Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (6 page)

*   *   *

“The Stuart place backs up on a vacant lot, just like the Medeiros residence,” Jennings said. “No trees, this time. Just a lot of scrub brush. The killer hid in a thicket a few yards from the back fence and spied on the family off and on for weeks.”

“For weeks? How do you know that?”

“He made a little nest for himself in the leaves. And he left a dozen roaches behind.”

“So he would have known that her husband moved out weeks ago,” Mulligan said.

“That’s the way I see it. Late Friday night or early Saturday morning, he came out of his hiding place and jumped the chain-link fence. He crossed the yard, pried the screen off an unlocked window, and slid it open. Then he took his shoes off and climbed inside.

“He left a lot of physical evidence behind, just like last time. It tells a story, if you know how to read it.”

*   *   *

The killer found Connie’s new set of KitchenAid knives, still unopened, on the butcher-block kitchen counter. He ripped the top off the box and tore through the packaging, scattering cardboard and Styrofoam on the floor.

Carrying the four biggest knives, he crept up the carpeted stairs to the second floor and entered the dark bedroom where Connie was sleeping. He jumped on top of her and pounded her face with his fists. Then he used one of the knives to slice her nightgown from neckline to hem. He yanked it off her and tossed it over a bedpost. Then he went to work with the blades.

Sara and Emma must have heard their mother’s screams. They leaped from their beds and ran into her room. There, the two children fought for their lives and the life of their mother, the killer’s blades slicing their hands and arms as they tried to drive him off. But he was much too strong. When they fell to the floor, he continued to stab them, striking so hard that he broke off two blades in Emma’s chest.

When he was done, he dropped the knives and padded down the hall to the upstairs bathroom, leaving a bloody trail of footprints on the hardwood floor.

At the bathroom sink, he flipped on the faucet and rinsed the blood from his face and hands. Perhaps it was then that he noticed he was bleeding. Somehow, he’d cut himself with one of the knives. Maybe his hand had slipped as he savagely plunged a blade into Connie. Or maybe it had happened as he struggled with the children.

He pulled a lilac towel from the rack and used it to stanch his wound. Then he rummaged through the medicine cabinet, knocking bottles of aspirin and cold tablets, a child’s thermometer, and a box of tampons into the sink. He found a package of Band-Aids, tore it open, and slapped one on the cut. He dropped the crumpled bandage wrapper in the sink and the bloodstained towel on the bathroom floor. Testing proved the blood on the towel didn’t come from his victims.

He returned to the bedroom, plucked souvenirs from Connie and her children, and covered their bodies. Then he carried his treasures down the stairs and exited the way he came, leaving fingerprints on the windowsill.

Outside, he pulled off his socks, put on his running shoes, and sprinted across the backyard, leaving size thirteen tracks in the soft ground. Before reaching the property line, he paused beside the swing set and vomited in the grass. Then he grabbed hold of a tree branch, stripping it of leaves as he hauled himself over the fence.

He peeled off his blood-soaked hoodie, threw it and his socks beneath some bushes in the vacant lot, and ran off.

*   *   *

“A few questions,” Mulligan said.

“Shoot.”

“How many times were they stabbed?”

Jennings flipped through his notebook. “Connie, twenty-two times. Sarah, her youngest, twelve times. And Emma, the twelve-year-old?” He closed the notebook slowly and locked eyes with Mulligan. “Fifty-two times.”

Mulligan sat in stunned silence, willing the picture in his head to go away.

“Do you ever get used to it?” he finally asked.

“Haven’t yet,” Jennings said. “I hope the hell I never do.”

“I wonder why he singled out Emma for special treatment.”

“No idea.”

“Why did he cover the bodies?”

“I don’t know.”

“What made him throw up?”

“Hard to say,” Jennings said. “It wasn’t because the gore turned his stomach, that’s for sure. This guy
likes
the smell of blood.”

“What did he take from the victims?”

“Some jewelry Connie’s sister says they always wore. But that’s one of the details we’re holding back.”

Mulligan reached for his cup of coffee and discovered it was cold. Jennings fetched another round.

“Got any suspects?” Mulligan asked.

“Not yet.”

“So now what?”

“We’re interviewing everybody who knew the Stuarts and the Medeiroses to see who might have had contact with both families.”

