Jack of Spades Read online

“We’d like to speak with you privately for a minute, Sergeant Stern,” Spader said.

  The man nodded and followed Spader and Dunbar over to Crossland, who was standing near the kitchen at a small table with a phone and a pile of mail on it. Crossland was flipping through the mail.

  “Could we have a word, Detective?” Spader said.

  Crossland’s eyes flitted to the evidence techs for a second, then he nodded and headed off down a hall toward the back of the apartment. Spader, Dunbar, and Stern followed. A moment later they entered what was clearly Wagner’s bedroom. Spader didn’t bother to look around. There wasn’t much to see anyway.

  He looked at the Waltham detective and the CSS officer. “We need you to look through this apartment very carefully.”

  “That was certainly my intention, Detective,” Crossland responded, with a little less attitude than he was probably entitled to employ, “as I’m sure it was Sergeant Stern’s.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t have done so. I just…this is a sensitive matter. I’ll be honest, the fact that the victim was once a state police officer isn’t the only reason Detective Dunbar and I are here.”

  Spader paused. Crossland waited. Stern watched.

  “I’d like you both to keep this as quiet as you can, but there has been a suggestion that Wagner could have had ties to the Galaxo crimes. You’ve heard about them, I’m sure.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Crossland said. “You’re saying the victim—who used to be a cop—you’re saying he had something to do with what Galaxo has been doing?”

  “We don’t know. It’s a lot of speculation.” He looked back and forth between Crossland and Stern. “But we need you to comb through this apartment very carefully, much more carefully than you normally would in a slam-dunk case like this. I’m asking you to look for anything that might help us out in those cases, okay?”

  Crossland nodded. “Of course.”

  Stern said, “I worked one of Galaxo’s crime scenes. I have an idea what to look for.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve searched his car yet,” Spader said.

  “Not yet,” Stern said.

  “I’m particularly curious whether you’ll find anything…out of the ordinary in there.” Like a big yellow mask.

  “I think we understand, Detective,” Crossland said.

  “Good. And again,” Spader said, “I hope you see how sensitive this is. If Oscar Wagner wasn’t involved in Galaxo’s crimes, we don’t want his name dragged through the mud. It gets out that he was suspected, it taints his memory. And he was a cop once, so we owe him something, right?”

  Crossland and Stern nodded. Spader didn’t even look at Dunbar. He recognized the irony in his request for secrecy. But even though there had been a leak, perhaps it could be contained from now on. He’d certainly discuss the matter with the task force, though he doubted anyone would admit to leaking information—either intentionally or unintentionally—to Peter Lisbon’s mother. But she was the wife of a trooper who had died in the line of duty, and her son had just been killed, so it was understandable that, if she asked, someone would sympathize and feed her updates on the investigation. But if Wagner wasn’t Galaxo, then Spader truly did owe it to him to keep a rumor from spreading, if possible.

  Spader gave both men his card. “Sergeant Stern, please copy me on all your findings. In fact, if you do find evidence linking the victim to the Galaxo crimes, please call me right away…once you’ve informed Detective Crossland, of course,” he added diplomatically. “And Detective,” he said to Crossland, “please keep me in the loop. And thanks for your cooperation and understanding. This case has been a bitch, and that man out there used to be a friend.”

  Crossland’s face had been hard, but it softened a little. “I will. And I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as possible if anything significant arises as we tie this one up.”

  He and Stern turned to leave. Spader said, “Oh, and one more thing. We have a time of death here?”

  “Neighbors heard the shots around one forty,” Crossland said.

  Just after he’d returned home from Hull. “Thanks.”

  When the others had left the room, Dunbar took a quick look around Wagner’s bedroom, then looked at Spader. “Think they’ll find anything?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. But we have to be sure, right?”

  They walked back into the living room.

  Dunbar said, “You said we’d be at the next scene in fifteen minutes?”

  “Galaxo’s latest victim lives just a few blocks away.”

  Dunbar frowned. “A few blocks? When did this happen? I mean, before or after…well, before or after Wagner was killed?

