BLUE MERCY Read online

  “What about prints? The Mobile Crime Lab came up with all kinds of latents from Eales’s house, right? What about running those against Arsenault’s?”

  “You mean, from his rape file?”

  “Exactly. The charges were dropped, but he’s probably still on Printrak. If there’s a match, then we can put him in Eales’s house.”

  “And if there isn’t, that doesn’t exclude him from being there either.” Finn sipped the glass of Wink she’d poured him. The soda was flat. He pushed away from the doorframe and wandered to her office.

  Kay’s monitor glared red and white. Finn recognized the Eales website message board. He didn’t doubt Kay read the messages every night, searching for anything that might resemble a lead.

  “What about this website of his?” he asked, heading back to the bathroom. “How about subpoenaing the wiseass for a list of the dipshits on his chat group?”

  “Sure, but it’s probably not going to help. When I dropped him off last night, I asked about getting a list. He said most of them use non-server-based addresses. Almost impossible to track,” she said over the pounding water. “He’s going to try though. I also asked him to remove a lot of the details on the site.”

  “And?”

  “And he agreed.”

  “Guess you do have a way with him, huh?” he said, coming back to the bathroom door.

  But if Kay heard his remark, or the jealousy in his voice, she chose to ignore it.

  Through the textured glass and the steam, Finn watched her soap herself and wished he’d never come upstairs.

  “The list I really want,” Kay said, tilting her head back to rinse, “is Hagen’s.”

  Alexander Hagen hadn’t proven cooperative. They’d called the funeral director twice already for the list of employee names.

  They’d also pulled the fifteen-year-old police reports corresponding with Eales’s accusations against the old man. It had been nothing but bullshit. No evidence. No other complainants. The case had been dropped within days by the investigating officers. But Finn couldn’t escape the feeling that there was more behind Eales’s accusations than a simple case of a horny teenager being denied access to Hagen’s only daughter.

  And then there was Kay’s theory, spawned by Arsenault. Necrophilia. The connections to the Parkview Funeral Home were too obvious to ignore.

  “Well, if you ask me,” Finn said, still watching Kay, “Hagen’s got to have the mother of all hate-ons for Eales. First the accusations. I mean, something like that, if it had gone public, the old man would have been ruined. And then he’s got Eales pawing all over his daughter.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Just that if anyone actually wanted Eales locked up, it’d be old man Hagen.”

  “You mean, set Eales up?” Kay turned off the water and Finn turned his back. “Look, Finn, I agree, there’s something wonky about the Hagens. And the old man’s definitely hiding something. But to set someone up as a serial killer … come on, it’s a bit of a stretch.”

  “Yeah.” Finn left the doorway and wandered back down the hall. “I think we need to talk to Patsy again,” he called over his shoulder. “She’s too involved. I don’t for a second buy that she came to Eales’s rescue after his arrest. Nobody, I don’t care how fucked-up, does that. She’s probably been seeing him all along. And I’m sure she knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “Like maybe if Eales had help.”

  Kay had posed the theory earlier today, and Finn agreed it had merit.

  When she came out of the bathroom, she was wrapped in a light terry robe, the sash snug around her small waist. “Patsy would know who his friends were at least. If someone helped Eales get rid of those bodies a year ago, maybe the guy’s still keeping the fantasy alive. And maybe Hagen knows him.”

  “Or …maybe we really are looking at a damn copycat,” Finn said, trying to get them back to the hard facts of the case, rather than on wild theories and hypotheticals. “I don’t see anything about Beggs’s murder that isn’t on Arsenault’s website. And the ketamine’s new too.”

  Kay’s face was tight. She looked as overwhelmed by the rampant possibilities as he was. Fingering back her wet hair, she shook her head. “I need a drink.”

  When she came back to the living room to join him on the couch, her beer was already half-drunk.

  “Why did you ask me up here, Kay?” He needed to know.

  She said nothing for a moment, then: “I didn’t want to be alone.”

  Their silence then was uncomfortable. He wanted to say so many things but didn’t know how. As he stared at Kay, a year of waiting hit him. A year of sitting on the sidelines of her life, waiting for this day.

  And now that it was here, Finn felt powerless.

  Kay caught his stare.

  “I worry about you,” he told her, admitting the truth at last.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  He washed down his laugh with the last of the bitter soda. “Trust me, it’s not something I can control. I’ve tried.”

  “Finn, listen, you’re a good friend. The best I have. I—”

  “You know something? I don’t want to be your goddamn friend.” He set his glass down on the coffee table a little too hard, and when he stood, he saw the surprise on her face. “I should go.”

  “Finn, wait.” Kay caught him at the door.

  He already had it open, one foot out.

  “Damn it. Wait.” Her hand closed around his wrist.

  But when he turned, she only stared, the rush of emotions behind her eyes too scattered for him to interpret.

  “Don’t you need anything, Kay?” he asked finally. “Don’t you ever need someone in your life? Someone who gives a shit about you?”

  She was struggling. Biting her lip. Searching for an answer. “Yes.” The word caught in her throat. “Yes. I do. Okay? I do. Now just close the door.”

