The Mentor

by Monticelli, Rita Carla Francesca

  The moment he recognized the big box of evidence from that massacre, Eric couldn’t help but hesitate. He wasn’t sure he wanted to reopen that door.

  He climbed up the shelving, one row after the next, until he’d gone high enough to get what he needed. Then he brought everything down and set it on a table that stood to one side near the wall. He tried to keep his breathing calm, glancing around every once in a while to make sure no one else was there. Finally he lifted the cover.

  Inside lay a series of catalogued objects, some in sealed paper envelopes, others in transparent plastic bags. These included the bloody clothing that had been worn by the victims: the woman’s nightshirt, the child’s pajamas, the man’s sweat suit. There was even the long piece of rope the man had been tied up with.

  If they were to repeat their analysis today, using the more accurate methods they’d developed in the time since, who knew whether they’d be able to identify something that had been invisible to them back then—whether they’d be able to find something that had escaped them in the past and come closer to identifying those responsible.

  At the time, it had been the first truly cruel case he’d come across in his short career. He’d been twenty-nine, so he wasn’t exactly a novice criminologist, but he could still remember the impression it made on him. A family destroyed in the blink of an eye. Only the little girl had survived, and only then because nobody had realized she was there.

  The eyes of that little girl, sparkling in the darkness beneath that bed when he shined his flashlight on them, were like a defenseless kitten. Those eyes and the terrorized expression on her face had stayed with him for a long time. So had the smile she gave once they were outside the house, when she decided to tell him her name, the name her family called her by.

  What was left of that little girl today? What was left in the woman who still bore those same eyes?

  Chasing that thought out of his head, Eric took a file from the bottom of the box and then quickly closed the lid.

  He decided to wait until that evening to open the file. He didn’t have the courage to look at it in the office. He’d rather wait and go through it in the peace and quiet of his own home.

  Once he was home, he abandoned the file on the desk in his study and did nothing more with it for a few hours, save passing by the doorway to glance at the folder from a distance. He was putting off the inevitable, but when he had no more excuses, nothing left to do in the meantime, he sat down at his desk and opened it.

  The first thing he saw were the photographs of Mina’s father’s body, bound to a chair in the living room with his arms, legs, and torso tied to the wood. The fingers on both his hands had been chopped off. All his teeth had been knocked out. They’d struck him in the face over and over again with a golf club they’d found in the house. Then they’d carved out his eyes and shattered his skull, leaving him to die.

  The similarities with what he’d seen that morning in the garage were remarkable, although the recent murderer had done less damage to the body. For that reason he couldn’t be absolutely sure the killer was copycatting this homicide, even though the victim had been tied up in exactly the same way.

  Then there was a photograph of the little boy. They’d shot him in the back as he was trying to get away. The murder that had taken place on the street in City a few days ago looked just like what happened to Paul. Of course, here the similarities were less marked, less obvious. Lots of people are killed that way, but whoever shot Gerald McKinsey had forced him to stand up and turn around. If his intent was merely to kill the man, why go to all the trouble? Why stage every element down to the last detail? The symbolic significance was obvious.

  Finally Eric got to the photographs of the mother. He had been the one who found her on the bed. They had raped her, then cut her throat. Comparing that killing to the Thompson case—where the victim had been shot in the groin and then in the neck while sitting down—might seem forced if taken alone, but placing all three cases together, the overarching scheme was perfectly clear.

  The only survivor had been the little girl. She’d survived by hiding underneath the same bed her mother was killed on. There was little doubt she’d witnessed her mother’s murder. She may have seen the others take place too.

  Eric paged through the file until he found the photograph he was looking for. She looked just like he remembered her, but what did she remember of that day? It was hard to say . . .

  She’d been just seven years old, old enough to understand. Most of all, old enough not to forget—not completely, anyway. It was impossible to believe that the experience hadn’t had repercussions on her life. Looking at her today, she seemed normal—a normal woman. No one would suspect that she’d experienced such a traumatic event in the past.

  But he knew. And he was certain that she’d noticed the similarities too. What bothered him the most was that she hadn’t said anything to him about it.

  Suddenly Eric jumped up from his desk, driven by a wave of terror, and brought both hands to his face.

  The thought that she might be involved in these crimes had just entered his mind for the first time. He struggled to drive it away with all the strength he could muster. He couldn’t, wouldn’t accept that.

  He forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. He struggled to calm himself down. Losing control now wouldn’t help him get to the truth.

  Detective Shaw went to the refrigerator and got a beer, then stopped to sip it slowly in front of the window. The sun was about to set on that last Saturday in June. He hadn’t come home this early in months. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing his apartment in the light of day. It seemed different, alien somehow.

  Reluctantly, he went back to his desk, where the photograph of little Mina was waiting patiently for his return. For twenty years she’d waited in vain for justice to be done.

