Fury (24 page)

Monday, September 24
1:35
A.M.
Day 6 + 2

“Guess what’s missing?”

He pointed to the series of photos pinned to the drapes. Victim number two. Kate Mitchell. Dougherty checked her watch and scowled. She wanted to punch him in the mouth. He looked so goddamn pleased with himself. Standing there in the salon, moving from one foot to the other, like some smart-ass schoolboy who’d stolen the answers to the algebra final. She stepped in close, poked him in the chest with a long red fingernail.

“What gives with you? I finally get last night’s disaster out of my mind and sleep for the first time in forty-eight hours and what happens? You call me at one in the morning. Then, without being consulted, next thing I know, there’s a cab calling me from downstairs. What kind of shit is that? You think I’m your dog or something?”

Corso tried to look as if his feelings were hurt, but she ignored him. “In return for being dragged out of bed, I get fifteen minutes in the back of a drafty taxi, driving at two miles an hour through the worst fog I’ve ever seen and you think I’m going to play goddamn guessing games with you. Get a grip, Corso. If you’ve got a point, you better get to it.”

“How about a glass of wine?” For the first time since she’d known him, he looked vaguely embarrassed. She wanted to take advantage of the situation, to stay in his face, to puncture that veneer of his but couldn’t muster the energy. Instead, she sighed and said, “White. Dry.” He hesitated, waiting for her to step aside. She held her ground.

Corso squeezed by her, slowly, belly to belly, slipped into the galley, and opened the refrigerator. Dougherty slid the coat from her shoulders and threw it over the back of the teak desk chair. Aware of her unencumbered body moving beneath the dress, she folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the built-in bookcase. She tried to focus on Corso pulling the cork, but couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting to the glossy black-and-whites of Kate Mitchell. From the way her arranged body seemed to fall away from its center. From the knot of angry bruises encircling her narrow throat. From the rubbery film covering her eyeballs like milky sandwich wrap. She pulled away. Hugging herself harder now. Her mouth felt as dry as wood.

“I can’t believe you dragged me down here in the middle of the night to look at photographs,” she groused. “This thing is over. The good guys finally won.”

“Nobody won,” Corso countered. “Himes is up in Harborview sitting in bed, stuffing his face and telling anybody who’ll listen what he’s going to do with the money he gets from the state. Old man Nisovic’s the closest thing we’ve got to a hero and that poor bastard couldn’t even blow his own brains out. Sticks a gun in his mouth and only manages to shoot off half his jawbone. Not only that, but whenever he gets out of the hospital, he’s going to have to stand trial for trying to off Himes. Excuse me if I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy over this one.”

“What’s your problem, Corso?”

“Ten brides. Eleven bodies,” he said while pouring wine. “Do the math.”

“You saw that place. Defeo was a hundred-percent stone nuts. What makes you think anything he did has to make literal sense?”

“He seemed pretty firm on the number ten to me.”

She thought about it and, although unwilling to admit it to Corso, couldn’t help but agree. The amount of trouble Defeo had gone through to play out his deranged “lambs of God” and “brides of Christ” scenario, no matter how loony it might seem to the rest of the world, suggested that he probably wasn’t going to be confused about the size of his flock.

“So how come you’re the only one bothered by the disparity?”

“The cops have already got what they want. They’ve got themselves a serial murderer, a martyr, and a couple of heroes. Cue the memorial service and the awards ceremony. End of story.”

Corso came back into the salon offering a glass of wine. She took it. Stuck her nose into the glass. Okay, not fruity. She took a sip. Then another, sipping halfway down the glass. Just the way she liked it, but she wasn’t telling him that either.

“Okay?” he inquired.

“Um,” was all she said. She waved at the photos. “So what is it I’m supposed to notice is missing?”

The glint in his eye said he was going to try to make her guess.

“Don’t,” she warned. “I’m not in the mood.”

He took her seriously, tucked his lower lip in, and said, “The ear tag.” He reached down onto the settee cushion, picked up the list of the items in Kate Mitchell’s evidence bag. He read the list: “‘One watch, Timex. One gold bracelet. One gold cross and chain. Two toe rings. One plastic ear tag, ovine,’” he intoned finally. Corso let the list float back to the cushion, then pointed to Dougherty’s photos of the evidence. Pointed.

