The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(19)

The next morning, he would find out.





9




Detective Sandoval’s hunt for Nick Mason had brought him to one of the most expensive streets in Chicago. Sandoval parked a few doors down from the town house and double-checked the address. Lincoln Park f*cking West, he said to himself. With the park right across the street. The gardens, the conservatory, the zoo. A great view of Lake Michigan. This is the place. This is where Nick Mason lives now.

Sandoval remembered Mason’s last address. Or rather his last address before USP Terre Haute. It was a little shitbox in Canaryville, one of those houses they built right on top of one another with barely enough room to walk between them. Forty-third Street, if his memory was right. He’d seen it a few days after that night at the harbor. He’d just recently been partnered with Higgins back then, still getting the hang of the guy. Higgins was at the peak of his career, with a winning streak of big busts that would have made most cops insufferable. But Higgins wore his success well, with just enough self-confidence to believe he could solve any murder in the city. That’s how they ended up on the Sean Wright case. It was a “heater case,” with a mandate from the superintendent’s office. A federal agent had been killed. They needed to solve it and solve it quickly.

They started with the one dead suspect, a man from Canaryville named Finn O’Malley. A perfect name, Sandoval thought, for a mick from that part of town. O’Malley had a long record of minor incidents, some pickups on more serious charges that never went anywhere, until an aggravated assault on a police officer put him away for eighteen months. They went to O’Malley’s last-known residence and asked around. They got nothing. Sandoval was ready to take it personally, all the locals closing ranks on him. But Higgins kept his cool and dragged him back to the station and they spent a full day going through old arrest records. If they couldn’t find any known associates who also went away to prison, they could at least find some other men O’Malley might have been picked up with even if everybody eventually walked.

That’s how they came up with two more names. Eddie Callahan and Nick Mason. They’d been picked up together and then released, on two separate occasions, a few years apart. A long-standing relationship.

Sandoval and Higgins went out looking for both men. They found them in Canaryville—Eddie Callahan at his fiancée’s apartment and Nick Mason at the house he shared with his wife and young daughter. Both men denied any involvement in the harbor job. Both men claimed they had been straight for years. Both men admitted that they had seen Finn O’Malley at Murphy’s bar on the night in question but that he had left the bar long before Callahan and Mason went home.

The two detectives checked out their story at the bar. The bartender on duty that night confirmed that O’Malley had been there, had left early, and that Callahan and Mason had stayed.

“You trust that guy?” Sandoval said to Higgins as they walked back to their car. “Who’s the guy who killed Lincoln? John Wilkes Booth? If he’s a Canaryville guy, this bartender’s f*cking great-grandfather swears Booth was at the bar all night. Never went near that theater.”

“Went deep for that one,” Higgins said.

“Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.”

The next day, a stolen car was found in a parking lot a mile down the road. The blood was tested and found to be consistent with Finn O’Malley’s.

“Somebody brought that blood home,” Higgins said.

“Only been a few days,” Sandoval said. “If either guy’s in his own car that night . . .”

Higgins looked at his partner. They both knew what would happen next. Warrants were served. The cars were impounded. In Mason’s car, they ended up finding trace amounts of Finn O’Malley’s blood on the right armrest of the driver’s seat. Callahan’s car was clean.

When Mason was brought in, Sandoval and Higgins sat there in the interview room for a while. Higgins had already told Sandoval to do the talking. He had a gut feeling that Mason wouldn’t say a word to either one of them, but at least Sandoval was the same age. He might have a slightly better shot at him.

Sandoval kept watching Mason, waiting for the pressure to build. For most guys, it doesn’t take long. You just have to sit there and wait for it to become real to him.

I’m sitting in a room with two cops, the guy will say to himself. There can only be one reason for that. They’ve got me nailed.

But Sandoval wasn’t seeing this on Mason yet. All the signs you look for. The way the eyes start moving around. Looking toward the door. Thinking about what you can say that will get you out of the room. Never mind where I go next, just get me the f*ck out of here.

The hands coming together. The man instinctively protecting himself. Closing himself into a ball.

Or the legs starting to shake under the table. All that tension, it has to go somewhere. But no, not this guy. He wasn’t giving them anything.

Not yet.

“Canaryville kid,” Sandoval said, finally breaking the silence. “You go to Saint Gabriel’s?”

Mason said nothing.

“Bet you’re a Sox fan, too. I’m from Avondale, been a Cubs fan my whole life.”

Mason stared past them at a spot on the wall.

“You go to Tilden High School? We played basketball there.”