by Casey Hill
‘The thing is,’ said Kennedy, who had appeared in her office when she got back. ‘I just know this guy’s up to no good. I want to put a closer watch on him.’
‘They’ll never agree to it. We’ve got nothing on McMurty, and those are huge resources.’
A plate of pastries wobbled between them. Reilly did have a weakness for pastries and she was steadfastly trying to ignore them.
‘I’ve just got a feeling about this guy. You understand those feelings don’t you? He might not be smart enough to be our murderer…but maybe he is. He’s into all that dating stuff on the internet too. I had Gary check.’
‘I’ll try and get you something but I’ve already got O’Brien playing target practice with my head. He wants something solid from the evidence. And: so far we’ve just got bits and pieces.’
‘Well, what does the chief bloody well expect? For us to pull something out of a magic hat? If our jobs were that easy there would be no murders. I saw Gorman stomping around your desk earlier too, like a big, red bull. Someone should shove a pin in his hind, see how he likes it.’
Reilly couldn’t help but laugh. There was no love lost between Gorman and Kennedy. It was strange, because they were both of the old-school way of doing things.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But I think you should go to the restaurant with Chris this afternoon, despite your dislike of fine dining. There will be no eating today, just business.’
‘Grand. We’ll see if we can’t get a read on this fella.’
Before he left, Reilly gave in and split a pastry with Kennedy. What was life for, anyway, if you couldn’t comfort yourself after the morning from hell?
So,’ said Julius, positioning a slide under a microscope, ‘whoever was lying on Jennifer Armstrong’s bed, was wearing a material that didn’t shed. But it did leave a residue of a chemical called magnesium stearate.’
Reilly immediately recognized this as the finishing agent on spandex. So basically, tights, exercise gear, things like that. ‘
‘Because it’s so thin, I had hoped that we might be able to get a skin sample though the fabric. Or maybe semen, if the unsub’s reaction was sexual one. But I don’t think it is. Anyway, along with DNA from the hair, we also now have the fabric agent linking these two crime scenes. The same trace occurring at both scenes.’
‘OK. What kind of person wears spandex. Someone who exercises obviously. Or…’ she continued, her brain suddenly spinning into a familiar overdrive. ‘It might be a very smart thing to wear to a murder. Like you said, it doesn’t shed fibers as such. So what if the killer wore normal clothes to the murder site, took some clothes and changed into exercise gear to run home in? He wouldn’t be noticed. There’s thousands of people running to and from work in the city.’
‘You’re right, it’s completely anonymous. No one would think twice.’
‘Another thing. If the unsub was on or in the bed, and we could get something from his clothing, then why wasn’t there more trace left behind?’
‘My theory is that he was wearing a head covering of some kind. This guy came prepared.’
‘Any treads?’
‘Very vague,’ Julius said, pulling out the tread imprints. ‘Guy’s light on his feet.’
‘And a runner would be light on their feet too, wouldn’t they?’ Reilly moved in to look at the treads. The footwear in question looked to have a strong raised arch, and thick ridges, the same indentation disappearing every centimeter.
Her face brightened as finally some of the puzzle was starting to come together. ‘I think our guy was wearing running shoes.’
Chapter 17
Hammer and Tongs had a cold, clinical feel to it. Chris didn’t like it at all. He was glad they weren’t eating here.
But he was taken aback and more than a little worried that Reilly had cried off on the visit today. Especially given what had happened on Friday…
To say that he was shocked was the understatement of the century. He had no idea what had happened in the prison, but the sight of her when she came out … he automatically moved to comfort her. And then, when she’d turned her face up at him like that looking so vulnerable, so unlike her … He shook the thought away and tried to concentrate on the task in hand.
Harry McMurty escorted them to the kitchen. He smirked when he saw Kennedy again. ‘Come to arrest me then, have you?’
‘All in good time, mate.’
