Serial Separation (14 page)

Chapter 41

It was difficult dealing with what I learned, and I’m not sure I’ve completely dealt with it yet. At one point, I felt like saying to hell with the task force.

The sight of Mercedes sleeping reminded me again of the previous night and the next morning. I wondered if I said we were going back, would she smile and accept it . . . or what? My memories of that time were like eating a hot pepper.

We were a few miles from the office when I woke Mercedes. I decided not to say anything about finding the money to see how this progressed. She had obviously planned the adventure and, from the looks of it, was satisfied with the results.

“Mercy . . . Mercy, wake up, we’re almost at the office.”

She looked around. “You made good time.”

I felt like saying I gave you the time you planned
.

“Yeah, the trip turned out better than I expected.”

“Scott, are you going to tell anyone we stayed together last night?”

“Why? Are you concerned?”

“Well, yes
.
I think it’s our business what we did . . . not anyone else’s on the task force. Besides, if they knew about us, they might question our working together. I suggest we keep it to ourselves. That’s not to say we need to lie, just not share some of the intimate details with anyone.”

“Like when Mike called me at the cabin and I told him you were with me. However, I didn’t tell him that you were with me all night. I didn’t hide that detail from Lisa.”

“Like I said, no one needs to know the details—only that we had to stay overnight at the cabins.”

“I think we’ll be busy enough when we get to the office. I don’t expect the attention will be on us. It might be on you with that short skirt,” I said smiling.

“I’m glad you noticed, but you’re not staring anymore.”

“It was hard not to.”

“I know it was hard.” She smiled again, stroking the side of my face. “Do you want to stop the car and roll around in the snow again?”

I know my flushed face answered her question.

* * *

When we arrived at the office, the walk was shoveled, and all the lights were on in the building. As we entered the office, we were greeted with an enticing smell of fresh brewed coffee. We quickly hung our coats and headed for the coffee.

Mercedes looked great, considering she was without an arsenal of makeup. We looked at each other over our cups. She was the first to break the silence.

“I know it’s awkward . . . but you made me feel like a woman . . . thanks, Scotty.”

Before I could respond, I heard footsteps behind me.

“Well, Merry Christmas. I’m glad you could make it. I’m going to talk to Colleen about not giving you the message—not to try to make Newburyport,” Mike said, reaching to fill his cup.

“Merry Christmas to you too. The roads weren’t so bad coming back. I thought they would be, but there wasn’t much traffic coming into the city,” I replied, noticing Mercy was dealing with Mike’s comment.

Mercedes held up her hand to get Mike’s attention. “Please don’t talk to Colleen about your call. I answered the phone and never said anything to Scott about it. Colleen had already left. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it wasn’t her fault.”

Mike looked stunned and was slow to respond. “I’m glad you told me, young lady, but I wish you had told Scott about it.” He looked at me and then at Mercedes. “We are going to get an update from the Boston P.D. on what they’ve found for any witnesses to Palmer and Sullivan’s kidnapping. We would also like to get Mercedes’ impression, or profile, of who is doing these killings. We are about to meet in the conference room when you’re . . . done here.”

I thought Mike handled her confession well and was surprised she admitted she took the call. On one hand, she could be deceitful and the other truthful. The question was, which was which? I was glad Colleen wasn’t confronted about this.

We both filled our cups, but Mercedes noticed the coffee pot was running low and made a new pot. She asked, “Did I surprise you by admitting I took Mike’s call?”

“Mercy, I’m not sure anything surprises me about you anymore.”

She turned quickly, and we were nose to nose, and I was immediately surprised by the fragrance of gardenia. “Scotty I’m not going to let you know all my secrets. I don’t think you’re ready for them yet.”

* * *

We headed to the conference room. Just when I was feeling more at ease with Mercedes, she managed to make me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable again. However, I was beginning to assemble the puzzle pieces.

When we entered the conference room, many of the former members of the task force were present even though it was Christmas afternoon. Paddy was at the front of the room talking with Mike.

