Sign of the Maker (Boston Crime Thriller Book 4) Read online

  "He is." Kelly wiped the sweat from his brow. "A bit of a meathead. But all-around good guy. Grew up a few doors down from me."

  "Do I detect a hint of jealousy in your voice?"

  Kelly laughed again. "Me? Of muscle man back there? Nah."

  "I got one."

  "One what?"

  "Calendar." This time it was Barnes's turn to laugh. "I had to support a good cause. Maybe I should run back to my apartment and get it so Hutch could sign it for me?"

  She was playing with him, and deep down Kelly liked it. He played back. "You're not planning on putting that thing up in your place?"

  "I'll only put it up on the nights you don't sleep over." Barnes taunted him with her eyes. She winked as if to punctuate the sentence.

  Over the past few months, when Kelly didn't have his daughter with him, he slept over at Barnes's apartment. It had been nice. Really nice. There'd been hints at going further with the relationship over the last six months. They were older in life and smarter in love. And therefore, by default, things moved quicker. Kelly's mother was fully recovered from her broken hip, albeit she still had a bit of a limp. She no longer needed Kelly's constant support.

  "That's not happening."

  "What's not?" She dropped to almost a walk.

  "No way that thing is going up in our apartment." He met her gaze and gave her a wink of his own.

  "When did my apartment become our apartment?"

  "It didn't." He came to a stop before crossing Dartmouth Street. The sun battled against a thin layer of clouds lining the gunmetal-gray sky. It wouldn't matter if it broke through; the Boston Public Library’s stone walls shrouded them in their shadow.

  His father had taken him there as a child. Kelly remembered the first time he stood outside the doors facing Copley Plaza. Before allowing him to enter, Kelly's father walked him around to the corner of Boylston Street, right where they were standing now. The words etched just beneath the flat roofline held more meaning now than they did then. “The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty.” His father made him stop and read those words before allowing Kelly to enter. He had taught himself to read later in life, falling in love with the characters and stories that filled the pages of an excellent book.

  His father normally picked up his books from the Dorchester branch on Adams Street, but he wanted Kelly's first library card to come from the iconic nineteenth-century building, home to millions of books. Finding the right book was a daunting task, but one that Kelly's father navigated with little effort. When Kelly shrugged indifferently regarding making a selection, his father made it for him, grabbing a paperback copy of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders.

  The Greasers’ plight made sense to Kelly. Even though the novel's setting was rural Oklahoma, he found things not so different from the world he grew up in on Arbroth Street. The loyalties were the same. Blood oaths were forged in tough neighborhoods. Kelly thought he understood the story as a child. As an adult, his connection to the flawed characters in the book about hard-fought redemption resonated with him on a much deeper level.

  He hadn't recalled that memory in a very long time. Its return pleasantly surprised him. Kelly realized Barnes was probably experiencing a uniquely different memory, one he didn't need to be a mind reader to see. They were less than a block from the finish line of the marathon. She didn't avoid it. In fact, Kristen Barnes did the opposite. Every time she went for a run, she made sure her route took her across the line. When Kelly asked her why, her answer was simple. Because they never get to win. Ever.

  He put his hands above his head and tried to catch as much of the cool morning air as he could, both to recover from his run and steady his nerves for what he was about to ask. "Let's get a place of our own."

  Barnes stopped her forward progression altogether. She jogged in place with her mouth agape for a moment. "What?"

  Kelly wasn't sure what he'd been expecting her reaction to be, but that was definitely not it. He back-pedaled. "I just figured things were moving in that direction. Why bother stretching it out any longer just for the sake of appearances."

  "I wasn't quite expecting that from you. What about Embry?”

  "Embry loves you."

  Barnes brought her arm across her chest and stretched her shoulder as she continued to shuffle her feet like a tap dancer keeping beat. "I know. And I love her too. I also know from experience what it's like to have your world flipped upside down at an early age."

  "Her world was flipped when her mom and I got divorced. I think this… you and me together… might finally put things right side up again."

  "Maybe," she conceded. "That still leaves your mom."

