BLUE MERCY Read online

  “Lucky guess?”

  “No. The building means something. He was familiar with it.”

  “Come on, Kay, we’re getting soaked. We’ll come back in the daylight. Rattle some doors. By then Arson will have something for us. We may as well get started on the paperwork.”

  Kay started to follow him, then stopped. “No. I want to go to Valley’s apartment first.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. You said her purse had been gone through. This guy has her address. It wouldn’t be the first time a perp made a house call after the fact. Besides, we have to check the place anyway.”

  “Fine. But we gotta get through that.” He nodded to the media personnel, each jockeying for a better position along the yellow tape. One broke from the pack. “Here comes Jane,” Finn warned.

  Jane Gallagher, WBAL’s crime reporter, zeroed in, her cameraman scrambling to keep up.

  “Detective Delaney, can you tell us if there’s been a positive identification on the body?”

  “No comment.” The red operating light on the camera glowed, and Kay clamped down on a dozen other words she’d rather use.

  “Has it been ruled a homicide?”

  The microphone bobbled in Kay’s face. “No comment.”

  “What about the fire? Has it been classified an arson?”

  There was a time Kay had been civil to Gallagher. Actually liked her. She’d used the reporter herself a couple times on cases. But that had ended fourteen months ago. Paramedics had barely scraped Kay’s battered body off Eales’s walkway when the reporter had pounced. The next morning, and for several days after, the image of Kay’s bloodied and swollen face had flashed across Channel 11’s monitors.

  But it had been Gallagher’s ongoing commentary on the incident that had been the most defamatory: citing bad judgment, a disregard for policy, and a lack of departmental defensive training as the cause of the brutal attack on the two detectives. Kay never knew why Gallagher had such an obsession for the case, but Kay suspected Jane’s feelings for Spencer had gone beyond professional, despite his wedding ring. And that Gallagher, like many others, blamed Kay for his death.

  “Detective Delaney, are you working the case? Is this your first investigation since—”

  Before Gallagher could execute any defensive move, Kay had the mike in one hand. With the other she snatched the lens of the shoulder-mounted camera. The reporter’s thin lips stretched into a smile, and Kay despised the amusement she saw in the woman’s face.

  “Don’t go there, Jane. Don’t go anywhere near there. You are the last person who’s getting anything on this, you hear?”

  “Wait, is that a departmental position or a personal one?”

  “You need to ask?”

  “I’m just doing my job, Detective.”

  “Yeah? Then let me do mine or you’re going to find this mike so far up your rectum you’re going to need a fucking nuclear enema to get it out.” Kay gave the microphone a final shove before turning.

  Behind her, Gallagher mumbled something indiscernible, then Kay heard Finn’s voice: “… not like you don’t deserve it, Janey. Besides, you know the drill. Talk to the spokesperson. Like everyone else.”

  Kay couldn’t make out the words after that, but when Finn caught up with her, his silence said it all. He’d just run damage control for her, and he didn’t like it.

  6

  VALERIE REGESTER’S APARTMENT was up in Hampden, a predominantly white, working-class enclave in the Northern District. Here there were fewer steel grates over store windows and doors, and the trash sat neatly at the curbs waiting for morning pickup. The four-story walk-up smelled of cooked onions and cat piss, and the humidity from the day still hung in the tight stairwell. It was even hotter on the top-floor landing outside the girl’s apartment.

  Kay remembered Valley’s excitement the day she’d first brought the girl to see the rental. The promise in Valley’s eyes was one of those images, those life snapshots, that would stay with Kay forever. But as she envisioned it now, Kay saw her burned remains. And she saw Bernard Eales. Could he have arranged the girl’s murder?

  Kay watched as Finn snapped on a fresh latex glove and tried the knob of Valley’s door.

  “Locked,” he said. “Doesn’t look like our boy was here. Does she have a roommate?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna wake the super?”

  But Kay didn’t have to answer. From the opposite door on the landing there was the slide of a chain, then a dead bolt being thrown back. When the door opened a crack, Kay badged the tenant.

