Strangled - Brian McGrory [17]
The smell was one of all-encompassing mustiness, like another year, a different season, had sat here frozen in time. I flicked a wall switch and an overhead light came on, illuminating a small, barely furnished office. I had taken up rowing the year before, and the club was nice enough to accept me as a member in good standing.
I opened yet another door and walked into a vast, dark space. Again, I flicked a wall switch and the large storage garage lit up, revealing stacks of sculling boats hanging on all four walls, as well as piles of weathered oars.
I yanked open the garage door, which made more noise than I expected, carried the shell down to the nearby dock, and returned to the building. I grabbed a couple of oars, wriggled into a life vest, donned an old down parka that had probably been hanging on a peg since the first Roosevelt administration, and headed back to the dock.
Let’s not kid around here: it was cold out, and given that I had just taken up the sport of crew, I had never been on the water in this kind of weather. For that matter, I had never been on the water this deep into a dark night. But the moon was bright and the sight lines were good and I’d heat up within the down jacket as soon as I began rowing. The wingtips might be a little awkward, but hey, life’s a little bit awkward most of the time.
Once on the water, the first push with my legs and pull on the oars felt impossible, like my ribs might crack apart and fall through the black skin of the river. The boat tilted sideways, and I leaned toward the other side to balance it out and pulled on the oars again, a little smoother this time. Still, the boat was wobbly. I straightened it out again and took another pull. Better. And another. Before I knew it, I was thirty yards offshore, the boat’s nose heading directly upwind, which was good, because it kept the howling air at my back.
Suddenly, I had movement and a rhythm, thrusting with my legs, pulling with my arms and back, sliding across the surface. Thrusting, pulling, thrusting, pulling. The whole thing was as therapeutic as I had imagined, though I probably could’ve been locked up in a special room with white padding for being out there at that hour on a March night.
Inevitably, my mind wandered. I thought of Peter Martin pressing me earlier that day for a story that I didn’t yet have. I thought of Maggie Kane, wherever she was, running from, well, me. I thought of the Phantom Fiend, whoever he was, and Vinny Mongillo holding court among cops in the ballroom of the Ritz. I thought ahead to the immediate future, how there were too few answers to too many questions on too many fronts — always a dangerous deficit in my line of work. And then my mind wandered far enough afield that I was thinking of nothing at all but my breath and my motion and the little splashes of cold water with each steady row.
Finally, I began thinking of the soft purring I heard in the distance and looked overhead to see if a medical chopper was fluttering down the river toward Massachusetts General Hospital. I saw no lights.
The sound grew louder, grinding closer. I slowed down my rowing and looked to my left, and then to my right, and saw a tiny flashlight hovering over the water about a hundred yards away toward the middle of the river — apparently a boat. I assumed it was a state police trooper on late-night patrol — someone who was undoubtedly wondering what kind of moron was rowing in a scull at this hour.
Sure enough, the sound of the engine got louder still, the light brighter. I pulled the oars up and rested for a moment, the wind still banging at my neck, the sky unusually bright above. The light continued toward me, close enough that I could hear voices — men, I believe, shouting above the din of the outboard.
About twenty yards away, I could see what looked to be the outlines of a small powerboat, perhaps a Boston whaler. I could make out the silhouettes of two people standing inside