The Dread Line Read online

  With that, everyone but Ragsdale and I got to their feet.

  “You’ve got to admit Mulligan did a hell of a job sniffing all this out,” Booth said as he led Crowder out the door.

  “Shucks,” Crowder said. “Even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and again.”

  * * *

  After they were gone, Ragsdale jerked open a drawer and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He sloshed some into two tumblers and slid one across the desk to me. For a moment, we drank together in silence. Then he drew two Perdomos from his humidor, clipped the ends, and tossed one to me.

  “Screw it,” he said, “We both could use a good smoke.” He reached across the desk to light mine and then set fire to his.

  “Didn’t figure you for a scofflaw,” I said.

  “Today only. We can’t go making a habit of it.”

  “That Crowder is a piece of work,” I said.

  “But was he right about you?”

  I just shrugged.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Take it any way you want.”

  “Notice how his country bullshit got thicker after you called him on it?”

  “Yeah. He was having a good ol’ time pissing me off.”

  “I thought it was pretty funny.”

  “Maybe he should tour with Larry the Cable Guy.”

  “Get ’er done,” Ragsdale said.

  “Don’t you start with me,” I said. “So, tell me. When are you going to bring Souza in?”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to be there.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “No way he’s going to talk anyway.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “There’s still one thing we don’t know about how the robbery went down,” I said.

  “How Souza and Belinda knew why Cargill was going to the bank that day,” Ragsdale said.

  “I’m thinking they got it from the bodyguard,” I said.

  “Cargill says he never told Bukov why he was going to the bank.”

  “But Bukov could have overheard him talking about it.”

  “I guess it’s possible.”

  “Awful suspicious, the way Bukov skipped town so soon after the robbery,” I said.

  “And he’s Russian,” Ragsdale said. “Damn Ruskies are all over this thing.”

  “You still think Alexander Cargill killed Belinda?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “So do I.” Or maybe, given what I’d done, I just hoped it had been him.

  “But you have doubts,” the chief said.

  “Well … I still wonder if it could have been Souza.”

  “Unless Alexander wakes up from his coma and decides to confess,” the chief said, “we’ll never know for sure.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Ragsdale called me with the news. Alexander Cargill had succumbed to his juries in the neurological unit at Johns Hopkins without ever regaining consciousness.

  That afternoon, Richard Harding Davis’s account of Cargill’s death was the lead in The Ocean State Rag. The story took no position on whether he had been the dognapper, as the police suspected, or the Good Samaritan of his father’s imagination.

  The story raised the possibility that the death was accidental but reported that the police were investigating it as a homicide. So far, the story added, there were no viable suspects.

  After I watched Logan Bedford plagiarize the piece for Channel 10’s eleven o’clock news, I put Joe Bonamassa’s new blues album on the sound system and cracked open a bottle of Locke’s single malt. Then I sprawled on the floor with my dogs and drank straight from the bottle. Brady and Rondo nuzzled me, sensing that something was wrong.

  Alexander had been such a twisted little bastard. A stalker. Probably a murderer. Definitely a psychopath who’d found joy in setting family pets on fire and watching them burn. If he’d managed to get my gate open on that stormy night, Brady and Rondo might be in the ground instead of snuggling by my side. I wasn’t sorry he was dead, but I wished I hadn’t killed him. I was going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.

  The title cut, “Different Shades of Blue,” was playing now. The song was a wrenching tale of lost love, but one line spoke to me.

  “You carry the pain around, and that’s what gets you through.”

  37

  A week later, I was washing the breakfast dishes when Joseph called.

  “Guess who just popped into the market?”

  “I give up.”

  “Conner Bowditch.”

  “What? Why?”

  “To buy a six-pack.”

  “You’re telling me this because?”

  “Because when he drove off, a car pulled from the curb, made a U-turn, and followed him down the street.”

  “McNulty and Vargas?”

  “Not them. Some old coot in a silver Subaru Legacy.”

  “Get the plate?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. I’m on it.”

  I clicked off and punched in Conner’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Mulligan.”

  “Can’t talk now. I’m driving.”

  “Put the phone on speaker and drop it in your lap.”

  “Okay.”

  “Check your mirror. Is there a silver Subaru on your tail?”

  “Uh … yeah. How did you—”

  “Never mind that. Is your bodyguard with you?”

  “Vachon is back at my dad’s place.”

  “Okay. Don’t try to shake the tail, Conner. Just drive home, go inside, and lock the doors. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  * * *

  Fifty minutes later, I turned onto Bowditch’s street and spotted the silver Subaru parked at the curb a half block from the house. I called Conner and asked him to keep everyone inside. Then I climbed out and strolled toward the car, my pistol out of sight behind my right leg.

  The driver, his gaze locked on the Bowditch place, startled when I rapped my knuckles on the driver’s-side window. Then he lowered the glass and said, “Can I help you with something?”

