by David Hosp
“There are some things in here you’re going to want to discuss,” he’d said. At first she thought it was just a ploy to flirt with her again, but something in his voice told her there were things he really needed to explain in person. This was clearly one of them.
“You told me the other six had their hearts removed within a few minutes of their death, right?” she asked.
Farmalant nodded. “That’s what I told you, but we’ve gone back and run some more tests on the blood of the other victims, and I may have been wrong, sort of.”
“What do you mean by ‘sort of’? How long were they dead?”
“They weren’t. At least not all of them. And the ones that were dead were only killed a moment or two before their hearts were removed.”
“How can that be?”
“According to the results of the most recent tests, in each of the earlier victims, there was a mixture of muscle relaxants and local anesthetics. These were mixed pretty skillfully, so that Little Jack could actually operate on the victims while they were still alive. As a result, death didn’t occur until the aorta was severed.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You don’t want to know,” Farmalant said. When she scowled at him, he shrugged. “It looks like he was getting better and better at mixing the drugs. In the last three or four victims, prior to the Caldwell girl, the mixture was so professional that the victims could actually have been conscious while he was cutting them.”
Flaherty felt sick. “You can’t be serious. They were conscious?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty twisted, isn’t it? It looks like at least some of these women got to watch while this sicko reached into their chests and literally cut out their hearts.”
Flaherty was glad Natalie Caldwell hadn’t endured the horror of being sliced open while she was still conscious. At the same time, it was a significant departure from Little Jack’s MO, and inconsistencies in method made the investigation harder. It also meant they had to consider again the possibility that this was a copycat killing.
“Anything else?” Flaherty asked.
Farmalant nodded. “I’m afraid so. We found semen inside the body.”
“You mean she was raped?”
“Well, there’s no way to be sure. She could have had consensual sex before she was killed—either with the killer or with someone else. We found some light bruising around her wrists that could be consistent with her having been bound, but the test wasn’t conclusive. The circumstances of her death obviously suggest rape as a possibility, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”
“None of the others were sexually assaulted, were they?”
“Not a single one,” Farmalant confirmed. “It’s starting to look more and more like this is a different guy, isn’t it?”
“Well, we still don’t know. It may just be he was in a hurry, or something threw him off this time.” Flaherty was rationalizing, and she knew it. The possibility that the killer had raped Natalie created particular problems. Murder motivated by or combined with a sexual impulse was a very different crime, psychologically speaking, from a ritualized serial killing. The absence of a sexual component in the first six killings, combined with the highly sophisticated manner in which the victims were dispatched, suggested a very distinct personality type: intellectual, patient, and controlled. The introduction of a sexual element was at odds with this particular profile. It suggested a lack of control and an absence of patience, and, like it or not, it seemed to support Farmalant’s suspicion that they were dealing with a different killer.
On the other hand, Flaherty thought, there was no way to tell whether the penetration had occurred before Natalie Caldwell encountered her killer or after. If she had sex with some other person before Little Jack got to her, it would explain the state in which her body was found without being inconsistent with the method of Little Jack’s prior murders. Still, Flaherty knew, it would only explain the crime’s sexual element; it wouldn’t explain the victim’s being strangled to death before her heart was removed, or the difference in the skill with which the heart had been taken.
“Anything else?” Flaherty asked.
“That’s not enough?”
“It’s plenty, but I need to know if there’s more.”
“Nothing else startling. But these issues—” Farmalant cut himself short when he saw the look on Flaherty’s face. “I just thought you should know.”
“I appreciate it,” she said, sighing. She got up from the plush leather chair and headed for the door. She paused when she got there, and turned around to face Farmalant. “What’s your gut feeling?” she asked. “Is it him, or someone else?”
“You don’t really want to hear my answer, do you?”
“Might as well. I don’t have to agree with it.”
“Fine.” Farmalant took a deep breath. “In my opinion we’re dealing with two different killers.”
Flaherty nodded, and then turned and walked out the door.
Chapter Thirteen
FINN LOOKED ACROSS THE TABLE at Antonio Patrick McGuire, the president of Huron Security. He looked slightly more like an Antonio than a McGuire, but having both Irish and Italian blood never hurt in Boston. Despite the facade of liberal politics that covered the city, its heart was still ruled by racial and ethnic divisions as old as the Freedom Trail. His dark hair was receding rapidly, revealing a flat, sloping forehead that ran down to a prominent brow above small, wide-set eyes. The eyes possessed intelligence; not the studied, cultivated intelligence Finn was used to seeing from in his lily-white, milk-fed clients, but something closer to cunning.
Finn was excited to be tasked with the responsibility of defending McGuire’s deposition. It was a job that could easily have been taken by one of the partners on the case, but Preston was tied up in court, and Nick Williams was preoccupied with his analysis of the documents, so the responsibility fell to Finn.
“Have you ever been deposed before?” he asked McGuire.
There was a long pause before McGuire answered. “A couple of times. My divorce got messy when the shysters got involved, so I was deposed for that. Then I got sued by a tenant in a building I own and I was deposed again.”
“What was the tenant lawsuit about?” Finn asked.
