30
As much as people believed that she enjoyed being combative, the truth was otherwise. Dealing with bullshit and bureaucratic agendas and stupid people and the garden-variety assholes everyone encountered in their daily life often left her feeling addled, drained to the bone. Instead of seeking refuge inside a bottle, the way most cops did, Darby turned to the one place she had discovered that recalibrated her thinking.
CrossFit called it a ‘box’, which was their name for a gym. An online search revealed Belham had one. It was located downtown, the inside pretty much like all the ones she had visited, a garage-like space big enough to accommodate an adult version of a jungle gym. It had pull-up bars of various heights and ropes for climbing and gymnast rings hanging from the high warehouse ceiling. The floors were padded, and the weights were made entirely of rubber or coated in it. The box was warm and smelled of sweat and determination and chalk, and the clanging sound the weight bars made as they were dropped to the floor relaxed her in the same, soothing way as if she had been listening to the ocean.
For the next hour, she threw herself into a gruelling workout that left her collapsed on the floor, her lungs on fire and soaked head to toe with sweat. Her body was pleasantly exhausted, which was great, and her mind now felt wiped clean but also invigorated, which was even better. She showered, dressed, and then drove back to Belham, to St Stephen’s, where Cullen’s secretary told her that the priest was still unavailable.
When she returned to her hotel, Darby headed into the sad-looking lounge draped with thick velvet curtains and a glowing, neon-blue mirror to show people how cool and hip the place was. It had a solid lunch menu and a pretty decent selection of bourbons. She ordered a double Bulleit neat and an Angus burger stacked with all the fixings, opened a tab and took her glass over to a booth in the far corner of the room, wondering why Kennedy hadn’t called her. She took out her phone and found out why: she had muted her phone at Byrne’s house, wanting to focus on the crime scene. She found the constant buzzing and pinging sounds of her phone distracting.
Kennedy hadn’t called her, but someone else had. A green text box message held a local phone number she didn’t recognize. It also told her the caller had left a voicemail. She listened to it now.
A wet, crackling sound filled the phone speaker before the voice spoke.
‘I was hoping to catch you before you left,’ Byrne said. He struggled to breathe, his throat and lungs drowning in phlegm. ‘I remembered a detail about your brother I thought you might find helpful, in case you decide to look for him. Oh, and one other thing. Your father engaged in an extramarital affair of his own shortly after your mother’s peccadillo. She lives in Belham. The woman, not your mother, obviously, as Sheila has long since passed. Please don’t hesitate to call if I can be of any help. May God bless you and keep you safe, Darby.’
She had to give him credit. He really knew how to set the hooks.
But her words were facile, and she knew it. His words had bypassed the logical and intellectual centres of her brain – gave them the finger and headed straight down to their intended target: her heart. She felt them twisting inside there, her heart trying to pump them away and failing because Byrne had, in his possession, incredibly private information regarding her mother, her father, her family. He knew intimate details of their lives, things she didn’t know about and would never know about. Byrne would never pass the information on to her, and she knew he would never give her the tapes either, because he wanted to torture her with them. He wanted to use them to break her down until she begged. Pleaded. Cajoled.
That was never going to happen.
As for the tapes themselves, she suspected Byrne had either destroyed them or put them someplace where they would never be found after he died. Having the truth come out about her parents’ private lives wasn’t nearly as fun or as satisfying as watching her twist on the hook, knowing it was eating her alive. He would take his knowledge with him into the ground, and thinking about that made her want to drive to his house and beat it out of him – the same tactic Mickey Flynn had already tried.
Besides, if she went after Byrne in his current physical state, he would die – which, she firmly believed, was what Byrne desired. Going out on a violent note was a far more interesting and far more powerful end to his story than withering away inside his house.
Darby also had another thought – one that had been quietly nagging at her for the past couple of days. Byrne playing the tape of her mother’s confession, telling her about her parents’ infidelities and the story of how they had given a child – a boy – up for adoption – and now, leaving a cryptic message to torture her mind further – yes, all of it had thrown her, and yes, she was, in all likelihood, still in a state of shock, her brain trying to process everything, come to terms with it. And maybe that was the point. If she were consumed by her own personal turmoil, it would divert her time, energy and attention away from Byrne. Sure, he got off on seeing how it had hurt her, but what if he had a secondary agenda – namely, throwing her off the scent, trying to keep her mind occupied on herself instead of discovering something she could use against him?
