The Dead Room

still time to close Pandora’s box. You can walk out of here with your conscience free and clear.’

‘Maybe you should talk to a lawyer.’

‘I’m not talking to a lawyer, Darby, I’m talking to you. You want to know the rest of it or not?’

‘Tell me.’

‘This girl, her hands, arms and clothes are caked in dirt because Mr Sullivan made her dig her grave in the basement with her bare hands. She’s got duct tape over her mouth. She’s shaking and crying, I’m crying because now the Fed’s pressing a gun against the side of my head – I can feel the muzzle digging into my skin as Mr Sullivan tells me about how I’ve got this real important decision to make. Life changing, he says. One of us, he tells us, is going into that hole.’

Darby’s skin grew cold. Coop stared up at the ceiling, at the fast-moving shadows made by the rainwater running down the living-room windows.

‘Mr Sullivan turns to me and says, “Who do you think should be put in there, Coops? This young lady right here, who decided to go to the Feds and tell them about my hotel parties, or you? Word on the street is you’re thinking about going to the cops when you promised me and your old man you were going to keep your mouth shut, keep our business right here in the neighbourhood? ”

‘That’s when I realized my parish priest must’ve told Mr Sullivan about my confession. I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, not my parents or my sisters. I was afraid of it getting back to Mr Sullivan and here I was stupid enough to believe I could trust Father Humphrey with the whole seal of confession thing.’

Darby gripped the edge of the cushion. ‘This girl in the basement, did she know Kendra Sheppard or Michelle Baxter?’

‘I’m sure she did, but I never got a chance to talk to her. I’m bawling, telling Mr Sullivan I didn’t tell anyone, and he just stares at me cracking peanut shells like he’s at a ball game. He keeps asking me the same question. Who do I think should go into that hole? Either I make a decision, he says, or he’s going to make the decision for me. Guess what decision I made, Darby?’

Her stomach hitched. Bile rose in her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could speak.

‘What was her name?’

‘Don’t know,’ Coop said, his eyes growing wet. ‘I’m ashamed to say I didn’t bother to ask. It was probably better that way, since Mr Sullivan made me put a plastic bag over her head.’

Darby felt her midsection disappear.

‘Of course, being the wonderful Robin Hood figure he was, Mr Sullivan yanked off the tape from her mouth so I could talk to her. You know, in case I wanted to say sorry before I suffocated her to death.’

Coop’s dry, hoarse voice cracked over the words.

‘She tried talking to me, I know she did, but I don’t remember a word because the entire time I was holding that plastic shopping bag over her head I was thinking about my mother, how it would destroy her and my sisters if I was the one who ended up in that hole. If I was the one who disappeared. That was Mr Sullivan’s specialty. I had heard stories, but now I was seeing it up close and in person.’

Tears spilled down his cheeks and his face crumbled. ‘She didn’t even put up a fight, Darby. It was like… like she had resigned herself to it.’

Darby couldn’t move and all the while a voice inside her kept wishing that she could hit some magic rewind button on time, go back to her office and forget about coming here.

Coop wiped his eyes. ‘After it was over, he made me put her body in the grave. I was burying her and not really feeling anything, I was in shock. But I was thinking about how I was going to hell. Mr Sullivan, he was all happy, kept telling me how proud he was. After she was buried he stuffed a wad of cash in my pocket. Two hundred bucks. That’s how much her life was worth. He told me I was working for him now, and my new job was to keep an eye out on the streets, report back to him if I heard or saw anything in the neighbourhood.

‘First, though, he said, I had to pay the piper. And if I didn’t, he was going to pick up the phone and call one of his boys on the force, tell him about what had just happened here and give ’em this plastic bag with my prints all over it. And this Fed was going to back him up, say how I’d been working for Mr Sullivan and he’d seen me going into the house with this girl and heard screaming. And once I was in jail, Mr Sullivan said he was going to pay my mother a special visit.’

His name isn’t Frank Sullivan, Coop. His real name is Ben Masters and he was a Federal agent who’d been planted inside the mob and I don’t think he died and I don’t know how he, King, Alan and the other two Federal agents placed on that boat managed to fake his death. All I know is that as every minute passes, this thing just keeps getting deeper and deeper, and I keep wondering when – or if – I’m going to reach the bottom.

Ezekiel kept whispering to her:

I didn’t call you to help me; I called to warn you about these so-called Federal agents. I have no idea if they’re still working for the FBI… You know what they did to your father; you saw what happened to Kendra… Don’t think you can expose these people. You can’t trust anyone.

Coop moved his niece so her tiny head rested underneath his chin. ‘Mr Sullivan took me upstairs to what I guessed was Kevin’s mother’s or sister’s room – the sun is shining through these real lacy curtains, and there were all these religious pictures of Jesus and Mary and the pope hanging on the walls. And there was Father Humphrey sitting on the edge of the bed with his collar off and a glass of whiskey in his hand. The door locked behind me – they conveniently locked on the outside so I couldn’t get out – and Father Humphrey kept smiling at me as he patted the spot next to him on the bed. Want to know what he did?’

‘No,’ she said, strangling on the word.

‘Good, ’cause I don’t want to rehash the gory details. And I’d hate to see you blush.’

‘Coop –’

‘I found the plastic bag, by the way. That’s why I was in such a rush to get inside the house. I found the bag inside that box full of bones.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘I threw it away.’

Darby stared at the carpet. She felt numb all over.

‘I’d appreciate it if you left out that little detail when speaking to the commissioner,’ he said. ‘I don’t want her to come looking for me. I already have them watching me.’

‘Who? Who’s watching you?’

‘Why, the League of Extraordinary Dead Federal Agents. They’re roaming around Charlestown.’

‘Do you know their names?’

‘No, but I know their faces. They’re probably watching the house right now.’

‘That woman you… met in the basement.’

‘I don’t know her name. And I’m proud to say that, being the stand-up guy I am, I never bothered to find out. Feel free to use your psych degree to draw your own conclusions. Just don’t share them with me.’

‘Ezekiel told me Kendra Sheppard was working with my father to help bring down Sullivan.’

‘And look how well that turned out.’

‘Did you know?’

‘I knew Sullivan had a thing for her, kept her close. I found out about it after the prostitution bust.’

‘And the other remains in the basement?’

‘No idea. I’ve got a favour to ask.’

‘What?’

‘Take a long vacation until this blows over. Fake a heart attack. Buy a plane ticket and go somewhere, just do something. You need to get as far away from this as you can.’

‘It’s a little too late for that.’

Coop stood up and placed his sleeping niece on the sofa.

‘You remember how my old man died?’

‘Hit-and-run,’ she said. Someone had run him over after he stumbled out of a bar in Lynn.

‘What I didn’t tell you was the phone call I got after we buried him. That Federal agent who’d brought me to Reynolds’s house, Special Agent King? He called me at home and told me to keep my mouth shut or I’d be burying my mother next to my old man. That’s why Jackie and I decided to stick around in Charlestown. We wanted to keep an eye on my mother. Thank God she moved to Florida at the beginning of the