Eight in the Box (2 page)

CHAPTER 3

S
wiping his key card through the scanner, Connie entered the
South Bay District courthouse. He started toward the stairs leading to the district attorney’s satellite office. Shit. He was covering arraignments this morning, a bad way to start the week. Another swipe of his card and he wove his way through a maze of desks to the front counter of the clerk’s office. There he picked up the stack of police reports from the weekend arrests. Busy weekend. Hopping over the counter into the front lobby, he jogged up the main staircase to the third floor.

Through the glass doors of the DA’s office, he saw the secretaries answering phones and checking in witnesses who had been subpoenaed to court. At least ten people were crammed into a waiting area designed to hold five. It was like standing room only at Fenway for a Sox–Yankees game, except no one was happy to be here. They were either victims or witnesses to crimes. The last thing they wanted to do was come to court and testify.

“Good morning, ladies,” Connie said as he hurried past the secretaries, careful not to make eye contact with any of the witnesses. He hated treating them like homeless people asking for change, but he had work to do and no time to answer the questions they were sure to ask.

The long corridor ahead of him was on the north side of the building, a wall of windows broken up by the assistant district attorneys’ work cubicles. Except for Liz Moore, the supervising ADA, none of the lawyers had their own offices. Their cubicles faced out onto Roxbury’s Dudley Square and toward the distant, mirrored glass of the John Hancock building.

As he came around the corner, Connie almost ran into Nick Costa, who was leaning back in his swivel chair. Nick looked sharp in one of his trademark tailored suits and Italian ties, his expensive wardrobe complementing his Mediterranean looks. And he didn’t have to live beyond his means to look good. He was well taken care of by his parents: Greek immigrants who had achieved the American dream by founding a floral shop that had grown into the largest chain in the Boston area. Connie stuck with the two charcoal gray suits his father had bought for him when he was sworn in to the bar. “You’re tardy,” Nick said. “It’s almost nine.”

Connie pointed to his pager. “Homicide Response. I was supposed to pass it off on Friday, but one of the Gang Unit ADA’s had a wedding. It sucks having two sleepless weekends in a row. Wearing this pager is like hazing for DAs. Every time you start to doze off, the damn thing beeps. The hardest part is being out at a crime scene all night and then handing the case off to the Homicide DAs.”

“I thought I saw you on the news. The ‘suspicious death’ in Rozzie.”

“How’d I look?”

“Like Mr. Clean with that shaved dome of yours,” Nick said, running his fingers through his hair.

Mitchum Beaulieu hung up his phone and stood up from the neighboring partition, a red thermos cup of home-brewed tea by his lips. He tapped Nick on the shoulder. “Let the man tell his story.” Mitch Beaulieu stood over six feet tall with the muscular, lanky build of a swimmer. He had light brown skin, scattered freckles and neatly trimmed reddish-brown hair. People told him that he looked like Malcolm X, and he milked the resemblance for all it was worth, going so far as to wear the same style of eyeglasses.

“Hey, Red,” said Connie. “Didn’t see you hiding there.”

“What time did you get called out?” Nick asked.

“Two. Hardly got any sleep.”

“Why are they saying it’s suspicious?” Mitch asked.

Connie put the police reports down on his desk, crouched in a base-ball catcher’s stance and leaned in, lowering his voice. “Suspicious death is the understatement of the year. I get the page for a possible homicide. I throw on a suit and tie, fire up the Crown Vic and head to this old Victorian on Prospect Hill.”

“Lights and siren?” Mitch asked.

“Lights, no siren,” Connie said. “Victim’s already dead. Didn’t want to look like a jackass in front of the cops, pulling onto the scene with the sirens blasting.”

“Did you see the body?” Nick asked.

“There
was
no body. All they found was a bathtub full of blood, like that murder back in December. They never had a suspect or a solid lead on the first case. They didn’t even find the woman’s body. Now it looks like they have a serial killer on their hands.”

“What did it look like?” Mitch asked.

“What did what look like?” Connie said.

“The tub full of blood.”

For an instant Connie was back in the narrow hallway of the Victorian, the metallic smell of blood in the air, Mooney barking orders. “To be honest? Kind of surreal—seeing all that blood, knowing that someone’s body was drained.” Connie straightened up and stretched his legs. “Got to get ready for arraignments. And I still have discovery I need to turn over in the Jesse Wilcox case. It’s coming up for motions soon. I ain’t letting that bastard walk again.”

