by David Hosp
‘Why?’
‘Because a maid found Kendra Madison’s body in a room this morning. She was tied to the bed and strangled, just as you described in the LifeScene you saw.’
I feel like a building has fallen on me. I start to say something, but no words come out. I feel like I’m choking. ‘Dead?’ I finally manage to say.
He nods. ‘Raped and killed. We have a DNA sample.’
‘She wasn’t raped!’ I yell, getting to my feet.
‘Yes, raped! And then you kill her!’ NetMaster shouts.
‘Fuck you!’ I scream at him. My world is spinning out of control, and NetMaster is standing there with a sick smile on his gigantic, twisted face. It’s more than I can take, and I step forward and hit him in the face as hard as I can, snapping his nose. He screams out in pain, and it feels good. I hit him again and again. The two cops who accompanied Killkenny rush into my office to pull me off him. They pin my arms back and put handcuffs on me.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I scream. ‘Paul, tell them to take these fucking things off me!’
‘We’ll take them off at the station house,’ he says. NetMaster is standing again, his face a smear of blood, but with a smile on it.
A woman’s voice comes from the office door. ‘What’s going on?’
I look over and see Yvette there, and my heart drops. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I didn’t do anything!’
‘We’re taking him in for questioning,’ is all Killkenny says.
‘For what?’ Yvette asks.
‘He killed the whore!’ NetMaster yells. ‘He raped her and he killed her! What do you think of your boyfriend now?’
She turns to look at me, and I meet her eyes with mine. ‘It’s a lie,’ I say. ‘It’s not true.’
She says nothing as the two cops take me by the arms, practically lifting me off the ground as they drag me out of the office and toward the external door. ‘It’s not true, Yvette! You have to believe me!’
I’m trying to look back over my shoulder, but it’s useless as they pull me away. I’m searching for something to say – something that will make her understand and believe, but there is nothing. Suddenly I realize that I am all alone.
CHAPTER FORTY
‘You see my problem, Nick, don’t you?’
I’m sitting in an interrogation room in the police station in the Back Bay. Paul Killkenny is sitting across from me. His boss, Detective Sergeant Tom Welker, stands against the far wall, watching. There’s a mirror behind him, and I’m sure there are others observing through the glass. I’m still handcuffed and I sit uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair, leaning slightly forward to keep my hands from pressing into the chair back. Not that it would matter, I suppose; the handcuffs are so tight that they’ve cut off the circulation, and my hands lost feeling long ago.
I haven’t spoken since I saw Yvette. The full implications of my situation are just beginning to set in. If what they are telling me is true, Kendra is dead – found strapped to the headboard on the bed in the hotel room where she and I spent the night before. There would be plenty of people who would testify that we were together the night before. The girl at the front desk might even remember me leaving early that morning, and I have no alibi until I was seen at the office. Plus there’s the physical evidence, which will be overwhelming. My DNA will be all over the room, and all over Kendra’s body. Hell, they’ll even have bruises on her neck that match my hands. Based on the evidence, there will be no question that I killed her. That puts me in a difficult position, given that she was fully alive and talking when I left. I need time to think this through, and being handcuffed and interrogated by the police is hardly conducive to rational contemplation.
‘My problem,’ Killkenny continues, ‘is that François is currently in police custody in the secure wing of the psych ward at Mass. General, undergoing observation. He’s been there for more than a day. Gunta is still in custody, though we’re not convinced he was actively involved in any of the killing anyway. They’re the guys we’ve been assuming were responsible for all this. Shit, we know François did the Westerbrooke girl – his DNA was dripping out of her.’ I wince again at the way he talks about the murder victims. ‘Until this morning I was ready to put this whole thing in the win column and be done with it.’
