BLUE MERCY (23 page)

“Did you know he was friends with Bernard Eales?”

Hagen moved to the girl’s legs, rubbing the gray skin vigorously under gloved hands. “No, I didn’t. But it doesn’t surprise me. It was probably Bernard who got him addicted.”

“What else can you tell us about Mr. Bates?”

“Nothing. Like I said, he was good at what he did. Smart. Organized. Punctual. I wouldn’t have kept him for twelve years if he wasn’t. Now, if you don’t mind, Detectives—” Hagen reached behind him and took up a long steel tube. Except for the heavy silicone hose attached to it, he looked like a fencer brandishing his foil. “I do have work to do here.” He threw the switch on the pump then, and it whirred back to life.

Touching the honed tip against the girl’s abdomen, immediately below the ME’s Y-incision, Hagen paused and looked across at them. “You might want to show yourselves out now.”

And as she and Finn left the embalming room, Kay heard the distinct suction of fluids as the motor of the Porti-boy whined.

“YOU GOT A WARRANT?”
Bates scowled at them as they stood on his porch.

Hagen’s former bookkeeper had clearly been about to shoot up when Kay and Finn knocked on his door. With his hair spiked straight up and his eyes a little wild, Bates wedged himself between the door and the jamb. Finn noticed the fresh impression of a belt across the scrawny biceps of his right arm. Below this, on the inside of his arm, was what looked like a relatively new tattoo—a pachuco cross, used by addicts to conceal their injection sites.

“No,” Kay answered. “We don’t have a warrant.”

“Then you can’t come in. I know my rights.” He tried to close the door but Finn propped it with his foot.

“I’m sure you do, Jerry. But we just want to talk,” Kay said, her voice soft.

“ ’Bout what?”

“Bernard Eales.”

“And you need four of you to do that?” Bates nodded at the two uniformed officers who shared the porch with them. With the possibility of a deviant conspiracy between Bates and Eales, and not knowing what to expect from the junkie, they’d called for backup.

“I don’t gotta let you in,” he said again.

“That’s right, Jer.” Finn snagged the skel’s arm fast and yanked him onto the porch. “So why don’t you come on out and talk?” He gave a quick nod to the uniforms, dismissing them back to their radio unit parked across the street, and tried to swallow his impatience.

Wasting an entire day at the courthouse always put Finn
in a mood, especially when there was a case to work. He’d wanted to be there for Kay when she went through Eales’s house, and that she’d had to go alone pissed him off even more. And now this—pussyfooting with a junkie—was the last thing Finn had the patience to tolerate.

“Come on, Jer. Just relax.” Finn squeezed Bates’s shoulder a little too hard. “Unless of course there’s something you
need
to be nervous about.”

Bates’s eyes flitted back to his door. Kay pulled it shut.

“See?” Finn said. “We’re not interested in what you’ve got going on in there, okay? But if you don’t cooperate, we
could
be.”

Leaving the Parkview Funeral Home, they’d swung by HQ to check Bates’s record. It didn’t surprise Finn to see two counts of drug possession, but the solicitation charges surprised him. If Bates was a true addict, sex would be the last thing on his mind.

“What do you want from me?” Bates whined.

“Just wondering what you’ve been doing with yourself since leaving the Parkview Funeral Home.”

Bates chewed frantically at his bottom lip. Finn followed his gaze to the adjoining porch. One neighbor sat on a rusted lawn chair; past that, another cooled herself on her stoop.

“Okay, listen. Let’s go to the car and have us a chat, all right? Nice and private.” Finn escorted Bates firmly across the street and to the unmarked Lumina at the curb. When he opened the door to usher Bates into the backseat, Bates balked.

“Come on, Jer, don’t piss me off here. We just wanna ask a few questions.” Finn tried to keep the antagonism out of his voice. “Now scootch over,” he said, and slid in after the junkie.

From the front seat, Kay remained silent, letting Finn
have this one. She switched off the police radio and turned in the passenger seat to watch Bates.

“So, d’you take an early retirement, Jer?” Finn asked. “You didn’t like working for Hagen anymore or what?”

“Maybe.”

