Dark Harbor (27 page)

Chapter Fifty-five

I
T TOOK NEARLY AN
hour for Finn to meet with Preston and McGuire regarding the settlement, and he had trouble concentrating the entire time. Preston made clear that he expected Finn to take the lead in drafting the settlement agreement, and gave him detailed instructions on how it should be structured, but Finn’s mind was elsewhere. He knew that he needed to get moving if he was going to meet Flaherty at his apartment.

Once he was released from the meeting, he hurried along the streets of Boston, back to his car parked near the office. He had to get to Flaherty to tell her what he’d discovered. How she reacted would determine his next move. He couldn’t think that far ahead now, though.

It was nearing seven-thirty, and the sun had set to the west of the city, the glow on the horizon in that direction fading to light purple, then to blue, then to black in the east. It was the time of day and time of year Finn liked best. He could feel the wave of barometric pressure cresting and readying itself to crash upon the land, making way for the crisp, clean air of the fall. It felt like everything was coming to a head, and the world was preparing itself for a rebirth.
Who knows
, he thought,
maybe Townsend was right. Maybe the apocalypse is upon us and the crescendo of the summer will bring with it a new biblical era
. If that were to happen, Finn would need his answer to give to God. He was close, he knew, but he still needed closure. He owed it to Natalie.

Bostick lived in a small one-bedroom in the heart of Chinatown, only a couple of blocks from Linda Flaherty’s loft, and a few more from the Kiss Club. He’d stopped into Coogan’s Pub on his way home to grab a beer and calm down. The run-in with McGuire had shaken him, and he needed to be around other people for a while, even if it was in the anonymity of a crowded bar.

The first beer felt so good that he ordered two more in a half hour, letting the alcohol ease him into the evening. By the time the third beer had settled in his stomach, he was feeling better, and he decided to make his way home to grab some dinner. He slapped a ten-dollar bill on the bar, thanked Tommy, the bartender, and headed out.

Bostick could feel the pressure in the air, too. It was summer’s last great gasp, as a wall of heavy, humid air pushed in from the northwest. This should be the last of the heat, he thought, looking forward to the crisper days of autumn.

The entrance to his apartment was in an alley off Atlantic Avenue, and he felt even better as soon as he made the turn into the narrow passageway. It was good to be home, he thought. He hadn’t done anything he considered dangerous since the day he left the police force, and even while he was a cop, he’d never been in any really life-threatening position. As a result, the day’s discoveries had been stressful, and he was looking forward to relaxing on his couch and watching a ball game.

He walked up the creaky wooden stairs that led to his apartment door—a remnant of the days when the building had been full of tenements, each housing several families of Asian immigrants. As he stood on the platform at the top of the stairs fumbling for his keys, he heard a creak behind him. It was an odd sound, as if the weight on the planks had somehow doubled. He might have turned around to look behind him, if only out of curiosity, but there was no time. He felt the steel of a silencer behind his ear, and before he realized what it was, he heard the muffled pop of the gun going off. Then everything was dark.

The killer stood over Bostick’s slumped body in the alley in Chinatown. He looked down at the trickle of blood that ran from the back of the investigator’s head, over his collar, and down onto the wooden stairs. There was less of it than he expected, probably because the wound was instantly fatal and Bostick’s heart was no longer forcing blood through his veins.

Then the killer raised his arm and fired a second shot into Bostick’s head, just to be sure.

Chapter Fifty-six

F
LAHERTY ARRIVED AT FINN’S
apartment before he returned. She knocked several times before taking the key from under the mailbox and letting herself in.

She felt guilty being in his apartment when he wasn’t there, but he’d told her where the key was. She sat on the sofa in the living room for a few minutes, reasoning that as long as she was anchored in one spot, she’d be less tempted to snoop through the dwelling, as was her natural inclination. After a few moments, however, the stillness of the apartment and her own curiosity got the better of her, and she felt the need to stand up and move around.

