Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (28 page)

Her face flushed. ‘You had no right!’

‘My darling Reilly, you and I both know that what happened to your mother and sister is what drives your every move – fuels your quest to overcome evil,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I think it’s admirable, actually. After all, every brilliant investigator needs a powerful motivating factor. But what confuses me is this: are you trying to run away from your family sins, or atone for them?’

Reilly just sat there, unable to respond. It was a question her therapist back home in Cali used to ask, and one Daniel had raised the last time she’d seen him.

‘In any case, I must now convene with your erstwhile colleagues,’ Reuben continued, dropping the subject just as quickly, and leaving Reilly’s emotions spinning. ‘Should be fun. And just between us, I believe O Serious One has a major bee in his bonnet about my naked admiration of your talents ...’ Again, he let the comment hang in the air, waiting for her to respond.

‘Delaney?’ she laughed nervously. ‘ I just think he’s taken a serious dislike to your cologne.’

Reuben held her gaze for a touch longer than was necessary, as though he had found some way to read her mind. ‘Perhaps.’

She swallowed, deciding to deflect the conversation back to the investigation once and for all. ‘Just before you go ... if our killer does have a judge in his sights—’

‘“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”’

‘That’s not Dante?’

Reuben grinned. ‘John F. Kennedy, actually. In the
Inferno
, Dante and Virgil pass by a group of dead souls outside the entrance to Hell. These individuals, when alive, remained neutral at a time of great moral decision. Virgil explains that these neutrals cannot enter either Heaven or Hell because they could not choose one side or another while on earth. They are therefore worse than the greatest sinners in Hell because they are abhorrent to both God and Satan alike, and have been left to mourn their fate as insignificant beings, neither hailed nor cursed in life or death, endlessly travailing below Heaven but outside of Hell.’

‘In a limbo of sorts?’

‘Indeed.’ Reuben looked pensive and she guessed he was having the very same thoughts as she was, namely trying to guess what punishment awaited the judge upon whom the killer had set his sights.

‘So what should we expect?’

‘These wretched ones, who never were alive, went naked and were stung again and again by horseflies and wasps that circled them.’ Reuben seemed to be quoting directly from the text. ‘The insects streaked their faces with their blood, which, mingled with their tears, fell at their feet, where it was gathered up by sickening worms.’

C
hris stared at the glass of vodka on the bar in front of him.

The pub was busy, full of the office lunchtime crowd looking for sandwiches and shepherd’s pies on a Friday afternoon.

Chris was looking for a remedy.

The place was across the road from the station, and he’d popped in for a quick one, realizing that alcohol was doing a better number on his limbs than ten painkillers. He knocked back the vodka; unable to remember the last time he had been really, truly, shitfaced drunk.

Actually no, he was wrong. He could.

C
hris parked his car carefully, but still couldn’t avoid hitting the kerb.

He unbuckled his seatbelt, managing to get it tangled as he stumbled out of the car. Then he made his way unsteadily up the path, rang the front doorbell, and stood swaying slightly while he waited for her to reply. After a moment the hall light flicked on, then the outside light, bathing him in a yellow glow.

‘Who is it?’  Her voice was edged with annoyance.

‘Mel, you know it’s me. Let me in, for Christ’s sake.’

‘You’re drunk.’ The accusation, though true, sounded harsh and judgemental issued from the small intercom.

Chris pushed the button to speak. ‘Yes, I’m drunk,’ he admitted, ‘Let me in, I need to talk to you.’

There was a long silence as Melanie thought about it. ‘Show me your ID,’ she said finally.

‘For fuck’s sake...’

‘I said, show me your ID,’ she commanded, and frustrated, Chris whipped his badge out from his jacket pocket. Tonight, he was in no mood for this.

She opened the door and he stepped into the hall. Peeking outside, she caught a glance of his car. ‘You drove here?’ she said, her eyes heavy with accusation, and Chris automatically felt guilty.

‘Yeah, I drove. I told you, I needed to talk to you.’

