Chapter 7 - THE SKETCHBOOK
Chloe’s fingers trembled as she turned the water-stained pages of Leo’s sketchbook.
Her brother had wanted to be a graphic novelist. Because he couldn't hear the world around him, he had watched it with hawk-like precision, sketching people on the subway, dockworkers at the harbor, license plates, faces.
Three pages from the back, Chloe stopped.
There, drawn in crisp black ink, was a detailed sketch of Pier 4 in South Boston. Beneath the crane lights stood two men standing beside an open shipping container filled with unmarked medical crates.
One man was clearly Dante—Leo had captured his slick hair, his sharp nose, and the way he stood with his hands in his jacket.
The second man was wearing a Boston Police Detective’s badge clipped to his belt. And in his hand, drawn with enlarged detail in the corner margin of the page, was a gold Zippo lighter with the initials A.C.
Beneath the drawing, Leo had written a note to himself in neat pencil:
Saw these guys behind the cannery after my shift at the fish market. The guy in the suit read the cop’s lips—said they used the fentanyl from these crates to stop the old boss’s heart so the son would take the fall when the feds raid next month. Gotta show Chloe.
The date at the top of the page was October 14th.
The night Leo died.
Chloe sank onto the bumper of the green Mercedes, pressing her hand over her mouth as a sob finally broke from her chest.
“He wasn’t just riding his bike home,” she cried softly, clutching the sketchbook against her heart. “He read their lips from across the dock. Dante saw him sketching and chased him down Route 9.”
Gabriel knelt in front of her on the dusty concrete floor. He didn't care about the blood dripping from his arm onto his trousers. Gently, with an aching tenderness that took her breath away, he reached out and wiped a tear from her jaw with his thumb.
“Look at me, Chloe,” Gabriel said quietly.
She looked up into his dark eyes.
“Dante killed my father. He crippled my mother. And he murdered your brother to cover it up,” Gabriel said, his voice steady as iron. “And then he used my guilt to keep me chained to this business for four years when my father was trying to set me free.”
Beatrice placed a warm, steady hand on Chloe’s shoulder, signing softly where Chloe could see her.
Your brother was brave, little bird. He tried to save my son’s life before he even knew his name.
Chloe looked down at the sketch of the police detective again. A cold chill ran down her spine as she recognized the sharp cheekbones and the heavy mustache in Leo’s drawing.
“Gabriel,” Chloe breathed, pointing at the drawing of the corrupt detective. “I know this cop.”
Gabriel looked closely at the sketch. “That’s Detective Miller. State Police Organized Crime Unit. He’s been hunting my family for five years.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Chloe said, her heart racing. “Miller was the lead investigator who came to my apartment the morning after Leo died! He was the one who told me the hit-and-run car had diplomatic plates and that there were no cameras on Route 9! And he told me Leo’s backpack and sketchbook were lost in the river!”
Everything fell into place with sickening clarity.
Detective Miller was on Dante’s payroll. When Leo was killed on Route 9, Miller had arrived at the crime scene first, taken Leo’s sketchbook and rosary off his body, and handed them straight to Dante.
And Dante had kept them in the trunk of the dead Don’s car—right inside Gabriel’s own carriage house—so that if the FBI ever raided the property, Gabriel would go down for both the fentanyl shipment and the murder of a sixteen-year-old witness.
Suddenly, the red and blue strobe lights of four police cruisers flashed through the dirty glass windows at the front of the carriage house.
A bullhorn crackled from the cobblestone alley outside.
“Gabriel Costello! This is Detective Miller, Massachusetts State Police! We have an anonymous tip that you’re holding a kidnapping victim and an elderly woman hostage inside the garage! Come out with your hands empty, or we breach in sixty seconds!”
Beatrice gripped Gabriel’s arm.
Chloe looked at the front roll-up doors of the garage. If Gabriel walked out there with a gunshot wound and a gun in his belt, Miller and Dante would shoot him dead in the alley and claim he fired first. And then they would walk inside and silence Chloe and Beatrice forever to bury the sketchbook.
“They aren't here to arrest you,” Chloe whispered. “It’s an execution.”
Gabriel stood up slowly, looking at the green 1978 Mercedes sitting in front of them. The keys were still dangling from the trunk lock.
“How well can you drive a stick shift?” Gabriel asked her.
“I drove a rusted Honda Civic through six Boston winters,” Chloe said, wiping her tears with the back of her coat sleeve. “Why?”
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Gabriel looked at his mother, then at Chloe, and pulled a heavy leather envelope of property deeds and his father’s ledger from the trunk, stuffing them into Chloe’s backpack along with Leo’s sketchbook.
“Because I can’t shift gears with a bullet in my left shoulder,” Gabriel said, tossing her the keys to the vintage Mercedes. “And because fifty yards down that alley is the rear courtyard of the Italian Consulate—where thirty reporters are currently standing with live cameras for the Mayor’s press conference.”
