The Murder Channel (26 page)

I entered the park and walked through the chill, late-morning air. A woman strolled hand-in-hand with her daughter. An old man in tattered tweed fed cracked corn to the pigeons. A young couple—I thought one male and one female—shared a joint and stared at the barren trees, the nearly frozen pond. The pond probably would not quite freeze; there was enough bacterial action going on in there to generate defensive heat.

I looked back at the gate and counted benches. The man in tweed and white chin stubble tending the rock doves occupied number three on the left.

“You the doc?” he asked.

He looked like he had just tossed back his cardboard quilt for the day. “Lucas Frank,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet a man here.”

“Great big guy.”

I nodded.

He stood. “You get the seat and the bag of corn. I’m gonna get some breakfast.”

He walked toward Boylston Street.

“That’s it?”

“I’m hungry,” he shouted, and quickened his pace.

The young couple—two men? two women?—on the next bench soared somewhere above the pond. Pigeons murmured, flurried a foot in the air, then settled back on the corn, their bobbing heads allowing them to visualize depth.

“You’re a fucking miracle of nature,” I muttered to the birds. “Raccoons wash their food before they eat it. You shit on yours.”

The police helicopter hummed in the distance, a black dot against a blue sky.

Zrbny entered the Public Garden from Beacon Street. He moved easily through a gaggle of tourists. No heads turned.

After three days of uninterrupted TV coverage, his was probably the most famous face in Boston. According to BTT, the city was under siege, its residents in a state of panic. Folks probably were terrified, I thought, but they were not observant. No one pointed, screamed, fainted, or dove into the pond.

Zrbny sat next to me on the bench and placed a plastic garbage bag on the pavement between his feet. “Do you know what catgut is?” he asked.

I looked at him. “Fishing line,” I said. “It’s
single-strand, and strong. I used it mackerel fishing when I was a kid.”

“Look at my right index finger.”

He sat rigidly, as he had in his session with Randy Severance, his hands resting on his thighs. There was a monofilament loop secured to his finger.

“That strand extends up my sleeve,” he said, “and attaches to the trigger on a nine-millimeter handgun that is secured to my chest and aimed at you. The action is already engaged. If I flinch, the gun fires. If the man on the roof behind us shoots, we both die.”

Zrbny’s delivery was the same deliberate monotone I had registered on our drive from New Hampshire. Despite the chill, sweat beaded on the back of my neck.

“What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“My sister.”

Zrbny was near the edge, teetering in a land where only he knew the terrain.

“You have questions,” he said.

As the midday break approached, a small army of office workers scurried past on the wet pavement. Bolton’s nightmare had come true. He wanted us out of the Garden before the lunch rush.

I considered Zrbny’s preference for chronological accounts. Wherever I began, I would have to
be content with his unfolding of events. I could not risk disrupting his flow, and I had little time.

“You were eligible for release four years ago,” I said.

“I wouldn’t have bothered. It was Wendy’s idea. She wanted my story. I wanted to know who killed my sister. She had been investigating Levana’s disappearance for years.”

I took advantage of the pause, hoping that my statement did not require Zrbny to make any cerebral adjustments. “You two have known each other for years,” I said.

“A few days after Fremont killed my sister, Wendy came to our house. We kept in touch. It was more her idea than mine, but I did call her the day I killed those people.”

“I wondered about that.”

“It wasn’t a secret. No one ever asked me.”

“Do you remember what you told her?”

“Of course. I said that Levana had spoken to me, that today was the day. Right here. Right now.”

“Neville Waycross interrupted you.”

“Does it matter now?”

“I’m curious, only because there are three ladies of sorrow. You had killed three times.”

A slight smile creased Zrbny’s lips. “You’re very good,” he said.

“There were more?”

“Continue with your questions.”

As Ben Moffatt had said, Zrbny did not lie. He simply did not answer. I gazed into the distance, focusing on the helicopter dot.

“Wendy Pouldice gave you Fremont.”

“She could have given him to me sooner. When I saw him, I remembered him.”

“What about the courthouse shootings?”

“I didn’t know anything about that until the next night.”

“Ralph Amsden told you.”

Again I saw the hint of a smile.

“Secure his window,” Zrbny said, “but don’t remove him from his room.”

“That’s what I think will happen.”

Zrbny took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “The police can’t prove any of this,” he said. “Wendy is clever, not your average TV airhead. She was impatient, didn’t want to wait for the system to release me. She knew I wouldn’t agree, so she said nothing and made her arrangements. She also didn’t want to be implicated in shooting up a courthouse. I was supposed to know what to do when the shooting started. Maybe I would have. I don’t know.”

Zrbny could have climbed out Ralph’s window anytime. Instead, he had waited for the Commonwealth to free him.

“The accident was … an accident,” he said, “one of those fortuitous events that no one can
plan. What I did was up to me. I liked that. When I walked into Sable’s apartment, I thought it was an aquarium shop. I looked at her and I saw my sister.”

He pulled his plastic bag onto his lap. “I still haven’t heard Levana’s voice. I thought I would.”

Zrbny gazed at the blue sky. “My sister was not alone,” he said. “There are other remains in the dungeons.”

I pointed at his bag. “Is that what all of this has been about?”

He remained silent.

Our lunch traffic had evaporated. My stoned androgynes were gone. Cruisers blocked the entrances to the Public Garden, and Ray Bolton approached on the path from Boylston Street. The police helicopter thrummed lower, closing on the pond. Tactical officers scaled the fences and moved through the deep snow.