  “It’s Valerie, isn’t it?” Valley’s neighbor looked to be in her early twenties. She clutched a silk kimono around her and twisted a lock of blond hair around one finger. Behind her, through the open door, Kay saw the snow-filled television screen of a station gone off the air.

  “I’m Detective Delaney. This is Detective Finnerty.”

  “Kathleen Koch.” Her hand was slim and cool in Kay’s. “You’re that cop. Valerie’s friend, aren’t you? I recognize you from the picture in the paper.”

  “Yeah,” Kay said. The same picture everyone else in Baltimore City and twenty-three counties from Worcester to Garrett had seen. “Ms. Koch, do you know if anyone’s been here tonight?”

  “No. I would have heard. I’ve been keeping an ear out, waiting for Valerie to come home from class.”

  “Class?”

  “Yeah. She’s taking a drawing class at Notre Dame. It’s done at ten and she should have been home hours ago. She’s got work tomorrow.”

  “Does she get a ride with someone? Take Mass Transit?”

  “Sometimes she catches the Light Rail. Tonight she had my car.”

  “Would she have driven anyone home?”

  “No.”

  “Does Valerie have a boyfriend?” Kay asked.

  “No. Not Valerie. She’s had it with guys. That’s why she’s at Notre Dame,” Koch said, referring to the all-women’s campus.

  “You don’t have a key to her apartment, do you, Kathy?” Finn asked.

  “Sure.” Koch groped the wall just inside the door and produced a key chain.

  “Can you tell us what Valley was wearing tonight?” Kay asked.

  “Oh, God, what’s happened to her?” The first waver of panic gripped the girl’s voice and her knuckles whitened around the spare key. “Tell me she’s all right.”

  Kay shook her head. Looked to Finn. In her partnership with Spencer she’d always been the one consoling, the one carefully choosing words for the victim’s survivors. Spence used to tell her she was good at it. But Kay had figured out early on that it was just his way of avoiding the wailing mothers, the weeping spouses, and the hysterical family and friends.

  “She borrowed my leather miniskirt.” Koch handed Kay the key, her hand suddenly shaking. “It’s pink. And a white top, I think. What’s happened to her?”

  Kay unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer of Valley’s apartment. Tonight, she couldn’t be the one delivering the news. After what she’d seen back at the warehouse, there was no comfort left in her.

  Behind her she heard Finn’s muted tones, then Kathleen Koch’s sobs. The place smelled of scented candles or some kind of flowery air-freshener. A cheap box fan in one window slapped the heavy night air through the small apartment. The carpeting was worn, but Valley had had it cleaned. She’d painted as well. Kay remembered the nicotine-yellowed walls.

  Nowhere in the apartment were there signs of a struggle or foul play. Nothing to indicate Valley had been abducted from her home. Still, Kay pulled a pair of gloves from her jacket pocket.

  In the bedroom, the wall switch worked a small lamp on the nightstand. A faded kerchief with a Florentine pattern was draped over the shade, muting the light. The bed was made, pillows carefully arranged. Another fan was propped in the bedroom window, its breeze rustling the leaves of a hanging spider plant and the brittle pages of newsprint tacked to the wall—pages from Valley’s sketchbook
. Life-drawings, nudes, portraits in broad, bold strokes of charcoal. Kay recognized several of Kathleen Koch.

  A paint-chipped dresser with lopsided drawers had been angled into the corner, the top cluttered with costume jewelry, knockoff imitation scents in quaint perfume bottles, and nail polish from Wal-Mart. Tucked in the corner of the clouded mirror was a photo-booth snap of her and Koch. Both laughing.

  There were no other photos. No family shots. No childhood memories caught on celluloid. Kay remembered the sound of the zipper on Valley’s body bag. Who would bury the girl?

  Kay tamped down the threat of emotion. The time to grieve was later, after Valley’s killer had been caught. Right now she couldn’t afford to dwell on the girl’s loss.

