BLUE MERCY

by ILLONA HAUS

  “Any emails to Arsenault?”

  “Several. The last one she wrote offers him a higher cut from the defense fund if he can arrange some national exposure.”

  “So the bastard’s been getting a percentage all along.” Finn shook his head. “What about documents?” He waited as Kay perused the user files. Together they scanned the short list. Letters to Grogan mostly. Several love notes to Eales.

  “Fucking nutcase,” Finn said, backing away from the computer. “I say we pack this up and take the whole mess in. Let the computer guys go over it. Maybe they can salvage some of the deleted shit.”

  He ferreted through the letter trays on the desk. Articles and photocopies from law journals. Online pages printed from other sites developed for “innocents,” and letters to and from national organizations supporting the “wrongfully incarcerated.”

  “And all this garbage too,” he said, indicating the stacks.

  He scanned the desk again, and the red flashing digit on the answering machine caught his eye. Finn hit the play button and heard the satisfying whir of tape rewinding. Old technology. Far more accessible than voice mail, and no need to subpoena the phone company for messages.

  They listened to the half dozen messages. One from Kay asking Patricia to call, three hang-ups, then one from Arsenault:

  “Patricia, it’s Scott. Saturday night. Ah … ten forty. Listen, I know it’s late, but I need you to call me. Something’s come up.” There was a rustling in the background that Finn couldn’t identify. “I may have lined up something with one of the networks, but we should talk. They’re calling me in the morning, so I think we should meet tonight. I’m at home.”

  “Sounds like bait to me,” Finn said.

  After Arsenault’s call, there were two more hang-ups, then nothing.

  “I want a dump on this line,” Finn said. “We need to find out who’s been calling, and who the hang-ups are. I’ll have the subpoena ready tomorrow.”

  “What about outgoing?” Kay asked.

  Picking up the receiver, Finn jabbed the redial button.

  “Checker Cab.” The voice over the line was laced with phlegm.

  “Yeah, this is Detective Finnerty. Baltimore Police. I’m trying to trace a call you would have gotten from this number. Can you check your logs?”

  He heard the tapping of a keyboard. “Nineteen Wether-burn?”

  “That’s right.”

  There was another burst of keyboarding. “Yeah, that call went out Saturday night. Ten fifty. Fare went to three-eleven Keystone.”

  “Keystone? You’re sure about that?”

  “System doesn’t lie. But I can check with the driver and get back to you.”

  Finn gave the dispatcher his number and hung up. “You’re gonna like this,” he said to Kay. “Cab took Hagen to an address up on TV Hill. After Arsenault’s message.”

  50

  KAY WAS THE FIRST ONE UP the concrete steps of 311 Keystone, a queasy déjà vu sweeping over her. Just last week she’d banged at this very door, hoping to find a witness to the disposal of B. J. Beggs’s body in the back alley.

  How had she been this close and missed it?

  On the drive up, Finn had radioed for backup. Then he’d gotten a call from the cabbie who’d actually seen Hagen go into the house Saturday night after dropping her off.

  Three-eleven was a narrow row house three doors down from where Keystone ended at the top of TV Hill. There were no lights behind the blinds in the upstairs windows or on the ground floor. The last tinges of daylight reflected in the dark panes.

  On the covered porch, Kay swung open the dented aluminum screen and hammered on the door. Nothing. As she had the other day, she moved to the main-floor bow window and cupped her hands against the grimy middle pane, peering through the narrow slit between the heavy curtains.

  Finn beat the butt end of the police radio against the door. Then waited.

  On the street, a radio car pulled to the curb behind their Lumina. The two uniforms took the first set of steps to the walkway, adjusting their equipment belts and assessing the quiet neighborhood.

  “Might be nothing, guys.” Finn beat on the door again.

  Turning back to the window, Kay thought she saw movement in the soupy darkness beyond the parting of the curtain. It had been quick. A fleeting shadow. Or nothing at all.

  “I think I saw something,” she said, and pressed tighter against the window. But the phantom—imaginary or otherwise—was gone.

  “What was it?” Finn already had his gun’s holster unclipped.

