The Killer in Me

by Olivia Kiernan

  The SOCOs continue around us, bagging, labeling, collecting, and photographing evidence so that we can reconstruct the scene later. I turn away, move back down the aisle toward the exit, Clancy beside me. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Berry,” I say. “Get a statement if she’s up for it. Who took the call?”

  He frowns and looks down at his feet as he moves through the church, the blue plastic of his foot protectors rustling against the parquet floor. “Switchboard took it up and Harcourt Street passed it on.”

  “Harcourt Street throwing us a bone?”

  “A fucking anvil and the side of a cliff,” he says. “Say the sergeant heard the sorry tale, knew there’d be a media frenzy, and decided this was just about dirty enough for our mitts.”

  “It would have ended up on our table in the end. Best we get it fresh before there’s any fuckups.”

  We emerge out into the fading light. The sky is closing over. Clouds thick. More rain on the way. Already media vans have gathered. On the road, cars slow, windows down, drivers stare out at the unlikely view of a crime scene at a church. The uniforms stationed at the outer cordon are watchful, urging people to move on, but two white-haired women remain, stubborn, their faces screwed tight with worry and bent over shopping carts. I imagine the morbid curiosity alive in their eyes.

  I find Mrs. Berry sitting in a garda car. The door is open and when I approach she steps out, pulls the edges of her cardigan together, and clasps shaking hands over her stomach. Thin, neatly buttoned, with a crucifix glinting over the collar of her blouse. A church mouse, if ever I saw one.

  “Mrs. Berry,” Clancy says. “This is Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan.”

  She gives me a tiny nod of her chin. “Hello.”

  I take out my notebook. “Mrs. Berry, do you think you could answer a few questions?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What time did you come to check on the flowers?”

  “Seven. I said seven.”

  “And you’d not been in the church since the last service, at one? Is that correct?”

  “Yes, maybe a couple minutes here or there of that.”

  Clancy steps back, nods his good-bye over Mrs. Berry’s shoulder. He turns and walks toward his car, leaving the blood trail to me.

  “Did you come in the side door or the front?”

  She twists her head round, a cautious look back at the church. Her arms tighten around her waist. “The side, ’tis easier from the house, you know.”

  “So the door at the front stayed locked?”

  “Until youse arrived.”

  “There was no one else here when you discovered the bodies; you hadn’t noticed anyone around the church before then?” I ask.

  “If I had, I woulda said.”

  I glance back at the slow trawl of traffic heading into Clontarf, the walkers, the families, the cyclists, and think how quiet a Sunday evening could really be around the church. Then look back at the cold, unwelcoming sight of St. Catherine’s sitting in her gloomy spot, back from the road and under her black canopy of elms. The rest of Clontarf is enjoying the last of the miserable light left to the day, but around the church, night has already fallen.

  There’s a small two-story redbrick house close to the church. I know it’s likely the priest’s residence. “You live at the parochial house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And up until returning to the church, you’d been there?”

  “Yes. I do the carpets in the vestry every Sunday. It’s a day of rest and all, but not for everyone.”

  “Only the house overlooks the churchyard here.”

  “I don’t be paying mind to all the comings and goings of everyone,” she says with a firm nod. “I’ve me own business to be getting on with.” For some reason that prompts her to bless herself.

  “Can you take me through exactly what you did and what you saw?”

  Her mouth sets into a taut little pout then she nods toward the side of the church. “I went in the side door and to the altar to collect up the flowers from the day’s service. I saw them almost straightaway.” She snatches a breath. “It took me a moment to cotton on to what I was seeing. And I might have taken a step or two from the altar down to the aisle but as soon as I was sure, I left to phone someone.”

  “And what were you seeing?”

  “A man, a priest by the looks of it, and a woman. Dead.”

  “You phoned someone. Who?”

  “I tried Father Healy first. Then when he didn’t answer I phoned the guards.”

  “Father Healy?”

  “Our priest.”

  “So, that’s not your priest in there?”

  She shakes her head, a small movement; soft gray hair drifts over her forehead. “No.”

  “You’re sure? It doesn’t sound like you got too close to the bodies.”

  “Father Healy is a bit more padded around the middle, grayer in the head.”

  “How about the woman?”

  “I didn’t see.”

  “Where is Father Healy now?”

  “He goes on house calls every Sunday. I left a message on his mobile. But he sometimes turns it off so as not to be disturbed now.”

  She says the last with a slightly defensive edge to her voice, as if she’s saying he shouldn’t be disturbed by us lot either. “I see,” I reply. “Clontarf is a large area for one man to cover; did he mention north, south, a street, even?”

  The skin on her forehead wrinkles, gathers like tissue paper over her brows. “He could have mentioned Sybil Hill, it’s often around there, sure I do be only half listening to him.”

  I hear a car pull up behind me and Mrs. Berry’s features fall with relief. “Ah sure, here he is now. Father!” she shouts.

  Father Healy is a tall man, his face the only narrow part to him; his body widens steadily toward his abdomen, his chin and neck funneling into the collar at his throat.

  “Mrs. Berry, what’s this about?” he says, tripping his way across the yard.

