Strangled - Brian McGrory [84]
He said, “Cause of death determined to be head trauma from a fall down a flight of stairs at his house.”
“Suspicious death?” I asked.
“Apparently not,” he replied, then added, “Sometimes an accident is just an accident.”
And sometimes not. But I didn’t say that.
I asked, “Anything else of note from the death scene?”
For the first time, Wit sounded somewhat suspicious. He asked, “What’s your interest in some old retiree living out his years in the sun?”
“Former member of the Boston Police Department — a homicide detective, and a damned good one,” I said. “I’m just making sure he’s well tended to in death.”
Wit seemed to appreciate that, as I suspected he would. He said, “Well, it looks like there was a pair of eyeglasses, broken, found near the body of the deceased at the bottom of the stairs.” He fell quiet again, probably reading from the screen. I heard him press a button a couple of times, like he was scrolling down. Then he said, matter-of-factly, “And there was a single key on a small key ring retrieved from the bottom step. The assumption is that he was carrying it downstairs.”
A key. His eyeglasses. An accident really may have been an accident. Bob Walters might have forced himself out of bed after I left, struggling down the stairs to get something that was locked away before I returned. And he fell. But what was it?
I asked, “Sergeant, off the record, can you share next of kin?”
“Well,” Wit responded, “it’ll be in tomorrow’s obituary anyway. He leaves a wife, Patricia. And I’ve got here a Deirdre Walters Hayes, a daughter who lives in the area.”
“Number?”
And he gave it to me — Deirdre’s telephone number. Boston PD should be so kind. I hung up with sincere thanks.
When I looked up, Vinny Mongillo was standing over me, a king-size box of Junior Mints in one of his oversize hands, a small reporter’s notebook in the other. The box of candy, I noted for no particular reason, was larger than the pad.
“Let’s go,” he said. “And bring your A-game. This is no time for us to choke.”
Choke. Strangler. Get it? Neither did I.
24
It was to the point where minutes, even seconds, felt like they mattered, not only to the women who would become victims to the Phantom Fiend but to the people whose help I was seeking. Everyone kept dying, naturally and unnaturally.
Which would explain why I was speeding through the city of Boston, taking a left on red, among other automotive transgressions. And it would furthermore explain why a Boston Police cruiser came racing up behind me, its overhead lights whipping blue and white, its headlights pulsating on and off. I had no idea that Boston cops bothered pulling anyone over for speeding anymore.
“Who the hell knew that Boston cops pulled anyone over for speeding?”
That was Vinny, taking a quick break from gabbing away in the passenger seat on his cell phone. Great minds, it seems, really do think alike — or at least one great one and a slightly above-average one. No need, I hope, for me to distinguish whose is whose.
An old Irish gray-haired cop walked up to the driver’s window of my car after I pulled to the side of Cambridge Street near Government Center in downtown Boston.
“Quite the hurry, aren’t you?” he asked.
This was a good thing. It was a good thing because when a cop engages you in any way during a traffic stop, it gives you the opportunity to squirm your way out of the citation. It’s the cops, almost always younger cops, who act robotic and make no conversation as they issue you a ticket, who are a lost cause.
“Just trying to save the city, until you got in my way,” I said.
Actually, I didn’t. What I said was, “Too much of one, sir. I shouldn’t have been going as fast as I was.”
He nodded. I handed him my license and registration without him having to ask — another gesture that I think they like. Vinny continued to chirp on the phone, talking at that point about the prior night’s Celtics game.
“Any special reason?”
With