BLUE MERCY Read online

  “Sure. You?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have a problem. As long as you do the typing.”

  It wouldn’t have been the first time Finn had solicited her writing skills. Before Spencer’s death, they’d often found themselves in the Homicide offices together. One or the other working overtime, their hours deliberately overlapping in spite of their alternating shifts. These days, though, Kay did her best to be out of the offices before Finn’s squad came in, avoiding him when she could. Obviously Finn had been doing the same.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll do the typing if you don’t babysit me through this entire investigation.”

  “Deal.” And in his voice she sensed she’d been right about why Sarge had put Finn on the case. Finn was Sarge’s safety net, his way of ensuring that she didn’t screw up, that she didn’t get someone else killed.

  He accelerated through the amber light at Biddle. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re feeling about this girl, Kay, but if you want to sit out the autopsy this morning—”

  “I’ll be there. Thanks for the concern though,” she added.

  As they crossed Eager Street, Kay felt the familiar tightening of her spine. It had started two blocks away, but now, with Maryland’s State Pen to her right, the tension twisted in her empty gut.

  The rough-hewn granite of the Transition Center loomed beyond the twenty-foot Cyclone fence topped with accordion coils of shining razor ribbon. Kay wondered if other cops looked at the Pen as they passed it. If they thought about the men they’d put there.

  As the Lumina shot past the cluster of buildings, there was only one man Kay thought of.

  8

  DAY 403.

  Bernard Eales felt his feet first. Arches pressed against the cold iron bar at the end of his low cot. The bunk was too small. With no room to roll over, he generally woke in the same position he lay down in when lights went out each night in A Block, the starched sheet still pulled to his chin.

  From the farther reaches of the cellblock he heard the echoes of catcalls, distant slammings, even muffled cries. Nothing in particular defined mornings in his corner of the State Pen. No sun. No alarm clocks. But Bernard always recognized morning in his gray double cell: his bladder was bursting and his mouth was stale.

  With effort, he hauled himself up. Shambling barefoot across the cement pad to the stainless-steel urinal, he loosened the drawstring of his prison trousers and groped for his cock.

  From the top bunk, Darnell Brown whimpered. One month in and the crack-selling street tough still cried for his mama. Especially in his dreams.

  Bernard checked his watch, then remembered he’d traded it for smokes last week. He’d ask Patricia for a new one. Nothing pricey. And some more Marlboros. He hated bartering. Always got the shit end of the stick.

  Not that it mattered much when he had Patsy, he thought, his urine at last striking the steel bowl. She took care of him. Two visits a week. More, if they’d let her. And always with a little something. All he had to do was smile, nod while she talked about her cats, and pucker a few blown kisses from behind the visitation-booth Plexiglas before she left.

  Patsy and her fucking cats … If he ever got out, the first thing he’d do would be to get rid of the fucking cats. He kicked the flush with his heel. Darnell stopped whimpering.

  Bernard turned within the twelve-by-fourteen cell to the narrow window. Like all the cell windows in the Pen, it was welded shut, its frame painted a bright orange. They did that so the guards could see if you fucked with it.

  Next to it hung a calendar, stuck up with shreds of masking tape. Patsy had given it to him, from the garage her old man took the Beemer to. Photos of classic cars. Nothing that turned him on though. Nothing as sweet as his ’59 StratoChief. He wondered where the Strat was now. Still in police impound probably. The gleaming black paint job dulling in the glaring sun. The white walls drying out and flat. The battery dead. Sons of bitches.

  On the calendar, Darnell had been crossing off the days with bold red X’s. Bernard let him. It was Thursday. In his left-handed chicken-scratch Bernard had made a notation to remind him of today’s meeting with Grogan. With the trial starting in two weeks, the defense attorney was itching to talk strategy, jury selection, and witnesses.

  All a waste of time. Even if Grogan did manage to convince a jury he’d shot the cop in self-defense, that he hadn’t known they were police at his door that night, and he’d been protecting his home against presumed intruders, even then that ball-busting, blond state’s attorney bitch was going to have his nuts on a platter for the hookers’ murders.

