by Casey Hill
But it was even easier with children. You had to be very careful not to influence them. Their testimonies were often not reliable in court. But it might help to talk to Lucy again now, to find out if she had buried something down deep. Some clue that might help. After all this time, it might even help to have her hypnotized. Reilly didn’t always put that much stock in that kind of thing, but while on an FBI task force back in the States she had seen people remember a lot when they relaxed their minds a little. It could have remarkable results.
She took a couple of bites of paella, felt the firm flesh of the shrimp squeeze and pop beneath the pressure of her teeth. She suddenly thought of all the tiny capillaries and veins visible through shrimp skin, its flesh-like pinkness. Suddenly, the food had turned repulsive in her mouth and she felt as though she couldn’t eat another bite. She got up and scraped the rest of her bowl, and the leftovers into the bin.
It was probably all this thought of food, mixed in with death. Maybe she was getting soften as she got older.
Reilly took a long bath instead, remembering the drawn out Florida heat, all the while trying to forget Todd Forrest’s hands on her body as they made love into the night.
Chapter 5
There are many layers to the body, and each has its own particular use and value. The protective outer layer, a tell-tale of age and quality. Underneath the layer of subcutaneous fat, most to be cut away with a flinching knife, leaving just the finest coating. Then the working muscles, the flesh and blood that lets us all move around, hurting others with careless movements and thoughtless words.
What happens to the body when it is poisoned? Oh, all the things you would expect. The discoloration of surface skin, the dilating and then shrinking of the pupils. The heart speeds up, pumping poison to the extremities faster as it struggles to comprehend what is happening. The veins shrink like rivers in drought. Eventually the muscles begin to harden, the tongue lies fat and heavy like a sated slug in the mouth.
I have no desire to mutilate these women. I am a clean person. I always teach my trainees the importance of keeping a tidy workspace. If I hadn’t been interrupted the other night, I would have cleaned up after myself. A tiny bit of sloppiness which won’t be repeated next time.
These women have done enough to make themselves unattractive. I need not peel back their skin, take the bones out of the putrid flesh. I can see below their deceptively firm and lustrous skin to the merciless harridans they are. Obsessed with only themselves, and with getting ahead. No time to stop and love someone. No time to see what a person might have to offer them.
They think they have it all, until the moment they realize it’s all being taken away…
When Reilly woke up the next day, it was to the grey, rain-misted Dublin skyline. She had dreamt of the Gulf Coast white beaches and palm trees, the sun’s warmth enveloping her limbs. Wishful thinking.
She dressed with less enthusiasm that she had the day before. It was too late to go for a run, and too wet in any case. She studied her body for a long moment in the mirror. Florida was gradually being leached out of her limbs, leaving them pale. Despite the fact that she had been neglecting exercise since her return, her body was still slender and strong. Her hair fell shining and blonde to her shoulder blades. She looked the same. She looked good. So why did she feel so different? As if she wasn't quite sure whether she belonged back in Florida or here?
In any case, she had to keep going. Murders didn’t solve themselves. She would take a round of Vitamin C and soon be back to normal.
And this terrible Irish summer weather was enough to give anyone second thoughts about coming back.
‘OK, so here’s the lowdown,’ said Gary later at the lab. ‘I’ve managed to trace most of the dating accounts Jennifer was communicating with.’
Gary, Chris and Reilly were going over the identities of the men Jennifer had connected with recently. They were in the poky little conference room down the hallway from the lab. Reilly couldn’t help but be acutely aware of Chris, right next to her, emanating warmth and that woody scent he had. He had freshly showered before work she knew, his hair slightly damp and citrus smelling.
Then she caught herself, horrified. What was she doing? She couldn’t believe she was thinking like this. Her mind was all over the place.
‘The trouble is, a lot of these people set up bogus email accounts, with fake names. Some of them are married, but obviously we know some of them have even more sinister reasons for doing it.’
‘So what can you tell us then?’ Chris asked.
‘Honestly? Not that much. I’ve got two names of guys that she was seeing a while ago, who seem to have set up their accounts with real names. But according to their online conversations, they went out on a couple of dates and that was it.’
‘We’ll follow up anyway. At this point, everyone who’s ever spoken to the woman is a suspect. We’ve got nothing else.’
‘I’m going to do my best to see what else I can find. If these guys used the same email accounts for anything else, I might be able to get a name.’
‘OK, thanks, Gary,’ said Reilly. ‘It’s a start.’
‘Hey, one more thing. Lucy mentioned you wanted to help out on the task force for her sister.’ He paused a little, rare for him. ‘Do you think I could help too? I …ah, don’t have much experience with cold cases and I’d like to get some.’
‘I’d need to know that your personal feelings wouldn’t cloud your judgement,’ Reilly said, seeing right through him.
‘What personal feelings?’ said Gary, assuming an innocent face. ‘I barely have feelings at all.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Reilly. ‘But right now this investigation is our priority.’
‘Of course. But I’m ready whenever.’
‘OK thanks. In the meantime, keep your mind on the matter in hand,’ she told him, aware that she sounded a little like Jack Gorman. ‘For this one, we need everything you’ve got.’
