The Night Is Deep (A Liam Dempsey Thriller Book 2) (10 page)

“Didn’t mean to step on any toes,” he said as they climbed into Perring’s sedan.

“Bullshit. You didn’t care who you elbowed out of the way to come with,” she said, backing out of the drive.

“No really, I—”

“Look, I know the score. I read about your case last night. The woman caught in the cross fire. Tragic thing to happen to any cop, and it looks like you were a good one. But most people, something happens like that, they drop it and move on. They take up bartending or drinking or origami. Unless that itch won’t go away that makes you a cop in the first place.” She glanced at him as she sped up an incline and blew through a stop sign. “And since you’re here and not home drinking or folding paper cranes then I’m guessing you’re still itchy.”

“You don’t know me or anything about me. No matter what you read,” Liam said. His voice was flat in his ears and he kept his eyes straight ahead.

“That’s fine if you don’t want to acknowledge it. You can go home right now and go back to working on cold cases. I bet you’ve got an office full of them.”

“Let’s go see what we see.”

“Fine. But just so you know, I’m more comfortable with you being here than before I knew your background.”

“Great.”

“I thought you’d appreciate that.”

“That now you know what everyone else does? Do you think I can get away from it on a personal level? Do you think I need people bringing it up? I came here to help my friend any way I could and this is the only way I know how.”

Perring seemed undaunted. “But you’re not unhappy doing this. Police work.”

Liam closed his eyes. “Let’s just get there.”

She was quiet for a long span and then made a quick right turn. “Fine. But I need something in my stomach if we’re seeing a dead body. Can’t hack the smell along with hunger pangs.” She swung off the street into a parking lot and pulled into a drive-through coffee stand and ordered a sausage, egg, and cheese Danish. “Want anything?” she asked.

“No.”

The smell of the greasy breakfast filled the car, making his stomach growl but he ignored it. As Perring wolfed the sandwich down he took her words apart and put them back together, trying to find a flaw in them, an inaccuracy. He couldn’t.

Moments later they turned onto a side street that curved gently through a beautiful stand of trees alight with fall colors. Between their gaps large homes loomed above careful landscaping, their facades immodest with white balustrades and Greek columns. On the curve of the first corner two squad cars blocked a paved driveway and another sat before a two-stall garage. The garage was attached to a tall two-story brick house that sprawled on an acre lawn. Yellow “do not cross” tape spun in the breeze before the front door.

“What’s the deceased’s name?” Liam asked as they stepped out of the car.

“A Mr. Dade Erickson. He’s a lawyer here in town. His cleaning lady found him this morning.”

Liam turned in the drive and looked out at the view. The land dropped away in an almost dizzying slope, its side checkered with rooftops and blazing tree lines until it emptied out in the slate gray of Superior. “Hell of a view,” he said.

“He could afford it. From what I know his parents were loaded before he started one of the biggest law firms in town. They owned a private shipping line or something.”

They moved up the drive and past the running squad. A uniformed officer met them outside the front door.

“Charlie, what do we have?” Perring said.

“Body’s upstairs in the master. The place is a mess. Forensics went through the kitchen first but everything’s upstairs.”

“You don’t look so good,” Perring said.

Charlie shook his head. “Seen a few bodies but nothing like this.”

“Take five and head off any media out here, okay?”

“Yes ma’am.”

They watched the officer walk away and Perring frowned before stepping inside. Liam followed her and they both stopped in the entryway, the smell meeting them immediately.

“Shit,” Perring said.

“Smells like it,” Liam said.

To the left there was a murmur of conversation. When they entered the kitchen a woman holding a digital camera glanced in their direction before continuing to photograph the scene before them.

A slick of dried blood six inches wide ran across the wood floor amidst the bright glitter of broken glass. Several shards were black with blood and an almost perfect crimson handprint stained the side of the breakfast counter. A bloodied bath towel was curled next to a Glock lying beneath a bar stool, a plastic bag beside it.

“Damn,” Perring said. Another uniformed officer stood on the opposite side of the room, his hands on his duty belt.

“Something, isn’t it?” the officer said.

