The Burning Soul (Charlie Parker, #10)

by John Connolly

Dig again: Anna Mary Morris was born in Dorchester, Mass. Search for Ronald Doheny, and Massachusetts. Dismiss the eighty-year-old man who had died of cancer after a long and happy life with his wife of fifty-eight years. Dismiss the high-school football star who had wrapped his car around a tree two years before Anna was born. Dismiss a chronically obese used-car salesman (“Ronnie’s the Real Deal!”), and a prodigiously gifted eight-year-old child violinist. Leave Ronald Doheny of Somerville, Mass.: twenty-one years old when he skipped bail in December 1997 on charges of possession of a Class A substance for sale or distribution, which in Massachusetts in the late 1990s probably meant heroin. Dig, dig, dig: Ronald Doheny, one of three men found in an apartment in Winter Hill, Somerville, along with three kilos of heroin. That meant Doheny was looking at a mandatory fifteen years, which was tough for anyone, but particularly for someone who had barely attained his majority.

IN THE WORST OF ALL MEN THERE IS A LITTLE BIT OF GOOD THAT WILL DESTROY THEM. William Rose (1914–1987)