Chapter 95
T HIS COULD BE IT. The end of a long and winding road after Maria’s murder.
Sampson and I took the Long Island Expressway to the Northern State, all the way out to the tip of Long Island. We followed Route 27 and finally found the village of Montauk, which until that moment was just a name I’d heard and occasionally read about. But this was where Michael Sullivan and his family were hiding out according to Anthony Mullino. Supposedly they had just moved here today.
We found the house after twenty minutes of searching unfamiliar back roads. When we arrived at the address we’d been given, two boys were tossing a bloated-looking football on a small patch of front lawn. Blond, Irish-looking kids. Pretty good athletes, especially the littlest guy. The presence of kids could make this a lot more complicated for us though.
“You think he’s staying out here?” Sampson asked as he turned off the engine. We were at least a hundred yards away from the house, and pretty much out of sight now, playing it safe.
“Mullino says he’s been moving around a lot. Says he’s here now for sure. The kids are the right age. There’s an older boy too, Michael Jr.”
I squinted to see better. “Car in the driveway has Maryland plates.”
“Probably not a coincidence there. Sullivan was supposed to be living somewhere in Maryland before he and his family made their latest run. Makes sense that he was close to DC. Explains the rapes there. The pieces are starting to fall together.”
“His kids haven’t seen us yet. Hopefully Sullivan hasn’t, either. Let’s keep it that way, John.”
We moved, and Sampson parked two streets away; then we got shotguns and pistols out of the trunk. We hiked into the woods behind a row of modest homes, though still with a view of the ocean. The place where the Sullivans were staying was dark inside, and we hadn’t spotted anybody else so far.
No Caitlin Sullivan, no Michael Sullivan, or if they were in the house, they were staying back from the windows. That made sense. Plus, I knew that Sullivan was a good shot with a rifle.
I sat down with my back against a tree, huddled against the cold with a gun in my lap. I started thinking through the problem of taking down Sullivan without harming his family.
For one thing, could it be done? After a while, I began to think about Maria again. Was I finally close to clearing her murder? I didn’t know for sure, but it felt like it. Or was that just wishful thinking?
I took out my wallet and slid an old picture from a plastic sleeve. I still missed her every day. Maria would always be thirty years old in my mind, wouldn’t she? Such a waste of a life.
But now she’d brought me here, hadn’t she? Why else would Sampson and I have come alone to get the Butcher?
Because we didn’t want anybody to know what we were going to do with him.