Free Strangled by Brian McGrory

Truth be told, neither Mongillo nor I knew what else to do. The plan was to call the police, but we also realized that standing here in the lobby, the cops would come, they’d deny us access to the building, and we wouldn’t see anything of the woman’s apartment, including the woman herself. The only thing we’d end up seeing would be several state workers wheeling her body into the coroner’s van. This was not a good way to start the day — not for me, but especially not for Lauren Hutchens.
    “Fuck it,” I said to Mongillo, resigned. “I’ll call Mac Foley now. This isn’t doing anyone any good.”
    Before he could answer, a twentysomething guy in a wool ski hat wearing a knapsack slammed open the glass doors from inside the apartment building and continued through the second set of doors outside — obviously a grad student of some sort on his way to one of the nearby universities. As I placed my foot inside the closing door, Mongillo called out to the guy, “Any idea what apartment Lauren Hutchens is in?” It was a Hail Mary question, but sometimes these things pan out.
    Without stopping, he turned back and called out, “She’s my neighbor, dude. She’s in 416.”
    We were in business. Of course, what kind of business, I didn’t know. We took the elevator to the fourth floor. We scouted out Apartment 416. I looked at Mongillo, standing there in the same durable tan pants he always wore, with a plaid hunting jacket wrapped around his enormous frame. He looked at me. His cell phone was vibrating again, but much to his uncharacteristic credit, he continued to ignore it.
    There was no doorbell, so I knocked. Mongillo pressed his ear to the door to listen, but apparently heard nothing. Was she alive? Would a fresh-faced woman named Lauren suddenly appear at the door? If she did, what would we say? Or were we standing just a few feet from a horrendous crime scene that the criminal wanted me to know about first?
    A minute or so passed and I knocked again. An older woman in the kind of cloth coat that Richard Nixon’s wife once wore appeared out of a nearby apartment. She gave us a suspicious look as she walked past us toward the elevators, but said nothing.
    I tried the knob and it was locked. I stepped away from the door, pulled my cell from my coat, and said, “I’m calling.” I was surprised at how breathless I had become. Mongillo nodded. I dialed the number to the Boston PD’s homicide bureau and asked for Detective Mac Foley.
    Last I saw Foley was the night before, first when he was pleasantly chatting with me, then when he was eyeing me from across the room, pointing me out to another cop. I didn’t for a second think he appreciated my unintended involvement in the Jill Dawson investigation, and he certainly wouldn’t appreciate my new found role in the Lauren Hutchens case — if, in fact, there was a Lauren Hutchens case. Most of me hoped there wasn’t. Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that some embarrassing little granule deep inside my head was excited about it all, but I tried to splash the cold water of human compassion on it.
    I was told by the receptionist that Foley wasn’t available, which didn’t surprise me. Mac Foley, as I’ve said, works under the radar of public interest, even as he’s working in the public interest. Truth was, he probably also wasn’t in yet at this hour. I said, “Would it be possible to page him and let him know that Jack Flynn called. I’ve received more correspondence that may be of an urgent nature.” I left my cell phone number.
    Two minutes later, as Mongillo and I lurked in the dimly lit hallway outside of Lauren Hutchens’s door, my phone rang with Detective Mac Foley on the other end of the line. I got not one second of pleasantry — no top of the morning, no how are you, no nice to meet you from the night before. This was definitely the second version of Mac Foley.
    “What do you have?” he asked abruptly. Same words as Martin