BLUE MERCY

by ILLONA HAUS

  “But I guess that doesn’t really matter though, since shooting a cop is what’s gonna stick that needle in your arm anyway. And don’t count on some trumped-up self-defense argument, because I was there. I identified myself at the door. You knew I was police. Who do you think the jury’s gonna believe?”

  When she leaned across the table, nailing him with those angry eyes, he felt the lick of adrenaline quiver through him, the muscles in his legs and shoulders twitching.

  He could clear the table in a quarter of a second. Come down on top of her and have her throat in his shackled hands before she ever knew what hit her. And by the time the guard swung his stick, he’d at least have crushed her windpipe. Maybe even snapped the bitch’s neck.

  But then one link of chain on his leg-irons rattled.

  It was the only warning she picked up on. The bitch backed away. The opportunity passed. Another regret settled in.

  When she lifted her jacket from the back of the chair, he was glad she was going. But not soon enough. “Unless, of course,” she added, “you’re going to start saying it wasn’t even you who shot my partner.”

  She was fishing. He knew it. No way he was taking the bait. He watched her shrug on her jacket, pace a few more lengths of the cell, before returning to the table.

  “Who was there that night, Bernard? Who else was in your house when I knocked?”

  She couldn’t know, otherwise she’d have questioned him a lot sooner.

  “There was someone else there. I know, cuz when you were beating me, he found my gun on your porch. It was him who shot my partner. Not you.”

  “First those three skanks, and now you’re thinking I didn’t shoot that cop either? What? You gonna try ’n’ prove me innocent on all the charges now? Hey, maybe I should be payin’ you instead of that shit-for-brains attorney of mine.”

  When she leaned in that last time, there were daggers in her whisper. “Trust me, Bernard, I’m sure as hell not doing it for you. I want whoever it is that shot my partner, whoever you’re covering for. And I swear to God I’m going to get him.”

  44

  “SHOULDN’T WE SAY SOMETHING?” Kathleen Koch whispered.

  Valley’s best friend had worn black. Standing between Kay and Vicki in the mausoleum sanctuary of the Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens, the girl looked wan as she wrung her hands.

  “You can say some words if you like,” Kay said.

  Koch stared at the marble niche that now housed Valley’s ashes. Its front was marked with a piece of card-stock bearing nothing but a number, soon to be replaced with an engraved bronze plate, the director of the cemetery had promised.

  “I don’t know what to say.” Koch held back tears, and Kay suspected Valley was the first loss the girl had experienced in her young life.

  “Then you don’t have to say anything.” Kay touched the girl’s hand. It was cold. “It’s what you feel that’s important.”

  An early-evening breeze swept over the seventy acres of grounds, lacing through the granite benches and pruned hedges. It ruffled the pink and yellow blooms in the rows of flower vases designating the flat grave markers and found its way to the shade of the mausoleum. Kay welcomed the coolness.

  After leaving Eales, Kay had gone over the disappointing interview with Finn. She’d left him at the office and gone to the gym. But even a strenuous workout and a shower hadn’t cleansed her of the visit with Eales. Vicki had picked her up at five and they’d battled traffic north through the city and up to Timonium. Kathleen Koch had already been waiting for them.

  Now, in the quiet shelter of the mausoleum, Kay tried to rid her mind of Eales. Past Vicki’s shoulder and beyond the arch of the outdoor sanctuary, Kay looked to where the grounds leveled down to a small man-made lake. Beyond it lay the Fallen Heroes section of the Gardens. It didn’t feel like fourteen months had passed since she’d stood on that slope, Gunderson holding her up. A full police funeral with honor guard, a mile-long motorcade halting traffic along the beltway, and the mounted unit leading the procession through the cemetery grounds off Padonia Road. Kay remembered flinching at each round of the twenty-one-gun salute, watching numbly as taps played and Grace was handed Spencer’s departmental hat.

  Kay hadn’t been back since. Hadn’t been able to face the guilt.