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “So Wagner could still be our guy?”

  “Depends on the timing,” Spader said.

  He walked over to the redheaded CSS officer, who said, “Detective, here are the things from that gym bag.”

  Spader walked over to the coffee table and looked down. Spread out there was a short crowbar, a long kitchen knife, a black sock with a bulge in it, and a roll of duct tape.

  “The sock is full of pennies,” the officer said. “I haven’t counted them yet.”

  Spader was more interested in the knife and the duct tape. He told Dunbar how he’d followed Wagner tonight out to the Halperts’ house in Hull, and how Wagner had this bag with him.

  Dunbar stood beside him looking down at the items on the table. “No stun gun,” he said. “And that tape looks different, doesn’t it? Darker gray than our guy uses, don’t you think?”

  Spader did think that. But he said, “Maybe the store was out of his favorite brand. And maybe he forgot his stun gun. Or maybe he didn’t plan to use it tonight. Maybe he left it wherever he keeps his other stuff, other weapons, mementos from the scenes, whatever. Or maybe Oscar wasn’t the guy we’re looking for. Either way, though, it looks like he was carrying a bag full of nasty things and head full of bad ideas.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Spader was in the dark. Figuratively and literally, he thought. He was lying on the sofa in his living room, the lights off, his eyes closed, staring into the blackness behind his eyelids. He wondered if this was what Oscar Wagner was seeing right now, wherever he was. Was he looking at nothing but infinite blackness, or was there more to see? Or perhaps when you die, you see nothing—not a white light, not even impenetrable blackness, but simply nothing at all. Cheery thought.

  Wagner wasn’t Galaxo. And now he was dead because of Spader. At least partly because of him, anyway. Sure, it had been Peter Lisbon’s mother who’d pulled the trigger, and somebody on the task force—almost certainly one of the detectives in the unit, in fact—had leaked their suspicion of Wagner to Estelle Lisbon, but it was Spader who started it all. His suspicion of Wagner, and his sharing that suspicion with others, had set in motion the events that led to a grieving mother putting six bullets into the man she mistakenly believed had killed her son. By casting suspicion on his old friend, he’d also drawn a bull’s-eye on his chest.

  Spader wanted a beer. Thinking of the drinking Wagner had been doing in the months and years before his death, Spader was hesitant to open a Bud just then. But to hell with it, he needed a beer. And he should toast Wagner’s memory anyway. And apologize. Not for what happened years earlier, but for what happened tonight. And maybe for not making a simple phone call to help the man get a job interview. Spader had been worried about himself, about what would happen if he recommended Wagner for a security job and the guy showed up to work drunk again. Perhaps, though, instead of worrying about his own reputation, he should have been worrying about a man who had been his friend in years past, a man who needed help. He wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d been right not to make that call. But maybe not. He just didn’t feel like thinking about it at the moment. What he wanted to do was have that beer.

  He grabbed a Bud from his fridge and returned to the couch. Christ, the last twenty-four hours had sucked
, ever since he heard that Oscar was dead. He saw his former friend’s corpse, then he and Dunbar headed to Matthew Finneran’s apartment, where they saw the blood-spattered walls, the blood-spotted carpet. What a world. And, as reckless as Galaxo was this time, he still didn’t bother to do them any favors. Even though he seemed to have lost control with Finneran—the control he seemed to need so much to demonstrate—he still managed to leave the scene without leaving behind anything in the way of DNA or trace evidence. Though he had clearly gone crazy for a time with Finneran, he was clearheaded enough to remember to call 9-1-1 before leaving the house. And though he didn’t leave anything behind, he did take a couple of things with him…Finneran’s eyes. He also remembered to leave behind another bloody message for Spader, written by a gloved finger dipped in Finneran’s blood. Written on the wall of the kitchen, just above the telephone, the receiver of which dangled at the end of its cord, the message read, “Gonna let me off the hook again, John?”

  Cute. Clever. Sick.

