Eight in the Box (3 page)

CHAPTER 5

A
lone in the conference room, Andi Norton heard the commotion
as the guys moved down the hall toward her. They looked like a group of cute young boys on their way to face a playground challenge.

She had her red hair pulled back and draped over her shoulder. That morning it had looked like a deep red silk scarf in contrast to her sharp navy blue suit, the skirt of which she’d had tailored to show off her slender legs. “Well, if it isn’t the three musketeers,” she said.

“That’s right,” Nick said, flashing a smile. “We’re on a mission to clean up the streets of the city.”

“Andi, I need your help in arraignments,” Connie said. His hands, by his side, were flexing, like he was anxious to get started.

“I’m all yours,” she said.

“We know that,” Nick said. “But he needs your help in arraignments.”

Connie punched Nick in the arm.

“That hurt.”

“I know,” Connie said.

Andi followed him as they walked ahead of the others down the stairs to the second floor.

Connie was taking two stairs at a time and Andi was having trouble keeping up. “Slow down,” she said. “I’m going to break my ankle with these heels.”

“We’re late. We need to get squared away before the judge takes the bench. You do the arraignments. I’ll start the paperwork and step in if you need help.”

“Great,” Andi said, “I can use the ice time.” Every day she spent in court, Andi felt more like a real lawyer. After interning in the office for almost nine months, she felt she had developed a solid understanding of the law. “Connie, do you think I’ll be ready for a jury soon?”

“I think you’re ready now. I’ve got one set for tomorrow that I was going to give you. A simple drug case, hand-to-hand to an undercover.”

“Are you serious?” Her entire body pulsed with adrenaline. This was more than she’d been hoping for.

“I’ve got to start working on the Jesse Wilcox case. If I lose the motion and the drugs get suppressed, then I’ve blown another shot at taking him off the street.”

“Is he the one that—”

“Beat a drug case last year. It was the last trial I lost. Then Alves pinched him on this new case a few weeks before getting bumped up to Homicide.”

“When’s the motion?”

“Not for a couple of weeks, but I want to finish looking over the file tonight and make sure discovery’s complete. I’ll get together with Alves later this week if he frees up some time. Everything’s riding on this motion.”

“So, is tomorrow’s trial definitely mine?”

“I’ll check with Liz to make sure it’s okay. You’ve been doing a great job. I don’t think she’ll have a problem with it, especially if I second-seat you. And hey, you are one lucky gal. It took me a year before I had my first jury trial. It would be a neat trick if we can get you one while you’re still a student.”

Andi studied the tall, serious man in front of her. Unlike guys she had dated in the past, Connie hadn’t been frightened away by her young daughter. He had understood that she had to put Rachel and her career ahead of everything else. She fixed her eyes on his. “Connie, thanks for everything. You’ve taught me so much that I feel like I’m better than most of the lawyers I go up against. If Liz lets me try the case, I’ll do a good job. I won’t make you look bad.”

He nodded. “I know you won’t. Because you’re going to spend tonight prepping. And you’d better have your opening ready to run by me first thing in the morning.”

With that, Connie opened the door to the first session for her. The noise of the courtroom hit her like that of the annual wedding gown sale at Filene’s Basement. Thank God she had chosen South Bay for her internship. So many of her classmates were stuck in suburban courthouses with garden-variety drunk-driving cases and barroom fights, day after day. Instead, she had drug distributions, gun cases, even serious assaults.

And she got to meet Conrad Darget. There was no pretense with Connie. The combination of his clean-shaven look and his muscular body was a nice bonus. And there was that excitement, that helplessness she felt when he hugged her, like there was no escape.

His eyes were the most unusual she’d ever seen: two different colors, one hazel, one blue. The two together were beautiful—mesmerizing, she liked to think, like each held a separate part of his personality. The logical prosecutor. The thoughtful man.

To the other ADAs, Connie may have been Mr. Clean. But for Andi Norton he was starting to look more like Mr. Right.

CHAPTER 6

T
he corridor on the second floor of police headquarters at One
Schroeder Plaza seemed especially long this morning. Angel Alves opened the glass door that led into the Homicide Unit and walked into Sergeant Wayne Mooney’s office. Mooney had his back to the door and Alves knew he must be lost in thought. “Sarge, I just spoke with Eunice. She confirmed that McCarthy’s probably dead.”

