Chris Mooney - The Soul Collectors

It was coming up on 1:00 p.m. She guzzled the last of her coffee, hoping it would sweep away the remaining cobwebs stubbornly clinging to the inside of her head. She had slept fitfully for the last six hours and wanted her head clear.

Standing, she picked up the cordless phone from the nightstand and carried it with her to the tall window — the air blowing through it was refreshingly cool, the sun warm on her face. She called Information and asked for Harvard's Divinity School, and, as she waited for the operator to connect her, her gaze drifted to the boats anchored in the water, to the people no bigger than dots on the pier lined with bricked restaurants, apartments and the ultra-expensive Westin Hotel, which took up most of the area.

After drifting through the automated choices, she finally got a real person on the other end of the line, a secretary who seemed both patient and eager to assist a Harvard alumna. Darby explained what she was looking for, and the woman suggested a professor named Ronald Ross.

Professor Ross happened to be in his office. The man agreed to investigate the historical and religious significance of the Latin phrase Et in Arcadia ego.

Her next call was to the Retired Boston Police Officers Association. The retired cop working the phone searched through his computer and gave her the information she needed on Stan Karakas: the former Boston Police detective had retired and moved to Darien, Connecticut. The man's address and phone numbers were in the system.

Darby wrote the information down on a hotel pad. She thanked him, hung up and called the Boston Police Department's main switchboard. The man who answered knew Darby and agreed to transfer her call to Jimmy Murphy's cell phone.

'Darby, my girl, I'd love to shoot the shit, but I'm about to hit the sack.'

'Just a quick question about the party you broke up last night at the end of my street, the corner of Temple and Cambridge.'

'The two guys in the Chevy Tahoe?'

'That's them. Who are they?'

'Feds from the Boston office. York and Blue. I didn't get their first names.'

'They tell you what they were doing there?'

'Surveillance — and doing a piss poor job, I might add. They weren't at liberty to say whom they were watching, so after we confirmed they were, in fact, federal agents, we sent them on their way. Anything else?'

'Sweet dreams, Jimmy. And thanks.'

Her lucky streak ended when she called Stan Karakas. His home number had been disconnected, and his cell phone was no longer in service.

For the next two hours, she worked the phone, giving her name and fake Boston police credentials to each person she spoke with, and by quarter past four she had hit a dead end. Stan Karakas was no longer among the living.

Karakas had moved around a lot during the last twenty-odd years. Connecticut, then Utah, Colorado, and finally Montana, where he had suffered a fatal heart attack at age sixty-nine, while fly-fishing. The news had been delivered to her by his widow, Nancy.

Karakas may have been the lead detective, but there were others who had put in a lot of man-hours. Darby remembered one, an Irish guy stuck with one of the most generic names on the planet: John Smith. She called back the Retired Boston Police Officers Association and found out that Smith had also retired but was still local, now living on the North Shore, in Nahant.

Darby called the man's home number. As luck would have it, he answered. She introduced herself and asked if he was available to talk.

'Sure,' Smith said. 'What's this about, if you don't mind me asking?'

'Charlie Rizzo. I'd like to speak to you in person, if that's possible.' Cell phone transmissions were notoriously easy to pick up with scanning equipment readily available at stores like RadioShack.

'I can meet you at your home within the hour,' she said. 'Are you free now, Mr Smith?'

'All I've got now is free time. Sure, come on over. And call me Smitty, will ya? That's what everyone called me growing up, and hearing it now makes me feel less like a useless 72-year-old fart, you know?'

Darby locked up and went to the parking garage to grab her bike, wondering if her new friends had managed to follow her here.

A thorough inspection revealed no new tracking devices.

Still, they had to be close. Whoever — whatever — these people were, they were highly organized. A small army, she suspected. After what had happened at the blast site, they had most likely regrouped and discussed tactics. They knew she had found the original tracking devices placed on her bike and leather jacket.

Driving down side- and one-way streets, sometimes circling back around, she didn't spot any tails. Maybe they weren't following her. Maybe they thought she would return to her condo and were there now, somewhere close by where they could watch and wait.

Or maybe they would wait for night to fall and, hidden by darkness, try to capture her again or simply come straight at her and wipe her off the playing board.

Darby figured John Smith had either hit the lottery or robbed a bank, because there was no way a retired cop could afford this massive old Victorian home. It was situated on a cliff and had a sweeping view of the ocean. The driveway held a Mercedes and a Lexus, and some serious money had been spent on the landscaping in the front. Lots of fresh autumn flowers — enough to open a small nursery.

The man who answered the door was shorter than her, roughly five foot six. He wore a grey V-neck cashmere sweater with jeans and a pair of scuffed penny loafers. With his slim build and thick blond hair parted on the side and threaded lightly with grey, John Smith could easily have passed for someone in his late forties or early fifties. But the craggy face and saddlebags under the bright blue eyes gave away every moment of his seventy-two years.

Smith ushered her through the bright foyer and into a kitchen the size of a basketball court. He pointed to the mugs sitting in front of a coffee maker and said, 'Help yourself. Or do you want something a bit stiffer?'

'Coffee's fine.'

'I'm going to have myself a little poke. Don't think less of me.' He winked a rheumy eye at her and filled a highball glass with Bushmills. 'Let's go outside so I can smoke.'

He put on an L. L. Bean barn jacket and with his highball glass in hand — he had poured himself a healthy shot over ice — he took her to a living room with windows that stretched from floor to ceiling and overlooked the ocean. He opened a sliding glass door to a balcony. It stretched around the side of the house. Darby glanced over the railing and saw a private stretch of rocky beach and, to her far right, a part of the backyard where four puppies with stubby legs and round bellies sat on the warm grass, eagerly awaiting the petite older woman standing in front of them with their food.

'My third wife, Mavis,' he said. 'I thank the good Lord above for bringing her into my life.'

And her bank account, Darby added privately. There was no way a cop's pension could pay for a spread like this.

'People always think I married her 'cause of her money.' He turned to her, squinting in the last of the bright afternoon sun. In another hour or so it would be dark. 'You thought the same thing, am I right?'

'I don't know of too many retired cops who have waterfront views.'

'Look at you, being diplomatic.' He smiled at her, flashing a mouth full of crooked teeth turned brown and yellow from a lifetime of smoking and drinking coffee. 'Don't blame you for thinking it. Everyone does. In her former life, Mavis used to be a paediatric surgeon. She never married and spent all her free time playing the stock market. She owns the house free and clear. We don't hurt for money. I spend my time fishing and puttering around the house, and Mavis is a full-time foster mom for dogs, keeps them here until she can get them homes. What I got here?' He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. 'I consider this payback for all the shit I had to wade through.'