"Yeah?"

"The cops think it's Julia Arruda."

The scene at the farm was all too familiar: a small lump under a blue tarp, detectives pawing through a pile of garbage, Parisi inside the farmhouse talking with Scalici. I took notes, going through the motions, but my heart wasn't in it.

That evening, Parisi called to say his detectives had found some bits of human skull in the garbage. They looked as if they'd been smashed into fragments with a hammer. So much for the mystery of what the child killers were doing with the heads.

62.

That evening I found Fiona hunched at her usual table at Hopes, drinking beer with Anne Kotch, an a.s.sistant attorney general. I got myself a club soda from the bar, strolled over, and joined them.

"Would you mind giving Mulligan and me a few minutes?" Fiona said, so Anne got up and claimed a stool at the bar.

"I'm glad you showed," Fiona said. "I could use a friendly shoulder."

"How come?"

"I handled the Arruda notification myself."

"Why put yourself through that? The state cops could have done it."

"I owed it to the parents."

"Must have been awful."

"Worse than you know."

Fiona's lower lip quivered, and I noticed then she was wearing lipstick. Her shoulders shook, and she began to weep. I got up, stood behind her chair, wrapped her up in a hug, held her until the shaking stopped, and then sat down again across from her.

"That was one h.e.l.l of a story yesterday morning," she said.

"Thanks."

"Probably earn you a big journalism prize you can hang on your wall."

"I don't much care about that."

"Well, you should. You earned it. You did a brilliant job figuring everything out."

"Not really," I said. "After all, you figured it out first."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Think you know the rest of it, do you?"

"I do."

"Tell me what you think you know."

"You did your own research on Sal weeks ago and learned he was a big donor to child protection groups."

"I might have."

"And you went to the New Haven Public Library, dug into Puglisi's past, and learned what happened to his sister."

"So what if I did?"

"Once you had all that, it wasn't much of a leap to guess Sal was the one behind the hits on the child p.o.r.nographers."

"Go on."

"It was around that time that I told you my suspicions about Wayne."

"I remember."

"There were only two other people who knew Wayne might be dirty," I said. "One of them was the source I got it from, and I know for a fact he didn't tell anybody else. The other was Wayne's secretary, and she's way too nave to have done anything with the information."

"So?"

"So after I told you my suspicions, you pa.s.sed them on to Sal."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you couldn't touch Wayne legally. You didn't have enough to get a warrant for his computers."

Fiona raised her beer to her lips and discovered the can was empty. I got up, walked to the bar, and fetched her another. She took it from my hand and drank deeply.

"Is Vanessa going to continue her father's crusade?" I asked.

"Let's say I have reason to believe she will."

"Going to hunt down the child p.o.r.nographers who are still on the loose, is she?"

"And maybe the child p.o.r.n fans we found on the computers at Chad Brown," Fiona said.

"The four who haven't been shot yet, you mean."

"Those would be the ones."

"Wow," I said.

Fiona closed her eyes for a moment, and I saw her lips moving. Perhaps she was saying a prayer. When she was done, she rested her arms on the table, leaned forward, and looked into my eyes.

"We live in G.o.d's beautiful world," she said, "but there is evil abroad in it. Monsters are hunting our children. I don't seem to be very good at catching them, and neither are the state police. Maybe it's a good thing that there are others who hunt the hunters."

"And do G.o.d's murderous work?" I asked.

She didn't have anything to say to that.

"I can't f.u.c.king believe this," I said.

"Neither will anybody else, Mulligan. Besides, you can't prove any of it."

"If I worked at it, maybe I could."

"Might be worth it," she said. "It would give you something to hold over the head of the next governor if you ever happen to need a favor."

With that, I got up to go. At the door, I turned back for one last look. Her eyes were stone.

63.

It was raining again when I stepped out of the bar and whistled for Secretariat. He didn't come. By the time I tracked him down at an expired meter by Burnside Park, my old Boston Bruins jersey, the one with hockey G.o.d Cam Neely's number 8 on it, was sopping. I slumped behind the wheel, tore the f.u.c.king thing off, and chucked it into the backseat. Then I cranked the ignition, let the engine idle for a few minutes, snapped the heater on, and felt a blast of cold air. I'd forgotten it had stopped working again three days ago.

I was sick to death of this rotten Rhode Island weather. I watched the rain fall and cursed John Ghiorse, Channel 10's septuagenarian weatherman. Then I cursed G.o.d. I stopped cursing when it occurred to me that neither of them had anything to do with it.