  She turned to Valley’s unmarked niche. Now she had two reasons to come here. She made a silent vow to do so.

  “We should get going,” Vicki said, then slid her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Are you going to be all right, Kathleen?”

  Koch nodded.

  “And you’re okay to drive back?”

  “Yeah.” Koch forced a smile and let Vicki guide her to where they’d left the cars on the cul-de-sac.

  Kay followed, but not before laying her palm against the smooth marble of Valley’s niche. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but didn’t feel better for saying it.

  As the sun lowered into a haze of smog, they left the grounds and drove south from Timonium. In the passenger seat of Vicki’s blaze red Del Sol, Kay had lost sight of Koch’s Chevy long before the city limits. She thought of the girl, going home alone.

  With only enough time for a quick change, Vicki waited while Kay slipped into her dress and heels. Kay had tried to get out of their symphony date, but Vicki had argued that the night out would do Kay good. Take her mind off things.

  They parked in the Mt. Vernon cultural district and walked the three blocks to the $24 million brick-and-glass hall on Cathedral and Preston, and by the time they took their seats in the center orchestra section of the Joseph Meyerhoff, Kay tried to shed the job and her frustrations.

  Sitting in the elegant, wood-appointed interior of the hall with its sculpted box seats and modern sound-baffles, with the din of decked-out concertgoers buzzing around her, Kay felt the excitement rise. Wearing suits all day, she loved putting on the tight black dress and rubbing elbows with the elite of Baltimore, even if she did feel slightly misplaced. She didn’t feel like herself in this place, and she liked that. Liked the escape. Liked pretending to be someone else just for one night.

  Still Eales was with her. And Patricia Hagen. Kay closed her eyes, tried to block them out, but found herself strategizing.

  “I’m going to call Hagen in the morning,” she said, leaning over to Vicki.

  “The old man?”

  “No. Patsy. Maybe I can get something out of her if I sympathize with her, convince her that I believe in Bernard’s innocence. If she does know anything about the murders, maybe she’ll be more willing to give it up if I promise to help her get Bernard off. If I play her right, I might get a name.”

  “You really think he had an accomplice?”

  “More than ever.” Given Eales’s confession and his attitude this afternoon, Kay was almost certain of it.

  “You said Bates implied to you that Hagen was seeing Eales before his incarceration, right?” Vicki asked, taking out a compact from her purse and checking her lipstick.

  “Yeah, which means Patsy Hagen might know who helped Eales.”

  “Then talk to her.” Vicki snapped the compact shut and tucked it away. “It can’t hurt. Now, are you going to listen to some music or keep chewing at this case all night?”

  The din in the hall hushed as the orchestra tuned. Kay tried to focus on the concert program in her hands, but her mind was crashing.

  Patsy Hagen … Eales was covering for someone. Kay pictured Patsy, standing in the doorway of her Mt. Washington home, distrust in her eyes. The woman had lied about her history with Eales. What else would she lie about?

  Maybe it was Patricia Hagen who’d been at Eales’s that night, Hagen who’d found Kay’s gun on the porch while Bernard beat the shit out of her.

  It made sense that Eales would cover for Hagen.

  The orchestra settled and the lights dimmed then.

  In the darkness of the symphony hall, Kay conjured up Patricia Hagen—the calloused hands and strong shoulders. She imagined the woman’s
childhood; Hagen admitted to being numb to the death that pervaded her life as an undertaker’s daughter. What better person to help Eales dispose of a body? Or three? A woman blinded by love with a stomach for death.

  It took the first quarter of the first movement of Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto for the last traces of the case to seep from Kay’s thoughts. There was no escaping the power of the music. The strains of the strings swelled over her, reflected off the soundboards overhead, and filled the hall, consuming her entirely.

  It swept her away. Away from Eales and Hagen, the dead women, Valley and Beggs. Away from Spencer, the job, the streets. The clean vibrations of the violin solo took her home again, to the most vivid memories of her mother. She’d spent many afternoons sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to her mother administering violin lessons to the children of Jonesport. It helped pay the bills, but Kay had always suspected her mother would have done it for nothing. And after the lessons were done, after the last student had left their weather-beaten clapboard house that overlooked Chandler Bay, Kay would sit and listen to her mother play.

