The Dead Room

33

Jamie opened a drawer in Dan’s desk and took out Ben Masters’s passport and licence. She clutched the items as she ran back upstairs to the living room.

She opened the passport and held the photograph up against the TV screen, next to the picture of an older Frank Sullivan.

Ben had smaller nostrils but his nose was the same long, angular shape as Frank Sullivan’s. Both faces were oblong. Same high forehead. And both men had square jaws and cleft chins.

Differences: Ben’s rooster neck was gone. The skin on his face was tight and smooth, not a wrinkle anywhere. He had a full head of black hair.

Dyed, she thought. He must have had the hair transplanted, or maybe it’s a wig or a –

Do you realize what you’re saying? that inner voice asked.

Yes, she did.

Frank Sullivan was Ben Masters. There was no question in her mind.

She had encountered a handful of men in Wellesley – successful big-time executives who had undergone minimally invasive nips and tucks that, after a week of healing, left them looking relaxed and refreshed, as though they had taken a long vacation. These middle-aged men were struggling to maintain their youth. Nothing terrified a man more than losing his sex appeal to younger women, who, when you got right down to it, weren’t paying attention to them anyway.

To complete his transformation to Ben Masters, Frank Sullivan had undergone a complete craniofacial reconstruction. He’d got himself a new head of hair but hadn’t tucked his ears or done anything to hide the dimple on his chin. Maybe no one would recognize Frank Sullivan passing by in the street, but if you put these two photographs side by side anyone could see the similarities.

Do you still think this is goddamn coincidence? she asked that nagging inner voice.

It didn’t answer.

Fact: Frank Sullivan is Ben Masters.

Fact: Ben Masters is Frank Sullivan.

Fact: Frank Sullivan and Ben Masters are the same person.

Jamie grabbed the remote and pressed PLAY.

She had to wade through five more minutes of commentary and then came the segment of Frank Sullivan’s death during an FBI raid in the summer of 1983. Two of Frank’s associates had died, along with four FBI undercover agents who’d been placed on the boat – Jack King, Peter Alan, Steve White and Anthony Frissora.

The men’s four pictures came on the TV. Jamie hit PAUSE.

Peter Alan… He bore a close resemblance to the man she’d shot in the basement – and Kevin Reynolds had called him Peter. She couldn’t be entirely sure, though. And Anthony Frissora, why did he seem so familiar?

The man I shot at the Belham house… I swear that’s Anthony Frissora.

That inner voice perked up again: So now you’re saying that, in addition to killing one dead man who went by the name of Francis Sullivan, you’re saying that you killed two more dead men – two dead Federal agents by the names of Peter Alan and Anthony Frissora.

There was no doubt in her mind that Ben Masters was Frank Sullivan, but Peter Alan and Anthony Frissora… the pictures on the TV screen were at least twenty years old, but their faces… their faces did bear a close resemblance to the two men she’d shot.

She filed the thought away and hit PLAY.

Frank Sullivan’s badly charred body, the newsreader said, was buried next to his mother’s in a Charlestown cemetery.

Jamie wondered who was really buried in the cemetery, wondered how Frank Sullivan had managed to fake his death, and wondered how he had managed to get both the FBI and the Boston police to buy off on it. Her thoughts turned to the man she’d shot in the basement – the man she knew only as Peter.

I can tell you everything you need to know, he’d told her.

He’d worn a gun in a shoulder holster underneath his suit jacket. And she remembered him saying how he had tried to visit the boy named Sean at the hospital and encountered a problem with some woman from the Boston PD.

Was the man named Peter a cop? Clearly he was tied in to Kevin Reynolds and Ben Masters.

Frank Sullivan was now Ben Masters. Kevin Reynolds had worked for Sullivan. Reynolds had said he was expecting a call from Ben.

Has to be Ben Masters, she thought.

If the man named Peter was, in fact, some sort of law enforcement officer, had he helped Sullivan fake his death?

You’re forgetting that this Peter guy was working with other people – the man you shot inside the house, the ones who removed the body from the woods, the ones watching the house. One man couldn’t pull off faking someone’s death, but if he had a whole group of law enforcement people working together to pull it off…

Frank Sullivan died in the summer of 1983. He resurrected himself as Benjamin Masters. Five years ago he broke into her house and killed her husband.

Why had Sullivan/Ben come out of hiding?

What happened to your husband and children, the man named Peter had told her, I didn’t have anything to do with that. You have to believe me. That… that was all Kevin and Ben.

She watched the news for another twenty minutes. There was no mention of a missing man named Ben Masters, but she was sure there would be plenty of discussion about it between Kevin Reynolds and his people.

Carter called out for her.

‘Mom! Mom, I’m getting cold!’

She shut off the TV and stood, trembling all over. She shoved the passport and licence into her pocket as she moved to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Get… ah… towel. Dry… ah… dry… off. Be… ah… ah… up… ah… in… ah… minute.’

‘Okay.’

Back in the basement, she took out Ben’s mobile phone and slipped in the battery. She turned it on knowing she had to do this quickly, knowing that the signal was being monitored by this group of men. She knew one of these men was named Jack. She remembered Peter saying something about a man named Jack watching the Belham house.

The phone’s screen had a message saying Ben had missed another eleven calls. She touched the message and the screen changed to the call log. Pontius had called. No calls from the man named Alan.

She found the box marked ‘Messaging’. She touched it. A new screen now appeared upon which she could compose a message. She started typing ‘Pontius’ when the phone automatically filled in the name.

She composed the message she’d been playing with for the past few hours:

MEET ME AT WATERMAN PARK IN BELHAM AT 5 A.M. COME ALONE. WE’VE BEEN SET UP. DON’T TALK TO ANYONE. GET RID OF PHONE SO THEY DON’T TRACK YOU. WILL EXPLAIN WHEN YOU GET THERE, THEN HAVE ARRANGED SAFE WAY FOR YOU TO LEAVE. CASH, NEW ID, PASSPORT & DRIVER TO TAKE US. BE CAREFUL. MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FOLLOW.

Throughout the afternoon she had debated the ‘come alone’ part; it reeked of a set-up. She wondered whether it would alert Reynolds. If he didn’t come alone, her plan wouldn’t work.

This is too risky, that inner voice said.

Maybe, but this was the only way to bring Reynolds to her. She didn’t think he’d pass up an opportunity to speak to Ben Masters/Frank Sullivan. Reynolds, with his repeated phones calls, was clearly in a state of panic about what the police had found in his basement. And now here came Ben to the rescue. She felt confident Reynolds would follow the instructions in the message. When someone threw you a life preserver, you didn’t say wait, excuse me, but I need you to answer some additional questions before I grab hold. You clutched it and thanked the sweet Lord above for your tremendous good fortune.

What if something happens to you? Michael and Carter have already lost one parent. Don’t take away another.

Jamie saw the photograph Dan had taped to the wall – the photograph of Carter, still a baby, sitting on Michael’s lap on a beach at Cape Cod, their last vacation together as a family. Her two boys smiled at her from the picture, looking healthy, happy. No scars on their bodies. No memories of their father being tortured to death in the kitchen. No dead room.

You can figure out another way. You don’t have to –

She hit SEND. The message lingered on the screen for a moment and then disappeared into cyberspace or wherever these things went. Jamie removed the battery, threw everything back inside the drawer and went upstairs to tend to her children.