BLUE MERCY (8 page)

Well, fuck him
. “Leave ’em on. This won’t take long.”

She turned her back to him, trying to contain a shudder of loathing and uncontrolled fear. How many interviews had she conducted in her career? Hundreds? Thousands?

Eales shuffled behind her, coming to the table. She could sense his closeness as she lay the cigarettes and a book of matches on the table. Sense the presence of the man who had beaten her to within an inch of her life. She almost wished Finn were here. But it was better this way.

Kay pulled out the chair farthest from the door, the legs grating across polished concrete. “Have a seat, Bernard.”

While driving here she’d already made the decision to address him by his first name. Keep it cool. Professional, yet casual.

“You remember me, Bernard?”

“Sure.” Eales’s mass poured over the edges of the seat, dwarfing the chair. His irons clattered against the table and the chair’s legs. Elbows planted, he balled one hand into the other, rested his chin against his thumbs, and slumped forward onto the table.

She circled back, but didn’t pull out the other chair.

Fresh abrasions marked three of his knuckles, she noted, and there was dirt under his nails. Other than the scar on his cheek and the bloodied knuckles, it didn’t appear Eales
was having a tough time behind bars. She’d have thought a dumb-ass like him would have been the brunt of more attacks and ridicule. Then again, maybe he was too big for anyone to consider fucking with.

From her briefcase, Kay took out a Miranda waiver and slid it across the table. “You know the drill, don’t you, Bernard?”

He took the pen she offered, clasped it between thick fingers, and initialed each warning as she read them out.

“You understand, Bernard, you don’t have to speak with me today, right?” she asked him when they got to the end of the list.

He made a gesture somewhere between a nod and a shrug.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yeah.”

“You also understand that you can, and in fact are advised to, have your lawyer present?”

Again, a nodding shrug.

“And your presence here this afternoon is completely voluntary, is that correct?”

This time the shrug came with a grunt she thought sounded like a reflection of humor. He dropped the pen and opened his hands to draw attention to the cuffs cutting into his meaty wrists. “Voluntary. Right.”

“All right then.” Her hands were fists inside the pockets of her suit jacket. A line of perspiration trailed down her back, and she wondered if Eales could smell her stewing in her own sweat.

“So how ya doing, Detective?” It came out
dee-tective.

Kay circled the table slowly, keeping her gaze on Eales’s head. That ugly, shaven scalp with all its cranial ridges and irregular depressions. She shuddered at the evil she knew lurked beneath that misshapen skull.

“Valerie Regester’s dead,” she said when she reached the front of the table again.

“Don’t know who yer talkin’ ’bout.” His voice was low, the words slurred in a lazy Baltimore drawl.

When Kay leaned across the table, she could smell the musk of body odor coming off him and the sour breath that leaked through his crooked teeth.

“Don’t play me for some dumb shit, Bernard. Valerie Regester was the witness who was set to testify against you.”

“Oh, right. The bitch that says it was me she seen dump some broad’s body in Leakin.”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“So she’s dead, huh?” He eyed the pack of Camels.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Nothin’ much surprises me no more, Detective.”

“I know Grogan was in to see you earlier. You’re saying he didn’t tell you the prosecution’s witness had been murdered?”

Something twisted at the corner of his down-turned mouth. Kay imagined he’d just amused himself with a thought.

“Naw,” he said. “The guy ain’t got much of a stomach for that kinda stuff. Weird, him being a criminal attorney and all, huh? So how was she killed exactly?”

“You don’t know?”

“How the hell am I supposed to?”

“She was strangled. Then someone set her body on fire. Not exactly your style, is it?”

“What? You think
I
got something to do with it? How’s that supposed to work? I bust outta here, kill that lying skank, then break myself back in? Let me tell you, sweetheart, the food ain’t that good in here.”

He lowered his folded hands on the table, the right half-obscuring
a two-foot tattooed snake that coiled down his forearm, wrapped around his cuffed wrist, and came to a head along the back of his left hand. The tattoo was old, the ink green with age, and the reptile’s scales had stretched to accommodate Eales’s expanding fat.

