Eight in the Box

by Raffi Yessayan

  “What did what look like?” Connie said.

  “The tub full of blood.”

  For an instant Connie was back in the narrow hallway of the Victorian, the metallic smell of blood in the air, Mooney barking orders. “To be honest? Kind of surreal—seeing all that blood, knowing that someone’s body was drained.” Connie straightened up and stretched his legs. “Got to get ready for arraignments. And I still have discovery I need to turn over in the Jesse Wilcox case. It’s coming up for motions soon. I ain’t letting that bastard walk again.”

  “Christ, Connie, who cares about a drug case?” Nick said. “You can’t start telling us about a murder and then shut us off.”

  “I’ve already told you more than I should have. If Alves finds out, next time I’ll be outside the yellow tape, doing the Dunkin’ Donuts run.”

  Nick waved him off. “You don’t want to tell me, fine. But don’t treat me like some asshole on the street.”

  Connie took a breath. “Sorry, okay? I’m just wiped out. I was at the scene for six hours.”

  “Who found the blood?” Mitch asked, taking another sip of tea.

  “Two patrolmen responding to the call. And the killer may have made the call himself. Seriously, that’s it.”

  “The killer called the police himself?” Nick repeated. “I definitely want to hear more about this later.”

  Connie picked up his police reports. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

  “I think they’re in court,” Mitch said.

  “Is Andi in yet?” Connie asked. “I’m going to grab her and see if she can help me out in arraignments.”

  “Don’t go grabbing her in the courtroom,” Nick joked. “I don’t care what you guys do on your own time, but that’s not appropriate behavior for a courthouse.”

  “Wow, that’s funny,” Connie said. “I keep forgetting how funny you are.”

  Nick shrugged. “If you’re going to date an intern, you need to have a sense of humor about it.”

  “Hey, boys, let’s get going,” Liz Moore called out to the three of them. “It’s almost nine. I don’t want to hear the judges complaining about you being late again.”

  Liz Moore was a no-nonsense woman, raised in the rarefied air of power, prestige and acute social awareness. Her father, Arthur Moore, was a lawyer active in the civil rights movement. Ever the politician, he claimed allegiances with both the militant Malcolm X and the pacifist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Not only was he a leader in Boston’s black community, but he was also one of the most successful lawyers in the state.

  Now his daughter was admired for her fairness and openness, and respected for her ability in the courtroom. And, Connie thought, it didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous.

  “How much longer do we have to work like this?” Mitch said. “We’ve been down two ADAs for months.”

  “Stop whining,” Liz said.

  “I’m serious,” Mitch said. “Didn’t the DA promise us more bodies? We’ve been shorthanded for too long. One of us is going to drop the ball on a serious case.”

  “Mitch,” Liz said, “the gods of justice have heard your prayers. We’re getting a new lawyer tomorrow.”

  “Does he have any experience?” Mitch asked.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Liz said. “I’m expecting you guys to help her out so she’ll actually be of some use to us. But for now why don’t you help me by getting your asses down to court?”

  Liz Moore promoted a team atmosphere among the lawyers at South Bay. Connie appreciated the way she had made it a requirement that they look out for one another. As a black woman who had accomplished so much in a profession dominated by white men, Liz made it clear she didn’t want the competitive atmosphere of big law firms to tarnish what was clearly her courthouse.

  “All arraignments to the first session,” the courthouse PA system boomed. “All pretrial hearings to the second session, all motions to the third session, and all trial matters to the fourth session.”

  “Let’s go put some bad guys away,” Nick said.

  CHAPTER 4

  Detective Angel Alves entered the BPD’s crime laboratory and moved around the reception desk toward the examination room. He was aware of every step, fueled with the energy from his first major case since being promoted to Homicide in the fall. Two murders in two months linked to the same killer. He tapped on the glass window, and Eunice Curran waved him in. A blast of cool antiseptic air hit him as he opened the examination room door.