  “I think the son of a bitch is in there.” She pushed Finn aside, hammered on the door herself as the first wave of adrenaline lashed through her. “Baltimore Police. Open up.”

  “Go around back,” she instructed the uniforms as she tried the handle, found it locked.

  “Kay, I don’t think there’s anyone in there.”

  She kicked at the door one last time before letting the screen slam shut. “I could have sworn I saw something.”

  Taking the steps back to the sidewalk, Kay studied the dark windows. “I want in this house, Finn.” Was she the only one who felt the electricity in the air? Did Finn not have the same deep coil in his gut that she did?

  “We need a warrant,” Finn said.

  “Then let’s get one. We’ve already got the cabbie saying he saw Hagen go in. That should be enough PC.”

  Kay scanned the street. It was getting dark now; only a thin line of dusk clung to the top of the tree line skirting Druid Hill Park. It smelled like more rain.

  At the bottom of the block a screen door slammed, and a tall figure descended the steps of the other porch. She watched the man gimp in a calm, long-legged shuffle up the hill toward them. Finn followed her into the street to meet him.

  “I help you with something?” the man asked, taking an easy drink from his can of Natty Boh, his docile eyes swinging from them to the radio car and back.

  “Yeah.” Kay nodded to 311. “Can you tell us anything about this house?”

  “Sure I can.” He tipped his beer at its front door. “It’s mine.”

  51

  HIS NAME WAS LEON GAINES.

  Gaines had been renting out 311 Keystone for the last eight years since his uncle passed and left him the place.

  “It comes furnished,” he said, walking them down the block to his own house. “Easier ’n having to get rid of all the furniture. And I can charge more.”

  As they mounted the steps of his porch, Finn felt the exhaustion in his bones and guessed Kay did as well. Since Bates’s house this morning, they’d gone nonstop, but the new rush of adrenaline had offered them both a second wind. Now, Finn shared Kay’s raw excitement.

  “This about that girl they found in the alley?” At his door, Gaines turned to face them. He was a tall, rawboned man with deep-set eyes that were spaced too close together. His jeans were tattered and his T-shirt stained. “Cuz if it is, you guys already talked to me. Twice.” He crushed the can of Natty Boh in his fist and tossed it in a recycle bin. It clattered against a dozen other beer cans. “I already told the uniformed guy the other day I didn’t see nothing.”

  “What can you tell us about your tenant, Mr. Gaines?” Kay asked.

  “He’s quiet. Not around too much from what I can tell.”

  “He moved in recently?”

  “Yeah. ’Bout a week ago. Not much to move in, but he did install an AC unit, so I’m hoping he figures to stay a bit.”

  “Do you have a tenancy agreement?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Kay nodded toward his door. “Can you show it to us?”

  “Sure.” Gaines turned into his house and probably hoped they’d stay on the porch. But Kay invited herself in.

  Inside the stuffy house, Finn offered a cursory nod to a woman sitting on a plastic-covered sofa, an open bag of Utz potato chips in her lap. Her bifocaled gazed flitted briefly from some country-western music video, then back again. Gaines had di
sappeared somewhere in the back of the house. When he returned, he held a stained manila folder in one hand and a fresh beer in the other. He handed Kay the folder and Finn scanned the contents with her.

  The rental agreement was a photocopy of a standard, and Finn’s eyes passed no farther than the renter’s name.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.

  “Can you tell us what your tenant Mr. Arsenault looks like?” Kay asked.

  “I dunno. Average, I guess. Clean. A bit of a pretty boy. Wore a nice suit when he came around to see the place.”

  “What else? Size, build? Hair color?”

  “Like I said, average. Shorter ’n me, and skinny. Pale too, like maybe he doesn’t get out much.”

  “Blond hair?” she asked.

  “I guess. Dirty blond.”

  “Yeah, and he had a bit of a beard.”

  “A goatee?”

  “Dunno. Maybe, but honestly, I don’t pay attention to that sorta thing. Guy looks decent and pays the rent, I mind my own business.”

  “How did he pay?”

  “Cash. Four months up front.”

