BLUE MERCY (13 page)

There was the scent of flowers as she ushered them stiffly into the foyer and through the house. Cut roses filled several crystal vases positioned throughout, and a sitting room overlooked an immaculate garden. A stone path led past fountains and a birdbath, to dense cascades of rose vines climbing the board fence. Kay counted four cats basking on the narrow deck.

Hagen was a sturdy woman, with boxy hips and a flat
chest. The casual pantsuit she wore was off-the-rack Target. It was a size too large and didn’t hang right on her frame, and her bare feet looked swollen in a pair of strappy sandals. A plain woman trying to come off as elegant. It didn’t quite work.

She gestured to a grouping of rattan furniture. Sitting, Kay spotted the photo of Eales next to another vase of roses.

“Scott said you’d been asking about the website. Is there a problem?” she asked.

“There could be.” Finn pulled out his notebook. “How exactly do you know Scott Arsenault?”

Kay let Finn take the lead. Not only would he likely get farther with his smooth demeanor, but Hagen clearly recognized Kay. Contempt and distrust came off the woman in waves.

“My only association with Scott is through the website.”

“Well, how did you find out about him? Do you follow his kinds of websites on the net?”

“No. Actually, it was Scott who contacted me.”

“He called
you?”
Finn asked.

Kay studied Hagen, surprised. Both she and Finn had assumed
Hagen
had initiated the site, seeking out Arsenault’s assistance.

“Yes. He explained what he does and asked if I thought Bernard would be interested.”

“And you didn’t find that a little odd?”

“No. I think he took an interest because Bernard is local.”

“Did you ask how he got your name?”

“He’d spoken to one of Mr. Grogan’s clerks, asked if there was any family to contact. She gave him my name.”

“Because you’re paying for his defense?” Finn guessed.

“No, Detective, because I’m Bernard’s fiancée.”

For the first time Kay dropped her gaze to Hagen’s hands. They looked rough, the nails chipped and stained, no doubt from tending her garden. Kay noticed the diamond before Hagen—perhaps self-conscious—folded her hands in her lap.

“When Scott first called,” she said, “he suggested I check out his other sites. He told me about their success in raising awareness. In getting the truth out there.”

“And where do you get these ‘truths’?” Kay could no longer be silent.

“Pardon me?”

“The information on the site, where does it come from?”

Hagen shrugged. “Most of it from Bernard, through me.”

“So you’ve discussed the murders with Mr. Eales?” Finn asked.

“Of course not. How could we discuss something Bernard knows nothing about?”

A good dose of delusion was probably the only thing that kept Hagen coming back for visitations, Kay thought.

“Those women were killed in Mr. Eales’s house, Ms. Hagen. You
are
aware of the evidence in the case, are you not?”

“I’m aware of what the media tries to sell the public, as well as the kinds of things police will do to close a case.”

“So you don’t believe Mr. Eales killed those women?”

“I believe in the things I see, Detective. And for all the years I’ve known Bernard I have always seen in him a gentle person. Someone who cares about other people. Someone who embraces life. Not death.”

So, Hagen’s tunnel-vision view of life wasn’t a purely clinical condition.

“Then if not from you, how
does
Mr. Arsenault know about the details of the murders?” he asked.

“You’ll have to ask him that. I’m sure he has his sources.”

“All right. We’ll do that.” Finn flashed Kay a look before turning to a fresh page in his notebook. “And how long have you known Bernard?”

“Going on twenty years. My father handled his mother’s funeral.”

“And that’s when he hired Bernard?”

“Shortly after that. Yes.”

“What did he do for your father?”

“Ran errands, cleaned. Sometimes he’d assist in the basement.”

“The basement?”

“The embalming room. If things were busy, he’d have to help prep the bodies for interment.”

“And how long did he work for your father?”

“That first time it was a year. I don’t think Bernard could have handled much more. But then, five years later, while I was away at Norfold State, my father took him on again.”

“And how long did that last?”

“Less than a year.”

“Is there a reason his employment stints were so short?” Finn asked.