“Neighbors, meter readers, trash collectors, landscapers?” Mulligan asked. “Gas station attendants, checkout clerks, hairdressers, teachers, PTA members?”

“All that and more.”

“Sounds like a lot of people.”

“Yeah, but I’m betting only one of them has a knife wound and size thirteen feet.”

“Size thirteen?” Mulligan said. “Wait a minute. Didn’t Becky Medeiros’s killer wear size twelves?”

“So maybe he gained some weight. There’s no doubt it’s the same guy.”

Mulligan shuddered and took a sip from his cup. “Why would someone do this?” he asked.

Jennings turned and looked out the window. It was nearly a minute before he turned back.

“Off the record?”

“Sure.”

“Because I don’t want to see this in the paper.”

“Then you won’t, Andy.”

“This was a sex crime.”

“They were
raped
?”

“Not exactly. After he killed them, he masturbated on the bodies.”

Mulligan felt bile rise in his throat. “Did he jerk off over Becky Medeiros and her daughter, too?”

“He did.”

“At least you’ve got his DNA.”

“Yeah. From the blood on the towel, too. But with all the prints he left, no way we’re gonna need it to convict him.”

*   *   *

A couple of days after filing his story, Mulligan met his best friend at Hopes. This time, it wasn’t just the men whose admiring eyes followed Rosie as she strode to her bar stool.

“How’s your mom?” Rosie asked.

“Holding her own for now.”

“I should go see her.”

“She’d like that. She thinks the world of you, Rosie.”

They ordered Buds, and Rosie dropped a twenty on the bar. Mulligan picked it up, pressed it into her palm, and told her to put it back in her purse.

“No way you’re paying for anything tonight after what you did yesterday.”

“In that case, I’ll have champagne,” Rosie said.

“The closest you can get to that here is Miller High Life, the champagne of bottled beers.”

“Then I’ll stick with Budweiser.”

“Did Hardcastle get the story right?” Mulligan asked.

“Yeah, but I thought the headline was a bit much.”

It had been the lead story on the metro page:

Heroic Lady Firefighter

Rescues Two Children

From Locust St. Blaze

“Tell me how it happened.”

“Why? You already read about it.”

“I want to hear you tell it.”

“I will if you put out that cigar. It stinks.”

So he did.

“When we rolled up, flames were jumping in one of the second-floor windows. Someone was screaming about two little boys trapped up there. Eddie Silvia and I pulled a ladder off the pumper and propped it under a window that didn’t have flames in it yet. I was the first one up. I smashed the window and sash with a fire ax and climbed inside.

“Lucky for me, the kids were right there, choking on smoke that was seeping through the bottom of their bedroom door. I grabbed the nearest one and handed him to Eddie, who was right behind me at the top of the ladder. Then I grabbed the other one and carried him down. Nothing much to it, really.”

“Tell that to their mother when she names her next born after you.”

Rosie smiled at that.

“What was it like?” Mulligan asked.

“Better than the day I dropped thirty-two points on Tennessee.”

“I’ll bet. Think
I’ve
got what it takes to be a firefighter?”

“You serious?”

“Serious?… No, I guess not.”

“What is it, then?”

“I’m starting to hate my job.”

“What you’re doing is important, Mulligan.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. There’s a serial killer on the loose, and the police are having a hard time catching him. People need to know about that.”

“I guess. But it’s such an ugly story, Rosie. I just wish I weren’t the one telling them.”

September 1991

The lock on the antique steamer trunk in his father’s bedroom closet is easy to pick. Inside, the boy finds two dozen videotapes, each still in its original cardboard sleeve. He sorts through them, studying the glossy cover photos of naked women named Sheri St. Clair, Angel Kelley, Stacy Donovan, Christie Canyon, and Candie Evans. He stops when he comes to the one with a slim blonde named Ginger Lynn holding a large black penis in her small fist.

He returns the other tapes to the trunk, takes his selection downstairs to the living room, and slides it into the family VCR. Then he stretches out on the couch and unzips his fly. His parents are at work. His brother has football practice. His sister is at her dance lesson. The boy has the house to himself.

