by Aiden Bates
He could have just been starting out. Sometimes a first murder was simply a crime of passion, until the perpetrator found he'd become addicted. Still, two years seemed like an awfully long layover. There had to be something else that Morrison was doing to stave off his urges in the meantime.
He fired off an email to Doug Morrison. Where was your father from 1998 to 2000?
Doug replied almost immediately, which made Ray's heart sing. Raising his son.
Okay, but was he ever away for long periods of time?
Doug hesitated for a moment before replying. For a moment, Ray felt some alarm. Had he scared Doug off? Doug came back after a few seconds. Sorry. Paralegal had a question. He didn't leave me alone at home for more than an hour until I was about fourteen. He was worried about small-minded types coming after his omega son. Not that he admitted that until later.
Ray thanked him and scratched his chin. He guessed that Morrison might have been able to slip away during school hours, or if Doug had gone away on any school trips, but he would need more evidence before reaching so far.
He beckoned Morris over. "What do you think about the idea of Morrison changing his kill location?" he asked, showing his data. He ran over the revised facts of the case as they stood from the night before and gestured to the blank spot on the timeline on the wall. "I can't get over the whole two years thing. What the hell was he doing then?"
"He could have been biding his time." Morris scratched his cheek. "I mean sometimes killers do escalate. They'll have a long quiet period, and then the time between kills gets shorter. But after that, the spacing becomes more even, so I don't think that quite makes sense."
"No." Ray shook his head. "I don't either. That's what has me so stumped. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out who he was killing or what he was doing with the bodies."
Tessaro popped into the room. "Hookers," he said, and stuck his thumbs through his belt loops.
"Well that's cryptic." Ray shook his head. "You want to maybe share with the rest of the class, or are you going to make us guess?"
Tessaro leaned back against a desk and smirked. "I was thinking that I might do exactly that, Space Case. But since we're all here, I might as well share my superior wisdom with the ages." He struck a lofty, professorial pose, and then he dropped it and laughed at himself. "The guy obviously has a problem with women. Most serial killers do. So do most dudes that kill their wives, for that matter."
Morris pursed his lips. "Okay, valid. So, you think that he was killing hookers?"
"Sure. They're the most vulnerable, right? That's why they're such a popular target with the kill by numbers set. Plus, no one is going to report them missing, or take it all that seriously on the off chance that someone does report it. I mean look what happened with the Green River Killer."
Ray snapped his fingers. "And if he disposed of the remains someplace else, like if he was trying to truly get rid of them, we'd never have a clue. Like, say he chucked them into the ocean. Sharks and crabs could eat the bodies and we'd just go about our day like it never even happened."
"There's a pig farm in Bridgewater." Morris stuffed his hands into his pockets when all eyes swiveled toward him. "What? It was for a case."
Ray massaged his temples. "So there's no way to know if he went up into Boston or down into New Bedford, or into Fall River, to find prostitutes who then turned up dead."
"We can always look into some old cases." Tessaro scratched his head. "With unidentified parts floating in the water, there's not usually a lot of hope to do anything with them, you know? They could be from anywhere, but we'll see what we can get."
Ray rubbed his hands together. "It's a start. If nothing else, we can start to rule out other possibilities. At the very least, we're looking at two separate killers here—Morrison and one other. It would be awesome to get Number Two off the streets."
Morris wrinkled his nose. "Okay, but there hasn't been a killing since Morrison went to jail."
"That we know of." Tessaro waved a finger. "Maybe our boy's gone back to his old ways."
"Keep a good thought, Tessaro." Ray shook his hand and went back to his desk, but he was grinning. They had a direction, at least.
Chapter Three
Doug sat at his desk and tapped out the drum line for Korn's "Got the Life" as he stared at the computer screen. He could remember the day that Natalie Tobias' hands had been found. They'd been left on top of a mailbox, stuffed inside of a pair of mittens. The mailman who'd found them, Frank Mancini, still had nightmares.
They'd found enough parts of Natalie Tobias, and constructed enough of a picture of her life, to make it clear that she'd died sometime between midnight and six o'clock in the morning on the morning of December fourteenth. Doug knew exactly where his father had been that night. He'd been in the hospital, with Doug, because Doug had needed to have his appendix out. He picked up the phone and called Morton Hospital.
It took a little while to find someone who could help him. The records department wasn't all that cooperative about giving him access to his own juvenile medical records, which left him wishing he could go shout at someone for a while. They were records about him, after all. When he explained, finally, what he was looking to do, they put him through to the legal department, who then gave him even more of a runaround.
Once he finally got through to someone, he was much less willing to play nice. In the end, though, he got what he wanted. The nurses who had been working that night were still employed by Morton Hospital, and told him that they remembered his father sitting by his bedside all night long. "We were all surprised, when we saw the news, that he was the Lakeville Killer. We're so sorry."
