TORN (29 page)

Some time after midnight she woke up to find the half-eaten bowl of pasta had slipped off her lap and spread itself across her couch. The TV was muttering away to itself. Reilly shivered – the heat had been off for a couple of hours, and the room was now bitterly cold. She scooped the leftover pasta back into the bowl with the spoon – cleaning the couch would have to wait until tomorrow – then headed straight for bed.

She slipped off her skirt then burrowed deep under the covers, still wearing her blouse. Trying not to shiver, she curled herself up in a fetal position and wrapped the covers all the way up around her neck, cocooning herself in a deep layer of goose down and Italian linen.

Little by little she began to warm up, and was able to start to relax her muscles. But though she was tired – exhausted, even – sleep refused to come. Her nap on the couch had done just enough to take the edge off of her tiredness, and now sleep was as difficult to catch as a butterfly on a summer’s day.

Every time she started to relax, her thoughts turned back to the investigation. The arrival of the video footage had given them a brief moment of optimism, but in the end it had produced more questions than answers.

Was the barn they could see in the background the same one where they had found Fitzpatrick, or was there another location – the region where the samples of horse feed and cooking sauce had come from?  And, more pertinently, who were the next two victims? And where and when would the killer strike next?

Reilly had sent the disk on to the tech guys to analyze the footage itself, and to focus in on the dust mark she’d spotted, but she didn’t expect much; the killer was skilled at covering his tracks, and giving them nothing.

In fact, the only thing they had so far that she suspected he didn’t mean to give them was the orange pencil, which dovetailed with Reuben’s suggestion that he was an artist, sketching each individual scene for his own enjoyment.

Was that something to follow up on? And if so, how? All they knew about the guy was that he most likely worked or lived in an area frequented by horses, could have a taste for spicy food and liked to sketch.

Her thoughts then shifted to last night’s conversation with Chris, and his surprising revelation about his ex.

He obviously still held a candle for Melanie too, and her forthcoming wedding was clearly the reason for his recent short temper.

Reilly was also somewhat taken aback by how much the idea bothered her.

She lay in the darkness, unsure what to think. She and Chris had some kind of … connection, she was pretty sure about that; she just couldn’t tell if it was solely down to what had happened earlier this year, and the closeness they shared throughout that investigation, or was it something more, something deeper?

One thing for sure was that she trusted him, felt safe around him.

And as she’d learned last night, there was so much more going on behind the calm, easygoing façade he presented to the world.

Now Reilly wanted to find out much more, wanted to know exactly what made Chris Delaney tick, besides work, of course.

She smiled, thinking about Pete Kennedy and his beloved Josie. She didn’t think she was made for quite that kind of domestic bliss, but maybe a piece of something similar might be good?

It would definitely be nice to have someone to share things with, someone to have breakfast with in one of those nice little cafés down by the canal at weekends, or a stroll through St Stephen’s Green on a sunny afternoon. Someone who understood the demands of the job, but could help her forget about them too.

Reilly rolled over, feeling annoyed at herself for even going there. Who was she kidding? In this job, there was barely time for sleep, let alone play.

Notwithstanding that, Chris had never given the slightest indication that he was interested in anything more than the findings of Reilly’s electron microscope, and clearly he was still nursing a broken heart. So how had she gone from thinking of him in terms of a good working relationship to almost comparing them to an old married couple?

When Reilly woke the next morning, she didn’t feel at all refreshed.

For just those few short hours in front of the TV she had been able to relax and forget everything about work, the murders (and Chris), but with the dawn of a new day it all came rushing back to her, along with the nagging feeling that there was something about this investigation she was missing.

Down on her knees scrubbing the couch in the gray light of a December morning, she wrestled with the idea, but whatever it was that had momentarily surfaced, was once more hidden in the depths of her subconscious.

For a brief moment she considered talking to Reuben Knight about it – he was a qualified psychologist, after all – but the thought of him snooping about in her subconscious …

The last thing Reilly wanted was his lascivious mind probing her darker thoughts. Sometimes, the way he looked at her, it was like he knew everything about her. Her family – what had happened with Jess …

Arriving at the GFU headquarters sometime after eight, she flicked on the light in her office and almost jumped in surprise: the devil himself was sitting in her chair in the dark, gazing up at the ceiling with his dark, thoughtful eyes.