  “And what’s a clean-cut suit doing renting a dump from you?” Finn asked.

  “Not a dump. ’Sides, you think I’m gonna start counting teeth in a horse’s mouth? But he did say something ’bout looking for a place to buy and needed a short-term rental.”

  “Have you ever seen anyone else with him?” Kay asked.

  “Like I said, he ain’t around much. Low-key. Kinda tenant you want.”

  Kay closed the folder and tucked it under her arm. “I’ll get this back to you, Mr. Gaines. In the meantime, we need access to the house.”

  He seemed to take a mental stumble. “What’s this about?”

  “Mr. Gaines, please, we’re not at liberty to say.”

  “Well, you can’t. Get in the house, I mean. Not tonight anyway. I have to give the tenant twenty-four-hour notice.”

  “You won’t need any notice when we show you the warrant,” Kay said, turning out the door then. “We’ll come get you when we have it so we won’t have to bust up your doors.”

  Gaines lifted his sweating beer can in a limp toast. “Appreciate that,” he called after them as they headed back to the street and up the hill to 311.

  “I’m having problems seeing Scott in this,” Kay said when they reached the car. She opened the driver’s-side door and tossed the folder onto the dash.

  “Gaines’s description matches.”

  “Only vaguely.” She nodded to the house. “This isn’t Scott’s style.”

  “And why not? Why wouldn’t he keep a place up here? At his condo he’s got a doorman, he’s got neighbors. No easy way to get those victims in and out without being seen. This dump’s perfect. Pretty much a dead-end street up here, and he’s got the alley in the back.”

  “Anyone could have thrown that form together, Finn. Besides, it’s all fiction. The address listed as his last residence …I worked the Northwest. There is no nine hundred block of Booker Street.”

  “Why Arsenault’s name then? If it’s not him, how would this mope even know it?”

  “He reads everything written about his murders. Including Eales’s website. He’s fucking with us. He’s using Scott’s name because he knows we’re sniffing around the guy. He could have put any John Henry on that form. Cash up front, Gaines isn’t going to verify any of it. He’s using Scott’s name to throw us a curveball.”

  “Well, fiction or not, that form is all a judge’ll need to sign a warrant for us to toss Arsenault’s condo. And I am not going to pass up that opportunity.”

  Kay was silent for a moment, her eyes still on 311. “Fine. But I want a warrant for this place first.” She looked at her watch in the twilight. “I want inside that house before the night’s done.”

  52

  FEARING AN OVERREACTION DOWNTOWN, Kay asked Finn to keep the latest development quiet as he went to arrange for the warrant. Last thing she needed was a Quick Response Team busting down the door of 311 and a descent of brass trampling the crime scene she knew must lie beyond its front door.

  It had been an hour since Finn had caught a lift to Headquarters with Giordano, one of the Northern uniforms, while the other—a wide-shouldered slab of a kid named Madjarian—kept Kay company. They’d sat in the Lumina, positioned on Rockrose, allowing a full view of 311’s front porch as well as the mouth of the alley. She and the kid had exchanged shoptalk, but Kay’s attention was on the house, the alley, on every car that passed the bottom of Keystone and every moving shadow.

  With Giordano’s return, Kay instructed the two uniforms to park their unit out of sight and go on foot to record tag numbers of the vehicles parked in the neighborhood. In the past twenty minutes, she’d radioed them twice for progress reports as they worked the five blocks south of the Hill. It was raining now, and she imagined them taking cover on someone’s porch.

  Through the open window, the smell of wet asphalt was heavy. A nighthawk squawked softly overhead, and a weak breeze stirred a bamboo wind chime somewhere down the street. To her left, the lights of the TV towers blinked red into the night, refracting into shattered patterns across the rain-beaded windshield.

  She looked at the house again and wondered if she’d really seen movement inside earlier. It could have been her own reflection. She remembered the mirror she’d seen hanging on the opposite wall when she’d peeked through the drapes last week.

  Focus on the street, Delaney. The alley. If he comes back, you’ve got to be ready. The radio lay in the seat next to her, its channel open to Giordano and Madjarian in case she needed backup.

