by Lisa Gardner
Tasers, which were illegal in Massachusetts, were supposed to discharge coded confetti with each stunning jolt. The code on the confetti could then be used to trace which Taser had been used in an attack—compensating for the fact that there was no bullet left behind for the police to trace. The confetti was a huge, fluttery mess, nearly impossible to clean up, especially given conditions at the Laraquette household.
“Don’t know,” Neil said. “But the ME is convinced it was a Taser. Has no doubts about the marks.”
D.D. frowned, decided to come back to the confetti. “Okay. So that gives us four instruments for attack: Taser, handgun, knife, pillow. What else did the ME have?”
“Definitely stabbing as COD for the woman. Single fatal blow. No hesitation marks,” Neil reported, still pacing.
“Like the Harringtons,” D.D. said.
“Same size blade,” Neil reported. “Meaning both households contained knife sets, and in both attacks perpetrator selected the same size blade.”
“The largest blade,” Alex said, his tone cautious. “Which, if you think about it, is the most logical choice for murder.”
“True, true,” Neil mused, stopping his pacing long enough to stick his hands in his front pockets and jiggle the loose change.
“Can the ME check Patrick Harrington’s body?” D.D. asked. “See if he was tasered, too?”
“Already made the request.”
“Well?”
“Give him a couple of days. Between the two scenes, plus the rest of the city’s normal mayhem, bodies are stacking up.”
“August,” D.D. muttered. “Always a busy time of year. So what about the kids? The son was shot.”
“Yep. Same with the four-year-old and eleven-year-old girls,” Neil reported. “Infant’s gonna be tougher. Harder to rule on asphyxiation. More like nothing else seems to be physically wrong with the child, ergo it was probably suffocation. ME’s sent the pillow out to be tested for DNA. Might be able to trace saliva on the pillow back to the infant, then it’s a bit more conclusive.”
“How long?” D.D. was already bracing herself.
“Three to six months,” Neil said.
“Fuck.”
“Not right now, I’m already too excited.”
D.D. rolled her eyes at Neil. Sure, the lanky redhead talked a good game, but it wouldn’t help her any. Alex, on the other hand, should look out.
“So what does this tell us?” she mused, riding the same adrenaline wave as Neil. She studied her whiteboard, then got busy with the marker: “One, this takes Hermes out of the perpetrator column and moves him squarely into the victim category. After all, the man couldn’t very well taser himself to death, then shoot himself to death.”
“Ambush,” Alex said.
She looked at him, nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Stun Hermes, incapacitating him, then go after the rest of his family,” Alex continued.
“Why does Hermes have to be first?” Neil asked. “Couldn’t it be someone had attacked the family, then Hermes walked in on it?”
“If Hermes walks in, why taser him?” Alex pointed out. “Someone walks in on a shooting, the perpetrator fires off an extra round. The perpetrator doesn’t set down the gun and dig through his pockets for a new weapon.”
“True, true.”
“I think Hermes went first,” D.D. agreed. “Perpetrator incapacitates the most obvious threat—the father—by stunning him multiple times.”
“Not exactly foolproof,” Alex commented. “Especially a hard-core drug addict. I’ve seen guys stunned half a dozen times and they’re still screaming bloody murder.”
D.D. chewed her lower lip. Considered it. “Given that Tasers are illegal in Mass., maybe our perpetrator has a truly illegal, illegal Taser. Meaning, as long as he was acquiring a black market Taser, he got one with super-sized voltage. For the military, commercial grade, etc. Maybe custom cartridges, which would explain why no confetti was left behind. For a buck fifty, you can buy just about anything on the black market. Why not a super-volt Taser, guaranteed to silently incapacitate your problem, while leaving no evidence behind?”
The more D.D. thought about it, the more she liked it. “Higher voltage might also explain Hermes’s massive coronary event,” she continued. “He wasn’t just hit by a Taser, he was hit by a Taser.” She glanced at Neil. “Any way the ME can study the burn patterns on Hermes’s chest to estimate size of the hit?”