  As director of the crime lab, Eunice Curran was considered by most cops to be the best forensic examiner. Single and in her mid-forties, she had devoted the last ten years to making hers one of the most professional, accredited forensic crime labs in the country. The cops appreciated how she and the criminalists who worked for her used solid scientific methods in collecting evidence so their testimony held up in court.

  “Hey, Angel,” she said. “Coffee?”

  “No thanks. Already had two.”

  “Then you must need something. You never stop in just to say hello.” She winked at him.

  “I can’t stop in every day. My knees get weak when I see you. Then I spend the rest of my day thinking about your beautiful eyes. If Marcy found out, she’d kill me.”

  “I keep forgetting about that wife of yours.” Eunice smiled. A nice smile. Perfect white teeth. “You ever get tired of her, you know where to find me.” Eunice was kind of a plain Jane, but she took good care of herself and she was fun to talk to.

  More than anything else, Alves liked her for her brains. Intelligent women had always attracted him. That was why he was still so much in love with Marcy, a part-time English professor at UMass Boston in Dorchester. But even though he played their banter off, he found it exciting when Eunice Curran, in her white lab coat, explained science that he didn’t fully understand. The lyrics from an old Robert Palmer song popped into his head: A horn section you resemble, and your figure makes me tremble, and I sure would like to handle what’s between your ears.

  “Let me guess why you’re here today,” said Eunice. “The Blood Bath Killer.”

  “Don’t let Mooney hear you say that. He doesn’t want to give this guy a nickname and a cult following.”

  “I’ll be careful around the Sarge,” she assured him.

  “We just got back from the crime scene. Same as the last case, we need to know if the amount of blood we have here is consistent with a death.”

  “Hard to tell. Like I told you last time, the average human being”—and all traces of the flirty Eunice Curran vanished, he could see—“has about four and a half to five liters of blood in their system. This will vary with the size and weight of an individual.”

  “I have a couple of pictures of Susan McCarthy. She was about five seven, medium build,” he said, showing her the photos. “She weighed about a buck-twenty, buck-thirty.”

  Eunice gave a nod.

  “How much blood was in that bathtub?”

  “I’m not sure. It was like the Hayes crime scene; the blood mixed with water. Judging from the temperature of the water, Ms. McCarthy had probably been set down in a warm bath, just like Hayes. Based on the deep red color and the thickness of the liquid that we found in both bathtubs, I’d say they were consistent with suicides. But then we would ordinarily find a body in the bathtub along with the bloody water.”

  “She was alive when she was put in the bath?”

  “I think so. There are other ways to drain a person of her blood, but the easiest way is to have the heart do the pumping for you.”

  “So he puts his victims in the bathtub and slits their wrists. Are they incapacitated in any way? Unconscious, maybe?”

  “No trace of drugs in the blood.”

  “So, maybe he hits them over the head and knocks them out. Who knows? But whoever lost that blood is definitely dead, right?”

  “Angel, I can’t say so with any scientific certainty, and this isn’t my specialty, but if that was Susan McCarthy’s blood in the tub, m
y guess is she’s dead. There’s no way of determining the ratio of blood to water, but it certainly seemed like there were at least three or four liters of blood in the tub. She wouldn’t have lost all her blood, but that’s all she would need to lose before her heart would stop beating. The blood matched Susan McCarthy’s type. You’ll have the DNA results as soon as I get them.”

  “Anything else in the tub besides blood and water?” he asked.

  “Some hair, but that was it.”

  “What about everything else your guys collected from the scene?”

  “I’ve got them going over the bed linens. We inspected each room with visible ambient light. Then we used an alternate light source for fibers and biological stains that fluoresce. Nothing. So we went to the trace evidence vacuum. It doesn’t look promising. McCarthy kept a pretty clean house and our killer is very careful.”

  “What about the footprint?” Alves asked.

