18
Darby had promised Kennedy she would call him the moment she got back to her car. She didn’t want to call him. She wanted to go to her hotel and take a long shower, and to follow it up by using an entire tube of toothpaste to scrub her mouth, and then gargle with bleach instead of mouthwash.
As she drove away, she kept looking in her rearview as if expecting to see Byrne there, following her.
She gripped the steering wheel to keep her hands steady. All she could think about was the tape.
From all outward appearances, her parents had had a solid marriage. They loved each other and laughed a lot and they didn’t snipe at each other or trade passive-aggressive comments at the dinner table like most married couples from that time. They weren’t perfect – what couple was? – but, from everything Darby had seen, her parents were good, decent people, kind and loving and considerate, and always standing up to do the right thing. And now Byrne had shared a small snippet from a tape that had poisoned not just the memories of her parents but also how she viewed them as people, which was worse.
Had Byrne been telling her the entire truth, though? That was the question.
The answer, she suspected, was yes. Byrne had in his possession the sort of secrets he knew could flay her soul, and the evidence was sitting in a cassette recorder back at his house. She wondered if she had made the right decision, leaving it behind.
Being a good cop required that you know a good deal about the law. Massachusetts Statute Chapter 272, Section 99 – otherwise known as the ‘Wiretap Law’ – dealt with the interception of oral and written communications. Created in 1968, the law came into being in order to give law enforcement the investigative power, under strict judicial supervision, to combat the growing threat of organized crime. It also detailed what citizens can and cannot do with a tape recorder.
Massachusetts was one of a handful of states that required ‘all-party’ consent. Recording audio of someone, or a whole bunch of people, without their explicit consent was a felony with a maximum five-year sentence.
Possession of such a tape, however, was not a crime. There was no solid evidence that Byrne, in fact, had made the recording. Add that to the fact that Father Keith Cullen’s voice, not his, was on the recording. For all she knew, Father Cullen had been the one who had recorded the confession. If that was true, how had Byrne got his hands on it?
Her phone rang. It was Kennedy.
She decided to take the call.
‘Well?’ he asked, drawing out the word, his voice spiked with hope.
Darby wondered how he knew she had left the house; then she remembered he had people watching it. Someone must have called him.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
Never make it personal. That was the first rule of the job. Darby quickly collected her thoughts.
‘He asked if I wanted to know where Claire Flynn was buried.’
‘Hold up,’ Kennedy said. ‘He confessed to burying the Flynn girl?’
‘No. He asked if I wanted to know and I said yes.’ Then, in a cold, clinical manner, she told him about Byrne’s proposition, leaving out the part about what she’d done to him inside the kitchen.
A long silence followed after she finished.
‘I know you’re going to think I’m an asshole for asking this,’ Kennedy began.
‘I didn’t wipe the floor with him, if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘Then what, may I ask, did you do to him?’
‘I left him.’
‘In one piece?’
‘You think I beat the shit out of him?’
‘Did you?’
‘I’m gonna pretend you didn’t ask me that.’
‘Were his bodyguards there?’
‘His bodyguards?’
‘He hired two guys to watch him.’
That made her straighten a bit. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Dead serious,’ Kennedy said. ‘I take it they weren’t there.’
‘No. Who are they?’
‘Nick Rossi and Paul Ward. They work for a place in Boston that specializes in security and investigations, do a lot of work for Byrne’s lawyer. This morning they took Byrne out grocery shopping and guess who they ran into?’
‘Mickey was there?’
‘You got it. Mickey went after him. Or, I should say, he tried to go after him. Byrne’s hired muscle dragged him out of the door, Mickey screaming his head off about how he’s going to go after him. This is according to multiple witnesses – including Father Cullen.’
‘Did something happen? Did Byrne provoke him?’
‘Byrne wanted him to leave the store – which, legally, Mickey was required to do.’
‘The restraining order,’ Darby said.
‘Right. It must’ve set him off. Byrne, being the kind, wonderful soul he is, didn’t file any charges. Let’s go back to you: specifically, why Byrne wanted to talk to you.’
Darby’s thoughts turned back to the tape. Once she told him, there was no turning back.
Did she trust him?
‘I need to tell you something in confidence,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
Darby took in a deep breath and held it for a moment.
‘Byrne had a tape. An audio cassette,’ she said. ‘My mother was on it. She was in the confessional.’
‘With Byrne?’
‘Cullen. She confessed to having an affair. That’s why he wanted to see me, Chris. He wanted to play the tape for me, see my reaction and put it into his spank-bank for when he jerked off later.’
‘Ladies – especially ones with degrees from Harvard – should not use terms like “spank-bank” and “jerk off”. That’s very crude.’
‘What else was on the tape?’
‘I didn’t listen to the rest of it. He alluded to having audio cassettes of confessions from other parishioners – namely, Elizabeth Levenson’s mother, Judith.’