He reaches into a folder on the desk and pulls out a picture. I’ve been here before, I realize, and I’m dreading it. ‘Then we find this.’ He flips the photo over, so I can see it. I don’t want to look, but I can’t help myself. She’s there, in the room I left less than ten hours ago, in the same position she was in when I first entered the room, her wrists strapped to the headboard, the bustier back on, her legs spread. And yet, despite the identical position, the scene could look no more different from the one etched into my memory. There is no candlelight, no soft cries of ecstasy, no intimacy. Instead, her skin looks harsh and raw against the blare of the light. Her hair is mangled, tossed over her face like a death shroud. I can just make out her mouth, which lolls open, her teeth catching strands of her hair. Her breasts, so full of life the night before, lie flat to her chest. I want to look away, but I can’t. After a moment I begin to wretch.
‘Get him a trash can,’ Killkenny says.
Welker reaches out with his foot and kicks a plastic trash can across the room. It comes to rest by Killkenny’s chair, and he picks it up and puts it on my lap. Because my hands are still cuffed behind my back, I have to balance it on my knees as I spew the contents of my stomach. It feels like I may have separated a shoulder in the effort, and my ribs, which have only just begun to feel better, scream out in pain. My body convulses three or four times even after there is nothing left to come up. I cough and spit, trying to clear the vomit from my throat and sinuses. I’d like to wipe my face, but that’s not an option in my position.
Killkenny takes the trash can and puts it on the floor, near enough to me that the stench is overpowering.
‘It’s not a pleasant sight, is it?’
I lean over and spit again into the trash can.
‘You want to tell us what happened?’
I stare at him. ‘I didn’t do that,’ I say after a moment.
‘No?’ Killkenny looks back at his boss. ‘No one wants to believe that more than me, Nick. Trust me, my nuts are on the block here, too. I let you get involved in the investigation into the De Sade situation. If it turns out that you’re somehow connected to that, I’ll lose my stripes.’
‘I had nothing to do with De Sade,’ I say. ‘You know that’
‘See, I agree with you there. I saw you on that investigation and, like I said, we’ve got François dead to rights on at least one of the girls. Once the DNA tests on the others are done, I think we’ll have him for all four of the girls, other than the Madison chick. But we can’t jam him up on her, ’cause we got a camera on him in a padded room, and he never moved last night. That’s why I think this was probably an accident.’
I glance quickly at the picture, then look away. ‘An accident?’
‘Yeah, you know, an accident.’ He points to the picture of Kendra. ‘This chick had a history. Lots of arrests for solicitation, an established history of kinky sex. And she’s a hot piece of ass, no doubt. Someone who looks like her asks me to tie her up, fuck the shit outta her – trust me, I’m all on board. I don’t care what she’s charging, y’know? No one blames you for that.’ He turns and looks at Welker. ‘Hell, even the Sarge here would be on board, and I’m pretty sure his wife cut his nuts off in the Nineties.’
Killkenny gives an awkward chuckle. I just stare at him, and Welker remains a statue.
‘Thing is, once you go down the road she liked to go down, things can get a little dangerous. I figure that’s what happened here, right? This was all consensual – I could see she was trying to reel you in when we first talked to her – and you’re not so experienced in this. So she’s okay with you choking her – shit, maybe she even wants you to, right? But you don’t know your own strength, so by
the time you let up . . . ’ He shrugs and taps the photo. ‘Am I on the right track? ’Cause if that’s the case, you’re looking at involuntary manslaughter at the worst.’
‘That’s not what happened.’
Killkenny takes a deep breath. ‘Look, Nick, I know this sucks. But if we’ve got to go for a full trial and prosecution, the DA is gonna go for the whole shootin’ match. Rape. First-degree murder. The whole ball o’ wax. Life without parole. You take a plea, give us a story we can work with, you can be out in three – maybe less. Plus, it doesn’t fuck up the case against François.’
‘What do you mean?’
He leans back. ‘You shittin’ me? A defense lawyer for François finds out there’s another murder that mimics one of these LifeScenes, which he knows his guy didn’t do? He’s gonna start thinking he can create reasonable doubt with a jury. We don’t need that. Work with us here; I’ll let the DA know how big a help you and Yvette were on the François thing, and maybe you can cut some time off with that, too.’
The mention of Yvette is like a sharp fist in the gut. ‘I didn’t do this, Paul,’ I say. ‘I’m not gonna say that I did.’
