Chris Mooney - The Dead Room

'You're right. I would.'

'I appreciate your honesty. Take a seat.'

She could smell the cigarette odour baked into his orange jumpsuit, the medicinal odour of the shampoo the prison used to delouse the inmates. He had nicotine-stained fingers and greasy brown fingernails. Those same fingers had been wrapped around the gun that had killed her father.

His eyes were no longer dull; they were bright and alive now, gleaming with satisfaction.

'You smell wonderful,' he said.

'I can't say the same for you.'

He let loose a low chuckle. 'What happened to your beautiful face?'

'Accident,' she said.

'It's amazing how much you look like him – your father, I mean. Tommy had the same dark red hair and those piercing green eyes. It's funny how genetics works, isn't it?'

'Did you know my father?'

'Very well. I admired him greatly. May I come closer?'

Darby nodded. The chains rattled as Ezekiel moved. She felt his whiskers brush up against her cheek.

His mouth was against her ear, and she could hear the slight wheeze from his lungs. His sour breath smelled like a rancid blast of hot air caught in a subway tunnel.

'Kendra introduced me to your father,' he whispered. 'I heard about what happened to her son, by the way. How is he?'

She moved next to his ear and whispered, 'He's brain dead. Who's his father?'

'Kendra said some guy knocked her up, and she decided to keep the baby. She wouldn't tell me the father's name. Did anyone have a chance to speak to the boy before he shot himself?'

'I did, for a little bit. He asked to speak to my father. He didn't know he was dead.'

'Kendra didn't know either, until she came to Belham.'

'I find that hard to believe.'

'Kendra left Charlestown before your father was murdered. I had no idea where she went – I wasn't supposed to know, and I never bothered to try to track her down. I didn't want to put her in danger. Nobody heard from her either. I asked her old friends. That's why Kendra survived as long as she did. She didn't call anyone back home, afraid that someone's phone may have been tapped and they'd find her. And there was no internet back then.'

'How did she find out?'

'She came to Belham, went to the house where you used to live and spoke to the new owners. They're from Belham originally and knew about your family. By the way, I was sorry to hear about your mother's passing.'

Ezekiel speaking with an exaggerated sorrow, as if he actually knew her.

'After Kendra found out about your father,' he whispered, 'she did a little research, found out my new residence and set up a visit. Needless to say, she was quite upset and wanted to know what had happened. She loved your father very much. Big Red was a remarkable man. One of a kind, you could say. I regret what happened to him every single day.'

Darby swallowed, found herself making a fist. She stared at his bony neck, a part of her hoping he'd try something. She'd snap his neck before the guards entered the room. I won't kill him. I'll snap his neck just the right way so he'll end up a quadriplegic, spending the rest of his life in diapers and feeding tubes.

'I know what you're thinking,' he whispered.

'What am I thinking, Mr Ezekiel?'

'You want to know why Kendra came all the way down from Vermont when she could have picked up a payphone, called the Belham Police Department and asked for your father. Someone there would have told her what had happened.'

'Why didn't she?'

'Police stations record everything now – phone calls, they have security cameras monitoring you the second you step inside. She didn't want to risk the possibility of someone recognizing her. Kendra didn't trust the police, but she did trust your father. The last thing he told her before she left was that if there was ever a problem to never, under any circumstances, call or come by the station. The phone lines were tapped, and he'd found out someone had bugged his office. Big Red told her to go by his house, and that's what she did.'

'Why was Kendra looking for my father?'

'What do you know about Francis Sullivan, the head of the Irish mob?'

That name again, Darby thought. 'I know he's dead.'

'I knew Mr Sullivan – that's what you called him, even if you worked for him. I'm embarrassed to say I went back to the trade that sent me away to prison the first time – selling drugs. I had a network of contacts. Mr Sullivan wanted to take advantage of that, and I needed the money. What do you know about Kendra?'

'I know she was arrested for prostitution.'

'Kendra had a drug problem. Coke. She worked the streets for a while before Mr Sullivan brought her to these hotel parties where she serviced a number of men. Including cops.'

Michelle Baxter had told her the same thing.

'Mr Sullivan,' he whispered, 'liked rough sex.'

Darby recalled what Baxter had told her about Sullivan holding a gun to her head.

'Kendra didn't mind it, so he kept her around. He had a thing for young girls, but that wasn't what got him off. I didn't believe the stories until… I walked in on him once. He was with a young woman – a teenager. I don't know her name, she wasn't from the neighbourhood, but I could tell she was very, very young. I didn't see the braces until… afterwards.'

He swallowed. She heard a hitch in his voice.

'Mr Sullivan had this poor girl on all fours. They were on the bed. Mr Sullivan was behind her, pumping away, holding her by the hair so he could slit her throat.'

In her mind's eye Darby saw Kendra Sheppard bound to the kitchen chair, her head nearly decapitated.

'I wanted to stop it, but the girl was already bleeding out,' he whispered. 'Mr Sullivan saw me – I was standing in the doorway, frozen. He was covered in blood, like he'd bathed in it. He got off the bed very calmly – I swear he did, I'm not imagining it. He didn't come after me. He pointed to the girl with the straight-edged razor, this poor young girl who was running into the walls and choking on her own blood, and he looked at me and said, 'Go ahead and give her a whirl, Zeke. She's still got some life in her.' That's when I got the hell out of there.'

Darby had to clear her throat. 'Where did this happen?'

'Kevin Reynolds's house in Charlestown. He lived there with his mother, Mary Jane. There's a bedroom to the right of the stairs. Mr Sullivan took all his… victims there. Sometimes Kendra would find him napping in there. She told me that, even in the winter, you could smell the blood. It didn't matter how many times they cleaned up or replaced the rugs, that odour never went away, she said.'

'After you saw this, what did you do?'

'I went into hiding for a few days. I knew Mr Sullivan was looking for me – I was a witness, a liability. I went to Kendra. She was a friend. I told her what I'd seen, and that's when she introduced me to your father.'

'Why?'

'When you were at the hospital speaking to Kendra's son, did he confide in you?'

'He told me his real name was Sean.'

'What else?'

'He said he knew the real reason why his grandparents were murdered. We didn't get a chance to speak about it.'

'Why not?'

'We were interrupted.'

'By the FBI?'

Her breath caught. That information hadn't been reported in the news.

'Listen to me very carefully,' Ezekiel said. 'The men who killed Kendra Sheppard – at one time they were Federal agents from the Boston office. These men's assignment was to dismantle the Irish and Italian mobs. But their main job was to protect Mr Sullivan.'

Darby recalled what Jennings had told her about Sullivan's special status. 'Was he an informant?'

'Mr Sullivan was much, much more valuable.' Ezekiel swallowed, his breath coming out sharply, excitedly. 'He was a Federal agent. The FBI had planted a Federal agent at the head of the Irish mob. Sullivan's real name is Benjamin Masters.'