“No tag,” he said. “Not in any of them.”

Dougherty drained her glass and handed it to Corso. She put one knee on the cushion and stuck her nose close to the pictures. Picked up the list and mouthed the words as she slowly scanned the pictures. He was right. No ear tag in any of the prints.

When she looked back over her shoulder, Corso had refilled both glasses. She stood upright, plucked the glass from his fingers. “So…what? You think I made a mistake? You think I missed something, don’t you? That’s why you dragged me down here at one o’clock in the morning, to tell me I missed something.”

“Matter-of-fact, I don’t think any such thing,” he said. “I think you got everything that was there.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means somebody removed it from the evidence room.”

“Stole it?”

“Yep.”

“Why in God’s name would anybody want to steal an ear tag?”

“Good question.”

“For a souvenir, maybe?” she offered.

“Hell of a risk for a trinket.”

Grudgingly, she agreed. “What then?”

“Damned if I know.”

“You’re paranoid. You know that? You could find a conspiracy at a yard sale, Corso.”

He didn’t say anything. Just stood there rolling his wineglass between his palms, staring back at the photographs.

“How could someone get into the police evidence room and…” She stopped herself. “Unless the person was—”

“Somehow associated with the Himes case,” he finished for her.

“You mean in some kind of official capacity?”

“Absolutely. The SPD evidence room isn’t part of the building tour.”

“Maybe they used it for testing purposes or something.”

“If they did, it’d be noted in the file. Besides which, they’d never use up one whole tag. They take little pieces from all of them.”

“And all the rest of the victims still have their tags?”

“Yep.”

“You still have the rest of the files?”

“Yep.”

“Lemme see.”

She watched from the far side of the salon as Corso retrieved the cardboard box from beneath the sink and then, once again, covered the pin rail with glossy visions of murder most foul. She handed him her glass and knelt on the cushions, studying the prints. Moving a fingertip from list to photo and back. Halfway through the gallery, she heard the muted pop of a cork. He was right. Except for Kate Mitchell’s missing ear tag, the evidence lists matched the photos she’d taken on Thursday. Kate Mitchell’s crime-scene photographs, however, clearly showed the tag in her left ear at the time when the body was found. Now, her tag was gone. Ergo what?

Corso slipped her glass between her fingers. “So?” he said.

She took a swallow. “So…then…what you’re saying is that maybe one of the women wasn’t killed by Defeo after all. She was killed by somebody connected to the original investigation, who then arranged it to look like she was just another victim of the Trashman.”

“You’re a quick one, you are,” Corso said.

“And you think the odd victim was Kate Mitchell.”

He shook his head. “It can’t be her.”

“Why not?”

“Because Defeo had her clothes.”

“They know that for sure?”

“It’s the outfit she was reported missing in. The dry cleaners by Defeo’s house has records for cleaning all ten sets of women’s clothes found by the cops. They’ve identified five sets of the clothes. Mitchell’s was one of them.”

“Can’t be one of the new victims,” she said out loud to herself. “That wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

“If there’s something haywire with any of the original victims, it’s gotta be the Doyle girl,” Corso said quickly.

“The one they found after Himes was already in jail?”

“Gotta be.”

“Mother carries the picture with her all the time.”

“Yep.”

“Why her?”

“She’s the only fly in the ointment. Found two full days after Himes was arrested. Frozen solid, so time of death couldn’t be pinned down. The only victim where whoever called the cops about the body didn’t stick around until they got there.”

“If you ask me, that’s pretty damn weak.”

His expression said he wasn’t prepared to argue the point.

“I suppose you think you know who did it.”

“Not a clue,” he said with a flicker in his eye that said maybe he did.

Dougherty made a rude noise with her lips. “You’re a regular engine of conflict, you know that, Corso? Where others find answers, you find only questions.”

“It’s possible that—” he began.