  Fortunately, Finneran survived. It was touch and go for a while, and the poor guy flirted dangerously several times with dropping into a coma or dying outright. In the end, though, he lived and the doctors believed he’d be conscious for light questioning the following day.

  Earlier that day, just before noon, Spader had been paged and, on returning the call, learned that Finneran was conscious and wanted to speak with the police about what he’d been through. So Spader and Dunbar visited him in the intensive care unit of Newton-Wellesley Hospital. Even though they’d read the report on his injuries, seeing him was something of a shock. He’d been savagely beaten with a wrench. Jaw broken, cheek on one side of his face crushed. Bandages lay unnaturally flat over his empty eye sockets. None of it made Finneran much fun to look at, but it was the broken jaw Spader was most troubled by, mainly because it made it difficult for him to give his statement. But seeing as the man couldn’t see to write down what happened to him, Spader and Dunbar had to rely on an oral narrative. Through patience on all parties’ parts, the detectives were able to coax Finneran’s story out of him, including the fact that Galaxo had been waiting for him in his apartment when he returned from a movie around eleven the night before, surprised him with his stun gun, then chloroformed him. He woke up later, bound to a chair. He wasn’t sure, however, exactly how long he’d been out, what time Galaxo had started working on him, or when Galaxo left. The 9-1-1 call had come in at 1:51 a.m., eleven minutes after Oscar Wagner was shot and killed a few blocks away. Assuming the witnesses got the time of the shooting right, and there was no reason to think that a dozen neighbors who heard the shot and who had no motive to lie would get it wrong, then Galaxo was at Finneran’s apartment when Wagner was killed. Which meant that Oscar Wagner wasn’t Galaxo.

  Spader took a pull on his beer and sighed. He realized he’d been hoping that Wagner was their guy. It would have made things much simpler, saved lives. Now that Wagner was dead and Spader knew he wasn’t Galaxo, he felt a little guilty about that. But Wagner clearly had been troubled. Even though he wasn’t Galaxo, he certainly had been having some ugly thoughts lately. Spader realized that this was likely the bad vibe he’d picked up from Wagner recently, which Spader’s mind had connected to a few other things to lead him to suspect Wagner in the Galaxo case. That bag Wagner had with him on his drive to Hull had clearly been packed with the intention of doing harm to someone else. That someone else turned out to be Robert Halpert, the Target manager who’d fired him a few weeks earlier. Spader flashed back to Wagner at the Green Hills, admitting to Spader that he’d had thoughts of just slipping over the edge, snapping, doing something crazy to someone. He’d laughed it off as a joke, but Spader hadn’t thought he was joking at the time. Now he was sure he wasn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t have acted on those thoughts. Maybe the fantasy of hurting the boss who’d fired him was enough for him. Maybe he’d already driven out to Halpert’s house a number of times and each time he came home with his dark fantasies still inside his head, where they belonged. Or perhaps, Spader thought, he’d have acted on those fantasies one day very soon. Wagner’s death might have saved Halpert’s life. Or it might not have. Spader would never know. It was one of many things he’d have to live with.

  He remembered something and walked into his office and dropped into the chair behind his desk. He pulled Olivia’s photo albums from his desk drawer. He put the first album aside. He didn’t think it would be good for him to look at those pictures just then. He didn’t want to see how happy she’d been before they met, then how happy they’d been together before things went wrong. He didn’t need that. Besides, what he was looking for was in the second album, the pictures of his and Olivia’s life together.

  He opened the album and flipped quickly toward the back until he found the picture he was looking for. It was a shot of him with Oscar, his arm over his friend’s shoulder. Olivia had taken it at a backyard barbecue. There was Oscar, a beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other, grinning at the camera. He had a Red Sox hat on his head. He was tanned; the gray barroom pallor he acquired late in his life was still a decade away. Spader and he had just worked a hostage situation together, made a nice clean arrest, and everyone but the perp went home safe and happy. He and Oscar were friends then and Eddie Rivers—and everything he did to Spader’s and Wagner’s lives, as well as to the lives of so many others—wasn’t even a speck on the horizon. That day long ago, in some other detective’s backyard, the camera caught forever a moment that was good and happy. Wagner’s face in the picture, smiling under the Sox cap, was the face Spader wanted to remember.

