by Aiden Bates
He believed in what he could see and feel for himself. What he could see and feel was that being with Ray worked for him. The situation wasn't perfect, of course. They were going to have to figure out a way to adapt to one another. They were going to have to deal with the whole housing issue soon, too. But those were solvable problems.
He didn't want to be apart from his alpha anymore. After a day like today, the ability to come home and crawl into bed with his alpha, to lose himself in his scent, was better than the privacy and autonomy of his own condo. They could work out where else they would want to live. As long as Doug had Ray by his side, he didn't care about anything else.
All of that would have to wait until his father was free, though. His father had suffered enough. Doug had a responsibility.
***
Ray sat at his desk and buried his face in his hands. "Okay. So we're up to twelve of twenty-four victims for which Larry has alibis." His stomach lurched. "Awesome. At least we found two of them."
"Hey, maybe you'll get somewhere with that pretty little lawyer guy if you can go to him and tell him, 'Look, I'm trying.'" Morris snickered.
Ray flipped him off. "You know his dad is rooming with your gangster, right? Joe Sierzant is Larry Morrison's prison roommate." He felt moderately better when Morris turned green. "Right. Now that I've brightened your day, let's focus on the case. So, there's someone else out there killing people. And there are two 'dead' periods, pun absolutely intended, that we still have to account for."
Robles shifted. "Okay, so Ryan's still out on paternity leave. I asked him about looking into missing prostitutes and he told me—well, I won't repeat the first part of it, but the second part was that he has diapers to change and that I should probably stop talking or I'd have diapers to change." He blushed. "Babies are messy, man."
"Usually." Ray blinked at him. Did Robles really not get how babies worked?
"Anyway, then he said to reach out to his boss, Lt. Frisk, or to reach out to Vice. Both is probably our best bet." Robles' cheeks were scarlet.
"Got it. Would you mind taking care of that, Robles? I really need that data, and you're the one with the best connections so far." Ray tried for a smile at his friend. "Don't limit your search to Southeastern Mass., okay? I know Bay Staters tend to be territorial, but whether we're dealing with Morrison, or someone else, or a copycat, we're dealing with someone highly intelligent here. It's entirely possible that they would break pattern if they realized that things were getting too hot for them."
Nenci snorted. "We never catch the smart ones."
"We didn't catch this one." Ray glared at his colleague. "We wouldn't have known about him at all if it weren't for Doug and his closeness with his dad. Whether or not you think Larry did some of the murders—and I do—the fact is that he didn't do all of them, and someone else did. Our job is to get that guy off the streets, okay? Guys like that, they don't stop. Not if they've killed, what, twelve women."
Nenci stuck his tongue out. "Bossy. So anyway, I'll start looking for any unusual finds along the coast, or in other odd areas. It is odd that our guy would change up his home range, though. Serial killers are almost always creatures of habit. Why would our boy suddenly change things up?"
Tessaro squinted at the whiteboard for a moment, and then he snapped his fingers. "He moved."
Ray turned to look at him. "What the hell?"
"He moved." Tessaro stood up, gray eyes blazing with excitement. "There aren't a lot of independently wealthy serial killers out there. Most of them have day jobs, and they'll have reasons to change their location sometimes. Maybe our guy didn't even come in from within the state. Maybe he came in from some other Godforsaken dump."
Ray closed his eyes. "Tessaro, Rhode Island isn't a Godforsaken dump. It's just a little bit smaller."
"It's a Godforsaken dump. The only other decent state in the union is New York, and I'm kind of iffy on them." Tessaro crossed over to another whiteboard and erased it. "Our boy moves to Lakeville, because he has a fetish for mosquitoes or something, and he's already got the serial killer thing going on. Maybe he had a different MO in Rhode Island, but once he moves in he's got another killer already hard at work. He just wants to kill; he doesn't have an attachment to how he disposes of the remains afterward."
Ray nodded slowly. "I can see that," he said after a moment. "He says to himself, 'Oh, here's this guy, I can slide under the radar by hiding my kills as his.' And he changes things up. It sounds plausible, but there's one problem." He jogged over to Tessaro's whiteboard and started writing. "How many serial killers don't have a sexual component to their crimes? And what are the odds that we'd get two serial killers who look similar enough to one another to confuse eyewitnesses?"
Robles chewed on his lip. "Well, I hate to go with the 'they all look alike' defense, but wasn't that what the son said in court? His dad isn't remarkable looking in any way. A lot of those eyewitnesses came forward after Senior was accused. It's absolutely reasonable to think that they filled in the blanks that their memory couldn't. You know—they saw an average old-ish white guy and filled in the details to come up with Larry Morrison."
"It happens every day." Morris tossed a pen up into the air and caught it. "The good thing is that it narrows down our suspect pool. Average looking white males, who would be about sixty years old today." He pointed to the whiteboard.
Tessaro wrote down the description. "What else?"
