my face and roots tripped up my steps.
When I caught up to her, she was hysterical, tears streaming down her face. But then again, so was I. What we had just seen would have made anybody hysterical. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it back to the car hiking in such a distraught state, but eventually we did. I made the call to 911, and before too long the sounds of chickadees and scampering squirrels were drowned out by a fury of sirens.
The cops brought in police dogs and GPS equipment. There were fire trucks and ambulances and some sedans driven by guys who looked like they were from the FBI. Thankfully, I didn’t have to show anybody how to get back to those heads. I gave them the coordinates, instead.
We didn’t stick around to see the crime-scene folks work the area. Instead, we were ushered away, driven to Boston by a cop who promised me that Clegg would be there once we arrived.
Clegg was there, all right, but he didn’t get a chance to speak with us—not for long, anyway. We had to be interviewed first. Nothing he could do about that. Clegg did ask me if I wanted a lawyer present. I didn’t. I just wanted to tell my story.
And so I did, to two detectives, a burly, doughy-looking fellow named Gant and a bald one with a thin mustache, Kaminski. They were nice enough, probably because I was just answering their questions. I had on a grimy blue T-shirt and jeans layered with dirt. They wore suits and hard-edged attitudes.
I told them about Ruby’s cancer and stealing Uretsky’s identity so we could afford her medication. I told them about Uretsky’s phone call and how I believed he was just trying to scare us. “That’s why I didn’t try to shoplift those scarves,” I said, “and why Roberta Jennings was subsequently murdered.”
I recounted my life of crime—lying to Henry Dobson, the investigator from UniSol; robbing Giovanni’s liquor store with an unloaded gun; orchestrating Ruby’s stint as a prostitute and finding the substitute, who ended up paying the ultimate price for her trick; and finally starting the fire in Southie. I gave them what information I had about the people Uretsky had used to control me—people connected to me in some way: Dr. Lisa Adams, Ruby’s oncologist; Winnie, her mom; and Tinesha, another mother who I somehow knew and who lived somewhere unknown to me. I told them what I could about the concrete room with a dripping pipe where Uretsky held his victims hostage.
Gant left the interview room for a while and returned, not looking particularly happy or sad. “We don’t know of anybody named Tinesha who’s been murdered, kidnapped, or reported missing,” he said.
“Whose heads did I dig up?” I asked.
“We don’t know that, either,” Kaminski said.
Gant was shaking his head.
“What?” I asked him.
“Just so I’m clear, you’re the guy wearing a ski mask in the surveillance video, doing CPR?” he asked me.
“That’s me,” I said, no pride in my voice.
Kaminski showed me his phone. “That video has got eight million hits.”
It had shot up since the last time I looked, I thought.
“You beat out the baby who got scared by his mother blowing her nose,” Gant said.
“No? Really?” I said. I probably sounded surprised, but I didn’t know how else to act.
Kaminski went back to his smartphone. “Nah,” he said, correcting himself. “That video has over twenty-three million views.”
I don’t know how much I helped them with their investigation into the SHS killings. I told them they could take all my computers, access my phone, and search my apartments—yeah, both of them—for anything helpful. I did ask that they give the Spanish professors living in my Somerville apartment a heads-up first. We talked a lot about my drive by in Uretsky’s neighborhood, how he and his wife had been reported missing, and that the neighbor, a class three sex offender named Carl Swain, came from some very bad stock and enjoyed leering at Elliot’s wife.
“I want to see Ruby,” I said.
“Yeah, soon,” Gant said. “She’s doing all right. I promise.”
I believed them, though that didn’t stop me from worrying.
“So are you going to arrest me?” I asked.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen to you,” Kaminski said. “To be honest, these are some pretty unusual circumstances. We do appreciate your cooperation, though. No matter what goes down, that’s going to count for something.”
It was well past midnight when Clegg entered the interview room and