“You worked for the man a long time. You ever see anything hinky at that place?”

“What do you mean?”

“The old man. He ever do anything weird?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your buddy Bernard called the cops on Hagen a long time ago. You know anything about that?”

“No. That was before I ever worked there. All I heard was rumors. And frankly, what the old man does in his basement is none of my business, right?” Bates winked.

“And what the hell does
that
mean?” Finn asked, imitating the junkie’s wink.

“Nothing. Nothing. Forget it.”

“You ever see anything? Ever go down to the basement?”

“No. That’s not my thing.” Bates cleared his sinuses with a sucking noise, then wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of one shaking hand. When his eyes darted to Kay briefly, Finn could see the whites were bloodshot, but the pupils weren’t dilated. Bates was jonesing but he wasn’t high.

“What about Hagen and his daughter?” Finn asked him. “Anything untoward going on there ever?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“Come on, Jer, quit pissing around.”

“I’m not, man. Seriously, I don’t know what you’re after.” Under the stained and threadbare sweats he wore, his bony knees had started bouncing, and again he sucked at his sinuses.

“So how well do you know Patricia Hagen?” Finn asked.

Bates showed no reaction to the name. “I only know her through the business. Even then, she weren’t around much.”

“Any idea if she and Eales dated? Before he was arrested?”

“I don’t know. Bernard said no though. I asked him once, a long time ago when I seen her leave his place.”

“So he
was
seeing her then?”

“I don’t know. I only seen her twice leaving his house.”

“Did she ever stay over?”

“How should I know?”

“Come on, Jer. You’re four doors down.”

“Yeah, and I ain’t no Peepin’ Tom neither. I mind my own business.”

“You have a girlfriend, Jer?”

“No.”

“So what do you do for fun then?”

“I don’t know. Watch NASCAR.”

“Well, you weren’t watching any races on May tenth of last year,” Finn reminded him. “You remember that night?”

Bates shook his head, eyed his front door across the street.

“That’s the night you got picked up for patronizing a prostitute. Remember that? And I guess there weren’t any races September eighth either, because they nailed you then too.”

“What’s that gotta do with anything?”

Finn gave him a shrug. “You ever pick up hookers with your friend Bernie? Go over to his house, do a little two-for-one?”

“No. Bernie and I’d get high once in a while. Maybe five or six times, total. That’s it.”

“What? Come on, Jer. You never shared a bit of ass with your best buddy? Or do you keep them all to yourself?”

“Look, man, I don’t do that kinda thing.”

“Do what?”

“Share ass. Now come on, quit hassling me. I already told you we’d get high. That’s it.”

“So while the two of you were getting high, did Bernie ever talk to you about the murders?”

Bates flicked his middle finger against his thumb repeatedly, and when his gaze went to his front door again, he eyed it as if it were the portal to an eternal high that he couldn’t get to fast enough.

“Just a few more questions, Mr. Bates, and you can go home,” Kay said from the front seat. “Annie Harris. You know about her?”

His eyes went back to Finn, and he ran his fingers through his buzz cut, scratched at his scalp.

“Answer her, Jer.”

“Okay. Okay. She’s the girl they found in that Harlem Park row house, right?”

“A plus, Jer.” Finn wondered if there was any substance to the clarity of Bates’s memory on that point.

“Did Bernard ever talk about her?” Kay asked.

Bates shrugged.

“What did he say, Jerry?”

“Said he knew her. This was after it was in the paper.”

“That’s it?”

Bates hesitated enough that Finn knew there was more, but the junkie had clammed up. He’d always hated interviewing addicts. The only thing on their minds was the next fix, the next score, even beyond self-preservation. He’d interviewed enough of them to know they’d say whatever it took to get to that next high. And if you pushed too hard, especially when they were needing a fix as Bates was tonight, they’d shut down. But Finn’s patience had been tapped.

“Okay, look, Jerry”—Finn moved to get out of the car—“we may as well take you in.” He shoved his thumb at the radio car parked behind them. “I’ll just get these guys to run you downtown while we get a warrant. How much smack d’you figure we’ll find on your coffee table tonight, hmm?”