Paul Brosque came over and showed me something he was holding, but my attention was on Paddy’s introduction of Mercedes.

Mercedes looked totally comfortable. She was greeting everyone with what looked like her patented handshake. She just looked at them, nodding her head. I noticed the movement of her red hair against her gray sweater, accenting her striking figure.

Paul tapped me on the arm and placed his finger on a small area of the map he was displaying. “This is the area where Cathy Palmer lived and she and Bob Sullivan were last seen.”

I quickly noticed Lisa’s dormitory was located on the same street.

Mike continued. “Boston P.D. will be updating us on any leads based on their partial canvass of the apartments along these two streets.”

Paddy announced, “If everyone can take a seat, we can get started. I want to thank all of you for coming in on Christmas, and I’m sorry to take you away from your families. We’re going to get a report from the two Boston P.D. detectives on what leads we might have, based on canvassing the area around where Ms. Palmer and Bob Sullivan were last seen. I might point out that the torso found on the North Shore yesterday was confirmed to be Bob Sullivan. As reported, Cathy Palmer’s body was found along the Fenway. She had been raped and stabbed numerous times.”

We listened to the detectives’ canvass reports along with their ideas for the remaining effort needed. So far, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary, and certainly no kidnapping.

Paddy spent part of the next hour going over the material he had, serving as a refresher for me. During the discussion, some of it reminded me of why I had my nightmares. I noticed Mercedes; she had a notebook and was making entries as the material was presented. She made the notes left-handed, which I guess I had never noticed. Paddy called for a quick break, and we all went off in separate directions.

When we resumed, Paddy was seated at the front of the table with Mercedes beside him. Paddy stood. “As I mentioned earlier, I would like Mercedes to give us her impression of the killers’ profile. Please understand, this is just another perspective to consider. She has only seen the details for just a few hours. Thanks, Mercedes, you have the floor.”

She rose, straightening the bottom of her sweater. I could tell she had everyone’s attention.

“The first thing I want to say is thanks for letting me join the team, and I hope it can be mutually rewarding. The second, with Paddy’s permission—I would like to be called ‘Mercy.’”

She looked over at Mike and me. “Third, I do have some immediate input for your consideration,” she said, taking a long sip of coffee and then slowly walking to the side of the room.

I watched heads turn like they were attracted by a magnet. Mike and I turned to face her at the blackboard behind us.

“I want to preface these comments with the following: I might be way off the mark, but they’re my first reactions. For those not aware of profiling, it is the potential makeup of the type of characters that might be committing these crimes. So, please bear with me and consider this input with any other.”

She picked up the chalk, which had a chrome holder, and wrote ‘Female’ on the board. “I believe the removal of the private parts indicates ‘sexual.’” She wrote ‘Sexual’ on the board
.

“These men underwent some amount of torture.” She wrote ‘Torture’ on the board. She spoke the word for emphasis again, “Torture.”

She continued, remarking, “This leads me to believe there were multiple females involved.” She wrote ‘Multiple’ on the board. “Considering the size of these men, it would have taken more than one to pull off these murders.”

She walked back around to take another mouthful of coffee, and all the heads watched her. I thought, what a bunch of puppets. She could tell my eyes were on her moving back to the board.

She wrote ‘Many’ on the board. “Since there are multiple females involved and only three bodies have surfaced, I believe there will be more—potentially more than the number of females involved.” She lengthened the piece of chalk, and I could see her red nails and the white on her fingers from the chalk. She added ‘Revenge’ to the board.

“The motive behind these killings is revenge. I’m not sure what could have happened, but I believe the females are killing these men because of something done to them. It’s hard to say if these men were the actual perpetrators of the crimes committed on them, but they are getting back at ‘men’ for doing whatever it was.”

She looked around the room at each of us, not saying a word.

She studied what she had printed and then went back to the photographs. I saw the same intensity I saw moments before. She came back to the board and wrote, ‘College Age.’ “These women are most likely in college, and either the same college or another close by, and have established a strong bond of their own.”