Outside in the hallway, she said to Chris: ‘I wish people wouldn’t fall in love with their colleagues. It makes everything so complicated.’
She was joking but his reply was surprisingly serious. ‘People have to fall in love with someone, I suppose.’
Later in the lab, Reilly looked through the team’s analysis from the crime scene.
‘Any promising hair samples?’
‘A few,’ said Lucy. ‘We’ve definitely got some that aren’t from the victim.’
‘And the bed thing is interesting, don’t you think?’ Gary piped up, referring to the imprint he’d noted on the mattress.
‘Interesting, yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m not sure what it really tells us, though. The perp got tired? Has intimacy issues?’
‘There are two more things,’ he told her.
‘Feels like Christmas,’ said Reilly with uncharacteristic snark.
‘OK boss, seems you brought back more than a tan from Florida,’ Gary replied good-naturedly. ‘But look at this.’ He moved to a nearby laptop and brought up an enlarged image onscreen. It was of some wood, crisscrossed with gouges. ‘It’s the victim’s chopping board. You can see the old marks where she has been chopping with a blunt knife. On top of those are really slight, short marks. I’m willing to bet that they were made by the knife at the scene.’
‘So, in other words, someone really knew how to use that expensive knife,’ Reilly mused.
‘Exactly. I’m not sure how much it helps, but the evidence seems to be building up to someone who likes to cook and has at least some expertise in that area.’
‘What’s the other thing?’
‘I managed to get into the victim’s phone. Not too much of interest, but she did have six missed calls from a friend on the night she was killed. A person called Helena Burke.’
‘The detectives are talking to her, actually’ said Reilly, remembering Chris mentioning that name. ‘What time were the calls?’
‘Around 9:30pm.’
‘Perhaps the perp was
interrupted or spooked somehow?’ she mumbled, almost to herself. ‘That’s good work. Thanks, guys.’
‘One more thing: the place had been wiped clean,’ Julius said. ‘He might have left some things undone, but surprisingly there are no prints, not even a partial. Even the phone was wiped clean, which indicates the unsub may have picked it up to see who was calling. He did leave behind that imprint on the bed Gary spotted though, and we’re analyzing trace on the bedclothes now.’
‘We don’t know that he left that shape, though,’ Lucy pointed out.
Reilly nodded. ‘At this stage, everything is up for speculation.’
Chapter 6
Like everything in life, preparation for this kind of thing amounts to a recipe.
First step: Find the main ingredient. If you wish to continue the recipe analogy, you could liken this to harvesting, or selecting the right product.
It can’t be just any ingredient. When you pick fruit, you pick that which has ripened perfectly, that will bear up to the treatment required. You pick something firm, but not too hard. You pick something with the exact right color, the right smell.
The right subject must be one who is supremely confident. You must trawl through hundreds of these infernal profiles, looking for someone who is so confidant they don’t believe that anything bad could happen to them. She must look straight at you. She must be beautiful. She must not be so young that she hasn’t had a chance to make choices. She mustn’t be so old that she has had a chance to regret them.
It’s a fine line, you see. The wrong ingredient can strike a sour note through your whole meal.
Even after you select the subject, you might chat with her for a while and find that she is not the right one after all. You have to start all over again.
I will not waste my talents on just anyone. Not any more. My days of apprenticeship are over.
For now, I think I have another in my sights. She seems perfect, but of course more work must be done. Now I begin the slow process of getting to know her. She must invite me into her home for the first date. There can be no prior meetings, this just increases the probability that she will talk to a friend about me.
You might think that I don’t enjoy talking to my subjects, that, since I am planning to kill them, I must not want to waste time talking to them. On the contrary, I find it enlightening. I want to know what made them the way they are. I want to have no reason at all to feel bad for them.
I think of the things I will say to her to make her trust me. I think of these things as I run. I run so fast people might think I am running from something. I run until my lungs are burning like coals in my chest. I run until I can feel my blood pulsing in my fingertips. I run to take the edge of my needs, to train myself in patience and discipline.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Sometimes the old adages are the truest.
Chris and Kennedy sat in Helena Burke’s perfect living room. It was almost comical, how uncomfortable Kennedy looked, sitting on a pristine cream couch. He was perched as though to move would be to smear grease all over it. The whole place startlingly clean, which was strange, as Helena and her husband had two children. They must be angels, thought Chris. Or else their mother must keep them in a cupboard somewhere.
He was trying to appear more relaxed than Kennedy, but they were just the wrong size for a room like this. Helena Burke had gone to fetch them coffee, despite them saying that they didn’t need anything. Chris got the feeling that Helena was the kind of woman who couldn’t let you leave her home without having been offered something.
‘Mate,’ he whispered, ‘You look like you’re about to snap.’
‘This chair is not made for sitting,’ Kennedy grumbled. ‘It’s an instrument of torture.’
Helena breezed back in with coffee and biscuits laid out on a tray. They went through the milk and sugar preferences and then it was time to ask some questions.
‘Did you know Jennifer well?’ Chris began.