“No. Wait. Shit, man, give me a break.”

“Then give us something, Jer,” Finn said. “It’s not like we’re not askin’ pretty.”

“Okay, look. Yeah, Bernie did say something, okay? We were getting high together, a week or so before he got arrested. He was acting all stupid. Asked me if I ever seen a dead body, other than at Hagen’s place. Then he asks me if I ever seen anyone die before, like while it was happening. And then he starts saying shit about how he killed Annie. Christ, I didn’t actually believe the son of a bitch. I thought he was just blowin’ hot air, you know? Joking around.”

“You always joke about killing people, Mr. Bates?” Kay asked.

“No. But I didn’t think he’d killed her. Now, honest, I don’t know anything else.” The whine in Bates’s voice had become irritating.

“We know Bernard came to you when he was wanted,” Kay said. “He surrendered from your house. So was it you who talked him into turning himself in?”

Bates nodded.

“You must have a lot of influence over Bernard, huh?” Kay asked. “Convincing him to turn himself in on a multiple murder charge.”

“Maybe.” Suspicion marked Bates’s whine.

“So where were you Saturday night?” Kay asked, shifting the direction of the interview like a pro, deliberately keeping Bates off-balance.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to check my social calendar.”

“Hey, don’t be a smart-ass, Jer,” Finn warned.

“I’m home just about every night, okay? So I’m guessing I was Saturday too.”

“Come on, Jer. Where were you? Cuz if you don’t give Detective Delaney here a good alibi right now, I’m thinking we’ll have to haul your skinny ass downtown.”

Bates inhaled and sat up straighter. “Fine. Take me the fuck downtown.” His voice was suddenly stronger. The whine gone. “And then I’ll be needing to call my lawyer.”

Finn backed off. It wasn’t worth it. They’d only spend the night dancing with a two-bit defense attorney. They needed more first.

“Never mind.” Opening the door, Finn ushered the junkie out. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, and watched Bates scurry across the street.

“I want a car on his house,” Finn told Kay after Bates disappeared behind his front door.

Kay was silent, leaning against the roof of the Lumina, staring across the street.

“This mope’s not as helpless as he seems,” he said. “Plus he had access to Hagen’s funeral home. Probably even had keys to the company van. If you’re thinking someone may have helped Eales ditch the bodies”—he shoved a thumb at the skel’s closed door—“he’s the most likely candidate so far.”

“He’s a junkie, Finn. Do you really think he could pull off something like that?”

“Hey, it didn’t sound like he was so strung out while he was working for Hagen.”

“But what about now? What about Valley? And Beggs? Look, I agree, he’s mixed up in this. Somehow. But”—she nodded to the house—“do you really see this guy pulling off these murders?”

Finn shrugged. “Who knows? There’s a big difference between an occasional skin-popper and an all-out main-liner. I don’t think Jerry’s there yet. I think we caught him on a bad night. Who knows what he’s like when he’s not jonesing. I don’t get the feeling his only hobbies are smack and NASCAR.”

Kay shook her head, her gaze finally leaving Bates’s house to pan four doors down to Eales’s.

“What is it, Kay?”

“It just doesn’t feel right,” she said at last, shoving away from the car and pacing the sidewalk.

“You’re saying we shouldn’t put a car down here?”

“No, let’s get a car on Bates.”

“But what’s your gut telling you?”

She shook her head again, and Finn could see her mind working at the possibilities. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I think we need to find out more about Patricia and Eales, and what really went on in that funeral home.”

The smoke spiraling from the tip of the Camel enticed Kay. She watched him flick a long ash to the concrete floor and imagined the smoke curling down into her own lungs, sedating her nerves.

She’d come to see Eales alone again. Finn had conceded, begrudgingly agreeing that she’d likely get more out of Eales on the subject of Hagen’s molesting his daughter. The topic required sensitivity and the kind of familiarity Kay hoped she already had with Eales.

But the bigger reason Kay hadn’t wanted Finn along
was his anger. She recognized the hatred he had for Eales, the man who’d almost killed her, and she couldn’t afford to let it get in the way of the answers they needed.