DARK KILLS a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by BREARTON, T. J.

  Dana looked at the young man in her bed: Perry Brady.

  Hamill was right behind Dana, and leaned over her shoulder. “Can we come in?”

  “Um. Whatever. Okay.” Maggie walked back across the room with the sheet dusting the floor like a toga. She plopped down on the bed beside Brady, who was sitting up, his eyes bleary, hair sticking out on the sides.

  Dana took a moment to process the scene. She needed time to quell the roiling energy within her. Okay. There was no dead body here, no apparent crime scene. But the girl seemed nervous.

  Dana took a chair and slid it into the center of the small space. Hamill folded his arms in the doorway.

  “Look,” Dana began. “We’ve got two bodies just turned up in the last twelve hours. Two girls that go to school here. Okay? Dead.”

  Her intent was to shock them, get a reaction. She would separate them soon, and get each of their versions. Maggie’s face crumbled and the punky-looking student raised a trembling hand to her mouth. Dana glanced at Hamill.

  Not quite what they had expected.

  She watched as Perry Brady put a tentative hand on Maggie. He met the detective’s gaze.

  He swallowed, mustering some gumption. “What happened?”

  Screw separating them. Get the broad brush right now. “Can you tell me where you were last night, Perry?”

  The young man blinked. He was good-looking as hell, better in person than the picture. A mop of brown hair pushed across his forehead, the way kids styled it now, he looked ready for a modeling shoot. “I was here,” he said, and glanced at Maggie. The girl’s face had turned red, her eyes wet with tears.

  “Okay,” Dana said. “All night?” She already had the information from local police, but she wanted to hear it from him.

  “Yeah, totally. Yes, ma’am. All night.”

  She turned her eyes on Maggie. “From what time to what time? Can you be exact?”

  “Um.” Maggie snuffled back tears. She dropped her hand away from her mouth and took a quick, stuttering breath. Dana watched her and the young man closely. “What time did we come back from Charlie’s?”

  “I stopped by the student center at like six,” Perry said, “Then we were at my place, then out until . . . eleven, I think?”

  “Who’s Charlie? Or what is it?”

  Both the kids looked at Dana. Something in their eyes told her that “Charlie’s” was a bit clandestine. Perry, especially, didn’t look happy Maggie had mentioned it. Maggie spoke for them. “It’s just, you know. Where we hang out.”

  “A public establishment, a private residence, or what?”

  “Um, private.”

  Dana saw Hamill in her peripheral vision. He seemed to be staring at Perry. Perry looked back at him, then dropped his gaze. Dana asked, “How old are you, Perry?”

  “Me? I’m twenty-one. Well . . . I’m twenty. I’ll be twenty-one next month. My birthday is the day after Christmas.”

  “And you, Miss Lange?”

  “Twenty.” The girl seemed to draw away, perhaps thinking about the two dead girls, who they might be. Or because she already knew who they were.

  “And how about yesterday, Perry? Around noon.”

  “Around noon? I was in class. Friday from eleven to three.”

  “That a one-day-a-week class?”

  “That’s right.”

  Dana looked at her partner again. Here he was, the guy they’d thought had run from them last night, and he had an apparent alibi for both dead girls. Hamill’s look indicated, Maybe, maybe not. Keep going.

  Dana turned back to Perry. “You ever go down to O’Sullivan’s?”

  “No, ma’am. Like I said, I’m not twenty-one yet.”

  “Right. So you weren’t there last night . . .”

  “No way. No. Not me.”

  Dana leaned forward. “Perry, let me make you a promise. You’re not going to get into any trouble for underage drinking. Okay? So let me ask you one more time. Have you ever been to O’Sullivan’s?”

  The kid had absolutely no poker face. He was either guileless or just not too bright. He looked over at Hamill, then he put a hand on his forehead. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Were you there last night?”

  “No,” he said. Dana thought his voice betrayed fear.

  “Who are the girls?” Maggie blurted. She seemed back in the here and now again. Her bed sheet was slipping past one of her small breasts, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Dana stretched forward and pulled the sheet up. Maggie seemed slightly confused for a moment.