  If she were still alive today, Kay would have liked to bring her here. She imagined her mother sitting next to her, breathing in the beauty of the music.

  It was Kay’s pager, vibrating in her lap through her handbag, that startled her out of the abstraction of memories. In the dark hall, she dug out the unit and angled its display.

  “Shit.”

  “What is it?” Vicki whispered next to her.

  “It’s Finn. nine one one.”

  45

  FINN HAD TO LOOK TWICE before he recognized the two women getting out of the two-seater sports car that turned onto Gettings Street. He identified Vicki first, in her figure-hugging red dress and stilettos. Kay’s heels were shorter, but the little black number she wore was every bit as sexy as Vicki’s.

  He let out a breathy whistle as they crossed toward him. “Whoa. What did I drag you two away from?”

  “Girls’ night out,” Vicki said, smiling in spite of the interruption. “This better be good.”

  “Well, just my luck to get both of you down here.” He pointed to Bates’s house. “I want inside.”

  “What’s going on?” Kay asked.

  Seeing her standing there in the soft amber glow from the streetlamp, he tried to take his eyes off her, but wasn’t having much luck. He remembered the dress too well, remembered the Habitat benefit they’d attended less than a week before the beatdown. And he remembered how he’d peeled that black number off Kay later that night, back at her place.

  Leaning against the front fender of the radio car, he gestured to Bates’s house, the windows dark. “Seems our boy was on the prowl tonight. He’s home now though.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  Finn nodded to the uniform next to him. “Mikey here caught him slipping out the back.” He gestured for the Southern District officer to fill them in and wondered if the rookie could stop ogling Kay long enough to string a sentence together.

  “Mike McNally,” he said, extending his hand first to Kay, then Vicki. “I didn’t actually see him exit the back, but I saw headlights in the alley. Then Bates’s car comes round, he’s got his hand up against the side of his face, like he thinks I won’t recognize him or his ride.”

  “You’re on your own here?” Kay asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re short-manned. So I called it in, then tailed him. He took me up to Hollins Market, tried to lose me, but I caught up with him on Wilkens and Fulton.”

  “Wilkens Avenue?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I hung back at first so maybe he figured he’d ditched me. Then he starts cruising the ladies.” He smirked. “Didn’t get too lucky though, with my unit glued to his ass. Girls’d take one look and move on. He led me around again for a bit, trying to lose me, then ended up back on Wilkens. Finally he pulls over, gets out, and walks back to my car.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Not much besides cussing me up one side and down the other about his rights.”

  “Do we know for sure he was trying to pick up a girl?” Kay asked.

  McNally shrugged. “When I threatened to take him in on a john charge, he claimed he was only trying to score a little H for personal use. Said he prefers dealing with the ladies. I followed him home after that. He parked out back again, and his lights came on inside. There’s been movement, and now it looks like he’s either gone to bed or he’s sitting in the dark watching us.”

  Kay studied Bates’s dark windows, assessing. Finn couldn’t help thinking she looked out of place down in this dirty end of Baltimore.

  “So what are you thinking?” Vicki asked Finn then.

  “I want in that house, Vick. Tonight.”

  She was already shaking her head. “You’ve got nothing, Finn.” She turned to McNally. “Did you see Bates go into his house with a possible victim?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone else enter the premises?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then you’ve got no exigent circumstances to warrant an immediate search,” she said to Finn.

  “What about the fleeing-felon rule?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t apply here, Finn. Sorry.”

  “But we can get a warrant, right?” Kay asked. Finn could hear the edginess in her voice, knew that if she could bust through Bates’s door right now, she would, sexy dress and all. “If Bates is trying to pick up prostitutes, from Wilkens Avenue where Beggs was picked up, we’ve got our PC right?”