But that was the one thing she hadn’t found. The guy was a walking cypher. She had been relentlessly working the phones, trying to dig up information on Byrne, talking to anyone she could to learn more about the man. The Boston Catholic Archdiocese refused to speak to her about Byrne in any way, shape or form – or the Belham police, for that matter. After Kennedy had tried – again – and hit a wall – again – Darby had enlisted Sue Michaud to help, hoping Sue could work some back channels, dig something up. Sue, though, hadn’t got anything beyond dry biographical information. Nobody knew Byrne – and, if they did, they weren’t talking about him.
Father Cullen was the only one who really knew him, and the man was MIA. She had left several messages with his insufferable secretary, and he hadn’t called. And then there was the matter of the mothers of Byrne’s other two victims, Nancy Hamilton and Judith Levenson. They still hadn’t returned her calls.
Mickey had described Nancy Hamilton as ‘stand-offish’. Darby thought she might have better luck focusing her efforts on Judith Levenson, who was probably the better choice, anyway, since Byrne had discussed her and her daughter that day in his kitchen. Darby took out her phone and called, unsurprised when the woman’s voicemail picked up. Darby checked her frustration and left another message.
Her food came. Her burger, fries and salad, even the bourbon – it was all as tasteless as Pablum.
Her phone rang when she was paying the bill. It was Sue Michaud.
‘I have a present for you,’ Sue said.
‘Great. I could use some good news. What is it?’
‘Father Keith Cullen got himself a new cell phone.’
‘And you have his new number.’
‘I do. I also know, thanks to GPS tracking, where he is at this very moment. Now, before I tell you, I need your assurances that you will not hurt him or do anything that will get you into trouble and, by proxy, me, since this gift I’m about to give you is technically illegal.’
‘I’ll be on my best behaviour. You have my word.’
‘All right, then. I’ve been tracking Cullen’s cell signal, and, according to what I’m seeing here on my screen, he just walked into 29 Huntington Avenue in Boston. Address belongs to a restaurant called Camilla Rose. Hey, speaking of Cullen, I did some digging, because I was curious about him.’
‘Unfortunately, no. Everything points to his being a boring, ordinary priest. Then again, on paper, I could say the same thing about good ole Father Byrne, and we know that’s not true. You think there’s something there with Cullen?’
‘Hard to say.’ Darby hadn’t told Sue about the recorded confession Byrne had played for her.
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do on my end to help, don’t hesitate to ask.’
Darby felt the words on her tongue, surprised herself when she said them out loud. ‘Actually, there’s one thing you can help me with – not about the Flynn case but about something else. Something … personal. About my parents.’
Sue waited. Darby closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, wondering if she wanted to set this ball in motion.
‘I was told they had a kid – a boy,’ Darby said. ‘This is before I came along, so he’d be older. I was told they gave him up for adoption when they were in high school.’
‘Who told you this?’
‘I’d rather not say right now.’
‘Is this source credible?’
‘To some degree.’
‘Well, if you can get me your parents’ social-security numbers, that would be a huge help. That opens a lot of doors. Until then, give me their full names, and as many details as you can.’
Darby rubbed her forehead. ‘Okay.’
‘This thing with your parents, how long have you known?’
‘A few days.’
‘I asked because, well, I’m sure I don’t have to explain this to you, but, in situations like this, I find that people don’t really think through the long-term implications of what they truly want. People want to know details but not all the details. You can’t cherry-pick.’
‘I understand.’
‘Take some more time and think this over. Thing like this, when you reach the end of the road, it’s not going to end the way you wanted it to. You’re not going to be in some Disney movie where you get to the end and everyone is happy and singing songs together, while unicorns shit rainbows. But you know this better than anyone, am I right? … Darby, you there? Hello?’