TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series) (12 page)

Chapter 20

‘But how would someone get the mushroom into the burger?’ Chris asked Reilly. ‘Wouldn’t the restaurant have delivered the food to the right customer?’

‘Well,’ interjected Julius. ‘I know the place. Restaurant is maybe too strong of a word for it. It’s a rat infested shit-hole, basically. I don’t think they would care who the food was delivered to, as long as they got their money.’

‘So,’ said Reilly. ‘It’s not a stretch to think that someone, maybe McMurty, maybe someone else, collected Kennedy’s burger, shoved a toxic mushroom in it and delivered it to him?’

‘We need to talk to Kennedy again,’ said Chris. ‘See if there was anything odd about the delivery. For all we know, the restaurant might just be so bad they don’t know their poisonous mushrooms from their button cups, or what have you.’

Chris’s phone rang and he turned away to answer it. Reilly continued to talk to Julius. ‘I want you to test the oil used to cook the mushroom and compare it to the one used to cook the meat,’ she said. ‘We need to find out if they were prepared separately.’

‘That would be extremely difficult,’ said Julius. ‘It’ll be cross-contaminated once they’re put together.’

‘Just try it,’ she insisted. ‘You’re the best in the business. I know you’ll find a way.’

Chris ended his call and turned back to her. ‘The guy Kennedy was watching, Harry McMurty? He’s just been found dead.’

When Reilly and Chris pulled up to the apartment block not far from Sheriff Street, they could see police cars around the entrance. Residents milled about too, looking intrigued and slightly disturbed.

‘Delaney.’ A tall, sandy haired man waved at them from behind the police cordon. ‘Over here.’

‘Reilly, this is James Costello from the Narc Unit. Not sure if you’ve met.’

‘From Chris’s days down with us lowly bunch,’ the man finished. ‘Looks like we’ve got a suicide here, mate, but I called you in because it could be related to that murder case.’

‘Which one?’ said Chris. ‘The Armstrong girl?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Peter. ‘Come on up.’

The elevators in Harry McMurty’s building smelt of spilt liquor, vomit and urine. Her nose was able to pinpoint each one with deadly precision and it was all Reilly could do to keep from throwing up.

‘Almost there,’ said Chris, looking sideways at her. He understood that her sense of smell could be both curse and gift.

McMurty’s apartment was small and dim, much the same as Rose Cooper’s. It was a single room, with a bed that pulled down from the wall. The windows were not clear glass, but instead they were a kind of foggy fiberglass material. There was no view to be had, and with the lights off, only a dim and murky light filtered through.

‘Here you have it,’ said Costello. ‘A suicide note.’ He picked up a single sheet of paper that was bagged and put back in its original position. The note was badly written, in a cramped and ugly script. It read:

‘I did them murders. The girl Jennifer Armstrong and the other one Cooper. I hate women, those slags. I fed them poison and pills in their food. Killed the cop too.”

After that, the note slid into incomprehensible scribbles. Chris and Reilly looked at each other. ‘Not exactly Shakespeare, was he?’ said Chris.

‘We need to find out what his reading and writing level was,’ said Reilly. ‘It looks like he could be semi-illiterate.’

The corpse of Harry McMurty was slouched over the little formica table like a man gone to sleep at dinner. He was clutching his stomach. Reilly didn’t want to look too closely until she had scoped out the rest of the room.

The walls were mostly bare, apart from a few pictures of Harry with different groups of people, male and female. Holiday shots, by the look of them. Young kids having fun in the sun. McMurty was always at the centre of the action, with the prettiest girl on his arm. Reilly recognized Rose Cooper in one of them, her hand held under her chin like a starlet, her red lips pursed in a kiss. The last picture Reilly had seen of her, she had been a dead, sold corpse. If only she could reach back through time and warn her: Get out of there.

The carpets stank. Dirt and filth had been ground into them. Cigarette burns littered the floor like gun casings.

The bathroom was full of beauty products. Moisturizers, hair oils, cleansers, toners, concealer. The guy had more products that Reilly did, that was certain. McMurty may not have cared about what his apartment looked like, but he sure cared about his looks. Reilly guessed he probably stole these from the girls he was with. They were high end products, a lot of them.

‘We already did a quick sweep of the bed,’ she could hear Costello saying to Chris. ‘It looked as though he hadn’t washed his sheets in years. We found a stash of meth in the bathroom, and pills under the bed. He was a known dealer, but small time. We were watching him, seeing if he would lead us anywhere big.’

