Rogue Island (25 page)

“Anything you want to confess before we get started?” Polecki said.

“Save us all a lot of time,” Roselli said.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have fornicated a thousand times since my last confession.”

“In the old days,” Polecki said, “this would be the part where I slug you with a phone book.”

“But we don't do that so much anymore,” Roselli said.

Both took a moment now to sip coffee from paper cups. They didn't offer me any.

“You know what a criminal profile is, Mulligan?” Polecki said.

I didn't say anything.

“The FBI's real good at them,” Roselli said. “You give them the details of a crime, and they come back with a description of the perp, right down to the size of his dick.”

“So last week,” Polecki said, “the boys and girls at Quantico took a few hours off from chasing ragheads to work up a profile of our serial arsonist.”

He pulled something out of his jacket pocket and slapped it on the table—a few typewritten sheets of paper stapled together. It had to be notes he'd taken talking to an agent on the phone. The bureau never puts its profiles in writing. They don't want defense lawyers using them as exculpatory evidence if they turn out to be wrong.

“Perhaps you'd like to look it over,” Polecki said. “Oh, wait. With your hands cuffed behind your back, how are you going to turn the pages?”

“That
is
a problem,” Roselli said.

“We could uncuff him,” Polecki said.

“Let's not,” Roselli said.

“I know,” Polecki said. “Why don't we summarize it for him?”

“I'll start,” Roselli said. “According to the FBI, our arsonist is in his late twenties to late thirties.”

“You're thirty-nine, right, Mulligan?” Polecki said.

“He lives alone,” Roselli said.

“Like Mulligan,” Polecki said.

“He drives an old, beat up SUV,” Roselli said, “probably a Chevy Blazer or a Ford Bronco.”

“Mulligan's Bronco is a piece of shit,” Polecki said.

“He's in pretty good physical condition,” Roselli said.

“Sort of like Mulligan,” Polecki said.

“Otherwise,” Roselli said, “he wouldn't be able to lug five-gallon gasoline cans around and slip in and out of cellar windows.”

“But he's got some kind of nagging illness,” Polecki said. “Didn't we hear that Mulligan has an ulcer?”

“The fires are meticulously planned, with little evidence left behind,” Roselli said, “so we're looking for an organized killer with a high IQ.”

“You're a smart guy, right, Mulligan?” Polecki said.

“He has an unhealthy attitude toward authority figures,” Roselli said.

“Might even stoop to calling them names, like ‘Dumb and Dumber,' ” Polecki said.

“He likes to cruise around at night in his Blazer or Bronco scouting for opportunities to set more fires,” Roselli said.

“Hey,” Polecki said. “Didn't we hear something about Eddie pulling Mulligan over in Mount Hope late one night?”

“After he sets the fires, he likes to stand around and watch them burn,” Roselli said. “But he's smart, so he'll have a plausible excuse for why he's there.”

“Like, say, reporting for the newspaper,” Polecki said.

“He'll find a way to insinuate himself into the police investigation,” Roselli said.

“Maybe even implicate an innocent person like Wu Chiang or invent a phony suspect like a little thug to throw us off the track,” Polecki said.

“He has difficulty maintaining relationships with the opposite sex,” Roselli said.

“Say, how is Dorcas, anyway?” Polecki said.

And he's fascinated by fire,
I thought, remembering a snippet from my nighttime reading. But there was no way Polecki and Roselli could know that about me.

“And he's fascinated by fire,” Roselli said.

“Yeah,” Polecki said. “What was it that Dorcas told us this morning?”

“That Mulligan is a fucking bastard.”

“I meant the other thing.”

“That he's been mesmerized by fire ever since he watched the Capron Knitting Mill burn down fifteen years ago,” Roselli said.

Thank you, Dorcas, for finding another way to punish me.

Polecki lit a stogie with a paper match, held the flame in front of my face a moment, and then flicked it at me.

“So, Mulligan,” he said, “does this profile sound like anyone you know?”

