BLUE MERCY (20 page)

“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.

“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 have 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
dis
organized 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.”

“And that’s why he drugs them?”

Constance nodded. “And the stun gun you mentioned with this burned victim. And the use of heroin with the first three victims. It’s all about maintaining control so the fantasy can unfold as accurately as possible. Fantasy and ritual dominate the organized offender’s way of working. You often see obsessive-compulsive behavior in these individuals and in their crime-scene patterns.”

Kay’s mind flashed to Scott Arsenault’s medicine cabinet. The OCD prescriptions lining the shelves. Was it possible she was wrong about Scott?

“In the case studies I’ve read,” Kay said, “it’s usually the
dis
organized offender who keeps his victims’ bodies.” Wackos stashing body parts in their freezer, keeping them for years. Some even burying their victims, only to dig up
body parts after the spring thaw to have sex with them.

“Your guy’s different,” Constance said. “He keeps them under controlled conditions, otherwise you’d see more advanced putrefaction. He uses them after they’re dead but gets rid of them before they start decomposing.”

“So we might be looking at a necrophilia angle?”

“That would be my guess.”

“And the cuts to the chest?”

“If they were made postmortem, I’d say they were mutilation as a substitute for sex or as a way to demonstrate his control over them. Or maybe they’re the result of a deep-seated anger that’s playing into his fantasy. Were there any foreign objects found in any of these women? Inserted into their body cavities? Any mutilation of the genitalia?”

“No. So you’re saying these murders are sexual?”

“Definitely. Control and sex.”

“Even though we found no indicators of rape?” Kay asked.

“Just because there’s no penetration doesn’t mean you don’t have a sexual act. He could be masturbating. The homicide triggers a sexual reaction or fantasy, and if he has a history of solo sex or has difficulty with interpersonal relationships, he’ll revert to masturbation rather than penetration.”

“Even when the victim’s dead.”