Strangled - Brian McGrory [126]
Amid his crunching I said, “Um, do you want to explain all this?”
He nodded, but as he did, he looked at the floor between us rather than at me. He crinkled up his bag and stuck it in the side pocket of his heavy khakis, his gaze never looking up. It was quiet in the room, the buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights creating the only sounds.
Finally, he said to me, “My mother was one of the Boston Strangler victims — she went back to her maiden name, and I thought I could keep it secret.” When he said this, his eyes never left the grimy patch of floor just beyond his feet.
“I know,” I replied. “And I’m sorry about that. I really am. I wish you had told me earlier.”
His head jerked up, and he looked at me for the first time since he entered the room. “How long have you known?” he asked. His eyes betrayed a sadness that I could all too well understand. Sadness, and resignation.
Before I could respond to his first question, he asked another: “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I just found out yesterday, and I had to fly all the way to Las Vegas to learn about it. That retired BPD detective, Bob Walters, left a bunch of old files and other pilfered evidence in his garage. Your name was in there.”
Vinny nodded. “A good man,” he said. “He tried his best, just like a lot of others. Their best just wasn’t good enough.
“And you,” he added, “you’re no Vinny Mongillo, but you’re still pretty good. I figured you were going to find this out. It was just a matter of how and when.”
I wanted to talk more about Bob Walters, wanted to know what exactly he meant. But I also wanted to know why Vinny Mongillo, my Vinny Mongillo, was sitting in a Boston Police Department holding cell in connection to perhaps the most storied serial murders in the nation’s history. So for lack of a better way to put it, I asked, “Vinny, what the hell are you doing in here?”
He nodded, pursing his lips as he did, and he fell silent, his gaze again dropping to the floor. I felt a sense of dread roll down my spine. Could Vinny be charged in his own mother’s slaying? Impossible, I quickly concluded; he would have been far too young. Could he have some role in the new murders? That I wasn’t quite so certain about, even if I was.
I said, “Vinny?” The word came out more pointed than I had intended, but it seemed to snap him back to the present.
He said, “They want to charge me with receiving stolen property. The head of homicide, a guy I don’t know well, is saying that’s the minimum charge I’m going to face. He said they plan to look into what else I might have done.”
He paused, his eyes meeting mine again, and he added, “I’m a little worried about some of these bastards framing me on something.”
I swallowed hard, trying to process the little I had just learned. Questions filled my head, so I began releasing them.
“What’s the stolen property?” I asked.
He stared me square in the face and said, “The knife used to kill Albert DeSalvo.”
The knife. The infamous missing knife. The knife that held DNA evidence that could determine whether Albert DeSalvo was indeed the Boston Strangler. The knife that Hank Sweeney told me I needed to find was right under my nose all along. It could have been sitting in a Ziploc bag in the bottom drawer of a colleague’s desk, for chrissakes.
I asked, “You have the knife, as in, the knife?”
I’m not sure why I felt the need to ask again. In response, he nodded.
“How did you get it?”
“Detective Bob Walters gave it to me.”
Immediately, my mind clicked to my bedside interview with Walters, the grungy room, the sallow look on his face, his determination to have some things known.
I had the knife. I gave it away.
He had said that so matter-of-factly.
I gave it to the family of one of the victims.
It gave them closure. That