‘Did the neighbors hear anything last night?’

‘Haven’t talked to them yet. People here are pretty loathe to talk to cops. Plus, what would they hear from a suicide? The guy crying or something?’

Reilly sighed. It was this kind of sloppiness that led to things being missed.

‘Let’s call in our guys,’ she said, coming out of the bathroom. ‘I want them to tag and bag this place.’

Half an hour later, Lucy and Gary were at the flat, going over everything with a fine toothed comb. ‘We’re lucky those narc cops didn’t completely trash the scene,’ Reilly commented.

‘We’re lucky those narc cops called us,’ Chris pointed out. ‘And you’re going to have some explaining to do to the chief about why the GFU are here, cleaning up a suicide.’

She looked at him speculatively. ‘You can tell me that you’re one hundred percent sure that this was suicide?’

‘I’m not,’ said Chris. ‘I’m not as convinced as you are, that’s all. But it’s not me that you have to convince.’

‘Leave O’Brien to me,’ said Reilly. She leaned over the body of Harry McMurty, trying to get a glimpse of his face, which was curled into the shadow of his chest. She saw something glinting in his dark hair. Taking a cotton bud, she dragged it over his scalp, then raised it to her eye and saw that it was a tiny speck of red glitter. It was present all through the hair. ‘Look,’ she said, ’he’s got glitter in his hair. So he goes to a party, then comes home and just kills himself?’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said Gary, who was dusting the floors and surfaces for prints.

Reilly crouched down again and studied the dead man’s prone form. Karen Thompson would do an autopsy, of course, but Reilly wanted to know if the body could tell her anything from the outset. A bottle of pills lay prone on the table. The suspected suicide weapon.

As she looked at the creamy smoothness of Harry McMurty’s skin, Reilly noticed something at his temple. A redness, an indentation.

‘Lucy,’ she called. ‘Get the camera.’

She lifted Harry’s glossy hair while Lucy took some close ups of the marks.

The forensic sweep of Harry McMurty’s flat was taking a long time. Chris, who was supposed to be concentrating, found himself distracted by Reilly. She was completely focused of course, going over the scene like it had something urgent to tell her, something that was just for her.

And it did. She had found something.

Last night, when he got the news about Kennedy, Chris had felt his whole world tilt on its side. He took Kennedy and his partner’s solidness, his humor and his reliability for granted. More than ever, he had wanted someone by his side to share his distress with, and the only person he could think of was Reilly.

Since her return they had been growing closer, he knew it. He had always liked how tough she was, how smart, how you could joke around so easily with her.

For a long time he had told himself that he simply admired and respected her, and that was it. But when she was away in Florida, he found that he had missed her. He missed their daily banter, the little glances they exchanged when they had both zeroed in on a clue or inconsistency in a case. Pete Kennedy had a heart of gold, but catching his eye didn’t give Chris quite the same thrill.

When Reilly came back, he had cautioned himself not to be over eager. But he found that she seemed a little more open now, almost as if she was allowing him to get closer. Something had happened in Florida. He wasn’t sure exactly what, but he liked the effect it had.

And then the other day … Whatever part of Chris that had still been trying to be careful, to hold something back, had been completely overwhelmed by that kiss. But then she had pulled back. He had more been disappointed than he cared to admit when she’d called it a “major mistake.” She had laughed about it, as if the mere thought of being with him was hilarious. Well, he would back off. He had never been in the habit of chasing women. If Reilly wanted to be friends, then he would be friendly.

Now, she was on her hands and knees taking hair samples out of the carpet with Lucy. He didn’t envy them. That carpet was beyond the pale.

Gary began spraying some of the hard surfaces with luminol. The chemiluminesence was visible to Chris from across the room. He had closed the curtains, so the rest of them stopped the work they were doing and watched instead. There were some smears on the wall next to the bathroom. ‘Ugh,’ said Gary. ‘Ten points for guessing what that is.’

‘Blood surely?’ said one of the narc cops standing nearby.

‘Well, my friend, you could be right. I would hope, actually, that you are. But luminol will show the presence of faecal matter in exactly the same way that it shows blood. From the placement and the patterning of this, I’m picking the former.’

‘That is so disgusting, Gary,’ said Lucy. ‘No need to be so graphic.’

‘Man’s just trying to learn something,’ muttered Gary and Chris felt sorry for him. It seemed as though he and Gary were in the same position: pining after women who didn’t want them.