Reilly stared at him in surprise. ‘Goodness, Reuben, what are you doing?’

He looked entirely comfortable behind her desk, fingers steepled together, lips pursed in thought. ‘I find the dark is much more conducive to creative thinking, don’t you?’

Reilly dumped her handbag on the floor, and sat in one of the chairs facing the desk. If he wanted to play the mysterious profiler, she was quite happy to humor him. For all his eccentricities – and there were many – there was no denying that he’d come up with the goods. ‘Really? So has your nocturnal cogitation produced any radical breakthrough?’ she teased, mocking his own way with the English language.

Reuben was pensive.. ‘Breakthrough?  I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that, but I am rather impressed with our little serial killer.’  He gave a wicked smile. ‘He has quite the sense of style, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, I suppose he does have his own distinctive way.’

Reuben leaned forward, his face full of enthusiasm. ‘I watched the video several times last night.  I’m so sorry I missed the premiere but I was otherwise engaged,’ he added mysteriously. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice how our man set us up, then knocked us down several times.’

‘Detective Kennedy made the same comment.’

Reuben arched his eyebrows. ‘Detective Dinosaur? You deduced that from his grunts?’

Reilly did her best to resist a smile and kept her cool, steady gaze on Reuben. 

‘Also,’ he added, leaning forward in a conspiratorial way, ‘did you catch the potential reference to the upper echelons of the force?’

She nodded. ‘I was going to ask you about that – do you think the killer noticed it?’

‘What you mean is, do I think that another lawman is at risk?  Perhaps one of the two remaining victims he mentioned?’

‘Yes, because if there’s even the slightest suspicion—’

Reuben grinned wickedly. ‘How delicious that would be …’ Then his expression turned suddenly serious. ‘I don’t think it’s a serious threat, no. I think our unsub included it as another tease, possibly another wind-up to send us off in a different direction.’

Reilly thought for a moment. ‘So if the police are not a target then who are the remaining two? We’d have to assume that the final one will be what you talked about before – the perpetrator himself?’

Reuben nodded. ‘Once again your beguiling looks are matched by your sharp-witted mind.’  He gazed at his immaculately manicured fingernails, then back at Reilly. He shrugged. ‘Assuming that we believe him when he says that this is all about justice—’

‘Or rather a miscarriage of justice,’ Reilly clarified.

‘Indeed. And given the effort he’s gone to with the Dante setups, it seems unlikely he’s lying.’

She thought for a moment. ‘Well then, I suppose the one person we don’t have yet is a judge.’

Reuben clapped his hands together in mock applause. He stood suddenly, and walked quickly round to her side of the desk. Reilly felt his warm breath on the back of her neck.

She laughed uneasily. Although she liked Reuben, there was no doubt that being alone with him unnerved her.

‘Tell me, is that work ethic of yours innate – or borne from a relentless drive to cast out the demons in your past?’ he remarked.

Reilly whirled around to face him, her heart pounding. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Oh, come, my dear.’ Reuben looked disappointed. ‘I am a behaviourist, after all. And given your rather … impenetrable demeanor, but very obvious psychological fragilities, you must have known I’d be tempted by your personnel file.’

Her face flushed. ‘You had no right!’

‘My darling Reilly, you and I both know that what happened to your mother and sister is what drives your every move – fuels your quest to overcome evil,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I think it’s admirable, actually. After all, every brilliant investigator needs a powerful motivating factor. But what confuses me is this: are you trying to run away from your family sins, or atone for them?’

Reilly just sat there, unable to respond. It was a question her therapist back home in Cali used to ask, and one Daniel had raised the last time she’d seen him.

‘In any case, I must now convene with your erstwhile colleagues,’ Reuben continued, dropping the subject just as quickly, and leaving Reilly’s emotions spinning. ‘Should be fun. And just between us, I believe O Serious One has a major bee in his bonnet about my naked admiration of your talents …’ Again, he let the comment hang in the air, waiting for her to respond.

‘Delaney?’ she laughed nervously. ‘ I just think he’s taken a serious dislike to your cologne.’

