by Blake Pierce
The smell was not coming from here. More importantly, she noticed that the sounds of faint hammering had stopped as soon as she had come inside the house. If Phillip Bailey was here, he apparently knew that he was not alone now.
She nearly called out again but if he was inside, there was no sense in purposefully giving herself away. She continued down the hallway. Every door she passed was open, revealing a bathroom, a bedroom, and a cluttered study. Inside the study, another laptop glowed from a tattered desk otherwise littered with books.
Her instincts told her she’d find answers in there but right now, she was more worried about locating Phillip Bailey. She turned away from the office and started forward again. The hall came to an end ahead of her, but not before one more door broke up the hallway to her left. It was closed, but light shined through the cracks along the bottom and the sides.
She reached for the handle, turned it, and was surprised to find that it opened. She pulled it open and found herself staring not only at a set of stairs that led down into a basement, but at a man standing on those stairs.
He was startled, but also looked as if he had been caught doing something. She assumed he had been creeping up the stairs as she had been investigating the house, hoping to get the drop on her.
“Are you Phillip Bailey?” she asked.
“I am,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
Before she answered, she made a show of slowly reaching for her sidearm. She started to answer him but then saw his hands. They were covered in something that was either black or very dark red.
“I’m Detective Avery Black with the Boston Police,” she said. “Homicide.”
Bailey looked confused at first but then smiled. “Really?”
“What’s on your hands, Mr. Bailey?”
He looked to his hands as if he hadn’t known there was anything on them. As he studied them, Avery was very much aware that the smell that had nearly bowled her over earlier seemed to be coming from below the stairs.
“Would you believe paint?” he asked.
“Mr. Bailey,” she said, drawing her gun. “I’m going to ask you to lift your hands in the air, turn around, and lead me into the basement.”
“We don’t need to do that,” Bailey said.
“Oh, I think we do. Do it now, Mr. Bailey.” She then leaned her head to the left and gave a quick shout. “Ramirez! Come on in!”
With a sigh of defeat, Bailey did as he was asked. When he did, Avery saw more of the black or dark red substance on his shirt.
That’s blood, she thought. No way in hell that’s not blood.
She followed Bailey down the stairs. The smell grew stronger and she started to realize that it was two separate things she was smelling. The first was of something very much like the smell a dead animal leaves on the side of the road.
The other was the unmistakable smell of smoke and something that had been badly burned.
We got the bastard, she thought. I can’t believe it was this easy, but we—
But when she reached the basement floor and looked to Phillip Bailey’s grisly work area, she wasn’t so sure.
She had been right: Phillip Bailey had been worth checking out. He might not be guilty of the recent deaths they were investigating, but he was certainly guilty of something.
Behind her, Ramirez came down the stairs. “Everything okay down h—?”
But his words were cut off when his eyes fell on the same scene Avery was trying to understand. He then found his words, changing his question.
“What the fuck?”
Phillip Bailey looked at them rather dumbly and then back down to his blood-streaked hands. “Shit,” he said. “Am I in trouble?”
Neither of them answered. They were too busy trying to make sense of what they were seeing.
On a large oak table covered in a tarp, the body of a large cat was split open from neck to stomach. There was surprisingly little blood, as the incision looked neat. Beside the cat, a small Tupperware dish contained the contents of the cat, again surprisingly tidy and well tended to.
On the floor, pushed against the wall, there were several large coolers. Avery stepped toward them. Beside her, Phillip Bailey took a step forward.
“Nope,” Ramirez said, aiming his gun at Bailey. “You don’t move.”
“The cat on the table is a stray,” Bailey said, as if it explained everything. “I don’t think it had an owner. No one will miss it.”
Avery barely heard any of this as she peered into the fist cooler. She gagged a bit when she saw the contents. Inside was another cat. This one had not been gutted but had been burned quite badly. Its head was little more than a skull. Rotted black tissue was exposed along its ribs. Next to the cat was what looked to have once been a gerbil or guinea pig. Currently, though, it was little more than a black and pink charred ball with legs.
“Jesus,” Avery said, fumbling for her phone to call it in.
This gruesome find actually made her quite sure that Phillip Bailey was not their killer, but the maniac needed to be locked up regardless.
“You can’t call,” Ramirez reminded her. “Let me do it.”
She nodded as she looked into the next cooler. There, she found a medium-sized dog that had been partially burned, along with two more cats. She scanned the room and saw a small rack with other tarps and plastic sheeting. There was a can of gasoline, too. On the floor there were slight maroon stains, indicating that Bailey had been at this for quite some time.
She listened to Ramirez call it in while she turned slowly toward Bailey. She did all she could to keep her voice level and calm. She flicked the barrel of her Glock toward the stairs. “Lead me upstairs.”
He sighed, as if this was a massive inconvenience, but did as he was asked.
