Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (3 page)

As he turned away, reporters hurled questions.

“When were they killed?”

“Who discovered the bodies?”

“Were they shot?”

“Did you recover the murder weapon?”

“Were drugs involved?”

The chief turned back to face them.

“They were killed sometime late last night or early this morning. Everything else is still under investigation.”

“Hey, Chief!” Hardcastle shouted. “The neighbors say Becky’s live-in boyfriend, Walter Miller, was taken away in handcuffs this morning. Can you confirm that he’s your suspect?”

“We are still in the preliminary stages of our investigation,” Bennett said, his narrowed eyes locked on Hardcastle. “If you print that name, you will never get so much as a head nod from anyone in this department. Do I make myself clear?”

He turned away abruptly, stomped up the front walk, and disappeared inside the house.

“Big friggin’ deal,” Hardcastle muttered. “That prick never tells us shit anyway.”

“That mean you’re going with the name?” Mulligan asked.

Hardcastle smirked and headed for his car.

The rest of the reporters sprinted for their vehicles, too. Doors slammed. Engines roared to life. Minutes later, Mulligan stood alone on the sidewalk, a single uniformed patrolman eyeing him warily from the other side of the police line.

Mulligan turned and looked around. Neighbors who had been watching from across the street were drifting away, scuttling down the sidewalks and slipping back inside their houses. After a few minutes, the only ones left were two teenage boys on bicycles. One was a short, skinny kid in a Boston Celtics T-shirt with Kevin McHale’s number 32 on the back. The other was a tall, heavyset kid wearing a Red Sox jersey with Mo Vaughn’s number 42. The big kid was black, a rarity in this lily-white neighborhood. His wine-red twenty-six-inch Schwinn racer looked like a toy between his thighs.

What the heck, Mulligan figured. Since I’m here, I might as well ask a few questions. As he crossed the street and approached the two boys, they started to head out.

“Hey! Hold up.”

“What do
you
want?” the short, skinny one snapped.

“I’m wondering if either of you saw what happened here this morning.”

“Naw,” the skinny kid said.

“I did,” the other boy said.

“You
did
?” the skinny one said.

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?” Mulligan asked.

“Kwame.”

“Kwame what?”

“Kwame Diggs.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

That was a surprise. Mulligan would have pegged him for a high school senior, maybe a starting lineman on the Veterans Memorial football team.

“You live around here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where?”

“The green house right over there.”

“Can you tell me what you saw?”

“You a cop?”

“I’m a reporter.”

“He’s lyin’,” the skinny kid said. “Don’t tell him nothin’, Kwame.”

“You got something against the police?” Mulligan asked.

The skinny kid didn’t say anything.

“Look, here’s my press pass,” Mulligan said, pulling it out of his pocket and showing it to them.

“You gonna put my name in the paper?” Kwame asked.

“Put your name in the paper? Only if you want me to.”

“Yeah? That would be fuckin’ cool!”

“Okay, then. I bet there were a lot of sirens going off here early this morning. Did they wake you up?”

“Uh-huh,” Kwame said.

“So what did you do?”

“Pulled on some clothes and ran over to see what was up.”

“And?”

“Couple of cops were putting handcuffs on a guy and shoving him in the back of a police car.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Yeah. Walter Miller.”

“Walter Miller? He lives there, right?”

“Uh-huh. He moved in about six months ago.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about him this morning?”

“Hell, yeah. He had blood all over him.”

“Anything else?”

“He was screamin’ and cryin’ and shit.”

“He must be the one who done it,” the skinny kid butted in.

“Anything besides the blood make you think that?” Mulligan asked.

The skinny kid looked blank.

“Did Miller and Becky fight a lot?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” the skinny kid said.

“Me either,” Kwame said, “but ain’t it always the boyfriend who done it?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“That Law & Order show on TV.”

With that, the two friends took off down the street. Mulligan watched them go, then walked around the neighborhood to see if anyone else would talk to him. Those who did hadn’t seen anything worth putting in the paper. After an hour he gave it up, walked back to the murder house, and chatted up the uniform behind the police tape.