“Nothing worth talking about. I convinced the guy to drop it.” McGuire said it with such finality that it foreclosed further probing. He was, after all, a client of the firm. As president of Huron Security, Inc., he ran one of the fastest-growing companies in Massachusetts. The growth was due largely to the contracts the company had secured from the state. Word had it that McGuire was a close friend of the governor’s and that his inside track had won him the contract to staff the Transportation Safety Commission guards. It seemed odd to Finn. McGuire didn’t look like someone who hobnobbed with the blue-blooded pillars of Massachusetts society. He looked like he’d be more comfortable in a pub in Charlestown or Southie.
“Well, at least you know the basic ground rules. We’ll be in a conference room at the plaintiffs’ attorney’s office. There will be a court reporter and probably a few lawyers for the plaintiff who’ll be asking you questions. You’ll be under oath, so you have to answer truthfully. You should remember, though, that there’s a big difference between answering questions truthfully and being useful. Your goal in this deposition is not to be helpful to the other side.”
McGuire twirled a cigarette lighter around on the oak conference table. “I’m not sure I get what you’re saying. Aren’t you going to tell me exactly what to say? I mean, I don’t want to screw this thing up. If you tell me what to say, I’ll just say that and we can be done with it.”
Finn sighed. He was dismayed at the regularity with which clients and witnesses expressed their willingness to be led to the “right truth.” It wasn’t that they were eager to lie, but they wanted to avoid saying anything wrong, and they were willing to bend the truth as much as necessary so as not to hurt the case. In the modern legal world, few people
felt that being under oath really compelled them to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Clients paying five or six hundred dollars an hour in legal fees expected to be told what to say so they’d win the case.
Finn had never crossed that line, and he didn’t plan to. He’d walk the tightrope and play his games in the gray areas of the law, but feeding testimony to a witness was too much a betrayal of a system in which, despite his cynicism, he still believed.
“I can’t tell you what to say, you have to tell the truth. I can simply tell you that there are ways you can tell the truth and still not be helpful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for example, listen carefully to the question, and don’t answer anything that isn’t asked. If they ask you, ‘What do you do for a living?’ you should give them the title of your position at Huron, not a full description of what it is that you actually do in that position. If they ask you, ‘Do you have a direct superior?’ you should simply answer yes and make them follow up with a question about what the name of your superior is. Remember, the less talking you do, the better off the company is.”
McGuire smiled conspiratorially. “I can do that.” Finn wasn’t surprised. McGuire didn’t look like someone who parted with information easily or made a habit of being helpful.
“Good. Also, don’t guess. If they ask you a question and you’re not absolutely sure what the answer is, tell them that you don’t know. The worst thing you can do is start guessing. We can always supply them with the answers to the questions later, once the information has been vetted.”
McGuire smiled again, more broadly this time. “There’s a lot I’m not absolutely sure about.”
“That’s all the better. Hopefully it means you’ll get out of this deposition quickly without giving them anything useful. Just keep reminding yourself that the less information, the better.”
McGuire nodded. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together, putting them back over his head. He had huge knuckles, Finn noticed. The kind of knuckles that grow with continued use on docks, at warehouses, on construction jobs. Knuckles like that were only found around hard work requiring strength and indifference to pain and fatigue.
“Let me ask you something, Counselor.” He drew the last word out into a slur, letting his contempt show. “What are these plaintiffs’ lawyers looking for? The feds have already concluded no amount of security would have been able to stop this fuckin’ towelhead. Even if we did screw something up in our procedures, the attack still would have taken place. Doesn’t that mean these guys have no case?”
“It ought to, and it’s likely we will ultimately win this thing for just that reason. But you’ve got to remember, this is a high-profile case, so the judge may want to let a jury decide it, and a jury has a lot of leeway in how it decides. Who do you think the jury is going to be more sympathetic to, the widow of one of the victims or the big security company hired by the state?”
“So we’re screwed.”
“If you weren’t at least a little screwed, your company would never be paying the fees we charge.”
Chapter Fourteen
FLAHERTY SAT AT HER DESK, staring at her computer screen, feeling defeated. She’d spent much of the morning in a meeting with the entire task force—more than twenty police officers in all—sharing information and analyzing what they’d come up with. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much. They had no leads, nothing to guide the investigation. They continued to turn over rocks, only to find dirt underneath. Her eyes hurt. Her head hurt. Her muscles ached. But still, she needed to press on to find an answer. If only she could get a good night’s sleep, maybe then she’d see whatever it was they were missing.
She suddenly looked up from her computer screen and noticed Kozlowski standing in front of her desk. He had this way of materializing without a sound that she sometimes found disconcerting. It was a useful skill as an investigator, though.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. He looked at her like he had something on his mind, though. “I ran the tox screens again—same result. I also had some uniforms do a house-to-house of all of the businesses and homes near where the Caldwell woman’s body was dumped, just to see if anyone saw anything. Nothing. And I just spent the last two hours cross-checking our references, trying to find anything that ties these seven girls together—other than their being carved into pieces over the last four months. Zippo.”
Kozlowski was thorough, but Flaherty already knew that. He wouldn’t waste his breath on this kind of useless detail unless he had a point. He used conversation too sparingly for that. There was something else behind the visit.
