Mother Harvard, the law school this time, with the vague idea that a law practice might be a nice roost from which to pursue other interests. And then he had ingested the New Boston bug, another city in need of rebuilding, another project of a scale commensurate with his bounding energy. By now he’d even taken up an interest in modernist architecture; he thought he might try architecture school at some point.
Michael never knew what to make of Wamsley. He considered his boss a curiosity, a strange exotic bird from a faraway WASP country of which he’d heard rumors. Wamsley considered Michael a sort of exotic, too, a policeman’s son and an inveterate laconic, maybe a little dull but a Harvard man, a good sober presence to have at one’s right hand. Wamsley had recruited Michael to be his adjutant, and Michael felt a suitable gratitude, even affection, for his loony and possibly brilliant boss.
That afternoon when Michael entered the corner office of the Attorney General, it was Wamsley he noticed first. Wamsley was seated in a wing chair facing the A.G.’s desk, and from behind Michael saw only his skinny legs double-crossed. Wamsley unwound his legs and twisted around to peer at Michael over the back of the chair, as a child might. “Ah, Michael. The indispensable man.”
The Attorney General, Alvan Byron, emerged from a bathroom off the office, wiping his hands with a paper towel. “Graveyards are filled with indispensable men. That’s what de Gaulle said.”
“Cheerful thought,” Michael responded.
Alvan Byron was a big man, his torso one enormous barrel. The A.G. favored big collars, French cuffs, and peaked lapels despite the prevailing fashion. His anachronistic suits seemed to place him in an earlier, more glamorous era. Though he was one-quarter Scot, Byron was at the moment considered the highest-ranking Negro elected politician in the country, and his career already seemed to have acquired an irresistible velocity. Alvan Byron was bigger than Boston.
“Big news, Mr. Daley.” Byron settled himself at the desk. “We’re taking over the Strangler case.”
Michael let slip an undecorous guffaw.
“Something funny?”
“No. Just, I know someone who’ll be happy to hear it.”
“A lot of people will be happy to hear it. It’s time for a fresh pair of eyes.”
“Boston PD isn’t going to be happy to hear it.”
“No.” Byron gave Wamsley a glance. “We have some ideas about that, too.”
Michael sat there nodding, with a dumb, bemused grin. He thought, You two have absolutely no idea. You could put Sherlock fucking Holmes on the Strangler case and nothing-nothing-you could do would satisfy Boston Homicide. What he said was: “Well, Criminal Division has a lot of good guys. I’m sure they’ll do a good job.”
“That wasn’t exactly what we had in mind-”
“Criminal Division isn’t getting it,” Wamsley interjected.
“No? Who then?”
“A special bureau we’re creating,” Wamsley enthused. “Kind of an all-star team. With all the men and resources they’ll need, regardless of jurisdiction or expense.”
“Did you see this?” Byron tossed a copy of the morning’s Observer across the desk. A splashy three-column headline:
STRANGLER INVESTIGATION RIDDLED WITH ERRORS
The byline read, Amy Ryan and Claire Downey.
“Yes, I saw it.”
“That’s your sister-in-law, isn’t it, this Amy Ryan?” Byron bored in.
“Something like that.”
“Well,” Wamsley continued, “we think she’s hit the nail square on the head. BPD had its chance. They tried the old-fashioned way. Now it’s our turn.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning the case is just too big for one department, even Boston’s. You have thirteen women dead, a serial- murder investigation that spans four cities and three counties. These local departments aren’t used to working together. They don’t know how to communicate. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. What’s needed is a coordinated approach. It’s just the sort of case we should be intervening on. Even more important, what you have in this case is a killer who is canny enough or unpredictable enough or just crazy enough that traditional methods have failed utterly. What’s needed is new thinking.”
“New thinking?”
“Yes, yes.” Wamsley was giddy and sincere, and what he was saying made a superficial sort of sense. You could almost believe it. “An interdisciplinary, unconventional, scientific approach. Detectives unblinkered by experience, by what they know, or think they know, is the right way to investigate a homicide. If experience shows anything, it’s that people tend to see only what they’re looking for. They will overlook the most obvious evidence because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what clues ought to look like or where they should be found. We think this case could benefit from a fresh approach. We think the answer-the critical clue, the correct suspect-is probably already there in the data, somewhere in that haystack. The trick is to find it, to isolate it from all the background noise, and to do that before the strangler strikes again. If we could just aggregate all the evidence we have, synthesize it, and subject it to rigorous scientific methodology, we could really crack this thing. We could subject all that data to computer analysis-”
“Alright, George,” Byron said. “I think he’s got it.”
“Well,” Michael ventured, “it all sounds very interesting. You mind if I ask why you pulled me out of court to tell me all this?”
“The new bureau is going to be headed up by Mr. Wamsley.”
“It is?”
Wamsley grinned. “It is.”
“George, you don’t have any experience investigating homicides. Do you?”
“Absolutely none.”
Michael thought at this point that he knew why he was here. Nutty as it was, they meant to put Wamsley in charge of the new Strangler bureau, and Michael would be asked to take over Eminent Domain. Michael thought he was up to it despite his relative lack of experience, he thought the others would accept him. And in the New Boston era, who knew where it might lead?
“Michael, George has asked that you be detailed to the new bureau as well.”
“What! I’ve never investigated a homicide in my life.”
“Precisely!” Wamsley boomed.
“Precisely? Look, all I know is eminent domain. What am I gonna do-take away the Strangler’s parking space? This is crazy.”
“It’s not all that crazy, Michael,” Byron insisted. “You’re a bright guy. Your dad was in Boston Homicide, which will give you a little credibility with these guys. And you probably absorbed more from him than you realize. Anyway, your primary responsibility will be administrative. The bureau will be staffed up with detectives and experts and whatnot. Your job, with George here, will just be to synthesize it all, to keep everybody pulling in the same direction. We’re not asking you to do anything you’re unqualified for. We’re not stupid. You underestimate yourself, Michael.”
“No, no, I estimate myself just right. I’m not a detective. I can’t even figure out the cases on Perry Mason.”
Byron chortled. “No one’s asking you to be a detective. We’re asking you-no, we’re telling you-to be part of a team, a team that needs your particular skills.”
“What skills? I don’t have skills. Ask anyone.”
“Michael, do you know what I see when I look at you?” Byron fixed his eyes on Michael. “I see a bright young lawyer who is satisfied doing work that is beneath him. He comes from a family of cops, he has a good mind, yet he wants no part of the biggest murder case that ever happened in this city. It makes me wonder, what is he so afraid of? What does he want?”
“Maybe I just don’t want to touch murder cases. Cuts a little close to home, you know?”
“I see. Your father.” The city rustled outside. Byron considered it a moment. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Michael. You help me here, catch me a strangler, and I promise you, you can try eminent domain cases to your heart’s content.”