Mooney swiveled around to face him. The sergeant nodded and drew his hand over the crime scene photos spread out on his desk. “We’re not waiting around for DNA results. You and I both know that she
is
dead. Now let’s see what we can do to catch this bastard.”

“I thought we should at least check with the crime lab. She also said that both vics were probably alive when they were put in the tubs. What I can’t figure out is why he would go through all that trouble to make them look like suicides and then take the bodies.”

“He’s not trying to make them look like suicides. I think he’s performing some kind of sick ritual. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

That quickly, Mooney became engrossed in the photos. In the bright morning light Alves could see a thicket of gray hairs rapidly conquering the brown on Mooney’s head. Not bad, considering most guys on the job for more than twenty years had gone completely silver or had no hair at all.

“What else did you get from Eunice?” said Mooney. “They find anything useful in the house?”

“No.”

Mooney was chewing on his pen, studying the Hayes crime scene photos. “What about the shoe print?”

“They got a decent mold. It’s a New Balance. Eunice thinks it’s an irregular. Says she can make a match if we find the shoe.”

“Pull up a chair. When we catch this sick fuck, that mold will be great corroboration at trial.”

Alves watched as Mooney sorted through the stack of reports on his desk from the Hayes murder, pulled one out and seemed to cross-reference it with one of the photos.

“We need to find a common thread between the two vics. Why were they killed? Why the hell is he draining off their blood?” Mooney asked. “What’s he doing with their bodies? They’ve got to have something in common that brought this guy into their lives.”

“They were both divorced, successful businesswomen,” Alves said.

“Lucky in their careers, unlucky at love. We know that Hayes wasn’t dating anyone. Was McCarthy? We canvassed the neighborhood last night. No one saw her getting dropped off by anyone. If she was seeing someone, last night would have been the perfect time to have him over, with the kid and the ex both out of town.”

“She wasn’t dating,” Alves said. “Her parents said she didn’t want a parade of guys coming in and out of her daughter’s life. She thought it would hurt the kid. It sounds like she had no intention of dating until her little girl graduated college.” If he were ever out of the picture, he knew Marcy would put the twins before her own needs.

“What else?” Mooney asked.

“Both of their exes were out of town at the time of their murders,” Alves said. “Each has an alibi. But we can keep digging.”

“I talked to Walter McCarthy a few hours ago. The man’s destroyed. I’ll get a better read when I see him in person, but I don’t think he had anything to do with this. You’re right. The killer must have known that they’d be alone. Did he know their exes would be out of town too? How would he know that?”

“Maybe our guy’s a travel agent or works for an airline,” Alves said. “I’ll check to see if there were any similarities in their travel arrangements. I’ve got a decent contact with the feds.”

“When you finish, I want you to run over to Fidelity to see if any of McCarthy’s friends knew she’d be alone this weekend. Maybe she was seeing someone she was hiding from her family. Or maybe there was someone she wasn’t interested in who couldn’t take no for an answer. I’m going to shoot over to Roslindale to see McCarthy. He and the kid are due in at Logan at ten. I’m having them picked up.”

“What do you think you’ll get out of him, Sarge?”

“I’m wondering if they used any of the same contractors that Hayes used on her house.” Mooney pulled a report off the stack on his desk and handed it to Alves. He said, “Successful, single mothers always use housecleaners, landscapers, plumbers, handymen. There might be a link there.”

Mooney stood up and hitched his pants, putting his gun and holster back onto his belt. He took a fresh battery out of the charger and clipped it onto his police radio and slid it into his back pocket. “There’s another way our guy could’ve known they were alone. He could’ve been watching them. The house next to McCarthy’s didn’t look lived in. Everything was overgrown. Someone could have watched her from that yard. I want to see if there was a similar vantage point near the Hayes house. Then I’m going to start canvassing both neighborhoods. I don’t like to rely on what people tell the uniforms. I’d rather ask them face-to-face.”