She walked over to the living room windows to admire the view. Law firm life must be treating Finn all right, financially speaking, she surmised. The apartment had one of the best vantages she could remember seeing. It was a corner unit, and one side looked directly out at the Bunker Hill Monument, a granite spike identical in shape to the Washington Monument in D.C., only smaller. It rose from the top of the hill like some confirmation of conquest, overshadowing all of the other structures in Charlestown. The other side of the apartment looked down the hill toward the water. The tips of U.S.S.
Constitution
’s masts were just visible from the window, down by the pier at the naval shipyard.

Flaherty took in the views then drifted around the living room, examining the various artifacts with an investigator’s idle interest and analytical judgment. The room was sparsely decorated. The couch was a modern leather model with clean lines that cut in front of a glass coffee table. A low-backed armchair upholstered in an expensive designer fabric sat to one side of the sofa, with an end table in between. Facing the couch, two carved wooden chairs completed the set with a standing lamp in the middle.

The walls were largely bare. A few modern prints hung in those spaces that would otherwise have been too blank to suggest a life of any fullness, but they felt generic. Their colors were bold and matched the rugs and walls perfectly, as if a decorator had chosen them. Flaherty wondered if Finn had dated an interior designer at some point. It would certainly explain a lot, she thought. None of the furnishings seemed to reflect Finn, except insofar as they put her in mind of a man searching for an identity to be comfortable with. From what Flaherty knew of Finn’s past, the image didn’t really surprise her.

She moved from the living room to the kitchen, flipping on the lights as she went. The impact as she entered the room almost blinded her. Everything was bright white—the walls, the floors, the counters, the appliances—all of it so bright that it reflected the light painfully. It made her think briefly of the sterile atmosphere in John Townsend’s basement, and she almost felt the need to leave. Instead, she made her way over to the refrigerator, opening the door with a notion of foreboding she couldn’t explain.

It was almost empty. There were just a few condiments lingering on the door, lonely and forgotten. A few cans of diet Coke and several bottles of beer were pushed to the back on one shelf, and there was a half-eaten pizza still in its box.

Not much of a chef
, she thought.

She closed the refrigerator door and stood upright. She should go back into the living room and sit quietly until Finn got back, she knew. She should respect his privacy and end her snooping, but that just seemed too difficult. She needed to know more about him. As much as she fought to deny it, she had strong feelings for this man, and that didn’t happen very often. She needed to know what it was she’d seen in him that captured her attention, and whether there was any chance to sustain those feelings. She wanted it to happen, but she needed more information about him. The rooms she’d seen so far were blank slates, yielding nothing.

She stood for a long moment, in an ethical quandary. And then, finally, she shook her head in disgust and walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hallway toward the bedroom.

When Flaherty got to the bedroom door, she paused. She flipped on the light and stood at the threshold, hesitant, looking around the room. As with the living room, the decor was sparse, but it felt less forced to her. A queen-size bed stood against the far wall, covered in sheets and a bedspread of simple country design. The bed had been made up haphazardly, simply by pulling the covers up to the top of the mattress. Beside it was a nightstand with a brass light and an old-fashioned alarm clock. A book was lying next to the light, and Flaherty walked over to take a look at it.
The Great Gatsby.
She opened it and flipped through the pages.

There was a dresser against the near wall at the foot of the bed, but the surface was clean and devoid of any objects of interest. In the corner there was a battered old six-string guitar leaning on a stand. The walls were bare except for a small mirror above the dresser, hardly large enough for Flaherty to see her entire face in.

Is this it?
Was this all there was to the man who’d so affected her? It seemed like there should be so much more. Something was missing, like he was only part of a person. Something primal and necessary was conspicuously absent, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was, exactly. Then, all of a sudden, it hit her.

Pictures.

There were no pictures in the entire apartment—at least none she’d seen so far. Not a snapshot of friends at a party; not a memento from a trip hanging on the refrigerator; not a single image that would betray any sense of Finn’s past or any connection to another human being.

