“Now what’s a good girl like you doing with one of these?” he whispered.
It was a.25-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Small, easily concealed, a favorite of hit men and assassins because it was already quiet when fired, and because it was easy to fit with a homemade silencer. When loaded with expanding-head bullets in the nine-shot clip, it was more than adequate for the tasks it was designed for. A lady’s gun, unless it was in the hands of an expert.
“I’ll just be taking you along,” he hissed. “Did you get a permit for this? Did you register it with the Springfield police? I’m guessing you didn’t, honey. A nice, illegal street gun. Right?”
Michael O’Connell slipped the weapon into his bag. A most profitable night, he thought, as he stood and looked at the mess he’d made.
In the morning, the office manager in the counseling center would call the police. A detective would come and take a statement. He would tell them to go through their things and determine what was stolen. And they would then conclude that some half-fried junkie had broken in, looking for an easy score, and, frustrated by how little there was to steal, had resorted to angrily throwing things around. Everyone would have to spend the day cleaning up, calling in a couple of workmen to repair the ripped doors, a locksmith to install new locks. It would all just be an inconvenience to everyone, including the attorney and his lover, who sure as hell wouldn’t report the loss of an illegal gun.
Everyone, except Matthew Murphy, who would determine that his extra locks and heavy door had saved his office. He would first congratulate himself, conclude nothing was taken, and probably wouldn’t even bother to call his insurance company.
All he would do would be to buy his secretary a new frame for her pictures of her dogs.
A cheap frame, at that, O’Connell thought, as he exited into the night.
The chief investigator for the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office was a slight man in his early forties, with tortoiseshell eyeglasses and sandy-colored, thin hair that he wore disarmingly long. He promptly placed his feet up on his desk and rocked back in a red leather desk chair as he looked intently across the room toward me. He had an off-putting style that seemed both friendly and edgy at the same moment.
“And so, it is Mr. Murphy’s death and our subsequent failure to bring the investigation to a respectable conclusion that has brought you here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I presume that a number of different agencies ultimately looked at the case, but if anyone had been close to an arrest, it would have been your job to steer that case through the system.”
“Correct. And we did not indict anyone.”
“But you had a suspect?”
He shook his head. “Suspects. That, in a nutshell, was the problem.”
“How so?”
“Too many enemies. Too many people who would not only be served by his death, but a significant number of folks who would genuinely be pleased. Murphy was killed, his body tossed into an alleyway like a piece of trash, and there was more than one glass around this state raised in celebration.”
“But surely you were able to narrow the field down?”
“Yes. To some extent. It is not as if the people we were entertaining as suspects were naturally inclined to assist the police. We still hope that someone, somewhere, maybe in a jailhouse, or a bar, will let something slip and we will be able to focus our attention on one or two individuals. But until that happy time arrives, the murder of ex-detective Murphy remains an open case.”
“But you must have some leads…”
The chief investigator sighed, removed his feet from the desktop, and swung about.
“Did you know Mr. Murphy?”
“No.”
“He was not a particularly likable fellow,” he said, shaking his head. “He was the sort of person that walked some pretty narrow lines. Legally speaking, that is. One cannot be sure on which side this killing fell until one actually knows something about the murder. Beyond, of course, what the body told us, which, alas, was not much.”
“But something?”
“The killing had all the earmarks of a professional.”
The chief investigator stood up, walked behind me, and placed his index finger to the back of my head. “Pop. Pop. Two shots in the head. A twenty-five, probably silenced. Both slugs were soft-tipped bullets and significantly deformed upon removal, making an eventual match impossible. Then the body was dragged into an alleyway, pushed behind some garbage cans, and remained undiscovered until a garbage truck arrived the following morning. The person who shot him was someone with the expertise to catch Murphy unawares. Very little in the way of workable forensics. Not even an ejected shell casing, which lends further credence to the notion that this was someone well trained in killing, because they stopped and retrieved those before leaving. It rained the night he was killed, pretty hard, which further compromised the crime scene. No witnesses. No immediate leads. A very difficult case from the start, without someone helpfully pointing us in the right direction.”
He circled around and this time perched on a corner of his desk. He smiled with a slight barracuda look.
“What was this murder? Revenge? Payback for something in his past? Maybe it was simply a robbery. His wallet was cleaned out. But the credit cards were left behind. Curious that, right?” He paused. “And your own interest in this case? It stems from precisely what?”
“Murphy was peripherally involved in a case that I’m looking into.” I guarded my words carefully.
“An investigator spoke to every client he had. Someone took a look at every case he was working. Every case he’d ever worked. Which interests you?”
“Ashley Freeman,” I said cautiously.
The chief investigator shook his head. “That is most interesting. I wouldn’t think there is much of a story there. That was one of his smaller jobs. A couple of days invested, no more. And resolved, I think, sometime before the murder. No, the person who killed Murphy was connected to either one of the drug rings he helped put away when he was a cop, or one of the organized-crime types he was looking at in his private business. Or maybe one of the police officers who were engaged in messy divorces. All those are better suspects.”
I nodded.
“But, you know, the one thing that really intrigues me about the case?”
“What is that?” I asked.
“When we started looking under rocks and pulling back curtains, it seemed like everyone we spoke with was expecting us.”
“Expecting you? But why would that be unusual?”
The chief investigator smiled again. “Murphy tried to keep things very confidential. That is, after all, the nature of the business. He kept everything close to the vest. He was secretive; didn’t share much. Didn’t let anyone in on his business. The only person who had even the vaguest idea what he was up to on a day-to-day basis was his secretary. She did all his typing, billing, and filing.”
“She was unable to help you?”
“Clueless. Utterly clueless. But that wasn’t the issue.” He paused, eyeing me closely. “So how is it that all those people knew he was looking at them? Now, certainly some of the subjects he was engaged with were bound to have figured out in some way or another that he was snooping around their lives. But that would be the smaller percentage. Yet, somehow, that wasn’t the situation. I repeat: People knew. Everyone. When we showed up at their doors, they were waiting, alibis and excuses all intact. That’s wrong. One hundred percent wrong. And there lies the real question, does it not?”