In the opening scene, the blonde strips and begins playing with the cocks of two scrawny white guys. The boy watches for a couple of minutes, then fast-forwards until he reaches the part with the brother. He has bulging biceps, six-pack abs, and a penis so huge that the blonde looks a little scared.

The boy reaches down and plays with himself. Nothing happens. After fifteen minutes of frustration, he gets up and pops the tape out of the VCR. He goes back upstairs and returns the video to the trunk. Then he enters his bedroom, fetches one of
his
tapes from the shoebox under his bed, and carries it downstairs.

When the movie reaches the part where Jason Voorhees stabs Alice in the head with an ice pick, the boy’s dick is iron.

9

July 1994

“The chief’s on a rampage,” Jennings said. “If you don’t watch your ass, you’re gonna get hauled in.”

“Hauled in?” Mulligan said. “What the hell for?”

“Interfering with a police investigation. Half the people we interview say they’ve already been questioned by you.”

“That’s gotta be an exaggeration. You’ve got thirty people working this. There’s only one of me.”

“Okay, so maybe it’s just a quarter. That’s not the point. What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Mulligan? You’re not a cop.”

“Heck, Andy. I’m not even much of a reporter.”

“So?”

“So I was thinking maybe I could help out a little. Some of the punks who talk to me would never spill anything to the cops.”

Jennings fixed a hard eye on Mulligan, then took a sip from his cup of Dunkin’.

“I don’t suppose you’ve learned anything useful, have you?”

“Not yet.”

Jennings sighed, then rested his head in his hands. He was a lot grayer than when they’d first met two years ago. This case was tearing some life out of him.

“We’re under a lot of pressure to solve this thing,” the detective said. “The whole state’s in a panic. Alarm systems are selling out. Folks who never considered owning a firearm before have stripped the local gun shops bare. People are installing dead bolts and outside floodlights.”

“Some are even nailing their windows shut,” Mulligan said.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

They went back to their coffee, each adrift in his own thoughts.

“I take it you cleared Connie’s ex,” Mulligan finally said.

“Yeah. According to her twin sister, Carl Stuart made a big scene when he moved out. Claimed Connie had cheated on him with some guy she worked with at Johnson & Wales. Mary insists it’s not true, but we never did get to the bottom of it. And Carl has a sheet, an assault a couple of years ago for mixing it up with a drunk who hit on Connie at Lupo’s.”

“A jealous guy,” Mulligan said.

“Looks like. But no way he’s good for it. The stocking feet that tracked through the murder scenes could never have squeezed into his size nines. His prints are all over Connie’s house, of course, but he’s not a match for the ones we lifted from the knives, the medicine cabinet, and the windowsill. And as far as we can tell, he wouldn’t have had any reason to kill Becky Medeiros.”

“What about Peeping Tom complaints?” Mulligan asked. “We know the killer spied on Connie and Becky. Maybe he’s been looking in lots of windows around the neighborhood.”

“We’ve canvassed the neighbors,” Jennings said, “but only a couple of them noticed a prowler, and none of them got a good look at him. They just heard rustling noises and saw some movement in the dark.”

“So now what?”

“So far, we’ve interviewed more than three hundred people and gotten absolutely nowhere. All we can do is go back to the beginning and start over.”

“The FBI been any help?”

Jennings raised an eyebrow.

“How’d you hear about that?”

“You’re not the only person I talk to, Andy.”

Jennings didn’t say anything.

Mulligan gave him a moment to think about it, then said, “So?”

“This has gotta be off the record.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

“The chief called the BSU last week and asked if they could give us a hand.”

“The BSU?”

“The Behavioral Science Unit.”

“What’s that?”

“The part of the bureau that studies serial killers.”

“And?”

“They sent a profiler named Peter Schutter up from Quantico. We gave him copies of our investigative files and walked him through both crime scenes.”

“And he told you what?”

“Mostly stuff we’d figured out already.”

“Such as?”

“That the same killer was responsible for both attacks. That he probably has a history of prowling, peeping, and animal cruelty. That the size of his footprints and the way he overpowered his victims indicates a large male. That the sloppy crime scenes mean he’s young and inexperienced. That the method of entry also tells us we’re looking for a young guy, probably in his mid- to late twenties. Not that climbing through windows is that difficult, but an older man would have chosen a less strenuous way to get inside.”