Cause to Save

by Blake Pierce

  She pulled out of the lot and left the apartment building behind, along with the sense that the place had never really felt like home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  One thing Avery always appreciated about her job was that she never quite knew what to expect. Even when cases seemed very similar, no two days or two leads were ever the same. She was reminded of this when she pulled up in front of Kevin Parrish’s townhouse. He lived in a fairly nice little townhouse complex; each structure contained six to eight townhouses, each boasting their own quaint little front stoop.

  She saw Kevin Parrish right away, sitting under his stoop. He was sitting in a rocking chair, smoking a cigarette and reading a book. She could barely remember what he had looked like on the stand during Biel’s trial but she was quite sure he did not look like he did as she got out of the car and approached his front stoop.

  He had grown his hair long and had one of those beards that Rose sometimes referred to as hipster beards—the sort that needed a good grooming. On Parrish’s face, the beard was mostly gray. Avery figured he had to be in his early fifties now. And despite the hair and the unruly beard, the thing that drew Avery’s attention more than anything else was the eye patch he wore where his left eye used to be.

  She approached the stoop quietly, not wanting to alarm him as he was apparently lost in his book—one of Jesse Ventura’s conspiracy titles. She hated to cast stereotypes, but the title seemed to fit the new appearance Parrish had taken on.

  “Kevin Parrish?” she asked as she reached the front of his stoop.

  He looked up through a cloud of cigarette smoke, setting the book down on his knee. “Yeah, that’s me. Who’s asking?”

  “I’m Detective Avery Black. I’m on some urgent business and I was hoping you’d be able to speak to me about Ronald Biel.”

  “That’s fine,” he said with a smirk. “Let’s just hope the conversation begins with you giving me the news that he’s dead and rotting in a ditch somewhere.”

  “No, I’m afraid not. In fact, he was released from prison a little over three weeks ago. And since then, it appears that he has killed at least three people. And he’s also threatening me and my family.”

  “How was that asshole not thrown under the prison?” Parrish asked. He punctuated the question by taking a long drag off of his cigarette and then stubbing it out in an ashtray on the porch railing.

  “Lots of variables,” she said. It was clear that he did not recognize her. And why would he? While she had questioned him when he was on the stand, she had not pressed hard. By that point in the proceedings, she had decided to throw the case.

  “So he’s out there again? As crazy as ever?”

  “He is,” Avery said. She was a little surprised by his whatever sort of attitude. Now that she was thinking about it, she wondered if Kevin Parrish might be somewhere on Biel’s list of people to kill.

  “So what do you need from me?” he asked.

  “First and foremost, be careful,” she said. “Two of the three people he has killed were closely attached to his trial. His parole officer and the head attorney of the firm that worked to put him away. And I know there was some sort of skirmish between the two of you…”

  “Yeah, there was. I lost the eye and these fingers,” he said, holding up his right hand and revealing the stubs where his ring finger and pinky should have been. “But I’m a big boy. I’ll be okay. And besides…he won’t come for me. He kills me, he’ll have the mob come down on him. I’m not associated with the mob anymore, but I still have friends on the inside. Ronald is smart. He knows better. Now, I ask again: how can I help you?”

  “As a man who was once Biel’s friend, do you know where he might have headed once he was released? Some sort of safe place that the authorities might not think to look?”

  “Well, I think the mob connection is kaput. He burned that bridge to the ground. So outside of his old haunts, I really don’t know. He had one friend that he hung with for a while. This was back when he was active in the mob, working as an enforcer. There was some stink over it because this friend was not in the mob. They might have been cousins or something. But honestly, I doubt he went there. I’m pretty sure there was some bad blood between them at the end. Rumor has it that this is the guy that might have put in that anonymous call that led to the feds finally catching Ronald.”

  There’s someone that would for sure be on a revenge hit list, Avery thought.

  “Do you know a name and address?”

  “I do,” he said. “The guy’s name is Warren Reilly. He lives in one of those old rundown houses out on Florence Street, where that mill used to run on the end of the block. You know it?”

  Avery nodded. She was in a rush, sure, but she felt that there was an opportunity here to delve a bit deeper—maybe to get a better understanding of Biel’s true motives and skewed reasoning.

  “Can I ask what the altercation between you and Biel was?” she asked.

  Parrish lit up another cigarette, which he drew from a pack sitting by the ashtray. He seemed to consider things for a while—maybe whether or not he wanted to get into it at all. In the end, he nodded and took a drag of his smoke.

  “Ronald was always an extremist. We knew it pretty quickly, but no one said much. He was violent and took things a little too far when he was sent in as an enforcer. He’d be sent in to break a finger or two just to get some information from a guy and end up breaking his hand, a few ribs, busting out a few teeth. You heard about the guy he nailed to the shed, right? Just before he was caught?”

  “Yes. What about him?”