“Maybe you got someone to do you a favor, hmm, Bernard?”

He didn’t answer, and Patricia Hagen’s name almost slipped from her lips.

“Funny thing is,” she said, bracing her hands on the back of the empty chair and leaning toward him, “she was burned in a warehouse down in Canton. Twelve hundred block of Luther. Ring any bells?”

He shook his head.

“It should. You worked there. Dutton Mannequin.”

“Now ain’t that a coincidence?”

“Exactly what I thought. So what do you know about Regester’s murder?”

“Nothin’. This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

Kay’s bullshit radar was usually foolproof, but she couldn’t get a firm read on Eales. She guessed it was their history that impaired her judgment today.

Yanking out the empty chair, she sat. From her briefcase she snatched the two five-by-sevens she’d selected from the crime-scene photos and slapped them faceup on the table.

She searched Eales’s face for a reaction.

“Oo-ee, someone sure went all firebug on that girl, huh? Musta really hated her.”

“Someone like you maybe?”

“Hey, I don’t even know the girl.”

“Knew her enough to call her a bitch.”

“Yeah, a
lying
bitch. And a skank. And I’d say it to her lying face, ’cept she’s dead.”

“What did she lie about, Bernard? Seeing you in the park?”

“No. I was there. Already told police that. She lied about what she seen me dumpin’. Wasn’t no body. It’s all in the files.” His eyes held hers for several heartbeats, narrowed into two slits. Then a slow smile parted his lips. “But you probably ain’t read the files, huh? They pulled you offa the case, didn’t they? Git the shit kicked outta you and you’re probably on desk duty, huh? Doin’ a lot of filing lately, Detective? Answering phones? Making coffee? Guess it’s better ’n being fired.”

“What did you dump that night in the park, Bernard?”

He looked disappointed she wouldn’t take the bait. “Shee-it. I was dumpin’ my trash is all.” He reached for the smokes at last—uninvited—the chains clattering across the metal table. Tapping one of the Camels out, he jammed it between his dry lips, then worked the matches in spite of the cuffs.

Kay held her breath as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. Bad enough she had to breathe his air, she wasn’t about to share his smoke. “So you wouldn’t find it necessary to have Regester dealt with?” she asked.

“Even if I did, how the hell am I supposed to?” He lowered his head to the cigarette again, the cuffs cutting into his wrists as he took a long drag. “I’m just a low-life thug, ain’t that right?”

Kay gave him credit for having no delusions. He exhaled another cloud of smoke and stared at her through it. His gaze slithered down, past her neck and the low V of her blouse, settling on her chest. Kay felt dirty. Felt as though those big, ugly hands of Eales’s had just made the journey instead of his groping eyes.

“You look different, Detective. Kinda butch. You change your hair?”

Kay held his stare when it slid back up.

“Y’ain’t a dyke, are you? Not that it matters, I guess. At least we’d have pussy in common, huh? I just kinda thought you were an item with that cop I shot, you know? The way you was crying when he hit the ground and all.”

Kay swallowed the rage.

“So you sleepin’ nights, Detective?”

“I sleep fine, Bernard.” She felt her jaw clench again. Only once. But he must have noticed.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” His lips crawled into a smirk when she didn’t answer. “You are. Detective Delaney, sittin’ there in her fancy suit, ’fraid of li’l’ ol’ Bernie.”

She took a breath. “Yeah, Bernard. That’s right. I’m so fucking afraid of you I’m pissing myself right here in my fancy suit, while you …you sorry, sad fuck, sucking on a year-old Camel, you’re never going to see the outside of this place again except for a few short drives to the courthouse where they’re going to convict your murdering ass.”

Bernard sat, unflinching.

She leaned in closer. “But we’ll see who’s really afraid when you’re getting strapped down to that table and they stick a cold needle into your arm, huh, Bernie? We’ll see who’s pissing in their shorts when that countdown starts.”

Silence settled on the cell. She could hear his breath whistle through his once-broken nose, then watched his pupils dilate.

