The Soul Collectors

41

Darby rode in the back of the squad car with her hands cuffed behind her back. She used the quiet time to think.

Leland had told Lu she was involving herself in an investigation, so the question was: had Leland been told the truth about what had really happened to the Rizzo family? The feds had locked down that information, yes, but there was also the matter of her job offer from Leland on the same day she'd been released from the quarantine chamber. She didn't think it was a coincidence. She was willing to bet the feds had called the acting Boston police commissioner and put some pressure on him to get her back on the job until the investigation was over. Then the Boston PD could do whatever it wanted with her.

If Leland knew the real story about Charlie Rizzo and his family, he wouldn't have shared it with anyone. Leland knew how to keep his mouth shut. He was a good bureaucratic soldier, maybe one of the best.

When she reached the station, she surrendered her cell phone, wallet, belt, keys and gun holster. She had already given her sidearm to one of the forensic techs for bullet analysis. Standard procedure. Her items were dropped into a bag and she signed the inventory form.

After a thorough search, she was booked and fingerprinted. A patrolman escorted her to an interrogation room that smelled of BO and stale coffee. One of the overhead fluorescent lights hummed and flickered on and off.

The pudgy detective who came in had delicate fingers and an emerald pinkie ring. His brown hair, threaded with grey and white, had side-swept bangs that left little doubt he had punched a one-way express ticket to Gayville.

After he removed her handcuffs, he cuffed her to an O-ring in the centre of the table.

'You're joking,' she said.

The detective left the room without answering.

The scuffed desk had plenty of reading material: JIMMY MC WAS HERE!!!! TINA HERBERT LIKES BIG DONKEY DICK UP HER POOP-SHOOT. BOBBY K BLOWS HORSES. Someone had managed to write down all the lyrics to Van Halen's 'Running with the Devil'.

A clock hung on the wall: 9:20 p.m. She rested the uncut side of her face on her forearm and tried to get some sleep.

Sometime later, she heard the door open. She propped up her head and checked the clock: 10:33 p.m.

A new detective, this one a white guy with a big, pie-shaped face, dropped a pad of paper on the other side of the desk. He had bushy black hair and a thick moustache straight out of a seventies porn movie. Or maybe she was thinking this way given the high-grade erotica she'd just read on the desk.

'My name is Detective Steve Kenyon.'

Steve Kenyon, she thought. Not a bad porn name. Steven Cannon would be better — or Cannon Kenyon, the Thunder from Down Under.

He sat down, the chair straining under his considerable weight, and slipped a gold pen from his shirt pocket.

'You ready to talk?'

'Can't. I could go to jail. I signed forms.'

'Forms? What forms?'

'Legal forms. Had the United States Army insignia stamped on it. In gold.'

Up-and-coming seventies porn star Steve Kenyon looked confused.

'Call Sergeant-Major Glick,' she said. 'He's in charge of the BU Biomedical Facility.'

He rubbed his bushy moustache.

'That's in Boston,' she said.

'I know where BU is.'

'Good. Go and call him. I should warn you, he's a tough guy to get a hold of, so if he's unavailable, ask for a man named Billy Fitzgerald. He's supposedly their number two guy, but I don't believe it.'

'We're not calling anyone.'

'I can't answer any questions until you bring Glick or Fitzgerald here. I need their permission.'

'You need to play ball with us.'

'And you need to come up with a better tough-guy routine. Try using a deeper voice. That'll really make my ovaries quake in fear.'

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. 'I heard you were a pisser.'

'You have questions, and I want to answer them. I really do. But I can't for legal reasons. Bring in Glick or Fitzgerald or anyone else from the place, and we'll answer your questions together, make it one big party here in Nahant.'

'I think you need some time to cool down.'

'You really should make that call.'

He stood.

'Speaking of which,' Darby said, 'I'd like my statutory phone call now. I'd like to speak to my lawyer.' The holding cell was the size of a closet and held two bunk beds bolted to the wall. The opposite corner had a stainless-steel toilet built into a sink cabinet, one of those oh-so-clever advancements to save space in jail cells. It smelled of Lysol and urine.

Darby folded her jacket and, using it as a pillow, lay down on the bottom bunk.

She had spoken to her lawyer. He said not to worry; he could get the weapons charge dropped. But he couldn't do it until the morning, when he could get in front of a judge, so she was looking at spending the night in the Nahant Inn. Lu would be forced to let her go tomorrow — unless he manufactured some other charge. She wouldn't put it past him.

The weapons charge was a bullshit move. Lu had played it because he wanted in on the investigation. He had sniffed around and found a possible opportunity to advance himself, get transferred to someplace more exciting; with a better-paid job, he could stop buying used police costumes at the discount stores.

So now she had to play a mental version of the duelling gunslingers. She imagined Lu standing across from her on a gritty road in some dusty mining gown plucked straight out of a John Wayne Western. No need for guns on this ponderosa: the weapon used here was sheer stubbornness; it was a battle of wills to see who would buckle first. She wondered how much experience the man had with the most intractable people on the planet, the species known as 'Irish Catholic'.

Good luck, she thought, grinning. Darby closed her eyes and settled in for a long night.