“I have no idea,” Neil said, “but I can ask.”
“All right. Back to where we were. We know a Taser is being used, and it was strong enough to kill at least one man. So we’ll assume that’s part of the perpetrator’s plan. Incapacitate the father figure with a Taser. Next up is the second adult—the mother. She’s ambushed in the kitchen with a knife. Another silent weapon, maybe an attempt on the perpetrator’s part to remain undetected for as long as possible. Once someone notices, however—”
“Ishy, in the hallway,” Alex said.
“Yeah. Now the subject has to move fast. Ishy’s raising the alarm, there are two other kids capable of bolting for the neighbors’. The subject’s gotta tamp down, or the whole scene will spiral out of control.”
“So the subject grabs a gun—”
“One he’s taken off Hermes?” D.D. questioned.
“Unregistered, so no way to determine,” Alex said. “But subject has a gun and now it’s quick and dirty business. Fumbles the first shot with Ishy, but makes it right with the second. Then hits the girls’ room. Boom. Boom. Kids are done. It’s down the hall to the last member of the family.”
D.D. nodded. “All right. But the last member of the Laraquette family is a five-month-old baby. Infants can’t talk or bear witness. Why kill the baby?”
Neil and Alex were both silent for a minute, contemplating the matter.
“He has to kill the baby,” Alex said at last. “Because it has to be the whole family. It’s a script, remember? The family must be dead and the father must appear to have done it. So the baby must die. Then Hermes must be moved to the sofa and posed accordingly. It’s what the killer does. What he needs.”
“Not a gangland hit,” D.D. said slowly. “Because in a gangland hit, the shooter would want to take credit. He’d want it known that he’d eliminated his rival’s entire family, to strike fear into the hearts of other up-and-coming drug dealers. Plus, he wouldn’t mess around with four different weapons. Too much fuss. This isn’t about revenge. This is something deeper, something more personal to the killer.”
“A reenactment,” Alex murmured.
D.D. frowned, uncomfortable, not sure why. “Hermes’s death screwed it up. He was supposed to be stunned unconscious. Then, when the rest of the family had been eliminated, the killer could return, move Hermes to the sofa, wrap Hermes’s fingers around the gun, and complete the final act in the story. But Hermes had a heart attack, breaking with the script, and giving us our first clue.”
Alex said suddenly, “Hermes had the gun on him.”
D.D. and Neil turned to him. “How do you figure?”
“Because the gun has to come from inside the home. It’s part of the pattern, and if you think about it, it works. At the Harrington residence, the subject eliminates Patrick first. Stuns him, we’ll assume for the sake of argument. Then the subject slips into the kitchen, grabs a knife, and goes to town. Finally, the staging takes place. Patrick gets moved, the subject locates the gun, performs the final act.”
“Patrick lived,” D.D. pointed out.
“The risk you take with a twenty-two,” Alex countered. “But the gun was registered to Patrick, remember? That’s all he owned, and I bet if we ask his neighbor Dexter, he’ll agree that Patrick was conscientious about handgun safety in a household with three kids. I bet he kept the twenty-two in a lockbox. So the killer had to wait to access it and use it. Hermes, on the other hand—”
“Probably had it stuffed in the waistband of his jeans,” D.D. finished for him. “Luc
ky he didn’t blow off his nuts.”
“Lucky he ate so much fast food, and suffered a heart attack.”
“So now all we have to do is find some kind of link between the Harringtons and the Laraquette-Solis family,” D.D. said. “And figure out why someone’s idea of fun is murdering entire families. Then we catch him. Preferably in time for the five o’clock news. Ideas?”
She looked at Alex, he looked at Neil. Neil looked back at her.
“Trace evidence,” Neil said finally, with a small shrug. “Hair, fiber, prints, some link between the two crime scenes.”
“Look for parking tickets,” Alex offered. “Subject had to come and go, and let’s face it, parking in the city is a bitch, especially during the summer months.”
“Footprints outside the windows.” Neil again, getting into the spirit of things. “Subject probably scoped out the place first.”
