by Aiden Bates
"He's a good guy, too." Tessaro rubbed at the back of his neck. "He's a fighter. I think you'll like him."
Sean hung his head. "Yeah, I guess." He squirmed a little. "I mean I don't know what we'd say to one another."
"I don't think that Doug's ever had trouble thinking of something to say to someone else." Ray chuckled. "Look. I'll have him give you a call and if nothing else, he'll make sure that no one takes advantage of you from a legal perspective. I think you'll get a lot more out of it than that, though."
Sean nodded and wrote down his number, and the two detectives went to leave.
Ray didn't want to. Ray wanted to stay and help the kid out. He wanted to look into the kid's situation. Did he have any place to go? Any way of getting help? Seventeen was too young to be living on his own.
Sean wouldn't want that, though. Not right now. Right now, Sean needed the familiar. The counselor would know how to handle things. Ray and Tessaro headed back out to the car. "It's a safe bet that Shelly Kerry didn't make it to that bar," Tessaro said, buckling himself into the passenger seat. "There wasn't time."
"No, there wasn't." Ray sighed. "We keep coming back to the same two guys, though. And the same priest. I wonder if we shouldn't talk to him again."
"I don't think that the priest is going to do you much good." Tessaro ran his tongue over his teeth. "He's been out of the area for years; I don't think that he's going to be able to give you any insights on someone who's been active down here. I think the priest has some blame, don't get me wrong. His whole Order of Lot thing is disturbing."
"But I can't let my bias against him in that way affect my pursuit of this case." Ray plugged the address of the middle school into the GPS. "You're right. I want it to be the priest, but you're right. I need to try to stay objective here."
Tessaro stuck his tongue out at him. "'There is no try. Only do.'"
Ray flipped him off. "Don't even Star Wars me here. There's still something that's bothering me here. We have the same MO. We have the same victim type. Something still isn't working."
Tessaro frowned. "What do you mean 'isn't working?'" He scratched his head. "I mean the forensic tests and everything are still coming back, but they all seem pretty self-explanatory to me."
Ray sighed. "Okay, but why was he late with this killing? It should have happened in September or so, if we're dealing with a killer who works on a cycle. And what about those two years between Morrison and Leveque?"
Tessaro bit his lip. "Maybe we should just focus on the case in front of us, and let the pieces behind us fill themselves in?"
"Yeah, maybe." That wasn't the answer. Ray knew that it wasn't the answer, but he didn't know how to prove it.
Chapter Twelve
The new house was everything Doug had wanted it to be.
He missed his old place in the South End immediately. That went without saying. He'd loved the elegance of it. He'd loved the ease of cleaning such a small space. He'd loved the convenience of having a place that was steps away from work, too. He hadn't ever seen himself as a suburban kind of guy, not once he'd gotten out of high school and slithered off to New Haven.
He could put up with the inconvenience of living in the wilds of Needham in exchange for the joy that having that much land brought Ray. Ray liked to go out back and commune with nature or something like that. Doug didn't get it, but he didn't have to get it. It was just one of those little things about Ray that Doug loved.
Doug bemoaned the lack of local dining, but he appreciated the wide open spaces in the house and the huge master bath. He found himself a little nonplussed by the expansive kitchen. He'd never been much of a cook, but he guessed he'd learn.
Their first guest wasn't one of Ray's family members, and it wasn't one of Ray's fellow cops. It wasn't a lawyer buddy of Doug's, or a former bandmate either. Their first guest was Sean Kerry, the teenaged son of the Lakeville Killer's latest murder victim. Doug had spoken to the boy that same night, after he got Ray's email. They'd spoken again, and when he'd disclosed to Ray that the kid had nowhere else to go, they'd made the offer of their home. Sean had been a little uncomfortable with that at first, changing schools in the middle of the year not being high on anyone's list of fun times, but he soon realized that it was the best of his options.
Doug's heart went out to the poor kid. He'd just lost his mother, and his siblings. One of the other detectives from Cold Case had an omega in Abused Persons. That omega, Ryan, was able to pull a few strings and find the Kerry siblings, but he wasn't able to reunite them with their brother. Sean was too young to keep them in the family home and together. He just couldn't afford it, not on part time wages and especially not if he dropped out of school. That might have been possible in another part of the country, but not in the greater Boston area.
Ryan was able to persuade the Department of Children and Families that the younger siblings would benefit from having visitation with their older brother on a regular basis. Doug didn't think that it should have taken persuasion; it seemed like common sense to him. Nevertheless, that was the verdict, and so that was what was going to happen. Sean moved into one of the guest rooms, and life gradually slowed down to a normal pace.
Thanksgiving came. They celebrated at home, with Sean and his siblings. Doug botched the turkey and Ray was pretty sure that there were laws against serving mashed potatoes from a box on Thanksgiving, but they did it anyway. The Kerry kids didn't mind. They were happy just to be together for the holiday, and they got to mourn their mother in peace.