He leans back in his chair with a frustrated sigh. ‘No? Then who did?’
‘Josh Pinkerton.’
‘Pinkerton? How do you figure?’
‘You heard her before. She was with him for a couple of years and he couldn’t take it when she wouldn’t see him anymore. They were way into the bondage thing – the control thing. That’s what Josh is all about. He didn’t even like me talking to Kendra, and he sent NetMaster out to warn me, to beat the shit out of me, twice.’
‘Why didn’t you report that?’ It’s a good question, and I’ve been second-guessing my own thinking on that.
‘He threatened Ma, too. And Yvette. I thought maybe it was about the investigation, and once we caught De Sade, they’d let it go. I was wrong. It was always about Josh’s jealousy. He didn’t like that I was spending time with Kendra – that’s why they came after me. He must’ve been following her, or following me. Either way, he ended up at the Liberty Hotel and saw us. It must have sent him over the edge, and after I left, he killed her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘She wasn’t tied up when you were with her?’
I say nothing.
‘You didn’t choke her?’
Again, I figure silence is the only option.
‘This brings me back to my original problem, Nick. You’re giving us an interesting theory about Pinkerton. The only thing it’s missing is any shred of evidence. Unfortunately, all the evidence we have points to you.’
He’s right, and I know it, but the evidence is lying. I just have to figure out how to make them see that.
There is a commotion outside the interrogation room. People are shouting angrily at each other. Suddenly the door swings open and a tall, thin man in his forties is standing there. He has dark hair, a handsome, thin face, and he’s dressed in a dark suit and expensive tie. Killkenny looks at the man and rolls his eyes. ‘Finn. What the fuck are you doing here?’
The man glares at Killkenny. ‘I’m here to take my client out of an illegal interrogation.’
‘Illegal interrogation?’ Killkenny spreads his hands, the picture of innocence.
‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘I’m your lawyer,’ the man says. ‘Shut the fuck up.’ He looks at Welker. ‘You read my client his rights?’ he asks. Welker looks away.
‘You offer him a lawyer?’ he asks Killkenny.
‘This isn’t an interrogation at all. He’s speaking with us voluntarily.’
The lawyer looks at me, bent over in the chair, the pail of vomit next to me. ‘With his hands cuffed behind his back and a bucket of puke next to him?’
‘We’re just trying to make him comfortable,’ Killkenny says. He holds up the picture of Kendra tied to the bed. ‘He’s into this sort of shit. That’s why we’re having this conversation in the first place.’
‘This conversation is over,’ the lawyer says. ‘Unlock the cuffs now. He’s coming with me.’
‘He isn’t going anywhere,’ Killkenny says. ‘He’s under arrest.’
The lawyer glares at him. ‘Is he? You’ve booked him on charges? That would also mean you’ve read him his rights and advised him that he has the right to a lawyer, yes?’
The cops exchange a look that says they’ve been caught. ‘We could arrest him now,’ Killkenny says.
‘Yes, you could, Detective. But if you do, I’ll file a motion that lays out exactly what went on here. I’ll put every detail of this illegal interrogation in front of a magistrate to get a ruling on the record. You know what happens then, right? He’ll spend less than an hour in jail,’ he looks at me sharply, ‘keeping his mouth shut,’ he says with emphasis, ‘before Judge Taylor sees my petition and not only lets him go, but busts both of you down two pay grades for pulling this shit. Either that, or we skip that process and you let him go. Anything you learned here today is off-limits, but you’re free to conduct whatever investigation you want. And if you think you have the basis for an arrest, you come see me tomorrow and we can discuss it. Am I being clear?’
Killkenny looks at Welker, who remains still. ‘Yeah,’ he says after a moment. ‘You’re being clear.’ He stands and walks behind me, unlocks the cuffs. I pull my hands in front of me, trying to rub them together, but they’re still totally numb, and they dangle like rubber from my wrists. ‘But you better make sure your client doesn’t skip town,’ Killkenny goes on. ‘We will be coming for him. If he’s in Canada tomorrow, your ass is in a sling, Finn.’
