BLUE MERCY (34 page)

He’d always marveled at the creatures’ resilience. He’d read about how a roach could survive a microwave. How it could live nine days without its head before it starved to
death. Johnny Newcomb from next door had tried to prove the latter theory once, tearing the head off Roach’s biggest specimen. That was the first time he’d ever pulled a knife on someone. Ten years old. He’d pressed the blade tight against Johnny’s screaming white throat. He’d never been sure what he would have done, since Johnny managed to wriggle free and run home to his mama. And Roach had turned the blade onto his pet instead as it made frantic backward circles across his bedroom floor. With one swing he’d ended its suffering.

Still, he’d gotten even. Little Johnny never saw that flea-bitten dog of his again.

Roach looked away from the spider and fingered the three plastic cards in his lap. Valerie Regester’s and Bobby Joe Beggs’s driver’s licenses. Their photos did them little justice. Weak smiles for some overpaid MVA worker. Still, the cards offered enough visual reference for him to conjure up the women’s last, splendid moments.

The third card was Patsy’s State of Maryland ID.

Hers had been a calmer death than the whore’s, flailing and gasping in her final throes, smearing the blood everywhere. But to see Patsy come around like that, to watch her horror and the sheer disbelief at her own death, had been exhilarating. A real learning experience.

Each was getting better. But the best was yet to come.

Roach perched at the edge of the bed, rocking, letting the plan take hold, already craving the sweet oblivion he would find in Kay Delaney’s dimming eyes.

THE PLASTIC SPOON
threatened to snap as Bernard stirred milk onto the congealed slab of cold oatmeal. Hunkering over his breakfast tray at a back table in the cafeteria, he ignored the conversations buzzing around him.

He’d gone to sleep in a pissy mood and woken up the same. A headache jangled behind his eyes. Made him miserable, then made him twitchy. He’d recognized the nicotine withdrawal yesterday when he’d run out of smokes.

Three days since he’d seen Patsy. And not a word. In spite of all the bitching about her father, all the yapping about her damned cats, he sort of missed her. At least she was a break from the routine. And of course, there were the cigarettes.

As he pushed the oatmeal around his bowl, he toyed with the notion of calling her. He could have fresh smokes by the afternoon. But he wouldn’t call. He was starting to feel guilty about taking advantage of her. He’d always figured that Patsy’s taking care of him the way she did was some form of payback for him having saved her from her father’s mauling hands. But now he was starting to suspect she might actually love him.

He didn’t usually think lovey-dovey thoughts. Just wasn’t in him. It was Patsy who’d asked him to marry her. She said it would make her happy. Bring “substance” to her life, she’d said. At the time he’d said yes mainly because he didn’t want to lose the good thing he had going with her, and because he’d have conjugal visits to look forward to. A man got lonely.

Before Patsy, whenever he’d wanted a piece of ass, he’d have to either buy it or beg for it, and sometimes he’d just
take it. He’d never had to buy or beg from Patsy. She actually
wanted
to be with him, even if it meant only two times a week behind a Plexiglas wall.

Now with his confession, he was sure to get life, probably a death sentence if that bitch Delaney was right. Either way, he wasn’t getting out, and he needed Patsy. He didn’t want to be alone. Certainly didn’t want to die alone.

Then, as he chased the last lump of oatmeal around the bottom of his bowl, Bernard entertained a paralyzing thought. What if Delaney had already gotten to Patsy? What if she’d told her about his confession and that’s why she hadn’t come to see him? Maybe Patsy was pissed. She would be. From day one she’d held faith in his getting off, getting out, and being with her. Patsy had come up with the self-defense angle for shooting that cop. As for the prostitutes, she avoided discussing them.

But if Delaney had gotten to her before he could explain …A twinge of panic followed the last bite of oatmeal into his gut.

No. Patsy would be here. She loved him, and she’d come around eventually. And maybe one day, he’d even tell her the truth.

IN THE HANDS OF A SKILLED ME,
a body on the cutting-room table could resemble little more than a rack of ribs in a matter of minutes. But in Patricia Hagen’s case, Eddie Jones took his time. With each piercing whine of the Stryker saw, each smooth slice of his scalpel, Jonesy seemed to find satisfaction in his morning’s work. For him, Hagen was one piece of a larger puzzle.