She waved him off. “I’m not onboard here, Corso. I’ve gone along with the program. Haven’t I gone along with the program?” He nodded but didn’t speak. “I’ve been shot at, shit on, thrown into jail.” She looked at the floor. “I saw a man get killed last night,” she said in a low voice. “All in the name of getting to the bottom of this thing. But”—she hesitated—“this is way too out there.” She waved a hand. “Let well enough alone, for criminey sakes. Win some friends. Influence some people.”

Her hand dropped to her side with a slap. “It’s like you’re always striving…looking for some sort of moral high ground or something. Like you don’t think anybody but you can possibly get things right.”

He stood silently, his eyes turned inward, looking tired and lonely.

She turned her back on Corso, ran her eyes over the pictures again, shivered, and looked away. She felt Corso’s eyes moving over her back like long fingers. Without turning, she said, “Get rid of those pictures, will you, Frank? They’re giving me the damn willies.”

He said, “Sure.” As Corso busied himself with the photos, she pulled the right half of the aft door aside and stepped out onto the stern. Unbelievable that a glorious day like today could end like this. Like being closed in a box of cotton. The air was stark white, floating seamlessly around the boat like chowder. She looked up. Not even the tops of the masts were visible. Then down. The water beneath the swim step was flat and still, like black ice.

From somewhere within the fog…the sharp sound of shoes and then the voice. A woman’s voice. “Frank?” And the hesitant clicking of high heels.

She watched as Corso reached above the navigation station with his left hand. With a single twiddle of his fingers, he simultaneously activated the boat’s exterior spotlights and doused the cabin lights. “Frank.” The voice again.

Corso turned Dougherty’s way. Put a finger to his lips. She nodded in the darkness. And then peeked around the corner, toward the bow. The spotlights made it possible to make out the iceberg outline of the cruiser in the next slip. Nothing else. Corso’s head poked out into the fog just as a figure appeared at the end of the slip. Cynthia Stone. Same red plastic raincoat she’d been wearing the other day.

“How’d you find your way down here?” he asked.

“I told you, Frank. I have my sources.”

She had this way of squirming around while standing still. Like she had ants in her dress or something. “Aren’t you going to invite me onboard?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. Stepped up onto the dock box, threw a leg over the rail, then the other, until she had Corso pinned against the doorway with her crotch.

Corso took his time escaping. The raincoat cracked and crinkled as he backed slowly out of the doorway. “What do you want, Cynth?”

She slid the door closed behind her. “Do I have to want something to see my ex-fiancé?”

“Pretty much. That’s the way it works. Yeah,” Corso said.

“You’re getting to be such a cynic, Frank,” she teased.

Corso shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Cynics think they know all the answers. I’m not even clear on the questions.”

“That’s remarkably humble,” she cooed. “Especially for you, Frank.”

“I was just buttoning things up for the night, Cynth.”

She stepped up close to him again. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

“Where to?”

“D.C.,” she said. “The Hartman hearings.”

“Lot of good dirt there.”

She leaned against him now. “Speaking of which, Frank.”

“Yeah.”

“You know what my downtown source told me tonight?”

“It’s late, Cynth.”

“The story is that you and Officers Donald and Wald had quite the spat earlier today. Right here on this very dock. In front of God and everybody. The way I hear it, if Detective Wald hadn’t intervened, you and Donald might have actually come to blows.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is that you’ve been one step ahead of the rest of us for the past week and a half and, when I heard that story…I don’t know…suddenly I had this niggling feeling that you
still
know something the rest of us don’t.” She put her arms around his waist and searched his eyes. “Come on, Frank. Talk to Mama.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cynth. You know me. I’ve never been good with authority figures. Especially cops.”

She smiled and began to pick at the belt of the raincoat. “A trade,” she wheedled.

“One good turn deserves another.” She gave him a piranha-like smile and pulled the coat back to reveal scanty red silk underthings. “You used to like it when I surprised you like this.” She swayed from side to side, as if dancing to silent music. “Remember?”

From the darkness of the stern, Dougherty’s hands clenched as she watched Corso’s Adam’s apple bob a couple of times before he spoke. “I remember,” he said.

Her dancing had turned her back to Dougherty. Corso looked out over Cynthia Stone’s head. Found Dougherty’s eyes. Covered his mouth with his hand.