  Crossing to the bed, Kay pulled open the nightstand drawer: a dog-eared Chicken Soup book and a half-used pack of matches from Donna’s in Mount Vernon. She’d taken Valley there for lunch months ago, had jotted her new cell number inside the matchbook. A bottle of NyQuil and two prescription bottles rattled in the drawer when Kay pulled it open farther. She picked them up, turning each into the light: Xanax and doxycycline.

  Taking one last look around the bedroom, Kay knew Valley hadn’t been hooking again. She shouldn’t have been so quick to lose faith in the girl. This was the apartment of someone starting over, someone living on a city wage, leaving a lifetime on the streets behind her. She’d turned her life around, and watching her do it had been one of the few glimpses of humanity Kay had found since that night on Eales’s porch. It had given her hope.

  In the living room, Kathleen Koch had gotten ahold of herself. Finn looked huge sitting on the couch next to her, cradling a tissue box while she wiped her eyes.

  “Do you know why Valley was taking Xanax?” Kay asked her.

  Koch looked up with swollen eyes. “She was having panic attacks. Mild ones.”

  “About the upcoming trial?”

  Koch nodded. Blew her nose. “She was having nightmares too.”

  That explained the NyQuil.

  “And do you know what the doxycycline was for?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  A shared glance with Finn told Kay he’d gotten everything he was going to from the girl. Kay motioned to the door, and Finn guided Koch to the foyer and out onto the stairwell.

  “You’ve got my number if you think of anything or need to talk,” Finn told her, returning Valley’s key.

  The girl sniffed again. “Thank you, Detective.”

  “One more thing, Kathleen.” Kay stopped her before she could close her apartment door. “You said Valley used your car tonight?”

  “Yeah. It’s a Nova. Gray.” She gave them the tag number.

  “Valley had her license then?”

  “Of course. We went to the MVA just last week to get the photo renewed. It was her birthday.”

  Kay mentally kicked herself. She shouldn’t have forgotten.

  “And she carried it with her, right? The license?”

  “Always.”

  “Thanks, Kathleen. Now lock up, okay?”

  They heard the dead bolt slide home, then the chain, as they headed down the stairs. Wordlessly they left the building and crossed the street to the unmarked. The sound of Finn’s hard-soled brogues against the asphalt echoed through the wet dark of morning.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky on the wallet after all,” Kay said over the Lumina’s buzzer as she opened the passenger door.

  “You’re thinking the killer took Regester’s driver’s license? But why, when he didn’t take the money?”

  “Because the money’s just money.” She met Finn’s gaze over the roof of the car. “Her license has her picture on it.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “And, it’s his souvenir.”

  7

  THEY FOUND KATHLEEN KOCH’S Chevy behind Fourier Hall at Notre Dame College. Dawn had started to lighten the sky over the Chesapeake some fifteen miles east as Kay and Finn scanned the manicured campus and the empty lot, working their way to the rundown Nova.

  From a distance nothing was visibly suspicious about the little car: no awkward tilt from a flat tire, no smashed window, and certainly no note on the dash begging the campus parking division not to tow.

  The lot’s lamps still burned, their yellow glow shimmering off beaded rain across the Nova’s windshield.

  “Both doors are locked,” Kay noted as she approached the passenger side. “Her stuff’s inside though.” On the passenger seat lay a sketch pad and a small wooden box bearing the name of an art supplies store. A red rain jacket had been tossed in the backseat.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t start,” Finn suggested. “Could be she went for the Light Rail and he grabbed her there. Maybe even grabbed her up in Hampden after she’d gotten off.”

  “No. Ten o’clock at night, I think she would have called her friend. Gone back inside to use the phone.”

  “Building might have been locked up already.”

  Kay circled the car. The paint had oxidized years ago in the blistering Baltimore sun. The bumper’s chrome was peeling and the Maryland plates had started to rust. When she came around to the driver’s-side door, Kay knew the feeling in her gut was valid. Glass ground beneath the heavy soles of her shoes.

  Finn heard it as well. “What the hell’s that?”

  At her feet, thick shards peppered the wet asphalt, glittering like jewels. Several more glinted along the Nova’s roof.

  Kay looked up. “The son of a bitch took out the light.”

