One thing was for sure: He’d be damned if some motherfucker was going to start picking off Caldie’s girls. Wasn’t going to happen on his watch.
As he turned away, he clapped his partner on the shoulder. “I give you ten days, buddy.”
“Till what.”
“Till you’re back in the saddle with the Marlboro Man.”
“Don’t underestimate my willpower, Detective.”
“Don’t underestimate what you’re going to feel like when you go home and try to sleep tonight.”
“I don’t sleep much, anyway.”
“This job ain’t gonna help.”
At that moment, the photographer arrived with her click-click, flash-flash, and her bad attitude.
José nodded in the opposite direction. “Let’s back off and let her do her thing.”
Veck glanced over and his eyes popped as he got glared at but good. The fuck-off reception was no doubt a news flash for the guy—Veck was one of those types women gravitated to, as the last two weeks had proven: Down at HQ, the females were all over him.
“Come on, DelVecchio, let’s start casing this joint.”
“Roger that, Detective.”
Ordinarily, José might have had the guy call him de la Cruz, but none of his “new” partners had lasted much longer than a month, so what was the point. “José” was out of the question, of course—only one person had called him that on the job, and that bastard had disappeared three years ago.
It took about an hour for him and Veck to nose around and learn absolutely nothing material. There were no security cameras on the outsides of the buildings and no witnesses who had come forward, but the CSI guys were going to crawl all around with their headgear and their little plastic baggies and their tweezers. Maybe something would turn up.
The coroner showed at nine and did his thing, and the body was cleared for removal another hour or so after that. And when folks needed a hand with the body, José was surprised to find that Veck snapped on a pair of latex specials and jumped right in that Dumpster.
Just before the coroner took off with her, José asked about the time of death and was told about noontime the day before.
Great, he thought as the cars and vans started to pull out. Nearly twenty-four hours dead before they found her. She could well have been driven in from out of state.
“Database time,” he said to Veck.
“I’m on it.”
As the guy turned away and headed for a motorcycle, José called out, “Gum is not a food group.”
Veck stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Are you asking me for breakfast, Detective.”
“Just don’t want you passing out on the job. It would embarrass you and give me another body to step over.”
“You’re all heart, Detective.”
Maybe he used to be. Now he was just hungry himself and he didn’t feel like eating alone. “I’ll meet you at the twenty-four in five.”
“Twenty-four?”
That’s right; he wasn’t from here. “Riverside Diner on Eighth Street. Open twenty-four hours a day.”
“Got it.” The guy put on a black helmet and swung a leg over some kind of contraption that was mostly engine. “I’m buying.”
“Suit yourself.”
Veck slammed the kick start down and juiced the motor. “I always do, Detective. Always.”
As he tore off, he left awake of testosterone in the alley, and José felt like a middle-aged minivanner in comparison as he schlepped over to his oatmeal-colored unmarked. Sliding behind the wheel, he put his nearly empty and totally cold Dunkin’ Donuts fister into the cup holder and looked past the tape to that Dumpster.
Nabbing his cell phone out of his suit jacket, he dialed into HQ. “Hey, it’s de la Cruz. Can you patch me over to Mary Ellen?” The wait was less than a minute. “M.E., how you be? Good . . . good. Listen, I want to hear the call that came in about the body over by the Commodore. Yup. Sure—just play it back. Thanks—and take your time.”
José shoved the key into the slot at the steering wheel. “Great, thanks, M.E.”
He took a deep breath and cranked the engine over—
José gripped his phone and started to shake all over.
The South Boston accent was so clear and so familiar it was like time had gotten into a car wreck and whiplashed backward.
“Detective? You want to hear it again?” he heard Mary Ellen say in his ear.
Closing his eyes, he croaked out, “Yes, please . . .”
When the recording was finished, he listened to himself thank Mary Ellen and felt his thumb hit the
Sure as water down a sink drain, he was sucked into a nightmare from about two years ago . . . when he’d walked into a shitty, run-down apartment that was full of empty Lagavulin bottles and pizza boxes. He remembered his hand reaching out to a closed bathroom door, the damn thing quaking from palm to fingertips.
He’d been convinced he was going to find a dead body on the other side. Hanging from the showerhead by a belt . . . or maybe lying in the tub soaking in blood instead of bubble bath.
Butch O’Neal had made hard living as much of a professional pursuit as his job in the homicide department. He’d been a late-night drinker, and not just a relationship-phobe, but completely incapable of forming attachments.
Except he and José had been tight. As tight as Butch had ever gotten with anyone.
No suicide, though. No body. Nothing. One night he’d been around; the next . . . gone.
For the first month or two, José had expected to hear something—either from the guy himself or because a corpse with a busted nose and a badly capped front tooth turned up somewhere.
Days had slid into weeks, however, and in turn had dumped into seasons of the year. And he supposed he became something like a doctor who had a terminal disease: He finally knew firsthand how the families of missing persons felt. And God, that dreaded, cold stretch of Not Knowing was nothing he’d ever expected to wander down . . . but with his old partner’s disappearance, he didn’t just walk it; he bought a lot, put up a house, and moved the fuck in.
Now, though, after he’d given up all hope, after he no longer woke up in the middle of the night with the wonders . . . now this recording.
Sure, millions of people had Southie accents. But O’Neal had had a telltale hoarseness in his voice that couldn’t be replicated.
Abruptly, José didn’t feel like going to the twenty-four, and he didn’t want anything to eat. But he put his unmarked in drive and hit the gas.
The moment he’d looked into the Dumpster and seen those missing eyes and that dental job, he’d known that he was going in search of a serial killer. But he couldn’t have guessed he’d be on another search.
Time to find Butch O’Neal.
If he could.
SIXTEEN
Done week later, Manny woke up in his own bed with a stinger of a hangover. The good news was that at least this headache could be explained: When he’d come home, he’d hit the Lag like a punching