By 10 a.m. Patricia Hagen’s body lay before Kay as a shell of muscle and bone. Her skin resembled marble, waxy and translucent.

Beside her, Finn sipped his coffee and watched Jonesy work.

Nothing about the body on the table resembled the woman they’d first interviewed a week and a half ago. Hagen’s skull had been sawn open, the brain and dura removed for tests, and her face sagged like a rubber mask, partly concealed by the overturned scalp. Patricia Hagen had become another faceless casualty in Baltimore City.

“I figured you’d want me to run a preliminary tox screen for ketamine,” Jonesy said, his latex gloves covered in a gory slick of body fluids.

“And?” Kay asked.

“Same as your last girl. We’ve got an injection mark on her outer thigh here. Can’t be sure how much she had on board, but it must have been enough because, other than the ligature marks, there’re no signs of significant struggle.

“Also, the cuts to her chest”—he flipped back the breast plate, and the overlying skin—“there are more this time. And deeper too.” He pointed out the notches in the long, flat bone of Hagen’s sternum. “Half of them were made premortem while the rest were post. There’s soft-tissue hemorrhaging in half of these. The others, none. And the premortem ones are a little more ragged.”

“Implying what?” Kay asked. “A different knife?”

“No. Same blade. I’d say she flinched, like she was conscious when the first cuts were inflicted.”

Jonesy detailed the other findings—the ligature marks, the exsanguination, the time of death set sometime over forty-eight hours ago.

When Kay glanced up from Hagen’s dissected shell, she studied Finn’s profile. As he watched Jonesy work, Kay felt
the urge to touch Finn, to ease the deep lines of worry that had set in his face, to be there for him as he’d been for her.

In the dark of morning, Kay had finally put herself out there. Let herself free-fall. And Finn had caught her. In his arms, Kay had realized that only Finn could have done that for her. Only Finn could comprehend what she experienced and felt, because he saw the things she did, day in and day out. Last night he’d seen the evidence of the slaughters that had taken place in 311. His reaction had been different, but he’d seen. He knew where her mind was at, and he was the only person who could come close to understanding what haunted her.

And if anyone could be that for Finn in return, Kay realized she could. After their lovemaking last night, for the first time, Kay started to believe she
could
be that person Finn deserved.

“Got something here.” Jonesy’s voice snapped her gaze back to the table where he prodded Hagen’s pelvic area like an overzealous gynecologist. In moments, he withdrew a small packet. “Lodged up in the vaginal canal. He sure didn’t do that with your other vics.”

“What the hell is it? This girl wasn’t a crack whore.” Finn moved in as Jonesy set the packet onto the table behind him.

“No, it’s not drugs,” Jonesy said. “Looks like a piece of paper.” He took out two sets of forceps and gingerly began working at the moist edges of the tightly wadded ball.

Constance had suggested the murders were sexual.
Were there any foreign objects found in any of these women?
she’d asked in Kay’s last session.
Inserted into their body cavities?

Kay herself had read the textbook cases. Bottles, broom handles, umbrellas, hairbrushes …anything that was handy could act as the killer’s substitute for penetration sex. But this was different. This wasn’t some item jammed into a
victim out of lust or as a penis substitution. It was a message. Just as Hagen’s murder was some kind of message.

She watched Jonesy peel back the edges of the stained paper, as handwriting appeared. And when Finn angled one of the lamps, Kay saw something else. “What’s that inside it?”

For Kay, Jonesy couldn’t work fast enough, bit by bit unfurling the paper until it lay spread out before them, and in its center lay a crucifix. Jonesy removed the pendant.

“That’s Eales’s handwriting,” Kay said, recognizing the stumbling scrawl from the letter he’d drafted to Hagen. “And it’s dated the day before his confession.”

Some of the words were indiscernible, the blue ink having bled from the vaginal moisture. It was addressed to someone named Roach, and between the smudged letters Kay managed to decipher the gist of the note’s intent.

“This is it,” she said, feeling charged now. “This ‘Roach’ is our guy. Look, Eales is telling him to leave town. ‘… don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s you, get out. I’ll take care of things at this end,’ ” she read. “ ‘Like we arranged.’ If Eales mailed this, it wouldn’t have gotten to him in that time frame. Someone delivered it, and the only people who visit Eales—”

“Hagen,” Finn finished for her.