Upstairs, she checked every room as Bailey led the way. Ramirez joined her, making the search go a bit faster. When she went to the laptop in the room she supposed served as a study, she pulled up the browser and checked Bailey’s internet history. She was looking for any sort of evidence of Bailey having looked for the correct way to burn a human body, but found nothing.
What she did find was every single one of the videos he took while working at the crematorium. She also saw where he had watched a few YouTube videos of cremations, even ones from Nepal where they burned the bodies of deceased loved ones on a river near religious temples. There was also the entire video of the concert fire back in the ’90s when the one-hit wonder rock group Great White shot off pyros and just about everyone at the venue burned alive.
She wasn’t sure how long they searched the house—maybe ten minutes. When the first police car arrived by that time, she wasted no time in heading outside. She barely heard Ramirez update the officers as she took a seat on Phillip Bailey’s front steps.
After a few moments, Ramirez sat with her as they both listened to the commotion from inside the house. Avery was trying her best to make sense of what they had found in the basement but she was also waiting for O’Malley to bring the hammer down on her. He had not arrived at the scene yet but she was pretty sure he’d blow a fuse when he did. She could have easily split the scene when Ramirez had called it in but decided that was the coward’s way out. This was her find and Ramirez was her partner. She’d stick with him through this, not to take the credit for the discovery but to take the fall for it if they turned out to be wrong.
Avery breathed in the fresh air of a gathering dusk.
“What the hell is wrong with people?” Ramirez asked.
“That’s a loaded question,” Avery said.
One of the officers who had first arrived stepped out onto the porch. He looked a little pale in the face, but determined.
“The creep is still down in the basement,” he said. “He hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet even though he’s essentially under arrest. You need anything else out of him?”
It took Ramirez a moment to realize that the officer was speaking to him, not Avery. He seemed to be having trouble rem
embering that Avery was, as of right now, not officially on the case.
“No. Book him and take him in.”
The officer nodded and turned back into the house. Avery and Ramirez remained on the porch steps. Avery badly wanted him to put an arm around her but he remained professional.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. That was just…unexpected.”
“I’ll say. I don’t think I’ll ever—”
A car pulled up across the street, coming to a shuddering stop. They both recognized it at once. They fell into silence yet again when O’Malley stepped out. He saw them sitting on the stairs, honed in on Avery, and shook his head in frustration.
“This should be fun,” Ramirez joked as O’Malley came marching across the street. “You mind if I stick around and watch the shit hit the fan?”
“Please do,” she said with a smirk, and she got to her feet to meet O’Malley.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
As night settled in and word of Phillip Bailey’s arrest filtered through the A1, the headquarters started to smell of freshly brewed coffee and an overworked Xerox machine. Avery was starting on her second cup of coffee of the night as the members of a late and hastily thrown together meeting concerning the arrest filed into the conference room.
A sense of closure was starting to fill the room as everyone was under the impression that although there was no definitive proof, Phillip Bailey was the man they were looking for. There were still questions, of course, but the severity of what they had found in Bailey’s basement seemed to line up with most of what they had expected to find in a killer. Even Avery was unable to get the sight from her mind and the smell from her nose.
Avery didn’t think it quite fit, though. In the same way the childlike manner of George Lutz had not aligned with what she was looking for in a killer, there was something about Phillip Bailey that didn’t quite fit, either. There was something about the nearly aloof way he had reacted to being caught that didn’t sit right with her.
Am I in trouble?
He’d asked the question as if the whole thing had been a laughing matter. But the way the bodies they had found had been dispersed made her think that there was nothing playful about their killer. The carefree attitude Bailey was showing didn’t seem to line up with the personality she was expecting their killer to have.
In other words, she felt that they had busted someone that certainly did not belong in society, but she didn’t feel that Phillip Bailey was responsible for the deaths of Keisha Lawrence, Sarah Osborne, and the as-of-yet unidentified third victim.
Even if he’d started working up his nerve with humans, there was no way he could have burned bodies in that basement. Wallace even said that someone doing such a thing would need a dedicated room or building for such a thing.
Her thoughts were broken as O’Malley took the floor in his usual way—like a concerned father that was doing everything he could not to vent all of his anger and frustration out over his kids. She was relieved to see, though, that he looked mostly happy. She assumed this was because he was also under the impression that they had nailed their killer.
“First and foremost,” O’Malley said, “Black is back on this case. So as we wrap it all up, everyone defer to her. Got it?”
A few murmurs of agreement trickled across the table. Some of those in attendance rolled their eyes in disbelief. It was a look Avery had long ago gotten used to.
“I hear you, trust me,” O’Malley said. “But in a case like this, I’m willing to overlook her direct opposition of my orders, seeing as how she managed to do in one day what our entire department could not—bring in this guy. Now…he’s being questioned and we’ve got a small Forensics team scouring his house for other proof. As of about ten minutes ago, we’ve also discovered several scattered bones buried in his backyard but they are almost certainly the remains of a large dog.”
“Are we still lacking evidence to point towards the use of humans in his little experiments?” Avery asked.