  “Open the door and get out of the car.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, and reached for his key to crank the ignition. When I stuck my pistol in his face, he thought better of it and did as he’d been told.

  “Assume the position.”

  He placed his hands flat on the roof of the car, and I patted him down.

  “Got a weapon in the car? I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Turn around.”

  He looked me up and down, then frowned and asked, “You a cop?”

  “Gee,” I said. “Why does everybody keep asking me that?”

  “If this is a stickup, I’ve only got twenty dollars on me.”

  “Nice watch, though,” I said.

  “Don’t hurt me. Just take it.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “So what do you want with me?’

  “The question is, what do you want with Conner Bowditch?”

  “Who?”

  “Drop the act. I know you’ve been following him.”

  He didn’t say anything to that.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Crabtree.”

  “First name?”

  “Elliot.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “I’m not working for anybody.”

  “Why were you following Bowditch?”

  “Maybe I just want his autograph.”

  “Give me your wallet.”

  “Robbing me after all, huh?”

  “Shut up and hand it over.”

  According to his driver’s license, Elliot Crabtree was fifty-nine years old and lived in Tarrytown, New York. I returned the license to the wallet, dropped it in the snow, turned my back on him, and walked to the house, where Conner, his father, and Vachon were watching me through the front window.

  Behi
nd me, I heard the Subaru start up and drive away.

  * * *

  “Who was he?” Conner asked.

  “His name’s Elliot Crabtree,” I said. “Know him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Give me a minute.” I dropped into an easy chair across from the couch where Conner was sitting beside his father. Vachon was still at the window, studying the street. I used my cell to google Elliot Crabtree and turned up dozens of them. On a hunch, I added the word “football” to narrow the search and found him.

  “He’s a scout for the New York Jets,” I said.

  “So he’s harmless,” Vachon said.

  “Sure,” I said. “As long as Conner keeps his nose clean.”

  38

  Marcus Eliason, the Patriots’ assistant director of player personnel, and Ellis Cruze, the team’s chief of security, were already seated on McCracken’s leather couch when I stepped into his office.

  “You’re five minutes late,” McCracken said. “We were about to start without you.”

  “Sorry, boss. I had trouble finding a parking spot.”

  “So what have you learned?” Eliason asked.

  “First off,” McCracken said, “Conner Bowditch has stopped gambling.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Eliason said.

  “Sure as we can be,” McCracken said. “We warned him that it could affect his draft status, and he seems to have taken it to heart.”

  “Still no indication he ever bet on BC games?”

  “None that we can find,” McCracken said. “The Providence bookie assures us that Bowditch only bet on other sports. I haven’t turned up anything to suggest that he’s done business with the Boston bookmakers, and he’s apparently never set foot in Vegas.”

  “What about online gambling?” Cruze asked.

  “Conner voluntarily gave us his Visa account number and let us examine his cell phone and laptop,” McCracken said. “We found no evidence that he’s placed bets over the Internet.”

  “Okay, then,” Eliason said. “Is there anything else we should be concerned about?”

  “Everybody who knows Conner claims that he’s Mister Perfect,” I said, “but somehow, he’s gotten himself into big trouble, and he keeps lying to us about it.”

  “Something besides the gambling?” Cruze asked.

  “We don’t know what it is yet,” McCracken said.

  “What do you know?”

  “That as soon as we started asking around about him, we got pushback.”

  “Meaning?” Cruze asked.

  So McCracken filled them in on our encounters with the hired thugs, leaving out the part about Joseph snapping some trigger fingers.

  “Jesus!” Cruze said. “Do you have any idea who they’re working for?”

  “No,” McCracken said, “but we’re going to find out.”

  “Ticktock,” Eliason said. “You’ve got a little over two months to get to the bottom of this. We can’t afford another mistake like Aaron Hernandez. If we don’t get answers by draft day, we’ll have to take the kid off our board.”

  With that, our guests got up and turned for the door.

  “One last thing,” I said. “Have either of you ever run across a guy named Morris Dunst?”

  Eliason and Cruze exchanged looks and then both shook their heads.

  “Who is he?” Cruze asked.

  “A Boston lawyer.”

  “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “Maybe nothing,” I said. “It’s just a name that happened to come up.”

  After they were gone, McCracken turned to me and said, “I think it’s time we paid a visit to your Mr. Dunst.”

  39

  Late February turned unseasonably warm, melting the mounds of soot-smeared snow that had lined the Boston streets since Christmas. The sudden flood overwhelmed the city’s storm drains. Outside the office building where Dunst and Moran occupied the fourth floor, Milk Street was a river. McCracken and I sat in his Acura and watched fast-food wrappers, old newspapers, and Styrofoam cups bob in the current.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” McCracken said. “Maybe we should drop in on him and ask some questions.”

  “Let’s give it a little more time,” I said.