  “He used to be friends with us, too. He was the biggest voice of reason, trying to keep Ronald under control. In the end, look at what happened to him. Anyway…all of this,” he said, waving at his eyes and other hand, “happened about a month before he was caught. I was with him on a job and he went berserk. He was asked to scare the guy, maybe even break his leg if necessary. But Ronald lost it. The guy smarted off to him and Ronald killed him. He strangled him to death and while the guy was fighting to breathe, Ronald told him about how he was going to find the guy’s wife and daughter and do all of this repugnant shit to them.

  “So I sort of lost my temper. I threatened to report him, to see that he never worked with the mob again. We got into a fight. He pulled a knife and I had nothing—no knife, no gun. He cut off my fingers and stabbed me in the fucking eye. I think he would have killed me if he didn’t think the rest of the mob would rain hellfire down on him. But really, I think that little temper tantrum was the beginning of the end for him—when things really started to unravel.”

  Avery could see from the almost blank expression in Parrish’s eyes that he was not enjoying the process of dredging it all up. He took a long drag from his cigarette when he was done and looked at her through the smoke he blew out.

  “You close to catching him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If Warren Reilly pans out as a reliable lead, then perhaps. Thank you for your time, Mr. Parrish.”

  She took a few steps back toward her car and then paused. She turned back to the stoop where Parrish was picking his book back up.

  “One more question, Mr. Parrish. Do you by any chance know Howard Randall?”

  Parrish thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “It sounds familiar, but it’s not anyone I know. Why?”

  “Just asking,” she said, and continued to her car.

  As she pulled away, she tried to figure out how Howard would have known about Kevin Parrish. Had he been following Biel’s case while he was behind bars? For that matter…

  Did they know each other while in prison? They were in the same building, after all. And they both had notorious reputations…

  She felt like this was a bit of a stretch, but it did answer a few questions if it was indeed true. And whether it was true or not, the weight of it was enough to push her on. She pressed her foot a little harder on the gas as she hit the street, placing a ca
ll to the A1 to get an address for Warren Reilly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Ironically, Warren Reilly’s house was located less than five miles away from the Weston Hotel. Parrish had been right to call it a rundown place. Most street kids referred to these types of houses as crack houses. It was low-income housing usually offered by defeated real estate agents to recently released convicts or former drug addicts looking to get back o their feet and reclaim their lives.

  She found parking easily, as hardly anyone who lived on Florence Street and the surrounding blocks could afford their own transportation. She knocked on the door and waited for a while only to have no one answer. She leaned toward the door, listening for signs of life, but there were none. She knocked again and this time, after no one answered, she tried the knob. It turned freely in her hand.

  She creaked it open just a bit and called inside. “Mr. Reilly? Warren Reilly? Are you here?”

  The only response she got was her own voice bouncing from the dingy walls. From simply placing her head inside the partially opened door, she could tell that the house was humid. And there was also an intense garbage smell, like piles of it waiting in the kitchen to be carried off to the city dump.

  “Mr. Reilly, if you’re here, this is Detective Avery Black with the Boston PD. I’m coming in because the door was open and under suspicion of criminal activity.”

  It was all bullshit, but Reilly didn’t need to know that. If he was here.

  The house was a dingy mess. Wallpaper was peeling, the floorboards were filthy, and she spotted a cobweb in the entryway, complete with two plump flies ready to be feasted upon.

  The small entryway led into a den area that also served as the living room. She had to go no farther than that.

  Warren Reilly was sitting on the couch. Several other flies, these very much alive, were circling around his head. Some landed on it, crawled around, and took off again. Warren Reilly did not seem to mind. Even before she got to the front of the couch to verify, Avery was fairly certain he didn’t notice due to the two gunshot wounds in his forehead. Then, as if for good measure, a serving fork had been shoved into his stomach. Blood from the fork wound had seeped over his bare belly and into the couch cushions.

  The peculiar thing was that this blood was almost completely dried.

  Biel visited him first, she thought. When he decided to start his little plan, he came to Warren Reilly first. According to Parrish, the two were close and then came to a bad end. Looks like Warren Reilly came to the worst end, though…

  Avery ventured around the rest of the house while she called in the scene to A1. She found no other signs of foul play; there were no cute cryptic notes, no obvious signs of Biel damaging the house or Reilly’s property. She did see that a few drawers in the kitchen were opened. The silverware drawer looked to have been rummaged through the most—presumably where the serving fork had come from.

  She walked back into the living room, looked Reilly over again, and then stepped back outside.

  This is getting out of hand, she thought.

  She found that she wanted to be back at the hospital, sitting with Ramirez. Knowing that he was now able to speak to her and that there was a certain ring to be discussed made this nightmare of a case seem almost offensive.

  She headed back down to her car to wait for the cavalry to arrive. While she waited, she called the hospital to get a report on Ramirez’s condition. According to the night nurse on duty, everything looked good—no different than from when she had been there earlier, but even that was a good sign. She badly wanted to ask if they could connect her to his room but she decided not to. Best to let him rest. All he would do would be to ask her about her case anyway. And she didn’t want him overworking his brain in his condition.

  She killed the call and nearly called Rose to check in on her as well. But before she had the chance, the saw a series of red and blue lights coming up from behind her.