“What’s on your mind, Kozlowski?”
“You found anything in your magic computer there?” he asked. It sounded almost like an accusation, and Flaherty didn’t like it.
“If I’d found anything useful I would have told you by now, Sergeant.” She referred to him by rank on purpose. It was meant to remind him that, friends or not, she wasn’t required to take his crap. “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? If you’ve got something to say, why not say it?”
She was letting her frustration show. It had been more than a week since she’d put both their heads on the chopping block in front of the leaders of every law enforcement agency in the state, and they were no closer to catching their killer. If anything, they had more questions now than they’d had before.
Kozlowski fidgeted a little, like he was trying to make up his mind about something. It was odd to see such a bull of a man fidget, Flaherty thought. Something about it seemed incongruous.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Koz?” she asked, raising her voice, and several others in the squad room turned and looked in their direction. She didn’t care; she was used to being scrutinized on this case.
Kozlowski hesitated just a minute longer. “I think we need to get a little more proactive, boss.”
“How much more proactive can we get?” she asked incredulously. “I’ve got twenty-two cops running down leads, comparing data, looking for patterns. Everyone is busting his ass on this, including me. What is it exactly that you think we’re not doing?”
Kozlowski looked at her, and it was clear that he was debating whether to take the conversation a step further. He had never doubted the team’s commitment to the case, and Flaherty knew he certainly would never question her resolve and dedication, but she’d put his ass on the line right alongside hers.
“We should be out there,” he said, nodding toward the window that looked out on Congress Street in downtown Boston.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s time to stop playing computer jock and get out on the streets.” His voice was low and strong, and it somehow made Flaherty feel inadequate.
“What the hell are you talking about?” She meant to express indignation, but instead her voice seemed plaintive and small. “We’ve got cops in uniform knocking on doors all over downtown and Southie.”
Kozlowski shrugged.
“If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.” She was furious now, but she was also desperate. Kozlowski had no diplomatic skills, but his ability in the investigative realm was unparalleled.
“Let’s start leaning on people,” he said simply.
“Leaning on who?” she demanded.
“Local scumbags. Bartenders. Convenience store clerks. Anyone who may have seen something or might know something. It’s time to get our hands dirty.”
“‘Local scumbags’? You don’t really think there’s a mob connection here, do you? There’s nothing that even suggests—”
He cut her off. “It’s not wiseguys doing the killing, but we need their eyes out there on the street. Somebody must have seen something. Or if nobody’s seen anything yet, they will in the future, when this asshole kills again. We’ve got to make sure everyone who crawls in the gutter at night is taking this investigation seriously.”
Flaherty thought about this for a moment. They hadn’t been reaching out and putting the heat on their snitches because they weren’t thinking of this as the type of crime where snitches could be helpful, but Kozlowski had a point. Boston still ran on its unseen connections, and Southie was the home of one of the oldest and best-organized crime networks in the country. It might be worth putting some pressure on the right sort of people.
“Fine,” she conceded. “Set up a pressure cooker and see if anything pops. Anything else?”
“Yeah, let’s get someone out at the Kiss Club in street clothes.”
“What the hell for? You and I were both out there shoving Caldwell’s picture under every nose we could find, and we got nothing. Even if that’s where Little Jack found her—and we don’t know that for sure—we’ve got no reason to think he’d go back there. How can we possibly justify an undercover operation?” He was really pushing it. They’d run that lead down as far as it would go, and they’d come up with nothing.
“You got any better ideas?”
They stared at each other for an eternity. She had no comeback, and he knew it. She could pull rank on him and simply say no without giving an explanation, but she knew neither of them would accept that. It would be like admitting defeat. She drew in a deep breath and pulled her brow down into an angry scowl, causing deep creases to appear on her broad, attractive forehead. Then she blew out a long exasperated sigh. In her position, she couldn’t turn down any suggestions, and there was no question Kozlowski had the best instincts in the department.
She looked up at him and shook her head in frustration. “Just make sure it’s someone who won’t be recognized.”
Chapter Fifteen
FINN SAT IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM, listening intently as McGuire’s deposition progressed at a snail’s pace. It was all he could do to keep himself from wringing the necks of the plaintiffs’ lawyers across the table from him, but at least the work kept him focused.
Work was the only thing keeping him sane in the wake of Natalie’s murder. He found it to be more of a distraction than a passion now, but he welcomed the distraction with the desperation of a drowning man thrown a lifeline. He missed Natalie even more than he had anticipated. Even through their difficulties, she had provided an anchor in his life. A few times a day he still found himself picking up the phone to call her. And whenever something funny or odd or outrageous happened at work, he’d instinctively head out of his office toward hers, only to realize in an instant that she was no longer there. He’d walk by her office, which was now being used as a storage room until the fall, when a new crop of nameless, faceless law school graduates would start with the firm as first-year associates. Her nameplate still hung by her door like a tomb-stone or the plaque on a mausoleum entryway. It felt wrong that no one had bothered to take it down, as if the firm hadn’t even noticed her death. But he couldn’t bring himself to carry out the task.