  “Christ, Mulligan, we’ve been sitting out here for three days already.”

  “Um.”

  “I could use another cup of coffee.”

  “There’s a Starbucks a couple of blocks south on Federal Street.”

  “Want me to bring you back something?”

  “I’m good.”

  A stakeout requires patience and concentration. Let yourself slip into a daydream or get distracted by a pretty thing in a tight pair of jeans, and you could miss whatever it was that you’d spent days looking for. What we were hoping to spot on this busy city street, I had no idea. I just hoped that we’d recognize it when we saw it.

  McCracken had just dropped back into the driver’s seat with a coffee in his fist when a tall young man in a maroon-and-gold Boston College sweatshirt sloshed down the sidewalk.

  “Recognize him?” McCracken asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The guy looked up at the office building as if he were checking the street address and then pushed through the door. We climbed out and followed him in.

  We found him in the marble-walled lobby, standing in front of a bank of elevators. A door rolled open and three men in business suits stepped out. The young man got on the elevator alone, and the door closed. McCracken and I watched the numbers that lit up as the elevator rose. It stopped on the fourth floor.

  We were still loitering in the lobby forty minutes later when B.C. sweatshirt stepped off the elevator and turned for the front door.

  “Lance Gabriel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My name is Bruce McCracken and this is my associate, Liam Mulligan. We represent the New England Patriots. I’m wondering if we can buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “The Patriots? Sure thing.”

  Five minutes later, we were sipping Starbucks at a table by a window that looked out on soggy Federal Street.

  “You had yourself a fine season this year,” McCracken said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Except for the three passes you dropped in the Syracuse game,” I said. “One of them bounced right off your chest.”

  “It happens,” he said. “Everybody has a bad game once in a while.”

  Word for word, that was what Bowditch had said when I’d asked about his shoddy performance against Syracuse.

  “You played fullback for two seasons before switching to tight end,” I said. “Where do you see yourself lining up as a pro?”

  “Tight end. Most definitely.”

  “Why?”

  “I got all the tools, man. Good hands. The power to punish linebackers in the running game. And I run the forty in 4.53 seconds.”

  “Think you’ll still be on the board in the third round?” McCracken asked.

  “I wouldn’t count on it. From what I hear, I’m likely to be gone by the middle of the second.”

  “Well, you’d be a hell of an asset if we could pair you with Rob Gronkowski,” I said. “But out of curiosity, who were you visiting on Milk Street today?”

  “My agent.”

  “Oh? Who would that be?”

  “Morris Dunst.”

  “Dunst? I thought he specialized in business litigation. You’re telling me he’s an agent now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, he’s got no experience with it,” I said. “As one of the top tight ends in the draft, you could have your pick of big-time sports agents, Lance. What made you sign with Dunst?”

  “Uh.… A friend recommended him.”

  “Who?”

  “Coach Creighton.”

  “Forrest Creighton? The receivers coach?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After we finished with Gabriel, I reached Creighton in his Chestnut Hill office and ask
ed if he could spare a few minutes.

  * * *

  We were nursing glasses of beer at a table in Mary Ann’s, a college hangout on Beacon Street, when a graying fifty-something in a B.C. ball cap strode into the place. He grabbed a Bud Light at the bar, saw me wave, ambled over, and pulled out a chair.

  “So you two work for the Patriots?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” McCracken said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’re private detectives. The team hired us to help them vet a player they’re considering drafting.”

  “Which player?” Creighton asked.

  “Conner Bowditch.”

  “Figures. Everybody wants Bowditch. So what do you need from me?”

  “Tell us what you know about a Boston lawyer named Morris Dunst.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Can you elaborate?” McCracken asked.

  “He started coming around during spring practice, buttonholing our best players and trying to sweet-talk them into signing agent contracts.”

  “Signing while they were still playing college ball would be a violation of NCAA rules,” I said.

  “I told him that. The greasy bastard didn’t give a shit. I had to throw him off our practice field three or four times last fall. After that, he started hanging around the bars where the players go to blow off steam. We warned all our guys to stay clear of him.”

  “As I understand it,” McCracken said, “the NFL Players Association has certified eight hundred people to act as player agents.”

  “That’s right. A few of them are shysters, but most of them do a good job of representing their clients’ interests. There’s no need for anybody to sign with a sleazeball who’s got no experience in the business.”

  “So I take it you didn’t advise Lance Gabriel to sign with Dunst,” I said.

  “Of course not.”

  “He says you did.”

  “What? Why in hell would Lance tell you something like that?”

  “No idea.”

  “He didn’t, did he?” Creighton asked.

  “Didn’t what?” I asked.

  “Didn’t sign with him.”

  “I’m afraid he did.”

  “Aw, hell.” He shook his head sadly, then said, “What about Bowditch? Don’t tell me he signed with the asshole, too.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Conner claims he never heard of Dunst, but I think the kid’s lying to me.”