A Simple Act of Violence (65 page)

‘That’s right.’

‘So where the fuck does that put me?’

‘You plead ignorance,’ Miller said. ‘You do the thing, you plead ignorance.’

‘But I’m not ignorant—’

‘Doesn’t mean you can’t say you were.’

‘Is that the way it works with you?’ she asked, and there was an edge to the question, a pointed edge which arrived exactly as it was intended, right between the ribs. It was a stiletto knife of a question. Did you push Brandon Thomas down the stairs and kill him? Did you murder that man, and then tell the world that you were innocent, that it was an accident?

‘No,’ Miller said.

‘But that’s what you’re asking me to do?’

Miller looked down at the floor. He felt the weight of it all. He felt conscience and responsibility, obligation, the promise he’d made to Natasha Joyce. He felt a sense of loss, the beginning and end of so many things. He felt lonely and tired and sick and confused, and none of it made sense, and he was beginning to wonder if he even wanted it to make sense any more. He wanted to know what right John Robey had to break his life apart and kick the pieces all over.

‘What do you want from me?’ Marilyn Hemmings asked. ‘You want me to break the law? You want me to violate protocol? You want me to do an autopsy on someone and not file a report?’

‘I want to know who he is, Marilyn, that’s all. I want to know who the guy is. I know how he died. I know what happened to him. I know someone tied a ribbon around his neck and locked him in the trunk of a car, and then they set the car on fire and he burned to death inside . . .’

‘He had a ribbon around his neck?’

‘According to CSA Greg Reid, yes . . .’

‘Oh God, no.’

‘Yes. And in the glove box of his car was a collection of ribbons—’

‘So who the fuck is this?’ she asked.

Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t know who it is. I need to know who it is, I need to know now, and you’re the only person I can trust to do this . . .’

‘Trust? Is that what this is about? You think someone’s after you?’

Miller didn’t reply.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘This is really beginning to scare me now.’

Miller reached out and took her hand. He held it for a moment, looked right at her. For a moment she did not seem to want to look at him.

‘Can you just do this?’ he asked. ‘Can you just see if there is a name to go along with this guy?’

‘Where did they put the body?’

‘They said Lab Four, is that right?’

Together they walked through the complex to Lab Four. Hemmings told Miller to stay back against the wall and away from the door. The charred remains of the trunk victim were on an examination table. Hemmings switched on the overhead lights and the brights to the left of the table. She took latex gloves from a box on the side, and then she stood quietly for a moment before the blackened and distorted cadaver.

‘Definitely male,’ she said, almost to herself, but loud enough for Miller to hear her. ‘Appears to be late forties, perhaps early fifties. Five-nine or ten. There had been some bruising beneath the skin, the appearance of centimeter-wide lines at the ankles and wrists. Appearance of having been bound tightly by something that has left a plastic-type residue. Nylon rope, perhaps ziplock-ties.’

Miller stepped closer and watched as Hemmings took a sliver of skin from the man’s arm, a layer of epithelials which she placed inside a glass receptor. She processed it for DNA sampling, and while the machine did its business she prepared a scalpel.

‘Just sting for a second,’ she said quietly, and then she inserted the blade of the scalpel into the arch of the foot and scraped away a sample of coagulated blood. She transferred the blood from the blade of the scalpel to a petrie dish and covered it.

‘Two alleles,’ she said, once she had typed the blood. She concentrated to such an extent that Miller believed she’d forgotten he was there. ‘One comes from each parent, and in this man’s case one was a dominant A, the other O.’

Miller looked away for a moment. There was tension in the atmosphere, something palpable, as if a shadow was pressing against him from all sides and there was no way to determine how it was being cast. He backed up and sat down for a moment, afraid he would lose his balance. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands together. ‘I don’t know why I came here,’ he said.

Marilyn Hemmings turned and looked at him. ‘I have no prints to work with,’ she said. ‘His hands are too burned for me to print. There’s not enough for me to work with, Robert . . .’

