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By Root 1100 0

The first sensation I had was that of cold air gushing into the hallway from an open window inside. The second sensation I had was an impulse to vomit. Sitting in a chair angled directly at the door from the middle of the living room was the body of a young woman. She was wearing a nightshirt that was hoisted up around her waist and torn by her chest. She had dried blood around her eyes and on her upper lip beneath her nose. Her legs were splayed far apart. A ligature, which looked to be an electrical cord, was wrapped around her neck and dangled off to one side. And right beneath her chin, a big looping red bow hung toward the other side.

The six of us — two plainclothes cops, two uniformed officers, two reporters — stared inside in collective shock. The bottom of a blind slapped against the corner of an open window — the source of the sound that Mongillo and I had recently heard. At that moment, a figure stepped off the elevator down the hall and shouted out, “Get those fucking reporters away from a potential crime scene.” It was Mac Foley. I wanted to tell him that there was nothing potential about this scene anymore.

Instead I whispered to Mongillo, “Take detailed mental notes.” One of the detectives, having just regained his wits, yanked the door shut.

Mongillo said to me, “This, my friend, is the work of your new pen pal. God save Boston when it hears what’s in our midst.”

Foley, close now, snapped at one of the uniforms, “Escort these guys out of here.” Which the patrolman did, almost apologetically. And that was it. God save this city indeed.

8

The police commissioner’s office looked like it was decorated by a Hollywood set designer — what with the grouping of flags behind a sprawling oak desk, heavy blue curtains, a rich burgundy rug, glass cases filled with Boston Police Department memorabilia, a wall of photographs interspersed with old badges and framed letters of commendation.

I bring this up only because this is where I happened to be sitting a little before noon. Hal Harrison was reclining in a leather swivel chair behind that aforementioned oak desk. Vinny Mongillo sat to my left on the visitor’s side of the desk, and Peter Martin, editor of the Boston Record, was to my right. It’s probably worth noting that I don’t think I had ever seen Martin in public when he wasn’t sitting at a restaurant table and I was paying for the meal. Smart as he is within the confines of the newsroom, a man of the people he is not.

“You think this is some sort of fucking publicity stunt — another ploy to sell your goddamned paper? That’s what you think?”

That was Commissioner Harrison, who had lost all of the confiding charm he had displayed from the podium at his retirement speech the night before. On this day, in the privacy of his office, I’d have to say he was absolutely livid.

So livid that he pounded his fist on the desk, then picked up a pile of papers and tossed them on the floor beside him. His face was beet red, his eyes contorted. Normally a handsome man with silvery hair and a fit frame, he looked like a tired, angry pensioner who had just found out that his Social Security COLA was frozen in the halls of Congress.

Harrison had personally called me the moment I got back to my desk from the Lauren Hutchens murder scene, saying he needed to see me, Mongillo, and preferably the editor of the paper on an urgent matter. I thought he might be prepared to confide information in this investigation. Apparently I thought wrong.

“No sir,” I replied. “We didn’t ask for these letters. We didn’t seek them out. As soon as we received them, we not only alerted your detectives, but we handed over the original copies —”

“As soon as you received them? As soon as you fucking received them?” That was the commissioner again, his voice rising to a whole new level of anger. “When my men arrived at the fucking murder scene this morning, the two of you were already standing outside the fucking door. And you’re saying you called us as soon as you received them.”

He picked up another pile of papers and flung them on the floor.