Doug visited his father again. Larry seemed to be in a melancholy mood this time around, a sweet little smile on his face as Doug described their Thanksgiving. "If you're going to be raising kids, Dougie, you need to learn to cook." He shook his head, a fond smile on his face. "I had no idea how to cook when your mother died. I had to figure it out. If they'll let you into the Lakeville house, you should take my cookbooks. They'll steer you right."
"Thanks, Dad. I will." Doug bit his lip. "I remember how much you helped me, after Mom died. I want to help Sean the same way, but I don't know how. You always knew what I needed, and of course I was younger then than Sean is now. Plus, I was sick, if I remember right."
Larry went still. "Yeah, that's right," he said after a second. "You were pretty sick. I think it was bronchitis. Poor thing. Grieving and trying to deal with being sick on top of it, all at the same time. But you, Dougie, you never complained. Not once." He shook his head and grabbed Doug's hand across the table. "I've always been so incredibly proud of you, Dougie."
The comments confused Doug, but he didn't think much of it at the time. A lot of the things his father did confused him.
Doug made partner with the next promotion cycle. He was only partly surprised. When they'd assigned him a staff they'd kind of given the secret away. He wasn't sure that he deserved it quite yet. He didn't think that he'd done enough, and he knew that he'd shamed the firm by getting claimed by the opposing side in a case they were actively investigating. He wasn't about to say no, though. Not with his family's financial future secured like this.
He did ask that Ray and Sean not celebrate until the case was over. "I don't feel as though I've really earned it until we finish this. Not until we have the wrong guy out of jail, and the right guy in jail."
They agreed.
Chris came over to the house to try to go over strategy. "Look," Chris said, once he'd toured the house. "I'd normally be all for a judge who didn't want to release a killer, but at this point the Commonwealth is content to drop all charges against your father. It's all Murphy. You know that, right?"
"I do." Doug leaned back onto the couch cushions. "There isn't anything that I can do about it, unfortunately. I've never done anything to him personally, but he's got it in for me in ways that I've never seen before."
"It's kind of scary." Chris grimaced and sipped from his cappuccino. Doug would always list that new coffeemaker as one of his greatest achievements. "I can't think of a reason for it, yo
u know?"
"He is the way that he is. The problem now is that we have to work around it." Doug picked up his own coffee cup. "I'm not sure how to proceed."
Ray sauntered into the room. "So," he said, cheeks and eyes bright. "I've got some news that might help your situation."
Doug leapt to his feet. "You found a suspect and got a perfectly legal confession out of him?"
Ray frowned down at Doug. "Well, no. Not quite that good. But the three remaining victims from 2000 onward all have the same types of tool marks on the remains as the women who were killed at times that can be confirmed to not be your dad, Doug."
Doug fell to the ground. Hot tears streamed down his face as he laughed. He'd never been so happy to win a court case. "You're joking. This has to be a joke, or a dream."
Chris and Ray exchanged glances. "Er, no joke, and no dream," Ray said, very slowly. "This should be enough to get them to drop those charges against your dad, right?"
Chris' smile was about a mile wide. "I'm running off to go and start that paperwork right now."
Doug hugged him tight. "Thank you, Chris. With any luck, my dad will be breathing free air for Christmas."
"We'll see what I can do. It is Murphy." With that, Chris grabbed his coat and left.
That night the little family went out to dinner to celebrate, just something small between the three of them. They didn't want to jinx anything. Even Sean, who knew the case the least and didn't know Larry at all, didn't want to spoil the joyful event.
After dinner, once Sean had gone to bed, Ray and Doug retreated to the master suite. Ray drew a bath for them in the two-person hot tub—not something they'd put in, but something that Doug certainly wasn't about to turn down—and they sank into the warm water to enjoy a relaxing and celebratory bath. "I'm still nervous," Doug told his alpha. "If it were any other judge, the charges would have all been dismissed and Dad would have been home by now. But because it's Murphy, he won't drop a single charge until I can prove six ways from Sunday that my dad didn't kill that specific woman. It's been like that with every charge that's been dropped. I have to walk through the data on every case."
"I'd love to say that he's just being thorough, but I don't think that he is." Ray scrubbed Doug's back. "Do you think that he might be related to a victim?"
"If he is, and I can find it, I can make him recuse himself. It's a little late in the day to be thinking of that." Doug snuggled back into Ray's waiting arms.
"He might still dig in his heels. There's one victim whose body didn't display the same tool marks as the others." Ray squeezed Doug a little. "There are other little differences between her and the others, too. Like we did find her head. We haven't found the others'."
"Emiliana. My mother." Doug turned his head away. "You think that he'll insist that my father did that one, even though it's been shown that he didn't do the others. The only reason that anyone ever thought that he did Emiliana's was because of those others!"
Ray sighed and rested a hand along Doug's side. "Doug, you know that the husband's always the first suspect in any homicide. And it's usually the right suspect, too."
"Usually. Not always." Doug flopped a hand into the water, making a tiny splash. "There's no way that Dad could have killed Emiliana. He was with me that whole night. And I was sick."
