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

  "Kelly, let me see you for a minute." Halstead flagged him over with a wave of his arm.

  Kelly turned his back to the carnage and walked to his supervisor. "What's up, Sarge? I was just going to run back to the evidence van, see if Charles had any more placards."

  "You can check on that in a minute. I want you to meet a couple of people."

  Kelly cocked an eyebrow. He’d known it was coming, just not exactly when. Bombings were terrorist acts, and federal agencies typically handled those. Especially when the Bureau's headquarters at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building were only a couple blocks away on Congress Street. Agents were on the scene already. Kelly hadn't been keeping track, but the number of suited federal agents had grown exponentially since he'd first arrived. Another contingent of dark SUVs arrived, four deep.

  "Captain Acevedo is handing this investigation over to the FBI and ATF. Homeland Security is assisting, but the lead will go to the Bureau." Halstead offered no indication in his tone or manner if this news bothered him.

  "Figured. Just wondered why it took them so long."

  "They were waiting for their bomb expert to arrive."

  "I guess he's here now." Kelly walked alongside Halstead. They were heading to greet the arriving agents, who were now speaking with Acevedo and his men.

  "She. Not he. Their resident bomb expert is ATF Agent Alexa Mills. Heard she's one of the best."

  Kelly looked back at the café’s destroyed facade. "She'd better be."

  5

  Halstead moved ahead at a quick pace. Kelly slowed and turned, whistling at Barnes to get her attention. She was talking with Hutch over by an ambulance but left the conversation with the hulking firefighter and walked over to Kelly.

  "Ready to meet the varsity team?" He rolled his eyes.

  "Are we benched?"

  "Does it matter if we are?"

  "No." Her eyes were vacant. He'd seen the change come over her before. The mental distancing needed to move past the trauma. It was like flipping a switch, cruising on autopilot. Kelly knew because he had been there. "They could fire me right now on the spot and I wouldn’t stop looking."

  It was as if she was in his head, speaking the same words he was thinking. That was why he felt the way he did about Kristen Barnes, although he'd never said it out loud. Neither of them had. The idea of that scared him to death. Maybe her too. Kelly would have rather faced down the barrel of a loaded gun than enter another serious relationship, until he and Barnes got together. Then, everything changed. He'd been working up the courage to say the four-letter word. Kelly wasn't scared of much. But love? That damn well terrified him. Ever since the dissolution of his first marriage, Kelly had closed off that part of himself. Barnes had found a way in.

  "We best catch up." He didn’t say the words he should have. They moved at almost a jog until they reached Halstead.

  Kelly stood in his blood-soaked running apparel, surrounded by the shining collar brass of his supervisors and the small horde of well-dressed federal agents taking up positions around the head of Boston PD's Criminal Investigations Services.

  "Sir." He acknowledged the senior ranking officer. Kelly once had a little blowout with Acevedo's son, who also worked Homicide. The two butted heads when Kelly jumped him in the rotation when a priest was murdered in his childhood church.

  Acevedo seemed genuinely devastated at the sight of the destruction around them. He was definitely more politician than cop, but Kelly could see the bombing struck home for the native Bostonian. "You two did a hell of a thing this morning. I'm proud of both of you." Acevedo, the BPD four-star commander, laid a hand on their shoulders, though he did it in a way that appeared disingenuous, like he had rehearsed this moment. Kelly chose to believe there had to be some truth behind the sentiment.

  "Thanks," he and Barnes muttered simultaneously.

  "With that being said," Acevedo continued, "this is now a matter of federal jurisdiction. The FBI's Counter-Terror Task Force will take over the primary role in the investigation of this bombing."

  Kelly bit the inside of his lip and tasted blood. "What are we supposed to do? Sit around and be their coffee runners?"

  "I don't drink coffee. More of a tea guy myself." A portly agent in a gray suit stepped forward. He wasn't the poster child for the FBI. The frayed suit was stretched thin at the seams, his face was the color of skim milk, and he had bags underneath a set of beady brown eyes. His thick mustache curled beyond his lip and into his mouth. It had at one time been a dark brown. Bits and pieces of those hairs were still left on his lip, but the rest were a yellowing gray.

  He was older than the typical field agent. If Kelly had to guess, somewhere in his late forties or early fifties.

  "I'm Special Agent Dan Langston,” the agent said. “This is my partner, Agent Cameron Salinger."

  "Cam's fine." Salinger was tall, fit, and young. He was everything Langston wasn't.

  Langston shot the junior agent a look of annoyance. "We're going to need your help on this. From what I can see, you've already got a good start. And we will appreciate anything you can do."

  "What's our role going to be?" Barnes stepped in.

  "You're going to help with whatever we need,” the agent said. His words annoyed Kelly.

  "There are plenty of cameras in the area,” he continued. “Between all the businesses, traffic cams, and cell phones, we've got a ton of footage to go through. That's not taking into account the physical evidence. We're going to need you guys to help gather as many statements as possible from any of the potential witnesses on scene."

  Kelly was about to speak when Halstead placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "We got patrol doing that. My unit will assist in any way you see fit, but I think you'd be better served by allowing them to be more involved."

