Harry put the box of letters away. He would not need them again until Tuesday. And after that, no matter what happened, he would never need them again.
CHAPTER TWENTY — TWO
The heavy barred steel door slid open with a loud rumble as Harry left the reception area and entered the main body of the prison. He could feel sweat gathering in the palms of his hands and he wiped it away as discreetly as possible on the sides of his lightweight tan sports jacket. A correctional officer walked ahead of him and came to a stop before another solid steel door. The officer glanced back at Harry, pressed a buzzer set into the wall, and then lowered his mouth to an intercom and identified Harry and the name of the prisoner he was there to see. Above them the light on a closed-circuit security camera blinked on so other officers could see who was at the door. Moments later there was a solid click and the correctional officer pushed the door open.
“The prisoner you’re here to see should be brought in within a few minutes,” the officer said. “You can sit anywhere you want. This isn’t a normal visitation time so you have the place to yourself.” He gestured toward a row of cubicles each separated by a thick glass partition, with telephone receivers on both sides of the glass. “They told me you were a cop,” the officer added.
“That’s right,” Harry said.
“Then you know the routine. Just hit the buzzer by the door when you’re finished.”
“This won’t take long,” he said.
Harry’s hands trembled as the door on the other side of the glass opened.
He watched his mother enter the visitor’s room and wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him. What he saw was the same young woman who had stood in their kitchen all those years ago, a broad smile on her beautiful face as she listened to Jimmy do his comic imitation of the small boy who lived next door.
Lucy Santos slid into the chair opposite him, her hands going to the glass partition that separated them, stroking it as if the glass were his face. He stared at the hands. They were old hands, cracked and work worn, not the soft hands of his mother. He looked up at her face and saw lines and creases he had not seen when she entered the room. Then the creases slowly disappeared, the lines smoothed out, and the face was young again. He fought for control and grabbed the handle of the telephone receiver that would allow him to speak to her, jabbing with the index finger of his other hand at the receiver on her side of the glass, indicating that she should pick it up. She obeyed, bringing the phone to her lips.
“Harry, my darling Harry,” she said.
“Be quiet and listen to me,” he snapped.
She jerked her head back and her eyes widened in surprise. “Harry-”
“Just listen. Don’t speak.” He glared at her with unforgiving eyes. He saw her lips begin to tremble but felt nothing. Her face was soft and young and beautiful again and he fought the image off. “When I was eighteen you sent me a letter and asked me if the dead spoke to me, if Jimmy spoke to me. I never answered your letter, never answered that question because I didn’t want to; didn’t want any contact with you at all.” Harry leaned forward still glaring into the young/old woman’s face. “Now I want to answer you. Now I want you to know what Jimmy has told me, year after year after year; I want to tell you what other dead people have told me.”
“Oh, thank you, Harry. Thank you, thank you. You give me a beautiful gift. You give me the knowledge of the angels. Tell me, tell me what Jimmy says? Tell me, my son, what your brother says to you.”
Harry’s jaw tightened. “He says that Jesus is waiting for you…”
“Oh, yes, yes…”
“He says that Jesus has told him that when you get to heaven you will see Him in all His glory…”
“Oh, yes, thank God, in all his glory…”
“And when you see Him you will also see all that awaits the pure of heart; all the beauty that will be theirs for life everlasting. You will see everything that Jimmy has now. And Jimmy says that after you have seen it, after you see all the beauty and the glory that awaits those who have pleased the Lord, Jesus will raise his hand…”
“Oh, yes, yes…”
“… and He will cast you straight into hell.”
Lucy Santos’s back stiffened and the telephone receiver fell from her hand. Her eyes were wide and terrified and her face was lined with sharp fissures and sagging flesh. She was an old woman now.
Harry got up and walked to the door, pressed the buzzer, and waited for it to open. He did not look back.
William Heffernan
The Dead Detective
C HAPTER T WENTY — T HREE
H arry called Vicky from the prison parking lot. She answered her cell phone on the first ring.
“I was hoping it was you,” she said. “How’d it go with your mother?”
“It went,” Harry said. “I told her something she needed to hear. Now I’ll have to wait for the parole hearing on Tuesday… Do you have anything for me?”
“I do.”
“Are you able to talk without being overheard?”
“Yes.”
“What happened with the background check?”
Harry sat in his car and listened to a story of childhood abuse that had been inflicted on their new primary suspect. As he listened Harry marveled at what now lay before him. He had just visited one child-abusing monster, his own mother. At the same time he was investigating the murder of a different child-abusing woman. And that investigation had now revealed one more monster, this one molded years earlier by the hands of yet another. He was silent for several moments when Vicky finished.
“Harry? Are you there?”
“Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking about everything you dug up. I’m starting to feel like we’re surrounded by monsters.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Have you heard from Marty LeBaron?”
Vicky let out a long sigh. “Marty got a warrant and searched his house and both his cars, but he hasn’t located the murder weapon yet. He did come up with positive blood evidence in his work vehicle. Blood that matches Darlene’s type that he found in the trunk, along with some on the driver’s-side floor mat of his personal car that we haven’t matched yet. It could be transfer evidence from one or more of the crime scenes, something that came off the shoes he was wearing. It’ll take some time for DNA to prove everything beyond doubt, but Marty’s pretty sure he’s good for these murders.”
“Get that stuff all on paper for me,” Harry said. “I’m about two and a half hours away, but when I get back I want to run this stuff by Lola Morofsky before we lay it out for Rourke and decide how to set him up.”
“It’ll be waiting for you when you get here,” Vicky said.
Lola Morofsky sat in her overstuffed chair, her short legs dangling way above the floor. The preliminary reports that Vicky and Marty LeBaron had prepared were resting in her lap as her index finger moved from point to point like a computer mouse.
“I would very much like to interview this man.”
“I imagine you will in time.”
“Is the arrest imminent?” There was a clear look of concern on her face.
“We need to force a move on the perp’s part,” Harry said.
“Force a move?”
“We don’t have the murder weapon yet. It’s obviously stashed somewhere that we couldn’t find. But…”