  I don’t recognize him, not that I should, having stopped attending any sort of church as soon as I understood that praying often got in the way of doing. But even so, in a community like Clontarf you’d not move far without someone name-dropping the local priest into their conversation.

  He stops before us, his expression an arrangement of concern and fear. His drooping eyes wide in his face, cheeks pinkening slowly.

  Mrs. Berry’s arms loosen from her waist. “There’s people dead inside, Father. I only went in to do the flowers.”

  He rests a hand softly on the housekeeper’s shoulder and she seems to calm immediately, her hands moving into a prayerful clasp at the base of her throat.

  “Father Healy,” he says as an introduction then moves his hand from Mrs. Berry and takes mine. He gives it a light squeeze, pats my knuckles, then lets go.

  “DCS Frankie Sheehan.”

  He stands uncomfortably close. His eyes level with the top of my head so that he looks down on me, his breath warm in the cool evening air.

  I take a small step back. “Father Healy, I’m afraid the church and surrounding area are now a crime scene. You might want to make provisions to stay elsewhere tonight.”

  He looks over my shoulder, craning his neck so that I can see the patches of inflamed skin where his collar rubs along the follicles of his beard. “We have to leave the parochial house?”

  “You don’t have to but it might be for the best.”

  He reaches out, beckons Mrs. Berry to his side. She moves next to him, her eyes directed meekly to the ground. “We’ll cope,” he says. “Who is it, Detective?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to help us with that. The deceased are one male and one female. The male is dressed in priest’s vestments.”

  His eyes widen. “A priest? Who would do such a
thing?”

  “That’s what we aim to find out.” And his face pales a little. I see the meat of his chin tremble against the rigid band of his collar. “Do you think you might be able to ID the victims?”

  He nods. “Sure, sure, I can take a look.”

  “Thanks. This way.” I hold out a palm, wait for him to lead us inside.

  He hesitates, shares a look of concern with Mrs. Berry, a brief moment of withdrawal. Then, with a pat to the older woman’s forearm, he pulls himself up and moves ahead of me toward the church.

  I can tell the moment he sees the bodies. His gait slows; the shuffling rhythm of his step breaks. His arm flexes as he brings his hand up to cover his mouth.

  I move beside him, watch the patches of pink on his face disappear, the skin around his eyes pale. Listen to the draw of his breath against his palm.

  “Do you recognize either of them?” I ask.

  “Good lord,” he says. “Good lord.” He nods. His hand drops from his mouth. “Geraldine, Ger Shine. She, erm . . . nice lady. Good lord.” His eyes flick between the two victims then settle on the woman. Gray brows drawn down. “Oh, Geraldine,” he whispers. His tone full of regret, as if he’d lost some sort of battle. “She was a weekly regular, I guess. But occasionally she came to talk about things that were troubling her.”

  “What things?”

  It seems to take a huge effort but eventually he pulls his eyes away from the woman’s face, angles his shoulders toward me as if he can’t bear to look down again. “I’m not really able to say; she spoke to me in confidence.”

  “She’s dead.”

  He lengthens his neck. “I can see that, Detective.”

  “What about the male victim? The priest. Do you know him?”

  The briefest of glances at the man’s body. “Yes. But he’s not a priest.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. That’s Alan Shine. Geraldine’s husband.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I SHRUG OUT of my coat, close the door on the office noise. The photos of the crime scene are laid out on my desk. I stand over them, peer down at the victims. We are our behaviors, our actions, and a killer is no different. A crime scene can tell us a lot about an offender. A messy murder scene, a weapon of convenience picked up quickly in a struggle, an abundance of evidence left behind all point to a killer who’s disorganized. These scenes are often careless, poorly executed, and frequently bloody, the killer acting impulsively, aggressively, focusing only on the moment and on the kill. They are usually male, have poor social skills, are loners and of low intelligence.

  I rest my fingers on Alan Shine’s bloated face. The Shine killer is different. This is an organized killer, the type of killer they make movies about, that writers stir into the plots of their novels. Usually in their late twenties or thirties, male with average to high IQ, their crime scenes leave little behind in the way of evidence. Generally, they are psychopaths. But what sets a killer like this apart is their ability to mimic the appropriate social cues. He’s a chameleon. A shape-shifter. And he’ll delight in getting close to the horror he’s created.

  I pick up the photo of Alan Shine. He was maybe a little thin, a rounded bloat to his abdomen but a good height. It’s not easy to strangle someone and it couldn’t have been easy to subdue Alan Shine. I lay the photo back down. Father Healy suggested Alan had a drinking problem but wouldn’t elaborate much more. Only that Alan still turned up for mass and had been a lay minister with St. Catherine’s for years. In response to my confusion around what that meant, he said that Alan gave out Communion at the church and participated in other church-related activities. He’d said it with a strange mixture of bitterness and defensive pride that I couldn’t quite understand. It was as if Healy was at odds with Alan Shine but also careful not to have me judge the man. For what, I couldn’t get out of him.

