BLUE MERCY Read online

  They left him then, his formerly straight and proud silhouette looking suddenly withered. Finn wondered how long it would be before Hagen called his daughter and what the outcome of the confrontation would be.

  Finn had to hurry to catch up to Kay as she steered herself down the carpeted corridor, past the showrooms of polished caskets, and out the front doors.

  “He’s hiding something,” she said even before they’d reached the bottom of the wide stone steps.

  “Agreed,” Finn said.

  “We might have to get a subpoena for those records.”

  “If we have to, we will. But I say give the old man a couple days. Let him digest the news we’ve just thrown at him. I think he’ll come through with the list. In the meantime, we oughta go over Eales’s records again. See if there were any police reports filed in connection with this place.”

  Kay was shaking her head. “I’ve been over those files so many times, Finn. I’ve never seen Hagen’s name.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time we looked into Mr. Hagen then. After all, his daughter didn’t exactly tell us who was accusing who, now did she?”

  25

  FROM THE PARKVIEW FUNERAL HOME, Kay drove them to Headquarters. Leaving the Lumina in the last available spot on the top floor of the Department parking garage, she and Finn walked down through exhaust fumes, the smell of old grease, and cigarette smoke to the battered steel door that served as the back entrance. Still, she couldn’t shed the pall that had crept into her very pores while in Hagen’s funeral home.

  The air had been musty and cloying. Perfumed decay wafting through the floor vents, choking her with the memories of her mother, laid out in a casket with what few trimmings her father could afford. Eleven years old, and what Kay remembered most about her mother was that she looked as though she were made of plastic before they put her in the earth.

  Kay hated the lies of funeral homes: the catalogues of caskets and trite verses on headstones. None of it had anything to do with the reality of death.

  When they reached the sixth floor, Gunderson caught them at the elevators. His tie hung loose and sweat stains marked his shirt.

  “Your pretty boy Arsenault’s here,” he said, shoving a thumb at the closed door of Interview Room One as they followed him.

  “Already?” Kay asked.

  “You sure were right about this guy.” Finn lifted the sheet of paper permanently taped over the eight-by-ten-inch reinforced window of the door and snatched a glimpse.

  “I need an update when you’re done,” Gunderson said, then turned down the corridor. “I’ve got the captain all over my ass on this one. At least pretend you’re onto something,” he added, disappearing into his office.

  Behind her, Finn let the paper settle back over the window. “It’s your move, Kay. You predicted this wiseass would come in. We’ll play this your way.”

  “Let me just grab a couple files.”

  When she returned, she gave Finn a nod, straightened her jacket, and opened the door.

  Arsenault looked crisp. In his crease-free pants and his starched shirt, he paced the length of the narrow room, hands in his pockets. His suit jacket hung precisely over the back of one of the three vinyl chairs. He looked relatively calm until he spotted Finn behind her.

  “Hello, Scotty. Nice to see you. Have a seat.” Finn gestured to the chair against the back wall.

  Arsenault hesitated. His eyes went from Finn to the chair, as though aware of the psychological warfare of interrogation rooms. Whether or not Arsenault saw the iron holds bolted to the underside of the table, he knew the offered chair was reserved for suspects. Kay wasn’t surprised when he pulled the chair around to the side of the table.

  “Thanks for coming in, Mr. Arsenault,” she said, setting the files down.

  “Scott. Please.” He flashed her a tense smile, but Kay sensed the wariness behind it.

  “So what can we do for you today?” she asked, sitting across from him, in the chair with his jacket. She noticed the Armani name on its label.

  Arsenault held his breath for a moment. When he let it out, Kay smelled alcohol. She imagined him in a bar, tossing one back to loosen up before coming in. “I saw the papers,” he said. “You didn’t tell me you were investigating the murder of Valerie Regester.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Only that she was supposed to be a witness in Eales’s trial.”

  “Ever meet her?” Kay asked.