  “Let’s get to that in just a minute, okay? First I’d like to talk to Perry alone. Would you like to use the bathroom, Maggie? Maybe take a moment to get dressed.”

  Again, the girl seemed bewildered, but then she got it. “Sure,” she said. They were all quiet for a moment, the air in the room heavy. Maggie gathered up some clothes and bathroom products. Dana looked around. Two narrow beds, one messed by the students, the other neatly made. A few posters, a sketch of a Shakespeare bust, a black and white of Einstein. Desks with shelves above them. A few novels on Maggie’s side, a Matisse hardcover. No books on ancient wisdom. A pile of shoes. The tangy sweetness of sex was in the air.

  Maggie left.

  They both zeroed in on Perry.

  “How long you been sleeping with her?” Dana asked.

  The kid seemed to shrink back against the wall, the blanket sliding away. Dana saw he had a tattoo on his shoulder. Intersecting circles, maybe Celtic.

  “Um . . . oh man.” It was his turn to shake, and he touched his face self-consciously.

  “Hey, it’s alright, guy. Relax.”

  “Um, I’ve been . . . we’ve been. Like a week.”

  “Just a week?”

  “Maybe two.”

  “Which? One week or two?”

  “A week and a half. Nine . . . er, ten days.”

  Dana could sense her partner biting his tongue. Perry Brady was really painting the picture of an empty-headed stud. Or, he was lying.

  “A week and a half, okay. You like her?”

  “Yeah, man, she’s great. She . . .”

  “Why is her name crossed off in a textbook in your room?” It was a leap. They had no probable cause to have such information, but Perry wouldn’t know that.

  His gaze became fixed, and the shaking stopped. It was like he was temporarily frozen. Then his nerves started firing again and Perry Brady looked sheepish, even embarrassed. Despite everything, Dana found herself starting to feel sorry for the kid. Even liking him a little. He wasn’t boastful, he didn’t ham it up and act tough, and she felt a knot loosen inside of her.

  “I, ah . . . You know, they’re all great girls. They all have great qualities and, I , ah . . .”

  “You slept with each of them, right? Sonia might’ve thought you were her boyfriend, but so did Maggie.”

  “Sonia?” Perry’s face showed stark fear. “Did something happen to Sonia?”

  “Hold on. Let me just ask you. And you need to be totally straight. You’ve slept with Sonia Taylor and Maggie Lange. Yes?”

  He nodded. His eyes were wide, his face a mask of worry, tempered with a touch of humiliation.

  “How about Holly Arbruster?”

  “Holly? Oh man. You guys, come on. What’s going on? Did something happen to her too?”

  “Could you answer the question?”

  He transformed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, okay? Now, I guess I need to get a fucking lawyer, huh?”

  The detectives shared a look. There’s some aggression there after all. Maybe he gets a bit angry with the girls after he tires of sleeping with them. When Dana looked at the kid again, Perry’s expression was apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sure,” Hamill said. “You can get a lawyer. We can arrest you, you can get processed; you can call your lawyer from jail, all the while looking guilty as hell. Or, you can talk to us. If you’ve got nothing to hide, this just helps us clear
you.”

  “It’s okay, Perry,” Dana added. “One last question and we’ll let you in on things, okay?” It was a lie. “How about Lori Stender? Just tell us. This one last thing. Sleeping with her?”

  He studied them both for a moment, decided something, and shook his head. He hadn’t. His demeanor suggested he was grateful for this fact. At least he hadn’t slept with one of them, right? Maybe it was why her name had yet to be crossed off the list.

  Dana pressed, “Kind of tough sleeping with her when she was roommates with Sonia, huh? Logistical challenges?”

  And the kid looked crestfallen again. What a roller coaster of emotions. Perry Brady would probably remember this day for the rest of his life. Maybe it would forever alter his sexual habits. Whether he was a killer or not remained to be seen.