  Bernard returned to his bottom bunk, flopped down onto the sweat-dampened sheet. He kicked at the top mattress when Darnell started whimpering again. Then he closed his eyes, rooted a booger out of one nostril, and flicked it across the cell while he imagined himself behind the wheel of his shiny black StratoChief.

  9

  AFTER A HALF HOUR in the cutting room of Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner at 111 Penn Street, Finn still hadn’t desensitized to the reek of Valerie Regester’s remains. Neither the chemical air fresheners nor a constant flow of purified air through the morgue’s ventilation system could compete. Kay, on the other hand, had surrendered. The paper face mask hung from her neck, and two smears of Mentholatum sat under her nostrils.

  Regester’s body had been wheeled out earlier, photographed, weighed, and finally prepped in the autopsy room’s sterile expanse of ceramic tile and stainless steel. What remained of her clothes had been peeled from her charred skin and laid out on an adjoining slab. They’d watched Eddie Jones work on her, removing and weighing organs, his gloved hands slick with body fluids as he droned observations to his assistant. Louis Armstrong played on a boom box in the corner, and from behind his mask the ME hummed along with “What a Wonderful World.”

  “So, finally out from behind the desk then, huh, Kay?” Jonesy asked as he slid Regester’s liver into the scale.

  Finn glanced across the table in time to see Kay nod.

  “Yeah. My coffee-making wasn’t winning me any points. I think they figured I’m less of a hazard out on the streets.”

  The corners of the ME’s eyes creased, revealing the smile hidden behind his mask.

  Eddie Jones was a little younger than Finn, closer to Kay’s thirty-three. At six-three and with a full head of sun-bleached hair, he was the easiest ME on staff to spot if he was on the floor. He looked like a bird, Finn had always thought, with close-set eyes and a sharp Roman nose. An albino vulture, poised over the city’s carrion and waste.

  From the moment they’d walked into the morgue, Finn had sensed a rare easiness and familiarity between Kay and the ME. Although he’d never worked a case with Kay before, Finn had witnessed Kay enough on the job to know her briskness. Civil but professional, Kay’s social graces sometimes took a backseat to whatever case she was working. He’d seen some of the guys on the unit take that frostiness the wrong way. And even he had wondered about her until Joe Spencer had introduced them two years ago.

  Kay had been working a new case caught on the four-to-twelve shift when Finn had come onto the midnight. Standing on the eighth-floor terrace of headquarters at 3 a.m., the lights of the city reflecting off the humidity that lifted from steamy streets, Kay had been having a smoke with Joe Spencer. He’d made quick introductions, then left, while Finn and Kay stayed, sharing a half dozen Camels and light conversation as they watched the sun rise.

  They’d shared smokes a few more times after that, running into each other by accident, then on purpose. Until one night they ended up at some waterfront bar. Finn couldn’t remember which one. They’d gotten drunk, then capped it off back at Finn’s boat, and Kay had stayed the night.

  In the morning they’d agreed they’d made a mistake, but he was in her bed the very next night. And for countless nights after that. For almost a year.

  From the start Finn had known his feelings and his illusions of the relationship
went deeper than Kay’s. Still, he’d always hoped she’d come around. Even after Bernard Eales, after she’d refused to take Finn’s calls and her avoidance of him became painfully clear, he’d waited for Kay. Until several months ago, sitting at O’Reilly’s, staring at a double shot of bourbon, on the verge of taking that first drink after twenty-one months of being dry, Finn had finally given up on Kay.

  He missed her. But it was getting easier.

  “All right, boys and girls.” Jonesy leaned back from the table at last. “Here’s what you’ve got so far. Obviously we’re talking major charring. Deep burning that was assisted by flammables being poured onto the clothing. She was definitely dead before the fire started. There’s no evidence of smoke inhalation, and no traces of carbon monoxide in her blood.”

  “Can you tell if she was raped?”