  “Along with everything else, yeah. I think I can get a warrant signed. Not till Monday though. Yes, the probable cause is there, but it’s shaky. I’m not going to push a judge with anything less than solid on a Sunday.”

  “All right, in the meantime, Mike”—Kay turned to the rookie—“you’ll stay here, right?”

  “All night.”

  “And can you see the back from in your car?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about getting a second unit down here?” she asked Finn.

  “We’re lucky to have this one,” he told her.

  “Look,” McNally interrupted, “I’ve got the place covered. If he tries again, I’ll see him. There’s only one way out with his car, and it’s past me.”

  “And what if he heads out on foot? If he goes out the back, he can hoof it over to Decatur and hail a cab down on Fort Avenue. I don’t like this, Finn.”

  Finn walked several yards down the street, studied the angles, and returned. “Just pull your unit up a hundred feet or so,” he said to McNally. “You should be able to see if he comes out the back then.”

  Still, Finn could see Kay wasn’t satisfied. “You need another coffee?” she asked the uniform.

  “Detective Finnerty’s already taken care of me.” McNally tipped the oversize take-out cup at her.

  Kay offered the rookie a parting nod. “All right then. Have a good night.”

  “So Monday morning, right?” Kay asked Vicki as Finn walked them back to Vicki’s sports car.

  “First thing.”

  “Good, cuz I wanna hit this guy before reality does,” Finn said. He held the car door for Kay as she folded herself into the tiny car.

  Vicki nodded, no doubt considering the work that lay ahead of her, and the judge she’d have to bat her blues at for a predawn signature on Monday. “All right. Let me see your paperwork tomorrow and have a team ready to go. We’ll see what this slimeball’s all about.”

  46

  JERRY BATES NEEDED A HIT. He paced, beating a path the length of his foyer between two uniforms, his fingers drumming his hips, his eyes blinking spasmodically. Kay almost felt sorry for the junkie as the search team flipped his house.

  Bates must have been sleeping when they arrived at 6:30 a.m. Or he’d been hiding his stash because, when the ram busted through the front door, the team found Bates shaking in the middle of the living room. Kay thought he was going to piss himself.

  For over an ho
ur they’d gone through the narrow row house. And in that time Kay had tried to get a read on Bates. If the former funeral-home employee had been capable of helping Eales a year ago, she couldn’t say. Any evidence of his once-organized life had decayed into the chaos of drugs.

  For Kay—thinking of Valley and Beggs, both murdered in the past eleven days, both conscientiously disposed of— nothing fit.

  From upstairs the thud of boots marked the progress of the uniforms as they dissected the place, and beside her, Finn foraged through papers littering the kitchen table.

  Kay moved in next to him. “He’s not our guy.” She kept her voice low.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, but she guessed he already knew.

  “He’d keep souvenirs. There’s nothing here. Where’s Valley’s driver’s license?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s got it stashed someplace else. Maybe he got rid of it.” Anger had crept into Finn’s voice, sharpening his words. “Maybe he doesn’t kill them here. This place is a fucking sty. How the hell do you live in this shit?” But he didn’t expect an answer from Bates.

  When Finn pushed aside more junk, a six-pack of empty Milwaukees fell to the floor, several rolling away across the old linoleum.

  “You got no right, man. No right,” Bates chanted from the door. “Bustin’ in here like this. Messing with my shit.”

  “Do I need to come over there and show you the warrant again, asshole?” Finn’s patience had worn thinner than Kay’s. “Now just shut the fuck up.”

  They’d worked long into Saturday night and most of Sunday morning putting together the search-and-seizure warrant for Vicki to process. Then Finn had surprised Kay with lunch on the boat. He’d taken her out onto the bay after, wrapped her in one of his wool sweaters as the sails of The Blue Angel unfurled to catch the crisp, autumn gusts that whipped around Wagners Point. For a few hours, she’d been able to forget about Bates, Hagen, and especially Eales. Finn too seemed to relax as they sailed, and Kay had felt the shift in their relationship, the beginnings of normalcy.