  "She's good. Doc said she's fit as a fiddle and can resume life as normal." Kelly gave up any attempt at keeping the jog going. They'd completed three of the five miles, yet Barnes barely looked as though she'd finished a warm-up. Kelly, on the other hand, was dripping with sweat and looked more like he'd just finished three hard rounds in the ring. "I've countered every argument. Unless you've got some other reason?"

  The question hung in the air between them longer than Kelly would've liked. For a man who prided himself on his ability to read people, as he looked into the eyes of the woman he'd fallen madly in love with, Kelly had no idea what she was thinking.

  Barnes opened her mouth to speak. A loud boom drowned out the sound of her voice. The ground shook with the shockwave that followed as a plume of debris rose from between the buildings ahead.

  "What the hell was that?” Kelly asked. “Sounded like a massive transformer blew."

  "No way." Barnes broke into a run. "I'd recognize that sound anywhere. It was a bomb."

  3

  Barnes leaned to the left as she rounded the corner from the Common, taking a shortcut through the garden landscape and onto Tremont Street. Kelly was only a few steps behind her. The scene splayed out in front of them was something out of a war movie, not the Boston Common he'd known. Dirt and debris overwhelmed the fragrant notes from the street vendors and cafés that typically permeated the air surrounding the fifty acres of green space. The oldest park in the United States and the prized jewel of the Emerald Necklace, a thousand-plus acres of linked parks and waterways, had been transformed into a horror show, the sight of which sickened Kelly.

  He saw a middle-aged man wearing a wool-lined jean jacket leaning against a lamppost. Something seemed off about him, and it took Kelly only an extra second to see the root cause. The man was bracing himself against the pole, holding on for dear life as if it were a piece of driftwood in a sea of sharks. He'd turned the lamppost into an oversized crutch to support himself. His right leg was severed below the knee, blood draining onto the sidewalk.

  The missing piece of his leg was nowhere in sight. Kelly scanned the ground in front of him as he charged forward. Seven or eight uniformed patrolmen and a couple plainclothes were scattered among the crowd of injured pedestrians littering his view.

  Barnes detoured to a woman holding the left side of her face. Her blood-soaked double-breasted beige trench coat caught the red rain falling from her wound. The spattered fabric told the terrible tale of what her damaged eye had borne witness to. Kelly continued running to the amputee.

  His face was ghost-white as shock and blood loss gripped him. "Sir, I'm going to help you,” Kelly said. “I need you to keep your eyes up, and don't look down."

  The man's body vibrated uncontrollably as Kelly slid a belt from his waist. He teetered on the verge of collapse like a precariously balanced Jenga block but did as he was told.

  Kelly threaded the worn leather of the belt's frayed end through the metal rectangular buckle and pulled it tight. He used the buckle's prong to pierce a new hole in the leather. The makeshift tourniquet slowed the bleeding but didn't stop it completely. The trick was to restrict the blood flow completely. Scanning the carnage in his immediate area, Kelly found a fragmented shard of metal just shy of the length of his hand, the perf
ect size for the last piece in his ad hoc medical device.

  His hands were now slick with the injured man's blood, making the grip on both ends of the metal shard and belt more difficult. Kelly alternated wiping the dampness onto his jogging shorts and maintaining the pressure. He slid the shard between the shredded jeans and belt, then stood, coming within inches of the man's ghostlike face. "Look away from your leg. But I'm going to need to lower you to the ground now."

  His blue lips moved, but no sound came out.

  Kelly didn't wait to confirm if the injured man had registered the instructions. He slipped his right shoulder underneath the man's armpit as he held the lamppost in a death grip. After a couple of seconds’ work peeling back his fingers to release his hands from the post, Kelly shouldered his weight and guided him to the ground, being careful not to drop him. A task made more difficult by the seizures ravaging his trauma-shocked body.

  With the dirty concrete sidewalk doubling as the bleeding man's bed, Kelly set to work. Using both hands, he gripped each wet end of the metal shard and said, "This is going to hurt like hell."

  The words held no value for the man, who was closer to death than life. Kelly twisted hard in a clockwise manner. The worn leather of the belt protested the effort, but Kelly was unwilling to concede to its resistance and powered through. He turned the shard one hundred and eighty degrees. The torn, bunched-up pant leg locked it in place.

