BLUE MERCY

by ILLONA HAUS

  From the moment he’d pulled up to the curb, Finn’s memory had flooded with the images from fourteen months ago. He’d been on duty that night when the call came in. Like every other available detective, he’d raced to South Baltimore. No idea who, or what, to expect. Only knowing that two of their own were down.

  At Cross Street he’d passed one ambulance hurtling north to Johns Hopkins. Then a second. Lights and sirens shattering the night. He hadn’t known one of the ambos was carrying Kay until he arrived on scene.

  He’d stayed only long enough to see Kay’s blood on the gray, cracked asphalt. Hurling the cherry onto the dash of his Lumina, he’d left some rubber along Gettings that night.

  Finn could still feel the fear that had consumed him back then, when he’d followed the ambulances carrying Kay and Spencer.

  To his right, a door slammed. Four houses down, he saw the dark silhouette on Bates’s porch. The junkie’s lean frame was unmistakable as he took the front steps down to his bare yard.

  Bates stopped only five strides down the sidewalk, frozen—it seemed—upon recognizing Finn.

  “You going somewhere, Jer?” Finn called out.

  “Uh, no.” Bates pinched his nose once, then turned on the heels of his flip-flops and scuttled back up the steps and into his house.

  Down the block, across from Bates’s house, the Southern District officer on watch had stepped out of his radio unit. Finn gave him a wave, then turned back to the porch. His gaze followed the beam of the Maglite, sweeping across the tangle of junk: rusted lawn-chair frames, tires, a discarded fridge.

  How had it gone down that night?

  He’d read the reports at least a hundred times, pouring over every detail, enough that he’d started to feel as though he’d been on the porch with Kay.

  She and Spence had expected Eales to bolt out the back, Kay had told investigators. But he hadn’t. And when he’d come through the front door, he’d knocked the gun from her hand. From then, Kay had stated, Eales started beating on her—from the moment he’d smashed the gun from her hand to when she heard the gun go off. Yes, the whole time, she’d told the IAD investigators. The suspect was on me the whole time.

  And when they’d questioned her on how Eales had fired the gun while he was still beating her, Kay had admitted she was confused about the events, that her memory was scrambled, and she may have blacked out briefly. According to the transcripts, the interview had gone downhill after that.

  Finn stood at the top step, imagining Kay’s position as she’d banged on the door. She would have moved aside then, not knowing whether Eales was armed, not exposing herself to the possibility of a round or a shotgun blast coming through the door. Finn mimicked what must have been her movements that night, his back against the porch pillar, his arms extended.

  Barely enough room.

  The gun in her right hand, Eales stepping out at her left.

  There’d been no porch light, Kay had reported. Dark, just like tonight. Finn panned the beam of the flashlight down the walk, then back across the junk-filled porch once more. Taking it all in. Calculating.

  The suspect was on me the whole time.

  And then, slowly, a chilling realization took hold.

  42

  “COME ON, KAY. ONE MORE TIME.”

  “Christ, Finn, I don’t want to do this.”

  “I know, but it’s important. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Kay had still been in bed when Finn called the next morning. He’d given her fifteen minutes to get dressed and honked the car horn from the street. Handing her a coffee from Starbucks, he’d driven them down to Gettings Street.

  She’d wanted to apologize for last night, but Finn didn’t give her a chance. He was too pumped about his latest theory.

  As the sun broke through the dense haze over the Northwest Harbor and baked the parched yard outside Eales’s house, Finn had led her up the walk. A solitary cicada buzzed over the clatter of the Locust Point rail yards behind them.

  Now at the base of the steps, Finn prodded her. “So you came up here while Joe went to the back, right?”

  “Finn, please.”

  “Damn it, Kay, just do this.”

  She conceded, again going through the motions of that night. She heard little of Finn’s narration this time, allowing him to lead her through the murky memories of Eales bursting through the door, Spence coming around the side, and finally the gunshot.