  Finn did.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” she said. “I should never have shut you out.”

  She looked small then, standing there in her robe, the rawness of her emotions unraveling in her voice.

  “It wasn’t fair of me, Finn. I know that. I was only thinking of myself. I’m just … I’m fucked-up, okay? And—”

  He didn’t let her finish. When he pulled her to him, he felt her body trembling. His kiss was frenzied. Desperate. Driven by a year of missing her.

  He wasn’t sure who locked the door then. He heard the dead bolt drive home, felt her heat press against his body. He drew her close, devouring her. And when she started to pull away, he held her tight. In that moment, if she’d said no, Finn wasn’t sure he would have been able to stop.

  But Kay didn’t say no.

  The path to her bed wasn’t straight. Staggering and stumbling down the hall. Past her office and every tacked-up memory of Bernard Eales and Joe Spencer. Pulling at each other. Tearing at each other’s clothes. The familiar dance. Just the two of them. Not Eales. Not Spencer. Not the job.

  He threw aside the comforter. Fumbling with the sash of her robe, then pushing back the terry. His hands took her in, sliding across damp skin, over familiar planes and curves. Her small breasts fitting in each hand.

  She unzipped his slacks, slid her hand beneath. And she held him as a moan slipped from her mouth and into his. When he lowered her to the bed, she pulled him with her. Arching. Clutching. Drawing away briefly, he reached for the nightstand where he knew she kept the condoms. He slid open the drawer and heard the thud of something heavy shift inside. In the dark, he could just make out the lines of her old Glock, and he knew why she kept it there.

  He felt Kay stiffen beneath him, worried the reminder might cause her to withdraw. When he looked into her face, the pale glow from the streetlamp outside washed over her confusion.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, Finn,” she said, a bare and uneasy honesty in her whisper.

  “Then just let me love you,” he said.

  A half nod. Her
legs circled him, urging him into her rhythm.

  It had been too long. He wanted to have her hard and fast, in the way their sweaty athletics had often been. Driving and all-consuming. The kind of exhausting all-out physicality that could—even if only for a few moments— block out the job, block out everything they saw and dealt with daily.

  But tonight was about passion. A passion Finn prayed was mutual. It had to be slower this time. It had to last. Tonight he needed to lower the volume on Kay’s need and his own. Draw it out. As long as he was making love to her, as long as he was inside her he could at least imagine they were together again.

  Kay was frantic though. Her hands, her body, her heat, urging him on. Driving him to a climax he dammed back as long as he could. But when she came, when her tremors clenched around him, Finn couldn’t hold back any longer. He emptied himself deep inside her and fought back the disappointment. It was everything he’d wanted, everything he’d imagined for months. And still, it wasn’t enough.

  It wasn’t until later, as the sound of traffic down on the Key Highway ebbed, and the city quieted, that Kay spoke, her voice thin in the dark. “I’m sorry, Finn.”

  “For what?”

  He heard a car pass by the end of Hamburg Street. A breeze blew the sheer curtains inward, then sucked them out again.

  “For everything,” she whispered eventually.

  And Finn held her tighter.

  32

  “SO YOU’RE SEEING FINN AGAIN?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, you said you’re sleeping with him.”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “But what, Kay?”

  “But it’s going to take more than one night of sex to repair the damage I’ve inflicted on this relationship, isn’t it?” Kay shifted on Constance O’Donnell’s couch, the leather cool under her palms.

  She’d woken at 2 a.m. from the same old dream. The memory of it clinging to her like a thin sweat. She’d thrown back the sheets and stared at the ceiling, listening to Finn’s breathing. When he’d woken, he’d reached for her and she’d turned his comfort into sex. Only this time she let him take his time.

  Slow or fast, Finn was a skilled lover. The best she’d had. But making love to Finn slow made Kay feel like a better person. When he came inside her, she felt that she was giving instead of just taking. That she was his lover. His partner.

  Sex for them had always been an attentive give-and-take. But last night had mostly been about “taking” for Kay. Selfishly, she’d answered her own needs above Finn’s. She’d needed to feel consumed. To find that sweet oblivion once again.

  But that wasn’t what she wanted from Finn. Not ultimately. She wanted to give the way she had before. She wanted to be that better person Finn deserved.

  “So do you think you’re ready for a relationship again?” Constance asked. “A few weeks ago, when you admitted to missing Finn, you said you didn’t think seeing him would be a good idea. That you didn’t want to use him as a crutch, and you needed to heal first. Do you feel you’re beyond that now?”

  Kay nodded. “I think so.” But the truth was she didn’t know, and now she regretted having brought up the subject.

  She eyed the soft leather briefcase she’d dropped next to the coffee table—the real reason she hadn’t canceled her appointment this morning.

  “I need your help,” Kay said, feeling the gears shift.

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Actually, it’s on a case.” Kay nodded to the bottom two shelves of a cherry bookcase that dominated the south wall of the room. She’d noted the texts’ spines on her second visit a year ago. “I know you’ve got an interest in psychopathology. Sexual deviance, homicide.”

  “It’s only ever been an extracurricular interest. I’m certainly not qualified to give advice on a police investigation, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “Then how about an unqualified opinion? I’m allowed to talk about anything I want in these sessions, right?”