  He closed the album. He took another sip of beer and his eyes fell on the other photo album. He hesitated, then pulled it toward him and started flipping slowly through the pages. God, Olivia had been a beautiful little girl. That slightly lopsided smile never quite straightened out, and it only enhanced her beauty. There she was at maybe seven years old, standing knee-deep in snow, bundled heavily from head to toe. And there she was riding a horse. She must have been twelve. And there, again, the picture of her at summer camp. Spader looked at the faces of the kids, the counselors, smiling on that long-ago day. Where were they all now? Did any of them stay in touch? Would they even know each other if they passed on the street tomorrow?

  Spader raised his beer bottle, then stopped before it touched his lips. Had anyone on the task force looked into whether any of the victims had attended or worked at the same camp together? Seeing as they had failed to find a recent nexus between the victims, Spader had begun to wonder whether that nexus might be found in the distant past. So this might fit the bill. It was a long shot, of course, but nothing else had panned out so far.

  He reached for the phone and started to dial Olivia’s number. He paused after four digits. It was late, nearly midnight. Suppose she was asleep? Even worse, suppose Spader heard her new boyfriend’s voice there right beside her.

  Screw it. This could be important. He punched in the remaining numbers. Olivia picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello?” Her voice was sleepy, but not necessarily sleepy enough to make him think he’d woken her up. He hoped like hell he didn’t hear a man’s voice say, Who is it, honey?

  “Olivia, it’s me. Sorry to call so late, but it’s important.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah. Well, no. Did you know that Oscar Wagner was murdered last night?”

  “Oscar? Oh, my God. I was busy today. If it was on the news, I didn’t see it. What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you about it some other time, okay? But I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was thinking about those pictures you want—and no, sorry, I still haven’t dug them out—but I seemed to recall one of you at camp when you were a kid. Am I right? You ever go to camp?”

  “Camp? Yeah, I did. A couple of years. In high school I was a counselor one summer. Why?”

  “You remember the names of any of the kids you were
there with?”

  “I went with a friend of mine. Kathy Cirillo.”

  “Anyone else? You remember the names of any of the kids you met there?”

  Silence for a moment. “No, I don’t.”

  “Not one?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t stay in touch with any of them? The ones you met when you were a kid?”

  “Well, I was like eight years old, then nine. We didn’t stay in touch, no. I doubt many people stay in touch with the kids they went to camp with. You go back to school, back to your regular friends, and you forget all about the friends you only knew for a few weeks.”

  “If you bumped into any of those kids today, or saw their pictures maybe, you think you’d recognize any of them?”

  She laughed. “I doubt it. That was a long time ago.”

  “That’s what I figured. By the way, what was the name of the camp?”

  “The one I went to as a kid? Camp Wilderness Adventure. Why?”

  “Just curious. Thanks, Olivia. Sorry I woke you up.”

  “No, I was still awake.”

  Alone, I hope.

  “Well, again, sorry to call so late.”

  “John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You okay? About Oscar, I mean?”

  He thought about it. “Not really, Olivia. Not yet, anyway.”

  After he hung up, he left a message at the office for Leon Fratello.

  “Leon, it’s John Spader. I need you to do something first thing in the morning. Find out who’s looking into the lives of each of Galaxo’s victims and delegate this accordingly. We should ask Golding and Pendleton if they ever attended camp when they were younger. Summer camp, music camp, sports camp, whatever. I’ll call Finneran myself. And somebody should look into this for Yasovich and Lisbon. They’re dead, of course, but somebody who knew them should know.” He took a sip of beer. “This is just a hunch, Leon, a long shot, I know, but we haven’t gotten anywhere tying these victims together, and maybe they simply don’t tie together, but this is another line of inquiry we can try. Thanks. See you tomorrow.”