‘But you’re the one who’s supposed to do things right –  you’re the one who’s supposed to uphold the law, supposed to protect us from—’

Chris’s head ached. He didn’t need to hear that shit just then.

Finally she sighed, pointed him towards the living room. ‘Go and sit down.  I’ll get you a cup of coffee.’

Chris slumped down on the couch, and looked around the small room. It looked just as it had when Melanie’s parents died a couple of years ago – the ceramic ducks flying forever above the mantelpiece, Melanie’s childhood photographs on the piano, the old fourteen-inch TV on its little stand in the corner of the room. 

The screen flickered at Chris, but he ignored it, and closed his eyes, allowing the tiredness to wash over him while he listened to the comforting domestic sounds of Melanie pottering around the kitchen. If only everything could be normal again, back to the way it used to be...

‘Don’t fall asleep here. You can’t stay here, you know that.’

Chris woke with a start.  Melanie was standing over him, holding out a chipped coffee mug with a butterfly on it. He remembered buying it for her a long time ago, at the time he was away in training college, maybe? And despite its somewhat worn appearance she refused to get rid of it.

‘I don’t like it when you’re drunk,’ she said.

‘I know, I know.  I’m sorry.’  He sipped at the scalding coffee, and tried to clear his thoughts.

Chris gazed at her. He could see the pain still lurking there, the years of loneliness, of fear.  Suddenly he slid off the couch, and dropped to his knees in front of her. ‘I’m so sorry, Mel. Sorry I wasn’t there for you, sorry I can never make you feel safe...’

Melanie just stood there, immobile as he wept, when all he wanted was for her to take him in her arms, gently stroke his hair, and wipe the tears from his cheeks as he sobbed, his head in her lap.

He wanted to her to comfort him, to tell him that of course he made her feel safe, that she knew he was doing everything he could.

But Chris realized that the life he wanted for him and Melanie would never happen. Their future was ruined, their past forever tainted by someone who’d taken everything. And their present ...well, this was their present. Him drinking too much and ignoring his responsibilities while she stayed locked away in this house, afraid to face the world, afraid to face him.

And with a heavy heart, he understood that neither of them would be able to bear this life much longer.

––––––––

L
ater that afternoon, Reilly’s phone rang. She answered quickly. ‘Steel.’

It was Kennedy. ‘Is Chris with you, by any chance? He mentioned something about calling over ...’  He sounded hurried.

‘No. I haven’t heard from since yesterday.’

‘Damn. There’s something going on with him ...’

Reilly wondered what Chris was up to now. It wasn’t like him to go walkabout. Then she remembered what he’d said about Melanie getting married this week. Could the wedding be today?

‘If I hear from him, I’ll—’

‘I wanted to talk to you anyway. We’ve found the next victim – at a quarry of all places,’ Kennedy told her quickly. ‘One of the workers stumbled acrossed the body this morning. Victim’s since been identified as one Andrew Morgan. And guess what  he’s a district court judge.’

It wouldn’t have been how Judge AndrewMorgan would want to be remembered.

‘This guy really is something else,’ Kennedy said, struggling to speak with his hand clenched over his face. Karen Thompson was low down in the sand, examining something, a white flag positioned nearby.

Already the smell was bothering Reilly less and less. That’s the way it was with unpleasant things, she thought – at first they seemed unbearable, a great intrusion, impossible to ignore, but little by little they lost their edge, and became almost everyday occurrences.

Was that what was happening to all of them in this job? Were they becoming immune? She looked at Kennedy, who was standing on the grass just above the gravel pit, talking to the medical examiner.

Chris was still nowhere to be found. Reilly had tried his mobile but it went straight to voicemail. Where the hell was he?

She was worried. While she was glad he’d confided in her, this thing with his ex-fiancée was obviously affecting him a lot more than he was letting on.

Still, this wasn’t the time or the place to worry about it.

Lifting up her kitbag, Reilly took a deep breath, and approached the small group. ‘Afternoon, Doc.’

‘Hey, there.’ Karen nodded towards the body. ‘Another little beauty for us to unravel.’