  “No. But I know you’re probably looking at me as a suspect.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because of the website. I know it doesn’t look good.”

  “It might help if you had an alibi, Scotty,” Finn said. He leaned against the opposite end of the table.

  “That’s why I’m here.” Arsenault reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and took out two business cards, slid them across the table. “These are two associates I was out with Wednesday. The night the girl was killed.”

  It was too easy. Kay saw Finn’s suspicion.

  “Check it out,” Arsenault said, giving the cards another shove in Finn’s direction.

  “And these buddies of yours,” Finn asked, “are they expecting my call?”

  “I warned them you might be contacting them, yes.” Arsenault was bouncing his foot, his knee jiggled up and down.

  “So why exactly do you think we’d be suspecting you, Scott?” Kay asked.

  He took in another breath, seemed to weigh options she could only imagine. “Like I said, because of the website. And the information on it.”

  “But you get the information from Patricia Hagen, don’t you?”

  “Most of it.”

  Kay wasn’t ready to push him. Not yet. Play him slow. Scatter him. “You know anything about Ms. Hagen’s father?”

  “Not really.”

  “Patricia told us there’d been conflict between her dad and Eales. She ever mention anything about that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, Scotty”—Finn’s voice was gruff—“you actually want to help us here. Trust me.”

  “All right, yes, Patsy did mention there’d been a falling-out the last time Bernard worked for her dad.”

  “Accusations. We know. Any idea what they were about?”

  “Apparently Bernard called the cops on Hagen.”

  Kay shared a glance with Finn.

  Arsenault saw it. “What? You two thought it was the other way around, didn’t you? That it was the old man calling the cops.” He shook his head. “Patsy told me Bernard accused her father of doing stuff with the bodies. Knowing Bernard, though, he probably did it just to stir up shit for the old man. But it’s not like I know Hagen. Who knows what his game is?”

  Arsenault picked lint from his pant leg. From there he seemed concerned with his fingernails. The foot-bouncing, the grooming—all signs Kay would normally take as indicators of a lying suspect. But with Arsenault she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just part of his obsessive-compulsive nature.

  “And what’s your take on Patsy and Bernard?” Finn asked then.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Scotty. A woman like that with someone like Eales? It doesn’t exactly jibe, know what I’m saying?”

  “I agree, but it’s not like I’ve got that one figured out either. Though, sometimes I get the feeling Eales might have something on her, you know?”

  “Like what?”

  “I have no idea.” Arsenault checked his watch, then eyed the business cards he’d tossed on the table, clearly anxious to have his alibi verified.

  Kay picked up the cards, handed them to Finn.

  “Guess I’ll go check these out,” Finn said.

  When the door closed behind Finn, Kay knew Arsenault’s eyes were on her. She shed her jacket and laid it across the end of the table. It was about body language now; show him she was relaxed. Keep it informal. Non-adversarial.

  His voice was different now that they were alone. Softer. Relaxe
d. “So how are you doing these days, Detective? I mean, since Bernard?”

  “Fine, thanks,” she said, surprised at the odd sense of ease she felt with him.

  “I bet it’s not easy though, being a woman on the unit. On the force,” Arsenault went on. “I mean not just the whole old boys’ club, but on the streets. You’re only what, five-five? That must be a bit of an impairment in some situations.”

  “I hold my own.”

  “Still, you’ve taken more than most. From what I read, Bernard almost killed you.”

  “I’m still here.” Kay couldn’t tell if it was something in Arsenault’s tone then, or in his eyes, but she sensed a genuineness in his words.

  He studied her for a long moment, then sat back in his chair. “So Finnerty, he’s your new partner now?”

  “We’re working this case together, yes.”

  “He really does like me for this, doesn’t he?” Arsenault asked, and Kay suspected he used the cop lingo to align himself with her.

  “Well, you gotta admit, Scott, you’ve given him good reason.” Kay opened Valley’s case file then. Reports, evidence logs, Jonesy’s protocol. As she flipped the pages, she was aware of Arsenault leaning into the table for a closer look.