‘You’re in no position to make threats, Detective,’ the lawyer says. He takes me by the shoulder and leads me toward the door.
‘I’m serious,’ Killkenny calls. ‘Don’t leave town, Nick!’
The lawyer calls over his shoulder, ‘Pull this shit again with one of my clients, Killkenny, and I’ll make sure you’re writing parking tickets for the rest of your career!’
‘I didn’t hire a lawyer,’ I say once we’re outside of the station house. The feeling is only starting to return to my hands.
‘No, you didn’t,’ the lawyer says. ‘Someone hired me for you.’
‘Who?’
‘Tom Jackson. He’ll be at my office.’ He walks over to an ancient MG convertible parked in a spot reserved for police vehicles. ‘They don’t tow my car,’ he explains as he opens the door for me. I slide into the passenger seat. He closes the door and walks around to the other side and gets in, turns the ignition and the engine grumbles to life.
‘Tom hired you?’
‘Yeah. He seems to think you’ve been set up.’
‘He’s right.’
‘Is he?’
I look at the man sitting next to me. He’s looking at me without judgment, but also without sympathy. ‘Yes, he is. I had nothing to do with this. Do you believe that?’
‘I’m a lawyer,’ he says. ‘I don’t believe anything.’ He pulls out into the traffic, heads in the direction of Charlestown.
‘I had nothing to do with this!’ I shout.
He shrugs. ‘Maybe not. I don’t care whether you did or didn’t. I care about what the evidence looks like. And I can tell you that, from what the evidence looks like at the moment, you’re fucked.’
‘Thanks.’
‘My job’s not to lie to you.’
I look out at the Charles River as we cross the bridge into Charlestown. ‘Well, great. You do your job exceptionally well.’
The lawyer’s office is on Warren Street in Charlestown. He parks in front of a brick-fronted building and gets out, leads me inside. Tom Jackson is waiting inside in a comfortably appointed office with two desks, expensive art, oriental rugs and a fireplace. He looks relieved to see me.
‘Thank you, Mr Finn,’ he says to the lawyer.
‘Don’t thank me,’ the lawyer says. ‘Just pay the bill when it comes. I haven’t really done anything yet.’
‘Y
ou got him out,’ Tom points out.
‘Only because they know the interrogation was illegal, and they were covering their asses. They’ll have enough to charge him by the book by morning, and I don’t know how successful I’ll be in the future on this. A plea deal might be the best way to go.’
‘I’m not taking a plea,’ I say.
The lawyer rolls his eyes at Tom. ‘You talk to him. I’ve got some other things to do. Ultimately I can’t make him take my advice.’ He walks out of the office, leaving me and Tom alone together.
‘Why did you get me a lawyer?’ I ask.
‘Yvette came to see me. She told me what happened. She told me about you and Kendra, about everything Kendra told you about Josh. I knew you needed some help.’
‘You’re taking my side against Josh?’
He looks away. ‘I knew what was happening with Josh two years ago when he was with Kendra. I saw it, and I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t want to rock the boat, and I figured he’d get himself all straightened out once the company went public.’ Now he meets my eyes. ‘It was a mistake I made. I should have gone to the police right away. If I had, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe Kendra would still be alive.’
‘The same is true if I hadn’t spent the night with her,’ I point out.
He nods. ‘We both failed her. What did you tell the police?’
‘Not much. They weren’t interested in listening.’
‘That’s not surprising. What will you do now?’
‘I’m going to prove it was him,’ I say.
‘How?’
I shake my head. ‘You don’t need to be involved. You’ve done enough by getting me out of jail. I can handle the rest. I have people who can help me.’
‘Like Yvette?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know whether she’ll be willing to help me, after some of the things I’ve done.’
‘You’re wrong there,’ he says. ‘She loves you. She came to me for help, but even if I hadn’t gotten you out, she was going to do all the digging herself to find out what really happened – to prove you didn’t do this. She made that perfectly clear. Her determination and the loyalty she has for you were the reasons I got you out. They made me feel ashamed of just standing on the sidelines while a friend was in need. I figured the least I could do was get you a lawyer.’
