BLUE MERCY (17 page)

She was childlike in stature: small, neat breasts, jutting hip bones, and evenly curved ribs that showed beneath the translucent skin. There were no track marks on her arms, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a junkie.

Finn felt Kay brush against him. Above the low buzzing of the flies he heard her mutter, “It’s him.”

His eyes, as well, were drawn to the wounds on the girl’s chest. The flesh of exposed muscle glaring red in contrast to her colorless skin. “She a Jane Doe?” he asked Worden.

“Actually, no. We got an ID on her.” Worden waved over one of the uniforms. “Miller here says he knows her.”

The patrolman was a muscle-bound brute, his shoulders drawing the uniform shirt snug across his barrel chest. “B. J. Beggs,” he said. “Bobby Joe. She hooked down on Wilkens. I brought her in a few times when I worked out of the South-West.”

“She have a file?”

“Yup. Mugs, prints. Good kid, though.” The big rookie shook his head, clearly disappointed. “From Wisconsin, I think.”

“Long way from home,” Finn said. “You know any of the girls she worked with down on Wilkens?”

“A few.” Miller shrugged.

“You mind going with us tonight? Talk to some of them?”

“Not a problem.”

“In the meantime, I need you and your guys to start a canvass. Find me someone who saw something out here.”

Finn watched Kay circle the girl’s body, then survey the row houses that backed onto the alley. She’d taken off her jacket back in the car. The sleeveless mock-turtleneck she
wore gathered around the butt of her Glock and revealed the angry scar along her left arm. Finn remembered the two-hour surgery required to fix the shattered elbow after Eales’s attack. One of several during which he’d paced the corridors of Johns Hopkins.

Past her, Finn noted the sanitation workers: Larry, Curly, and Moe, dressed in stained coveralls, leaning against their truck, gawking. “Worden, get whatever you can from those three and cut ’em loose, will ya?”

Finn joined Kay. “So what are you thinking?” he asked.

“We gotta get this bastard.” Kay squatted, scrutinizing the girl’s body. “Two in one week. He’s moving fast. Like killing Valley gave him a taste. And now he’s hungry for more.”

With one gloved hand she lifted Beggs’s wrist, turned it over, then nodded at the rest of her. “No way she was out here yesterday. With the heat we had, she’d be bloated and putrefying.”

“So he put her out with the trash last night.”

“That’s my guess,” she said. “He played with her for a while though, then tossed her before she’d start smelling.”

“How do you figure that?”

“She’s out of rigor. Rigor doesn’t start releasing for thirty-six hours, and it takes a good twelve to twenty more to be completely gone. This girl’s at least forty-eight hours dead.”

“Well, that doesn’t make sense. There’d be more decomp.”

“Not if he kept her cold.” Kay stood, the intensity rippling off her as she paced the tight alley. Finn saw her stiffen and followed her gaze to the top of the alley, where Gunderson gave Jane Gallagher the brush-off and ducked under the police tape.

When the sergeant reached them, he stood over the
girl for less than ten seconds before dismissing Worden. “I want you two on this.” Gunderson’s eyes never left Beggs’s exposed body. “It goes up on the board under your name, Kay, but you’re partnered with Finn still. Any idea who she is?”

“Hooker from down on Wilkens,” Finn said.

“This one have any connection to Eales?”

“We’ll dig around. Talk to her friends on the street tonight.”

Gunderson cleared his throat as he surveyed the scene. “We need a connection between this girl and Eales. Because if there isn’t one, we’ve either got us some son-of-a-bitch copycat taking his blueprints off that mutt’s website or …” He shook his head.

“Or we got the wrong goddamned guy,” Kay finished for him.

But Gunderson looked too tired for theorizing. He backed away, wiping the sweat off his balding pate with the back of his hand. “Tell me what you get on this girl.” Nodding to the crush of media at the police tape, he added, “I want this SOB before those jackasses give him a name, hear me?” With that he lumbered back up the alley, straightened his tie, and met the camera crews head-on.

“Someone had to have heard something out here,” Kay said, doubt in her voice.