  “No visible indications of forcible sexual activity. But you do have what appears to be evidence of strangulation. Petechial hemorrhaging in the mucous membrane lining the inner surface of the eyelids. And it looks like she bit her tongue. Both signs of asphyxiation. And then”—he pointed to the back of the neck, high up, where a narrow section of the skin had been protected from the flames— “it looks like you’ve got some bruising back here. Fingertip impressions.”

  “He strangled her?” Kay asked.

  Jonesy nodded, then circled both his hands around an imaginary throat. “From the front. I’m looking at a fractured hyoid bone, hemorrhaging in the voice box, larynx and the neck muscles, as well as damage to the thyroid and cricoid cartilages.”

  “Manual strangulation’s usually about power,” Kay pointed out. “Anger. Hatred. And if it was a frontal assault, then maybe it was about watching her die. Unless she was already unconscious. What about drag marks?”

  “Nothing suggests she was dragged. No abrasions or contusions to the back. Nothing on the shoe she was still wearing.”

  “So he carried her into the warehouse?”

  “That’s a big guy to be able to lift her out of a car and carry her through all the junk that was in that place,” Finn said.

  “Then maybe he forced her to walk in herself.” Kay’s eyes never left Regester’s remains. “What about the hands? You get anything from her nails?”

  Jonesy shook his head and drew the mask from his face. “Nothing visible, but we took clippings. We’ll see.”

  Over the blackened body on the slab, Finn watched Kay while Jonesy droned on. She didn’t look well. Her complexion was sallow, and he wondered if she wanted to throw up, but she remained intent.

  He admired that intensity. Until he’d actually met her, he’d only heard about her being a hound dog. Not just a detective in a suit, sporting a gun, but a real nose-to-the-ground, dog-with-a-bone murder cop. During the year they’d been lovers, he’d seen the effects an investigation could have on her. And he’d worried about the obsession that consumed her with each new case.

  “What about doxycycline?” she asked Jonesy. “She had a prescription for it. What would she take that for?”

  The ME shrugged. “It’s usually prescribed for chlamydia.”

  “So she was sexually active then?”

  “Not necessarily. She could have picked it up long ago and was only recently diagnosed.” Jonesy stepped back from the table and seemed to admire his morning’s work. “Oh, and another little tidbit. Your boy’s got a knife.”

  “A knife?”

  The ME nodded, and behind the silver-rimmed glasses his eyes lit up. Word around the OCME was that if you wanted a gunshot expert, you talked to Tam Nguyen, but if you needed the final word on a stabbing, Jonesy was the top blade man. The man even collected knives.

  “Looks like a single-edged knife. Probably something like a lock-back. Straight blade and damned sharp. But not big. The kind that fits in the palm of your hand. It’s got a narrow hilt, which suggests a thin handle. And I’m estimating a three-inch blade, based on one of the stab wounds that wasn’t as direct as the others. The tip of the blade slipped, skidded up the sternum. Left an impression of the hilt on the tissue.”

  “A stab wound to the sternum?” Kay had gone even paler.

  “Yeah. Actually, several.” Lifting back the thin flap of muscle and charred skin that had covered Regester’s sternum, Jonesy pointed out a half dozen shallow notches along the white bone.

  “Can you tell how they were sustained?” Finn asked.

  “Not really. I can say the blade’s cutting edge was down, and the thrust was upward. Assuming, though, that she was standing.”

  “So what then? He was taunting her? Or was it part of the abduction?”

  Jonesy shrugged. “Wish I could help you on that one, but with the burning I can’t even say for certain if the cuts were made pre- or postmortem.”

  When Kay finally spoke, her voice was thin. “I need shots of these. Close-ups, showing the placement of them.”

  “Not a problem.” Jonesy gestured to his assistant. “I’ll have them sent up along with the autopsy report.”

  “I need them sooner.” Kay didn’t wait for an answer. Stripping off the paper gown she wore over her suit, she started for the doors. “And I need this kept quiet. Thanks, Jonesy.”

  Catching up with her, Finn pulled the mask from his face and asked, “What’re you thinking?”

  Kay’s mouth was a tight line as her gaze went back to Regester’s remains, the legs still bent, the blackened knees rising above the stainless-steel slab. In that moment Kay looked lost.