  “So you ended up here.” Finn had steered her back to the spot along the walkway, barely five yards from the street, where she’d at last surrendered to Eales’s assault. “And that’s when you saw Joe come around from the back, right?”

  This time when he pointed to the section of lawn at the corner of the house where Spencer had died, Kay stared at the swath of sun-burned grass and dried weeds. She wondered about spirits, if somehow Spence was here. She hoped not. For someone who saw so much death, Kay had never clung to any notion of an afterlife or heaven. Dead was dead. But for Spencer’s sake, she hoped there was some kind of heaven, a place far away from this desolate strip of squalor.

  Finn was heading back to the porch, dragging her with him. “Don’t you see it, Kay?”

  “See what?” Kay rubbed at the headache that had started at the base of her neck.

  “Okay, there was no porch light on, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And Eales was on you the entire time.”

  “From what I remember, yeah.”

  “Well, look at this mess.” He waved a hand at the trash-cluttered porch, then stood at the door facing her. He brought her hands up, as though she were holding her gun. “You said he smashed the gun from your grip like so?”

  He brought one arm up, connecting with her wrist. She nodded.

  “So where’d the gun go, Kay? Huh? Where did it land?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure I heard it hit the porch.”

  “Well, where?”

  “I said I don’t know. Probably somewhere to my right. But it was dark.”

  “Exactly. So how the hell did Eales find it? Especially when he was busy beating the shit out of you, huh?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Maybe I’m not remembering it right.”

  “No, I think you are. And I think you’re absolutely right about Eales. I think he did have help getting rid of those women’s bodies, and I think he had help that night.”

  Kay could feel Finn’s intensity.

  “Think about it,” he said. “The only latents they lifted off your gun after it was recovered were Eales’s. Not even a partial print from you. Why?”

  “Because he wiped it at some point.”

  “Or the shooter wiped it. Then dumb-ass Eales carries the piece around for two days until he turns himself in. Kay, I think someone was with Eales that night, and they picked up the gun on the porch. They shot Spencer, not Eales.”

  Kay shook her head and left the porch. Her knees were weak as she took the steps and headed down the walk. She focused on the Lumina across the street, needed to get to it, to get away from the memories, from the implications.

  But Finn came after her. “Kay.” He caught up with her at the hood of the unmarked, took her wrist, and pulled her around. “Why’s this so hard for you to believe?”

  She felt sick. “Because it means that Spencer’s killer is still out there. And it means that because of my fucked-up memory his killer’s been free all this time.” She yanked her wrist from his grasp and turned so Eales’s house was behind her. “Besides, how are you going to prove this theory, anyway, when the only proof is locked in here,” she said, pointing to her head, where the throbbing magnified now.

  “Not the only proof. You’re not the only person who was there that night, Kay. Bernard Eales knows who shot Joe.”

  “Yeah, well, good luck trying to get it out of him.” She opened the passenger door and got into the Lumina. Glancing across to the driver’s side, she checked the visor where Finn usually kept his cigare
ttes. If there’d been a pack, Kay was sure she would have lit up then.

  Finn was silent as he got in behind the wheel. Staring out the windshield.

  “Listen, Finn, I’m sorry about last night.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Kay. I’ve been there. I know how drinking blurs the edges. But I also know how tempting it is to keep those edges blurred permanently.”

  “I’m not a drunk.”

  “I know.”

  She sensed that he wanted to take her hand then, so she kept them in her lap. She thought of the cardboard box on her desk back home. Valley’s ashes. She’d spent what felt like hours last night staring at it, pondering the unfairness of a young life, so filled with hope and promise, reduced to a small, plain cardboard box. “I’m just … I’m dealing with stuff,” she said to Finn at last.

  He started the car but left it in park. “So come to me, Kay. Talk to me.”

  “I’ll try.” She really meant it. She wanted to lean on Finn, to let him in as she had before.

  When he turned to her, he looked skeptical.

