The Chilling Spree (33 page)

“Honestly?  No, not really,” Johnny
said. 

“Shit.  Well it looks like I was way
off base too.”

“Is that because of this thing between
us?”  His fingers gripped my shoulders.  “Has my fucked
up memory, your guilt, what we did tonight, has all of that created
some kind of bizarre perfect storm that made you off your game as
much as it has me?”

Had it?  I wasn’t sure.  Devlin’s
warning echoed in my head.  He saw that my head wasn’t in the
case, but mistakenly believed what I wanted him to believe.  I
was boosting poor Johnny’s tattered confidence.  In the
meantime, they were all wrong.  Another victim was dead while
I plan B plotted all day and carved a few escape hatches into
existence.

A lifetime of strangling a normal healthy
conscience to death had been undone in a fraction of the time it
had taken to accomplish that singular feat – becoming a
conscienceless killer like my father.  Johnny Orion
resuscitated my guilt right back to larger-than-life.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”  He
gave a light shake to the shoulders still in his grip.

“Our little personal drama might’ve thrown
me off.  We won’t know for sure until we get to the crime
scene and look at whatever made the uniforms think it’s related to
our other cases.”

“Doc, what if this is our fault?  We
were so focused on the hate crime angle –”

“If we were wrong, we have a duty to look at
all of this with a broader scope and fresh eyes.  And we’ve
got to try harder to leave the other stuff out of the mix.  If
this thing between us is dulling our ability to work together,
maybe there should be a buffer between you and me while we’re on
the case.”

“I don’t know how that helps anything.”

“Are we at least past the irrational
jealousy?”

The wrinkles on his forehead smoothed. 
“Yeah, I’m over that.  What about you?”

“Me?”  I know I sounded offended.

“Doc, this has been eating at you a little
bit.  Please tell me that I haven’t misread what I’ve
seen.”

“Oh.  Of course it has.  I guess
I’ve always believed that my ability to compartmentalize personal
from professional…” I glanced up at his twinkling eyes and
inappropriately satisfied grin.  “You shouldn’t be so happy
that you breeched the barrier, you know.  This isn’t a good
thing, Johnny.  In case you’ve forgotten, we have another
victim.”

“Still, I can’t help but be a little
thrilled to know that I really did get behind the fortress wall of
the Impenetrable Helen Eriksson.”

“This is exactly the kind of insanity that
landed us in a bad spot in the first place.  Yes, you know
me.  Yes, the normal distance I hold the rest of the world at
bay with doesn’t seem to apply to you anymore.  Can we please
figure out who’s killing people left and right now?”

“With or without a liaison?”

“How about if we see if Belle’s murder is
related or a stand alone crime first?”

“No deal.  We work better together and
you know it.”

“Fine, no liaison.  Will you please get
dressed now?  I shudder to think what’ll happen if you let
Briscoe get to the crime scene first, and I’m assuming we’ve got a
greater distance to travel than he does.  Crevan told me his
house was an old Victorian in Downey that he worked very hard to
restore before the marriage fell apart.”

“Speaking of Crevan, did you catch that part
of the conversation?”

“I assume they’re sleeping in shifts
tonight, and he’s unaware that the divorce won’t ever be
finalized.”

“Yeah.”

“Good plan to keep him away from the crime
scene.  I know he didn’t love Belle, but it wouldn’t be
appropriate for him to see her like this.”  I thought of
Rick’s murder and the fallacy of my belief that seeing the grieving
ex-wife try to contaminate the crime scene might suddenly make me
appear innocent.

He squinted.  “Like you did?”

Great.  No point in denying it. 
That much of my criminal past was common knowledge.  “Yeah,
Johnny, like I did.  Go get dressed.”

By the time we backed out of the driveway in
my Expedition, a warm front had moved over Darkwater Bay.  It
felt downright balmy compared to this morning, and the black ice on
the street was gone.  I told myself that was why beads of
sweat formed and trickled down my back, because it wasn’t bitter
cold anymore.

It appears that I’m capable of lying to
myself as much as anybody else.

By the standard of historic Victorian
houses, the size of Crevan’s old home was commensurate with that of
a public servant who didn’t make a whole lot of money.  It was
obvious that Belle wanted the modest abode to hurt her husband, not
because it was a particularly valuable piece of real estate.