“This puts them in the vicinity of Boston proper, given the number of colleges in the area,” and she wrote ‘Boston.’ “Boston ties in with the ability to dump bodies in the ocean. There are many locations around Boston Harbor to do that,” and she wrote, ‘Waterfront.’

She added, “I can’t believe these women would take the chance of carrying bodies in a vehicle to dump them. They need immediate access to the water, which I would think would be a wharf or pier, or a building with access to it.”

I was doing my own analysis of Mercedes and could see by looking at how she had us spellbound that she really got off on control. She had captured all of us. I had to agree, she was making total sense.

I watched her drink the last of her coffee and realized she could have brought the coffee with her. She was purposely moving to capture attention. She went back to the board.

“Paddy said the coroner’s report indicated the bodies were in the water for several days. Based on the sequence, I would say,” and she wrote ‘Weekends’ on the board. “If these men were indeed tortured, and the women were in college, it would seem the only time they would have to pull this off would be on a weekend.”

“If they were trying to get revenge and wanted to torture the men, they wouldn’t just do it on an evening. That would be too rushed. They wanted the victims to fear what was going to happen to them—and wanted them to understand their fate. They would have been told why they were being killed.”

“I’ll give you a theory scenario: They, or someone close to them, kidnap these men on a Friday,” and she wrote ‘Friday’ on the board. “They bring them to a waterfront facility for their fun and games. When they’re done, which I believe is on a Sunday, they dump the torsos in the bay.”

She walked to the front of the room next to Paddy, who was totally letting her do her thing. She looked slowly at each of us again. No one said a word. I noticed that the gardenia fragrance was now much more noticeable, speculating that Mercedes was worked up about what she was doing. She walked back to the board.

I thought, what more could she list?

She said nothing and wrote, ‘Leftovers.’ She turned and looked at us again and finally said, “I don’t know about you guys, but at my mom’s house we always had leftovers. What did these women do with the left over parts?”

She purposely let her question linger.

“Here’s what I think: We have a group of women who want revenge on men who did something extremely bad to them, or someone close to them, and want to torture them. They would keep the remaining pieces as trophies of their vendetta.”

She tapped the board. “I want to give you one more thing to consider. If my calculations are correct . . . next Friday there will be another kidnapping.”

She wrote on the board: ‘Too late?’ “Gentlemen, it’s possibly too late to prevent that kidnapping from happening next Friday night. We need to consider how to break the pattern and find these women!”

Mercedes threw the chalk onto the holder with emphasis and swiped her hair back behind her ear. There was silence in the room for a few seconds, and then we all applauded. She smiled and walked back to her seat, squeezing Paddy’s shoulder as she walked by. Paddy stood up slowly, took a sip of coffee, and looked at Mercedes, smiling. “Mercedes, you have given us more than I could have expected. It’s obvious your training and insight has created a potential scenario which I find very believable. I think we would benefit from this perspective and should consider it going forward.”

He went to the board and underlined each word and added his clarifications:

Female(s)

Sexual (Nature)

Torture(d)

Multiple (People)

Many (More)

(Motive) Revenge

College Age

Boston
(Area)

Waterfront (Pier and/or Building)

Weekends

Friday (Kidnappings)

Leftovers (Evidence)

Too Late

Paddy ended with, “Young lady, I will applaud you again; you certainly exceeded my expectations. I can honestly say you are truly an asset to the team!”

Chapter 42

“Lisa, are you okay?”

She realized her mom had heard her throwing things.

“Never been better, why do you ask?”

“That wasn’t very nice. I thought I could help you.”

Lisa was quiet for a few well-chosen breaths. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to take my frustration out on you. Scott stayed . . . well; Scott and I had words about his not being able to make it here.”

“Lisa, I know that is upsetting, but you know the roads were a disaster, you barely—”

Lisa went running from the den to her room. When she got to her room, she threw herself on her bed. She took out her frustration on her favorite teddy bear, throwing punches at the innocent object. It helped, and she began crying uncontrollably.