Alex’s turn: “Reinterview the neighbors. To pull off something this sophisticated, the perpetrator had to have reconned. Did any of them notice the same car driving around the block several times? Or a new face suddenly taking walks in the morning, only to disappear again? Guy had to get his intel somehow.”
D.D. wrote down the list, added two of her own: ballistics, in case the slugs bore any similar markings between the two scenes, and also the ME’s report on Patrick Harrington. If he had Taser burns on his chest, the scenes were linked. No doubt in her mind.
“Neil,” she said, tapping that last item, “get back to the ME for us, will you? Couple of days is too long to wait for Ben to reexamine Patrick. We need the ME’s report tomorrow morning at the latest, even if it’s only his preliminary opinion. But this matters. Matters a lot.”
Neil nodded, then there was a rap on the door. Phil stuck his head in.
“Miss me?” the third member of their squad asked. “I’ve been looking all over the damn place for you. What’s with the conference room?”
“More space,” D.D. said. “Neil caught a break from the ME. Turns out Hermes Laraquette actually died from a Taser, and the whole suicide-on-the-sofa thing was staged. Now we just gotta link the Harrington scene to the Laraquette-Solis scene and we’ll be able to prove we’re looking for a single predator who likes to reenact family annihilations. Why? What’d you do with your afternoon?”
“Tell me you love me.”
“Is this more or less than I love a medium rare cheeseburger?”
“Definitely more. I’ve linked the Harringtons to the Laraquette-Solis family. Remember the Laraquettes’ four-year-old girl with the cuts all over her limbs?”
D.D. nodded her head; not an easy thing to forget.
“Child services was called, and the girl was taken into temporary state care, and guess what? Mommy and Daddy aren’t the ones who hurt her. She does it to herself. A form of self-mutilation that has something to do with compulsion, depression, anxiety, yada yada yada. To make a long story short, the girl can’t stop slicing her own skin. Uses everything from sharpened twigs to paper clips to the tabs from Coke cans. Well, nine months ago, Tika got her hands on a disposable razor and starting working on her neck. By the time Mommy noticed, girl was covered in blood. Mom rushed her to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed as an immediate threat to herself and …” Phil paused a beat, waited for the drum roll.
D.D. connected the dots, just as Phil spoke the words out loud.
“And four-year-old Tika was admitted to the Pediatric Evaluation Clinic of Boston. Otherwise known as Ozzie Harrington’s former home-away-from-home.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY
VICTORIA
Am I a good mother?
In the months prior to our marriage unraveling, Michael claimed that my personal failings were holding Evan back. I refused to view my son and his issues objectively. I refused to consider that someone else—or perhaps, more specifically, somewhere else—would be in my son’s best interest.
By believing I was the only person who could help Evan, I was, in fact, guilty of the worst sort of hubris. I was arrogant, self-centered, and putting my needs as a mother above the needs of my son. I was also ignoring my husband and my daughter, fracturing the family I was supposed to nurture and protect.
To hear Michael describe it, Evan’s temper tantrums, violent acts, and chronic insomnia were all my fault. If I could just be a better mom, Evan would be a better child. Preferably one who was locked up somewhere, where parents could visit at their convenience and a younger sibling could forget he ever existed.
Stop being such a martyr, Michael kept saying. This isn’t about you. It’s about what’s best for him. Dammit, we have resources, he’d add, as if Evan were some sort of remodeling project that if we just threw enough money at would be done to our satisfaction.
For the record, it’s not easy to institutionalize a child. There are very few long-term-care facilities. The good ones have waiting lists. The bad ones are a rung below the maximum security prison where many of the kids like Evan will eventually wind up. Evan’s third doctor, after the crowbar episode, said he could work some magic on our behalf. That’s pretty much what it takes for immediate placement. It’s like a letter of recommendation from a wealthy alumnus to get your kid into the right prep school. Except it’s a request from a prominent child psychiatrist to institutionalize your child.