  "Let us do more than pull tapes and talk to bystanders,” Kelly said. “We can be an asset to you on the investigation side. We know this city. We know the people." He was angry at himself for trying to validate his experience to a man he didn't know. The thought of playing second fiddle to the FBI didn't sit right.

  "Look, hotshot,” the agent said. “We're getting off on the wrong foot. You're going to help us with whatever we need, and at this point I might just decide to send you on that coffee run you mentioned."

  Kelly realized he had overplayed his hand, and if he wanted to be part of this investigation and have any chance of keeping himself in the loop, he needed to bite his tongue and dial back his annoyance.

  "Long morning. What do you need from us?" Kelly knew it was a weak offering, but it was the best he could come up with under the circumstances. Had Mainelli not been on his annual family vacation to Italy for the next week, he would've had a field day with this agent.

  "Your captain tells me you two are a pretty excellent team. I know your units have solved some high-profile cases. We heard about the work you did in finding the guy who killed our undercover agent last year. Pretty impressive stuff. We'll keep you close and in the loop unless you become too much of a pain in my ass." Langston pointed toward a row of FBI crime scene vans. "Right now, you can meet up with the crime scene techs and see what they need as far as assisting in setting the scene. Think you can handle that?"

  Cam Salinger was at least six inches taller than Langston, making him two inches taller than Kelly. He wore an up-to-date crisp blue suit with a collared shirt minus a tie and had the confident look of a quarterback. He stretched out his hand. "Look, I know how this thing goes. We're not trying to stomp around in your backyard. This is your city. I get it. A bunch of suits come in here where you think we've got no business. I grew up in Charleston, if that makes any difference. Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that this is going to be our show, and we're going to do the absolute best to keep you guys in the loop. I think that's what my partner was trying to say."

  With Salinger's not-so-subtle nudge, Langston conceded. "Yeah, that's what I was trying to say." He followed suit, shaking hands with their BPD counterparts. "We're on the same team here."

  "Where do we start?" Kelly asked.

  "That's where I come in." A short, athletic-looking, light-skinned black woman stepped into view, wearing jeans and a blue windbreaker with “ATF” in yellow lettering. "We're going to need to find fragments of the device used. It'll be crucial in locating our bomber."

  Kelly eyed the demolished storefront. "You think there's anything salvageable inside there?"

  "Yes. You just have to know what you're looking for." She looked to Langston. "I'm going to get started, if you don't mind?"

  "Do your thing, Lexi."

  She retreated to the rear of the SUV she'd exited and donned a full Tyvek suit and booties, then slung a red duffle bag over her shoulder and headed into the scene. After signing in with one of the patrolmen managing the crime scene log, she headed directly for the gaping hole where the café's storefront once stood.

  "She's got a nose for this kind of thing." Langston's gaze trailed behind her. "I don't know if you guys remember that mall bombing a few years back in Kansas?"

  Kelly nodded. He remembered the story from the news coverage. The bomber left a backpack bomb outside a food court in a big mall in Kansas, injuring thirty people and killing two. Investigators initially thought the attack had been the work of an extremist group but discovered several weeks later that the bomber was a twenty-three-year-old loner stalking a girl who worked at a cookie shop in the food court. "The food court bombing."

  "Everybody was spinning out of control, looking both nationally and internationally for the group responsible. Not Lexi. She followed the evidence. One of the bomb fragments she found led her to a local hardware store. Within a day, the killer was in custody. She's got a gift for finding the unfindable."

 
Kelly watched Mills disappear inside the café, hoping that ability would play out to their advantage here.

  Acevedo finished a quiet conversation with one of his lieutenants before addressing the group. "We've already coordinated with the owner of a vacant warehouse on Boston Street. We're going to be taking it over for a while and will use the seven thousand square feet provided to recreate the debris field. We're going to need to get everything photographed, tagged, and bagged, and then transported over. No small task. We best get to work."

  Kelly looked at the superintendent's polished brass and shined shoes, then at the dried blood caked to his own clothes. We best get to work. Kelly considered offering his own opinion on that subject but thought better of it.

  "My detectives will get back to work and coordinate with their crime scene techs, who will work with yours. I think we can have this scene mapped and under control in a matter of hours," Acevedo offered.

  “It looked like you had something you wanted to say, Detective?" Langston challenged Kelly.

  Langston had read Kelly's body language and was calling him out on it. There were two takeaways from that comment. Langston could read people, a sign of an excellent investigator. And he spoke his mind, which meant he was not a politician. Kelly dismissed the agent's chiding. "Not really."

  "Detectives, why don't you get back to work?" Halstead said.

  Acevedo stepped away from the group. "Detective Kelly, can I see you for a moment?"

  Kelly followed the senior officer out of earshot of the others.

  "What the hell was that back there?" Acevedo demanded.

  "I don't know. I don't want to get sidelined on this one."

  "Look, everything can't be personal to you. You understand me? They're here doing their job. I'd rather have our guys handling this too, but you know that's not the way these things work. Plus, we're going to need to throw every resource at this thing if we're planning on catching whoever's responsible. The FBI brings a lot to the table in that regard. You've been doing this job long enough to know better. Consider this your only warning."