  It had been a miracle to find her alive. When they were investigating the case, they’d assumed the killers hadn’t known she was there. Her bedroom was in the attic. Presumably they hadn’t even seen it, so nobody knew to look for her.

  This confirmed the theory that the killers didn’t know the family very well.

  Nobody knew them well, in truth. They’d moved to London less than a year earlier, and even their neighbors considered them mysterious. Apparently they were very reserved.

  The motive for the break-in had been robbery. The house had been cleaned out; everything of value was gone. At first they couldn’t figure out why the killers had been so savage with the man. Then the will was opened, revealing the presence of a small, secret safe in the attic. It was full of antique jewelry, which had been the prize for the thieves. The real mystery was how they’d come to know the jewelry even existed.

  The investigative team surmised that the jewelry owner had had the pieces appraised, though no leads panned out to anything concrete, in part because they couldn’t find any foreign fingerprints in the house. There were no witnesses, no surveillance system, no video cameras. None of the physical evidence provided anything that investigators could consider a viable lead.

  Who knew if things would be different today, with all the new techniques that had developed since then.

  The clear parallels between that case and the cases they were currently handling might be enough to justify ulterior analysis of the evidence, but Eric wasn’t at all sure he wanted to reveal his discovery. Not yet.

  He resumed paging through the file. He had a clear sensation that there might be something useful in there, somewhere. At a certain point his eye was drawn to a name, a name that had arisen during one of the numerous interviews they’d conducted for the investigations.

  Christopher Garnish.

  A satisfied smile crept across his face, followed by the sense of contained excitement he always felt whenever an important piece of evidence had been unearthed.

  Garnish had been about twenty years old wh
en they’d conducted the investigation. Something of a hell-raiser, he was the dissolute son of an auction-house owner. His father had forced him to get a job in the hope that work would help pull his son off the streets, and so Garnish had started working as a gardener, one of the few things he appeared to be good at. He’d been interrogated by the detective assigned to the case, since he was working in the garden of a house near the home where the crimes had taken place. The investigators believed Garnish might have learned about the jewelry through his father’s auction house. Maybe the victim had gone there to have the jewelry evaluated.

  It was a weak lead, one that eventually dissolved when they found nothing they could back it up with. They couldn’t connect Garnish with anything inside the house, and in any case he appeared to have an ironclad alibi provided by his father for the night the crimes took place.

  Eric closed his fingers into a fist, then stretched them open again. The fact that this name had reappeared in both the Thompson and the McKinsey cases couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

  He picked up his phone and made a call. “Mills,” said the voice on the other end.

  “I need you to check something for me,” said Eric, getting straight to the point.

  “Detective Shaw!” The agent was surprised, perhaps because it was relatively rare for the chief of the scientific investigations department to call him, especially at that hour. Mills usually turned to his superior in the homicide investigations team, Detective Leroux. “Of course, sir, what do you need?”

  “The Ridley case. Any connections between him and Christopher Garnish?”

  Mills hesitated for a moment. “Do you think he’s got something to do with the Black Death Killings?”

  Eric sighed impatiently. Why couldn’t people just do their jobs? “Let’s call it an intuition. Could you check on that for me please?”

  “Um, sure, of course.” He could hear that Mills was hesitant. “Am I supposed to tell Leroux about it?”

  “No, Leroux already has enough on her plate. Report to me directly.” There was the peremptory tone of an order in Shaw’s voice.

  Of course he could have investigated this aspect himself, but that would use up valuable time. Mills would be much faster than he was in that kind of investigation.

  “Okay . . .”

  Eric’s request was a little unusual, but Eric knew his agent. Mills would be discreet. “Thanks,” he said, then hung up.

  Forgetting about the telephone he was still holding in one hand, Eric went back to carefully reading through the transcription of the Garnish interrogation.

  His doorbell rang, dragging him only partially back to reality.

  Still lost in his thoughts, Eric walked over to the front door and opened it.

  “Hi,” said Adele, giving him a timid smile. “Am I bothering you?” Her eyes moved to the cordless telephone still in his hand.

  Finding her here, standing before him, was the last thing Eric had expected, and he fumbled a little before regaining his composure. “How did you get into the building?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine, thanks, and you?” said Adele ironically.

  Only then did Eric realize how brusque he was being. “Hi. Hello. I’m sorry.”

  “All I had to do was flash a badge to one of your neighbors and he held the door for me.”

  “I should have guessed,” he said.

  Adele took a quick look to either side of the hall, then asked Eric again, “Can I come in?”

  He shook his head, silently chastising himself. The shock of finding her standing outside his door had made him forget his manners. “Of course,” he said, stepping to one side to let her in. He put the phone down on the little table by the door.

  Adele walked in a little hesitantly, while Shaw closed the door behind her and tried not to stumble over her.

