BLUE MERCY

by ILLONA HAUS

  She’d barely turned in the half-light to inspect the room when instinct drove Kay’s hand to the grip of her nine. First fumbling with the safety strap, then fighting with the hem of her blazer. She drew the weapon and went into a crouch, and only when the Glock’s muzzle cleared the leather holster did Kay comprehend what she was seeing.

  With her heart still in her throat, she studied the dim outline in the corner of the bedroom. The figure against the back wall didn’t move. And when Kay stepped away from the window, allowing the light to reach the corner, she recognized it as a mannequin.

  She swore, crossed the room, and squatted before the fiberglass figure. A blond wig sat askew on its bald head, and the fuchsia-colored bra was at least two cup sizes too ample for the pert plastic breasts. Kay remembered Roma Chisney’s panties logged into evidence and wondered if it was a matching set.

  Nothing else was on the mannequin except black smudges left by the Crime Lab, where the carbon powder had come in contact with the oils no doubt left by Eales’s hands. The son of a bitch sure loved his mannequin. He must have stolen it from Dutton’s years ago when he’d worked there, taken her with him when he moved.

  Standing over the mannequin and the sunken mattress on its low metal frame, Kay felt disgust. The sheets had been stripped, and the faded blue polyester of the double Beautyrest was stained—one spill overlapping the next. Blood? Urine? Semen?

  This is where he slept. The man who almost killed you with his bare hands. This is where he spent his nights. Maybe sometimes with his mannequin. Maybe others with Annie Harris’s body. Or Chisney’s.

  Kay stepped away from the bed. In the corner, next to a shadeless lamp, were more porn mags and an overflowing ashtray. She imagined Eales smoking in bed. If only he’d accidentally set the old mattress on fire one night. Roasted himself while he slept.

  She thought of Valley’s burned body. One smoldering butt on Eales’s bed and she might be alive today. Along with the others.

  Kay crossed the red and orange shag. The carpet had been vacuumed, but not by Eales. The Mobile Crime Lab had gone over the entire house with the 3M vacuum, sucking up trace evidence too small for the naked eye.

  The wallpaper here was floral—wide, luscious poppies— faded and nicotine-stained, peeling back at the seams. A vintage-car poster hung lopsided over the veneer dresser. It was an old ad, a painted image of a green-and-white sedan with whitewalls and heavy chrome bumpers. “Pontiac’s Beauty Is Pontiac’s Alone!” It was selling the 1959 Canada-made 7100 StratoChief. Kay guessed it was the same model as Eales’s, sitting in the police impound off the Fallsway.

  The top of the dresser was clearly where Eales emptied the contents of his pockets at the end of each day. Small change, half-used matchbooks, pay stubs, and ATM printouts. All covered in a dense dust.

  Past a box of tissues, a man’s ring, and a crucifix on a chain, Kay’s eyes stopped on a worn copy of Webster’s dictionary.

  “You think I never owned a dictionary?” Eales had asked her. “There’s more to me than you think, Detective.”

  Kay picked up the battered volume, blew a layer of dust off its cover, and opened it. The purple-inked stamp from the Francis Scott Key Middle School inside its cover didn’t surprise her. Fanning through the pages, Kay imagined Eales’s slow brain taking in the words. She stopped at where a folded sheet of lined paper had been inserted between the pages.

  Kay removed it, unfolded it. And in the dim light, she scanned the mangled words in the teetering handwriting. Clearly Eales had struggled with the phrasing and grammar, painstakingly crossing out words and battling with his punctuation as he’d composed the letter.

  However, its content was chillingly clear. And when her cell phone chirped at her belt, Kay was already feeling the thrill of long-needed answers.

  35

  FINN MET HER ON GETTINGS outside Bates’s house ten minutes after he’d called her cell. She was still shaking as she returned the key to the junkie, and her hands clenched the steering wheel as she drove the six blocks to the Parkview Funeral Home.

  With Finn following in her rearview, she turned the Lumina into the manicured grounds. The place looked deserted. Only one hearse was parked outside the old carriage house where there’d been three before. Kay took several calming breaths as she parked; Hagen had to be there.