Within a few minutes, she had stopped crying, sitting against the headboard, holding her teddy bear tightly against her chest. She noticed the stuffing coming out of the poor thing, bringing her to tears again.

Her mind flashed between images of Scott in a motel room with another woman; Jimmy, with her naked and defenseless; Scott and her in the shower at the Balsams. She realized she couldn’t prevent the images of Scott and Jimmy being mixed.

Her breathing was erratic, and her chest pounded. She remembered her last words to Scott. ‘She couldn’t care less what he did.’

There was a knock on her bedroom door. A few moments later, the knock repeated, this time a little louder.

“Honey, can I talk with you, please?” her mother called softly.

After a short period of silence, Lisa said, “Mom, I just need to be alone.”

Her mom came in even though not invited. She saw Lisa on the bed hugging her teddy, obviously still very upset. She didn’t say anything to her daughter but went over to the bed and sat down beside her. After a short while, Lisa stopped crying and they hugged.

“Mom, things are confused with Scott and me, but we’ll work it out.”

Lisa could feel her mom studying her, and she knew what her mom was thinking.

“Is any of this related to your ordeal?”

“Mom, please, I can’t talk about that.”

They were both quiet, just sitting like they used to when she was growing up.

“Mom, it was awful. I thought I was . . . I was going to die.”

* * *

Lisa started to tear up again. “Mom, at some point in my captivity, I knew I didn’t care if I lived anymore. Jimmy might have been a good kid when you knew him, but he was a monster, and I was . . . I was his defenseless victim.”

Her mother offered, “The girls at the camp had done something to him, changing him from the nice kid I knew to that horrible person. His vendetta against them turned into a vendetta against me, and you were the means to make me suffer, kidnapping you.”

“Mom, what he did to me that night haunts me all the time. I can’t spend time with Scott without seeing Jimmy’s leering face. I know I need help. Every time I try to deal with what happened to me, everything gets so confused.”

She was glad her mom hugged her again. They cried together. “Hon, talk to me about it.”

Lisa was quiet for a few minutes. She tried to gain some strength by taking deep breaths.

“Mom, you don’t want to know.”

“Lisa, it’s going to help you to share. You can talk to me about it.”

“Mom, do you remember the movie we were watching a couple of years ago—I forget the name of it, but that’s not important. The young girl was naked and tied up. Someone was tormenting her. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I recall that. We turned the television off, and I think I said, how they can put that stuff on TV?”

“That’s right mom, you did. Now, fill in the blanks, and that’s what happened to me. I guess I had fainted, and when I came to, he had lit candles all around the room, and he had oiled my body. He made me watch him oil his. That was just before . . . before he raped me.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“Scott found us, but it was just a little too late. He came to my rescue, but he and Jimmy were fighting. He picked Scott up and threw him against the wall. When Jimmy climbed out the window, he went up in flames, panicked, and slipped off the fire escape to his death.”

She knew she could have told her mother more, but what she told her was sufficient.

“Scott was my knight in shining armor. I wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t saved me. Mom, I said some things on the phone to him a few minutes ago that might send him away for good.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry. I wish all of that had not happened. Thanks for sharing with me.”

Lisa wrapped her arms tightly around her mom.

“Your father and I only imagined what had happened. We need to get you help.”

She continued, “What you said to Scott you said because you love him. I know he loves you. You can see it every time he’s with you. A single set of words is not going to destroy that love. Whatever you said, you said in reaction to something. That was emotion talking, not rational thinking. Honey, people make mistakes. We all do. It’s what you learn from them that makes you wiser and stronger.”

“Mom thanks. I’m sorry I’ve made this Christmas a bust.”

They hugged each other. It reminded her of growing up. Many times she had wanted her mother to come in her room to spend time with her. However, her mom was mostly busy with other more important things.

She wondered if Scott would indeed be able to forgive her for what she had said. She wondered if he was going to call her back, or would she need to call him?

What if he had had enough of her behavior?