  * * *

  They were outside the dorms. A light snow was falling through the gray morning.

  “Am I gonna have to . . . ? Will this all be recorded, and everything? Are they gonna know?”

  Dana pressed on the top of Perry’s head, stuffing him in the back of the Corsica. “You’re going to give us an official statement. Maggie too, once she’s pulled herself together. The troopers will bring her in. We need both of you to swear and sign that you were together last night. It’s going to come out, Perry. We need everything to be transparent right now, nothing blocking our view. Your life is going to be a fishbowl for a little while.”

  Perry looked like a wounded dog, all sorrowful eyes and limp-shouldered, as Dana closed the door before the kid could say anything else. Then she glanced across the hood at Hamill, who sparked a cigarette. Hamill was tense; she could see it in his eyes.

  She walked around and met him at the back of the car.

  His voice was low, smoke issuing from the corners of his mouth. “Let’s take him, right now, right to his apartment, find the book.”

  She could feel the urgency in her partner, and it echoed her own. She’d been impetuous already. Now they needed to be smart. “And what? That it’s a search incident to arrest? What grounds? Because two witnesses claim he’s a boyfriend of the deceased? And we find him here, not at home, with another girl. Here, at the dorms. How do we justify taking him back to his house and searching his room? Anything we find gets chucked if he has a PD with half a brain. Or, he’s got money and lawyers up.”

  Hamill stared into her. “You don’t think he’s our guy.”

  “I don’t know what I think yet, Rob. I want to know why he picked those girls in particular. Maybe he wrote down his . . . I don’t know . . . his booty-call wish list. Plus I want to know if there’s a reason he wrote their names in that specific book. And I want to check his alibi for the Friday class.”

  She glanced through the rear window at the back of Perry Brady’s head. “Here’s the deal,” she said to Hamill, her voice a harsh whisper, “Local PD found the boyfriend of one of the victims. We questioned him, found out he was sleeping with a second victim, too. I’ll put in the affidavit for the warrant. That’s it. Judge signs off, forensics goes in and turns it upside down. If he’s our guy, that way we got him. Clean.”

  It still wasn’t the best route to have taken, but Hamill had been right — they would now have the jacket and wallet found in the room and the book with its list of names all on the level for the prosecution, if need be. They just had to be careful.

  “Alright,” Hamill agreed. “Meantime, I say we stay right on him, keep grilling him at the station, get a confession, and it’s over.”

  Dana turned and looked into the campus quad. There were four dormitories here, all that the college offered. A few students were out. They were either the dedicated type doing work or taking extracurricular activities on a late Saturday morning, or they were still on their way home from the night before. A couple of them on the far end of the quad looked like zombies from here, sort of dragging themselves along. But somewhere, for most of them, were families who loved and worried about them.

  “Maybe he’ll get a memoir out of this,” Hamill mused. “Could be the best thing ever happened to him.”

  “We have to talk to the parents. Can’t put them off any longer.”

  She heard Hamill sigh.

  “We have to,” she said.

  Hamill pitched his cigarette away. “Fine. So, parents first and then back to the kids.”

  Dana shrugged. “Yeah,” she said, thinking about her own parents. She felt like she was on her way to the torture rack.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN / A Break in the Case

  She had to shut her emotions down completely. It was work, she reminded herself, just work. Ten years, though, and it never got easier. She watched the parents and felt like they were on the other side of a wall of glass, their voices muffled and distorted. The Arbrusters, an aging yuppie couple from downstate; the mother, thin lips pressed together, gripping a stainless steel travel mug with shaky hands, her mascara running, the tip of her nose bloomed red from the crying. The father was wooden, staring into space. Dana couldn’t help but empathize.

  The Taylors were just as devastated. They were from the central part of the state, Schenectady, more rugged and working class than the Arbrusters. Sonia’s father was big-boned, one shoulder listed to the side. His face was thick with emotion, and a tear tracked down his cheek during the questions. The mother went ghostly white, her eyes shrinking to two hard beads as she recounted her daughter’s school activities; the last time Sonia had called, what she had said. Then her voice cracked and she broke down and sobbed. Mr Taylor put a hand on her. The big man’s lower lip trembled.

