called him Peter. She couldn’t be entirely sure, though. And Anthony Frissora, why did he seem so familiar?
That inner voice perked up again:
There was no doubt in her mind that Ben Masters was Frank Sullivan, but Peter Alan and Anthony Frissora… the pictures on the TV screen were at least twenty years old, but their faces… their faces
She filed the thought away and hit PLAY.
Frank Sullivan’s badly charred body, the newsreader said, was buried next to his mother’s in a Charlestown cemetery.
Jamie wondered who was really buried in the cemetery, wondered how Frank Sullivan had managed to fake his death, and wondered how he had managed to get both the FBI and the Boston police to buy off on it. Her thoughts turned to the man she’d shot in the basement – the man she knew only as Peter.
He’d worn a gun in a shoulder holster underneath his suit jacket. And she remembered him saying how he had tried to visit the boy named Sean at the hospital and encountered a problem with some woman from the Boston PD.
Was the man named Peter a cop? Clearly he was tied in to Kevin Reynolds and Ben Masters.
Frank Sullivan was now Ben Masters. Kevin Reynolds had worked for Sullivan. Reynolds had said he was expecting a call from Ben.
If the man named Peter was, in fact, some sort of law enforcement officer, had he helped Sullivan fake his death?
Frank Sullivan died in the summer of 1983. He resurrected himself as Benjamin Masters. Five years ago he broke into her house and killed her husband.
Why had Sullivan/Ben come out of hiding?
She watched the news for another twenty minutes. There was no mention of a missing man named Ben Masters, but she was sure there would be plenty of discussion about it between Kevin Reynolds and his people.
Carter called out for her.
‘Mom! Mom, I’m getting cold!’
She shut off the TV and stood, trembling all over. She shoved the passport and licence into her pocket as she moved to the bottom of the stairs.
‘Get… ah… towel. Dry… ah… dry… off. Be… ah… ah… up… ah… in… ah… minute.’
‘Okay.’
Back in the basement, she took out Ben’s mobile phone and slipped in the battery. She turned it on knowing she had to do this quickly, knowing that the signal was being monitored by this group of men. She knew one of these men was named Jack. She remembered Peter saying something about a man named Jack watching the Belham house.
The phone’s screen had a message saying Ben had missed another eleven calls. She touched the message and the screen changed to the call log. Pontius had called. No calls from the man named Alan.
She found the box marked ‘Messaging’. She touched it. A new screen now appeared upon which she could compose a message. She started typing ‘Pontius’ when the phone automatically filled in the name.
She composed the message she’d been playing with for the past few hours:
MEET ME AT WATERMAN PARK IN BELHAM AT 5 A.M. COME ALONE. WE’VE BEEN SET UP. DON’T TALK TO ANYONE. GET RID OF PHONE SO THEY DON’T TRACK YOU. WILL EXPLAIN WHEN YOU GET THERE, THEN HAVE ARRANGED SAFE WAY FOR YOU TO LEAVE. CASH, NEW ID, PASSPORT & DRIVER TO TAKE US. BE CAREFUL. MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FOLLOW.
Throughout the afternoon she had debated the ‘come alone’ part; it reeked of a set-up. She wondered whether it would alert Reynolds. If he didn’t come alone, her plan wouldn’t work.
Maybe, but this was the only way to bring Reynolds to her. She didn’t think he’d pass up an opportunity to speak to Ben Masters/Frank Sullivan. Reynolds, with his repeated phones calls, was clearly in a state of panic about what the police had found in his basement. And now here came Ben to the rescue. She felt confident Reynolds would follow the instructions in the message. When someone threw you a life preserver, you didn’t say wait, excuse me, but I need you to answer some additional questions before I grab hold. You clutched it and thanked the sweet Lord above for your tremendous good fortune.
Jamie saw the photograph Dan had taped to the wall – the photograph of Carter, still a baby, sitting on Michael’s lap on a beach at Cape Cod, their last vacation together as a family. Her two boys smiled at her from the picture, looking healthy, happy. No scars on their bodies. No memories of their father being tortured to death in the kitchen. No dead room.
She hit SEND. The message lingered on the screen for a moment and then disappeared into cyberspace or wherever these things went. Jamie removed the battery, threw everything back inside the drawer and went upstairs to tend to her children.
34
Darby, who had just stripped out of her coveralls, paced the threadbare carpet in the empty bedroom at the top of the stairs waiting for Dr Howard Edgar to come back on the line. The state’s new forensic anthropologist had moved into his Quincy home less than a week ago and was now rummaging around the strange rooms still packed with boxes searching for a pen and paper.
She had borrowed a mobile phone from a patrolman and had gone upstairs to get away from the noise. Jennings had gathered his troops inside the kitchen and she could hear him speaking.
‘The lead we had on Kevin Reynolds? It turned out to be his cousin, which isn’t surprising, since the two of them look so much alike. We need to find him. Some of you grew up here. I did too, so I know what you’re thinking – the neighbourhood won’t talk to us. Code of silence and all that bullshit. Tell them the remains we found might belong to local girls. That’s your way in. Use that to get them to talk. Work your contacts. Call any retired flatfoot you know who walked these streets during the Sullivan regime. Any name you get will help us get closer to identifying these remains.’
White lights danced across the old bedroom walls. Darby looked out of the grimy bedroom window at the faces gathered below her.
The locals had pretty much packed it in for the night but the media seemed to have doubled in size. Reporters, cameramen and photographers stood shoulder to shoulder behind the sawhorses, every one of them anxiously staring at the front door. Word had leaked about the remains.