  She thought of Scott. They’d have to talk to him about his phone call to Patricia. And his name on the tenancy agreement. Could she have been wrong about him? Had it been Scott who’d lured Patricia out here?

  Kay eased her head back and listened to the rain drum the car’s roof while mentally reviewing the day. From Leakin Park to the funeral home and finally Patricia’s house. All day she’d struggled to find a possible motive for Hagen’s murder.

  Had her killer known her personally? Had she simply been a convenient victim? Or was there more behind her death? Patricia Hagen had been more than vocal on Scott’s website. Had she said too much? Or had Hagen known the truth all along?

  Kay imagined Hagen’s body now, lying in the OCME’s admissions cooler in a white plastic bag, awaiting autopsy in the morning. Another victim. Another possibility for answers.

  But it was the house, 311 Keystone, that was going to give them answers that no victim could. Kay was certain. Her eyes fixed on the darkened windows, imagining what might await them inside. She took a breath. Tried to relax.

  Then she spotted the headlights behind the block of houses. The beams panned across the asphalt on Keystone, then disappeared. At first she figured it was a car parking down the block, until she saw the light stretch down the alley, reaching the top street only yards from where she sat.

  She waited for the vehicle to emerge from the alley. When it didn’t, she grabbed the radio: “Giordano, do you copy?”

  There was a crackle of static, then: “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got a vehicle in the alley. I need backup and I need someone on the front.” She swung open the car’s door, blinked away the drizzle that hit her face. “Where are you guys?”

  “We’re on our way.”

  “I need you here now. I’ve gotta check it out.” A last burst of static, then silence. Only the rain and the hollow clicking of the chimes.

  Rounding the Lumina’s hood, she paused at the top of Keystone, watching the light spilling out of the alley, then searching for any sign of the two officers. The car in the alley idled.

  And then she was moving. She crossed the wet lawn of 315, the end row house, and followed its brick side to the fence. The mortar was rough under her palm as she felt her way to the corner. At the fence she stopped, taking in the damp air. Her heart hammered as the darkness settled o
n her.

  She clipped the radio to her belt and took another shaky breath. She dried her palm on her hip, drew her nine, and stepped beyond the corner of 315.

  For an instant the headlights blinded her. In the harsh glare, the alley looked foreign, even though she’d spent hours here last week when Beggs’s body was discovered. She couldn’t remember the layout, which porches were covered, which were open. Which had sheds or fences.

  Three houses down, the car sat roughly parallel to the rear of 311. Kay could make out only shapes and silhouettes in the alley and backyards. No movement. The only sound was the car’s engine, and some hip-hop tune pulsing from its stereo.

  Past it, several of the houses at the end of the block had their lights on. But up here, at the top of the row, the porches were dark. She struggled to decipher 311’s yard, a narrow, fenced-in chunk of concrete. The headlights caught the edge of the four-foot fence, but reached no farther. And the partition that separated 311’s back porch from its neighbor blocked any view she might have of its rear door.

  With her free hand she brought the radio up: “Where the hell are you guys?”

  “We’re almost on Keystone.” Giordano sounded out of breath.

  “The front’s wide open. I need you there.”

  She didn’t like leaving it without surveillance, but she had no options. Drawing in a stiff breath, Kay stepped into the flood of headlights. No cover. No way to conceal her approach.

  Squinting, she searched for any movement beyond the glare. Was there someone past the dark windshield, behind the wheel? Ready to gun the engine and hurtle up the alley at her?

  Kay held the gun tight, barrel down, pressing the sidearm to her thigh as she moved past the rear of the first row house, then the next, her senses spiking.

  She focused on the car. Through the blaze of headlights she thought it might be a hatchback. The engine sounded small. Four-cylinder probably, and something rattled under its hood.

  And then Kay heard a screen door slap in its frame. Training made her bring the nine up. Fear made her flinch. The hip-hop tune on the car’s radio ended. There was a four-second break, then a rapper assaulted the airways. And in those four seconds of silence, Kay spotted the figure on the concrete porch of 311.