“Christ, Connie, who cares about a drug case?” Nick said. “You can’t start telling us about a murder and then shut us off.”

“I’ve already told you more than I should have. If Alves finds out, next time I’ll be outside the yellow tape, doing the Dunkin’ Donuts run.”

Nick waved him off. “You don’t want to tell me, fine. But don’t treat me like some asshole on the street.”

Connie took a breath. “Sorry, okay? I’m just wiped out. I was at the scene for six hours.”

“Who found the blood?” Mitch asked, taking another sip of tea.

“Two patrolmen responding to the call. And the killer may have made the call himself. Seriously, that’s it.”

“The killer called the police himself?” Nick repeated. “I definitely want to hear more about this later.”

Connie picked up his police reports. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

“I think they’re in court,” Mitch said.

“Is Andi in yet?” Connie asked. “I’m going to grab her and see if she can help me out in arraignments.”

“Don’t go grabbing her in the courtroom,” Nick joked. “I don’t care what you guys do on your own time, but that’s not appropriate behavior for a courthouse.”

“Wow, that’s funny,” Connie said. “I keep forgetting how funny you are.”

Nick shrugged. “If you’re going to date an intern, you need to have a sense of humor about it.”

“Hey, boys, let’s get going,” Liz Moore called out to the three of them. “It’s almost nine. I don’t want to hear the judges complaining about you being late again.”

Liz Moore was a no-nonsense woman, raised in the rarefied air of power, prestige and acute social awareness. Her father, Arthur Moore, was a lawyer active in the civil rights movement. Ever the politician, he claimed allegiances with both the militant Malcolm X and the pacifist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Not only was he a leader in Boston’s black community, but he was also one of the most successful lawyers in the state.

Now his daughter was admired for her fairness and openness, and respected for her ability in the courtroom. And, Connie thought, it didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous.

“How much longer do we have to work like this?” Mitch said. “We’ve been down two ADAs for months.”

“Stop whining,” Liz said.

“I’m serious,” Mitch said. “Didn’t the DA promise us more bodies? We’ve been shorthanded for too long. One of us is going to drop the ball on a serious case.”

“Mitch,” Liz said, “the gods of justice have heard your prayers. We’re getting a new lawyer tomorrow.”

“Does he have any experience?” Mitch asked.

“No,
she
doesn’t,” Liz said. “I’m expecting you guys to help her out so she’ll actually be of some use to us. But for now why don’t you help me by getting your asses down to court?”

Liz Moore promoted a team atmosphere among the lawyers at South Bay. Connie appreciated the way she had made it a requirement that they look out for one another. As a black woman who had accomplished so much in a profession dominated by white men, Liz made it clear she didn’t want the competitive atmosphere of big law firms to tarnish what was clearly her courthouse.

“All arraignments to the first session,” the courthouse PA system boomed. “All pretrial hearings to the second session, all motions to the third session, and all trial matters to the fourth session.”

“Let’s go put some bad guys away,” Nick said.

CHAPTER 4

D
etective Angel Alves entered the BPD’s crime laboratory and moved
around the reception desk toward the examination room. He was aware of every step, fueled with the energy from his first major case since being promoted to Homicide in the fall. Two murders in two months linked to the same killer. He tapped on the glass window, and Eunice Curran waved him in. A blast of cool antiseptic air hit him as he opened the examination room door.

As director of the crime lab, Eunice Curran was considered by most cops to be the best forensic examiner. Single and in her mid-forties, she had devoted the last ten years to making hers one of the most professional, accredited forensic crime labs in the country. The cops appreciated how she and the criminalists who worked for her used solid scientific methods in collecting evidence so their testimony held up in court.

“Hey, Angel,” she said. “Coffee?”

“No thanks. Already had two.”

“Then you must need something. You never stop in just to say hello.” She winked at him.

“I can’t stop in every day. My knees get weak when I see you. Then I spend the rest of my day thinking about your beautiful eyes. If Marcy found out, she’d kill me.”

“I keep forgetting about that wife of yours.” Eunice smiled. A nice smile. Perfect white teeth. “You ever get tired of her, you know where to find me.” Eunice was kind of a plain Jane, but she took good care of herself and she was fun to talk to.