  “Of course. But you know any input I offer won’t hold up in court.”

  Kay nodded. She’d already considered this, knew she’d have to move carefully on anything Constance gave her, since it could be challenged down the road by a defense attorney. “I just need a sounding board.”

  Kay reached for the briefcase. Sliding out the files, she fanned the photos across the glass coffee table. Annie Harris. Roma Chisney. The Jane Doe. And now Valley and Bobby Joe Beggs.

  Constance took them in, silently examining the five-by-sevens, before pointing at Beggs’s: “Was she posed like this?”

  “No. She fell out of the trash.”

  “And what about her?” She picked up the photo of the Jane Doe—her nude body laid out in Leakin Park.

  “We don’t think she was posed either. It looked more like he chucked her body down this slope.” Kay indicated in another photo the steep embankment that chiseled down from the roadway above. “And there was no indication he went down with her.”

  “But she’s clean. No debris from the trip down the slope?”

  “We had rain that night.”

  “So none of them were posed?”

  “No. It looked more like they’d been dumped.”

  Constance set her clipboard onto the table next to her chair. Kay saw the flash of notes in elegant penmanship. How many times had she wondered what Constance wrote in that notepad of hers? And now, with the notes in full view, Kay didn’t care.

  Constance leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and skimmed through more photos.

  “Can you tell me anything about their killer?” Kay asked when the silence became unbearable.

  “I thought you had Bernard Eales for these?”

  “These two are new. We’re trying to establish whether they’re copycats, or if …”

  “If you got the wrong guy?” Constance finished for her.

  Kay nodded. “I need an objective opinion on this. You don’t know Eales like I do. You’re not biased.”

  “So I’m to profile your killer and you’ll see if it fits?”

  Kay shrugged. That was exactly what she was hoping for. And then find something I missed. Because the thought that a year ago she could have missed a critical detail was too tough to swallow.

  “Kay, I’m not an expert. Why not take all this to the FBI? Get a real profiler?”

  “Based on my own experience, a profiler’s not going to tell me anything you and I can’t figure out on this one.”

  Kay remembered the Randal Hinch case, early in her homicide career—a pedophile whose carnage was a string of young boys’ bodies, left strangled in abandoned buildings. It appeared the twenty-five-year-old had heard voices most of his adult life, and their volume had been increasing, leading him to murder his victims instead of simply scarring them for life.

  Overenthusiastic, Kay had pushed for a profiler on the case, in spite of Spencer’s loud disdain for the process. Three suits had descended upon the unit, sitting in the cramped and hot boardroom, and at the end of the day she and Spence had gotten nothing more than a plate of hard-shelled crabs down at Cross Street on the FBI’s tab. In the end, it had been Kay’s own intuition and Spencer’s doggedness that had figured out Hinch.

  “All right,” Constance said at last. “I’ll offer what I can.”

  Kay spent the next half hour briefing her on the five cases, ending with Arsenault’s website and the details that had been laid out for all of cyberspace to see.

  “So do you think these could have been committed by the same person?” Kay asked after Constance had examined the photos and autopsy reports.

  “Sure. But that’s an unprofessional opinion.”

  “So what kind of person are we looking at? To have pulled these off?”

  “You’re wanting me to assume we’re looking at one killer for all five?”

  Kay was going with her gut now, even though she didn’t like what it was telling her. “Yes.”

  “Well, I’d ha
ve to say these are definitely well-orchestrated crimes. You say all the victims had been cleaned?”

  “Meticulously. Even their hair.”

  “And no one witnessed these girls’ abductions?”

  “All but one worked as prostitutes. They were easy targets.”

  “Still, he managed to avoid witnesses. And he kept this last body a couple days. He definitely falls into the category of organized offenders.”

  Psychological theories. Sociopathic versus psychopathic. The kinds of hypotheses that rarely came into play while on the job in Baltimore City, where homicides were predominantly drug- or gang-related. Kay had read the differences between organized and disorganized, the principles of sexual homicide. She let Constance give her version.

  “He plans these abductions,” Constance said thoughtfully. “Probably takes his time to choose his victims. All these girls are similar in stature and age, even if their looks vary slightly. Most likely he stakes out an area in advance. With this burned victim, the witness, her abduction on campus took careful planning. The fact that she was burned, that she wasn’t kept for a couple days like this last one, suggests her death may have served more than one purpose. Eliminating her as a witness could have been his primary goal.

  “But all of these are organized. Premeditated. He’s got a pattern he’s following. With a disorganized offender, you’re often looking at at least some form of psychosis. That’s not present here. These aren’t frenzied or blitz-style attacks. These are planned. He’s fantasized about these beforehand.”

  Constance pulled out the photo of the Jane Doe lying in the leaves of Leakin Park. “Overall,” she said, “he’s got control of the situation. He transports the body. There’s an absence of weapons and evidence, removal of the body from the primary crime scene. These are all signs of an organized mind. Also, his choice of victims points to his need for control. These women are all small. He doesn’t want a struggle. He needs to be able to handle them through every stage of the fantasy as he plays it out.”