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It also reminded him of why somebody should.

8

Three days dragged by before Jennings found the time to meet Mulligan at Dunkin’ Donuts on Greenwich Avenue in Warwick. Three days in which Mulligan and Hardcastle had to listen to Lomax rant about tight-lipped cops and about reporters who couldn’t come up with anything about a goddamned triple murder.

It was the same doughnut shop where Mulligan and Jennings had their first conversation two years earlier. Since then, it had become their spot, the two of them getting together once or twice a month to share their passion for the PC Friars and the Boston Red Sox. Jennings was already there, nursing a cup of black coffee, when Mulligan strolled in and dropped into the booth.

“Hey, Mulligan. How’s your mom doing?”

“Not so good.”

“Aw, hell.”

“It’s stage four uterine cancer, Andy. The doctors can’t do anything but try to make her comfortable.”

Jennings shook his head sadly, then reached across the table and rested his hand on Mulligan’s shoulder. “How long has she got?”

“A few months, maybe.”

“I’m so sorry.”

The two friends sat quietly, each lost in his own thoughts.

“You look like shit,” Mulligan finally said.

“That’s what working seventy-two hours straight will do to you.”

“Think it’s the same guy?”

“Oh, yeah. No question. A print we lifted from one of the murder weapons came back a match to the prints from the Medeiros case. But I knew as soon as I saw the bodies. The crime scenes are that similar.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” Mulligan said, “and tell me everything.”

“I’ll give you what I can, but I have to hold back a few details only the perp could know.”

* * *

The evening before the murder, Connie Stuart and her twin sister, Mary O’Keefe, decided to go shopping. Mary picked Connie up and drove her to the Warwick Mall, where they bought new bathing suits and some shorts for the summer. Mary got the new Bon Jovi CD. Connie picked out a new set of kitchen knives.

On the way home, they talked about whether they should move in together now that it was clear that Connie’s wayward husband wasn’t coming back. Mary dropped her sister off at her house at nine forty-five P.M.

At eight the next morning, Mary called Connie, but she didn’t answer. Three hours later, when Connie still wasn’t picking up, Mary got a little worried, so she drove over. Connie didn’t answer the door, but Mary had a copy of the house key. She let herself in.

The 911 call came in at 11:21 A.M. Saturday morning.

Help. Please help. There’s blood everywhere. It’s my sister. And her kids. Oh, God. They must be dead. So much blood.

Officers Peralta and Berube arrived first. They took a quick look inside the house, backed out, secured the scene, and called for detectives. Jennings and Mello got there just before noon.

Upstairs in the master bedroom, the detectives found a flowered sheet soaked crimson. It was draped over a lump centered neatly in the middle of a queen-size mattress. Jennings pulled the sheet aside, exposing Connie Stuart’s naked body. Her arms and legs were arranged like the points of a star. On the floor at the foot of the bed, two more lumps lay beneath a chenille bedspread that had once been white. Beneath it, Mello found Sara, eight, and Emma, twelve, dressed in matching Little Mermaid pajamas. Blood had soaked through the mattress and pooled on the floor. The oak headboard, the walls, and the ceiling were splattered with it.

* * *

“The Stuart place backs up on a vacant lot, just like the Medeiros residence,” Jennings said. “No trees, this time. Just a lot of scrub brush. The killer hid in a thicket a few yards from the back fence and spied on the family off and on for weeks.”

“For weeks? How do you know that?”

“He made a little nest for himself in the leaves. And he left a dozen roaches behind.”

“So he would have known that her husband moved out weeks ago,” Mulligan said.

“That’s the way I see it. Late Friday night or early Saturday morning, he came out of his hiding place and jumped the chain-link fence. He crossed the yard, pried the screen off an unlocked window, and slid it open. Then he took his shoes off and climbed inside.

“He left a lot of physical evidence behind, just like last time. It tells a story, if you know how to read it.”

* * *

The killer found Connie’s new set of KitchenAid knives, still unopened, on the butcher-block kitchen counter. He ripped the top off the box and tore through the packaging, scattering cardboard and Styrofoam on the floor.

Carrying the four biggest knives, he crept up the carpeted stairs to the second floor and entered the dark bedroom where Connie was sleeping. He jumped on top of her and pounded her face with his fists. Then he used one of the knives to slice her nightgown from neckline to hem. He yanked it off her and tossed it over a bedpost. Then he went to work with the blades.

Sara and Emma must have heard their mother’s screams. They leaped from their beds and ran into her room. There, the two children fought for their lives and the life of their mother, the killer’s blades slicing their hands and arms as they tried to drive him off. But he was much too strong. When they fell to the floor, he continued to stab them, striking so hard that he broke off two blades in Emma’s chest.

When he was done, he dropped the knives and padded down the hall to the upstairs bathroom, leaving a bloody trail of footprints on the hardwood floor.

At the bathroom sink, he flipped on the faucet and rinsed the blood from his face and hands. Perhaps it was then that he noticed he was bleeding. Somehow, he’d cut himself with one of the knives. Maybe his hand had slipped as he savagely plunged a blade into Connie. Or maybe it had happened as he struggled with the children.

He pulled a lilac towel from the rack and used it to stanch his wound. Then he rummaged through the medicine cabinet, knocking bottles of aspirin and cold tablets, a child’s thermometer, and a box of tampons into the sink. He found a package of Band-Aids, tore it open, and slapped one on the cut. He dropped the crumpled bandage wrapper in the sink and the bloodstained towel on the bathroom floor. Testing proved the blood on the towel didn’t come from his victims.

He returned to the bedroom, plucked souvenirs from Connie and her children, and covered their bodies. Then he carried his treasures down the stairs and exited the way he came, leaving fingerprints on the windowsill.

Outside, he pulled off his socks, put on his running shoes, and sprinted across the backyard, leaving size thirteen tracks in the soft ground. Before reaching the property line, he paused beside the swing set and vomited in the grass. Then he grabbed hold of a tree branch, stripping it of leaves as he hauled himself over the fence.

He peeled off his blood-soaked hoodie, threw it and his socks beneath some bushes in the vacant lot, and ran off.

* * *

“A few questions,” Mulligan said.

“Shoot.”

“How many times were they stabbed?”

Jennings flipped through his notebook. “Connie, twenty-two times. Sarah, her youngest, twelve times. And Emma, the twelve-year-old?” He closed the notebook slowly and locked eyes with Mulligan. “Fifty-two times.”

Mulligan sat in stunned silence, willing the picture in his head to go away.

“Do you ever get used to it?” he finally asked.

“Haven’t yet,” Jennings said. “I hope the hell I never do.”

“I wonder why he singled out Emma for special treatment.”

“No idea.”

“Why did he cover the bodies?”

“I don’t know.”

“What made him throw up?”