“Who’s Patricia Hagen?” she asked.

He took another long drag.

“I know she visits you, Bernard. You wanna tell me who she is? Or do I have to look her up?”

Watching his lips clutch the butt of the Camel made Kay never want to light up again.

“You got yourself a girlfriend, Bernie?”

She watched his eyes as the smoke cleared.

“Take me only a few minutes to find out,” she said. “I can get her address. Maybe give her a visit, hmm?”

“Yeah, she’s my girlfriend. So what?” There was a defensiveness in his voice suddenly.

“What’s she see in you, do you figure? Because I sure as hell don’t see it. When I look at you, all I see is total vacuity.”

She met his stare, unwilling to back down as the silence swelled between them.

“What?” he said at last. “You think I’m some stupid shit never owned a dictionary? Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. There’s more to me than you think, Detective.”

Undaunted, Kay drew herself to the edge of her chair, leaned across the table again. Close enough she could see the pores of Eales’s oily skin. “Does Patricia know why you’re in here, Bernard?”

“Course she does.”

“Does she know everything? Does she know you like your women
dead
? That you hack up their wrists and play with them once they’ve stopped breathing? What else did you do, Bernard, hmm? Did you have sex with them? Maybe you couldn’t get it up while they were alive. Is that why you murdered them?”

Nothing.

“And what would your girlfriend do if she found out? I wonder. What would she think if I showed her the pictures of your little hobby? You think she’d still visit?”

“Fuck off.” He shoved away from the table then, dropping the dwindling butt to the floor and crushing it under one laceless sneaker.

Behind her, Kay heard the guard shift at the cell’s gate. “So what about your brother, Bernard?”

“What about him?”

“His name’s not on your visitation records. He doesn’t come see you?”

“He lives in Pittsburgh.”

“And he can’t drive four hours to visit his big brother?”

“He’s got his own life.”

“No, that’s not it. You probably make him sick, don’t you? Probably can’t stand the thought of you. Your own brother doesn’t even want to see you.”

He grabbed up the pack of smokes, tucked them in the cuff of his jumpsuit. “We done here?”

She’d lost him. She’d let her anger take over, and Eales had clammed up. “Sure, Bernard. We’re done.”

The room came alive with the rattle of chains as Eales stood. Kay pushed back her own chair and followed him.

At the cell door, Eales turned unexpectedly, causing Kay to come up short. But not short enough.

He was too close. “I’m glad that lying bitch is dead,” he whispered between clenched teeth.

“I don’t see why,” she said, refusing to back down. “I’m more of a threat to you than she ever was.” In the narrow space that separated them she could feel the heat coming off his huge body. “They’ve already got a cell reserved for you over there in Supermax. You’re headed to death row, Bernard, because you killed my partner. And I’m the strongest witness in that case.
I’m
the one who’s going to guarantee you make it to that cell.”

IT WASN’T HER USUAL CROWD
at Rocky’s Iron Pit on Pratt Street. Not the late-night muscle addicts who were too absorbed by their own routines to take note of hers. Who never looked twice when she threw a few more
pounds on the leg press and shook as she barely made the twelfth rep, then did it all over again.

Trying to ignore the stares reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors past the Nautilus circuit, Kay wished she’d waited until her usual time. But after leaving the State Pen, with the residue of Eales still crawling along her skin, she’d needed the release. Needed to sweat out the disgust that raged through her body.

Her muscles burned and her arms quivered as she lowered the weights back onto the stack. Still, she couldn’t abolish the image of Eales. And Valley, her burned remains on the flooded warehouse floor. And finally, Spence.

Sitting, she took the setscrew down yet another notch, adding more weight, and felt the stares as she settled into the last set.

She closed her eyes. Tried to picture Spence. But it was harder now. She hated that Eales’s face was easier to conjure up than Spence’s. Hated that the one image her mind always came back to was of Spence as the life seeped out of him on that filthy corner of Baltimore City. She tried to remember his quick smiles and his easygoing laughter, his tireless patience as he’d taught her the ropes. But the memories were fading.