  Acevedo leaned in closer to Kelly. He could smell the coffee on his breath. "Get your head out of your ass, Kelly. Now get to work. And don't let me have this conversation with you again or you will find yourself banging parking tickets at Fenway."

  Kelly took the tongue-lashing in stride. Acevedo turned to walk away and then said over his shoulder, "I meant what I said earlier. You and Barnes did a hell of a job today."

  Kelly headed off toward the crime scene truck parked on the far side of the scene. As he neared the barricade separating the onlookers from the scene, he saw Hutchins’s familiar face. He looked as ragged as the rest of the first responders. His smile, normally etched across his face, was completely gone.

  "Mikey, how are you holding up, buddy?"

  "Been better."

  "Me too. Hey, do you know who put that tourniquet on that guy who lost his leg?"

  "It was me. Why?"

  "He came to at the hospital for a moment and was asking. He wanted to thank you."

  Kelly wasn't looking for any accolades. He was just happy the guy was still alive.

  "Do you know who that guy was?"

  "No idea."

  "Clem Winslow."

  "Is that name supposed to mean something to me? Who's Clem Winslow?"

  "You never heard of him? He's big, like huge in the world of country music."

  "No kidding."

  "I was talking with one of the EMTs. Apparently, he was in town for a concert this weekend at The Garden.” The Boston Garden had changed hands several times since the original venue had been demolished in '95.

  "Small world. Is he going to make it?"

  "Looks that way. Thanks to you. Maybe he'll write a song about you?" Hutch's attempt at levity fell flat. "He told the docs at the hospital that he wants to thank you personally."

  "That's going to have to wait." Kelly continued on to where Senior BPD Crime Scene Technician Raymond Charles's truck was parked. Charles was in the back, reloading his gear bag, when Kelly approached. "This is a mess, Ray."

  "Tell me about it."

  Charles's radio squawked. "Ray, we've got something." Kelly recognized the voice on the other end. It was Trent Dawes, Charles's protégé who'd earned the nickname “Freckles” from Mainelli a while back.

  "What do you got?"

  "Looks like part of the device."

  "Okay. I'll be there in a second. Where'd you find it?" Charles asked into the radio.

  "I didn't. Some lady with the ATF did."

  6

  After the evidence was collected and the scene released, Kelly and Barnes went back to her apartment to change out of their bloody clothes. Kelly opted to forgo the wash and threw his outer layer in the trash bin. Continuing from their short detour, they rode together to the warehouse on Boston Street where the crime scene was being recreated.

  The gaudy blue building stuck out like a sore thumb in the South Boston business center at Andrew Square, a one-minute walk from Andrew Station, which was two stops away from the bomb site. FBI agents and technicians, supplemented by members of the Boston PD, scurried about like ants delivering bits of evidence.

  The seven thousand square feet of open warehouse space was now littered with crime-scene debris. Tape was laid out in ten-by-ten squares, converting the floor into oversized grid paper that stretched in all directions. Evidence was placed in each of the assigned boxes. A frumpy woman with dark-rimmed glasses was overseeing the scene, barking orders to the technicians. If they were worker ants, she was the queen.

  Care was taken to properly place the sealed evidence bags in the spot where they had been located on scene. It was an enormous undertaking. A technician was assigned to each marked ten-foot square to assist in the coordination. Each piece of evidence collected from the original scene was placed in its respective position corresponding to mapped distance from the recreated blast epicenter. The FBI had used aerial photography provided by a drone to support the recreation of the debris field.

  Kelly stared at the replica, which was almost complete. Only the blood was missing. Even with the hot shower and change of clothes, he still felt it on him. Dried blood was caked into the creases of his hands. He absently picked a flake from the edge of his fingernail. Though he had scrubbed and scoured himself with a bristle brush, he still felt the remnants of the carnage, and knew he always would. Traumatic events, regardless of circumstance, left their mark. In Kelly's lifetime he had built up a thick layer of the invisible taint. He referred to it as mental plaque, the decay coating the mind after enduring a traumatic event. The weight of this morning's events added to his buildup. Layered on too thick, and over too long a period of time, it rotted the brain completely, like a cavity.

  He'd seen good cops go bad. He'd seen them take their lives. The life expectancy for some cops was greatly diminished by exposure to multiple traumas. Suicide and other health issues were on the rise in the constantly changing environment of law enforcement. Kelly bore the invisible scars of his job as best he could. His outlet, the place where he cleaned the plaque from his brain, was in a much smaller warehouse than the one where he now stood. In the boxing ring, his therapy came with each punishing blow received or delivered.

  After this morning's events, he knew he needed some ring time to clear his head, but that would have to wait. Barnes stood nearby. She looked somewhat refreshed, but her eyes remained vacant. The death of a child lingered. He knew without asking that she could still feel the weight of his lifeless body in her arms. The moment we're born, we begin our journey to the grave. Everybody expects their life to be a long and fruitful one. When a child’s is cut short, it casts a deep darkness. No parent should ever outlive their child.