36
While Mickey spoke with the priest, Darby watched the exchange from her car. The stay-away distance in her restraining order was 300 feet.
Mickey didn’t want to talk about his conversation with Father Cullen. He didn’t want to talk about anything. Darby sensed he seemed ashamed and embarrassed at having broken down at the cemetery. He had put on his sunglasses to hide his swollen eyes, and during the drive he turned his head away from her and stared out of the window.
She was taking him to Melrose, a city north of Boston. Mickey was staying at a friend’s condo, so he didn’t have to deal with the media. News vehicles had been parked day and night on Mickey’s street since the news of Byrne’s suicide broke.
Mickey cleared his throat. ‘The autopsy,’ he croaked.
Darby waited.
‘You told me you were planning on, you know, being there for it.’
‘Couldn’t make it happen,’ she said.
Mickey turned to her. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m not an officer of the law and, as such, not allowed to attend an autopsy,’ Darby said. Which was technically true and, for the purposes of this conversation, the simplest answer. She didn’t tell Mickey that an exception could have been made, given her forensic background and the fact that she had attended many autopsies in Boston over the course of her career. The reason she’d been denied access had to do with petty politics. Not only was Belham PD unhappy that Mickey had broken into Byrne’s house and found the former priest’s body, they were also downright hostile to her because, after Mickey had telephoned her, she had decided to enter the house and take a look at the crime scene instead of calling Chris Kennedy and remaining outside the house. She’d had no legal authority to enter and secure the scene herself.
‘The police were inside Byrne’s house for two days,’ Mickey said. ‘At least that’s what the news is saying.’
‘That’s what Kennedy told me.’
‘I heard they found more tapes,’ Mickey said.
‘Who told you that? Your source in the department?’
‘Is it true?’
‘Yeah,’ she sighed.
‘Two, right? Two more tapes?’
His source, whoever he was, seemed to have an inside line on the case.
‘What’s on them?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t listened to them,’ Darby replied. Which was true.
‘But you know what’s on them.’
She did. Kennedy had told her, but she didn’t want to get into specifics with Mickey – at least not today, not in his present mental condition. She believed he would torture himself with the information. ‘Let’s talk about this another time, okay? Right now, I think –’
‘No, we’re gonna talk about it now.’ Mickey swung his head back to her. ‘I have a right to know – and I want to know. I deserve to know.’
‘Your source didn’t tell you?’
‘I didn’t ask. I wanted to ask you in case I had questions, and because you’re the only person I trust. So tell me. Please.’
Darby shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘The two tapes are recordings, I’m told, of the girls … crying.’
‘For their parents.’
And other things, Darby thought, Kennedy telling her how there were parts where the girls could be heard screaming – whether in pain, or fear, or a combination of both, wasn’t clear. Kennedy had told her Claire Flynn had screamed for ‘it’ to stop – but there was no way of knowing what that was. She had begged to go home to her parents.
She didn’t tell this to Mickey, nor did she explain how some serial killers used such things to relive their crimes, to satisfy their dark, and often sexual, urges. And Mickey, fortunately, didn’t want to pursue the subject. He leaned forward and, with his elbows propped on his knees, rubbed his eyes and the sides of his head with such force it was as if he wanted to crush his skull.
‘The photographs I saw on the floor,’ he said. ‘Did they find any others?’
‘No, just what was on the floor.’
Mickey turned to the window, no doubt thinking of the pictures he’d seen of his daughter. There had been twenty-six in all, each one a 5 × 7 or 4 × 6 of Claire Flynn and the other two Snow Girls, Mary Hamilton and Elizabeth Levenson. The photographs, taken from what she assumed was a long-range lens, showed the girls in public places where someone with a camera wouldn’t stand out – parks, playgrounds, fairs, swimming pools and community centres. A good number of photographs showed the girls in bathing suits or summer clothing. All the girls were smiling. Happy.
‘I want those pictures of Claire,’ Mickey said. ‘I know that sounds odd, maybe even sick, given the fact that Byrne took them and touched them with his bare hands and did only God knows what else with them. But seeing those pictures of Claire, it’s like … it’s like Byrne stole something from me. I want them back.’
‘I understand.’ Darby didn’t know what else to say.
‘When will they give them back to me?’ Mickey asked.
‘Hard to say. They’re part of the investigation.’
‘What investigation? Byrne is dead. My daughter is dead.’
Darby wanted to say that until her remains were found – if they were ever found – the photos would most likely stay in the case file.
Mickey, though, didn’t press the matter. He had lapsed into silence.
It was impossible to tell how Mickey was handling everything. He had seen Byrne – had seen the pictures of his daughter and heard his daughter’s scared and wailing voice playing on the recorder. Given what he’d seen, she didn’t begrudge him seeking relief inside the bottle.
Only he wasn’t going to find any relief there. When the booze wore off and the hangover sank its razor-sharp teeth into the meat of his brain, the images he’d seen, his feelings – all of it would eat at him with the power and fury of a starving lion dropped into a petting zoo. That was the nature of the alcoholic mind.
