The Beast in the Bone

by Blair Lindsay

  “I already told you, Kapp. I can find you anytime I want. Don’t—”

  “Hey hey hey! We’re all on the same side here.” Kapp practically gushed it. The Fixer was gratified to hear some desperation in his voice, though he didn’t trust it. Anyone who worked for a politician had to be good at faking anything, right up to and including an orgasm if it came to it.

  “I gave you all those girls,” the Fixer said. “I gave you the ones no one would care about. I gave you everything you goddamn wanted on a platter.”

  “We’re not asking for anything direct right now. I’m confident our people can find Herzog’s killer.” Kapp sounded smug. “And I’m sure Sechev will enjoy meeting him.”

  “That’s not smart, using him,” the Fixer said. “Killing’s only half of it. Look what happened when he tried to dispose of that girl’s body. A mess.”

  Again, Kapp ignored him. “There is one thing you can do for us.”

  The Fixer sighed. “What?”

  “The common thread with the last debacle and this Herzog thing is Ashleen Keller.”

  “So what?”

  “It was unfortunate she survived the thing with Oakes.”

  The Fixer looked back toward the station. The uniformed cop and the admin assistant had finished their cigarettes and were lingering, and he suddenly realized they’d come outside for more than a smoke. They were lovers. Absolutely, positively—no doubt. And the admin assistant was married to a staff sergeant working another shift.

  Frustrated lovers, then, recognizing they were in full view of him. He guessed they didn’t like being noticed any more than he did.

  “So? So what from that?”

  “We reached out a month or so ago to try and keep her from coming back to EMS.”

  “Good for you.”

  “It didn’t work. She has friends. She’s liked.”

  “Ain’t that sad?”

  “It is,” Kapp hissed. “She’s a touchpoint now. What do you cops say? Two points of contact?”

  Despite his arrogance and ignorance, Kapp was not wrong about this. It was a truism in criminal investigations. Any serious crime? Things got interesting when you found more than one point of contact. The dead drug dealer whose girlfriend was BFFs with one of his customers. The dead husband whose wife frequented the same gym as the guy who’d manicured their garden.

  Or the paramedic who groped her way out of a basement full of child-trafficking victims only to find herself attending the murder scene of a pedophile. Two points of contact. One that a really diligent investigator, not to mention the press, would be unlikely to let go of.

  “Whatever else happens, Keller needs to go away,” Kapp said.

  The Fixer took two long, slow breaths before he answered. “I told you, that’s not a good idea. She’s famous… But she’s also a head case and druggie. She’ll likely get fired over what she did at Herzog’s house, probably go back on drugs and overdose in a month or two, and your problem’s solved.”

  Kapp weighed this. “It sounds logical. I might convince the boss of that. But if she doesn’t self-destruct…”

  The Fixer watched the two lovers on the stoop give up on snatching kisses in front of him. Smart of them, but people didn’t always do the smart thing. And just because Kapp was a worm didn’t mean he was always wrong.

  “She’ll need a nudge.”

  “I finally feel like we’re on the same wavelength.”

  Forty-Three

  Decker armed himself with two coffees and headed back into the main observation room.

  “Where the hell’ve you been?” Sanders sat on one side of the long conference table that was sometimes packed if something big was going down, watching Keller on the large monitor at the end of the room.

  “On the phone, catching up.” He handed her a mug.

  She sipped from it and frowned. “This sugar?”

  “You’re going to be a great detective one day, Renée. Two, right?”

  “Two Stevia, not sugar. You’re going to ruin my girlish figure.”

  Decker laughed. Sanders was lean, with a runner’s physique. She and her girlfriend had raced each other to a near tie in an Ironman two years before.

  “What’s our girl up to?” Decker nodded at the camera.

  “She finished her coffee and looked at her phone for a couple of minutes. Put it away afterward.” Sanders grimaced. “You sure a ‘soft’ interview’s the way to go?”

  Keller was in the kind of room usually reserved for witnesses. Suspects were placed in more spartan accommodations—rooms with doors that could be locked from the outside, furniture that was bolted to the floor—and before being secured, they were deprived of jackets, shoes, cellphones and anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon.

  Decker pursed his lips. “Doesn’t feel like she was in on this, but we can always get her phone later, if we need it. Anyway, her dad was in homicide about fifteen years ago. Probably told her stories. Best that she at least feels like a witness right now.”

  “Wonder what good old Dad told her about wandering around crime scenes?” Sanders sipped at her coffee again and then surrendered to the sugar and drank deep. “Any news?”

  Decker sat beside her, eyeing Keller, still trying to decide how much she knew, despite what he’d said to Sanders. Herzog’s dismembered fingers all pointing in the same direction might mean anything… or nothing. But putting it together like that? She was either brilliant or had inside knowledge, which didn’t feel right but Decker had been wrong before. Still, at her house she’d seemed smart and intuitive, and rightly irate when she ought to have been. He hadn’t gotten any kind of vibe that she was concealing something.

  “Coroner says Herzog died about four hours before the ambulance arrived. Fingers were probably removed with a pair of bolt cutters, post-mortem.”

