Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

“Hey, Chief!” Hardcastle shouted. “The neighbors say Becky’s live-in boyfriend, Walter Miller, was taken away in handcuffs this morning. Can you confirm that he’s your suspect?”

“We are still in the preliminary stages of our investigation,” Bennett said, his narrowed eyes locked on Hardcastle. “If you print that name, you will never get so much as a head nod from anyone in this department. Do I make myself clear?”

He turned away abruptly, stomped up the front walk, and disappeared inside the house.

“Big friggin’ deal,” Hardcastle muttered. “That prick never tells us shit anyway.”

“That mean you’re going with the name?” Mulligan asked.

Hardcastle smirked and headed for his car.

The rest of the reporters sprinted for their vehicles, too. Doors slammed. Engines roared to life. Minutes later, Mulligan stood alone on the sidewalk, a single uniformed patrolman eyeing him warily from the other side of the police line.

Mulligan turned and looked around. Neighbors who had been watching from across the street were drifting away, scuttling down the sidewalks and slipping back inside their houses. After a few minutes, the only ones left were two teenage boys on bicycles. One was a short, skinny kid in a Boston Celtics T-shirt with Kevin McHale’s number 32 on the back. The other was a tall, heavyset kid wearing a Red Sox jersey with Mo Vaughn’s number 42. The big kid was black, a rarity in this lily-white neighborhood. His wine-red twenty-six-inch Schwinn racer looked like a toy between his thighs.

What the heck, Mulligan figured. Since I’m here, I might as well ask a few questions. As he crossed the street and approached the two boys, they started to head out.

“Hey! Hold up.”

“What do you want?” the short, skinny one snapped.

“I’m wondering if either of you saw what happened here this morning.”

“Naw,” the skinny kid said.

“I did,” the other boy said.

“You did ?” the skinny one said.

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?” Mulligan asked.

“Kwame.”

“Kwame what?”

“Kwame Diggs.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

That was a surprise. Mulligan would have pegged him for a high school senior, maybe a starting lineman on the Veterans Memorial football team.

“You live around here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where?”

“The green house right over there.”

“Can you tell me what you saw?”

“You a cop?”

“I’m a reporter.”

“He’s lyin’,” the skinny kid said. “Don’t tell him nothin’, Kwame.”

“You got something against the police?” Mulligan asked.

The skinny kid didn’t say anything.

“Look, here’s my press pass,” Mulligan said, pulling it out of his pocket and showing it to them.

“You gonna put my name in the paper?” Kwame asked.

“Put your name in the paper? Only if you want me to.”

“Yeah? That would be fuckin’ cool!”

“Okay, then. I bet there were a lot of sirens going off here early this morning. Did they wake you up?”

“Uh-huh,” Kwame said.

“So what did you do?”

“Pulled on some clothes and ran over to see what was up.”

“And?”

“Couple of cops were putting handcuffs on a guy and shoving him in the back of a police car.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Yeah. Walter Miller.”

“Walter Miller? He lives there, right?”

“Uh-huh. He moved in about six months ago.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about him this morning?”

“Hell, yeah. He had blood all over him.”

“Anything else?”

“He was screamin’ and cryin’ and shit.”

“He must be the one who done it,” the skinny kid butted in.

“Anything besides the blood make you think that?” Mulligan asked.

The skinny kid looked blank.

“Did Miller and Becky fight a lot?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” the skinny kid said.

“Me either,” Kwame said, “but ain’t it always the boyfriend who done it?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“That Law & Order show on TV.”

With that, the two friends took off down the street. Mulligan watched them go, then walked around the neighborhood to see if anyone else would talk to him. Those who did hadn’t seen anything worth putting in the paper. After an hour he gave it up, walked back to the murder house, and chatted up the uniform behind the police tape.

“Must be terrible in there,” Mulligan said.

“So I hear, but I haven’t been inside. If I had, I couldn’t tell you anything anyway.”

“Bodies been removed?”

“Hours ago.”

“Remember anything else like this ever happening in this neighborhood?”

“I don’t remember anything this brutal happening in the whole damn state. At least not since Eric Kessler butchered the Freeman boy back in the eighties.”

It was early evening now, the light leaking from the sky. Mulligan was still chatting up the uniform when a streetlight across the road snapped on. It was time to pack it in. He’d have to return to the paper and tell Lomax he had nothing to show for more than three hours of work.

He’d just fished the car keys out of his pocket when a detective, a tall, lanky guy with thickly muscled forearms, strode purposefully out of the murder house and headed for an unmarked car parked on the street.

Before he reached it, Mulligan intercepted him.

January 1990

It’s a sunny, unseasonably warm Saturday morning, but the boy is planted in front of the TV, transfixed by an episode of Danger Mouse… He wishes the two crows, Leatherhead and Stiletto Mafiosa, would finally get hold of the little do-gooder and twist his head off.

But cartoons are never that cool.

On the front porch, someone is talking to his mother. He mutes the television to catch the gist and hears their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Bigsby, blubbering about something.

“I’m so sorry,” the boy’s mother says. “I can’t imagine who could have done such a terrible thing.”

The old bat must have found her ugly little mutt this morning, stuffed in the trash can behind her garage. Muzzle tied shut with twine. Tail, ears, and feet hacked off. And who knows how many stab wounds? The boy doesn’t. He lost count.

“We had Frieda for seven years,” Mrs. Bigsby says. “She was our best friend. We loved her so much.”

Friend.

Love.

Words the boy hears often around the house. He’s even learned to use them. Still, they are mystifying. He has no idea what they mean.

He shrugs and turns the volume back up.

June 1992

“Excuse me. I’m Mulligan. A reporter for the Dispatch .”

“I’ve got nothing for you, Mulligan,” the detective said.

“Look, I know that Becky Medeiros’s boyfriend, Walter Miller, was arrested here this morning, and that he had blood all over him.”

The detective gave him a hard look and said, “Get in the car.”

“Why? Am I under arrest?”

“Just get in the damn car.”

He opened the front passenger-side door, and Mulligan slid in. The detective slammed the door shut, walked around the unmarked Crown Vic, and got behind the wheel.

“Don’t put Miller’s name in the paper,” the detective said.

“Why not?”

“Because he didn’t do it.”

“He didn’t do it? The chief said a suspect was in custody. Does that mean you’ve arrested someone else?”

“No.”

“Aw, hell,” Mulligan said.

“Yeah,” the detective said.

They both sat there and thought about that for a moment.