Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

The agent paused, then said, “What about you, Gloria?”

“He’s only seen me a couple of times. Last year when I took his picture outside the courthouse and this week when I photographed his release. I don’t think he even knows my name.”

A late summer bug hit the newsroom hard. Mulligan spent the next two weeks working nights on the copy desk, filling in for a sick-in-bed slot man whose respiratory infection had turned into pneumonia. Mulligan wrote headlines, edited city hall and statehouse copy, and did whatever else was necessary to get the daily paper out.

Each evening, he stole a few minutes to scan the Associated Press’s Massachusetts wire, checking for murders in Brockton, Massachusetts. He found plenty of them: A high school football star stabbed to death in a bar fight. A clerk shot three times in the chest in a botched convenience store holdup. A teenager kicked and beaten to death in a street gang initiation. A ten-year-old with a toy pistol gunned down by a nervous cop. But no blonde stabbed to death by a sex maniac.

After finishing his Friday shift, he downed a couple of Killian’s at Hopes, drove home, went to bed, and drifted off into a…

Rushing to catch a flight to somewhere, he sprinted to the gate and dashed into the airplane seconds before the door closed. He started down the aisle and froze. Every seat was occupied by a naked blonde. Their bodies, faces, makeup, and hairdos were identical. Stab wounds blossomed like roses on their torsos. Each one, Mulligan somehow knew, had been stabbed fifty-two times.

Kwame Diggs’s voice burst from the intercom: “This is your captain speaking.”

At three A.M. Mulligan startled awake, exhausted and drenched in sweat. His cell was playing “Dirty Laundry,” his ring tone for Lomax.

“Mulligan.”

“You awake?”

“I am now.”

“Marvin from Barrington just won a hundred bucks for calling the WTOP tip line to report he saw two white males throwing Molotov cocktails through criminal-coddling Judge Needham’s windows.”

“You listen to WTOP in the middle of the night?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Thanks. I’ll call Gloria and have her meet you there.”

Less than twenty minutes later, Mulligan pulled onto Nyatt Road, just a short stroll from the Rhode Island Country Club in the upscale bedroom community of Barrington. The judge’s two-story Tudor-style brick home was fully involved. Flames curled from the eaves and jitterbugged in the blown-out windows.

The judge and his family, Mulligan knew, were not at home. After his ruling on Diggs, they’d hightailed it to their vacation place on Sanibel Island in Florida. Good thing, because the Barrington Fire Department was not on scene yet. That was odd, because two of the town’s fire stations were less than three miles away.

Five minutes later, TV vans from Channel 10 in Cranston and Channel 12 in East Providence came tearing down the street. Two minutes after that, Gloria pulled up, jumped out of her car, and started snapping pictures.

Another ten minutes passed before two pumper trucks and a rescue vehicle unhurriedly rolled up and turned into the long, tree-lined gravel driveway. The firemen climbed out of the pumpers and took their time unspooling hoses, connecting them to a fire hydrant, and dragging them across the wide, chemical-green lawn.

They waited until the roof collapsed in a shower of sparks before they sprang into action, spraying streams of water into the wreckage.

On Saturday afternoon, Chief Hernandez of the Warwick PD sported a blue baseball cap and a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo “Mercer Hardware Lions,” the name of the preteen girls’ soccer team he coached. He had his feet up on his desk and was sipping from a “World’s Best Dad” coffee cup.

“What I’m about to tell you has to remain absolutely secret for now. Can I count on you to keep your mouths shut?”

“Yes,” Jennings said.

“Sure thing,” Mulligan said.

“The state crime lab completed the DNA testing on Thursday, and we’ve got a match.”

“All right!” Jennings said.

“The results were sent to the New York State Police that afternoon. Yesterday, New York’s Criminal Prosecutions Division drafted a warrant for Diggs’s arrest for the murder of Allison Foley. At first, the judge they approached declined to sign it. He insisted that the DNA test be replicated by the New York crime lab. But when the urgency of the situation was explained to him, he relented.”

“What happens now?” Mulligan asked.

“At five A.M. tomorrow, the Massachusetts State Police STOP team, which is what they call their SWAT unit, will hit the Diggs house in Brockton. Two New York State Police detectives will be present as observers, as will I.”

“I want to be there,” Mulligan said.

“You and Andy have both earned it,” Hernandez said. “You’ll ride with me, but you’ve got to promise to remain in the car until they drag Diggs out.”

“Will do,” Mulligan said. “Can I bring a photographer?”

“No, but you can bring a camera. Once they clear the house, take all the pictures you want.”

At four thirty Sunday morning, the assault team assembled in the Cardinal Spellman High School parking lot two blocks from the Diggs house. Mulligan counted twelve state cops in body armor. One carried a breaching shotgun designed to blow dead bolts and hinges from exterior doors. The rest were armed with assault rifles. At four fifty-five, they jumped into their vehicles and raced toward the Diggs house, their bar lights dark and sirens silent. A New York State Police cruiser followed. Hernandez’s car, with Jennings riding shotgun and Mulligan in the backseat, took up the rear.

The vehicles screeched to a stop in front of the one-story cottage on Ruth Road. Four STOP team members sprinted toward the backyard to cover the rear door. Four more raced to cover the side windows. The last four rushed the front entrance, tromping through Esther Diggs’s petunia bed.

The breaching shotgun boomed, blowing the lock through the front door. The cops charged in, shouting, “State Police! Down on the floor! Down on the floor!”

And then… silence.

Hernandez, Jennings, and Mulligan waited in the car. They did not speak. Twenty minutes later, the cops walked through the front door and trudged down the front walk.

Alone.

Hernandez, Jennings, and Mulligan got out of the car and joined them on the sidewalk.

“He’s not here,” said the lieutenant in charge. “His mother says she hasn’t seen him since Friday night.”

“Aw, fuck,” Hernandez said.

“Yeah,” the lieutenant said. “And now he probably knows we’re after him.”

Early that afternoon, the Massachusetts State Police released Diggs’s mug shot to the media, hoping the public could help with the manhunt. Hernandez, Jennings, and Mulligan met Gloria and Mason for a late lunch at Charlie’s diner in Providence to talk things over.

“He could be anywhere now,” Hernandez said.

“Anywhere includes here,” Mason said.

“Think Susan Ashcroft is safe?” Gloria asked.

“Her husband has a gun, and he knows how to use it,” Hernandez said. “And the Coventry police promised me they’d have a patrol car go by her place every hour from dusk till dawn until the bastard’s in custody.”

“What about Mary?” Mulligan asked.

“She’s got me,” Jennings said. “I almost hope the bastard comes for her so I can empty my revolver into him.”

“What about Felicia?” Mason asked. He shouldn’t be asking about her, he thought. He should be with her.