More than anything else, Alves liked her for her brains. Intelligent women had always attracted him. That was why he was still so much in love with Marcy, a part-time English professor at UMass Boston in Dorchester. But even though he played their banter off, he found it exciting when Eunice Curran, in her white lab coat, explained science that he didn’t fully understand. The lyrics from an old Robert Palmer song popped into his head:
A horn section you resemble, and your figure makes me tremble, and I sure would like to handle what’s between your ears.

“Let me guess why you’re here today,” said Eunice. “The Blood Bath Killer.”

“Don’t let Mooney hear you say that. He doesn’t want to give this guy a nickname and a cult following.”

“I’ll be careful around the Sarge,” she assured him.

“We just got back from the crime scene. Same as the last case, we need to know if the amount of blood we have here is consistent with a death.”

“Hard to tell. Like I told you last time, the
average
human being”—and all traces of the flirty Eunice Curran vanished, he could see—“has about four and a half to five liters of blood in their system. This will vary with the size and weight of an individual.”

“I have a couple of pictures of Susan McCarthy. She was about five seven, medium build,” he said, showing her the photos. “She weighed about a buck-twenty, buck-thirty.”

Eunice gave a nod.

“How much blood was in that bathtub?”

“I’m not sure. It was like the Hayes crime scene; the blood mixed with water. Judging from the temperature of the water, Ms. McCarthy had probably been set down in a warm bath, just like Hayes. Based on the deep red color and the thickness of the liquid that we found in both bathtubs, I’d say they were consistent with suicides. But then we would ordinarily find a
body
in the bathtub along with the bloody water.”

“She was alive when she was put in the bath?”

“I think so. There are other ways to drain a person of her blood, but the easiest way is to have the heart do the pumping for you.”

“So he puts his victims in the bathtub and slits their wrists. Are they incapacitated in any way? Unconscious, maybe?”

“No trace of drugs in the blood.”

“So, maybe he hits them over the head and knocks them out. Who knows? But whoever lost that blood is definitely dead, right?”

“Angel, I can’t say so with any scientific certainty, and this isn’t my specialty, but if that was Susan McCarthy’s blood in the tub, my guess is she’s dead. There’s no way of determining the ratio of blood to water, but it certainly seemed like there were at least three or four liters of blood in the tub. She wouldn’t have lost all her blood, but that’s all she would need to lose before her heart would stop beating. The blood matched Susan McCarthy’s type. You’ll have the DNA results as soon as I get them.”

“Anything else in the tub besides blood and water?” he asked.

“Some hair, but that was it.”

“What about everything else your guys collected from the scene?”

“I’ve got them going over the bed linens. We inspected each room with visible ambient light. Then we used an alternate light source for fibers and biological stains that fluoresce. Nothing. So we went to the trace evidence vacuum. It doesn’t look promising. McCarthy kept a pretty clean house and our killer is very careful.”

“What about the footprint?” Alves asked.

“We got an excellent cast,” she said as she walked over to the evidence table and picked up the plaster imprint. “The sole of the sneaker is made from a mold with the New Balance name on it. That was helpful. Otherwise I’d have had to send it to the FBI. Size ten and a half. Right foot. I don’t know the model, but New Balance should be able to help you with that.”

“You mean you can’t tell me the height and weight of the guy who wore the shoe?” This time Alves winked at her.

“Welcome to CSI Boston,” she said, lowering her voice and raising her eyebrow. “Not only can I tell you the guy’s height and weight, I can tell you his race, his mother’s maiden name; and if it’s a clear enough mold, I might be able to give you the name of his firstborn child.”

“That’s pretty good,” Alves said. “But I wouldn’t quit my day job if I were you. Anything else you can tell me about the shoe?”

She nodded, back to business once more. “It has pretty distinctive characteristics in the tread pattern. There seems to be an imperfection from the manufacturing process.” She showed him the cast. “The
C
in Balance looks like an
O.
A flaw like that would have made it an ‘irregular.’”

“The kind of shoe they sell in outlet stores at a discount.”

She nodded. “And the shoe has some distinctive random wear characteristics,” she said. “Right here you can see that it’s worn out more on the right, especially toward the heel. Everyone has his own walk, so shoes wear differently. I also found some nicks and gouges left by sharp stones or broken glass.”

“Can you make a match?”

“You bring me the shoe that left this print and I can make a positive ID.”

“I’ll have the guys from ID come up and take a picture of the mold.”

“Good idea.”

“Thanks, Eunice. I’ll give Sarge the update.”

“Anytime, Angel Eyes. And if you want to continue this discussion later, I’m free for dinner.”