"Clothes were described as similar to clothes that were found in Morrison's home." Nenci got up from his chair and came around his desk to lean on his desk. "Oliver didn't find any trace on the guy's clothes that tied him to any of the victims, but he did find fibers on the victims' clothes."
"Okay. So, it's someone who has a wardrobe very similar to Morrison's." Ray tapped the end of the dry-erase marker against his jaw for a moment. "Crap. Do you think that our guy could have sought out clothes similar to Morrison's on purpose?"
Robles shrugged. "I can't see why not. Stranger things have happened." He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. "I wonder if he apes his mannerisms, too. Just to throw people off."
"Keep a good thought." Ray groaned and hit his head against the whiteboard for a moment. "This is like conspiracy theory stuff, and we have to take it seriously now."
"Fun times." Nenci threw a huge, nasty grin. "But hey—maybe Morrison is innocent and then you won't have to sneak around with his pretty son anymore."
Ray jumped. "Hey!"
Morris snickered. "Oh, come on, man. There aren't many secrets like that when you're in a department full of alphas."
"His scent is all over you." Robles nodded, grinning. "Which—I mean I can distinctly recall some people being less than supportive when I started seeing a certain member of a different department but whatever." He held up his hands.
Tessaro's mouth screwed up into a grimace. "Ugh. I loathe defense lawyers, although I guess they're a necessary evil. But I guess you have to do what you have to do, right? Just don't claim him."
Ray looked away.
"Oh, come on." Nenci slapped some files on the desk. "What were you thinking?"
"It was an accident!" Ray threw his hands up into the air, anger and embarrassment prickling hot beneath his skin. "You've never just come close and had to bite down on something? Well I missed, okay? I missed, and we're trying to figure things out right now, and you're not helping."
Morris laughed out loud, pointing right at Ray. "Oh man. And I thought I had a conflict of interest when I was sleeping with a witness! You're sleeping with a suspect's lawyer!"
"Not just sleeping with him." Robles shook his head. "You claimed him. I mean, how could you? How could you even get to that point? Why would you even want to be in a situation like that with a defense lawyer in the first place? I mean you'd think that the words 'defense attorney' would be enough to just kill your libido just like that."
"Hey." Tessaro stood next to Ray. "Look, I hate defense lawyers too, but that's not helpfu
l here. What's done is done, and no one can help who he has chemistry with. Langer's been supportive of both of you, and of your omegas, no matter what. Maybe you can pretend to show him the same courtesy? At least while he's in front of you and can hear you?" He shook his head.
Ray slumped. He knew that they would never accept Doug. While Doug might think that they were all on the same side, these guys would never buy into that philosophy. He hadn't been thinking of that, not when he'd been in the moment. He hadn't been thinking at all.
He didn't regret claiming Doug, though. Right now he might feel a pang of loss at the fissure in the camaraderie he shared with the rest of his department, but when he saw Doug again Doug would rest his head on Ray's chest and heal him.
"Okay. I'll talk to Doug about whether or not he can remember anyone who fits the description. He might have noticed someone who seemed to be overly attentive, who was really excited about his father's wardrobe or seemed to be watching his dad at odd times or something." Ray sighed. "In the meantime, what do you think Killer Number Two is doing now that Larry's up in Shirley?"
Nenci rolled his shoulders. "He could be doing anything. The chances that he'd have stopped are minimal, but it's a straight line from Larry's house to Freetown State Forest. That place has been used as a dump site for years. If someone found a body, or parts of a body, it's unlikely that anyone would ever think to attribute it to the Lakeville Killer."
"True." Ray rubbed at his face. "Okay. I'll take that on, and look through incidents and finds there. Let's see what we can find."
The team broke apart to follow up their leads. Ray started out by looking through incident reports from Freetown for the past two years, and then he called the rangers there. The rangers were surprised to get a call from him, but they told him that they had in fact found a few small parts in the past few years. Some of the parts were skeletonized already, remains of people long deceased and probably not associated with his case, but others fell within his time frame and victim profile.
They had one foot, with a bunion, belonging to a woman who had probably been between forty and forty-five. They had a hand, belonging to a different woman of about fifty. Her perfect manicure had been chipped in some kind of struggle. And they had a knee, belonging to another woman from approximately the same age range. The finds had all been made about six months apart, and all showed significant animal damage.
Rangers had assumed a hospital had been dumping medical waste. It wouldn't have been the first time.
Ray hesitated to give much information away. The ranger could be chosen for the jury, after all. He could be their killer, too. He decided to just explain that they were looking for a killer who had been "inspired by" the Lakeville Killer, and to be on the lookout for any more remains. The ranger agreed to send the incident reports over, which he did immediately.
Ray emailed both Maggio and Doug to let them know about the new information. Doug sent him a text in return, thanking him and promising him a more personal reward later on.
He worked to research those finds from the office that day, and made an appointment to go down to Freetown to check out the site the next day. On a whim, he invited Doug to join him, figuring that the trip would do them both some good. Doug agreed, since he didn't have any court cases, although he freely admitted that hiking was not his forte. Morris found out about their plans and insisted on joining them, because Freetown wasn't a park to be taken lightly.
