“At least I have an excuse,” Shannon said. “What’s yours?”
“What’s mine?” DiGrazia sputtered. “You sonofabitch. I’ve been out every goddamn night looking for you. I haven’t slept in five days. That’s my goddamn excuse.” DiGrazia hesitated and then lowered his voice. “What have you been up to?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up, so to speak.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like your rest did you much good.” He paused, considering Shannon. “At least you’re back in one piece.”
“It looks that way. About spending your nights looking for me, I’d like to thank you.”
“Yeah, sure you would. You really don’t know what you’ve been doing?”
Shannon shook his head. “No idea. About an hour ago I came out of it in a crack house in Roxbury.” He hesitated. “How’s Susie been?”
“She hasn’t left you yet. My ex sure would’ve.” Exhaustion passed over DiGrazia’s thick face, giving his flesh a wasted look. “I’m glad to see you, pal. I’ll tell you, after the last week being run ragged both on the job and looking for you, I’m having a tough time thinking straight. Did you know Rose Hartwell?”
“Ah, shit. What happened to her?”
“You did know her?”
“Yeah, I know her. I know everyone on this street. What happened?”
DiGrazia started to say something and then stopped himself. For whatever reason he got cute. “You better look for yourself.”
“All right. Let me wash up first-”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. You’re fine. Fresh as a goddamn daisy.” DiGrazia had an arm around Shannon’s shoulders and was veering him away from his building towards the triple-decker Rose Hartwell lived in. As they walked, DiGrazia asked whether Shannon knew if the Hartwells were having marital problems.
“Yeah,” Shannon said, “I think things had kind of hit bottom for them.”
“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” DiGrazia said.
There were about a half dozen plainclothes cops milling through Hartwell’s apartment, all grim-faced, all wearing beige or maroon sports jackets. Shannon didn’t recognize any of them. Rose Hartwell was waiting for them in the kitchen. She was lying on a small table, fully clothed, a knife sticking out of her mouth. She was dead. Gary Aukland was standing off to one side while a thin man with a short marine-style haircut examined the body. The man had an unnaturally pale complexion with lips that were way too red. His facial bones seemed to shine through colorless, translucent skin. Shannon didn’t know him, either. DiGrazia murmured in his ear, “FBI.”
There was no shock as Shannon looked at the body. He was surprised how calm he felt. Almost serene. It was as if he’d been expecting this for a long time. Maybe not Rose Hartwell, but someone. He asked the FBI examiner how long the woman had been dead. The man sniffed in the air as if he smelled something and then muttered about them having to wait for a report. Aukland cleared his throat and said it probably happened early in the morning. He moved his head to one side, signaling towards the living room. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go talk.”
They left the kitchen with DiGrazia joining them. Aukland asked if Shannon had been sick. “You look almost as if you’ve been suffering from exposure,” the coroner noted.
“Not that I know of. But then again, what the hell do I know?”
Aukland gave him an odd kind of look and then shook his head. He told him he’d heard Shannon had been put on departmental leave. “Right now I wouldn’t mind volunteering for that,” Aukland added. “They’re really pissing me off in there. You realize how big a favor they’re doing letting us watch? Tight-assed little pricks.”
“Why are they involved?”
“Because they’re experts from their elite Sex Crime unit. And we have a serial killer,” Aukland said with an unhappy smile.
“There was one several days ago in Boston,” DiGrazia said.
“And the Roberson murder,” Aukland added.
Shannon turned to DiGrazia. “I thought you had the kid all wrapped up?”
“I was wrong. He didn’t do it.”
Shannon was going to say something else but he let it drop. DiGrazia’s expression demanded that he let it drop. He asked Aukland what they had on Rose Hartwell’s murder.
“It’s hard to tell standing on the sidelines, but it doesn’t look like there’s any physical evidence. No skin, no blood, no semen. There’s a slight discoloration along the wrists that shows her hands were tied. Probably with some sort of fabric, maybe a towel. Whoever did this has a pretty good knowledge of forensics. How closely did you look at that knife?”
“What do you mean?”
“You probably couldn’t tell from the angle you were standing at. The knife went right through the back of her neck and stuck a half inch into the table. It severed her windpipe. My guess is she died of asphyxiation. And, Bill, it probably wasn’t fast.”
“Any other wounds?”
“No, just the one. It was more than enough, though.”
“And there was one like this last week in Boston?”
“A carbon copy. And you have Phyllis Roberson. For the most part the profiles match.”
Shannon looked out the window, squinting. “How’d you find out it wasn’t Roberson’s kid?”
Aukland shrugged. “The blood we found on the pillow didn’t match either Roberson or her son. Also the timing didn’t fit. With the amount of time it took her to bleed to death, the son couldn’t have done it. He was in school at the time the internal bleeding had started.”
DiGrazia’s thick ears had turned bright pink. “With what we had at the scene anyone would’ve picked that kid,” he said.
Shannon asked, “What about the scratch marks on his arms?”
“It probably happened the way he said it did,” Aukland said. “Her internal bleeding was slow so it took a while for her lungs to fill up. In the meantime, her son came home, found her like that, tried to pull the knife out of her throat, and well, you know what happened next.” Aukland showed some yellowed teeth as he smiled. “I almost think our killer planned it that way; leaving her dying with that knife bobbing out of her throat so her son would do what he did. The blood, though, doesn’t make any sense. He was so careful not to leave any other physical evidence. Do you know how difficult it is to kill someone like that without leaving any physical evidence? You think he would’ve realized he left a few drops of blood.”
“I guess he got careless.”
“The sonofabitch plants newspaper stories about Janice Rowley’s murder in the kid’s room to frame him, is so damn meticulous with the murder, and he leaves blood behind in plain sight?” DiGrazia asked.
“He probably got so excited with the murder he didn’t realize it.”
Aukland thought about it and shrugged. “Maybe,” he conceded. “I’m going back in there and keep my eye on things.”
DiGrazia grabbed Shannon by the arm. He told Aukland they’d join him later. Then to Shannon, “Let’s go to your place.”
Once inside his apartment Shannon tried to call his wife at work. DiGrazia cracked his knuckles impatiently as Shannon left a voice mail message.
“What do you think, we got a serial killer?” he asked as soon as the phone was put down.
“You don’t think so?”
“That’s right. I don’t.”
“A copycat murder?”
“Nope,” DiGrazia said, shaking his head. “No details were released on any of the murders.” He took a cigarette out, slipped it into his mouth, and then raised an eyebrow at Shannon and offered him one. Shannon declined.
DiGrazia lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply and then stood and watched as the smoke curled around him. “I think we got someone who wants it to look like a serial killer,” he said, the smoke drifting past him, his face all of a sudden anxious, his eyes like hard red marbles. He sat down on the sofa and leaned forward, licking his lips.
“Phyllis Roberson was having problems with her ex,” DiGrazia explained. “She was suing him for back child support. A lot of money, Bill. And her ex didn’t want to pay. You know, spite. Real bad blood between the two of them.”