Reuben held her gaze for a touch longer than was necessary, as though he had found some way to read her mind. ‘Perhaps.’

She swallowed, deciding to deflect the conversation back to the investigation once and for all. ‘Just before you go … if our killer does have a judge in his sights—’

‘“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”’

‘That’s not Dante?’

Reuben grinned. ‘John F. Kennedy, actually. In the
Inferno
, Dante and Virgil pass by a group of dead souls outside the entrance to Hell. These individuals, when alive, remained neutral at a time of great moral decision. Virgil explains that these neutrals cannot enter either Heaven or Hell because they could not choose one side or another while on earth. They are therefore worse than the greatest sinners in Hell because they are abhorrent to both God and Satan alike, and have been left to mourn their fate as insignificant beings, neither hailed nor cursed in life or death, endlessly travailing below Heaven but outside of Hell.’

‘In a limbo of sorts?’

‘Indeed.’ Reuben looked pensive and she guessed he was having the very same thoughts as she was, namely trying to guess what punishment awaited the judge upon whom the killer had set his sights.

‘So what should we expect?’

‘These wretched ones, who never were alive, went naked and were stung again and again by horseflies and wasps that circled them.’ Reuben seemed to be quoting directly from the text. ‘The insects streaked their faces with their blood, which, mingled with their tears, fell at their feet, where it was gathered up by sickening worms.’

Chris stared at the glass of vodka on the bar in front of him.

The pub was busy, full of the office lunchtime crowd looking for sandwiches and shepherd’s pies on a Friday afternoon.

Chris was looking for a remedy.

The place was across the road from the station, and he’d popped in for a quick one, realizing that alchohol was doing a better number on his limbs than ten painkillers. He knocked back the vodka; unable to remember the last time he had been really, truly, shitfaced drunk.

Actually no, he was wrong. He could.

Chris parked his car carefully, but still couldn’t avoid hitting the kerb.

He unbuckled his seatbelt, managing to get it tangled as he stumbled out of the car. Then he made his way unsteadily up the path, rang the front doorbell, and stood swaying slightly while he waited for her to reply. After a moment the hall light flicked on, then the outside light, bathing him in a yellow glow.

‘Who is it?’  Her voice was edged with annoyance.

‘Mel, you know it’s me. Let me in, for Christ’s sake.’

‘You’re drunk.’ The accusation, though true, sounded harsh and judgemental issued from the small intercom.

Chris pushed the button to speak. ‘Yes, I’m drunk,’ he admitted, ‘Let me in, I need to talk to you.’

There was a long silence as Melanie thought about it. ‘Show me your ID,’ she said finally.

‘For fuck’s sake…’

‘I said, show me your ID,’ she commanded, and frustrated, Chris whipped his badge out from his jacket pocket. Tonight, he was in no mood for this.

She opened the door and he stepped into the hall. Peeking outside, she caught a glance of his car. ‘You drove here?’ she said, her eyes heavy with accusation, and Chris automatically felt guilty.

‘Yeah, I drove. I told you, I needed to talk to you.’

‘But you’re the one who’s supposed to do things right –  you’re the one who’s supposed to uphold the law, supposed to protect us from—’

Chris’s head ached. He didn’t need to hear that shit just then.

Finally she sighed, pointed him towards the living room. ‘Go and sit down.  I’ll get you a cup of coffee.’

Chris slumped down on the couch, and looked around the small room. It looked just as it had when Melanie’s parents died a couple of years ago – the ceramic ducks flying forever above the mantelpiece, Melanie’s childhood photographs on the piano, the old fourteen-inch TV on its little stand in the corner of the room. 

The screen flickered at Chris, but he ignored it, and closed his eyes, allowing the tiredness to wash over him while he listened to the comforting domestic sounds of Melanie pottering around the kitchen. If only everything could be normal again, back to the way it used to be…

‘Don’t fall asleep here. You can’t stay here, you know that.’

Chris woke with a start.  Melanie was standing over him, holding out a chipped coffee mug with a butterfly on it. He remembered buying it for her a long time ago, at the time he was away in training college, maybe? And despite its somewhat worn appearance she refused to get rid of it.

‘I don’t like it when you’re drunk,’ she said.

‘I know, I know.  I’m sorry.’  He sipped at the scalding coffee, and tried to clear his thoughts.