  She stopped when she came to one of the pages she’d printed off his website and added to the file: a detailed documentation of the case, the investigation, and a summary of the evidence, as well as a chronicle of Bernard Eales’s insipid life. “These lists of yours,” she pointed out, “they’re very precise.”

  “I do my research. Like I said, it’s an interest. There’s no crime in that, is there?”

  “No. But come on, Scott, be honest. You don’t actually believe these guys you’ve got websites for are innocent, do you?”

  “In a couple of the cases, after going through court documents, statements, testimony, I did question some aspects of the investigations and trials. Clarence Gossard, for one. And Eddie McCleester. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the cases, but in both of them their lawyers really mangled their defense.”

  “So they’re innocent because they didn’t get a fair trial?”

  “No. In McCleester’s case, sure, the evidence is circumstantial. Still, I’m sure he did it. Gossard too.”

  Kay wondered if Arsenault was merely indulging her.

  “And what about Eales?”

  He shrugged casually, but she could tell he chose his words carefully now. “From everything I’ve heard, the evidence is strong. And you can’t argue evidence, can you?”

  “Well, there’s evidence. And then there’s intuition.”

  “And what’s your intuition tell you, Kay?”

  She shrugged. “I have my own theories.”

  He seemed to recognize he wasn’t going to get more from her. “Well, I think if there’s any doubt in Bernard’s guilt, it lies in his character. I mean, he’s not some mastermind serial killer. The way I see Bernard, he’s more of an opportunist. Sees something he wants and simply takes it. He’s not a planner, so one has to wonder, how could he have pulled off those murders? At the same time, maybe there’s more to Bernard than meets the eye. I’m sure people underestimate him all the time. Even you did.”

  She tried not to flinch, and she caught a glimpse of sympathy in his eyes then. Regret that he’d brought up the memory for her.

  “But you’ve probably talked to Bernard yourself,” Arsenault said. “What do you think?”

  When she held his stare for a moment too long, a nervous smile twitched at the corners of Arsenault’s lips. He knew he’d pushed the boundary.

  “Look, Scott”—she drew his website pages from the file and slid them over to him—“we’ve got a big problem here.”

  The smile fell.

  “It’s about some of this content. You know you’ve got certain details here, details that were never made public, were never in the media. In fact, they were our hold-back. Can you explain that?”

  The wheels turned behind Arsenault’s quick eyes.

  “You gotta come clean, Scott. You keep silent on this and life’s gonna get real messy real fast for you.”

  When he dropped his gaze to the pages, he appeared to scan them, but she knew he wasn’t. Scott Arsenault knew exactly what detail she was referring to.

  “It’s the cuts to the victims’ chests, isn’t it?” he asked finally.

  “Bingo.”

  “Oh, Christ.” He pushed away from the table. Stood, and paced the back wall of the room like a lab animal in its cage.

  “Listen to me, Scott, you’re not in trouble if you’ve got a source. Just tell us who it is. Tell us how you knew about those injuries, especially since you say you’ve never spoken with Eales.”

  He wouldn’t look at her, and Kay worried she’d lost him.

  “Scott?”

  But then he stopped, his expression drawn taut when he turned on her. “Wait a second. These are old cases. If this is about those cuts to Eales’s victims’ …Did Valerie Regester have the same marks on her chest?”

  Her lack of response gave him the answer.

  “Oh, man.”

  “Come on, Scott, talk to me. No one knew that detail except the investigating detectives and the ME who did the autopsies. And, of course, the killer. So unless—”

  “No. There is someone else who knew.” He’d started pacing again, shaking his head. “Christ.”

  “Who is it, Scott? We need a name.”

  Kay watched him pace, his hands clenching into fists, his knuckles white.

  “Andy Reaume,” he said finally.

  “And who’s he?”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No. It’s not like that.”

