Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

and threatened Frank. By trying to kill him, Frank was tying up loose ends. I thought of that cold evening– how long ago was it now? – when to see what the hell it was Frank Gannon wanted. I thought of all the things he had told me.
    The Chief said, “When that failed, he went to plan B. If he couldn’t kill you, he’d have the State of New York do it for him. He got your knife and killed Concannon with it. You were lucky you were wherever you were and not home when my men came to your place looking for you.”
    I thought about that, about where I was and how I had come to be there. Had the Chief inadvertently saved me by sending me to the reservation? Could he live with himself if he knew that?
    And then I thought of Gale, imagining her on her porch right now, wrapped in her afghan, maybe scanning the dark night, looking for me, or maybe not. After a while I looked at the Chief and said, “Why kill Concannon?”
    “Because I think Concannon found the truth.”
    “What truth?”
    “I think he came across what someone’s been trying to keep secret. What someone’s been killing to keep secret.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    The Chief looked at me, waited a moment, then said, “In the past thirty years Frank Gannon has murdered, or has had murdered, close to fifteen men, mostly political rivals and men who found out something about him that he didn’t want to get out. And I’m sure that in his early days, when he was just starting out, he killed for money. If you ask me, the guy’s a fucking serial killer. He was just lucky enough to find a vocation that allowed him to indulge his compulsion. But none of the bodies of the men he murdered have ever been found. Not one of them. Not a trace. And, in most cases, Frank was the man they were last seen with. I’m no genius, MacManus, but even I can do that math. I’ve thought about this a lot, and over the years I’ve come to conclude that Frank had to have been hiding the bodies in one place, in his own private graveyard somewhere out there, right under our fucking noses.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “If he scattered the bodies around the East End, with all the development that has occurred out here over the past thirty years, we would have found at least one of them. If he dropped the bodies in the ocean, one had to have washed ashore at some point. No, Frank has his own burial ground somewhere, and by what’s been going on these last few days I’ve got a pretty good idea for the first time where it is.”
    “The reservation,” I said.
    “I can think of several good places to hide bodies, places no one would ever build upon – or, rather, no Shinnecock would build upon.”
    “You’re saying Frank killed Concannon. Because Concannon found out about the bodies.”
    “The environmental group opposing the sale hired Concannon to research the effects future construction might have on the ecology. They wanted to block the sale entirely, or at least have the land declared a wildlife refuge. Anything to prevent construction. The town was behind them. Of course, Frank was all for this, too. It would solve a lot of his problems. He watched closely, staying out of things. But Concannon must have found something that made Frank nervous, and so Frank had him killed.”
    “The girl, Amy Curry. Why did Frank kill her?
    The Chief shrugged. “To warn Concannon, maybe.”
    “To warn him of what?”
    “To keep his mouth shut. To do what Frank told him to do. To write his report the way Frank wanted. I don’t know. Maybe it was all that. Maybe it was something else.”
    “And in between he tried to kill me and Augie.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Just my luck to have an overachiever for my enemy.”
    The Chief nodded. “I’ve never seen Frank this reckless. He’s running scared. I don’t see how he’d be able to sleep at night, knowing that a few hours after the first bone is found the FBI will come crashing down on our little town. A lot of people have a lot to say about Frank, if only someone would just ask them. But he’s in a panic now. And there’s going to be a lot more killing before this is over, you can count on that.”
    “So do something about it, Chief. Now that you know where his victims are, call the FBI, get them over there now. Be the one who brings down Frank Gannon.”
    The Chief was silent for a moment. I could hear a faint wheezing deep in my lungs when I exhaled.
    He shook his head and said, his eyes winced as if he was in