“It’s more likely he drove her here.” Finn unbuttoned his shirt collar against the heat. “Probably used the cover of the garages, backed in off the street and hauled her out of his car, then buried her under those bags.” He nodded to the trash bags close by. One was torn, leaking a fish tin and vegetable matter.

Kay waved to a tech. “Do the bags,” she said. “Those two over there.”

“You’re kidding, right?” The technician scowled.

“Yeah, I’m just full of jokes this morning. You can either do them here or take ’em in. I don’t care how. I want them dusted.”

“It’s a long shot, Kay,” Finn said.

“Maybe long shots are all we’ve got. But when we do get this guy, I want his prints on those bags so we can nail his coffin.”

She paced, then nodded to the rear of the row houses.

“He could be right here, Finn. He either chose this spot because it was outside his zone, or the son of a bitch is here. Watching us right now.”

IT WAS THE KIND OF NIGHT
when people killed. Not just the homeys slinging their drugs on the corners with their semis jammed into their shorts. There’d be steak knives and baseball bats, tire irons and anything else brandishable. In the heat of the summer, a late-night argument could go real wrong real fast. In the heat, the homicide rate always jacked up. As much as 20 percent.

Kay drove with the window down, guiding the Lumina along the side streets of Wilkens Avenue, scouting for any hookers who might be working just off the main drag. She felt more connected this way, smelling the city, hearing its pulse.

The unmarked stood out, and Kay took her share of eye-fucks from the neighborhood dealers. Crack-selling crews known as bomb squads broke up in the Lumina’s wake and regrouped in her rearview mirror, confident she wasn’t Narcotics.

The canvass of TV Hill this morning had been fruitless.
The residents who hadn’t already gone to work had seen nothing. She and Finn had left by noon, knowing they’d have to recanvass the unanswered doors tomorrow. At the offices they’d pulled B. J. Beggs’s record. It didn’t surprise Kay that the girl had wriggled out of two prostitution charges. She’d looked like the kind of girl that had a way with the circuit court judges.

Finn had located Beggs’s family in Wausau, Wisconsin, called local authorities to have them inform the girl’s parents. Then they’d gone to her apartment. A technician met them there, but it was immediately clear they were wasting their time. Although dingy, nothing in Beggs’s one-room, basement dive indicated any foul play. They’d gone over every scrap of paper in Beggs’s apartment, searching for any link to Eales or Hagen or Arsenault. But after three hours, Finn had called it quits. They’d taped the door and left to meet up with Miller from the Northern District.

For two hours they beat the pavement with the Wilkens Avenue hookers. With their sweet talk and good looks, Finn and the young officer had fared better with the girls. Still, all they got was a vague description of the car Beggs had hopped into three nights ago. A big, black, shiny number. “New, like, with the fancy grill and all,” they’d been told by a hooker named Daisy. “And the driver was blond, clean-cut, with a real white smile.”

Now, behind the wheel of the police car, Kay let the steam of the city wash over her and steered east onto Pratt. Finn was still on Wilkens, milking the last of the girls for information. It was Finn who’d sent her home. “You look half-dead,” he’d told her, and she’d thanked him for the compliment.

Kay was already imagining a shower and her cool sheets when her cell phone went off in the passenger seat. She caught it on the second ring, expecting Finn.

“Good evening, Detective Delaney.” Scott Arsenault’s voice was smooth and collected. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“I’m on the street, Scott. What’s up?”

“It’s about the victim they found this morning. I wondered if we could talk.”

“You have something you want to share?”

“Possibly. Can we meet?”

“Sure. You could come by the office tomorrow morning.”

“I was thinking tonight.”

Kay stopped at the light on Greene. It would take only ten minutes to loop back and get Finn.

Checking for traffic in her rearview, she was about to put the Lumina into a U-ey when Scott said, “And not with your partner. I don’t have anything to say to him.”

When the light turned green, Kay still sat at the intersection. Deciding. She wouldn’t go to Arsenault’s condo. Not alone. And then she heard voices and music, background noise over the Web designer’s cell. “Where are you?” she asked him.

“I’m at The Cosmo in Fells Point.”

She knew the bar. “Good. I’ll meet you there,” and she disconnected before he could object.