‘Did he play them for you?’ Kennedy asked, his tone urgent now.
‘No. And I didn’t see any other tapes lying around.’
‘It’s not going to be enough to get a search warrant. The problem we have is that the person on the tape – your mother – is dead, and there’s no way to prove she didn’t give consent.’
‘When you go to confession, the right to privacy is implied.’
‘Correct, but there’s no way to know for sure that recording was made inside a confessional, is there? For all we know, Cullen had that conversation with your mother inside his office, where a lawyer could argue consent.’
Kennedy, unfortunately, was right.
‘And there’s the issue of possession,’ Kennedy said.
‘Possession is not a crime, yeah, I know.’
‘Where’s the tape now?’
‘I left it back at the house. I thought – my gut reaction was that it was a set-up. Legally, if I took the tape, he could charge me with theft.’
‘And you could have charged him with blackmail.’
‘He knew I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I think he’s made a very careful study of me,’ Darby said. ‘He knows I don’t give interviews, and he’s smart enough to know I wouldn’t want to expose myself in that way. But I didn’t take the tape mainly because that’s what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to take it and then he’d imagine me listening to my mother confessing all these secrets about her, my father, God only knows what, and getting his rocks off. I also think … never mind.’
‘No, tell me.’
‘When he started playing the tape, I got this feeling that some part of him was trying to goad me into killing him.’
‘In other words, a normal day for you.’
Darby didn’t reply. She was thinking back to Byrne’s proposition, the lust he was barely able to keep out of his eyes and voice.
‘Really?’ Kennedy said. ‘Not even a chuckle?’
‘I was just thinking about Byrne’s request.’
‘Why? You thinking about going back there and giving him a lap dance?’
‘Would you stop me if I said yes?’
‘Darby, to solve this thing, I’d consider throwing my mother down a flight of stairs. Actually, I’ve been meaning to do that anyway. Bad example.’
‘He’s not going to tell me, you or anyone else where he buried those girls.’
‘Something else is eating at you. I can hear it in your voice.’
‘He wanted to see me naked,’ Darby said. ‘Paedophiles aren’t interested in adult women.’
‘True. But he’s an old guy now, he’s dying, the world knows he’s a paedophile. He doesn’t have access to kids any more, so he uses the only weapon he has left.’
‘Humiliation.’
‘You got it. But what do I know? I’m having a problem following this guy’s thought patterns. Why do I get the feeling he has some sort of endgame in place?’
‘He knows he’s dying, and he wants to go out creating as much damage as possible. He said Judith Levenson had peculiar sexual appetites.’
‘Like what?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Darby said. ‘But if it’s true and her tapes made their way into the public domain, imagine the shame and embarrassment she’d go through. That’s what he’s after, what this is all about. He wants all the attention turned on him when he decides to release those tapes.’
‘And there’s no way I can get my hands on them legally.’
‘I doubt they’re even inside the house. My guess is he has them stored somewhere.’
‘Guy doesn’t drive, though. The only one who visits him is the hospice lady. And now the two bodyguards.’
‘So maybe she’s brought stuff to him from a safety-deposit box or maybe something from his lawyer’s office. Or Byrne’s hired muscle could also act as delivery boys.’
‘I’ll look into it.’ Kennedy blew out a long stream of air. ‘Cagey prick, ain’t he?’
‘Slick.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Still attached to my shoulders.’
Kennedy chuckled a bit at that. ‘I don’t know what to say other than thank you. That and I’m sorry for putting you through this.’
‘Do me a favour.’
‘Name it.’
‘If we end up finding those tapes, I know you’ll have to log them into evidence. Just promise me you’ll limit who has access to the ones involving my mother. Byrne isn’t the only psychopath who gets off on people’s pain and misery. Some of them work in your office.’
‘Don’t worry about them, McCormick. I’ve got your back.’
Kennedy hung up. Darby dialled Father Cullen’s cell number: a recorded greeting on the other end of the line told her that the number was no longer in service.
She drove to the rectory.
The office was warm and fragrant with coffee, and she found the secretary on the phone, jotting down the details for a funeral. The woman ignored her, and after she hung up she busied herself with paperwork.
‘I need to speak to Father Cullen,’ Darby said.
‘He’s unavailable.’
‘When will he be available?’
‘He’s on vacation.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know, and I didn’t ask because it’s none of my business.’ The woman’s gaze flicked to Darby. ‘Or yours.’
‘Why did he change his number?’
‘I’m under no obligation to give it to you.’
Darby knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere with this woman. ‘You know what? You’re right. The next time you speak to Father Cullen, tell him I found his tapes.’
‘His tapes?’
‘Yeah, the recordings he made of his parishioners in the confessional.’
The woman blanched.