In the frantic kitchen, they were greeted by a tall red headed woman. ‘Better make it quick,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a full house today.’
‘Are you the Chef?’ Kennedy asked.
‘No, I’m the bloody Queen of England. What do you think?’
It occurred to Chris that this woman was probably used to being harassed in the workplace. The restaurant business was short on female chefs. Cooking at home was a supposedly woman’s business, but being a chef required the strength and creativity of man. Or so the theory went. You needed to rule the kitchen with an iron fist.
‘Are you the only chef here?’ he asked, the woman who eventually introduced herself as Gemma Collins.
‘I’m the daytime chef. The owner, Nico usually does the night work.’
‘Popular, isn’t it?’
‘Best food in Dublin,’ flashed the woman, proudly. ‘Tony and Nico are doing amazing things.’
‘And you use Joker Fruit?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Not any more. We did once or twice ages ago, but it’s a bit old now, isn’t it? In this restaurant, we don’t need to put poisonous foods on our menu to impress.’
‘Well when you did use it, were you involved in the preparation of it?’
‘No, Nico did all of that. He’s licensed.’
‘And is Nico here?’
‘Sleeping, probably. He works until very late. You can catch him in the evenings but I don’t think he’d welcome you. We don’t have problems with drugs among our staff, if that’s why you’re here.’
‘Why would you think we were here because of that?’
‘Everybody who works in hospitality takes amphetamines to stay up. Long hours,’ said Collins. ‘But our staff don’t deal. They’re good kids.’
‘What about Harry McMurty?’ interjected Kennedy.
‘Harry? Yeah, he’s a bit of a snake all right. But he can cook. Nico’s mentoring him. Lets him into the kitchen and teaches him things.’
Kennedy shot Chris a triumphant look. This was the link he had been looking for.
‘It’s solid. He murders one girl he’s seeing with sleeping pills, starts working at this fancy place and murders the next one with something harder to trace. I don’t know why we didn’t bloody book him the first time round.’
‘Patience. We’ll get him in for questioning. But I don’t know if he’s the right fit for both. He’s so young for starters. Too young to date Jennifer Armstrong.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ Kennedy said. ‘Too young to have a relationship, maybe, but not too young for something casual.’
‘I agree that this guy seems cocksure. Too in your face. By Julius’s assessment, this unsub is supposed to be a loner.’ He sighed. ‘We’ll bring him in for questioning tomorrow. But I just don’t think he’s the one.’
That afternoon Reilly read the background on Brendan Keating. It didn’t make for pleasant reading.
When their parents split up, Darren had been 3 and Brendan 7. Brendan went to live with his father, a truck haulier who took his son with him to work. By age ten, Brendan had seen all of the country, and much of Europe, but had also been witness to the worst of his father’s vices: women, alcohol and speed. It was no secret that truck drivers, like hospitality workers, often took drugs in order to work the long hours they needed to.
At age ten, Brendan Keating’s father considered him old enough to stay at home by himself. Young Brendan started getting into the kind of trouble that you might expect from a sixteen year old: robberies, vandalism, intimidation. He was sent to foster homes and correctional
facilities for youth, but to no avail. The damage was done. He had a list of convictions as long as Reilly’s arm. There were three charges of sexual assault that had been dropped before they went to court. Interestingly, Brendan’s criminal history stopped at age eighteen, around the time when he reconnected with his brother. Reilly couldn’t put this down to Brendan turning over a new leaf, however, since this was when Darren started to get into trouble too. She thought that Brendan had still continued to commit crime, but perhaps had used his brother as a scapegoat.
Soon after, Brendan Keating dropped off the map. His brother had been doing a short stint in jail, and when he got out, Brendan had disappeared. The official theory was that he had been killed, but a body had never been found.
Reilly couldn’t help but increasingly feel that Brendan was involved somehow in Grace’s disappearance. From the sound of things, Darren Keating had been a good kid until he turned up. She needed to do two things: dig deeper in to the pasts of the brothers, and see if Lucy’s hypnotherapy sessions turned up anything else in the meantime.