“Must be terrible in there,” Mulligan said.

“So I hear, but I haven’t been inside. If I had, I couldn’t tell you anything anyway.”

“Bodies been removed?”

“Hours ago.”

“Remember anything else like this ever happening in this neighborhood?”

“I don’t remember anything
this
brutal happening in the whole damn state. At least not since Eric Kessler butchered the Freeman boy back in the eighties.”

It was early evening now, the light leaking from the sky. Mulligan was still chatting up the uniform when a streetlight across the road snapped on. It was time to pack it in. He’d have to return to the paper and tell Lomax he had nothing to show for more than three hours of work.

He’d just fished the car keys out of his pocket when a detective, a tall, lanky guy with thickly muscled forearms, strode purposefully out of the murder house and headed for an unmarked car parked on the street.

Before he reached it, Mulligan intercepted him.

January 1990

It’s a sunny, unseasonably warm Saturday morning, but the boy is planted in front of the TV, transfixed by an episode of
Danger Mouse.…
He wishes the two crows, Leatherhead and Stiletto Mafiosa, would finally get hold of the little do-gooder and twist his head off.

But cartoons are never that cool.

On the front porch, someone is talking to his mother. He mutes the television to catch the gist and hears their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Bigsby, blubbering about something.

“I’m so sorry,” the boy’s mother says. “I can’t imagine who could have done such a terrible thing.”

The old bat must have found her ugly little mutt this morning, stuffed in the trash can behind her garage. Muzzle tied shut with twine. Tail, ears, and feet hacked off. And who knows how many stab wounds? The boy doesn’t. He lost count.

“We had Frieda for seven years,” Mrs. Bigsby says. “She was our best friend. We loved her so much.”

Friend.

Love.

Words the boy hears often around the house. He’s even learned to use them. Still, they are mystifying. He has no idea what they mean.

He shrugs and turns the volume back up.

4

June 1992

“Excuse me. I’m Mulligan. A reporter for the
Dispatch
.”

“I’ve got nothing for you, Mulligan,” the detective said.

“Look, I know that Becky Medeiros’s boyfriend, Walter Miller, was arrested here this morning, and that he had blood all over him.”

The detective gave him a hard look and said, “Get in the car.”

“Why? Am I under arrest?”

“Just get in the damn car.”

He opened the front passenger-side door, and Mulligan slid in. The detective slammed the door shut, walked around the unmarked Crown Vic, and got behind the wheel.

“Don’t put Miller’s name in the paper,” the detective said.

“Why not?”

“Because he didn’t do it.”

“He didn’t do it? The chief said a suspect was in custody. Does that mean you’ve arrested someone else?”

“No.”

“Aw, hell,” Mulligan said.

“Yeah,” the detective said.

They both sat there and thought about that for a moment.

“You look familiar,” the detective finally said, “but I don’t know why. I don’t remember seeing your sorry ass around the station.”

“You haven’t. I usually cover college sports.”

“Wait a minute. Are you
Liam
Mulligan? Didn’t you play for the Friars?”

“I’m surprised you’d remember. I was Dickey Simpkins’ backup, so I didn’t get much playing time.”

“I know. I’m a big Providence College fan. Got me a pair of season tickets right behind the visitors’ bench.” He extended his hand, and Mulligan shook it. “I’m Andy Jennings. PC Class of ’71.”

“Nice to meet you, Detective Jennings. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Call me Andy.”

“Well, Andy, you and I have a mutual problem.”

“And what would that be?”

“You know Hardcastle?”

“Yeah. He’s an asshole.”

“I agree. And I’m pretty sure he’s planning to name Miller as a suspect in tomorrow’s paper.”

“So stop him.”

“Stop him? He won’t listen to me. I was sent to help him out, but he gave me the brush-off.”

Jennings sighed, cranked the ignition, turned on the headlights, and pulled away from the curb.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

As he turned onto West Shore Road, the detective snapped the radio on and tuned it to WPRO, a local news and talk station.