“Bernard and my father …they had issues.”

“What kinds of issues?”

Patricia Hagen shifted and the rattan armchair creaked under her. “I never got the whole story, but there were accusations.”

“Of what?”

Hagen chewed her bottom lip. “Improprieties,” she said at last. “But that’s not the reason Bernard left. Truth of the matter is, Bernard couldn’t handle all the death.” She was addressing only Finn now, doing her best to
ignore Kay’s presence. “Like I said, he’s a gentle soul.”

Kay watched Hagen: her hands twisting in her lap, lips pinched. She was a flake but she wasn’t stupid. Kay wondered how Bernard had managed to charm her. She imagined Hagen as a teenager, a pretty but simple girl with thick glasses. The undertaker’s daughter. No doubt there were stigmas attached to that. And maybe dumb-ass Bernard had been the first boy to show interest.

Kay could picture Hagen in high school, working for the grades that would get her into college. Or maybe just applying herself to avoid helping out in her father’s shop of horrors. And then, a part of Kay understood Hagen. Hadn’t she done the same growing up? Turned to her books as a means of escaping her father? Escaping the bitter cold docks and the ragged nets of drowning fish, their guts spilling out across the stained deck of the boat. She’d never wanted any part of his world. So she stayed in her room, with her homework and her books, listening as her mother taught violin lessons in the parlor.

Kay studied Hagen’s profile and wondered how different she and the undertaker’s daughter really were.

“Did you date Bernard while he worked for your father?” Kay asked.

“We were only sixteen.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

Hagen’s eyes fixed on Kay. Angry, saucer-shaped hyperbolic eyes. For a second Kay imagined the woman would terminate the interview, but she turned to Finn instead. “I don’t see how these questions can have any bearing on whatever it is you’re investigating.”

“We’re just trying to establish some background on Bernard, Ms. Hagen. You were …
are
clearly close to him, but if you’re not comfortable discussing your relationship …”

But she was. What Kay saw in Hagen was a lonely woman, devoted to her garden, her cats, and Bernard—a relationship not many could understand. And with Finn, Hagen seemed almost eager to share the details of her bizarre existence.

“Bernard and I were … close. We lost touch after I left for college,” she said to Finn. “When I found out he’d been arrested, I came to his aid.”

“By paying his legal fees?” Finn asked.

“Yes.” And as though she sensed judgment from him: “Look, Detective, I don’t expect you or others to see the truth as I do. I
know
Bernard. He’s a pacifist. He’s simply not capable of doing the things he’s been charged with.”

Kay couldn’t bite her tongue any longer. She nodded to the
Sun
on the table beside Hagen’s chair. “You read the paper, Ms. Hagen?”

“Yes.”

“You watch the news on TV?”

“Of course.”

“Then I don’t know
how
you missed what your pacifist boyfriend did to my partner and me last year.”

“Bernard was acting in self-defense.”

“What he did, Ms. Hagen, was
not
self-defense. And I can also say with complete confidence that your Bernard is
absolutely
capable of having killed those women.”

Hagen stood from her chair, her lips a thin red slash across her pale face. “I think it’s time you left, Detectives.”

They followed Hagen to the foyer in silence, and Finn thanked her before falling in step with Kay down the walk.

“I might have gotten more out of her,” he said, his irritation evident as they reached the car.

“Like what, Finn? Eales hasn’t told her a thing. Why on earth would he? He’s got her wrapped up like a sweet little meal ticket. He’s not going to jeopardize that.” She opened
the car door a little too hard. “How the hell did he even convince a woman like that to marry him? It doesn’t fit.”

“She’s lonely, Kay.”

“Yeah, and the irony is, she’s probably waited her whole life for her Prince Charming to rescue her from Daddy’s funeral parlor. And when the day finally arrives, she’s standing alone in some jewelry store paying for the damned ring herself.”

Kay got in and slammed the car door behind her, looking out the driver’s-side window at the groomed house. “There’s something not right about her and Eales.”