It was an odd moment for me to notice that
there was no fog obscuring the view of the house, or magnifying the
flashing police lights outside the residence.  Two police cars
were parked at the curb, the uniformed officers having already
cordoned off the crime scene.  Briscoe’s sedan was
conspicuously absent.  CSD’s van had not yet arrived, not to
mention anyone from Bay County Medical Examiner’s domain.

No Briscoe.

No Forsythe.

No Maya.

The crime scene was as close to pristine as
I’d discovered in my tenure in Darkwater Bay.  Question was,
would that make a lick of difference this time?  It sure as
hell hadn’t on New Year’s Eve.

“Ready?”

I nodded.  “Let’s go see what’s
what.”

Johnny’s cell rang as we stepped under the
yellow tape strung around trees in the front yard and the columns
of the wrap around porch.

“Orion.”  He paused.  “Hang on,
I’m gonna put you on speaker, Tony.  Doc and I just got to the
crime scene.”

“You there?” Briscoe’s scratchy voice boomed
over the tiny cell phone speaker.

“Yeah, Tony, you don’t have to yell. 
We’d like to keep this discreet,” Johnny said.  “Now start at
the beginning so Helen can hear what’s going on.”

“Well, for starters, Puppy woke up before
Lou got down here.”

“You cannot let him come to the crime
scene,” I said. 

“Don’t I know it.  Besides the point
now.  Lou’s got him in her office layin’ down the law. 
That’s why I ain’t over there yet, on account of Puppy threatenin’
to kneecap me if I left without him.”

Was that it?  This was the news Johnny
thought I needed to hear straight from Briscoe’s ignorant lips?

“Here’s the kicker,” he continued. 
“Lou was on her way down here anyhow, on account of the Sentinel
callin’ old George Hardy about some weird sorta manifesto document
hand delivered to their offices tonight.”

“Go on,” my ears perked with interest.

“Well, we ain’t seen it yet, but George told
‘em to send a courier over here with the original, not to touch it
or copy it or otherwise fuck up any evidence that might’ve been
left behind by the perp.”

I doubted that any such physical evidence
would be recovered.  That didn’t rule out something a linguist
might find, or a handwriting expert if we were so lucky to have
such a manifesto dropped into our laps.  In an age of word
processing, I highly doubted the latter scenario.

“So the Sentinel starts givin’ Hardy a bunch
of shit about it, sayin’ that he got no right to violate their
First Amendment protection, and that if he did, they’d have their
lawyers up our asses for a bit of reversal of what happened this
afternoon.  We could kiss that sweet retraction and mea culpa
authored by none other than Ms. Belle Conall goodbye.”

I stared at Johnny.

“Uh, I didn’t tell Doc about the agreement
that legal worked out with the Sentinel yet, Tony.”

“Oh, well the long and short of it was that
Belle had to spill her guts on paper and kiss some serious ass
apologizing to both you and Johnny for that unwarranted bit o’
fiction she published in the morning edition.  Neither here
nor there at the moment.  See, the Sentinel told George that
this manifesto or whatever, claimed that if they failed to publish
it, more people would die.”

“And then Belle’s body is discovered
tonight,” I said, as a sort of grim reality settled over me. 
Missed the boat, had we?  It seemed like we were so far from
the dock, the boat and the water that we might well have been in
land-locked oblivion on this one.  “Tony, it’s imperative that
we get our hands on that document.  If George has to send CSD
to the Sentinel to process for prints or other trace evidence, he
needs to do it.  A copy is acceptable if it gives us some
insight into this lunatic’s mind.”

I heard the friction of fingernails over
hairy skin.  My mind’s eye saw Tony scratching, goatee
would’ve been my guess. 

“Here’s the deal.  Believe it or not,
George actually knew what he was doing.  He told the Sentinel
that they had the right to publish our Kozinsky wannabe’s
dissertation on why he has the right to decide who lives or dies,
but if they impeded an active police investigation in the process,
or tampered with and even so much as inadvertently destroyed one
speck of evidence, he’d hold their editors and the owner of the
Sentinel criminally liable.”

“So they caved?” Johnny asked.

“CSD’s got a guy picking it up right now, on
account of us not wantin’ some random courier throwin’ a little
more fingerprints into the mix.”