  “Please, make yourself at home,” he said, pointing to the living room. He immediately thought of the file, the contents of which were spread out all over his desk.

  He darted past her in order to get to the file, arriving just in time to slip all the documents and photographs back into the folder and turn it over so that she couldn’t see the front, which listed all the names and relevant dates in the case. When he turned around, Adele was right behind him.

  “I see you’ve brought your work home,” she said, casting an eye on the table. Eric stepped in front of her, hiding the file behind him.

  “No, no, it’s nothing,” he said. His tone of voice was anything but convincing, but then Adele had no business nosing any further into the way he spent his free time. “I was just reviewing an old case for a court deposition,” he added. There. If he focused his mind, at least he was still capable of saying something half-intelligent.

  Eric took a deep breath. Why was he so nervous? A little voice inside his head suggested that he was still discombobulated by their close encounter the previous evening, but he silenced it. He was still angry about the way she’d run off, leaving him there. That thought was enough to settle him again, sweeping away the surprise he still felt at finding Adele outside his door.

  “May I ask why you’re here?” Now his voice was serious, resolute.

  Adele sighed and cast a look around the room, as if the answer to his question were hiding somewhere within these walls. Then she looked back at him. “I thought we should talk,” she said, looking him up and down.

  Eric waited, determined to keep his cool and hear what she had to say.

  When Eric said nothing, Adele spoke up again. “I thought about calling you, but then I decided to come so that we could talk face to face. I took a walk first in order to clear my head.”

  “Did it work?” he asked. He couldn’t help but let a little sarcasm sneak into his voice, but Adele appeared not to hear it. Either that or she chose to ignore it.

  “I think so.” She was calm. Unlike Eric, she didn’t appear interested in arguing. She’d already made her decision. “I think it would be best if we stop things here for a moment.”

  Eric half-closed his eyes, making an active effort to keep from saying what he was feeling. Her flight the night before left little room for error. In his heart he hoped she regretted that move, and her presence here in front of him had let him hope for a moment that that might be the case. In reality, he’d come to know her quite well over the past few months. She wasn’t the kind of woman to let something lie, hoping that it would be forgotten over time. She wanted to end what she’d started somehow, and to make sure he understood her position. Now she was clearly telling him that what had happened between the two of them couldn’t happen again.

  “Good,” said Shaw. He couldn’t think of anything better to say. His brain was racing a hundred miles an hour, trying to come up with a decent argument on his own behalf.

  Adele looked perplexed, apparently surprised to find him so docile and compliant. “Good,” she repeated, sounding uncertain. She lowered her gaze and stepped back.

  “Good my ass!” he burst out, making her start. “Whatever goddamn game you’re playing, you need to stop. Right now!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Adele, defensive.

  “I’m talking about your little cat-and-mouse game, the one we’ve been playing for weeks now.” He stepped in closer, threateningly. “Except that I still haven’t figured out which one of us is the cat and which one the mouse.”

  In that moment, and just for a fraction of a second, a look of triumph ran across Adele’s face, but it disappeared so quickly that Eric doubted he’d really seen it in the first place. This was followed by a contrite, almost exasperated air. “Eric . . . ,” said Adele.

  God, he loved it when she called him by his name.

  “I’m not saying I’m not attracted to you. You know I am,” she said before pausing. She was silent for a moment, her fingers moving at her sides. Her eyes w
ere wet. “Please don’t make things more difficult than they already are.”

  Faced with her sudden change in direction, Shaw found himself doing the same. It would be worse if they started fighting again. “You’re right. There are a million reasons why a relationship between the two of us would be rather . . . inconvenient.”

  Adele laughed then, even as a tear threaded its way down one cheek.

  Eric laughed too. What the hell was he saying? It should come as no surprise if she thought he was too old for her. He was talking like an old man! But all it took was that one stupid word to lighten the mood as if by magic. “What I really want to say is—”

  Adele interrupted him. “I know,” she said.

  “What I really want to do is make things easier.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?”

  Adele leaned her face in to his, moving to one side and bringing her mouth close to his ear. “Stop for just a moment,” she whispered clearly. Then she planted a chaste kiss on his cheek.

  Eric stood there, his mouth open, as all the possible meanings of those five words chased each other in circles in his head.

  Adele drew back and sighed, reacquiring at least a little of her self-control. “See you around,” she said, backing up. Then she turned around and was gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  He carefully set the bullet that had been removed from Ridley’s head beneath the microscope. The laboratory was silent, as was to be expected at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. The morning team hadn’t even come in yet. This was always the best time to analyze ballistics without attracting any undue attention.

  Usually Eric concentrated on being the boss, leaving the small tasks to the other criminologists, but every once in a while he enjoyed slipping on a lab coat and picking up the tools of his trade, especially after they’d acquired some new instruments. He enjoyed staying up to date and was careful not to find himself relying too much on the people who worked around him, especially when there were special circumstances in play.