"Well, he certainly didn't kill Natalie Tobias." Doug gave a little chuckle. "He was with me at the time. I'll probably come down with a state police investigator to get a formal statement about that, so that victim can be dropped from the list and they can keep trying to find the actual killer. Thanks for your time, ma'am."
He messaged Langer and tried not to think of him as Ray already. He should not be attracted to Langer. Langer was just a guy. Sure, he smelled good. Doug didn't have time for alphas that smelled good. Doug had time to get his father out of jail, and that was it. Maybe it had just been a little while. He'd been on a celibacy kick ever since Liam and the whole mess where he'd been stringing a bunch of omegas along. Maybe he just needed to lighten up and get laid, so he could focus better.
Or maybe he should be better than that. Maybe he shouldn't be a slave to his lusts. For crying out loud, he'd barely shaken the guy's hand, a week ago, and he still couldn't shake the memory from his body.
He checked his calendar. The only thing on it was a meeting with his father and one other client who happened to be at Shirley, so he told the receptionist he was heading out and walked home. Once there, he grabbed his car and headed west.
Getting out of town proved to be a little bit more of a hassle than Doug would have liked, but Doug just focused and kept his breathing even. After he'd gotten past the Expressway and that knot of traffic between Routes 16 and 2, he could relax and enjoy the drive a little bit more. He rarely got the chance to listen to music anymore; it was good to be able to let himself go a little bit. The countryside was pretty, too; he should think of himself as lucky to be able to get out and enjoy it on a weekday.
He just shouldn't think about the fact that if he screwed up, his father would never enjoy something like this again.
He went through the entry process at the prison, just like always, and he waited his turn. The guards led him into a secure conference room, where he met with the secondary client first.
Samson Monette had been convicted of murder during the commission of a burglary six years ago, and had been given life without parole. He'd been convicted largely on the basis of eyewitness testimony. One witness had picked Monette out of a police lineup. He'd been the only black man she'd been able to choose from. Research by a non-governmental organization had since proved that witne
ss to have been in a different room during the burglary, and to have been a member of several racist organizations.
Even that information hadn't been enough to get Monette a new trial. DNA, however, had been. It was that news that Doug had come to deliver.
Monette was brought into the confidential conference room and shackled to the table. He and Doug hadn't met yet, although Doug had written to him to inform Monette that he'd been assigned to his case. Monette wasn't what Doug had expected to see. He was about Doug's size, with dark skin and a hard set to his jaw. "You the lawyer?" he asked.
"That's me." Doug shook Monette's hand, making it work despite the shackles. "Doug Morrison. I do a lot of appeals work."
Monette snorted. "I thought they didn't care about my appeals. Once they decided they didn't care that the 'witness' couldn't have seen what she said she saw, it didn't matter."
Doug grinned. "It always matters. It just means we have to hit harder. DNA evidence has been found, evidence that puts someone else at the scene. They've granted you a new trial."
A smile broke out over Monette's face then, like the sun breaking through the clouds. It disappeared quickly enough, though. "If I got a new trial, how come I'm still in here?"
Doug rolled his shoulders. "Because the prosecutor managed to convince the judge that you might still have done it. I don't like it, and I'm going to push back against it hard. In the meantime, though, we need to focus on your new trial. Is there anything that didn't come up at your first trial that's going to bite me in the ass?"
Monette blinked. He obviously hadn't expected Doug to be quite so blunt. Few clients did. "You've seen my records. You already know what I am. I've had a couple of scrapes in here, but nothing major. And I was just defending myself."
"Fair enough." They walked through the case for the rest of their time together, until the guard came to let them know that Monette's time was up. When Monette left, his step looked a little lighter than it had when he'd come in. That fact in and of itself, that little spring of hope, made the drive worth it.
Doug's father was his next guest. Larry smiled as he was guided to a seat. "How've you been, kid? You look good. Got a little color in your cheeks. Did you meet someone nice?"
Doug couldn't help but blush. "I'm not exactly on the market, Dad. I'm a little busy, remember? With your case?"
The guards left the room as Larry waved a hand. "You need to take care of yourself, Dougie. I'm an old man. You've got your whole life ahead of you. You find a nice alpha, you grab that chance, okay? I'm not saying you should just take anyone, but if he's good and he gets you, then don't you worry about me."
Doug looked up at the ceiling and sighed. "Dad, there's time enough for that later on. Okay? I've already found seven victims that I can prove you didn't kill, and that's without any trouble at all. I mean I didn't even have to try to prove those. I just showed a couple of old pictures to the cop who 'solved' the case and now they're looking into everything all over again." He shook his head and put his hands on the table. "Dad, there's no way that I could possibly just ignore all of that to go chasing after alphas. Not even the cop."