A ranger met them at headquarters. For all of Morris' disdain toward defense attorneys yesterday, he made himself agreeable toward Doug today. He even insisted on being called Ozzy, which gave the charismatic Doug an opening. Within minutes, they were old friends, and Ranger Ennis Derry was soon one of the guys.
Freetown was a huge piece of property, and they didn't have time to dither. The ranger led them on a long, intense march through the forest to the southwestern part of the park, pointing out areas of historical interest along the way. Of course, areas of "historical interest" in Freetown were pretty grim. The site had a long history of criminal activity, which had given rise to a whole host of ghost stories.
"We used to be terrified of this place when I was a kid." Doug, for all that he didn't do much hiking, kept up with the rest of them just fine. "Everyone knew that if you came here you'd wind up taking a flying leap off Assonet Ledge, or a pukwudgie would get you, or the Satanists would find you or something."
"Well, the ledge is an issue." Ranger Derry chuckled. "And the Satanists did contribute to some of the problems we had. So did the dumping. I mean there's a reason that we don't even bat an eye when we find body parts around here, you know?" He sighed. "If we'd known to be looking for something, we might have called sooner. As it is, we thought it was just more of the same. It's too much land for us to be able to watch all of, every second, and the bad guys know it."
They made their way over to the site, and Doug frowned. "Were all of the remains found at the same location?"
Derry nodded. "More or less. Animals messed things around, you know?"
Ray looked around the site. "What's near here?"
"The wild dogs have been spotted around here an awful lot. I think this is a spot that they like." Derry took off his hat.
Morris pulled out his phone, where he had a map of the forest. "And an old cemetery. A cemetery so old that people rarely go there anymore."
"It's kind of genius." Ray bit down on the inside of his cheek. "If people don't go there, why not stash some of the remains there? That way, they're taken care of."
"And scatter the rest up in here for the dogs." Doug shook his head. "You know, it's brilliant. We'd probably never know just how many he's taken."
"There's one way to narrow it down. Let's check out the cemetery." Ray steeled himself and gestured to the ranger.
Ranger Derry led them across the road and over to an ancient, unpretentious looking cemetery. Ray was sweating under his suit, and he'd have to send the shirt to the cleaner's, but he knew that the work was worth it. Something inside of him, an instinct that he always listened to, told him that he would find what he was looking for if he stuck it out here.
He wasn't wrong. The ground behind several tombstones showed signs of having been disturbed. No one had gone to much effort to hide it, either. It seemed almost as though the effort had been token. And then, of course, in other areas, something had gone digging into the ground behind the person who'd initially disturbed the grave.
Doug put his hand to his mouth. Ray wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close. Someone or something had left a skeletal hand sticking out of the ground, for all the world to see.
Chapter Six
Doug couldn't understand, for the life of him, why Judge Murphy wouldn't let his father out of Shirley this time. Oh, he heard the words the old judge said. "Just because some dogs dug up some bodies in a bone yard doesn't let your father off the hook, Morrison. No changes. The elder Morrison stays where he is, and that's final."
Doug was going to have his job for this, someday. He would see that wretched old man dismissed from the bench, and make sure that any thoughts about a pension were distant memories at best.
Ray tried his best to boost Doug's spirits as September lurched into October. "Look," he said. "If your dad is in lockup, he can't be accused of any new crimes. And you have plenty of witnesses for anything that he did between the time that he was arrested and now, so if we can find proof that these bodies are related to the killings then we can prove that he's not guilty of them."
Doug bit his tongue. He wanted to lash out, because his alpha didn't even remotely believe that Larry was innocent. Ray had been up front about his beliefs. He thought that someone else had cottoned on to what Larry was up to and just latched onto it. Most of the time Doug could live with that, because he loved his alpha and they didn't need to agree with one another about every little thing. Right now, there was a big part of him that wanted to scream about half-hearted support.
That wouldn't be helpfu
l, and it wouldn't even really be true, so Doug kept his mouth shut and kept working.
Fortunately, his other cases were going better than his father's. Samson Monette, Doug's other client at Shirley, was a free man. Doug had convinced them to drop all charges once they'd gotten in front of a judge, and the state had been ordered to pay a substantial settlement to Monette. The firm's share of that settlement was already in their account, and was making Doug look more and more valuable to them by the moment.
He had four other cases in progress. He had a woman whose mother-in-law had successfully accused her of murdering a baby that had died of SIDS. That case was just winding up for trial in Woburn, which was not a fun trip no matter what time of day he made it. He had a case involving a man who had been convicted of a string of car thefts in Fall River that was just now beginning the appeal process; the poor guy's harried public defender had suffered a stroke halfway through his trial. He had a woman appealing a homicide conviction in Suffolk County; the jury hadn't been all that interested in the couple's history of domestic violence the first time around. And finally, he had an omega who had been accused of killing an alpha trying to claim him by force. That case was going to be long, drawn-out and ugly.