The place he recommended had once served as a monastery. It was known for its stripped-down simplicity and structured approach to life. Unbeknownst to Michael, I toured it one afternoon. The rooms were small and guaranteed not to overstimulate. The walls were carved out of stone so thick, no amount of lighting would ever diminish the gloom.
The facility promoted self-discipline, hard work, and independence. I thought it smelled like an old folks’ home, someplace you went to die. I couldn’t picture a seven-year-old boy here. I couldn’t imagine Evan, with his brilliant smile and infectious giggle, ever wandering these dreary halls.
So I kept him home with me. And my husband and daughter left instead.
I don’t know if I am a good mom. Evan isn’t the child I planned on having. This isn’t the life I dreamed of living. I get up each morning and do the best I can. Some days, I give too much. Some days, I don’t give nearly enough.
But I’m not a martyr.
I know, because at 2 p.m. I’m going to do something that’s absolutely, positively not in Evan’s best interest.
And I don’t give a damn.
I start my preparations at noon. First, I make Evan a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a crushed Valium tablet sprinkled in the middle. Don’t ask me how I learned to do this. Don’t ask me what kind of pressure drives a mother to spend her afternoons crushing up various medications and mixing them into various lunch options. For the record, you need something sweet, like jelly or honey, to hide the bitterness. Grilled cheese … it took hours to effectively clean the grease spot off my glass sliders.
I serve the sandwich with apple slices and a cup of milk on the coffee table. Evan perks up. Lunch in the family room means he gets to eat while watching TV. This is a rare treat, and he’s already shaking off the residues of our morning playground drama.
Next, I turn on Evan’s favorite channel—the History Channel. Evan can watch tales of historical events for hours, from stories of Pompeii, to the life-sized clay soldiers recovered from the Chinese emperor’s tomb, to images of the Titanic. His favorite books are the Magic Tree House series, where Jack and Annie travel to various places in time. He loves nonfiction, as well. Biographies, coffee-table books, old lithographs—all of it fascinates him.
He gets this from his father, yet one more thing Michael will never know.
Currently, the History Channel is airing a show on digging the tunnel between Britain and France. There are images of heavy machinery and men in hard hats covered in mud. Evan picks up the first half of his sandwich and is transfixed.
I walk to the entryway, where I check the front door. Evan learned to work the bolt lock by age t
hree, escaping at whim. He also mastered chain locks and the heavy glass sliders. As a result, my front door now features a key-in, key-out bolt lock. I also converted the glass sliders, meaning that every entry/exit in the house can only be accessed using the key I wear on a chain around my neck. If there’s ever a fire, and I lose said key, Evan and I will burn alive.
But at least he can’t escape while I’m showering.
Upstairs I strip in the master bath. I take a moment to look at my reflection in the mirror, though I know I shouldn’t. I was a beautiful girl once. The kind of lithe, silvery-blonde beauty that turns heads. I understood my power early on, and used it wisely. I lived in a mobile home with newspaper stuffed in the cracks for insulation. I wanted out, and my looks were just the ticket.
I started on the pageant circle, winning modest amounts of money, which my jealous mother stole from my bank account. I kept going, eventually securing a scholarship to college. That’s where I met Michael. I recognized him immediately as someone just like me. Attractive, driven, desperate. We’d been stomped on enough in life and we weren’t going to take it anymore.
I lost my virginity to him when I was twenty years old, though my mother had been calling me a slut for at least the past six years.
I cried that night. Michael held me, and I felt genuinely special. The pageants were just titles. It was Michael who made me feel like a princess.
I don’t look like a beauty queen anymore. My face is gaunt, my skin nearly translucent, stretched too thin across my bony ribs and jutting pelvis. There’s a giant green-and-yellow stain on my left side—I think Evan had pushed me down the stairs. Fresher purple bruises run up my right leg. Red welts mark my forearm. I look old and beaten, and for a moment, I want to cry.
For the beauty that faded too fast. For the youth that disappeared too quickly. For the dreams I thought I would fulfill.
There are pieces of yourself that once you give away …
But I want them back. Dear God, there are moments when I just want them back.