Fifteen minutes later, Kay parked the Lumina in a tight spot along Fleet Street. The Cosmo had once been O’Toole’s, a crowded sports pub and a regular nighttime address on the Western District radios until it had been converted into the retro-swanky lounge-bar. Now, with its hip lamps shaped like giant martini olives, with its electric-blue walls and piercing halogen microlights, The Cosmo catered to a hipper clientele: young professionals and rich college kids, with only a handful of patrons left over from the bar’s rowdier days.

Three of those beer-guzzling O’Toole’s castoffs occupied the tall-backed booth diagonal to Arsenault’s. They looked out of place in Fells Point. Billy-Bob, Billy-Bob, and Billy-Bob. Kay met their slack-jawed stares as she slid into Arsenault’s booth.

“So why am I here, Scott?” she asked, arranging her jacket over her holster, and wondering why all of a sudden she felt as though she were on a date.

“Would you like a drink, Kay?” He lifted his empty cocktail glass toward their waitress.

“No, thank you.”

“Another one of these,” he told the girl. “Only this time could you tell the bartender I asked for it stirred. The gin was bruised.”

“I’ll let him know. Anything for you?” the girl asked Kay.

“Just a soda water.”

When the waitress left, the three Billy-Bobs continued to gawk at Arsenault’s back, whispering and sniggering, clearly mocking him. Kay wondered if Arsenault had already said something to piss them off while he’d waited for her.

“Why am I here?” she asked him again.

“You should order the mussels. Or the calamari. They’ve got great seafood here.”

“I didn’t come to eat.” Her words were strained. She tried to temper her voice. “What’s this about, Scott?”

Arsenault dragged a used olive skewer through spilt salt across the black tabletop, tracing an abstract design. When he met her gaze, he smiled. There seemed a shyness behind those green eyes then. Or maybe it was flirtation. And Kay questioned whether she’d really been called here tonight because of the case.

“Scott?” she prompted again. “Why did you call me?”

He shrugged casually. “I’ve just been thinking.”

“About what?”

“You and me, Kay.” He looked at her as though searching for a reaction to his suddenly intimate tone and the evocativeness of his statement. “You know, we’re not that different really.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, for one, there’s our mutual fascination with murder and psychopathology.”

Kay nodded, but doubted Scott Arsenault had any idea what she saw day in and day out. It was one thing to look at photos of dead bodies in textbooks, quite another to stand over one in a back alley. She thought of Beggs this morning.

Still, if Arsenault had something to share … “Okay,” she said, “let’s talk about that. Your interest in this case is obviously more than just a passing diversion. I mean, you’ve really done your homework with this one. Hell, I bet you know more about Eales than I ever could.”

Arsenault seemed to lap up the compliment.

“So why don’t you give me your take on these latest murders?” she asked.

“Aha, I’m right then. The girl in the trash this morning
is
related.” His face lit up, reflecting a pride in his acumen.

Even without acknowledging the accuracy of his observation, Kay knew she was tiptoeing through a minefield. “What’s your take, Scott?”

He obliterated his design in the salt and sat back. “Well, come on, Kay, how can I possibly comment on murders I know so little about?”

His eyes never left hers, and Kay had trouble reading them now. But she knew Arsenault was pumping her, and she knew how to pump him in return, get his take on the new murders without ever crossing the line.

“Forget these new ones, Scott. Focus on the first three. The women Bernard killed,” she said, even though she had problems believing it now.

“So these new murders
are
related.”

“I didn’t say that.” But he understood.

“All right then. I think you have to start with motive. You have to understand this guy. Get in his head.”

“Okay. What about motive then?”

“There are lots of potential motives. Fear. Mental illness. Greed. Honor. Jealousy. Power. Revenge. Self-defense.”

Kay was aware of the Billy-Bobs watching. She lowered her voice. “And what’s this guy’s motive?”

Arsenault paused, giving the question consideration. “I think, based on the fact that the vics were all washed, and kept for some time”—his tone was suddenly flat—“I think maybe he likes them cold.”

“What do you mean?”

“Necrophilia.”

Kay thought of Alexander Hagen and the accusations Bernard had made years ago.