  Sanders nodded, impatient. Her expression told him she’d guessed that and he should’ve known she would. Removing the fingers before death would’ve meant restraining the man, and the amount of blood splatter left behind would’ve been much greater.

  She looked at Keller. “Think she’s stewed long enough?”

  It was common practice to let suspects sit alone for twenty or thirty minutes in an interview room to allow small insecurities to grow larger in the silence. If evidence turned up later suggesting Keller was involved in this in some way other than as a victim, the room would be decorated the next time she saw it—covered with detailed crime scene photos to further unsettle her.

  “Hey, is that Ash Keller?” Tom Croutier, a superintendent who’d come up through Sex Crimes and had the white hair to prove it was standing arms akimbo in the doorway.

  Decker nodded at Croutier and smiled. “Good to see you, Tom. Been a while.”

  “Don’t let me disturb you.” He shook his head, eyes still on Keller. “Heard she was here. I was at her baptism, believe that?”

  “You work with her father?” Decker asked.

  Croutier nodded. “In the early ’90s, when the homicide unit was a little more… Wild West.” He wasn’t reminiscing about good times. “Jack Keller helped drag us into the future. Every bit of science he could get his hands on.”

  Decker knew this already. He’d reached out to a couple of retired detectives who’d worked with Keller’s father, and they’d had nothing but commendable things to say about him.

  “Hope it turns out she’s clear of this. She should’ve been a cop.” He nodded at her. “Born detective right there.”

  Sanders looked at Croutier, her face flat with skepticism. “How so?”

  “We were working on a burglary homicide once. Getting nowhere. Jack brought the file home and this one”—Croutier pointed at the screen—“got into it. She was maybe twelve. Jack was none too pleased. There were lots of pictures, it was a bloody scene.” He was still pointing at the screen. “Know what she said to him?” Croutier paused for effect. “She said, ‘Why was someone standing on the sofa?’”

  Sanders
half scowled. “And someone was?” Decker, familiar with her, knew she was repressing an irritated, “Get the fuck on with it.”

  Croutier arched an eyebrow. “There was indeed, and we’d have seen it, too, given time. Maybe. It was a damnably ugly sofa, weird brown pattern. But there was the trace of a shoeprint, barely visible against the design. We eventually caught the guy because of a parking ticket he got casing the street, but the footprint sealed the deal. Guy had a limp and his shoe was worn down in a unique way. Matched exactly.”

  “Quite a story,” Decker said. Sanders gave him a sour look, but he was in fact a little impressed.

  Maybe Croutier caught Sanders’s vibe because he backed up a step and smiled. “I’ll let you get to it.” He glanced at Keller again. “Don’t underestimate her. Her dad was the smartest guy I ever worked with and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “It was good to see you, Tom.” Decker smiled and shook his hand, then Sanders mustered an equally cheerful expression and did the same.

  When he was gone, Sanders turned to Decker. “Okay, Detective. Me or you against this criminal mastermind?”

  Sanders was asking which of them should conduct the interview. Unlike the classic good cop / bad cop constantly portrayed in TV and film, real detectives generally conducted one-on-one interviews with anyone involved in a serious crime. At this point, all they had on Keller was strange circumstances and ill-considered behaviour, but you never knew when you were going to find something unforeseen in the middle of a murder—a spurned lover, an unpaid debt. It was important to get the early part right in case circumstances changed later.

  “You, I think.” Decker ran a hand through his hair. “Last time I interviewed her I hit a couple of sore spots.”

  Sanders looked at Keller and pursed her lips. “Naw. You ought to take first crack.”

  “Why?”

  “Outside Herzog’s house… She flushed when she was talking to you, and it’s not that cold out yet.” Sanders winked at him. “And she brushed her hair back a couple of times.”

  Decker raised an eyebrow. Sanders mimicked the gesture right back at him. “Maybe she likes bad boys.”

  “Tell that to my ex.” A year after the divorce, Decker still caught himself feeling for a wedding band that wasn’t there anymore. “On second thought…”

  Sanders grinned. “They find anything in the garage?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Get the guys on scene to send you a couple of pictures of the garage interior. Show them to her. It’ll get her talking.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  “It’s okay to say ‘You’re amazingly intuitive, Renée’ when that’s what you really mean.”

  Decker rolled his eyes. “Okay, ‘Amazing Renée,’ you might get a call from the cybercrime guys while I’m in there.”

  “How come?”

  “Because missing fingers aren’t even the weirdest part of all this.”

  Sanders tipped her coffee back and gulped the last of it down. “Do tell?”

  Forty-Four

  Keller started at the sharp knock on the interview room’s door. Decker walked in holding two bottled waters, set them on the table, and gave her a perfunctory smile.

  “Thought you might be thirsty.”

  “Thanks, I am.” She grabbed the nearest bottle and took a long drink. She was trembling on and off, still reeling from the after-effects of adrenalin. Her senses seemed hyperacute since she’d given up fentanyl, and she could smell Decker’s cologne. It smelled good. It made her wish it were Sanders in here. Sanders clearly didn’t like her and Keller would’ve preferred that right now.