  Kelly slid his hand underneath the tourniquet, running his fingertips along the man's shredded flesh. The pulse beneath the belt had ceased and the blood flooding the sidewalk stopped its flow. Kelly took his blood-dipped finger and marked the man's head with a T, then wiped the blood from the face of his watch and wrote the time on the amputee's pale cheek.

  The man's eyes fluttered before rolling back. Kelly felt along his neckline, relieved to detect a faint pulse. He sat back just long enough to take a breath before beginning his search for the next victim.

  He glimpsed Barnes. She was carrying a small child wearing dinosaur pajamas out of a nearby café, his body hanging limp in her arms. Barnes was almost in a sprint as she carted the boy toward one of the two ambulances that had just arrived on scene.

  Kelly flagged a medic running by. "Got a guy down. Leg's missing. He's lost a ton of blood."

  The tall, lanky medic detoured, redirecting himself to the man on the ground. "Nice tourniquet."

  Kelly barely registered the compliment. His mind was reeling at the chaos surrounding him. "Is he gonna make it?"

  "Hard to tell." A second medic came barreling into view with a gurney leading his charge. "But he'd definitely be a goner had you not jumped in." In no time at all, the two paramedics had the legless man on the stretcher and were moving toward a waiting ambulance.

  Sirens hailed the approaching cavalry of fire, medical, and police personnel closing in on the Common. Amidst their wailing, Kelly met Barnes's tearful eyes as she turned after placing the child in the ambulance. She shook her head slowly, answering Kelly's unasked question as they stood separated by forty feet of carnage.

  Kelly met Barnes in the middle. Her head was still shaking as if in a silent argument with herself. He knew. He'd been there before. The Baxter Green incident had rocked him to his core. He saw the same shock and disbelief in Barnes's eyes. It didn't matter how long a cop had been on the job or how much awfulness they'd absorbed in their career, the sight of a dead child never got easier.

  Kelly saw in Barnes what he assumed she saw in him. No matter how long it took or what they had to do to accomplish it, whoever was responsible was going to pay for what they had done.

  Barnes stopped shaking her head, changing it to a nod as she met his gaze. The sadness Kelly had seen now shifted into an unequivocal rage that he recognized because he felt it too. "You okay?"

  "No." Barnes’s voice was flat. Her light pink, long-sleeved, moisture-wicking shirt had absorbed the dead boy's blood.

  "You've been here before. I know this is ten times harder for you because of the marathon." He disregarded the blood on both of them and pulled her close. "Listen to me, Kris: we're going to get the son of a bitch who did this!"

  "Then you better get changed."

  Kelly recognized the voice and turned to see Detective Sergeant Halstead walking from his department-issued sedan.

  4

  It looked as though every police officer, firefighter, and EMS worker had squeezed themselves into the three-block area surrounding the blast site. The morning's light pierced the thin clouds, but the debris kicked up into the air cast the area outside the café in a gray haze.

  Kelly took it all in. The last body bag was being loaded into the ME's van. Dark stains covered the ground—marks left by those killed or injured by the blast. It was like the city he knew and loved was distorted into some dystopian, futuristic novel. The sight angered him.

  Gnawing at Kelly was the fact that in the hour since he'd arrived on scene, there'd been no lead generated on the potential suspect or suspects responsible for the bombing. Data from building surveillance cameras, traffic cameras, and cell phones was being analyzed. So far, they were batting zeros.

  Even with the last victim's extraction, the blood remained. A crime scene tech marked the body before removal, using a triangular placard to note the position where it had dropped. The victim's blood left a crudely drawn outline that looked like a child's attempt at tracing a snow angel. The twisted position of the dead man's ultimate resting place was immortalized by the technician’s camera. Kelly stared at the marker of the man’s last foothold in life, letting the image burn into his mind. He vowed never to forget.

  One of the nine dead was the small child Barnes rushed to the ambulance. She had a faraway look in her eyes as she gazed upon it from a distance.

