Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

The short one raised an eyebrow and cracked a smile. “Shit,” he said, “I don’t muthafuckin’ know.”

Which was when Larry Bird decided to join the conversation: “Theeee Yankees win!”

“ There’s the muthafucka!” the tallest one said.

“So,” the shortest one said, “why’d you steal our muthafuckin’ bird?”

“I didn’t,” Mulligan said. “After the shooting at Chad Brown, the cops didn’t want to be bothered with it, so they gave it to me.”

“You’ve been taking care of the muthafucka?” the short one said.

“I have,” Mulligan said.

“Feeding it and cleaning the cage and shit?”

“Yup.”

“That’s cool,” the short one said. “But we want the muthafucka back.”

“Can you prove it’s yours?”

“It belonged to my muthafuckin’ cousin,” the tall one said.

“The guy who got shot?”

“Yeah.”

The guys who shot him were also driving a white Escalade, Mulligan remembered, but he figured it best not to bring that up.

“How’d you find me?” Mulligan asked.

“We been askin’ around,” the short one said.

Mulligan raised an eyebrow. The short one did not elaborate.

“You gonna give us trouble, muthafucka?” the tall one asked.

“Muthafucka!” Larry Bird said. “Muthafucka! Muthafucka! Muthafucka!”

“It’s all yours,” Mulligan said. “And you may as well take the package of bird feed on the counter.”

The tall one grabbed the cage, the short one snatched the seed, and the four young hoodlums swaggered out the door and pounded down the stairs.

Mulligan watched them go. Then he pushed the door closed, locked it, and said, “Good riddance, muthafucka.”

Protesters gathered in front of the newspaper every day now; but they seldom numbered more than twenty, and there were no more rock-throwing incidents. Still, two weeks after Mason’s story was printed, the publisher thought it best to keep the Wackenhut guards at their posts.

On Wednesday morning, Mulligan took the elevator to the third floor, stepped out into the newsroom, and walked by a slender, sixty-six-year-old black woman sitting in one of the white vinyl chairs set aside for visitors. She wore a yellow summer dress and flat white shoes. Her white vinyl purse rested in her lap. She looked up at Mulligan and scowled.

Two minutes later, Mason walked in and spotted her.

“May I help you, Mrs. Diggs?” he asked.

“No, thank you, Mr. Mason. I’m waiting for Gloria Costa.”

When Gloria arrived five minutes later, the woman rose to meet her.

“I have something I need to tell you,” she said.

From their desks, Mulligan and Mason watched Gloria lead the woman to one of the small meeting rooms and close the door.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Diggs,” Gloria said, and then pulled a chair over to sit next to her. “I’ve been worried about you. Are you okay?”

“No,” the woman said. “I don’t think I ever will be again.”

Gloria waited in silence, letting the woman get to it in her own time.

“In the summer of 1993, when Kwame was fourteen, we sent him to a sleepover camp. It was the first time he’d ever been away from home.”

That was the year between the Warwick murders, Gloria knew.

“What was the name of the camp?” she asked.

“I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Do you remember where it was?”

“In the Catskills.”

“What town?”

“Big Indian.”

“How long was he gone?”

“Just three days. Then the camp sent all the children home.”

“Why did they do that, Mrs. Diggs?”

“Because something happened.”

“What was it?”

The old woman lowered her eyes and spoke in a whisper.

“One of the camp counselors was murdered.”

“I was a cub reporter back in ’93,” said Dan Hurley, city editor of The Poughkeepsie Journal . “It was the first time I covered a murder. Big Indian is a little out of our coverage area, but the victim was from New Paltz, just across the Hudson, so it was a big story for us.”

“Tell me what you remember,” Mulligan said.

“Her name was Allison Foley. Just turned eighteen. Would have been a freshman at Stony Brook University in the fall.”

“How did she die?”

“Brutally. She was stabbed a dozen times in the chest with a jackknife. When the killer figured out the blade wasn’t long enough to pierce her heart, he stabbed her in the neck and then strangled her with her belt.”

“Where did this happen?”

“In the woods about eighty yards from a cabin she shared with three other camp counselors.”

“Was the knife recovered?”

“Yeah. Tossed in the bushes about twenty yards from the body.”

“Prints?”

“Nothing usable.”

“Footprints around the body?”

“No. When she went missing, counselors and campers searched the woods for her and tromped all over the scene.”

“Any physical evidence at all?”

“Yeah. The killer masturbated on her body.”

“Suspects?”

“Detectives focused on a known sex offender who lived in a shack few miles away in Shandaken. He didn’t have an alibi, and he had the same blood type as the killer.”

“They knew that how?”

“They tested the semen for blood type, and it matched the information in his police jacket. That gave them enough for a warrant to test his DNA, but when they went to pick him up, he was gone. One of the state cops, a detective named Forrest, never did stop searching for him, but the guy was a ghost.”

“What did the victim look like?”

“Tall. Athletic. A real pretty girl.”

“What color was her hair?”

“Blond,” Hurley said. “So how about telling me why you’re asking about this now.”

“Think I know who killed her,” Mulligan said.

Jennings rode shotgun in Secretariat as Mulligan cruised south on I-95 toward Connecticut.

“How come you didn’t bring Gloria along?” Jennings asked. “She earned the right.”

“She did, but Lomax said he couldn’t spare both of us.”

“That why you brought the camera?”

“Uh-huh.”

Jennings cracked open a Narragansett and handed it to Mulligan, who shook his head no. The ex-cop shrugged and took a pull from the can.

“Doesn’t seem fair,” he said.

“It isn’t.”

“She must be pissed.”

“Oh hell, yeah.”

At New Haven, Mulligan swung north toward Waterbury, then picked up I-84 west. At Danbury, he pulled off the highway for coffee at McDonald’s. A few minutes later, he crossed the New York State line and took the Taconic Parkway heading north. Just west of the little town of Lagrangeville, he slipped off the parkway and took country roads the rest of the way to Poughkeepsie.

Shortly after one P.M., nearly five hours after they’d left Providence, he pulled into the parking lot of the Coyote Grill, a pub on South Road, where they found two men in T-shirts and Yankees caps waiting for them at the bar.

“Mulligan?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you know you can get shot wearing a Red Sox cap in these parts?”

“I figured I’d risk it. You must be Dan Hurley.”

“I am. And this is Carter Forrest, the retired New York State cop I told you about.”

Mulligan shook their hands and introduced them to Jennings. Moments later, the four men were seated in a booth, waiting for their burgers.

“You really think a fourteen -year-old camper could have done this?” Forrest was saying.

“He stabbed two women and three little girls to death in my town by the time he was fifteen,” Jennings said. “So, yeah. He definitely could have done this.”