  The front doors were locked, and Hagen took a long time to answer. “I’m on my own,” he explained, leading them back to his office. “I have that list for you.”

  As they followed the carpeted corridors, Kay’s excitement thrummed along every nerve.

  “That’s everyone,” Hagen said in his office, handing her the list off his barren desk. Only a few remaining boxes and the larger furnishings awaited the movers. “I trust that should satisfy you?”

  “Actually, we did have a few questions, Mr. Hagen,” Finn said, and Kay saw the old man’s shoulders stiffen.

  “Then you’re going to have to join me downstairs. I’m in the middle of something.”

  It was the last place Kay wanted to go. Still, they followed him down the narrow stairwell with its velvet-textured wallpaper and formaldehyde stench. Kay heard a motor and saw the glare of white tile through the open door at the end of the hall.

  Hagen had an embalming in progress—a woman spread out on the stainless-steel prep table, its drainage channels brimming with watered-down blood and body fluids. She was young, and as with all deaths in the city of Baltimore that hadn’t been signed off by a medical doctor, she’d already been to the ME’s. If the autopsy hadn’t been violation enough, her remains were now subjected to Hagen’s desecration.

  Two thick tubes ran from the girl’s body, one of them carrying dead blood to a three-gallon glass tank, suctioned out by the pump that whined in the corner. Kay guessed it was the Porti-boy Jonesy had mentioned, replacing the blood with a pink formaldehyde solution.

  Hagen donned a rubber apron and gloves and flipped off the pump. Kay watched him remove the hollow metal tubes from the body and plug the holes with beveled plastic screws. She made a mental note then to tell Finn she wanted to be cremated.

  Unlike the rest of the place, the embalming room was only partially gutted. Amidst the sinks and workbenches, Kay surveyed the shelves of brightly colored fluids and the horrific apparatuses of the trade.

  When she looked to Hagen again, he was massaging the dead girl’s arms. There was nothing tender or deferent about the action, and Kay envisioned the man working late into the night, alone in his embalming room.

  “She’s my last,” he explained. “We’ll be operational at the new location after the weekend, but I don’t have the prep room there functional yet.”

  “And all the equipment down here?” Finn asked.

  “I’m selling off most of this older stuff. So what is it, Detectives?” Hagen was done with the small talk. Impatience seemed to make his movements brisker now.

  Kay bit her tongue. She’d agreed to let Finn lead. After all, he had a daughter himself, and she knew that his abhorrence of the implications of Bernard’s letter would get them farther in the interview.

  Finn took the letter from his pocket then, but didn’t open it. “When exactly did Mrs. Hagen pass?” he asked.

  There was an inappreciable pause in Hagen’s work. “My wife passed twenty-four years ago.”

  “So your daughter would have been how old?”

  “Nine. What’s this about?”

  Finn ignored the question. “And so that’s when you started molesting Patricia? Or did it start even before that?”

  Hagen froze, his expression as cold as the girl’s flesh he held in his gloved hands. “Where the hell do you get off coming in here with such—”

  Finn unfolded the ragged letter and held it over the embalming table for Hagen to read. Kay watched the old man’s yellowed eyes take in Bernard’s accusations.

  Patsy told me everything, Bernard had written in the letter addressed to Hagen, then called him a sorry-ass diddling fuck
. She’s not yours to diddle anymore, he wrote. I told you before, I’d do whatever it took to keep your hands off her…. Just because you fired me doesn’t mean I still can’t get you. I’ll let everyone know about you. I’ll tell the media …

  But in the end it was money Eales was after. How much though, he hadn’t figured out yet. In the final paragraph of the letter he’d asked for $10,000 then scratched it out and written $20,000.

  Hagen stepped back from the letter. “Bernard would do anything to get money. In fact, this doesn’t even really surprise me.” He waved a hand at the letter, dismissing it as he might a parking ticket. “I’ve never laid a hand on my daughter, Detective.”