  In the chaos following their arrival, Kelly tried to keep tabs on the amputee he applied the makeshift tourniquet to, last hearing that he was in critical but stable condition. Kelly stood not too far from the lamppost the severely injured man had used as a crutch. The pool of blood was now thick and dark. He said a silent prayer that his efforts had saved the man's life. He never even got his name.

  Halstead was on scene and had asserted himself as scene commander until relieved. The street bosses had done their part by locking down the external scene. It would only be a matter of time before the upper echelon arrived and reallocated control, but Halstead handled the current situation with poise. His nickname “Iceman” seemed apropos. His stoic face held no trace of emotion. Even though Kelly’s direct supervisor was doing a bang-up job, there were aspects to a scene of this magnitude that superseded his ability.

  Kelly had worked big scenes before, but this was different. Nearly incomprehensible. He had assisted in the marathon bombing's search and hunt back in 2013. Assigned to Narcotics then, he had reached out to his extensive network of confidential informants. Snitches, as they were more commonly referred to on the street. Back then, Kelly had rarely worked murder investigations but provided what help he could on a regular basis. When the Tsarnaev brothers bombed the marathon’s finish line, it became an all-hands-on-deck situation. This case would be the same, but he was now in a unique role. As a homicide investigator, he'd have a front-row seat to this show. He was literally standing at ground zero, at the place where nine people were killed and twenty-three wounded.

  The arson investigator was present, as were members of Boston's Explosive Ordinance Division, EOD. Kelly wanted no part in dismantling bombs of any sort and had nothing but respect for the men and women who did. Their expertise was being used to determine the crime scene's boundaries, which had just been extended into the Common’s green space.

  The yellow tape extended out and around the ten-foot-wide Crispus Attucks Monument memorializing the five men killed in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. A piece of rubble lay at the foot of the statue, which depicted a towering bronze Lady Liberty in a tattered dress holding the broken chains of her oppressors. Five people died that day in wha
t would become the battle cry launching the Revolutionary War. Attucks, a man of both African and Native American ancestry, was believed by many historians to be the first of many thousands to die in the war to follow.

  The crime scene was bookended by West Street and Avery Street. Patrolmen maintained the boundary, protecting the area from bystanders and concerned citizens while keeping an eye out for any potential suspects. Kelly knew some killers liked to return to the scene of the crime. Arsonists, especially, were notorious for it, though he wasn't sure about bombers. Killing events held a sense of arousal for some offenders. The experience was heightened by watching the devastation and calamity caused by their actions. It was also a validation of sorts.

  When Kelly was a rookie, he'd assisted Homicide in transporting an arsonist. During the ride, the firebug was very talkative. Almost euphoric. Kelly asked him why he stuck around. The man’s answer haunted him. “What's the point in lighting the match if you don’t stick around to watch it burn?” He killed a family of seven that day and stayed to watch them burn alive.

  In the time since Kelly had been on scene, he hadn't picked up anyone suspicious on his radar. Early on, he had tunnel vision when the initial triage of the wounded took place. Afterward, he focused on what he did best, looking for pieces of the puzzle. Nothing so far.

  He and Barnes had talked little since they’d arrived on scene. After enough paramedics rushed in, Halstead had tasked them with marking potential pieces of evidence in the debris field. The problem with bombs was that the very nature of their design often obliterated much of the evidence. This scene was far different from the norm, and Kelly's expertise wasn't in explosives. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for. His marching orders had been clear: "put an evidence placard on anything that looks out of place." So that was what he did. Every odd bit of debris was marked.

  He finished laying a placard beside a smashed Blackberry phone. The heat had seared the Blackberry’s raised keyboard, melting the rubber against the face. The glass had shattered. Kelly didn't touch it, instead marking it and noting the information in his notepad. Kelly heard the quick chirp of a cruiser's siren and looked up to see Boston Police Superintendent Juan Carlos Acevedo’s SUV pull to a stop on the outskirts of the yellow tape blocking access onto Tremont at West. He was flanked by his entourage of underlings, who usually circled him like flies around a horse's tail, waiting for his next command or to laugh at one of his bad jokes. But nobody was laughing today. Nobody would laugh until they caught the person or persons responsible and brought them to justice. And Kelly knew that could mean two very different things.