‘But this,’ Gary continued, pointing to the countertop. ‘This is definitely blood. Or at least the sign of someone trying to clean up some.’ He turned to the other cop. ‘Luminol also reacts with bleach. So if someone has tried to clean this surface of blood, that could be what’s showing up.’

Chris shook his head indulgently, wondering while all forensic investigators felt the need to show off their encyclopedic knowledge.

‘Looks like there’s been an accident in this spot for sure,’ said Reilly, examining the area that Gary had indicated. ‘But I imagine that lots of bad things happened here. Whatever the victim was, he was no saint.’

They were at the crime scene until late in the evening. McMurty’s body was removed and taken to the city mortuary. The team packed up the hundreds of trace samples they had collected for analysis. The fingerprinting alone would take days. Hundreds of people had probably come through this flat, and all of them had left behind a tiny piece of evidence. It would be a difficult scene to wade through for that very reason. There was too much trace. It was like swimming through a cloudy pool, with millions of pieces of debris floating around you. Hard to know what to concentrate on.

Chapter 21

Chris checked in on Kennedy on his way home. He was feeling much better, but still a little sleepy.

‘I’ll be back on the job in no time,’ he said.

Chris filled him in on the events of the past few hours: the results from the mushroom, and Harry McMurty’s supposed death by suicide.

Kennedy shook his head. ‘I knew there was something off about that delivery guy,’ he said. ‘I should have listened to my gut.’ He laughed. ‘Actually, I was listening to my gut. And it told me to eat.’

Chris frowned. ’What was wrong with the guy who delivered the food?’

‘He wasn’t in uniform. Just normal day to day clothes. The stuff before I passed out is a little blurry, but I remember thinking it was weird.’

‘Do you remember his face?’

‘Not particularly. But I do remember noticing that his feet squeaked on the wet path as he walked off, like he was wearing something with plastic soles, runners or something.’

‘Let me know if you think of anything else. I’ll come and see you tomorrow.’

‘I’m being discharged in the morning,’ said Kennedy. ‘But wait, why does this matter? Sure Harry’s the guy isn’t he? He just got one of his lackeys to deliver me the burger. And you said he wrote a confession.’

‘Reilly’s not convinced about the suicided and to tell you the truth, I’m not either. There’s definitely something off about it, the note in particular.’

‘For football sake’,’ said Kennedy. ‘Just when a man thinks it’s safe to come back to work ….

Funny how your whole world can fall apart in just a few hours.

Last night, still feeling the high from getting rid of the cop and Harry, I’m preparing a delectable meal, when the latest subject texts and says she has to postpone until Thursday. But the time is perfect now! What can I say, except: fine, see you then

After scraping the food into the bin, wasting weeks of labour and skill, I went back to my laptop. Perhaps I could line up another subject, someone a bit easier. Ah. There was the email I had been waiting for from the man I had hired to seek out my past.

Ruth Dell,
it said
. Born in Birmingham, England in 1949. Educated at Oxford University. Became a professor and expert in isolated tribes. Published nine non-fiction books on the subject, widely respected.

Sister died when Ruth was 25. Boy was four when he was adopted by his aunt. He was –

Blah, blah, blah. Yes, I knew this bit, only too well.

Nephew ran away at age 16 (
ran away? That’s hardly what happened. Maybe that’s the story she liked to give out. It sounds better than: ‘I threw him out onto the street without a penny.’
)

A few years later, Ruth had a child of her own, and gave birth at age 42. The child a girl is named Constance Dell. She is now 25 years old.

Of all the futures I imagined for my rotten aunt, the aunt who neglected, abused and abandoned me, this was not it. A child? Why would she want a child when she so hated the one that was thrust upon her? I was a helpless little boy and she despised me from the beginning. This woman, this awful bully, has a child?

Everything has changed. Wherever this child is, whatever she is doing, I will seek her out. She doesn’t deserve the love and security that I was denied.

Despite having spent most of the evening at the lab sorting through the evidence from Harry McMurty’s disgusting flat, Reilly couldn’t relax when she got home in the late hours of the evening. So she went for a run instead.

She waited for herself to settle into the familiar, semi-meditative state that running usually gave her. She wanted that rush of endorphins, followed by the relief and release from tension that came after. But it didn’t come. She tried pushing herself harder and harder, her knees pumping like pistons, her breath coming in hard, short gasps. But she couldn’t keep it up. She ended up bent over her own knees, wondering what she was pushing herself so hard for. What was she trying to run from?