‘Well, yes,’ said Helena. ‘She did some work for my husband and we became quite close. It’s a terrible shock to me.’ While she spoke, the woman showed some textbook signs of emotion. She dabbed at the corner of her dry eyes, looked down at the floor and then made eye contact with each of them in turn. Chris guessed that she didn’t really feel strong emotions: she may have been shocked at first, but now she was excited to be part of an investigation. They saw it often. People getting a kick when their lives were touched by a tragedy that wasn’t too close.
‘And you continued to see each other after she stopped working for your husband?’
‘Yes, we went out for dinner a lot. We both enjoy fine wines and food. Jennifer was quite confused and looking for love. I was able to guide her a little.’
‘Guide her?’
‘Yes, well, I have a successful marriage, children. Jennifer was looking for that kind of happiness.’
‘Everything we know about her indicates that she was dedicated to her career,’ said Kennedy. He took a bite of the dry biscuit that Helena had served him and froze in the action as crumbs scattered all over the floor. Chris bit back a smile.
‘Yes,’ said Helena, coldly, eyeing the crumbs, ‘she had been. But lately she had been talking about settling down. She had been going out on these ridiculous dates. With complete strangers.’
‘Did you meet any of the men she was dating?’ Chris asked. Kennedy was surreptitiously trying to pick up each individual crumb.
‘No, she was quite secretive. I get the feeling that they didn’t work out well, or mostly amounted to flings.’ She said the last word distastefully, as though she couldn’t bear to think of anyone enjoying sexual congress. Chris studied her. Helena was a beautiful woman, no mistake. Her amber colored hair sat in a lustrous bun on top of her head and her skin glowed. But she seemed cold. He couldn’t imagine wanting to touch her. It seemed like a cold blast of air was waiting inside her, to flow out on any offending parties.
‘Our records show that you called Jennifer six times on the night she was killed. Can you tell us why you were so urgently trying to contact her?’
Helena turned her head in Kennedy’s direction. ‘You can leave that,’ she said, referring to the crumbs. ‘The cleaner will handle it.’ She turned back to Chris. ‘I called her because I was worried. I had received a voice message from her saying that she had a date that night. Someone she hadn’t met before was coming to her house to cook her dinner. It seemed like a preposterous idea to me. Sadly, it seems that I was right.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Helena looked at him as though he was mad. ‘Well, obviously. The details might not be in the paper yet but it’s clear she was murdered.’
Chris noted a tiny hint of triumph in Helena’s voice. Maybe she did have some emotion after all, but she certainly wasn’t grieving for her “friend”.
‘Can we hear the message?’
Helena flicked her hand dismissively. ‘I deleted it.’
They would have to check with the GFU to see if it could be tracked. It seemed like there was nothing else for them here, in this strangely unfriendly pastel tinted room. But he felt something else was going unsaid. The house itself smacked of discord. There was no comfort to be found here, and Helena herself was stretched tight as wire.
‘Did your husband have a close relationship with Jennifer?’ he asked suddenly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kennedy thump back down on the couch with a look of resignation.
‘A working relationship,’ said Helena a little haltingly. ‘Yes.’
‘Did they remain close after she stopped doing work for him?’
‘I suppose so. He saw her when I did. I don’t see what this has to do with anything…’
‘Everything at this stage of the investigation is important to us,’ said Kennedy but Chris knew his partner wasn't sure where he was going with this line of questioning.
‘How long did Jennifer do PR for your husband?’
‘It was a short contract
,’ said Helena. ‘Three months.’
‘Are you happy in your marriage?’ Chris asked then and Kennedy’s head snapped up.
‘I don’t see what that has to do with it,’ said Helena, again. Her neck and chest were becoming a mottled red. ‘Not particularly. My husband is a bit of a prick. Happy?’
Chris didn’t enjoy upsetting her, but he needed to know what was happening. This could be a breakthrough.
‘Did your husband and Jennifer Armstrong have an affair Mrs Burke?’
‘Yes,’ said Helena, through clenched teeth.
‘Was it ongoing at the time of her death?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Helena. ‘Perhaps, but I got the feeling that they had cooled off.’
‘Were they aware that you knew?’
‘No,’ said Helena. ‘In any case, Jennifer may have felt bad but my husband wouldn’t have cared.’
‘Ok. I think that’s all we need from you,’ Chris said, making a move to leave.
‘You won’t get much out of Blair,’ said Helena. ‘He’s a snake. He won’t want to be involved in a murder investigation.’
‘I’m afraid he doesn’t have a choice,’ said Kennedy, standing up. The crumbs in his lap fell to the floor.
‘She was a stupid girl,’ said Helena savagely. ‘She thought she could have anything she wanted and look where she ended up.’
‘One more thing,’ said Chris, unimpressed by the theatrics. ‘What does your husband do for a living?’
‘He owns a bloody, stinking restaurant.’ Helen Burke told them.
Chris’s blood was pumping with the kind of exhilaration he got after a decent workout. This was the first major lead. All it took in a case like this was one thing to crack the whole investigation wide open. Jennifer Armstrong and Blair Burke had been lovers. Blair Burke owned a high end restaurant, which indicated some kind of knowledge of fine food, even if he himself wasn’t a chef.