Chris gazed at her. He could see the pain still lurking there, the years of loneliness, of fear.  Suddenly he slid off the couch, and dropped to his knees in front of her. ‘I’m so sorry, Mel. Sorry I wasn’t there for you, sorry I can never make you feel safe…’

Melanie just stood there, immobile as he wept, when all he wanted was for her to take him in her arms, gently stroke his hair, and wipe the tears from his cheeks as he sobbed, his head in her lap.

He wanted to her to comfort him, to tell him that of course he made her feel safe, that she knew he was doing everything he could.

But Chris realized that the life he wanted for him and Melanie would never happen. Their future was ruined, their past forever tainted by someone who’d taken everything. And their present …well, this was their present. Him drinking too much and ignoring his responsibilities while she stayed locked away in this house, afraid to face the world, afraid to face him.

And with a heavy heart, he understood that neither of them would be able to bear this life much longer.

Later that afternoon, Reilly’s phone rang. She answered quickly. ‘Steel.’

It was Kennedy. ‘Is Chris with you, by any chance? He mentioned something about calling over …’  He sounded hurried.

‘No. I haven’t heard from since yesterday.’

‘Damn. There’s something going on with him …’

Reilly wondered what Chris was up to now. It wasn’t like him to go walkabout. Then she remembered what he’d said about Melanie getting married this week. Could the wedding be today?

‘If I hear from him, I’ll—’

‘I wanted to talk to you anyway. We’ve found the next victim – at a quarry of all places,’ Kennedy told her quickly. ‘One of the workers stumbled acrossed the body this morning. Victim’s since been identified as one Andrew Morgan. And guess wha
t
he’s a district court judge.’

It wouldn’t have been how Judge AndrewMorgan would want to be remembered.

‘This guy really is something else,’ Kennedy said, struggling to speak with his hand clenched over his face. Karen Thompson was low down in the sand, examining something, a white flag positioned nearby.

Already the smell was bothering Reilly less and less. That’s the way it was with unpleasant things, she thought – at first they seemed unbearable, a great intrusion, impossible to ignore, but little by little they lost their edge, and became almost everyday occurrences.

Was that what was happening to all of them in this job? Were they becoming immune? She looked at Kennedy, who was standing on the grass just above the gravel pit, talking to the medical examiner.

Chris was still nowhere to be found. Reilly had tried his mobile but it went straight to voicemail. Where the hell was he?

She was worried. While she was glad he’d confided in her, this thing with his ex-fiancée was obviously affecting him a lot more than he was letting on.

Still, this wasn’t the time or the place to worry about it.

Lifting up her kitbag, Reilly took a deep breath, and approached the small group. ‘Afternoon, Doc.’

‘Hey, there.’ Karen nodded towards the body. ‘Another little beauty for us to unravel.’

‘Oh, man …’ Reilly turned her gaze to the heap on the ground and almost immediately averted it. The setup was as hideous to behold as it was to smell.

Judge Morgan had been a large man – no, she thought, if truth be told, he was obese – and nakedness certainly didn’t improve his looks.

Struggling to regain her professionalism, she looked again at the hulking mass in the sand, trying to take it all in. It was clear from the outset that he had been dead for three or four days – decomposition had already started, turning his flesh a disconcerting gray. But for Reilly, the biggest indicator that this wasn’t a fresh death was the maggots.

The dead man’s pasty naked form pulsed with teeming, relentless burrowing larvae. Most of his upper body, including his head, was completely enveloped by the stubby writhing mass.

As Karen went to turn the body over, handfuls of worms rained down from his nose, ears and mouth. They were devouring his flesh in a relentless manner, and every orifice seemed to pulse with movement. The maggots had colonized so much of his face that his dead eyes stared widely upwards, the eyelids eaten away. His nose, too, was barely recognizable, most of it already devoured.

A cloud of blowflies hovered doggedly aroun
d
despite the cold December temperatures there was enough heat from the rapidly decomposing body to sustain them.

Swallowing hard, Reilly immediately recalled Reuben’s words from that morning, and realized he had correctly predicted this particular punishment in accordance with their killer’s twisted code.