  Neither set of parents knew anything which advanced the case. They both had girls in college, girls who got decent grades, who called home every other weekend. Girls who’d had a normal upbringing; band practice (Holly) and cheerleading squad (Sonia). Both had gone to the prom. Both had their first boyfriend in their early teens. Sonia had two brothers, both younger, both half-siblings. Her biological father lived in Alaska and visited at Christmas, and Sonia had talked about spending time with him next summer. The relationships were amicable all round. Holly had an older brother who lived in the city, where he worked for a start-up. He was on his way up that afternoon.

  The only thing it did was contradict Rob Hamill’s ridiculous theory that women were overtaking men in terms of population. Both girls just had brothers.

  Neither of the girls had mentioned Perry Brady to their parents. When the detectives brought up the study on psychic behavior, none of the parents had heard of it. There was nothing else. It was another letdown for the cops, and it only seemed to deepen the grief of the parents. They had all felt they were in touch with their daughters, and they hadn’t known about half the stuff in their lives. Dana and Hamill assured them they would find out what had happened.

  A grueling session of back-to-back interviews with little reward. Not much more than what the captain had already noted. Both students were twenty. Both were psychology majors. Both had reasonable GPAs. Both grew up in New York State, Holly from the region and Sonia from the western part of the state. That was it.

  Dana felt like a sleepwalker by the end. Hamill convinced them to stop for sandwiches before returning to interrogate Perry Brady. They’d passed Brady and Lange on to two capable state troopers in the meantime, who would take their initial statements before questioning.

  The partners packed themselves into a corner booth and Hamill ate, while Dana just looked at her food, willing her appetite to return.

  “You should feel good,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “We probably just saved that girl’s life.”

  She pulled out her phone as Hamill munched on his turkey sub. She dialed the station.

  “What’re you thinking?” Hamill asked, a piece of lettuce stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  “Wondering about Maggie Lange’s extracurricular activities.”

  “Ah.”

  Trooper Maize came on the line. Dana asked him to find out whethe
r or not Maggie Lange was participating in the same study that Sonia Taylor had been. And to contact Wayland Kimball at the college and get a full roster.

  “Will do,” Maize said.

  “How are our two lovebirds doing?”

  “Oh, getting nice and juicy. Call you right back.”

  Dana hung up and looked at her uneaten sandwich. She had removed her suit jacket and rolled up her sleeves and her sole tattoo was showing on the inside of her forearm. Dana didn’t have a tribal symbol like Perry Brady, she had her brother’s name in elegant script.

  Hamill was looking at it. “Always liked your ink,” he said, and fed the last bite of sandwich into his mouth.

  “Shut up.”

  “How you doing with that?”

  Dana looked up. “With what?” She pushed her sandwich away. “How am I doing? This is work. That was my personal life. Still is. So . . .”

  Hamill stopped chewing, tucking the food into his cheek. “You’re going to pretend that you’re not affected?”

  “Affected? Affected by what? That was twenty-five years ago.”

  Hamill watched Dana for a moment longer. Then he pushed the sandwich back towards Dana. “You gotta eat, chica.”

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket before she could respond. She pulled it out. “What’s the word?”

  Maize reported his findings. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.” She ended the call and raised her eyebrows at Hamill.

  “She in the study?”

  “Yep. She was in the same study. Lange also gave the names of the others. Besides Sonia Taylor; Holly Arbruster, Lori Stender, and — drum roll please — Perry Brady.”

  Hamill slapped his palm on the table. The piece of lettuce caught on the corner of his mouth fell out.

  “My man, Perry,” he said.

  “Maybe that’s why he made the list.”

  “Dude takes an extracurricular with four hot chicks, says, ‘I’m gonna nail me each of them.’” Hamill burped. “I gotta say, the kid’s got ambition. Sleep with them, then kill them.”

  “Yeah, but how do we know he killed them?”