In all fairness, she supposed it was normal, given his history. Growing up without parents, being shuttled from one foster family to another, with time in an orphanage in between, Finn must have learned that emotional investments in other people seldom yielded much return. It was sad, she realized. And still, he’d done a remarkable job of reclaiming his life. From just a glimpse at Finn’s police record at age sixteen, Flaherty would have wagered that he’d either be long dead in the streets of Charlestown or spending time up Route 2 at the Concord correctional facility.

She moved over to the side of the room and opened the closet door. It was a small walk-in, and she flicked on the lights. There, lined up in perfect military order were Finn’s suits. He liked his clothing; she could tell that about him from the few times they’d been together. He was always impeccably dressed in the latest business fashions. But she had had no idea just how much he liked his clothing. The suits looked like something out of a movie—there had to be twenty-five in all, arranged by weight and color. Pinstripes and glen plaids and worsted wool, from designers such as Hickey Freeman, Ralph Lauren, and Armani, were all waiting their turn patiently.

The shirts were almost as impressive. They hung on a different rack neatly, but with more vibrancy than the suits they faced. In addition to the traditional Brooks Brothers white and blue, there were shirts that beamed with colorful personality in lavender and orange and French blue.

She looked around again and something caught her eye. It was sitting on the shelf, up above the shirts. She could just make out the corner of a silver picture frame, turned to the side. She reached up on her toes to pull it down. The frame was antique, with ornate relief around the edges—vines of some kind winding their way around the image in the center. The face in the center was one with which Flaherty had become exceedingly familiar. Natalie Caldwell’s eyes were hard to mistake, and they blazed out from within the matted frame. It was a beautiful picture. Even though she was looking at the camera, it seemed like a candid shot, her eyes showing surprise at having been caught unaware, and betraying an intimacy with the photographer not often found in pictures.

Flaherty wondered who the photographer was. Finn she presumed, and the thought made her shockingly jealous. Something about the way in which Natalie was looking at the camera made Flaherty long for an intimacy that was missing in her own life.

She could see what had attracted Finn to Natalie Caldwell. It wasn’t just the obvious beauty; it was something more. There was something so open, and inviting, and sexual about her look that it made Flaherty blush. She suddenly felt guilty for her jealousy, and guilty for snooping in Finn’s apartment. It would have been one thing if her motivation had pertained to the investigation, but it hadn’t. This was personal.

The realization made her feel horrible, and she needed to get out of the closet—out of the apartment if she could. She realized she was too confused to view Finn objectively anymore. She reached up to put the picture back, and as she looked up at the shelf, her heart stopped.

She was frozen. She closed her eyes and tried to wish away what she’d seen, but it was still there when she looked up again.
It can’t be
, she said over and over to herself, the fear and desperation growing. Even through her tears, though, she could see it dangling from the shelf, like a piece of thread that, once pulled, would unravel all her hopes about Finn. There, hanging from where it had become dislodged when she pulled the picture forward, was a piece of red ribbon—the kind that had been found around Natalie Caldwell’s neck as she looked up from beneath the surface of Boston Harbor.

Flaherty reached up and pulled on the ribbon, and an entire roll tumbled over the edge. She held it up to look at it.
No, please, no
, she thought. Then she reached up again and ran her hand along the top of the shelf where she couldn’t see. She was up on her toes, reaching as far back as she could when she felt it. It was hard and cold, and her fingers recoiled when they first ran across the flat surface. She looked around quickly for something to pick it up with, and grabbed a handkerchief off one of the racks in the closet. Then she reached up again carefully and brought it down. It was a knife; a professional-grade steel knife about ten inches long. The blade looked old and rusted, but when Flaherty looked more closely, it became clear that it was not old, it was just covered with a dark, flaky crust.

“God damn it,” she said out loud. Just then, she heard the front door of the apartment open.