“What are we looking at here, Tony?”

“Toshi can tell you better. He’s upstairs. Just to warn you, it’s a doozie.”

Liam moved around behind the photographer and looked out to where the house joined the garage, then studied the blood trail and broken glass.

“Liam, this way,” Perring said, motioning to the right. They wound their way through a large dining room and past a living room before entering a wide hallway that opened to a set of stairs. Drops of blood smeared the tread’s centers and several specks of crushed glass were marked with small plastic evidence arrows. They moved up the stairs close to the wall, careful not to step on any of the glass or blood. At the top, the hallway opened into a large master bedroom with two curtained windows on its far side. Toshi, the lead forensic specialist, was on one side of the massive sleigh bed that took up the majority of the room. He was looking down at what was strapped to its top and it took Liam a full second to translate what he was seeing.

A man’s body was fastened to the bed with three wide nylon straps, the kind normally found securing a heavy load on the back of a pickup. One band ran around the corpse’s legs, the next around its hips, and the last over its chest. Liam glanced at the man’s face and experienced a moment of disbelief.

His lips and the tip of his nose were gone.

The tissue had been raggedly removed, exposing very white teeth smeared with blood, the mouth open in a jaw-breaking scream. Below gaping eyes, a bit of pale cartilage poked from the leveled area where the nose had been. Liam moved around Perring who seemed to be frozen partway into the room.

“Good morning detectives, er, ah—” Toshi said, focusing on Liam.

“You can just call me Liam.”

“Sure.”

Perring entered the room, her features hardening as she neared the bed and its occupant. Liam took a closer look at the corpse and noticed several long stripes of black and purple flesh that ran the length of each arm and two parallel lines tracing down beneath the strap covering the body’s chest. The air in the room smelled like a mixture of excrement and old barbecue. The burnt odor increased the nearer he got to the bed.

“What can you tell us so far?” Liam asked.

Toshi straightened, spinning a pair of tweezers in one latex-gloved hand. “Deceased is Dade Reginald Erickson. Age thirty-five. Single, no children. His housekeeper found him this morning just like this.”

“Got an idea on cause of death yet?”

“Looks like some type of poisoning,” Toshi said, leaning in over the corpse. “There’s extensive chemical burning on the top of the tongue and rear of the throat. It looks like he was force-fed some type of acid.”

“Jesus,” Perring said.

Liam walked around the side of the bed and saw something plugged into the wall outlet near the bedside table. It was a soldering iron, tip blackened, handle coated with blood. His eyes shifted from the tool to the lines in the cold, white flesh.

“Those are burns from the soldering iron, aren’t they?” Liam asked, pointing toward the stripes.

Toshi nodded. “Appears so.”

“Pre- or postmortem?”

“Pre.”

“Wow,” Liam breathed. “That’s . . . really something.”

“I’ll say. I can’t imagine the level of pain inflicted by the burns. They’re easily third degree. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look at this.” Toshi slid one finger beneath the chest strap and pulled it down.

A large number four was crudely branded in charred lines on the skin.

“What the fuck?” Perring said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Toshi said, glancing at each of them. He let the strap go, partially covering up the blackened symbol. Liam ran his eyes up over the man’s ruined face and then back down to the number.

“What did they use to remove his lips and nose?” Liam asked. “It looks like they were torn off.”

Toshi let out a grim chuckle. “That’s probably the most grisly part of all this. The killer didn’t do that. The victim’s cat did.”

“What?” Perring said.

“That was one of the first things the housekeeper said when she called it in. Apparently the cat was sitting on his chest, munching away when she came up here. Tony had to chase it out of the room and put it in its cage.”

“You’re kidding,” Liam said.

“Wish I was.”

Liam stepped back and looked at Perring. Her expression hadn’t changed since she’d entered the bedroom. She looked like someone in their first minutes on land after being at sea for months. As he watched, she seemed to surface within herself and glanced around.

“Do we have a time of death?” she asked.

“Around one this morning.”

“Any prints yet?”