  She stepped out of her car and waited for them to pull in behind her. She wasn’t too surprised to see O’Malley stepping out of his car—not a patrol car but nice sleek black number he used when on duty. As he came over to her, two other officers and another A1 detective got out of their respective cars and headed over.

  Avery was prepared to brief them before they entered but before they could reach her, O’Malley waved them away. “Your show, guys,” he said. “Relay anything new to Finley.”

  “What?” Avery asked, confused.

  “Come here,” O’Malley said, pulling her back toward her car. “Avery…there’s another body.”

  “Another one? Jesus, this guy is working fast. Where? Do we know who?”

  O’Malley took a shaky breath and could barely look at her. “It your ex-husband,” he said. “It’s Jack.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  The world was a blur when Avery got to Tricia’s residence. She lived in a small townhouse in a cute neighborhood not too far away from Jack’s place. She had instructed him to move somewhere else for a while and Biel had still found him. When O’Malley pulled the patrol car up to the lot, there were already two patrol cars parked there, painting the townhouse in washes of red and blue strobing light.

  O’Malley had barely stopped the car before she was reaching for the door handle.

  “Avery, wait,” he pleaded. “Let me come with you.”

  She didn’t bother with a response. As she ran up the walk, her mind and heart seemed to be quarreling. On one side, she was having to accept that fact that although she had fallen far out of love with Jack many years ago, she had still spent almost ten years of her life with him. And on the other side…she tried to imagine breaking the news to Rose.

  “Oh God,” she said under her breath.

  As she reached the stairs, she saw two policemen talking. They apparently recognized her, as they stepped aside without question. From behind her, she heard O’Malley rushing up the sidewalk, still calling her name.

  She stopped running the moment she stepped into the place. It felt cold and she could smell blood. Images of what Mitch Brennan’s house had looked like earlier that day flashed through her mind.

  God, was that really today? The amount of death she’d seen today was too much…coupled with Jack having sex with his young girlfriend.

  And now this…it was surreal.

  But it became something much darker when she saw the first smear of blood. It was just a few drops at first, splattered on the carpet. A policeman stepped out from behind the open archway between the entry hallway and the kitchen. He looked alarmed at first, ready to scold whoever had crept into this crime scene, but then saw her face.

  “Detective Black,” he said. “Um…do you need a minute, or…?”

  O’Malley entered the hallway from the front door behind her. He was flushed, a little out of breath, and doing his best to play a supportive role. “Yes, Officer,” he said. “Give us a minute, would you?”

  The officer nodded sadly and walked out behind them.

  “Avery, are you sure you want to see this?”

  He knows it’s bad, she thought as she stepped into the kitchen. He knows it’s going to be bad and is trying to make sure I don’t break from this.

  There was a large pool of blood on the kitchen floor. It was mostly wet, but dried at the edges. This happened at least two hours ago, she thought. Maybe a little later than that. No more than four hours after I visited him, that’s for sure.

  She stepped around the edge of the counter and saw Tricia. She was lying face down in the same pool of blood. The back of her head had been hit hard, her skull clearly caved in. The marble cutting board that had been used as a weapon lay broken in the floor next to her. But there was also a large butcher knife planted in the base of her spine. That, too, was bleeding but not as profusely as the massive wound on the back of her head.

  She looked to the living room wall straight ahead of her. There was a message written in blood. The roll of paper towels used to write it had been left
on the sofa.

  EVERYONE YOU LOVE

  That was all it said.

  Avery felt a pure flash of hatred and anger sizzle for a moment but it quickly disintegrated into something that felt far too much like helplessness.

  The kitchen gave way to the living room and before she even crossed into it, she saw the hand; it was barely uncovered by the base of the small kitchen bar. She trembled, her eyes never leaving it as she stepped into the living room.

  She couldn’t help it—she let out a sob and her knees almost gave out.

  Jack was sprawled out on his back, his right leg bent awkwardly from the fall. His throat had been cut in the same way as Jane Seymour’s but that was not the end of it. Not by a long shot.

  There was so much blood. It was everywhere. Before she forced herself to tear her eyes away from Jack, she saw at least five more wounds. They all looked to be made by a knife, probably the same one that was sticking out of Tricia’s back. Two in his chest, one in his groin, and one in the side of his face that had split open the corner of his mouth.

  She turned around and blinked away the tears.

  Rose, she thought. My God…Rose.

  “Who discovered the bodies?” she asked, her voice thin and meek.

  “The neighbor. Said he received a call from Jack, saying he needed help. But when the neighbor got here, she found this.”

  “Excuse me,” a soft voice said from behind them. It was the officer who had stepped out not three minutes ago. “I thought you might want to know that the number on the neighbor’s phone was Jack’s. But the phone isn’t here. We’re trying to trace the location of the call right now. We’re assuming the killer stole it, placed the call so the bodies would be discovered, and then ditched it.”

  She listened and understood what was being said, but none of it seemed to fit. She was still having trouble believing it was happening at all. All of that blood on the floor…it couldn’t be real, could it? That wasn’t really Jack, was it?