  “You doing okay?”

  Last time they talked he lied to her. Now was her turn. “It’s all right. Nice enough room.”

  She glanced around the windowless space, her gaze coming to rest on a series of gouges in one wall. A nervous suspect beginning some petty act of vandalism or a witness overwhelmed by what they had seen? Such thoughts, and the vague smell of disinfectant in the room, layered over her already churning stomach, triggered a tinge of nausea.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Decker said.

  She guessed he wasn’t especially sorry, but that was okay. Cops listened to people lie all day. They ought to get to tell a couple to balance things out.

  Just not to me.

  “I can get you another coffee if you’d rather, or a Pepsi or something.”

  “This is fine.” She took another long gulp of the water. She hadn’t realized she was so thirsty.

  “Another water, then, whenever you want,” he said. “Stressful calls, it’s always good to make sure you’re hydrated.”

  “So we’re calling this ‘stressful,’ huh?” She felt numb. She was beginning to truly realize what she’d done, that she could’ve gotten Lang killed.

  But what if there had been kids in there?

  She tried to tell herself that Lang was the one responsible for her own actions, but it didn’t wash. The guilt of dragging a friend who would never abandon her through that scene was well earned.

  “You’re right,” he said. “‘Stressful’ hardly covers it.”

  She nodded stiffly. “What do you need to know?”

  He looked her up and down. “We’ll try to keep this brief. First thing you should know is that you’re not under arrest right now. You’re free to leave at any time. You’re also free to call a lawyer, or anyone else you might wish to.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Stupid question.

  Decker’s face was neutral. “Right now we just want to ask you some questions. You’re free to call one.”

  “It’s all right.” Was it? She’d walked through a murder scene and endangered her own life and her friend’s. How bad could what came next be? And she was tired of paying lawyers’ bills.

  “Couple more things I have to tell you. First, you don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say is being recorded—”

  “And could be used against me?” The trembling was back and she fought to control it.

  “I have to advise everybody in here this way.”

  And that would be another little lie, but it was hard to hold it against him. I guess I’d wonder about me too.

  “I have no idea how any of this happened,” she said. “It’s all crazy.”

  She saw compassion in Decker’s face and it seemed genuine, but there was really no way to know.

  He nodded. “It’s not the kind of thing we see every day, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ll tell you anything I can.”

  “We usually begin by going through everything from start to finish.”

  “My whole day?” She glanced at her watch. “Holy shit, it’s barely six thirty… It feels like midnight.”

  “Start of the day is fine, right up to the call and everything till we arrived.”

  Keller had heard her father talk about this process of getting everything on the record. Once a suspect had committed to a detailed version of events, the cops would try to pick it apart, as in, “You said you drove down Fourteenth Street but we have cameras showing your car on Twelfth Avenue.” Or “You said you arrived at the house at ten thirty but your phone is showing you near this cell tower ten miles away at that time.”

  Inevitably, the suspect would counter with a reason for the discrepancy, but from there on it was like a house of cards, new lies replacing old. Eventually it all came tumbling down.

  Except Keller wasn’t going to lie, so it didn’t matter. Telling it all might even be a relief.

  “Well, I had eggs for breakfast… Too much detail?”

  “Maybe a little. Sunny side up?”

  “Scrambled with shrimp and avocado.”

  “Nice… Maybe skip ahead a little.”

  She was aware his job was to make her feel comfortable, but she enjoyed the banter, enjoyed his smile, even if they were a sham. It made her feel slightly normal again in this least of normal places.

  Ove
r the next twenty minutes she told him everything she could remember about the morning, including the responses they went on and the final one that brought them to Herzog’s murder.

  Decker listened, leaning back in his chair, affecting the easy persona of a guy chatting about the weather. Every so often he wrote something on a lined yellow pad. One-word prompts, she guessed, for questions he would ask later. He didn’t interrupt her even once.

  Let them tell it all. Get it on the record.

  Eventually, she ran out of things to say.

  “And that was when I saw the cop outside the patio door and I nearly pissed my pants.”

  Decker’s mouth ticked up in a bare smile. “I get that.” He looked down at his notes. “Anything else that stands out?”

  She shrugged, feeling exhausted, as if telling the story had drained her of any remaining energy.

  “The blood… It didn’t look fresh. Not dry, but maybe a few hours old.”

  “That’s about right. We think he was shot about the time you were coming on shift. The dismemberment came after that.”

  “No arterial spray. Makes sense, I guess.”

  “It might be the only thing that does.”

  Fatigue eating at her, Keller said nothing.

  Decker looked down at his notes, then put them aside and leaned toward her, elbows on the table. “How long have you been a paramedic, Ash?”

  Keller recognized the tactic. Change subjects, keep the suspect off balance.

  “Almost ten years.”

  “Ever been to Herzog’s house prior to this? I believe he’d used an ambulance a couple times before.”

  “That’s what dispatch told us. But no. I never responded there.” Bet you know that already.

  “You’d remember?”

  “That house? Bet on it.”

  “Never met him otherwise, outside of work?”

  Keller shook her head. “No… I mean, I don’t think so.”