“No, but we got a rough shoe size from the crushed glass downstairs. Looks like our guy wears either a ten or ten and a half. Other than that he was very careful. We got some hair but I’m betting it’s either Dade’s or the cat’s.”

“It looks like Dade was injured downstairs and then came up here,” Liam said. “But not under his own power, right?”

Toshi’s eyebrows went up. “That’s correct. There’s a laceration on the bottom of his right foot that’s consistent with one of the shards downstairs. It appears he cut himself and then was dragged or carried to the bed and strapped down. Then whoever it was went to work on him.”

“The gun is an interesting point though. Do we know if it’s Dade’s or not?” Liam asked.

“Charlie checked and it’s registered to the deceased.”

The sound of footsteps came from the stairs and a moment later Tony appeared in the doorway.

“Have you guys been to the neighbors yet?” Perring asked, her voice steadier.

“Yep,” Tony said. “The people to the north said they heard fairly loud music start up around nine, but that was it. No vehicles in his driveway or on the street that they noticed.”

“Music,” Perring said, glancing at Liam.

“To cover up the screams,” Liam said. She nodded.

“Tony, I want you and Charlie to scope out the area around the house. See if you can find out where and how the intruder got inside.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Toshi, how fast can you get a toxicology report?”

“Maybe by noon if I put a rush on it.”

“Good. Get it to me as soon as it comes in. Liam, let’s go downstairs.”

They left Toshi to his work, passing his assistant in the hallway with her camera. The kitchen was empty now save for the violent mess on the floor. It was like an artist’s representation done in glass and blood. Perring walked around the glass and made her way to the garage door. Inside rested a new Mercedes, its sleek lines and dark gray color elegant against the barren concrete.

“Nice car,” Liam said.

“Lots of nice things here,” Perring said, turning back toward the kitchen.

“You thinking the same as me?”

“Why would someone come in and kill this guy but not take a thing?”

“Exactly. His wallet was on the bedside table and his car keys are in the kitchen.”

“This had nothing to do with money.”

“That’s for sure. Someone hated that man upstairs. They took their time with him.” Liam moved toward the gun on the floor. He looked at it, then studied the blood trail and the dark splotches in the center of the room. “So the gun’s his and he has it out, right? Why?”

“He knew someone was in the house.”

“That’s my guess. He’s upstairs and hears something. Grabs his gun and comes down to investigate. There’s a struggle, he loses the weapon and then is incapacitated somehow and brought upstairs.”

Perring nodded. “Yep.”

“Then whoever it is starts in on him and doesn’t quit for the next three or four hours.” Liam knelt and studied the bloody handprint on the counter side. Slowly his eyes traveled to the pet cage in the corner of the room and found a large tomcat staring back at him from behind the wire mesh. It licked its chops. “The countdown has begun,” he murmured.

“What?” Perring said.

“The countdown has begun,” Liam repeated, rising. “What the kidnapper said yesterday. Seemed to me like a strange choice of words.”

Perring shrugged. “He was being dramatic.”

“There’s a number four burned into Dade’s chest.” He let her absorb what he was saying.

“No. Liam, I hear what you’re saying, but no.”

“Why not? When’s the last time you had a homicide?”

“Two months ago.”

“What kind?”

“Domestic disturbance that got out of control. Wife shot her husband after he drank all the beer in the house.”

“She may get off for that.”

“Stop it! What are you getting at?”

“That there’s too many connections here. Two nights ago someone breaks in and takes Valerie. Now this man is brutally murdered and has a significant marking on him that relates to the kidnapping.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We don’t know any different,” Liam said. “This isn’t my show but I think it would be a huge mistake not to find out if there are any connections between Valerie and Dade.”

Perring began to chew on her lip and then fumbled for her pack of gum. “You remember whose show it is, right?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

The front door opened and Tony entered the kitchen, his face reddened from the chilly air.

“No signs of forced entry anywhere. I’m thinking the killer had a key or knew Dade and he let them in.”

“You checked the garage?” Perring asked.

“Yeah. Locked tight.”

“They could’ve snuck in behind his car as he pulled in last night,” Liam said, his eyes glazing over.