I just sat there and listened to the rain tap the roof, thinking about how journalism used to be fun. I remembered how I used to sit courtside at Providence College and Brown University basketball games, stuff my face with hot dogs, and fill my notebook with words that made no mention of severed arms or missing children. I remembered coming to work every day to a newsroom filled with dedicated professionals who were in love with their jobs and never wanted to be anywhere else. I remembered when nearly everyone in the state spent at least a half hour every day reading the paper.

But that was a quarter of a lifetime ago, and those days were never coming back.

I was sick to death of layoffs, buyouts, and forced retirements. I was sick of Fiona's crocodile tears, the pop of small-caliber handguns, and the candied stench of corpses. I was sick of decaf and club soda, of the gnawing in my gut that never completely went away, and of the child with no arms who still haunted my dreams. I was sick of people who found a way to justify murder, and of the undeniable fact that one of those people was me.

I was sick of feeling alone. I needed to wrap myself around somebody. I took out my cell and started to call Yolanda, but she was wrapped around somebody else.

I put the Bronco in gear and drove. I meant to go home. I really did. But on this night, Secretariat had a will of his own. As he rolled past the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, its brick edifice dark and brooding, I thought about going inside. But I didn't.

A pa.s.sage from the Book of Job flashed through my mind: "When I looked for light, then came darkness."

Before I knew it, the red-and-blue neon sign on the roof of the Tongue and Groove winked through the drops on my rain-splattered windshield. I pulled into the lot and parked. Joseph had been right. Word had gotten around. The lot was nearly full.

I pulled my wallet from my hip pocket and slid out the card for a complimentary trip around the world. It had been a long time since I'd gone on any kind of trip. I turned on the overhead light and studied Marical's picture. Her tobacco-colored skin was flawless. Her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s were enticing. And no hair concealed the paradise between her legs.

The rain fell harder now. It pounded the roof, turning the Bronco's pa.s.senger compartment into the inside of a drum. Yet somehow, I could still hear Marical's musical voice.

I show you a good time, beebe. Eef you get wit me, I make you world go round like craysee.

I sat there and listened to her say the words over and over for a long, long time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Susanna Einstein is more than a great agent; she is also a superb story doctor whose suggestions significantly improved this novel. My wife, Patricia Smith, one of our finest poets, edited every line on every page. And thank you, baby, for allowing me to excerpt your poem "Map Rappin'." I also owe a debt of grat.i.tude to the hardworking folks at Forge, including Eric Raab for his skillful edit of the ma.n.u.script.

Read on for a preview of Scourge of Vipers By Bruce DeSilva Available in April 2015 by Tom Doherty a.s.sociates A Forge Hardcover ISBN 978-0-7653-7431-8 Copyright 2015 by Bruce Desilva Pre-order/order this book today!

1.

A snake-that's what Mario Zerilli had called me. And now, just an hour later, something was slithering across my cracked kitchen linoleum. It was three feet long with lemon racing stripes twisting the length of its brown body. I watched it slide past the wheezing fridge and veer toward the kitchen table where my bare feet rested on the floor.

It raised its head and froze, its forked tongue flickering. It had caught my scent.

I pushed back from the table, got down on my knees, and studied it. A pretty thing. I flashed out my right hand and pinched it just behind its head. It writhed, its body a bullwhip. I was startled by its strength.

I carried the snake into the bedroom, opened my footlocker, and used my left hand to empty it, tossing a half-dozen New England Patriots and Boston Bruins sweatshirts and a spare blanket onto the bed. Beneath the blanket was a Colt .45 that once belonged to my grandfather. I tossed that on the bed, too. Then I dropped the snake inside, slammed the lid, and started thinking about names.

Stop it, I told myself. The garter snake was probably an escaped pet, the property of someone else in the tenement building. How else could it have found its way into my second-floor apartment? When I had the time, I'd ask around, but if no one claimed it, I'd be heading to the pet store for a suitable cage.

I could hear the snake blindly exploring inside the footlocker, its scales rasping as they slid against the wood. I couldn't help myself. I started thinking about names again. Mario leaped to mind. But no, I couldn't call it that. I liked garter snakes. If Mario had sneaked it in, it would have been a copperhead or a timber rattler.

The trouble with Mario started a week ago when his great-uncle, Dominic "Whoosh" Zerilli, and I got together over boilermakers at Hopes, the local press hangout, to talk about the future. I was a newspaper reporter, so I didn't have one. Whoosh was contemplating retirement.

"The wife's still nagging me about it," he said. "Wants me to sell the house, turn my business over to Mario, and move to Florida."

"So why don't you?"

"I'm thinkin' on it."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And what are you thinking?"