‘Oh, man ...’ Reilly turned her gaze to the heap on the ground and almost immediately averted it. The setup was as hideous to behold as it was to smell.

Judge Morgan had been a large man – no, she thought, if truth be told, he was obese – and nakedness certainly didn’t improve his looks.

Struggling to regain her professionalism, she looked again at the hulking mass in the sand, trying to take it all in. It was clear from the outset that he had been dead for three or four days – decomposition had already started, turning his flesh a disconcerting gray. But for Reilly, the biggest indicator that this wasn’t a fresh death was the maggots.

The dead man’s pasty naked form pulsed with teeming, relentless burrowing larvae. Most of his upper body, including his head, was completely enveloped by the stubby writhing mass.

As Karen went to turn the body over, handfuls of worms rained down from his nose, ears and mouth. They were devouring his flesh in a relentless manner, and every orifice seemed to pulse with movement. The maggots had colonized so much of his face that his dead eyes stared widely upwards, the eyelids eaten away. His nose, too, was barely recognizable, most of it already devoured.

A cloud of blowflies hovered doggedly around  despite the cold December temperatures there was enough heat from the rapidly decomposing body to sustain them.

Swallowing hard, Reilly immediately recalled Reuben’s words from that morning, and realized he had correctly predicted this particular punishment in accordance with their killer’s twisted code.

‘Any idea on the cause of death?’ she asked Karen Thompson

The other woman nodded, her saucer-like eyes peering up at Reilly as she bent over the corpse.

‘If I were a betting woman, I would say that the good judge was first brought here under some kind of duress, and judging by the swelling,’ she indicated a particular area on the victim’s head that seemed to be wriggling more intensely than the rest, ‘it looks like he was hit over the head with something. Can’t say for sure until I get him on to the table and pry off all these little creatures.’

Reilly thought that this relatively fuzzy description of the maggots seemed very much at odds with their disgusting appearance.

The doctor straightened up. ‘So what sin does this punishment signify?’

Reilly pursed her lips. She recalled a particular passage she’d read in the
Inferno
about the neutrals soon after her conversation with Reuben.

Reilly looked at the white flag.  Something to symbolize the blank banner?

‘Neutrality,’ she told Karen. ‘Our man seems to have identified Judge Morgan as someone who was uncommitted.’

‘But judges are impartial by definition, surely?’

‘Yes, but he must have ruled some way on a case that the killer didn’t like. The neutrals are portrayed in Dante’s
Inferno
as those who had the opportunity to do good or evil, but choose not to do either.’

‘Charming,’ the ME replied flatly, and Reilly followed her gaze back to the judge, the maggots still gorging on his rapidly decomposing flesh.

If the man’s crime was indeed impartiality, this particular punishment seemed unnecessarily harsh.

T
he following day, Reilly stood with her hands behind her back, and watched O’Brien carefully. The team had all been summoned to an early morning meeting.  The Chief wasn't exactly reading the riot act – he had been in the force long enough to know that without solid leads and evidence there was little they could actually do – but he was venting his frustrations at them all the same.

Chris and Kennedy stood beside Reilly, while Reuben Knight lolled in a nearby chair, one leg hooked over the arm of it.

She looked closely at Chris, and watched him resolutely place his shaking hands in his pockets. She didn’t believe him when he’d mentioned something about missing the Morgan discovery yesterday afternoon because he’d been following up on some mysterious lead. 

His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt wrinkled and his tie askew, as if he’d slept in his clothes. To someone like Reilly (who, with an alcoholic father, knew the signs all too well) Chris looked like he’d spent most of the day at the bottle.

What the hell? So much for being happy for Melanie and wishing her well. For a guy who didn’t drink all that much this was a worrying development.  Reilly sorely hoped this whole thing with the ex-fiancée, coupled with the pressures of the workload, wasn’t the start of a slippery slope for Chris, and she resolved to confront him about it as soon as she got the chance.

‘Five murders!’ O’Brien thundered. He held up a national paper for emphasis, a huge headline emblazoned across it: ‘Punisher Claims Fifth Victim’. ‘Are we any nearer to finding this madman?’