  “We got an excellent cast,” she said as she walked over to the evidence table and picked up the plaster imprint. “The sole of the sneaker is made from a mold with the New Balance name on it. That was helpful. Otherwise I’d have had to send it to the FBI. Size ten and a half. Right foot. I don’t know the model, but New Balance should be able to help you with that.”

  “You mean you can’t tell me the height and weight of the guy who wore the shoe?” This time Alves winked at her.

  “Welcome to CSI Boston,” she said, lowering her voice and raising her eyebrow. “Not only can I tell you the guy’s height and weight, I can tell you his race, his mother’s maiden name; and if it’s a clear enough mold, I might be able to give you the name of his firstborn child.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Alves said. “But I wouldn’t quit my day job if I were you. Anything else you can tell me about the shoe?”

  She nodded, back to business once more. “It has pretty distinctive characteristics in the tread pattern. There seems to be an imperfection from the manufacturing process.” She showed him the cast. “The C in Balance looks like an O. A flaw like that would have made it an ‘irregular.’”

  “The kind of shoe they sell in outlet stores at a discount.”

  She nodded. “And the shoe has some distinctive random wear characteristics,” she said. “Right here you can see that it’s worn out more on the right, especially toward the heel. Everyone has his own walk, so shoes wear differently. I also found some nicks and gouges left by sharp stones or broken glass.”

  “Can you make a match?”

  “You bring me the shoe that left this print and I can make a positive ID.”

  “I’ll have the guys from ID come up and take a picture of the mold.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Thanks, Eunice. I’ll give Sarge the update.”

  “Anytime, Angel Eyes. And if you want to continue this discussion later, I’m free for dinner.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Alone in the conference room, Andi Norton heard the commotion as the guys moved down the hall toward her. They looked like a group of cute young boys on their way to face a playground challenge.

  She had her red hair pulled back and draped over her shoulder. That morning it had looked like a deep red silk scarf in contrast to her sharp navy blue suit, the skirt of which she’d had tailored to show off her slender legs. “Well, if it isn’t the three musketeers,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Nick said, flashing a smile. “We’re on a mission to clean up the streets of the city.”

  “Andi, I need your help in arraignments,” Connie said. His hands, by his side, were flexing, like he was anxious to get started.

  “I’m all yours,” she said.

  “We know that,” Nick said. “But he needs your help in arraignments.”

  Connie punched Nick in the arm.

  “That hurt.”

  “I know,” Connie said.

  Andi followed him as they walked ahead of the others down the stairs to the second floor.

  Connie was taking two stairs at a time and Andi was having trouble keeping up. “Slow down,” she said. “I’m going to break my ankle with these heels.”

  “We’re late. We need to get squared away before the judge takes the bench. You do the arraignments. I’ll start the paperwork and step in if you need help.”

  “Great,” Andi said, “I can use the ice time.” Every day she spent in court, Andi felt more like a real lawyer. After interning in the office for almost nine months, she felt she had developed a solid understanding of the law. “Connie, do you think I’ll be ready for a jury soon?”

  “I think you’re ready now. I’ve got one set for tomorrow that I was going to give you. A simple drug case, hand-to-hand to an undercover.”

  “Are you serious?” Her entire body pulsed with adrenaline. This was more than she’d been hoping for.

  “I’ve got to start working on the Jesse Wilcox case. If I lose the motion and the drugs get suppressed, then I’ve blown another shot at taking him off the street.”

  “Is he the one that—”

  “Beat a drug case last year. It was the last trial I lost. Then Alves pinched him on this new case a few weeks before getting bumped up to Homicide.”

  “When’s the motion?”

  “Not for a couple of weeks, but I want to finish looking over the file tonight and make sure discovery’s complete. I’ll get together with Alves later this week if he frees up some time. Everything’s riding on this motion.”

  “So, is tomorrow’s trial definitely mine?”