‘Any idea on the cause of death?’ she asked Karen Thompson

The other woman nodded, her saucer-like eyes peering up at Reilly as she bent over the corpse.

‘If I were a betting woman, I would say that the good judge was first brought here under some kind of duress, and judging by the swelling,’ she indicated a particular area on the victim’s head that seemed to be wriggling more intensely than the rest, ‘it looks like he was hit over the head with something. Can’t say for sure until I get him on to the table and pry off all these little creatures.’

Reilly thought that this relatively fuzzy description of the maggots seemed very much at odds with their disgusting appearance.

The doctor straightened up. ‘So what sin does this punishment signify?’

Reilly pursed her lips. She recalled a particular passage she’d read in the
Inferno
about the neutrals soon after her conversation with Reuben.

They swatted helplessly in the air, swatting their own bodies, while insects and flies circled their naked forms. Maggots crawled out from rotted gaps in their teeth, gathering in heaps below. These souls were said to follow a blank banner ahead of them as a symbol of their pointless paths.

Reilly looked at the white flag.  Something to symbolize the blank banner?

‘Neutrality,’ she told Karen. ‘Our man seems to have identified Judge Morgan as someone who was uncommitted.’

‘But judges are impartial by definition, surely?’

‘Yes, but he must have ruled some way on a case that the killer didn’t like. The neutrals are portrayed in Dante’s
Inferno
as those who had the opportunity to do good or evil, but choose not to do either.’

‘Charming,’ the ME replied flatly, and Reilly followed her gaze back to the judge, the maggots still gorging on his rapidly decomposing flesh.

If the man’s crime was indeed impartiality, this particular punishment seemed unnecessarily harsh.

The following day, Reilly stood with her hands behind her back, and watched O’Brien carefully. The team had all been summoned to an early morning meeting.  The Chief wasn't exactly reading the riot act – he had been in the force long enough to know that without solid leads and evidence there was little they could actually do – but he was venting his frustrations at them all the same.

Chris and Kennedy stood beside Reilly, while Reuben Knight lolled in a nearby chair, one leg hooked over the arm of it.

She looked closely at Chris, and watched him resolutely place his shaking hands in his pockets. She didn’t believe him when he’d mentioned something about missing the Morgan discovery yesterday afternoon because he’d been following up on some mysterious lead. 

His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt wrinkled and his tie askew, as if he’d slept in his clothes. To someone like Reilly (who, with an alcoholic father, knew the signs all too well) Chris looked like he’d spent most of the day at the bottle.

What the hell? So much for being happy for Melanie and wishing her well. For a guy who didn’t drink all that much this was a worrying development.  Reilly sorely hoped this whole thing with the ex-fiancée, coupled with the pressures of the workload, wasn’t the start of a slippery slope for Chris, and she resolved to confront him about it as soon as she got the chance.

‘Five murders!’ O’Brien thundered. He held up a national paper for emphasis, a huge headline emblazoned across it: ‘
Punisher Claims Fifth Victim’. ‘Are we any nearer to finding this madman?’

‘He’s not really a madman,’ Reuben drawled, fiddling with his precious Mont Blanc pen. ‘That’s the problem, really.’

O’Brien shot him a furious glare, but the profiler seemed impervious.

‘So do we have anything? Anything at all?’

They glanced at each other like unruly kids hauled up before the headmaster, as if trying to decide how to tell their side of the story without getting anyone else in trouble.

‘I’m afraid Reuben is right,’ Reilly finally replied. ‘It seems pretty clear that our killer had all this planned out long before he committed the first murder. So far he’s made few mistakes, or has given us little that moves us forward.’

‘Except,’ Kennedy added, glancing at the others, ‘now that we’ve found the judge, we might have a good chance of connecting the dots and finding a link between all five victims, and maybe figure out the original crime that it’s all related to.’

O’Brien now had his back to them, and was gazing out the window. ‘You mean the justice angle?’  He turned round suddenly. ‘Assuming it’s related to an actual crime …’

‘There is little question that all these murder
s
these punishment
s
stem from a single transgression,’ Reuben said. ‘As I outlined in my profile, what we have is an angry vigilante who is intimately familiar with the failings of the modern courts system, and determined to extract what vicious justice he can from those he thinks were complicit.’