Miller wanted to stand. He wanted to walk towards her. He wanted to leave behind the charred remains of someone found in the trunk of a car and just vanish. Either that or go backward and decline the call to the Sheridan house that night of the 11th. He wished it was someone else’s problem, but it was not, and now he had made it Marilyn Hemmings’ problem, also Greg Reid’s, even Al Roth’s to some extent, because if one member of a partnership was drowning then the other would usually go with him.

The machine bleeped. CODIS had come back with nothing. That would have been too rich for words.

‘So we have no way of knowing who he was?’ Miller asked unnecessarily.

‘You knew that before you called me,’ she replied. ‘You knew that it would be a dead end.’

Miller didn’t speak.

‘Why?’ she asked.

Miller looked up at her. ‘God, Marilyn, I don’t know . . . because of what happened before. Because you seemed to understand what I was going through when they were trying to crucify me for what happened with Thomas and the hooker.’

Hemmings didn’t speak for a moment. She peeled off her gloves and dropped them in a waste bucket. She crossed the corner of the lab and sat beside Miller. She reached out and took his hand, held it for a moment. When Miller turned she was looking directly at him. It made him feel tense, awkward. He knew what she was going to ask him.

‘Was she just a hooker?’

Miller lowered his head and closed his eyes.

‘Answer the question, Robert . . . was she just a hooker, or was there something else going on?’

‘She was just a hooker,’ Miller said.

‘Did you ever—’

‘Did I what? Did I ever sleep with her? Did I fuck her?’

‘Don’t be angry . . . I’m not the one who’s got you into this. Don’t vent your—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Miller replied. ‘I’m sorry. The whole thing makes me angry. You’re right. It’s not you. Jesus, this thing is driving me crazy.’ Miller released Hemmings’ hand and stood up. He took a couple of steps and then turned to face her.

‘I don’t know why I got you into this,’ he said.

Hemmings smiled sardonically. ‘I’m all grown-up now,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of saying no . . .’

‘Then why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just say no and stay the fuck out of this? It’s not safe. It’s dangerous. There’s something going on here that has resulted in a whole lot of dead people, and it seems like whoever is behind this has no intention of stopping.’

Hemmings shrugged. ‘What d’you want me to say? That I did it for you? That I wasn’t interested in the case but I was interested in you? That I thought it might give us a chance to spend some time together . . . because if that’s what you think then that’s not what happened, Robert. This isn’t all about you, you know.’

‘I didn’t say it was—’

‘Let me finish, okay? That much at least.’

Miller nodded.

‘This isn’t all about you. This is about something that I am having great difficulty understanding. I only know so much about what’s happened. And you think I don’t feel for you? I don’t have any kind of compassion for someone who’s in difficulty? I’m human, just like everyone else. You came to me and asked me to help you, and I saw someone who’d been through the mill with IAD and the newspapers. I saw someone trying to do a good job who got himself kicked all over the place by some bullshit about a pimp and her hooker, and I thought that maybe you needed a hand, okay? I figured that you were someone who was trying to make a difference, trying to make things better, and you needed a bit of moral support. That was all there was to it. Nothing more nor less than that. You want to be a magnet for trouble then be a magnet for trouble. Maybe there’s something about people like you that makes people like me want to help you. Maybe I just think you’re so fucked up that if you don’t have someone giving you a hand then you’ll wind up dead.’

‘That might be exactly what happens,’ Miller said, and though he did not intend to imply anything humorous, Marilyn Hemmings smiled and said, ‘I’ll do your autopsy, okay? I’m the best they’ve got and I’ll make sure it’s done by the book.’

‘Thank you . . . that’s very reassuring to know.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘You gonna keep pushing at this thing until someone finds out and threatens you with your job?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

Hemmings rose to face him. Though she was a good four or five inches shorter than him, she had sufficient presence to make him feel as if he was being looked down on.

‘Tomorrow I’ll do a full autopsy,’ she said. ‘I don’t know that there’s anything I’ll be able to tell you about the guy. His DNA isn’t on our system. We have no prints. Maybe there was something in the car.’

‘There was nothing in the car. ‘I don’t know . . . I really don’t know. I’ll give you a ride home. Do you need a ride home?’