  “What is it about those stab wounds?” he prompted her.

  But she didn’t answer. A muscle flexed along her jaw as she swung open the morgue’s heavy door and tossed the paper gown into the biohazard bin. “I’ve got to get to the office,” she said.

  “You’ve seen them before, haven’t you? The stab wounds.”

  There was a distant look in her eyes when she nodded. “I have to pull some files.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Bernard Eales.”

  10

  WITH THE REEK OF THE MORGUE still on them, Finn convinced Kay to grab some take-out breakfast with him down in Fells Point and found a bench across Thames Street. Down by the water, surrounded by the tourist traps and souvenir shops, preppie bars and the Broadway Market, Finn could almost forget what they’d been witness to this morning. And with Kay next to him, unwrapping her usual fried egg on rye, he could almost dismiss the fourteen months of silence that separated them.

  “So how have you been?” He had to at least try.

  “Fine.”

  “Sarge says you’re working cases again?”

  “Just dunkers.” Resentment bristled in her voice as she stared at her sandwich. “I get every slam dunk that comes in. Sarge’ll send me out with one of the guys, and if there’s a lineup of eyewitnesses and a murder weapon waiting for us when we get on-scene, all of a sudden it’s my case. Domestics. Street fights. Stickups.”

  He wanted to say something about it taking time, about how some cops—after a beating like that—would never have come back to the job. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t just her who’d suffered; it was everyone on the unit. Trust had to be reestablished. Rebuilt. But Kay knew that, was living it.

  “Well, you look good,” he said instead. “I like the haircut.”

  From the corner of his eye he caught her quick side glance. Saw the skepticism. “What? I can’t give a compliment without you thinking it’s a come-on?”

  Kay’s silence verified he’d guessed right.

  “You know, just cuz I say something nice doesn’t mean I’m aiming to get you in bed.”

  “So you’re telling me you don’t want to get me in bed?” she asked, and Finn liked how the amusement softened her features.

  “Well, I didn’t say that.”

  More silence, and Kay looked away. “Thanks,” she said. “For the compliment.”

  He followed her gaze out over the bay. The sun’s light scattered in the wake of an early-morning water taxi shuttling
tourists from the Inner Harbor to Fells Point.

  “So, what am I missing on the Eales case?” he asked. “I never heard about these chest wounds.”

  “We kept it quiet,” Kay said. “The cuts were supposed to be our hold-back, because it was so bizarre.”

  “And they were on all three of the previous victims?”

  Kay nodded. “That’s how we finally linked my Harris case to the others.”

  Finn remembered the photos she’d shown him of the Annie Harris crime scene. Easily the worst decomposition case he’d seen. Based on the tox screen, Kay and Spencer had initially figured Harris was an OD, having gone into the vacant row house to shoot up. Kay had talked about the case, telling Finn how she and Spence had come onto Eales’s name on the street, people saying he was an acquaintance of Harris’s and that they’d get high together once in a while. That’s why she and Spence had gone to see the son of a bitch, to talk to him as a witness, find out if he might shed light on Harris’s last days.

  “With the decomp we didn’t see the chest wounds, but when the ME found the nicks to her sternum, we knew there was a connection to Jimmy Holewinski’s dead prostitute dumped in Leakin Park, and Varcoe’s Jane Doe a month after his.”

  Tourists spilled out of the water taxi across the way at Henderson’s Wharf and began to fan out along the pedestrian walks.

  “But Harris was Eales’s first victim?” Finn asked.

  “Because of the decomp, the ME put her time of death prior to the other two. So, yeah, she was the first. At least, the first that we know of.”

  Kay went silent after that, ignoring her breakfast, drinking her coffee and staring at the water. Finn knew her mind was on Eales’s South Baltimore porch.

  He waited. The water taxi backed away from the pier, its engine revving, before it shuttled back across the harbor.

  “So the stab wounds were the same as the ones on Regester?” he asked her.

  “I think so. On all the victims, the wounds were shallow, nonfatal. They made no sense to any of us.”