  “I’ll check with Liz to make sure it’s okay. You’ve been doing a great job. I don’t think she’ll have a problem with it, especially if I second-seat you. And hey, you are one lucky gal. It took me a year before I had my first jury trial. It would be a neat trick if we can get you one while you’re still a student.”

  Andi studied the tall, serious man in front of her. Unlike guys she had dated in the past, Connie hadn’t been frightened away by her young daughter. He had understood that she had to put Rachel and her career ahead of everything else. She fixed her eyes on his. “Connie, thanks for everything. You’ve taught me so much that I feel like I’m better than most of the lawyers I go up against. If Liz lets me try the case, I’ll do a good job. I won’t make you look bad.”

  He nodded. “I know you won’t. Because you’re going to spend tonight prepping. And you’d better have your opening ready to run by me first thing in the morning.”

  With that, Connie opened the door to the first session for her. The noise of the courtroom hit her like that of the annual wedding gown sale at Filene’s Basement. Thank God she had chosen South Bay for her internship. So many of her classmates were stuck in suburban courthouses with garden-variety drunk-driving cases and barroom fights, day after day. Instead, she had drug distributions, gun cases, even serious assaults.

  And she got to meet Conrad Darget. There was no pretense with Connie. The combination of his clean-shaven look and his muscular body was a nice bonus. And there was that excitement, that helplessness she felt when he hugged her, like there was no escape.

  His eyes were the most unusual she’d ever seen: two different colors, one hazel, one blue. The two together were beautiful—mesmerizing, she liked to think, like each held a separate part of his personality. The logical prosecutor. The thoughtful man.

  To the other ADAs, Connie may have been Mr. Clean. But for Andi Norton he was starting to look more like Mr. Right.

  CHAPTER 6

  The corridor on the second floor of police headquarters at One Schroeder Plaza seemed especially long this morning. Angel Alves opened the glass door that led into the Homicide Unit and walked into Sergeant Wayne Mooney’s office. Mooney had his back to the door and Alves knew he must be lost in thought. “Sarge, I just spoke with Eunice. She confirmed that McCarthy’s probably dead.”

  Mooney swiveled around to face him. The sergeant nodded and drew his hand over the crime scene photos spread out on his desk. “We’re not waiting around for D
NA results. You and I both know that she is dead. Now let’s see what we can do to catch this bastard.”

  “I thought we should at least check with the crime lab. She also said that both vics were probably alive when they were put in the tubs. What I can’t figure out is why he would go through all that trouble to make them look like suicides and then take the bodies.”

  “He’s not trying to make them look like suicides. I think he’s performing some kind of sick ritual. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

  That quickly, Mooney became engrossed in the photos. In the bright morning light Alves could see a thicket of gray hairs rapidly conquering the brown on Mooney’s head. Not bad, considering most guys on the job for more than twenty years had gone completely silver or had no hair at all.

  “What else did you get from Eunice?” said Mooney. “They find anything useful in the house?”

  “No.”

  Mooney was chewing on his pen, studying the Hayes crime scene photos. “What about the shoe print?”

  “They got a decent mold. It’s a New Balance. Eunice thinks it’s an irregular. Says she can make a match if we find the shoe.”

  “Pull up a chair. When we catch this sick fuck, that mold will be great corroboration at trial.”

  Alves watched as Mooney sorted through the stack of reports on his desk from the Hayes murder, pulled one out and seemed to cross-reference it with one of the photos.

  “We need to find a common thread between the two vics. Why were they killed? Why the hell is he draining off their blood?” Mooney asked. “What’s he doing with their bodies? They’ve got to have something in common that brought this guy into their lives.”

  “They were both divorced, successful businesswomen,” Alves said.

  “Lucky in their careers, unlucky at love. We know that Hayes wasn’t dating anyone. Was McCarthy? We canvassed the neighborhood last night. No one saw her getting dropped off by anyone. If she was seeing someone, last night would have been the perfect time to have him over, with the kid and the ex both out of town.”