“We’ll probably find prints from twelve guys
at the courier service, twenty from the newspaper, two dozen from
Office Depot –”

“I know, Doc,” Johnny said, “but we’ve still
got to look.”

“I’m more interested in what this thing
says.”

“Which brings me to my final point,” Briscoe
said.  “‘Cause of all this new drama, Lou wants me to hang out
until CSD can glove up and make a copy for you to see,
Eriksson.  I’ll be over with it hopefully within the hour, but
since this case is technically not ours, we figure Johnny can
handle whatever went on over there anyhow.”

“Good plan,” I said.  “Tony, will you
do something for me right away?”

“Uh ... sure, if I can.”

“Tell Crevan that I’m sorry,” I said. 
“I know what he’s feeling right now.  Tell him that Johnny
will get to the bottom of this, whether it’s related to our other
situation or not.”

“You got it, Eriksson.”

Johnny disconnected the call.  “Thanks
for doing that, Helen.  Tony’s been feeling pretty touchy over
this rift between the two of you.”

“I didn’t do it for him.  Crevan is my
friend, Johnny.  While I don’t mean this the same as I do for
you, I love Crevan very much.  There’s something about him
that’s very… I don’t know if I can even explain it.  I suppose
the closest thing I could compare it to is a soul mate of the
non-sexual kind.  He calms me without even trying.”

“More than I do?”

“It’s different.  I doubt he
understands me remotely the way you do, but in some respects, I
think he understands my anger better than anybody else.  He’s
like water on my fuse.”

“Crevan’s had his own struggles with biting
back the rage, Helen.  First his father, then Belle.  He
probably relates to your frustrations better than anybody
knows.  That doesn’t surprise me, to be honest.”

“Huh,” I took the stairs on the porch two at
a time.  “And here I had him pegged for the human equivalent
of Valium.”

“Officer,” Johnny nodded to the cop guarding
the front door.  “Where’s your partner on this one?”

The officer pointed toward the back of the
house.  Badge identified him as Officer Franklin.

“Give me the bullet, Franklin,” Johnny
said.

“Twelve-oh-two this morning, dispatch called
me to the scene.  The neighbor, a Mrs. Mussulmen, took her dog
out for his last business before bedtime.  She noticed that
Mrs. Conall’s door was wide open, all the lights in the residence
were off.  She called nine-eleven to report a possible break
in.  I arrived, waited for backup and we entered the
residence.  That’s when we found the body, Commander
Orion.”

“Where is she?” Johnny asked.

“Splayed out on the dining room floor about
three feet inside the doorway.  At that point, we stopped and
called division, sir.”

“You didn’t check to see if she needed
medical attention first?”

“No sir, it was pretty obvious that she was
dead.”

“How could you know that if you didn’t
–”

“Detective Eriksson,” Franklin interrupted,
“on account of the tongue skewered to the dining room floor. 
It’s pretty clear she’s dead.  Neighbor says that Mrs. Conall
usually gets home from work around eleven unless she’s working on
some hot story.”

Speaking of hot, my face felt that way in an
instant.

“Yes, well, did you look for signs of
burglary?  Forced entry?” Johnny asked.

“Door’s clean as a whistle.  Just left
wide open,” Franklin said.  “We checked the back.  Looks
to be dead bolted, though we can’t tell if it’s a key only lock or
what since we didn’t go through the house.”

“Has anyone called the medical examiner?” I
asked.

“We left that to Detective Briscoe, ma’am,”
he said.  “He told us to keep the place secure until you all
showed up, to stand guard until CSD arrives and then follow orders
as Commander Orion sees fit.”

“Tony mentioned some sort of message. I’m
wondering what it was if you didn’t actually enter and search the
residence,” Johnny said.

“Well, maybe I jumped the gun on that one,”
Franklin’s eyes darted away from the intensity in Johnny’s
stare.  “It’s sort of metaphoric, sir.  In light of what
she said about you and Detective Eriksson, I figured that cutting
out her tongue might’ve been what this guy had to say all
along.”

Good point.  I had a hard time
mustering a whole lot of sympathy for Belle.  All of mine was
reserved for her victim – Crevan.  Johnny and I would be fine,
no matter what the press had to write about us.