“Pouldice and Fremont,” I said.

Zrbny released the catgut loop on his index finger.

“I told you they were friends. It doesn’t matter now.”

“You went to New Hampshire to kill her.”

“She disappointed me.”

“That’s it?”

“For now,” he said, unzipping his jacket. “You
take the gun. If I remove it, they’ll shoot me. I’m not ready to die yet.”

BOLTON AND I WATCHED AS OFFICERS
searched and shackled Felix Zrbny.

“BTT has a camera crew on the roof,” he said, pointing at Boylston Street. “They’ve also got a parabolic microphone. I don’t know how good it is at this distance.”

“Sure is a different world, isn’t it? I don’t think we’re any more violent than we ever were. We just get better media coverage.”

A GUARD ENTERED THE CORRIDOR AND
placed a chair opposite my cell. “Your lawyer’s here,” he said.

I stood at the bars and waited. The short, stocky man who approached carried a battered briefcase in one hand, an Italian sandwich dripping olive oil in the other. He sat on the chair, dropped the briefcase, and filled his mouth with sandwich.

“Fuckin’ good shit,” he said. “I’m Hensley Carroll.”

His shirt had pulled itself loose from his pants, allowing his belly roll to spill from beneath his undershirt. He wore rubber boots with clips.

“I’m your attorney,” he said. “I’m on the court record as representing you, so I gotta see you through the arraignment tomorrow morning. After that, the court will appoint someone else to represent you.”

He took another bite from his sandwich. “Okay, I’ll do all the talking. Same as tomorrow. We enter a not guilty plea, you get remanded, we’re out of there in a half hour tops.”

Carroll stared at his fistful of food. “Only problem with these fuckin’ things is all my ties look like they just had lube jobs. You’re gettin’ arraigned for offing the cop, the deputy sheriff, Finneran. Nice guy. Good family. Irish Catholic. Grew up in Jamaica Plain. Anyway, the rest of the shit will come later. You understand? You got any questions?”

He hesitated only a moment. “Aces. I’m outta here.”

“Wait.”

“Holy shit. He talks.”

“Who is paying you?”

“I got paid. What do you care?”

I watched his face as he mouthed his sandwich and sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I got a cashier’s check, okay? I don’t know who paid me. All I know is I’m on the fuckin’ record and I can’t get off till after tomorrow. This is a formality, okay? Jesus. I pity the fuckhead who gets this case. He says not guilty, and the D.A. shows an instant replay. If we had the chair, you’d be a crispy critter.”

I turned from the bars and stepped to the back of my cell, where I examined the texture of the concrete blocks.

Carroll’s footsteps faded in the hall. The lawyer bantered with the guard about the Boston Celtics. Both men swore and laughed, and the steel door slammed.

The silence was a delight.

OUR TABLE WAS AT THE REAR OF JACOB
Wirth’s. Bolton was on his second dark beer before dinner, and in storytelling mode.

“We’d just gotten the DNA lab up and running,” he said. “A couple of department clowns were fussing about whether Albert DeSalvo was the ‘Boston Strangler.’ They wanted to run tests, make a definitive announcement, but they didn’t have anything to test. Jimmy Wheaton, BTT’s guy who does ‘Talk about Boston,’ called. I figured he wanted to discuss the new lab, but the last time I was on that show, Wheaton threw me more than a few curveballs. I made these cards, about the size of business cards, and I printed ‘Fuck You’ on each one.”

“Not very nice, Raymond,” I said. “Sounds like something I’d do.”

“Listen,” he continued. “Jimmy’s first question was about the bad blood between some of the cops and the highway department. There was stuff in the
Boston Record
, but that was all I knew about it. Instead of answering the question, I handed him a
card. We were on live. He handled the first one, skirted the issue, asked me about the lab, then he landed on the BPD’s image. I gave him another one.”

I laughed.

“At the commercial break he said, ‘Ray, you’re killing me. What are you doing?’ I told him to stop using me as a straight man, and we were fine for the last twenty minutes. I got the idea from you.”

“Bullshit.”

“The hell,” Bolton said with a laugh. “You were my inspiration. Where was it?”

“D.C.,” I said.

“That’s right. It was back when they had the seven-second tape delay. You told the guy that every time he asked a hinky question you were going to say one of those words you aren’t supposed to say on the air. The guy was cocky. He told you about the tape delay. You said that was fine, you’d just repeat each word for eight seconds.”

“A knowledge of syphilis is not an instruction to get it,” I said, paraphrasing my favorite philosopher of culture, Lenny Bruce.

Our waiter delivered dinner and removed our empty mugs for refills. Bolton had the German mixed grill—bratwurst and weisswurst, sauerkraut, potato salad, and pickled red cabbage. I had ordered Jake’s special, knockwurst and bratwurst in red beer sauce, and the requisite sauerkraut and potato salad. I stabbed at Bolton’s cabbage.

“Waycross should be here,” I said.

“He’s not a nice drunk,” Bolton said. “He was drinking before Shannon died. He didn’t drink every day, but when he did, it was uncontrolled. The only department Christmas party he attended, he never left the bar. Shannon was with Louise and me most of the night. When we went home, I guess she danced with a couple of the guys. Neville went after one of them. Remember Steve Winslow?”