‘I have my own car here. I don’t think it’s a good idea that we speak to one another on anything but a professional basis until this thing is finished. That’s what I feel right now, and I don’t think I’m going to change my mind.’

‘I understand,’ Miller said. ‘It’s not the way I wanted it to be, but I understand.’

‘So go,’ she said. ‘Go the way we came in. Don’t speak to anyone. I’ll clean up here, put our guest in storage, and then if anything comes of the autopsy tomorrow I’ll send you the report, okay?’

‘Thank you,’ Miller said. He held out his hand. ‘I’d hug you but I don’t think you want me to,’ he said.

Hemmings shook Miller’s hand. ‘Goodbye, Detective Miller, and good luck.’

‘Don’t believe in luck,’ Miller said.

Hemmings nodded toward the body on the examination table. ‘He probably didn’t either.’

One a.m., morning of Sunday, November 19th. Robert Miller had not even removed his shoes, such was the inertia he felt. He remembered the night he’d walked along Columbia Street, the questions he’d asked, his first inkling that there was something beyond the death of Catherine Sheridan than just her murder. It was not rage or jealousy, neither was it the work of some uncontrollable sociopath. It was premeditated, calculating, decisive and exact. Eight days had passed. Everything had turned upside down. Catherine Sheridan had merely been the precursor to a far greater horror. Catherine Sheridan had been his introduction to an entirely different world.

In his hand he held a single sheet of paper. The initials, the dates, like a roll-call of the dead. Seemed everyone who’d touched this thing was dead.

Roth had called - two missed messages on Miller’s cell phone - but Miller had not returned them. Roth did not deserve this. Roth had Amanda and the kids to consider. Roth had a life worth something. What did Miller have? He had a dead hooker, her dead pimp, an assistant coroner who wished to keep everything distant and purely professional. He had two old Jewish people who worried whether he ate too little and worked too much. He had a rented apartment, a piece of paper, a sense of failure.

And he had John Robey, or rather - more accurately - John Robey had him.

We are bound by the secrets we share. That was the thought in his mind. Where it had come from - something he’d read, a line from a movie - he couldn’t recall, but it went round and round ceaselessly.

We are bound by the secrets we share.

At one point he considered that Robey must have said it, but then it seemed to make no sense at all. Robey had said everything, but nothing. Robey had given him all that he needed to know, but given it in such a way that it could never be understood.

Miller turned over every single word he could recall, every statement Robey had made, every implied question and inconclusive answer. The man had engineered everything, of this Miller was sure.

And who was the man in the trunk? The Ribbon Killer, or another victim? Had Robey killed him, or was he merely another of the thirty or forty or fifty that had already been murdered? And again he pondered on why were they killed . . . for something they’d done? Surely not. Surely all of them couldn’t have been part of one punishable crime.

Miller sat down and worked his shoes off without untying the laces. He kicked them sideways, wished he had a drink - a can of beer, a glass of whiskey, anything at all to close down the rush of thoughts. It was remorseless, all of it. Remorseless, unforgiving, nothing to hold onto, nothing that indicated any way of escape or resolution. If there was an investigation to pursue, he would not be pursuing it. It would be Killarney. The FBI’s guest, the serial killer expert, the man who knew everything and yet had come to the party without a gift of his own. What had he told them? He had told them how difficult it would be to find the man who had done these things. He had made it all seem so vague and imprecise and unclear.

What was the thread that linked these victims? Had they all been involved in something that made them a danger to someone? What possible motivation could precipitate the killing of thirty, forty . . . however many people?

Miller reached for the list again, the single sheet of paper that revealed a greater horror than he could have imagined. The initials and dates of murders, dozens of them, and he found it so hard to believe they were all for one reason. But then such things had happened before. The death of sixty-four material witnesses to Jack Kennedy’s assassination. Car accidents. Falls. Suicides. Heart attacks. All within eighteen months of the event. This was something of similar magnitude. And what was back of it? Nicaragua. That was the direction that Robey had kept on pushing him. Nicaragua was like Salvador, like Korea, like Vietnam. Periods of America’s history considered unsafe to remember, events that people pretended had never occurred.