The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3) Brian Shea (good book club books .txt) 📖

"Shut up," Kelly said, shocked.

"You got an image and I got a name. Sounds like a match made in heaven."

Very rarely in police work did a case come together that cleanly and quickly, but when it did, the energy of it was unlike anything else in the investigative world. When a lead shifted into a full-speed manhunt, there was nothing like it. No amount of coffee or nicotine could equal the heart-thumping adrenaline rush of the chase.

"Send it my way."

"Already did. Check your email."

Kelly pulled up an expired driver's license photo and Department of Corrections mugshot for one Wendell Lumpkin. He hit print and a moment later had the two images in hand.

"Got something to add to that video still shot you've got," he said to Barnes excitedly. "Let's go find our guy. We got an old address here on the license. We can start there. I checked in-house already. Nothing within the last couple years."

"Sounds good," Mainelli said, hearing the news.

"Not so fast, sleepyhead." Kelly waved a finger. "Since you decided to sleep through our crime scene while we froze our asses off, I'm letting you type the arrest warrant."

"Come on. Really?" Mainelli offered resistance but knew he didn't have a leg to stand on.

Kelly knew it was fair punishment. The man hated paperwork more than he hated getting up in the morning. It was a soft win for Kelly. Plus, it gave him and Barnes a chance to go and do some digging. He felt the adrenaline coursing through his veins, equal to being inside the ring.

He was close. He could feel it.

15

Wendell Lumpkin’s home address turned out to belong to his mother, who was nearing the ripe old age of eighty-three and in poor health. Wendell had burnt his last bridge with his mother after stealing a family heirloom and pawning it, a Rolex her husband had received as a parting gift after thirty years of service to his company. The heirloom fetched Wendell sixty dollars on the trade and had been the tipping point in her tolerance of her son’s addiction.

Kelly couldn't help thinking back to Brayden’s near-death experience when he heard the story. The turmoil leading up to hitting bottom had pushed the balance of tolerance. His brother's addiction with heroin had nearly severed their relationship.

Facing death breathed life into his brother. Close brushes with death had a tendency to give perspective. The opiate afflicted often were hospitalized three to four times before either kicking the habit or dying.

Upon hearing Wendell Lumpkin's story, Kelly was grateful to have his younger sibling back in the fold of their family. If the past couple months were any indication of the future, Brayden appeared to be winning the battle against his addiction.

Wendell Lumpkin, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. His mother had cast him out after the final straw broke. He turned to the streets, homeless and bouncing from shelter to shelter. Ann Marie Lumpkin said her last contact with her son was nearly a year and a half ago. She had assumed when Kelly and Barnes arrived at her doorstep, they were there to tell her he was dead.

Kelly knew Lumpkin’s life, or at least his meager existence, ended the moment he decided to plunge a knife three times into an unarmed man during a robbery. It was a different kind of death. The slow, meandering kind that happened to a person who was apprehended and ripped from society.

Massachusetts had done away with the death penalty in 1984, but cold-blooded murder committed during the commission of another crime carried with it a heavy penalty. Beyond the killing itself, the penalty would be made worse by the fact the attack was captured on video. The defense would be limited, if indeed there was any at all.

Mrs. Lumpkin said Wendell loved the downtown area. It was where she had last seen him when she cared enough to look. He frequented the shelters around Downtown Crossing.

Since Palmer had been murdered not too far from there, Kelly figured it was as good a lead as any.

After leaving Ann Marie’s small one-bedroom apartment in the North End, Kelly and Barnes headed downtown. Kelly had mapped the homeless shelters within a one-mile radius of where Jason Palmer's body was found. If nothing popped at their three potentials, they would extend their radial search in one-mile increments.

It was early and Kelly, having worked narcotics, knew the majority of shelters cleared their guests out during the day. Residents needed to sign back in each night.

Two of the shelters had no record of a Wendell Lumpkin in the past couple weeks. The third did, although he had last checked in three days ago. Yet still, it was promising.

Transient populations were difficult to track, but even homeless people had patterns to their behavior. You just needed to take the time to see them. Their unconventional lifestyle did not conform to that of the average citizen, but Kelly had learned the importance of understanding the habitual pattern in the eccentric nature of their existence. He'd spent many days among the homeless population, partly for his job, partly for his own curiosity to better understand them as a culture.

Mental illness permeated the group. Some of the behaviors were erratic, and the thought patterns guiding them were at times unpredictable. Kelly learned even the most socially deviant still maintained a need for basic necessities like food and shelter. The homeless who sought shelter didn't deviate as far from the norm as others who found refuge on the open streets, sleeping in subways tunnels or on the grates.

The good news was that in the winter months, the shelter accepted the wait list for beds earlier in the day, allowing the homeless to get off the street sooner than during the summer.

The attendant at the Hope's Chance Shelter, three blocks from the murder, had told them walk-ins for available beds had to sign in between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. After that, their doors were shut to new