  Finn refolded the letter, then nodded down to the dead girl on the table. “Right, but the corpses can’t talk back, isn’t that right?”

  “I would never—”

  “The way this looks to me,” Finn went on, “is that Bernie came and took your daughter away from you. And when you didn’t have her anymore, you turned to your clients here in the basement.”

  “Please. More unfounded accusations from Bernard.”

  “Accusations that would have ruined you,” Kay pointed out.

  Hagen’s anger was peaking now. She could see it in his eyes, even though his face maintained that funereal calm. “Do you mean to tell me that you believe the rantings of a man who’s presently sitting in prison for killing three women and a police officer?”

  “So, then, Bernie just made all of this stuff up?” Finn asked, waving the letter. “I gotta tell you, he doesn’t strike me as being that imaginative.”

  “Of course he made it up.”

  “And why would he do that, Mr. Hagen?”

  “Because I wouldn’t let him see my daughter. When I knew him, he was a kid with a temper. Nothing but a bully. Besides”—Hagen nodded at the letter that Finn was pocketing—“I didn’t see any date on that. Bernard could have written that fifteen years ago, after I fired him and told him to stay away from Patricia.”

  “Sounds to me like he just wanted you to leave your daughter alone.”

  “I told you, Detective Finnerty, I never touched my daughter. Why don’t you ask her? In fact, why don’t you show her that letter, so she can see exactly what kind of reprobate she’s got herself tangled up with. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” The old man turned back to his work, massaging the dyed formaldehyde through the girl’s dead veins, bringing an artificial color to the pale flesh.

  The subject was spent. Kay turned to the employee list Hagen had handed her upstairs. Unfolding it, she scanned the almost three dozen names, then stopped on one. “Wait a second, Jerry Bates worked for you?”

  “Yes. For twelve years.”

  “Jerry Bates who lives over on Gettings Street?”

  “If that’s where he still lives.” Hagen’s words were crisp and he refused to make eye contact.

  Kay studied the list. “He quit a year ago?”

  “I let him go, last August.”

  “Why?” Finn asked. “I mean, twelve years is a long time.”

  When Hagen looked across the table this time, the lines in his face seemed to relax marginally, as though he was relieved he was no longer the subject of their interview. “Jerry developed a drug habit.”

  “When exactly did Mr. Bates start using?” Kay asked.

  “You’d have to ask him that. All I can say is, he was one of my best employees, and then he wasn’t.”

  “And what did he do for you? Did he help out down here?”

  “No. He kept my books, organized inventory and supplies, and managed all the accounts. He used to be extremely competent.”

  “Did you know he was friends with Bernard Eales?”

  Hagen moved to the girl’s legs, rubbing the gray skin vigorously under gloved hands. “No, I didn’t. But it doesn’t surprise me. It was probably Bernard who got him addicted.”

  “What else can you tell us about Mr. Bates?”

  “Nothing. Like I said, he was good at what he did. Smart. Organized. Punctual. I wouldn’t have kept him for twelve years if he wasn’t. Now, if you don’t mind, Detectives—” Hagen reached behind him and took up a long steel tube. Except for the heavy silicone hose attached to it, he looked like a fencer brandishing his foil. “I do have work to do here.” He threw the switch on the pump then, and it whirred back to life.

  Touching the honed tip against the girl’s abdomen, immediately below the ME’s Y-incision, Hagen paused and looked across at them. “You might want to show yourselves out now.”

  And as she and Finn left the embalming room, Kay heard the distinct suction of fluids as the motor of the Porti-boy whined.

  36

  “YOU GOT A WARRANT?” Bates scowled at them as they stood on his porch.

  Hagen’s former bookkeeper had clearly been about to shoot up when Kay and Finn knocked on his door. With his hair spiked straight up and his eyes a little wild, Bates wedged himself between the door and the jamb. Finn noticed the fresh impression of a belt across the scrawny biceps of his right arm. Below this, on the inside of his arm, was what looked like a relatively new tattoo—a pachuco cross, used by addicts to conceal their injection sites.

  “No,” Kay answered. “We don’t have a warrant.”

