Chapter 22

Ocean Park didn’t have enough ambulances to carry all the dead. One from Saugus arrived, slowing when it neared swirling blue lights. Police tape formed bright yellow fences that made cattle pens for the chattering neighbors. A news van followed the ambulance and tried to tailgate past the police checkpoint. Uniformed cops banged fists on the side of the van, cursed the reporters, ordered them off the street.

Conley stood next to a makeshift wall of wooden poles and black plastic that hid the bodies in the front yard. His heart still pounded a drumbeat that had begun when the call came in. He’d raced to her house, a ride he couldn’t even remember now, and his pounding heart didn’t slow until he saw Channary unharmed, felt the pulse in her tiny, warm hand, and led her to the safety of a neighbor.

Stefanos arrived and grabbed the collars of two young local cops, pulled their faces close to his, told them to guard the neighbor’s front and back doors with their lives. “And shoot to kill,” he screamed, the veins on the back of his hands as blue as the bunched uniforms he held.

Crime scene techs shuttled between the bodies on the ground. The corpse nearest the street was a rag doll. Hispanic male in his twenties, strong build, dressed in black. Dressed for death. Stefanos squatted and spoke to the dead man.

“Hope it hurt, asshole—a lot.”

Mazzarelli had just arrived. His hair was disheveled and his slack tie hung like a paisley noose.

“You okay, Captain?”

Stefanos rose and smoothed the wrinkles from his pants. “About time you showed up. Take notes.”

Mazzarelli straightened and dug a notepad and pencil stub out of his overcoat pocket.

The three of them walked to the corpse in the alley.

“Another Hispanic,” Stefanos said. “Latin Kings probably. Somebody gutted them both from belly to neck.”

Conley, Stefanos, and Mazzarelli climbed the steps of the three-family house, past the officer holding the logbook, to the victim on the second floor landing. He was curled into a ball, dead hands clutching his chest, dark hat shading lifeless eyes.

“Last two were edged-weapon attacks,” Stefanos said. He knelt on one knee. “Cuts have a bevel to them, probably came from behind. Angled strikes.”

Conley remembered a coroner saying knife wounds were agonizing—thousands of nerves screaming, thousands of points of pain.

A patrolman approached and whispered to Stefanos.

“Captain, we got enough meat wagons now. Techs need to do their work.”

“Ten minutes.”

They climbed to the third floor, Mazzarelli wheezing and glistening with sweat. They inspected the hallway and bedrooms. Spartan spaces—mattress and a chair, clothes in piles against the wall. They walked into Channary’s bedroom and stood over the body on the floor. This gangbanger looked like a teenager.

“Scrimmage wounds,” Stefanos said as Mazzarelli wrote with a tiny pencil, tongue out, eyes straining. “Lunging stabs from the front, knife twists to open a hole as big as a baseball. Killed quietly. Quiet and sure.”

“Dark clothes again,” Conley said. “Like commandos, all except for the one in the van. They placed lookouts. This was well-planned.”

Mazzarelli wrote fast, big hands pinching the pencil. He flipped a page and spoke.

“Buddy D’Amico’s the stiff in the van, Captain. He was just two weeks out of Cedar Junction. Child molesters like Buddy usually don’t do too good in that pit, but he’d managed all right. Raped most every guy under thirty, but none of them would testify. Hard to imagine someone could strangle a guy with a neck like that.ˮ

“Thank God someone did.”

Conley visited the rooms again, and the second floor landing. The perps had numbers and lookouts.

So how’d they get ambushed?

Outside, a reporter held a microphone in front of a statuesque redhead in the middle of the street. A crowd gathered around them. Conley strained to see.

Lisa.

Human misery attracted politicians as well as media. His wife the candidate held court, pointing at the death house, eyes shifting from one listener to another, a calculated second and a half, just enough to form a bond, maybe grab a vote.

He knew the spiel. Safer streets. Better-trained police. Programs. Money. He’d heard it a million times. Simple solutions. Everything was easy for those who didn’t have to do it.

“Kendricks just arrived,” Mazzarelli said to Stefanos.

“Tell him to take a look at this mess, then see me.”

“A drug beef, Captain?”

“I don’t think so.”

Outside, more reporters strained against the police tape and shouted questions at stone-faced policemen.

“This’ll get national coverage,” Mazzarelli said. “Local businessman’s death gets local newspaper’s front page. Drug dealer gets the metro section. Massacres get network news specials. News vultures must have all the rules written down in a book somewhere. We got a motive, Captain?”

He nodded upstairs. “They wanted Channary.”

“The girl in the church?”

“The last intruder was in her bedroom—farthest one from the van. Thank God she wasn’t there.” He dug a fist into his palm and turned to Conley. “Time to get to work, Detective. The Latin Kings have targeted our Channary.”

****

An ambulance left with the last body after noon. Conley and Stefanos joined Channary in the neighbor’s house. Conley sat next to her on a musty couch and Stefanos sat in a wingchair. The coffee table between them was cluttered with religious pictures and statues of saints.

Channary and the saints—a team of innocents.

She clutched a blond doll and caressed its limp hair.

“Hello, Channary,” Stefanos said.

“Hello, sirs, and good afternoon.”

“Your English is improving.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Sheila knows many words.”

“I bet she does. Do you know what happened last night?”

“No.”

Channary caressed the doll’s straw hair harder and smoothed it closer to its head.

“Did you hear noise?” he asked. “Voices?”

“The trees whispered good night to me. They always do. And then I slept with the Aunties last night.”

“I see. Nothing else?”

“The trees had nothing else to say.”

“Do you remember Kendricks and Conley?”

“Sheila says Kendricks is funny and Conley is handsome.”

“Do you like them?”

Her face turned red. “Yes.”

Kendricks walked in the front door, arguing loudly with the patrolmen posted guard. One pinned him to the wall before Conley refereed. Still breathing hard from the tussle, Kendricks sat on the sofa, and Channary smiled that beautiful lazy crescent of perfect, salmon-colored lips and teeth the color of pearls.

Conley placed his arm around her.

Stefanos sat back and folded his hands.

“I’m glad you like them, Channary, because you’ll be staying together for a while.”