‘Kennedy,’ Mickey snorted. ‘He actually thought I’d done that to Byrne – you know, strung him up and all that.’
‘He had to question you about it, Mickey.’
‘It’s bullshit.’
‘I hear you. But you were the one who found him – and you broke into his house. Because of that, Kennedy had –’
‘Why’d he have his trousers off? Byrne?’
‘It’s not important.’
He spun round to her. ‘Don’t be like the rest of them. Don’t be … you were always straight with me. Always, even when I was a complete and utter asshole who flushed away the best thing I ever had in my life.’
‘Why did you?’ Darby asked, wanting to change the subject.
‘If he wanted to commit suicide, why’d he put his trousers down?’
‘I don’t think he wanted to commit suicide.’
‘Meaning, what? It was an accident or something?’
‘An accident, I think.’
‘But why was he, you know, doing what he was doing in the first place?’
She didn’t want to get into this level of detail with him, not in his current condition, alone and grieving. But she’d rather he heard the truth from her.
Darby spoke by rote, in dry clinical terms. ‘He died of auto-erotic asphyxiation. It’s a sexual act generally performed by men who fall into the category of hardcore masochists. They believe that depriving themselves of oxygen during climax heightens an orgasm.’
‘I know what it is. I mean, I’ve heard about it, you know, on the news.’
‘When practitioners engage in this activity by themselves, the risk of instantaneous death is extremely high. The ligature puts pressure on the vagus nerve, which sends a message to the heart to shut down, resulting in sudden cardiac arrest.’
Mickey had turned away from the window. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered to himself, about to bury his face in his hands when he suddenly straightened and looked out of the front window. ‘Where the hell does Kennedy get off thinking I would break into the guy’s house and stage something like that?’ There was no anger or heat fuelling his slurred words, just a cold and weary acceptance. ‘If I wanted to kill him, I would have done it with my bare hands.’
Darby could feel Mickey circling around what he wanted to talk about, but she wasn’t sure he could – or maybe should – do so. Seeing the suspect responsible for the disappearance of his daughter and two other young girls dead from auto-erotic asphyxia, pictures of Claire and the others strewn about the floor – Mickey’s psychological trauma might still be too severe.
He exhaled loudly, the sweet odour of bourbon filling the car. ‘I wish I had done it.’
‘He wouldn’t have told you.’
‘I should have confronted him that night. If I had, he might’ve –’
‘Mickey, I want you to listen to me very carefully … Are you listening to me?’
‘Trust me when I tell you there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you or anyone else on the planet could have done to get him to talk. Believe me, I tried.’
‘So why did Kennedy go after me like that? Byrne killed himself – accidentally or otherwise. You were there.’
‘When you have a suicide by hanging, you have to pay close attention.’
‘To what?’ He sounded like he was nodding off.
‘We don’t need to talk about this now,’ Darby said. ‘Go ahead and sleep this off. I know where we’re going. I’ll wake you up when we get there.’
He sat up abruptly. ‘I’m awake. I want to talk about it now. Don’t shut me out.’
Darby sighed. ‘Sometimes a crime scene is staged to make it look like a suicide by hanging when it is, in fact, a homicide. With a homicide involving strangulation, you find defensive wounds on the victim’s hands.’
‘’Cause they’re fighting the person off.’
‘Right. The medical examiner or pathologist will also find two sets of ligature marks. A person strangles the victim in one place, then moves him or her to another location and stages a hanging. Byrne had only one set of ligature marks, and they matched the rope. He also had what’s called petechial haemorrhaging – the burst blood vessels you find in the white lining of your eyes. It’s a distinctive sign that someone died from asphyxiation.’
‘You said Byrne had only one set of ligature marks.’
‘He did.’
‘But you just said you weren’t at the autopsy.’
‘I wasn’t. I spoke to the forensic pathologist who performed it.’
‘Why? Because you think something was odd or whatever?’
‘I just wanted to follow up on it. Habit of mine when a case is closed.’
Mickey turned to her. ‘It’s not closed,’ he said. ‘My daughter’s body is still out there somewhere.’
Darby wasn’t about to debate with him. ‘Bad choice of words on my part. I’m sorry.’
Mickey said nothing. He went back to looking out of the side window, his forehead pressed against the glass.
‘He talked about her in his sleep,’ he said.
‘Who talked about who in their sleep?’
‘Byrne did. About Claire.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘It’s not fair,’ he said, more to himself than to her. ‘He took my daughter and he took pictures of her, he recorded her crying and screaming, and he gets a funeral and a headstone, and what does my daughter get? Dumped someplace where I can’t even go –’ His throat seized up. He cleared it several times, and from the corner of her eye she could see fresh tears rolling down his hollowed cheeks.
No matter how many times she had to console a victim, it never got easier. As a victim herself, she understood his pain and anger and rage, and the only way she could try to bridge it, the only way she could try to convey to him that she fully understood the haunted landscape he found himself in, was to reach across the console and grab his hand and hold it to let him know he wasn’t travelling alone.