  “I will,” she assured him, and if he’d intended to push further, she’d never know. From her jacket pocket, her cell phone trilled.

  It was Gunderson.

  “You two might wanna come in,” Gunderson said. “It’s about Eales. Vicki just stopped by looking for you and Finn. Left an audiotape for you.”

  “What is it? Eales’s Greatest Hits?”

  But Gunderson didn’t laugh. “Better than that. He just sang us a full confession.”

  43

  THE REALIZATION HAD BEEN SLOW COMING. Or maybe he’d known all along.

  Bernard shuffled down the north corridor between two guards, the irons biting into his ankles. He was tired. Hadn’t slept good last night. Lay on his cot, hearing Delaney’s words loop in his head. And when he’d rolled over, he’d started rehearsing his own words, over and over, getting the story straight.

  What exactly had happened a year and a half ago? Back then he’d lost whole nights, passed out in front of late-night TV ads selling specialty knives or big-busted bimbos. Back then he’d never been real sure what had gone on those nights the women died. He’d believed Roach. Let Roach convince him he’d done it.

  And why not? Roach was always so chilled out. He didn’t have the kind of anger that had smashed in Annie Harris’s face.

  Besides, why would Roach lie to him?

  But Detective Delaney, she didn’t believe he’d done it. And if anyone’d wanna nail him with them murders, it was that harpy bitch.

  After she’d left yesterday, he’d had cleanup duty in the can off the cafeteria. Pushing the gray mop head between each urinal, he’d stewed over her suggestions. Gone through his shredded memory, searching for the truth about those nights.

  Somewhere between scrubbing the last stall and returning the equipment to the guard, he thought he had it figured out. And he knew what he’d have to do.

  He’d gone back to his cell, smoked his last coke-laced cigarette, and got only half-mad at Roach for letting him take the fall. He wrote Roach a letter then and finally called Grogan.

  His defense attorney hadn’t agreed with his plan, of course. Grogan had spent an hour humpin’ his ass, trying to convince him to take the weekend to reconsider. And he’d still been working Bernard this morning as he sat shackled in a room at the State’s Attorney’s Office downtown, waiting to give his confession.

  The SA had been smug as shit when he’d signed the waiver for her and told her three times how he’d killed the women. And the whole time the blond bitch in her pink dress smiled as if he’d just handed her his dick on a silver fucking platter.

  He’d said nothing to Patsy when she visited at lunch. If he had, she wouldn’t send the letter for him. So he’d sat on the other side of the grimy Plexiglas, nursing a headache, and listened to her yap through the receiver. Her old man was pissed. Razzing her about coming here to see him. Delaney had obviously gotten to the old fuck, probably told him just to raise shit for Patsy.

  Bernard had never seen Patsy so upset, rubbing the diamond on her finger, her voice getting higher and higher till he thought his head was gonna bust open from the headache. But she always sent through the cigarettes at the end of her visit. So he’d had to sit through it all today just to see the three packs of Marlboros come through the slot. Waiting like a goddamned lapdog doing tricks for a Milk-Bone.

  As he rounded the last corner, Bernard could see the interior of the holding cell in the convex mirror. He’d thought it might have been Grogan. Or maybe Patsy had found out about his confession and had come back.

  He should have known.

  Delaney stood in the middle of the room.

  Without thinking, Bernard slowed. Almost to a full stop.

  “Come on, Big Man,” one of the guards urged. “Move.”

  The end of a nightstick nudged his ribs. When he reached the door of the cell, the bitch turned. Her face looked sour, and he could tell she was pissed.

  Bernard realized one of his greatest mistakes then. One of his few regrets: not killing Delaney when he’d had the chance.

  She nodded to his irons. “Leave ’em on,” she told the guard.

  No pack of cigarettes. No friendly chat. Not after he’d pulled the rug out from under her investigation.

  She yanked out the far chair. “Sit, Bernard.” When he settled onto the hard steel seat, she started to pace, trying to look tough.