Finn got in. “Yeah. And there’s something not right about her friend Arsenault either,” he said. “I for one am not done talking to that little asswipe. There’s a lot he’s not telling us.”

Kay started the car. “Don’t worry. He’ll talk. And he’ll come to us to do it.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a homicide junkie. He gets off on being close to an investigation. I think for now, we need to break the news to Mr. Hagen about his daughter’s engagement. Something tells me he doesn’t have a clue.
And,
while we’re there, I want to know just what kinds of improprieties are really going on at the family business.”

THE CYBER CAFÉ
on Charles Street was crawling with teenagers. Sipping cinnamon-dusted lattes, they hung in congested cliques, drifting from one terminal to the next. Boys in their frayed, low-riding jeans; girls flaunting their pierced navels in skimpy T’s.

From the back bank of terminals, he struggled to block them out. When a boy took up the station beside his, he spared a glance. The kid used one hand to navigate the mouse while the other picked feverishly at a rash of zits flaming across his ravaged chin.

He tried to ignore the kid, focus on his own terminal. The message boards had been busy. He looked for any post about Regester’s murder, but the morons hadn’t put two and two together. He flirted with the idea of starting a new thread himself, to point out that the witness in Bernard’s trial was now the subject of a homicide investigation. Headed by Detective Kay Delaney, no less.

But he refrained. Better not to raise any flags. Still, he needed to post a few responses to the various threads using his screen name, or other members would wonder where “Roach” had gotten to. It was all about balance. Blending in. Camouflage.

Roach wasn’t blending in at the Cyber Café though. Not anymore: the din was rising as the average age of the clientele dropped. A friend of the zit-picker sidled up, his backpack sliding off his shoulder and bumping Roach.

“Oh, sorry, man.” The kid barely afforded him a glance and Roach looked into the half-lidded gaze. He imagined the feel of the two-and-a-half-inch blade of his Spyderco lock-back sinking into the soft depression of the kid’s pale temple. A quick upward jab with the knife and a firm twist. Give the little shit a lobotomy to match that lifeless expression.

Roach’s hand clenched around the mouse. Out of curiosity he Googled Detective Delaney for anything new. The search engine came up with the archived articles and accompanying photos from the
Sun,
showing the aftermath of Bernard’s meth-induced freak-out on her. The picture sparked something in Roach.

He’d dreamed of Regester last night. Then Delaney.

He blamed Bernard for the dreams, and for the desire he felt steadily rising since killing Regester.

All because of Bernard’s letter. The man was a worrier: maybe the bitch had seen them both in Leakin Park when they’d dumped the whore’s body. Roach doubted it. Wearing Bernard’s raincoat, several sizes too large, he’d helped Bernard get the body out of the trunk. Then, as the rain hammered the car’s roof, he’d slouched in the dark behind the wheel while Bernard hauled her off.

The moment he’d approached Regester four nights ago in the college lot, Roach knew she’d never seen him before. There’d been no panic in her eyes. In fact, he could simply have walked away, left her there with her broken shitbox of a car, knowing she had no clue who he was. But the plan had brewed too long. A Technicolor fantasy. There was no way he could
not
have gone through with it.

And now, it wasn’t just the dream of Regester that kept Roach company. It was the memories from even farther back. Of that first time, in the cool stillness of the embalming room. It hadn’t been about power then, but comfort. Comfort in death’s embrace. It had been like coming home.

He never knew her name, that first one. But she’d been beautiful, in spite of the dissecting Y-incision left by the coroner’s scalpel, and the crude stitches drawing the puckered flesh together. The final incision that would never heal.

He’d slid his hand along her cold, tight skin, followed the line of her rib cage, her round hips, and the swell of her buttocks pooling against the table. He’d pressed his palm along her belly, past her hardened abdomen, until his fingertips touched the triangle of coarse, red-blond hair.

He remembered breathing in the calm air of the
embalming room: the chemicals and the harsh soaps, the damp-stone scent of death. And in that cool, quiet stillness, he’d touched her in a way he’d never touched another human.

It had marked a turning point in his life. For Roach, it was the day he had become a man.