At the moment all she had was a hunch, but it was a strong one.
She picked up a photograph of Brendan Keating and studied it. Like Darren, he had also been a good looking kid. He had a scar running down the side of his face from an accident he’d been in. His father’s truck had flipped on the ice on a windy road up North. Miraculously, they had both survived.
Reilly had a feeling it would have been better for Grace Gorman if he hadn’t.
Chapter 18
Later that evening, Kennedy was happy enough to sit in his car and watch Harry McMurty. He was in one of the seedier parts of Dublin. Josie had her book group this evening, which generally consisted of too much wine and shrieking, so Kennedy thought it was a good chance for him to escape the house. He had just ordered a burger from the fast food place he was parked next to, and had put a Johnny Cash CD on.
McMurty was lurking about in a bar across the road. Kennedy knew it to be a notorious hang out for dealers of amphetamine. If nothing else, he could probably go in and nab McMurty on a possession charge. But that wasn’t the way they did things. You had to respect the turf of others. He and Chris were homicide detectives, and they had done their stints in Vice and Narcotics. You couldn’t go stepping on people’s toes. There could be an operation here that he didn’t know about.
Chris had offered to come with him but Kennedy had told him not to bother. Surely a young buck like Chris had other things to be doing. Though he knew Chris’s life wasn’t quite as exciting as it should be. He should have women climbing all over him, that fella. Well, maybe he did and he was just quiet about it?
And Steel was no better. Why did a good looking woman like that spend her nights alone? He didn’t understand what people were up to these days and his thoughts drifted back to the murder victims.
Why spend your time looking for love on a computer when there were thousands of people out there, just waiting for someone special. He had met Josie at friend’s wedding. That’s how it should be done.
Kennedy’s reverie was interrupted by a knock at his window. A man stood there holding a bag from the chipper he had ordered his burger from. He rolled down the window.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ said the man, with a quick grin.
Funny, thought Kennedy. He didn’t look like the guy he’d ordered from. He was a little older. And come to think of it, he was wasn’t wearing the uniform either. Maybe he was the manager or something.
He unwrapped his burger and took a bite. Delicious – wait, no, there was something not quite right. He poked around in his burger and found the culprit. A mushroom. He hated the things, wouldn’t let them near the house. Smelt like an unwashed drawer of socks.
Kennedy didn’t like complaining, but the mushroom had tainted the whole burger. He was sure they would give him a replacement. He got out and walked through the frosty air to the fast food place.
An odd feeling assailed him as he walked. Kind of like he was being squeezed out of his body. Like someone had a hold of him and was trying to crush him. Pete Kennedy made it inside the door of the chip shop before he crashed and fell, the hard linoleum floor feeling like a balm to his burning skin.
Reilly’s phone rang in what felt like the middle of the night. She sat bolt upright and found herself at the kitchen table, a document from the Gorman missing person file stuck to her face. She ripped it off and madly rummaged through the papers to find her phone. A glance at the clock told her it was just after midnight.
‘Hello?’
‘Reilly. It’s Chris.’ Immediately she was flooded with discomfort, embarrassment … but then she heard something in his voice. This was nothing to do with … ‘Something’s happened,’ he continued. ‘It’s Pete, he’s had a heart attack or something.’
‘Oh my God. Oh no - ’
‘He’s all right. The hospital won’t let anyone but Josie in now but I’m going to see him first thing tomorrow.’
‘I’ll meet you there,’ she said, automatically.
‘Are you sure? You don’t have to, I just wanted to let you know.’
‘Of course, I want to.’ Kennedy was her colleague, her friend, the guy she’d been sharing pastries with the day before. She thought then about his terrible eating habits. Had his love of all things fried finally caught up with him?
A black fear gripped her heart. Chris had implied he was out of danger but what if he was wrong? If Kennedy died, it would be like losing … a good friend, she realized.