The following morning, after managing to eventually grab a few hours sleep, she was back at work. Karen Thompson had called her that morning to let her know that she would be able to autopsy McMurty first thing, and Reilly was going down there to oversee.

Like Chris had pointed out yesterday, Inspector O’Brien would no doubt have a fit over the GFU’s involvement in a deemed suicide, and she wanted to head the chief’s annoyance off at the pass by finding out for sure if her and Chris’s suspicions of foul play were correct. The autopsy should determine that.

‘So, what have we got?’ she asked Karen when she entered the autopsy suite at the city morgue.

‘Good morning to you too,’ the ME replied.

‘Sorry. I’ve had such a weird week I’ve forgotten basic manners.’

Karen chuckled softly. ‘And here I was thinking it was just an American thing.’

‘Nah,’ said Reilly. ‘Generally, we’re a genial bunch.’

‘You are looking a little peaked though,’ the other woman commented. ‘Are you coming down with something?’

Reilly looked at her colleague, so calm, concern showing on her graceful features. For a second she wished she could confide in Karen; about her worries about the Armstrong case, concern about Lucy and her missing sister, about Chris. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t allow her mask of professionalism to slip.

‘Oh, I’m still getting over the jet lag is all,’ said Reilly. ‘Haven’t been able to find enough time to catch up on sleep since I got back.’

‘Shall be begin then?’ said Dr Thompson. ‘I heard about Pete Kennedy. I must say, the man gets up my nose sometimes, but I will be glad to see him back on his feet soon.’

Once again, Reilly donned a mask and nose plugs while Karen stood by with a slightly sardonic smile.

‘I always say that death is the most natural smell in the world,’ the doctor said with a smile. ‘Like a compost heap.’

In Reilly’s experience, it always smelt more like an abattoir, but she didn’t say anything.

‘This body was delivered as a possible homicide/suicide,’ said Karen. ‘It didn’t take me long to confirm my verdict. This man, 27 years old, appeared to be a mixed bag of health. On the one hand, his body was in good shape. Very little fat, good muscle condition, slight impacting of the fibula, as is common when engaging in high-impact exercise, jogging in particular.’

Reilly’s ears plucked up at this, remembering how she and Julius had hypothesized that the unsub had worn latex, possibly as exercise clothing.

’However,’ said Karen. ‘The corps shows the kind of deterioration that is endemic to drug users. His teeth are in an advanced state of decay. The capillaries of the nose and the nasal passages are damaged from the abuse of cocaine, and his eyes are bloodshot, the corneas flat. He had three drugs in his system at the time: Benzedrine, a known “upper”, meth, or “ice” as it is commonly known, and Lorazepam, a common sleeping agent.’

She paused, and gently turned over Harry McMurty’s arms to show the light scarring there. ‘He was once a user of heroin,’ she said. ‘But my guess is that his use of methamphetamine was more recent, as well as more prevalent.’ She traced a finger along the finely detailed feathers of the eagle on Harry’s arm. ‘His last meal was duck,’ she said. ‘Baguette. Not exactly synonymous with the other symptoms of poverty I have found on his person.’

‘What killed him?’ Reilly asked.

‘Lorazepam,’ she said. ‘I understand there was a bottle found at the scene?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Interestingly enough, the content of his stomach was clean of any pills. Not a trace. But it was definitely pills that you found?’

‘Still half full,’ said Reilly. ‘I can get them if you want to analyze.’

Karen waved a hand. ‘No need. I began to scour his arms, and sure enough, I found a recent puncture from a needle. See here,’ she said, holding a microscope over Harry’s arm, ‘these are all old. The skin has worked its way back over and left the pink worms of scarring. But this one is fresh. Tiny, but unmistakeable. I’m running bloods to make sure, but my guess is that he was injected with liquid Lorazepam, which is commonly used for those who are unable to swallow pills.’

‘So it was a foul play, then?’ asked Lucy.

‘I would say so,’ said Karen. ‘But that’s not the strongest piece of evidence. The photos you took of those indentations around the left temple?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, those marks were still clear when I examined the body. Someone had pressed something very hard to the victim’s temple, for an extended period of time. I analyzed the residue left at the temple, and found it to be microscopic flakes of metal. My guess is that a gun had been held to the victim’s head.’

Bingo. It had been what Reilly had suspected when she saw the marks, but she hadn’t wanted to give too much away at the time. It was obvious now, that McMurty had been murdered.

