29
The first nonstop flight from Boston to Las Vegas leaves at 7:10 in the morning, and the passenger list isn’t exactly a roster of Boston’s social register. There were guys in tank tops, women with fanny packs, kids with two days’ worth of snot hardened around their noses. And this was first class, which cost me just enough of the Record’s money that Martin would undoubtedly ask if we now owned a percentage of the plane.
I felt a tinge of relief, a lot of trepidation, and overwhelming sadness as we ascended from the runway at Logan International Airport and banked over South Boston — the emotions having nothing to do with the physical act of aviation.
Rather, it felt somewhat good to get the hell out of Dodge, even for a day. Dodge was about the death of someone I loved and truly respected, Edgar Sullivan. Dodge was about another death of a man I never even knew in a place — the Public Garden — where I was supposed to be. Dodge was about the murders of young women whose licenses and videos I received shortly after they died.
I was feeling guilt. I was feeling helpless. And I’ll admit, I was feeling a little more than a little bit of fear. Someone wanted me vacated from this good earth, and, even if incompetent in their execution (pun partially intended), they were going to clever extremes to mask their efforts — a possible drowning, a daytime robbery, a faulty steam-bath door, a store holdup.
A few things happened before my flight that are worth noting, first and foremost being the conversation I had with Deirdre Walters Hayes, daughter of the late Bob Walters, retired detective with Boston PD.
She had known I had been at the house, known I was there because, she said, her mother had a vague recollection, and she found my business card on her father’s dresser. She didn’t seem particularly angry at me, which was a good thing, maybe even a great thing.
After my condolences, I cut to the quick. “Las Vegas Police said they found a key on the stairs above your father’s body,” I said. “Any idea what it unlocked?”
She didn’t hesitate. “An old footlocker that my dad kept in the garage,” she said.
My breath quickened. I asked, “Any idea what’s in it?”
“His life. His career. Things he cherished from his old days in Boston, and things from some old cases that haunted him right to the end. After you left, he must have gotten it in his head that he needed to see some of these things again.”
She hesitated, then said, her voice starting to crack, “But he didn’t have the strength. He should have known that.”
I knew what I needed, and what I needed was to see what was in that box. I also knew that Bob Walters wanted me to see what was in that box, which is why he was trying to get to it before I returned to his house. But I didn’t want to look overeager. So I said to Deirdre, “Listen, I came out there to ask your father some questions about the old Boston Strangler case, and he was phenomenal about answering them. Would you mind if I came back out and took a look to see if there’s anything that might be helpful in that locker?”
“Come on out,” she said. And that was that.
It’s also important to mention the story I filed for that morning’s Record about the murder of Edgar Sullivan. Maybe I shouldn’t have written it, but more probably I should have. Edgar was a lifelong employee of the Record, forty-three years running the newspaper’s security operation, and I think he would have gotten something of a kick being memorialized on his paper’s front page on his way out the door.
It’s one thing to be evasive with cops, quite another to be that way with readers, so in a first-person account, I provided many more details in my story than I let on to detectives at the scene of the crime the night before. That’s not to say I wrote everything. Rather, I described how the older woman was allowed to escape from the store. I indicated that the gunman seemed more concerned with the people in the store than he was with the money in the register. And I went into more graphic detail about the gunfight, portraying Edgar Sullivan to be exactly what he was: a hero who saved the life of a colleague, that colleague being me.
That particular story, written in an hour on deadline, inspired a 6:00 a.m. voice mail from Police Commissioner Hal Harrison to my cell phone, during which he said, and I quote, “I’ll slap you so hard with a subpoena that you won’t be able to spell the words Boston Record.”
Fuck him. Anyway, he’d have to have a Nevada sheriff serve it, and I doubt that was going to happen, mostly because he wouldn’t have any idea where I was — at least that was a key part of the plan.
Speaking of which, the plan called for me to parachute into Las Vegas, though not literally, drive immediately to the home of the newly late Bob Walters, meet his daughter, Deirdre, analyze and possibly retrieve whatever it was that was in that locker, and catch a four o’clock flight that would get me back to Boston by half past midnight. One added benefit of this trip was that it would get me out of the firing range that Boston had become, at least for a few hours.
Of course, I can’t remember the last time anything in my life went according to plan, so why should this day have been any different.
The last time I had pulled up to Bob Walters’s house on Rodeo Road, the county coroner was parked out front and Bob was already zipped up in a shiny black body bag and getting wheeled out the front door. That was not a good day, but then again, not many of them had been lately.
This time, no coroner, no body bags, no police cars, all of which was good news. Just desert serenity, with chirping birds, the distant sound of a gurgling fountain, and the dry, superheated air. I strode up the Walterses’ walkway and knocked on the front door.
I wasn’t exactly prepared for what happened next, but then again, preparation had hardly been my calling card of late. A woman answered, I don’t know, somewhere in her thirties, maybe about five feet six, 110 pounds, dressed in a miniskirt and a skintight white tank top that could just about make a man — especially this man — buckle at the knees.
Beyond that, she wore heavy eyeliner and bright lipstick, and her wavy auburn hair was bunched back in a ponytail. She said, “You must be Jack. I’m Deirdre Hayes.”
Now, Deirdre is one of those names I associate with navy blue pantsuits and white silk shirts that button to the neck — a conservative name for a conservative woman who, because of that, has probably achieved some modicum of financial success. It’s like Alice or Patricia or Ruth. You don’t expect to see a Deirdre dressed like this.
On the flip side, throw the name Tiffany around and that’s a woman I want to meet, or for that matter Alex or Andi or Jen. Kate can go either way, as can Liz or Anne.
Back to Deirdre. She must have sensed my, um, surprise, because she said, “Forgive my appearance; I’m just getting off the overnight shift. I’m a waitress on the Strip.”
I said, “I’d like to spend a few hours with my good friend Jimmy Beam in that bar.”
Just kidding. What I really said was, “I’m so sorry to intrude like this. Things are crazy back in Boston, and the sooner we did this, the better.”
“No apology necessary.”
She invited me inside. The place smelled strongly of cleaning fluids, which, given what had gone on in there over so many years, was probably a good thing. All the blinds and drapes were pulled open, allowing sunshine to flow inside. Classical music poured through a central speaker system — Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 19 in F, if I’m not mistaken. All right, I’m bluffing here, but someone was tickling the ivories, and it sounded pretty damned good, even if it didn’t seem to go with the woman before me.