When Chris and Reilly met at the hospital the next morning, it was like they had run into mirrors of their own tiredness. It was also the first time they’d come face to face since the episode on Friday.
She’d finally opened his email after crying off on the restaurant visit. And when she did, she felt even worse for doing so.
Reilly, whatever happens, we are friends first and foremost. Don’t shut me out. Out and about this morning but see you at the restaurant at one. It’ll be a relief to escape from Kennedy for a bit. He gnawing my ear off about this McMurty guy and you know what he’s like. Dog with a bone …
She’d felt a flush of shame when she read it. He was so good. Here she was, trying to avoid him, and he was just trying to make her feel better. Thank goodness he’d been able to just laugh the whole thing off. Now maybe she should do the same.
‘Rough night, huh?’ she commented, trying to make her voice sound casual, easy the way it used to be between them.
‘I honestly thought the morning would never come. I can’t believe it. Kennedy of all people. We both know what he’s like but honestly I thought he was so bloody stubborn he’d end up outlasting the lot of us. Josie said he collapsed in a chipper. Obviously his bad habits caught up with him.’
It was exactly what Reilly had been thinking.
They quickly waylaid a nearby nurse to find out the location of Kennedy’s room and both swept through the doors.
‘Bloody hell,’ he admonished. ‘A man might need a private moment or something. Fat chance of that with you two around.’
Reilly could have cried to hear him speak like that. He was still the same. A little gray, maybe, but sitting up in bed like a king entertaining his subjects, Josie by his side.
‘Yes,’ his wife admonished. ‘We’ve all been worried. You gave us a terrible fright. Now it’s time for you to listen to me and give up that rubbish you insist on eating. I told you didn’t?’ She turned to Reilly and Chris. ‘He was in the chipper when he collapsed. Imagine that?’
‘Now love,’ said Kennedy, rolling his eyes. ‘They still don’t know that it was a heart attack. They’re running tests.’
‘What else would it have been? No, from now on it’ll be steamed veg and skinless chicken for dinner.’
‘I might as well be dead, then,’ her husband moaned. ‘Would you be a pet and go and get these two a cup of coffee? They look worse than I do.’
‘Secret police b
usiness, I presume,’ Josie said shaking her head indulgently. ‘Yes, I’ll leave you in peace for a bit. As long as you promise not to slip him any doughnuts or anything.’
They promised, and Reilly thought for a second that Josie might make them turn out their pockets. She would have made a good cop.
When she was gone, she turned to Kennedy. ‘We were so worried,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness you’re OK.’
‘You should never have gone out alone,’ said Chris. ‘I told you I’d come with you.’
‘Blah, blah, blah’ said Kennedy. ‘Save it for my funeral, kids. I need you to do something.’
‘Of course,’ said Reilly. ‘But you shouldn’t be thinking about work right now.’
‘This was no accident — seriously’ said Kennedy. ‘My car’s still on Sheriff Street with any luck. Here’s my keys. I want you to get the remains of the burger and have Julius run his fancy tests on it. Mark my words, something will come back funny.’
Chapter 19
‘What do you reckon?’ said Chris, as he drove them both to collect Kennedy’s car.
‘Seems a bit far-fetched,’ said Reilly. ‘But we have to check. Maybe he’s just embarrassed. It’s a big thing for a guy like Kennedy to feel vulnerable. He probably just wants there to be another reason for this, other than his health and age.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Chris. ‘I’d probably feel the same. He seemed pretty certain it wasn’t a heart attack, but then again he’s got nothing to compare it to, has he?’
By some kind of miracle, Kennedy’s car was still where he left it. Not exactly as he left it though. It was up on bricks, the four tires removed.
‘No surprise there,’ said Chris. ‘You can’t drop your trousers in this part of town without them getting stolen.’
Reilly bit back a smile. ‘Speaking from personal experience then?’