But an hour later, in Inspector O’Brien’s office, she had a hard time convincing the chief of the same thing.

‘It’s cut and dried sir,’ she argued. ‘The ME herself has confirmed that the man was murdered.’

‘Maybe he was, Steel. But we’ve got a written confession for Armstrong and Copper. We’ve got the narc unit who found the body leaking the note to the press. As far as the world is concerned, this case is over and done with.’

‘But it’s not.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Armstrong and Cooper’s killer is still out there.’

‘You don’t know that. One of his criminal associates might have cottoned on to what he was doing, forced him to confess and then killed him. Just because he was murdered doesn’t mean he was innocent.’

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But he was innocent of those crimes, I’m sure of it.’

‘The murder investigations are closed, Steel,’ O’Brien told her. ‘Unless something new comes to light, this is over.’

Chapter 22

The report had the bare bones of my aunt’s history, but it left out a few salient details.

My mother died when I was four. I had never known my father, but it didn’t matter. My mother was everything I needed. She created a world for us both, a world that kept me safe. Each day she would have planned special things for us to do, things that would make me feel loved. We went swimming. We went to the museum, or the park, or the movies. We were poor, but it didn’t matter. Had she lived, I would be a different kind of man. Blinder to the evil in the world, but happier.

When she died, I did not know what had happened. I stayed in the house with her for three days, trying to wake her up. I fed her, tried to make her drink. I shouted in her ear, pulled at her eyelids. Eventually the smell, and my crying, alerted the neighbours. Before I even knew what was happening, I was being shipped to Oxford.

My aunt lived in lecturer’s accommodation at the university. Not suitable for a child, I felt caged and in the way. “Don’t you touch that,” she barked constantly. “Stay away from me while I’m working. Stop making that godawful noise.” Sometimes she would place her hands over her ears and scream. She couldn’t stand the sound of my voice, couldn’t bear to hear me singing the songs my mother had taught me.

It didn’t get better when I started school. I was away from my aunt more, and I thought she would be happy to have the peace and quiet. But when I got home she would make me stand against the wall and recite what I had learnt that day. I was made to stay there until I got everything completely right. “You can’t be as stupid as your mother,” she said. “I won’t have a dummy in my house.”

I became withdrawn, scared of the slightest movement. I should have detested her, but I was constantly trying to make her love me, constantly clinging to her leg, begging for her to notice me. Sometimes the power of her hatred for me would surprise us both. One day, when I reached out to stroke her arm, she pushed me so hard that I fell against the window. It cracked. Had it shattered, I would have fallen to my death. She told me: “You must stay out of my way. I can’t be trusted around you. You disgust me. You are repulsive.”

We carried on in this sickening manner until my teens. I began to fight back then, in small ways. Embarrassing her around visitors by walking around naked, messing up her notes, stealing her money. I thought it was fair game for all the hell she had put me through.

On my sixteenth birthday, I got home from school to find the doors locked. The house was completely shut up. There was a note for me in the letterbox. “I’ve done my duty. Never come here again. Never contact me.”

I put myself through cooking school. I became the best chef in London. I never contacted her again, but I feel sure she has seen my name. They have profiled me in all the best papers, have complimented my “vision,” my “fierce determination”. If only they knew what my vision really was.

My aunt was a woman who could not see past her own importance. She thought her career was the only thing that was worth anything. She gave everything she had to her work and gave me nothing. I wonder how she feels when she thinks of me. Guilt? Shame? Regret? But she doesn’t have to think of me. She doesn’t have to wonder how I am, because she has erased me. She went and gave someone else the life that should have been mine. And now I’m going to take it all away.

Everything else has merely been practice for this.

The day before Kennedy was due to return to work, Chris and Reilly finally made it to Hammer and Tongs. In his partner’s absence, he’d asked her to come along for the interview the restaurant owner who he and Kennedy had missed last time. While it seemed they had their man, Chris wanted to be sure of tying up all loose ends when it came to Jennifer Armstrong’s death.

Nico Peroni greeted them both with a warm handshake. He didn’t raise his eyebrows at Reilly, the way some people did when greeted by female law enforcement and she warmed to him immediately.

‘I’m sorry that we have to meet under such circumstances,’ said Nico. ‘I hope that you will be able to dine here again, for a more suitable occasion.’

‘Thank you,’ said Reilly, although the cavernous feeling of Hammer and Tongs wasn’t exactly to her taste. ‘How long has the restaurant been open?’