“Lincoln Chafee, son of former U.S. senator John Chafee, formally announced his candidacy for mayor of Warwick this afternoon,” newsman Ron St. Pierre was saying. He cued a tape of the candidate’s statement, then cut it short to break in with a bulletin.

“This just in. Warwick police have arrested Walter Miller, a thirty-four-year-old Narragansett Electric employee, in connection with the overnight murder of his girlfriend, Becky Medeiros, and her four-year-old daughter. We’ll have more on this breaking story at the top of the hour.”

“Aw, shit,” Jennings said. “I was afraid that was gonna happen. After what he’s been through, the poor bastard doesn’t need this.” He rubbed his jaw and added, “Guess I’m gonna have to call the station—and your editor—to set the record straight.”

“Two out of three Rhode Islanders read the
Dispatch,
” Mulligan said, “so it’s the best way to straighten out anything. But there’s still a problem. If all we have is a short statement from you, the story will get buried inside the metro section where most people will never see it.”

Jennings didn’t say anything.

“But maybe we can fix that.”

“How?”

“If you give me enough details about what happened inside that house, the story might end up on page one.”

Jennings gave him a sideways glance. “Bet that would get you in solid with your boss, huh?”

“It would. And it would really piss off Hardcastle.”

“I’m all for that,” Jennings said, “but I gotta give this some thought.”

He turned onto Greenwich Avenue and pulled into Dunkin’ Donuts. Inside, they ordered two cups of coffee, black for Jennings and lots of milk and sugar for Mulligan. They found a table, and the detective took a sip.

“Sit tight,” he told Mulligan. Then he got up and walked outside.

Through the window, Mulligan watched the detective pull a mobile phone out of his jacket and make a call.

In April, after the
Dispatch
’s best advertising quarter in a decade, editors had bought Nokia mobile phones for the entire reporting staff. Mulligan fished the newfangled toy out of his pants and punched in a number.

“City desk, Lomax.”

“It’s Mulligan, Mr. Lomax.”

“Where the hell have you been? Hardcastle got back two hours ago.”

“I’m developing a source.”

“Got something for me?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

“Oh, really? Hardcastle says you’re useless.”

“Useless, huh? Give me another hour to prove him wrong.”

Before Lomax could reply, Mulligan ended the call and turned the phone off. Outside the window, Jennings was still talking, gesturing emphatically with his free hand. It was fifteen minutes before the detective tucked the phone into his pocket and strolled back inside.

“You called the chief?” Mulligan asked.

“Yup.”

“And?”

“He says this will have to be off the record.”

“Off the record? That means I can’t use it.”

“Oh, right. I meant not for attribution. The chief wants you to say it came from a source close to the investigation. That work for you?”

“Sure thing,” Mulligan said.

Jennings looked out the window and composed his thoughts.

“Becky Medeiros and Walter Miller were planning to get married,” he said. “They already sent out invitations and ordered flowers. Becky picked out dresses for herself and Jessica, her daughter from her first marriage, at Ana’s Bridal Boutique in East Providence.”

“You know that how?”

“A little detective work.”

Mulligan pulled out a notebook and pen and started scribbling.

“The neighbors never heard the couple fight. They say Miller doted on the little girl, always bringing her presents, playing with her in the yard, taking walks with her around the neighborhood.”

“So what happened this morning?”

Jennings ran down what he’d found when he’d arrived at the murder house. Occasionally, he consulted his notes. Mostly he talked with his eyes closed, as if a video of the scene were playing inside his head.

“Jessica bled out from one slice across the throat. But Becky? In twenty years on the job, I’ve never seen anything like it. The killer really went to town on her.”

Mulligan dropped his Bic on the table and rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. This wasn’t the kind of story he had signed on for. Jennings drained his coffee and ordered another for both of them. Mulligan ignored his. The first cup felt like acid in his stomach.

“By afternoon, the front yard was full of cops,” Jennings said. “The sidewalk was crawling with reporters shouting questions and snapping pictures of everything that moved. The mayor and two city councilmen showed up to grandstand for the TV cameras. It was a goddamned circus. The chief figured we better make a public statement and announce that we had a suspect in custody.”