  Twenty feet above them the glass-bowl diffuser had been shattered. It had been a good shot. Or maybe it had taken several.

  “He targeted her. Knew what car she was driving, where she’d parked,” Kay said.

  But why was her sketchbook already in the car? Unless Finn was right. Unless she’d gotten in and the car wouldn’t start.

  “Can you get under the hood without access to the inside?” Kay asked.

  Finn had already snapped on a pair of gloves and was prodding through the top of the grill. There was a faint pop and the hood came up.

  “External latch,” he said, propping the hood, then pointing. “There. Spark-plug cables were pulled.”

  The rubber ends dangled uselessly next to the distributor cap.

  “Son of a bitch.” Kay stepped back from the oil-stained engine.

  “If this girl is as street-smart as you say, Kay, how’d he get her into his car?”

  “She wouldn’t have caught a ride with a stranger. He took her by force. Or …” Kay scanned the deserted grounds again, grasping for a scenario that felt right. “Or she knew the scumbag. We better get Mobile out here to dust the car,” she said, even though she doubted they’d find much. If Valley’s killer had put such orchestration into her abduction, he’d hardly leave prints.

  They waited twenty minutes for a Mobile Crime Lab unit, sitting together on the hood of the Lumina, first exchanging awkward small talk, then sharing silence. They watched the white Crime Lab van circle a couple times before locating the lot behind Fourier Hall. Leaving the tech to dust the Nova, they headed downtown. Kay let Finn drive, enjoying the rare luxury of being chauffeured through the streets that usually passed her in a blur.

  Baltimore wasn’t her city. From its glittering tourist-infested Inner Harbor to the crumbling projects where heroin and cocaine perpetuated the decay, from boarded-up row houses to the gluttony of Guilford and Roland Park with their private schools and stately shingled homes, all of it felt foreign to Kay.

  There had been no rhyme or reason to her coming here thirteen years ago. Out of college, needing a job and knowing there was no future for her back home in Jonesport, Maine, she’d followed a friend to Maryland on a whim, with two hundred bucks in her wallet and a suitcase in the trunk of her Honda. And when the Department advertised for recruits, the money and benefits looked better than any other prospects at the time.

  Thirteen years … Another eight and she could retire from the force. If she ac
tually made it to retirement. Eight years could seem like a life sentence when the passing of weeks and months was counted by the number of murders up on the board, by the endless list of victims, and the plea bargains for lesser sentences granted by the state simply to keep the system from clogging. Even at the best of times, murder was a thankless business.

  Still, she made a difference. It wasn’t a view shared by many in her squad, but it was the one thing Kay clung to over the years: the notion that what she did helped people, even if in the end it was only a handful. As a murder cop, she was entrusted with the pursuit of the worst possible crime—the taking of a human life. She spoke for the dead. And for the survivors.

  Even so, after her twenty were up, she’d retire. She’d made a vow to herself: no drop program, no tempting departmental bribes to stay on board just a few more years with the promise of a tidy bonus at the end. She wouldn’t let the stress eat what little soul was left. When her day came, she’d be gone. Maybe she’d go back home to Maine. Back to the fishing-village atmosphere, untouched by the plague of violence she saw drugs exert on the city. Away from the crack holes and seedy side streets, from the hot spots where crime seemed to incubate and spread like some terminal disease.

  Studying Finn’s profile now, Kay remembered a time when the city hadn’t seemed so bleak.

  “So, have you had lunch with Jimmy Carter lately?” he asked, perhaps sensing her eyes on him.

  “No. You?”

  Finn shook his head. Smiled.

  Together they’d worked with the Habitat for Humanity organization within Baltimore, helping to restore vacant row houses for low-income families. They’d seen several projects through completion in the Northeast District and even took part in a lunch with the former president as part of the groundbreaking ceremonies.

  Kay missed the camaraderie of the crew, missed the hard labor and the sense of accomplishment, and she missed sharing something outside the job with Finn.

  “You gonna be okay with this?” Finn focused on the traffic congesting along Greenmount. “You and me working together?”