  “So she’s a source. What is she? Is she on the job? A crime-scene technician?”

  More hesitation. Then: “She’s with the medical examiner’s office.”

  Of course.

  “She cleans up after the autopsies,” he explained. “Preps the bodies for viewing, organizes personal belongings, that sort of thing. She told me about the cuts to the victims’ chests.”

  “Working at the ME’s, she’d have signed a confidentiality waiver.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything when you came to my place Friday. I really don’t want to get Andy in trouble.”

  “Well, it’s a little late for that.”

  When Finn came through the door, Arsenault stiffened visibly. “Have a seat, Scotty.” Finn kicked out a chair and motioned for him to sit, then tossed the business cards back onto the table. “ ’Fraid your alibi doesn’t check out.”

  “What do you mean?” Arsenault’s voice was thin as he sat.

  “I mean, your story doesn’t wash. You weren’t at any bar Wednesday night.”

  “You talked to my friends?”

  “Oh, sure. They said you were at The Cosmo with them down in Fells Point from nine till one a.m. Lied just like you asked ’em to.”

  A muscle along Arsenault’s jaw went crazy.

  “You forgot about your doorman, Scotty.” Finn planted one hand on the table and leaned across it into Arsenault’s personal space. “I did some checking. Guess you figured the doorman didn’t notice you when you snuck out at nine thirty. And he says he never saw you come back in.”

  “I did come back. He mustn’t have been at his station when I did.”

  “So you did lie.”

  Arsenault snatched up his friends’ business cards and worried them between his fingers. Kay saw the sheen of sweat along his forehead.

  “Okay, look, I was home that night,” he said. “But I was alone, so what the hell kind of alibi is that, you know? I did go out at nine thirty for some takeout. That’s all. A half hour. I was back by ten.”

  But Arsenault must have seen that Finn wasn’t buying it.

  “Look, I was supposed to meet up with the guys at the bar that night anyway, but I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “So you figured you�
�d lie.”

  “Hey, is it my fault the doorman wasn’t at his post when I came back?”

  Finn shook his head. “Doesn’t look good when you lie, Scotty.”

  Arsenault’s chair scraped back against the linoleum as he stood. He turned to Kay. “Look, I’ve told you everything I know.” He reached for his jacket. “Unless there’s something else Detective Finnerty wants to harass me about, I think I’ll be going.”

  “Well, actually …” Finn stepped back from the table and opened the Interview Room door. “Before you go, Scotty, there’s someone here wants to say hi.”

  “Who?” Tension flared.

  “Maureen Greer. You remember her, don’t you? From the Rape Unit?”

  And Scott Arsenault’s face blanched.

  26

  MO GREER HAD BEEN WORKING Rape for ten years and somewhere along the way had acquired the not-so-flattering nickname Bulldog. Kay never knew if it came from Mo’s stout figure or because once she got her teeth into someone she didn’t let go.

  When Mo stepped into the Interview Room, Arsenault remained standing. His face tight, his back straight.

  “Hey, Mr. Kelly.” Mo swung her stockiness around with the same ease she did her confidence. She pulled out the last free chair, slapped her own file onto the table, and sat. “Or wait. Detective Finnerty tells me it’s Arsenault now? How you been doin’? Why don’t you pull up a chair and take a load off, huh?”

  Kay watched the Web designer. He didn’t move.

  “How long’s it been?” Mo asked. “Six years, right? I thought I recognized you when you came off the elevator. You had me a little confused though with the name change. No wonder Detective Finnerty couldn’t find anything on you. Arsenault. That’s your mother’s maiden name, isn’t it?”

  “You have a good memory, Detective Greer,” he said stiffly.

  “So why the change?”

  “My mother passed. I took her name out of respect. Is that a problem?”

  Mo shook her head. “Only if you did it to escape this rape charge.” She slid the dog-eared folder to Kay.

  “The charge was dropped, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to change my name, now would I? And that file should have been expunged.”