Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

Mulligan could see there was no way to talk Lomax out of this.

“All right, Mr. Lomax. I’ll be on it first thing Monday morning.”

“Good. And Mulligan?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me Ed.”

“You look tired, Andy.”

“I’ve got a right to. I’ve barely slept the last four weeks.”

“Still no leads?” Mulligan asked.

“Nothing but dead ends.”

It was Fourth of July weekend, the temperature peaking at ninety-six degrees outside the air-conditioned sanctuary of the Fraternal Order of Police lodge on Tanner Avenue in Warwick; but the Medeiros case had grown as cold as the inside of a morgue drawer.

“The tip I gave you didn’t go anywhere?”

“Ralph Branco was obsessed with Becky. You got that part right. The greasy little creep dated her a few times after her divorce, and he couldn’t stand it that she had the sense to dump him for Miller. But his alibi for the night of the murders checks out. And he wears a size ten shoe. No way he could have made those footprints on the rug.”

Jennings drained his bottle of Narragansett and asked for another.

“How’d you find out about him?” he asked Mulligan. “We’d totally missed that.”

“His name came up in a bar conversation with a couple of locals last week.”

Jennings raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve been asking around,” Mulligan said. “Same as you.”

“Makes me wonder what else we missed,” Jennings said, pausing to take another swallow. “Half the force has been working on this. We’ve questioned everyone we can think of who might have had contact with Becky. Postal workers. Meter readers. Trash collectors. Gutter cleaners. Landscapers. When that didn’t pan out, we widened it to people she dealt with away from home. Gas station attendants, checkout clerks, bank tellers, pharmacists, co-workers, hairdressers, her manicurist, her doctor, her friends. Her ex-husband, of course. A couple of them had sheets, but none of them matched the physical evidence, and none of them seemed to have a reason to kill her. As far as we can tell, no one did.”

“So now what?”

“Now we go back to the beginning and start over. The killer was sloppy and careless. He left physical evidence all over the place. If his prints were on file, the bastard would already be in custody. The prosecutor says that once we find him, the conviction’s gonna be a slam dunk. But if this was just a random crime of opportunity, we may never figure out who did it.”

“Unless he kills again,” Mulligan said.

April 1991

Street football. Five kids on each side. No tackling, just touch, which cuts down on the ways the boy can hurt people.

Eddie hasn’t shown up today, so they have to let the dumb girl play. Jenny is fast. The boy has to give her that. She’s tall, too. Taller than any of the guys. Except him, of course. Long, gangly legs like a colt that just dropped out of its mama. Ugly metal braces on her buckteeth. A blackhead on her nose that she doesn’t have the sense to pop. And no tits on her skinny-ass chest.

He’s pissed off just looking at her, split out to his right as if she thinks he would actually throw her the ball. It’s bad enough that they’re letting the bitch play. Why does she have to be on his team?

The boy grunts, “Hut!,” takes the snap, and drops back to pass. He always plays quarterback because he can throw the ball farther and straighter than any of the others. He looks left and sees Vinnie, the little Italian kid, churning his stubby legs as he tries to get open. Fat chance of that. Then he glances right and sees that Jenny has beaten her defender by a good five yards.

The street is nearly empty of cars today. The only vehicle in sight is Becky Medeiros’s Toyota Celica, parked at the right-side curb about thirty yards away.

Jenny is looking back over her shoulder now, waving her arm and calling for the ball. What the hell. He rears back and lets the football fly, aiming for the yellow “Smile. God Loves You” bumper sticker on the back of the car.

The throw leads her right into it, just as he intended. She hits the back of the car with a thud and falls hard to the pavement.

The other kids rush to her side. The boy hangs back, not wanting them to see how hard he is laughing. He sticks around, admiring his handiwork, until the ambulance comes to take her away.

June 1994

Mulligan finished his phone interview with Big East Conference commissioner Mike Tranghese, hung up, and started typing.

The conference’s four big-time football schools, Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh, and Miami, were threatening to secede. If they went through with it, they’d take the league’s lucrative CBS-TV contract with them, leaving the remaining six teams, including Providence College, in the lurch. It was a big story. If Mulligan could get it in print before anyone else broke it, he’d make national news.

“Mulligan?”

“Not now.”

“This is urgent.”

“So’s what I’m doing.”

“Mulligan, look at me and pay attention.”

He looked up and saw Lomax hovering over his desk.

“What is it?” He turned back to the keyboard and kept typing.

“There’s been another multiple murder in Warwick.”

Mulligan raised his hands from the keys.

“Look, Ed, I’ve got a big story on my hands. Can’t this wait?”

“How big?”

Mulligan told him.

“Okay. But as soon as you’re done, come see me.”

Mulligan finished the story, turned it in, and answered the sports editor’s questions about his sources. It was an hour before he reluctantly made his way toward the city editor’s desk. He wanted nothing more to do with murders, yet the memory of Becky Medeiros’s face in that family photograph propelled him across the room.

He pulled up a chair across from Lomax and asked, “What do we know?”

“We’ve got three victims,” Lomax said. “Connie Stuart, age thirty-three, and her two daughters, ages eight and twelve. They were killed sometime late last night or early this morning. Other than that, the cops aren’t saying anything.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“The scene is just a couple of blocks from where Becky Medeiros and her daughter were butchered two years ago.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Yeah. Hardcastle’s at the scene, but as usual the Warwick cops are stonewalling him. I thought maybe you could tap the source you cultivated on the Medeiros case.”

Mulligan took a deep breath and slowly expelled it.

“I’d rather not,” he said. “I’m not an ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ kind of guy. I still have nightmares from the last time you sucked me in.”

Lomax leaned back in his chair and gave Mulligan an appraising look.

“This is a big story, kid. I’d hate to get beat on it.”

Mulligan didn’t say anything.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t really need you on this.”

“You can’t find somebody else?”

“Not somebody with your source.”

Mulligan looked at his feet and shook his head.

“Look,” Lomax said. “Sometimes you have to accept an assignment you don’t want. It’s part of being a professional.”

Mulligan had heard the line before. It was the standard boilerplate Dispatch editors used on reluctant reporters. And it was meant to be a conversation stopper.

“Okay, Ed,” Mulligan said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He went back to his desk and dialed the phone.

“Detective Jennings.”

“Hi, Andy. It’s Mulligan.”

“Got no time for you now, kid. Get back to me in a few days.”