  I look down at the image of the woman; disposed of in one grand stroke across the neck. I close my eyes, try to get into the killer’s mind, imagine it, the release, the relief he must have felt, when her body weakened, sank into his own. Down she goes, limp and heavy to the floor. His breath washes over hers, churns out his desire. Finally, it was really happening. He watches the life dial down in her eyes, waits until she’s still. Then her shoes tugged off, her top, her bra. It’s odd that he does this but leaves her trousers. A token of respect? Or a message that this is not a sexually motivated kill. Then he stands, panting, admiring the ghostly sheen of her skin against the dark shadow of the church. Eager then to draw out the image, to reconstruct what has lived in his head, he leaves to get the husband. And then, how long does he linger? It must have been difficult to walk away from this scene, the end point of so much planning.

  I think of my meeting with Tanya earlier. Of Seán Hennessy. A killer. Of a different nature. A disorganized killer, someone who acts on emotion, in the moment, however callously. He doesn’t match the profile but I can’t help holding him up against the puzzle to see if he fits. Maybe time has shaped him. Changed him. I make a note to check his whereabouts in the run-up to our meeting. It would be an audacious move to meet with a chief super and a defense lawyer minutes after leaving a murder scene. But there are killers who would.

  I sit back, my eyes still pinned to the photo. The husband and wife. The male victim threatening, knife in hand. No outward sign of injury, his posture in death a display of dominance. I can just about make out the inscription on the knife, the crooked scratch marks spelling out the word WEAPON. My eyes move to Geraldine Shine’s postmortem injuries, the stab wounds down her back. I get the sense the killer is building his story. A dark narrative. And again I have the feeling that I’m witnessing a beginning rather than an end.

  There’s a knock on the door and my partner, Baz, steps inside. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, the shoulders of his shirt wet. After working up through the ranks of the gardaí sans partner, I got delivered one a year ago in the form of Barry Harwood, a detective who, after a shaky start, vacated the Bureau in favor of Ballistics. Then realizing that Ballistics was boring as fuck, returned at a time when the powers that be thought I needed a leash. And seeing as a leash would never work, they tied me to another detective instead. And that might’ve worked if they hadn’t chosen Baz.

  Baz will play by the rules, sure, but he’s not one to court authority either. His caution only apparent when safety is an issue, mention to him that if you walk into this danger you’ll get your man, and Baz will throw on a stab vest with the best of them and ask you to point the way. Often that’s what’s needed in this job; sometimes the obstacles in your path don’t give you the time to ask permission or to fill out a form. That drive to get the man above all else is what makes you work through the night with or without the extra paycheck. Get it done. Find our perp and take him in. Sometimes there’s a cost to that. And I have the scars to prove it.

  It helps that Baz is not bad to look at in a slightly off-kilter kind of way. He’s tall, a little angular; his shirt with or without a tie always hangs too loosely around the neck. But a small upward drift around the left side of his mouth and clear gray eyes give him a boyish kind of charm that comes in handy during interviews. He lives about an hour’s drive from the city center, in Blanchardstown, in a two-bed flat-share with an uptight French teacher called Arielle, or it could be Adriane, who Baz reports has their accommodation divided firmly in two. Separate cupboards for food, labeled shelves in the fridge, and a schedule for cleaning that could be enforceable by law, it’s that prescriptive. Needless to say there are often times when you’ll find him on my sofa after a late night or a long day at the office being that peering into crime scenes and talking murder feel more appealing to him than battling the Dublin traffic home to then negotiate the invisible lines drawn up by his flatmate.

  All in all, and I did try to resist this at first, Baz has become a close friend. I don’t think even he’s sure about how that ha
ppened. But he’s shown he’s got my back. Both of us with the same goal, like ticks on a dog, neither lets go until we’re ready to drop off, full and fat with the answers to whatever we’re working on. Our work is every waking and every sleeping hour. That’s a rare thing to find replicated in a partner and it’s true of Baz. As long as you remember to feed him often, he’s as dogged on a case as I am.

  “Howya,” he says, and throws himself into the seat across from me, pushing his hair back. “This bleedin’ weather. Wouldn’t mind the cold if the fuckin’ rain would let up.”

  “You been out to the scene?”

  “Yeah. They’ve moved the bodies now. Cleanup is under way. A right lock of reporters filling up the street now though.”

  Baz has more than a spring in his step. It’s been a few months since we’ve been dealt a murder case of this nature and in the interim we’ve been stuck to desks, on paperwork, laying out procedure, setting out protocol; I see the spark in his eyes now. Excitement wouldn’t be too far off the mark but determination certainly.

  I slide the crime scene photos toward him. “Not your usual Dublin fare.”

  He leans forward, takes up the pictures. “Been a while since I seen something like that, if ever.”

  We’re on the right side of this case. Everything neat and tidy, waiting for us. No mistakes yet. We can work under the illusion that if we follow the rules, the answer will drop into our waiting hands. It’s a nice feeling and Baz is fizzing with it. I’m not so naïve but for the moment, I’m happy to be pulled along by hope.

  “Keith still there?” I ask.

  “Just caught him before he left. Not a fucking print got? How’s that? How’s this fella come in, left carnage, and not a trace of himself behind?”