  Her jacket hung over the back of the other chair, and her shirt was stuck to her back. It was wrinkled and the fabric bunched around the empty holster where the butt of her gun would have ridden all day. When she crossed to the table, she spun the chair around and straddled its seat.

  “I listened to your taped confession on my way over, Bernard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And you are so full of shit it’s a wonder it doesn’t stink even more in here.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I only guessed you hadn’t killed those women last year, but after hearing your taped performance today, I know you didn’t.”

  “Are you sure I’m supposed to be talking to you?”

  She grunted a laugh. Shook her head. “You’re a piece of work, Bernard. You want your lawyer here? I’ll save you the quarter and call him myself. I’m sure he’s got nothing better to do right now after you’ve already wasted half his weekend.”

  He met her stare. Amusement gave way to reason. Sure, he didn’t owe the bitch anything, but what were his options right now? Back to his cell, where Darnell was nursing a case of the shits?

  “No. I’ll talk to you,” he said. “But you gotta get my car.”

  “No deals. There’s nothing you got that I want.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He studied her. Except for the butch haircut, she wasn’t too hard on the eyes. Not his type, with those small tits and her tight, little ass. He liked more meat on his women. More curves. But she was definitely in line with Roach’s tastes, even though she was probably a pussy-eating dyke.

  “No jury’s going to buy your confession, Bernard. You got too many holes in your little story.”

  He shrugged. “State’s attorney didn’t seem to think so.”

  “She will once she takes a closer look at the evidence.”

  “So I forgot a couple things. I told you, I had them alcoholic blackouts. Forgot a lot.”

  She shook her head. “Too many holes.”

  “Like what?”

  “Right. And I’m gonna tell you where you fucked up in your statement so you can prep some lame-ass retraction?”

  “You talking ’bout them cuts to the chest? I covered that.”

  “Oh, right. ‘I heared their hearts beat-beat-beating in their chests and had ta cut ’em out.’ ” She looked ugly when she mimicked him. “Are you planning to have Grogan present an insanity defense?”

  “You think that’d work?”

  “Don’t hold your breath.�
�� She paced again, two lengths of the holding cell, then returned to the table. “Why the false confession, Bernard, hmm? You afraid someone’s going to steal your limelight? I mean, Patsy’s paying for that flashy website for you, bringing in money. Even got people out there believing you’re a worthy cause. Can you believe that? Sorry sack of shit like you.”

  “I can’t help it if I got fans.”

  “I tell you what I think, Bernard. I think you got scared when I started talking about looking at someone else for the murders. I think you’re worried someone’s gonna prove you’re just a dumb-ass Bawlmer billy-boy with a bad temper, so you figured you’d better give the SA’s office what they want. Nail down that fifteen minutes of fame, huh?”

  “Well, you got that wrong.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So what about my car?”

  “What about it?” she snapped. Impatience narrowing her mouth.

  “I want it released from the impound.”

  “Yeah? And who’s gonna want that piece-of-shit antique?”

  “Patsy’s gonna take it.”

  Kay laughed. “I’ve met Patsy, and there’s no way she’s gonna take your car. The girl’s blind as a fucking worm.”

  He choked on a laugh because he knew Delaney was right. “She can still use the car. Have someone else drive her around.”

  “And where’s she gonna ride, Bernard? In the trunk? Does she know you chauffeured dead women around in there?”

  When he didn’t answer, Kay shook her head. “Fine,” she said at last, “you want your car? Tell me who killed those women.”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “You really are dumb as shit, aren’t you? Are you even remotely aware that if you do convince a jury you killed those women, you’re getting the death penalty? Ever heard the term capital crime? Cuz that’s what you’ve got coming, Bernard. Those girls were murdered in the commission of a felony.”

  “What felony?”

  “You robbed them.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Their belongings were in your house. Jewelry. Clothes.”

  Grogan hadn’t said anything about that. He’d have to talk to the moneygrubbing prick.