“He sent this out with her. That’s why she went to 311 Keystone. She hand-delivered it.”

Kay turned to the crucifix. The cross was three inches long, made of gold and silver metal, with inlaid wood. The bottom upright post was worn, as though a thumb had worried it over the years. Borrowing Jonesy’s forceps, Kay turned the pendant over. On its back, centered at the cross’s articulation, was a medal boasting a robed figure and encircled by Latin words.

“It’s a St. Benedict crucifix,” Jonesy said.

Finn nudged him. “Didn’t peg you for a churchgoer.”

“Take my mother every Sunday. According to St. Gregorio, the cross was used by the patriarch against the assault of demons.”

“Oh, great,” said Finn. “Here comes the insanity defense. ‘The demons told me to kill all them whores.’”

“I’ve seen this before.” Kay stared at the piece. “And not at church. It was in Eales’s house. On his dresser. I’m sure of it.”

“Well, I’ll send it to Latents.” Jonesy snapped his gloves off. “But something that size, don’t get your hopes up for anything more than a smudged partial.”

“No,” Kay said. “I’ll sign it out. I’ll take it to Latents myself. I’m putting a rush on this one. What about the note?”

“It’s too contaminated. You won’t get anything from it. I’ll have it dried and processed, but right now I’ve got other customers rolling in.” Jonesy nodded to the next case being wheeled into the bay beside them.

Kay bagged the crucifix, signed Jonesy’s form, and followed Finn out to the main corridor.

In the elevator, Finn asked, “You sure about seeing that cross at Eales’s house?”

“Yeah. Or one very much like it. Time to go through the crime-scene photos again.”

In the polished copper of the elevator’s interior, Kay stared at her distorted reflection, but in her mind she was seeing Hagen, in the tub at 311. “Roach” standing over her as she bled out. “Why does he cut their wrists, Finn?”

“To bleed them.”

“Is that all? Or is there more to it? I mean, is it a staged suicide? Is it fantasy, or is he reliving something?”

She caught Finn in her peripheral, saw the frustration set in his jaw. They were both feeling it. When the elevator
doors opened to an empty hallway a floor too soon, Finn jabbed at the lobby button again. “We gotta find out who this Roach guy is.”

Roach. And then Kay remembered Eales’s kitchen, the filthy sink, the infestation, and Eales’s calendar by the fridge. “He was there,” Kay blurted out.

“Who?”

“Roach. He was there the night we banged on Eales’s door. Eales had the word
roach
written on his calendar on that weekend. It was him, Finn.”

“That’s it. We’re seeing Eales now,” he said. “And this time
I’m
doing the talking.”

FINN AND KAY
waited in a dim holding cell on the fourth floor of the MTC while the guards brought Eales up. They hadn’t stopped for lunch, running from the OCME to Headquarters, then the crime lab, and finally the State Pen.

Finn’s stomach tightened around the half dozen coffees he’d poured into himself since this morning as he heard the rattle of chains and saw Eales’s ugly mass come around the juncture in the corridor. The man paused momentarily. The cold blue eyes caught his, perhaps searching for recognition, and finding none, he shambled through the door. Sweat stains marked the underarms of Eales’s jumpsuit.

Finn shook his head when the guard motioned to remove Eales’s cuffs.

“Have a seat, Bernard.” Kay laid her briefcase on the table.

Crossing his arms, Finn hid his fists and watched Eales watch Kay. He felt the hate move through him.

“What the fuck you want?”

“Nice to see you too, Bernard.”

“And who the hell’s he?”

“This is Detective Finnerty. I don’t think you’ve met.” She pulled out the chair across the table from the big man and sat as Eales glared. “He wants to talk to you.”

Locked in his cold gaze, Finn couldn’t escape the image of Eales standing over Kay on that filthy sidewalk fourteen months ago.

“I don’t got nothin’ to say to him.” Eales started to stand, the clatter of his chains filling the cell.

Finn saw Kay about to move, but he was there first. Circling the table, he reached Eales before he was a foot off the seat of the chair. When Finn forced him back down, Eales swore and nearly toppled the chair.