Ray kissed the top of his head. Doug loved it when he kissed the top of his head. It made him feel so warm and so safe, like nothing could touch him.
"You were sick? How come you've never mentioned that before?" Ray nuzzled into Doug's hair.
Doug frowned. "Oh, come on. I must have. But yeah, I was sick. I'm kind of fuzzy on a lot of things, because of the fever. It was kind of a difficult time for me. Emiliana was still furious, because Dad wouldn't drop me off at Social Services like she wanted. And then I got sick. I came down with a cold, and she said that taking care of me was a waste of time." The words came pouring out of Doug's mouth. He hadn't even remembered those words until he started talking about that time. "They argued. Emiliana said that the bronchitis was a blessing and we should just let nature take its course."
Ray shuddered. "That's kind of terrible."
"I know, right?" Doug closed his eyes. "I'd had an okay relationship with her when I was little. I mean I was always closer to my dad, but I loved her. I did. And then there was the testing, and then I wasn't human anymore. I was 'that thing.'"
"My God." Ray held on closer. "And then you got sick."
"Right. So I got sick. And they fought, and I dozed off here and there. For days that went on. And then one day she was gone, and I didn't feel at all bad about that. I mean I felt bad for my dad, because he loved her. But she'd gotten to be so nasty to me, you know? I couldn't miss her."
Doug felt a couple of big, fat tears run down his face. He should miss his mother, no matter how she'd made him feel. She was his mother and she'd given him life. That was all there was to it.
Ray petted his hair. "Hey. It's okay. You feel how you feel, okay? And you don't have to feel bad about not mourning for someone who didn't value you anymore. Your father was there. You had each other to get you through that, okay?
"And honestly, Doug, I think that she must have had something, some kind of issue, if she turned to a cult like the Order of Lot for comfort. I'm not sure what it was, but there was definitely an issue there because that's not… when a normal parent finds out that their son is an omega they turn away from an order like that. Not toward it."
Doug nodded. He focused on the feel of his alpha's slippery skin on his cheek instead of on his grief—grief for the love of his mother, if not for the woman herself. "I mean she was already involved with them when we got the test results."
"That's irrelevant though. It's not as though it's a choice." Ray rocked him a little, so that the warm water could splash up his back. "It's not as though you woke up one morning in a rebellious mood and said, 'You know what? I think I'll turn omega. It'll be swell.' It doesn't work that way. You couldn't physically do it."
Doug shook his head. "No. It's just how our genes are coded."
"So a rational person would think that hey, maybe I should be a little bit less into this weird cult that can't accept science." Ray chuckled. "Maybe, since I'm lucky enough to have a child, I should focus on helping this child that has this extra challenge instead of worrying about these people who want to tell me that his existence is a sin."
Doug closed his eyes. "Can we make a promise right now?"
"Of course."
"Whatever becomes of this child—no matter what—can we agree to love them unconditionally? We'll always keep them; we'll never give them up or cast them off."
"Oh, babe. This child will always be a part of us. We're a family." Ray moved his hand down to Doug's still-flat abdomen. It was too early to feel anything, or even for Doug to show yet, but Doug still felt a surge of pride as his mate ran his hand against his belly. "There is no part of me that won't accept our baby for whoever they are.
Doug held his alpha close, and let the weight fall from his shoulders. "Thank you." He hadn't realized how much he'd been holding in all these years until now, how much his mother's rejection had hurt. If he was going to go through the trouble of bringing a child into the world, giving it life, he wasn't going to turn around and reject it just because of some kind of genetic issue. "I love you."
"I'll always love you," Ray murmured into his ear. "And I'll always love our little bean too."
***
Ray scanned through the notes from his comrades' interviews with their two suspects. They couldn't afford to wait on this. He had a scared, grieving teenager at home who needed closure. He had an omega on a crusade who needed closure too, preferably before their baby put in an appearance. And Ray himself needed to finish this case out, to put this ghastly mistake behind him and move forward with his career.
He looked at his own notes and compared them to the interviews. He liked Tolbert for the murders. Tolbert was the more open and aggressive mi
sogynist. A few phone calls to the hospital did yield the information that Mrs. Marjorie Tolbert had indeed made several visits to the emergency department. The hospital couldn't share information about Mrs. Tolbert's specific medical history, but they were willing to drop the giant hint that on one occasion there had been "OB-GYN involvement."
Ray had needed to go and have a walk around the building after that.
Tolbert was a known wife beater, and he had a long history of making scenes with regards to women. Phone calls to the widowers of most of the deceased showed that he had confrontations with several of the murdered women, and his personal habits gave him no alibi for the times of several of the murders.
He ran that by the others, who didn't see a problem with Ray's theory in theory. "The problem in practice," Morris pointed out, "is that the kind of guy who sits there and raises a fuss with the manager because the postal clerk didn't call him 'sir' enough times is kind of like the kid in grade school who ran to the teacher every time that someone called him a name he didn't like. Do you remember that kid?"