Measure Of Darkness

“Not among,” Jack says, arms folded. “The best, period. Randall Shane is the last of the real kid finders. They broke the mold.”

Teddy shrugs his narrow shoulders, as if to concede the point. “Unlike many in the field, which can be pretty shady, monetary gain does not seem to be his primary motivation. For him it’s a calling.”

“Most of his cases are pro bono,” Jack concedes.

“Seventy percent,” Teddy says.

“Whatever, Shane ain’t about the money. He can’t even afford to drive a decent car,” Jack says.

Teddy suddenly has a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Current ride, a five-year-old Townie, previously registered to John B. Delancey of Gloucester, Mass.”

Jack shrugs his wide, well-tailored shoulders, but he’s no doubt impressed. “Donation to a good cause. And no, I didn’t get a tax deduction because Shane has never registered as a nonprofit, although he should.”

Teddy keeps going. “Current residence, Humble, New York. Small town in the general vicinity of Rochester.”

“Humble?” Dane says, grinning. “Is that ironic?”

Naomi sighs loudly, which effectively stops the banter. “You have more?” she asks.

“Tons,” says Teddy. “I found more than a hundred references to the so-called Shane’s Sleep Disorder Syndrome. Plus interesting facts on a variety of his cases.”

“Excellent, but hold for now,” Naomi says. “Jack, can you bring us up to speed on the murder investigation?”

Jack flips open his small reporter’s notebook. Strictly a prop, in my opinion, but he’s never without it. “So far everything Shane told me checks out. Cambridge homicide detectives are investigating the death by gunshot of Joseph Keener at his residence on Putnam Avenue, approximately two miles from the campus. The murder happened early this morning. State police are assisting—that means they’ll eventually run the investigation, in all probability—and the FBI is all over the scene.”

“Anybody you know?”

“Cambridge, affirmative, Staties, affirmative. I’m meeting with my state police source this evening. Hopefully he’ll have more to add.”

“Anything from your old colleagues in the FBI?”

“As you know, my former associates are mostly in the Boston field office, and normally the locals would be responding, assuming the murder has some federal connection. But this is a special team sent in directly from Justice. Unknown to me on a personal level.”

“You make yourself known?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet. Just to my guy in the Cambridge Major Crimes Unit and he won’t mention our interest unless I ask him to. He knows the deal.”

“Good,” Naomi says. “Let’s stay at arm’s length from our friends in federal law enforcement until we’ve had a peek at the big picture. That being said, did you get any sense they’re aware that Randall Shane has been seized and/or arrested by agents unknown?”

“The opposite. There’s an APB out on him as a so-called ‘person of interest.’ He’s their prime suspect and they think he’s in the wind.”

“Set the scene,” Naomi suggests. “Shower us with details.”

“There’s not all that much, I’m afraid. Cambridge police were alerted by a 911 call that originated from the Keener residence at 5:42 a.m. The caller would not give his name, but stated a man had been killed. That was Shane, so they’ll have him on digital audio making the call, for whatever that’s worth. The first mobile unit responded to the scene in ten minutes or less, found the front door open and the victim facedown in a pool of blood in the hallway, a few yards from the front door. Major Crimes and forensic units arrive, as well as the medical examiner. The M.E. determines the victim died of a single shot to the back of the head. Clotting and body temp suggest he’d been dead for no more than an hour or so before the call was made. No weapon recovered at the scene. Detectives did a canvas and his neighbors described him as the usual: shy type, kept to himself, very quiet. No one heard the gunshot.”

“Any indication of a child in the home?”

Jack shakes his head. “The investigating detective told me it was the residence of a single man, living alone. Cambridge police are unaware of any missing child connected with the victim. No such report was ever filed. There is no indication of a child in the home, not even a photo. No toys, no games, no bedroom set up for a kid, nothing.”

“No sign of a child,” Naomi muses, keenly interested. “How very odd. Two possibilities immediately present themselves. Either the victim has a child and all evidence has been removed from the home—surely he’d have pictures even if the mother has custody?—or the victim never had a child, certainly not a missing child, and Shane was somehow duped for reasons unknown.”

“To set him up for murder,” Jack suggests.

Naomi nods to herself, tapping her pen, wheels turning. “Okay, fine, that’s our theory of the moment, in deference to your relationship with the suspect—but he remains a prime suspect unless or until the evidence leads us elsewhere.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“You’re a friend. I need more.”

“Fine,” Jack says, with a steely edge to his voice.

“Now please explain the discrepancy,” she suggests.

“What discrepancy?” Jack says, all innocence.

“You rendezvous with your buddy Randall Shane at 7:00 a.m. and yet you don’t show up here until 8:30 a.m. Kendall Square is at most fifteen minutes from this location. Where did you go? What did you do?”

Jack sighs. “We attempted to break into a motel.”

“A motel located where?”

“The Residence Inn off Kendall Square. Shane thought it likely that he’d been lured to the victim’s home so that evidence could be planted in his room.”

“That’s his theory.”

“Yes.”

Silence. Everybody fidgets, including Jack. Uncomfortable moments accumulate. Finally I stick my oar in and go, “Um, attempted to break in?”

“I know,” Jack says with a sigh. “Embarrassing. Two former special agents, and we couldn’t manage to break into a motel room. We had the key card, so it wasn’t even a break-in, technically. My only excuse, the place was being staked out by state police detectives, and they happened to be good.”

“They must have been very good,” Naomi suggests.

“More stubborn than good, but still. The plan was, Shane creates a diversion, I slip into his room and check it out for planted evidence.”

“What kind of diversion?”

“An exploding vehicle just around the corner from the motel. Specifically a small GMC pickup truck with a full tank of gas.”

“Failed to explode?”

“Oh, it exploded,” Jack says with some satisfaction. “The cab went fifty yards in one direction, the chassis in another, mostly straight up. Produced a very impressive fireball and a really nice mushroom cloud of black smoke. But the damn Staties didn’t move. It was like they were expecting a diversion and determined not to budge. No way I could get into the room undetected, which had been the whole point.”

Dane stirs, says, “Hey, I don’t get it. How’d they know to stake out Shane’s motel room less than an hour after the crime was reported? How did they even know he was involved at that point? The Cambridge cops had barely taken possession of the scene, let alone been in a position to identify suspects, or pass it on to the state police.”

“Good question,” Jack says. “Shane told me the motel must have been under surveillance before he called 911. He gets back to the vicinity of the motel ten minutes after he makes the call, the state police were already in place, well established. That’s when he knows for sure he’s being set up and that’s when he calls me.”

“And you responded, even though you may have been assisting in the commission of a felony murder.”