“So far, yes. And damn it, Black…don’t you dare go doubting me on this. You nailed this bastard and I’ve put you back on task. Don’t butt heads with me on this.”
“Yes sir,” she said reluctantly.
O’Malley sighed and placed his hands on his hips. “For the sake of argument, Black, what are your concerns?”
“My concerns are that if he is our guy, he wasn’t burning human bodies in his home. Torching a cat in a cooler is one thing. But you’re not going to be able to burn a human body in a cooler, sir. If this is our guy, he’s got another location somewhere and I think we should be putting our time and resources into finding it.”
O’Malley nodded in an appreciative way. “I want a team on that right now,” he said, looking around the table. “But as of right now, all signs are pointing this being our guy. Further digging shows that he also tried getting jobs at two other crematoriums in the city. He also attempted to take classes at the community college dealing with human anatomy but failed out after one semester. There were trace amounts of gasoline in the lining of those coolers, which shows he has no problem keeping the necessary materials on hand. Two plus two equals four, people. Sometimes we get lucky and it all matches up. Damn good work, Black. You too, Ramirez.”
More eye rolls and a brief smattering of reluctant applause filled the room. Avery looked to Ramirez, who gave her a sly little grin.
“That’s it,” O’Malley said. “It’s late and we need to get feelers out for a second location this creep was using. Break, people! Get to work.”
The small crowd got up from the conference room table and disbanded. As Avery tried to do the same, Connelly stepped in front of her. “One second, Black.”
She stepped to the side as the last of the attendees filed out. Ramirez hung behind, remaining in his seat. “Do I need to go?” he asked.
“No, you’re her partner,” O’Malley said, joining Connelly. “You should probably hear this, too.”
He closed the door and took a seat at the conference room table. Connelly joined him and the two men shared a brief glance that Avery could not read. A thick and uncomfortable silence filled the room, making Avery feel like she was on trial for something.
“Here’s the deal, Black,” O’Malley said. “Yes, you disobeyed me yet again today. But you also managed to get stellar results without anyone’s help. We understand that Ramirez came to your side, which technically puts him on my shit list but I’m willing to overlook it. Black…I don’t even know what to do with you. The results you bring in time and time again can’t be ignored. And the fact that you were on your own today and got more done than our entire department shows that you don’t mind going it alone. And Ramirez…you complement her well. You could have taken full credit for finding Bailey today but gave credit where it was due. There aren’t many men on the force that would do that.”
Again, silence fell over the room. Avery was starting to wonder if they were looking for an apology out of her. If that were the case, they were going to be sorely disappointed.
Instead, O’Malley said something that floored her—something she had not been expecting.
“When this one is all over, and the last of the paperwork is filed away and Phillip Bailey is behind bars, we want to talk to you about a promotion to sergeant.”
She was speechless. Words literally would not form on her tongue. Did I hear him right?
“Black?” Connelly asked.
“Thank you,” she said. “But…I guess I just don’t understand.”
“You deserve it,” Connelly said.
“More than that, I think you’d be a great sergeant,” O’Malley said. “If you can bring the same results you produce as a detective to the position, it could be a great fit.”
“Can I think about it?” Avery asked, still astounded.
“Yes,” O’Malley said. “Think it over. We’ll start the actual discussion on this when Bailey’s case is done.”
“And it is just a
bout done,” Connelly said. “Do you understand that, Black? This is our guy. Unless someone comes to the front door of the A1 with a confession that says otherwise, Phillip Bailey is our killer. So don’t go digging this hole any deeper.”
But what if we need to go deeper?
It was an alluring thought but she kept it to herself. In the wake of the totally unexpected conversation they had just had, it seemed foolish to stir up the hornet’s nest.
“Again,” O’Malley said, “good work today, you two. Now both of you go home and get some sleep.”
With this comment made, Avery saw a thin smile touch the corners of Connelly’s mouth. He definitely suspects there’s something going on with me and Ramirez, she thought. So much for keeping it a secret.
O’Malley and Connelly left the room, closing the door behind them. Ramirez gave her a grin from across the table and shrugged. “Going home to get some sleep,” he said. “Sounds like a pretty good idea, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“We could go together,” he said. “Maybe end up in the same bed.”
“I don’t think there would be much sleeping involved if we did that,” Avery said.
Ramirez nodded, as if she had just made a very good point. “Still…I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve seen this look on your face before. You’re not sure Bailey is the guy, are you?”
“There are some lingering doubts, yes.”
“So you’re working a late night, huh?”
She nodded. “Ramirez…the other night was great. It was better than great, actually. But I can’t let that define our working relationship, too. And right now, until this case is really over, I don’t know that I’d be able to draw a line between the two.”
“I got it,” he said. “You do your thing, Black. I’m going back to my little corner of the building and see what I can do to help wrap up the paperwork on this. If you need me, let me know.”
She got the clear impression that this was his way of giving her a second chance—to come back home with him when she was done for the night.