“Sounds a little like you,” I said, “except for the high IQ and the part about being in shape.”

“Maybe we'll be needing that phone book after all,” Roselli said.

“Come on,” I said. “You both know I didn't do this.”

“Mulligan,” Polecki said, “you have now idea how much I'd love to see you go down for it.”

Dumb and Dumber made a few more empty threats, then got up and left the room. Fifteen minutes later they came back trailed by two more friendly faces. Jay Wargart, a big lug with a five o'clock shadow and fists like hams, and Sandra Freitas, a bottle blonde with rumble hips and a predatory Cameron Diaz smile. They worked homicide. What the hell did
they
want?

61

Freitas settled into the chair across from me and dropped a large manila envelope on the desk. Wargart walked around the table and stood behind me. Polecki and Roselli held up the wall near the door, the little room crowded now.

Freitas opened the envelope and extracted three crime-scene photos.

“She had your name and number on a phone-message slip in her pocketbook,” she said.

I didn't say anything.

“Witnesses saw you knocking on her door a couple of days before she was shot.”

I kept my mouth zipped.

“She'd been spending a lot of time looking at property in Mount Hope lately. Did she see something she shouldn't have? Is that why you killed her?”

I just looked at her. I should have asked for a lawyer an hour ago, but I wanted to see if I could learn something from the questions.

“She was shot three times with a forty-five, but of course you know that, don't you? I'm betting ballistics will show it's the same gun we found when we executed a search warrant on your shit hole of an apartment this morning.”

“How much?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“How much do you want to bet?”

Wargart kicked my chair, slamming my chest into the table. I'd seen the routine before—bad cop, worse cop. The vial of pills was still on the tabletop. My ribs were pleading for them now, but I didn't figure Dumb and Dumber and the homicide twins were going let me have any.

They grilled me about the murder for an hour before they unhooked the cuffs and gave me my one phone call. I used it to call Jack to tell him what was going on and let him know he was off the hook, at least for now.

“Jesus, Liam,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?” I gave him Veronica's number and asked him to let her know why I wouldn't be home for a day or two. There wouldn't be enough to hold me once the ballistics report came back. At least that's what I told myself.

When I was done, they tossed me into a holding cell. I chatted up a couple of meth dealers and then made a study of the folk-art mural scratched into the concrete blocks. Its visceral intensity, raw energy, and undiluted emotion stood in sharp contrast to its cool interplay of realism and impressionism. Think Grandma Moses meets Ron Jeremy.

I was dead tired. I stretched out on a hard, dirty cot, but my ribs wouldn't let me sleep. It seemed like hours before I finally drifted off.

*  *  *

Rain pelted the courtroom windows. Gloria writhed and moaned from the witness stand: “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

Dorcas peered down at her from the bench. “I know this is difficult for you,” she said, “but just answer the fucking questions.” Then she reached inside her black robe and pulled out a coffeemaker and a five-gallon gas can.

The little thug rose from the prosecution table.

“Is the man who did this to you in this courtroom?” he asked.

Gloria nodded and pointed her finger.

“The record will show,” Dorcas said, “that the witness has identified Fucking Bastard.”

In the jury box, Hardcastle, Veronica, and Brady Coyle laughed and slapped high fives.

Dorcas was fiddling with the coffeemaker, trying to set the timer. The witness was still pointing at me, but now she had Cheryl Scibelli's face. Then the coffeemaker exploded in a ball of flame, and I woke up. My ribs felt like they were on fire.

62

After forty-eight hours, I was kicked.

They returned my pills, belt, shoelaces, Mickey Mouse watch, lighter, and wallet, but the three twenties that had been in it were gone. My Visa card was still where it belonged, but I assumed they had taken down the number to check recent purchases. Fortunately I hadn't bought any coffeemakers lately. I didn't get my grandfather's gun back.

Secretariat had been impounded and was no doubt being torn apart at the state police crime lab. I dry-swallowed a couple of painkillers and walked the half mile home from the station. The apartment had been tossed, the kitchen drawers pulled out and emptied on the floor. I was beyond caring. I stripped, stepped gingerly into the shower, and let the hot water stream over my ribs for a long, long time.