Larry had turned pale when Doug mentioned that he'd cleared his father of seven of the murders, but he lifted his eyebrows when Doug mentioned Langer. "Oh. That Detective Langer fellow's an alpha, I see? Well, that's good to know. If I'd known he was your type I'd have made sure to introduce you. I thought you went more for those, you know, artistic types."
"Yeah, and look exactly where that got me." Doug leaned forward and waved a finger at his father. "Don't go changing the subject. You should have reached out to me during the investigation, Dad. We might not be in this situation if you had." He sighed and reached out to take his father's hand. "Look. Some of these are easy for me to figure out where you were. I mean you obviously weren't killing anyone when I was having my appendix out, for crying out loud."
"Heh. I remember that night." Larry's eyes went far away. "I was so scared for you that night. After everything, I was terrified that I was going to lose you. You were so sick, Dougie."
"I remember." Doug smiled. The "after everything" stuck out in his mind, but he dismissed it. He'd probably just been referring to losing his wife. "I felt awful, but you just held me close and told me that everything was going to be okay. You made me feel so safe, Dad, I knew I'd get through it." He squeezed his father's hand. "You've always been number one in my life. You've always kept me safe. And now it's my turn. Can you remember where you were on the night of March 15, 2003?"
"Oh, for crying out loud, Dougie, how am I supposed to remember that far back? I can barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday." Larry pulled his hand away and laughed. "Come on. No one remembers what they were doing with that kind of detail."
"I was fifteen. I was a sophomore." Doug recognized what his father was doing. He was deflecting. He'd seen his father's pupils contract just before he pulled his hand away; he remembered something. What Doug couldn't figure out was the reasoning behind it. "March 15 would have been right around the time of the debate team competition. If I did some digging, and I will, I'm going to find plenty of witnesses who remember seeing you there." He closed his eyes. "I remember you speaking to Principal Miller when I won."
Larry shook his head. "Sorry, son. I don't remember, and that's a fact. I know that I never missed one of your debates, and I loved every one of them. But I don't remember which days they were, or anything like that, son. There were a lot of them."
Doug chuckled in spite of himself. "That's the truth. Dad, I'm going to find this stuff. And I'm going to go into that courtroom. I'm going to show that judge, and that prosecutor, and even Ray Langer, that you're the amazing father and librarian and citizen that I've always known you to be. Okay? I'd rather do it with your cooperation. And I can't figure out why you're not helping. I can't figure out why you didn't provide these alibis the first time around, but Dad—we will win this."
Larry looked up at him. His eyes were wide and full. "I know you'll do your best, son. I wish I could be more for you."
Without Larry's cooperation, there wasn't much else that Doug could do to further the case today. He spent the rest of their time together talking about Larry's life on the inside. He checked to make sure that he didn't need anything, and that he wasn't being hassled by anyone. Larry told a few entertaining stories about life on the cell block. By the time that the guards came to get Larry, Doug knew three different ways to make cellblock hooch and got a long rundown on ways to get pornography past the censors.
He drove back home and checked his messages. He hadn't been expecting any, but he found himself pleasantly surprised to find one from Ray Langer in his mailbox. Got an appointment Friday morning to talk to the prosecutor about your father's case. I assume you want to be there?
Doug checked his calendar. It was clear on Friday. Name the time and place, and I'll be there. If he had to see Langer on a Friday morning, he'd rather that it be after a long and satisfying Thursday night, but that didn't seem to be in the cards.
Spitfire Bakery, 9:30.
Doug put the appointment into his calendar. Got it. I'll see you then.
He drummed on his desk for several long minutes and then got out of his chair. Somewhere in his closet was his yearbook from sophomore year. He was going to find the date for that tournament, and he was going to speak to everyone that his father had spoken to. Then he was going to move on to the next victim, and to the next, and the one after that.
He'd worked with clients who tried to obstruct him before. Every time that had happened, they'd turned out to be covering for someone else. Doug couldn't think of anyone that his father might be covering for, but that didn't mean that someone wasn't out there. Whoever Larry was covering for must be pretty damn special if he was willing to sit in a concrete box for the rest of his life, and let a killer go free.
Dad hadn't even gotten upset about Doug being attracted to the cop who'd put him away. On the contrary, he'd seemed to
encourage Doug. He'd all but told Doug to give up on him, to focus on himself and move on with his life. How could he truly think that Doug would ever be able to do that with his father languishing in prison for crimes he didn't commit?
At least, he thought, as he rummaged through a storage bin, he'd convinced Langer to take this seriously. He had no illusions that it had only been his own arguments that had done it. No, he was sure that Langer's superiors had been heavily involved with that decision, at least at first. Once Langer had seen the evidence, though, he'd been willing to pitch in and find the real killer. That made all of this easier, and it made him feel much less guilty about his own lust toward the handsome detective.
Appropriate or not, Doug didn't have time for lust. His father's freedom depended on his focus and his determination. Larry had sacrificed everything for Doug. His son could put off a roll in the hay long enough to pay him back.
