Triple Cross

Outside, a raw, dank, late-April wind cut through my sport coat and open rain jacket. Shivering, I zipped it up and then ordered an Uber to take me to Cambridge and the Harvard Book Store.

“You work there or something? Harvard?” asked Vic Daloia, the driver, a nice guy in his forties with a thick Boston accent. He had an all-news station playing softly on his radio.

“Just visiting the area,” I said. “You remember the electrocution killings in Boston years ago?”

Daloia sat up straighter. “Sure, I followed that one. And I read that book about it, Electric. Great book. I’m a true-crime buff and he nailed it.”

“Thomas Tull.”

“That’s him. Stickler for details. I like that.”

“I do too,” I said. “I work with the FBI.”

Daloia looked over his shoulder. “I knew you were something like that.”

That made me laugh a little. “Nice to know. Say, is there a way to hire you for the day? Have you drive me around a few places?”

In the rearview mirror, I could see Daloia beaming. “You bet. You pay Uber for this leg. Then I’ll sign out of Uber and you can pay me in cash for the rest of the day.”

“Deal. How much?”

“How far are you going?”

“Around the city. And MCI–Cedar Junction.”

“You mean the Walpole prison? That’s a cruise. How’s two hundred sound?”

“Like a plan,” I said.

Daloia dropped me at the Harvard Book Store and went to a nearby Dunkin’ to await my call. I entered the store, imagining Tull wandering the aisles, dreaming of being a writer and pulling book after book from the shelves.

Then I thought about Tull becoming aware of Emily Maxwell, one of the store clerks, a recent divorcée and the fourth victim in his first book, Electric.

How often had they spoken before she died? Did he know Emily had a broken heart before she was murdered?

These questions and others swirled in my mind as I sought out Martine Harris, the store manager. She remembered Maxwell and was saddened.

“Emily was a special, special person,” Harris said. “Customers were constantly asking her what they should read next.”

“She had a broken heart.”

Harris nodded. “She did, but she was coming out of it. I mean, getting over a divorce takes time, especially when you didn’t see it coming. I told her that a lot.”

“Was Emily friends with Thomas Tull?”

She hesitated and looked at the ceiling. “I’ve thought about that. I mean, how well he knew Emily. He says they spoke three or four times, just exchanging pleasantries when he was checking out. But I think he was shaken by her death and that triggered his interest and everything else—the book, the television series, all of it.”

“And yet I sense a little conflict in you.”

“Well, I’ve always wondered if there was more to their relationship than Tull let on. Something that would have explained the passion he brought to that case and to his book. What’s this all about, anyway?”

“Just wrapping up some loose ends for the Bureau,” I said. “Thanks for your time, Martine. I think I’ll walk around town and try to orient myself to where it all happened.”

“Do you have the map with you?”

“Map?”

“It’s in the back of the paperback edition of Electric. Shows where everything happened and when. People come here just to walk around and see it all. Like a tour, you know?”

“I have the book with me, and I’ll look at that map,” I said. “But I can’t imagine Herman Foster’s old haunt is hard to find.”

“No,” she said. “It’s where most people either start or end their tour.”

I thanked her again for her time and left, digging in my roller bag for my copy of Electric. Sure enough, there was a map at the back showing Cambridge and the surrounding towns and cities involved in the case.

I was interested to see that, with the exception of Emily Maxwell, all the victims lived outside of but close to Cambridge: in Boston’s Back Bay, Watertown, Somerville, Newton. With the electrocution scenes all identified on the map, I could immediately see a rough oval pattern with Cambridge and Harvard University slightly left of center.

Maxwell had lived seven blocks from the university. I decided to see a few places on campus and then walk to her old apartment before getting driven to the prison.

The wind had slowed but it was drizzling when I left the store and I hurried toward Harvard Yard, glad for the umbrella I’d thought to pack. I found a security guard and asked the way to Lyman Laboratory.

He showed me on a map where I’d find the physics research lab. I walked north through Harvard Yard, which was crowded with students hurrying through the light rain to their next classes or chatting about their looming final exams.

I crossed Cambridge Street and passed the university’s music hall on my way to the brick-faced laboratory on 17 Oxford Street. Remembering how Tull had described the place, I looked up at the window of the second-floor office on the right, where acclaimed theoretical physicist and Harvard professor Herman Foster had gone mad and plotted the electrocution deaths of seven innocent women.

CHAPTER 37