Alves skimmed the names of the contractors on the report Mooney had given him. “Sarge, remember this guy that Hayes hired to fix her ceilings? He was her next-door neighbor, a plasterer right off the boat from Ireland. He seemed a little cagey. I’d like to take another run at him.”

“The plasterer didn’t kill anyone,” Mooney said. “He was terrified that we were going to get him deported. Call me when you finish up at Fidelity.”

Alves knew he was getting the bum’s rush. Mooney was anxious to get going.

CHAPTER 7

A
lves watched the sun as it began its descent over the Mission
Hill housing development, his old neighborhood. The ugly three-story brick deathtraps that he grew up in had been razed and replaced by charming town houses, the city trying to give people a sense of home. Alves was standing on the second-floor catwalk that ran between the north and south wings of One Schroeder Plaza. The plaza had been named for two heroic police officer brothers, one gunned down by bank-robber radicals in 1970, the other shot during a pawnshop heist in 1973. It had been a busy day but there were no new leads and he was tired.

“How’d it go?” Mooney asked. Alves hadn’t heard his sergeant behind him.

“Not so good, Sarge. Sorry I never called.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Mooney said. “Anything new?”

“McCarthy worked with so many people they took up my whole day, but no one gave me anything we didn’t know. Most people knew she was divorced and that she and her ex were still friendly. She had custody of the kid, but she let the ex take her whenever he wanted. Since the split, she’d devoted herself to her daughter and her job. There was no man in her life. She’d never have gone out on a blind date or looked through the personal ads.”

“What about your friend with the airline info?” Mooney asked.

“He had nothing for me,” Alves said. “The two exes booked their airfare online with different airlines.”

“I came up empty too,” Mooney said. “McCarthy wasn’t aware of any contractors working on the house. Susan had custody of the house, but he took care of all the upkeep, including the yard work. He still had a forty percent interest in the house, if and when they ever sold it. I think he was trying to get back with her. Being her maintenance man was a perfect way to keep himself in the picture.”

“How’s he holding up?” Alves asked.

“He’s a mess.”

“You see the kid?”

“No,” Mooney said. “They’d dropped her off at her grandparents’ on the way over. All the shit we see, nothing bothers me more than seeing the kids when something like this happens. The only thing worse is when a kid dies.” Mooney was staring toward the fading sun. He looked angry, like he was mad at himself for having allowed Susan McCarthy to be murdered. Mooney didn’t have any kids of his own, and Alves wondered how this tender streak had developed in his otherwise tough sergeant.

“You find anything else in the house?” Alves asked.

Mooney closed his eyes and turned away from the sun. He took something out of his jacket pocket. “We looked through her BlackBerry,” he said, handing the device to Alves. “Everyone listed was a relative or a business contact. Get a subpoena from the DA’s office so we can check out her call history.”

“Did the neighbors see anything?” Alves asked.

“Most of them weren’t home. Maybe we’ll go back later.”

“Sure,” Alves said. “But, Sarge, can we get a little sleep tonight? Marcy and the kids haven’t seen me since yesterday morning and I’m running on fumes.”

Mooney watched the last sliver of the orange sun duck behind the skyline. “You know what’s bothering me more than anything? I still can’t figure out how the bastard got in the house if she didn’t let him in. And I don’t think she let him in. Look at the struggle that took place in the bedroom. I’d have to say she didn’t see him till he was in her room.” Mooney looked down at his watch like he was surprised to find it there on his wrist. “Oh shit, we gotta go.”

“Where?” Alves asked.

“The media room. Press conference with the commissioner and the DA. They’re hoping to go live on the five o’clock news.”

“Do we have to say anything?”

“No. Just stand behind the brass and look good,” Mooney said. They started walking toward the bank of elevators. “When we’re done, we’ll go talk with the rest of the neighbors. Then you can go home to your family and get some sleep.”

“Thank God.”

“Thank me, not God,” Mooney said. “Make sure you get a good rest. In the morning we’re going to start looking into every corner of McCarthy’s life. I want to know where she did her grocery shopping, where she bought her clothes, where she took her dry cleaning, where she got her keys made, what movie theaters she went to, her favorite restaurants, everything. We’ll cross-check it with everything we know about Hayes. These two women came in contact with this sick fuck someplace and we need to find that place.”