Late Friday morning, I stepped off the elevator and walked stiffly into the newsroom. Keyboard clacking dribbled into silence as two dozen reporters and copy editors stopped what they were doing to stare. At first, no one said anything. Then a drawl broke the silence.

“Burn down a neighborhood so you can write about it? Hot diggity! Why didn't I think of that?”

“Shut it, Hardcastle,” Lomax said.

He rose from his throne behind the city desk, gestured that I should follow, and stepped into Pemberton's glass-walled office. I was halfway there when Veronica intercepted me.

“Are you all right?”

“As good as can be expected.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Yeah,” I said. I took her hand and squeezed it. “Keep me company after I have this friendly little chat.”

Then I turned away, entered the managing editor's office, and sank into one of the maroon leather visitor's chairs.

Pemberton took off his glasses, wiped them with a Kleenex, and put them back on. Then he unbuttoned the cuffs of his starched white shirt and rolled up the sleeves.

“Can I get you anything, Mulligan? Bottled water? A cup of coffee, perhaps?”

“I could use some Percocet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. I'm good.”

“Yes, well. So let's get right to it, then. We seem to have something of a situation here.”

“A situation?” Lomax said. “Feels more like a goddamned train wreck.”

I didn't say anything.

“Have you observed how this unfortunate affair is playing on the TV news?” Pemberton said.

“Sorry, but the seventy-two-inch, high-def, flat-screen entertainment center in the holding cell was on the fritz.”

“Yes, of course. You were being detained. It must have been quite unpleasant for you.”

“Quite unpleasant indeed,” I said.

Lomax glared at me and said, “Cut it out.”

“Unfortunately,” Pemberton said, “all the local channels have blown the matter entirely out of proportion. To hear them tell it, you'd think the newspaper itself is the serial arsonist.”

“You mean, as opposed to just one wayward employee?”

“I didn't intend to imply that.”

“And how is the paper handling the story?”

“Oh, that's right. You haven't seen the newspaper either. Perhaps you should read this before we continue.”

He pulled a paper from a stack on his desk and passed it to me. I folded it open to the sports page. The Sox bats had pounded the Yankees 7–5 the night before. Yippie.

The name
L. S. A. Mulligan
was on page one again, but this time it wasn't a byline. The story of my arrest had been written by Lomax, the circumstances too sensitive to be entrusted to a mere reporter. I scanned it and learned that Polecki had identified me as “a person of interest” in the arson investigation. At least the cops hadn't publicly connected me to the Scibelli murder. Pemberton was quoted as saying he would have no comment until he had time to “review the situation.”

I tossed the paper on the desk and looked at Pemberton.

“Funny,” I said. “I didn't see anything in there about how you are standing by your reporter.”

“Yes, well …” He looked at Lomax for help, didn't get any, and pressed on. “I do hope you understand why I have to ask you this, Mulligan. Are you in any way culpable in this dreadful affair?”

“Of course he isn't,” Lomax said.

“I believe Mulligan is capable of answering for himself.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“May I take that as a no, then?”

“You may.”

“Good. That's settled. Now we have to decide what we are going to do with you.”

63

At two in the afternoon Hopes was mostly empty, just a couple of alkies slouched at the bar sipping something bitter. I led Veronica and Mason to a table by the beer cooler in back.

“Indefinite suspension without pay,” I said.

“You're kidding,” Veronica said.

“At first, it was gonna be
with
pay, but only if I promised to keep my nose out of the arson investigation. I told them I couldn't do that. Especially not now.”

“Baby, that's so unfair.”

“Try to see it from their point of view,” I said. “For the good of the newspaper, they've got to distance themselves from me. If I were in their position, I'd do the same thing.”

“But without pay?”

“How's it going to look if I keep digging into the story and some asshole like Logan Bedford finds out I'm still on the payroll?”