“And everyone,” she added.
Harvath smiled and tried to change the subject. “What can you tell me about the circumstances surrounding Penning’s kidnapping?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right,” she replied, her right forearm resting on the butt of her holstered pistol. “I think you know a lot more than you’re telling me. Can we help each other? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m not giving you anything else until you come clean with me.”
“I could call back to Washington and have some of Mr. Penning’s friends call your chief.”
Cordero nodded. “You could do that. But the chief would only kick it down to my commander, who would end up assigning Sal to be your liaison. Mama mia, can that guy be slow in handling requests, especially if he doesn’t like you. Which he doesn’t. So why not just cooperate and make it easy on yourself?”
“I bet you use that line on all the guys you meet at murder scenes.”
“Only if it’s the right guys and I haven’t already put a bullet in them.”
Harvath thought about her offer. When it came to investigating a murder, you wanted to be as close to the streets as possible and that meant lashing up with the cops. No matter what happened, it was much more likely that the Boston PD would hear about it before the FBI. In the end, he needed her cooperation.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Take me someplace for breakfast, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Anything?”
“Anything within reason.”
Cordero didn’t like the qualifier, but it left the door open. “I know a place not far from here,” she replied. “We’ll take my car.”
CHAPTER 29
Since Cordero and her partner had both arrived at the Liberty Tree Building in separate vehicles, she told him she would catch up with him at headquarters later and drove Harvath to the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood.
The Paramount was a local institution known for its breakfast by generations of Bostonians. That was her primary reason for taking Harvath there. There was also a secondary reason. She wanted to prove she wasn’t completely illiterate when it came to Boston history. She waited until he had ordered and they’d both been served coffee to fill him in.
“Really?” Harvath said. “It happened here?”
Cordero nodded. “Right upstairs. Her name was Mary Sullivan. She was nineteen years old and the Boston Strangler’s final victim.”
“I saw a documentary about him. He was a sick guy.”
“I’ve seen the crime scene photos. You have no idea.”
Harvath took a sip of his coffee and set the cup back down on the table. “They caught the guy, though, didn’t they?”
“They caught a guy, a rapist named Albert DeSalvo. He allegedly confessed while being held in jail for a rape he committed nine months after the rape and murder of Mary Sullivan. There still remain a lot of doubts as to whether or not DeSalvo was the actual Strangler, or if there may have been more than one killer.”
“What do you think?”
“I think DeSalvo knew too many details about the crime scenes not to have been involved,” she replied. “Either he was the killer, or he knew the killers. Either way, it was good to get him off the streets.”
“That was when, exactly? Early 1960s?” Harvath asked.
“Yup. The murders started in June 1962 with the last one occurring upstairs with Mary Sullivan on January fourth, 1964. There were fourteen women, all between the ages of nineteen and eighty-five, murdered.”
“DeSalvo got life in prison, right?”
“Yes, but it was for the long string of robberies and sexual offenses he had committed before the Strangler murders. The police couldn’t find any physical evidence tying him to the murder scenes. Did he know some pretty impressive details that hadn’t been released to the public? Yes, but that wasn’t enough to charge him with.”
Harvath shook his head. “Plus he had O. J. Simpson’s lawyer, didn’t he?”
“He did. F. Lee Bailey. Bailey was representing the jailhouse snitch whom DeSalvo originally admitted being the Strangler to. When Bailey heard that, he scooped DeSalvo up. He tried to get a not-guilty on everything by reason of insanity, but the court didn’t buy it.”
“But he did get life in prison.”
“He did. He also escaped that same year, only to turn himself back in the next day. Six years later, though, he was jumped in the prison infirmary and stabbed to death. The killer or killers were never caught.”
“At least justice was finally done and the people of Massachusetts didn’t have to foot his bill anymore.”
Cordero nodded just as Harvath’s Spanish omelet showed up.
“You sure you don’t want anything?” he asked.
“I’m good,” she said. “I ate before I left the house this morning. Most important meal of the day, you know?”
Harvath smiled. “That’s exactly what I was thinking this morning as I was cooking my eggs and the call came in telling me to get up here.”
“Why’d you know so much about the whole Liberty Tree thing?” she asked, changing the subject. “And please save me the whole I paid attention in class response again, okay?”
She was a very perceptive woman, an important trait for a homicide detective, or any detective, for that matter. You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on her and even then Harvath was not sure how successful he’d be. That being the case, there wasn’t any reason to lie to her. He just needed to refrain from telling her the entire truth. It was something that was on a need-to-know basis and she didn’t need to know.
“You said that the FBI told you that Penning was one in a string of kidnappings, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, what they didn’t tell you was that he wasn’t the first victim to be killed.”
Cordero looked to make sure no one was listening to their conversation and then leaned in closer. “Another murder? When? Where did it happen?”
Finishing what was in his mouth, he said, “Sunday night. A small island off the coast of Georgia.”
“Same MO?”
He had no idea how hungry he had been until he began eating and nodded as he took another bite. “The killer left a note there, too.”
“What did it say?”
“It was about the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
“Another death-to-tyranny reference?”
Harvath nodded again as he set his fork down and reached to take a sip of water. “Same skull and crossbones with the crown, too.”
“The FBI wouldn’t say how the victims are related. Is it family? Personal relationship? Business? What are we talking about?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that specifically.”
“What is it? Above my pay grade?”
“Mine, too.”
Cordero studied him. “I think you’re lying.”
“Can you pass the pepper, please?”
“Is this a joke? Because I can tell you right now, this is not a joke to me. And when you go back to D.C., this is still going to be the Boston PD’s case and the people of Boston are going to want resolution. They’re funny like that. Do you remember the marathon bombing? They expect us to do our job.”
Harvath picked his fork back up and cut another piece of omelet. “I’ve seen a lot of bad things over my career, Detective, and I bet you have, too. I think you understand graveyard humor. I also think you understand having to answer to a command structure. I do what I’m told.”
“And right now you’re being told to withhold information that may be critical to solving a murder.”
She was frustrated and rightly so. “Listen, Lara. Can I call you, Lara?”