  “Then you can’t come in. I know my rights.” He tried to close the door but Finn propped it with his foot.

  “I’m sure you do, Jerry. But we just want to talk,” Kay said, her voice soft.

  “ ’Bout what?”

  “Bernard Eales.”

  “And you need four of you to do that?” Bates nodded at the two uniformed officers who shared the porch with them. With the possibility of a deviant conspiracy between Bates and Eales, and not knowing what to expect from the junkie, they’d called for backup.

  “I don’t gotta let you in,” he said again.

  “That’s right, Jer.” Finn snagged the skel’s arm fast and yanked him onto the porch. “So why don’t you come on out and talk?” He gave a quick nod to the uniforms, dismissing them back to their radio unit parked across the street, and tried to swallow his impatience.

  Wasting an entire day at the courthouse always put Finn in a mood, especially when there was a case to work. He’d wanted to be there for Kay when she went through Eales’s house, and that she’d had to go alone pissed him off even more. And now this—pussyfooting with a junkie—was the last thing Finn had the patience to tolerate.

  “Come on, Jer. Just relax.” Finn squeezed Bates’s shoulder a little too hard. “Unless of course there’s something you need to be nervous about.”

  Bates’s eyes flitted back to his door. Kay pulled it shut.

  “See?” Finn said. “We’re not interested in what you’ve got going on in there, okay? But if you don’t cooperate, we could be.”

  Leaving the Parkview Funeral Home, they’d swung by HQ to check Bates’s record. It didn’t surprise Finn to see two counts of drug possession, but the solicitation charges surprised him. If Bates was a true addict, sex would be the last thing on his mind.

  “What do you want from me?” Bates whined.

  “Just wondering what you’ve been doing with yourself since leaving the Parkview Funeral Home.”

  Bates chewed frantically at his bottom lip. Finn followed his gaze to the adjoining porch. One neighbor sat on a rusted lawn chair; past that, another cooled herself on her stoop.

  “Okay, listen. Let’s go to the car and have us a chat, all right? Nice and private.” Finn escorted Bates firmly across the street and to the unmarked Lumina at the curb. When he opened the door to usher Bates into the backseat, Bates balked.

  “Come on, Jer, don’t piss me off here. We just wanna ask a few questions.” Finn tried to keep the antagonism out of his voice. “Now scootch over,” he said, and slid in after the junkie.

  From the front seat, Kay remained silent, letting Finn have this one. She switched off the police radio and turned in the passenger seat to watch Bates.

  “So, d’you
take an early retirement, Jer?” Finn asked. “You didn’t like working for Hagen anymore or what?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You worked for the man a long time. You ever see anything hinky at that place?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The old man. He ever do anything weird?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your buddy Bernard called the cops on Hagen a long time ago. You know anything about that?”

  “No. That was before I ever worked there. All I heard was rumors. And frankly, what the old man does in his basement is none of my business, right?” Bates winked.

  “And what the hell does that mean?” Finn asked, imitating the junkie’s wink.

  “Nothing. Nothing. Forget it.”

  “You ever see anything? Ever go down to the basement?”

  “No. That’s not my thing.” Bates cleared his sinuses with a sucking noise, then wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of one shaking hand. When his eyes darted to Kay briefly, Finn could see the whites were bloodshot, but the pupils weren’t dilated. Bates was jonesing but he wasn’t high.

  “What about Hagen and his daughter?” Finn asked him. “Anything untoward going on there ever?”

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Come on, Jer, quit pissing around.”

  “I’m not, man. Seriously, I don’t know what you’re after.” Under the stained and threadbare sweats he wore, his bony knees had started bouncing, and again he sucked at his sinuses.

  “So how well do you know Patricia Hagen?” Finn asked.

  Bates showed no reaction to the name. “I only know her through the business. Even then, she weren’t around much.”

  “Any idea if she and Eales dated? Before he was arrested?”

  “I don’t know. Bernard said no though. I asked him once, a long time ago when I seen her leave his place.”

  “So he was seeing her then?”

  “I don’t know. I only seen her twice leaving his house.”