BOSTON SERGEANT DETECTIVE D. D. WARREN was on the case. And she was not happy about it.
This was unusual. A born workaholic, D.D. lived and breathed her job. Nothing made her happier than a high-profile homicide case that demanded endless nights of cold pizza as she and her squad racked up round-the-clock hours, targeting their prey.
Granted, she was a mother now, and baby Jack was proving as big an insomniac as his mom. Teething? Probably not at ten weeks. Colic? Maybe. It’s not like babies came with an instruction manual. D.D. had tried singing to him last night. He’d cried harder. Finally, she’d rocked and cried with him. They’d both fallen asleep around four; her alarm had woken her at six. But two hours of sleep wasn’t the reason D.D. was cranky.
True, her life had undergone another major sea change: Given the unexpected news that she was forty and pregnant, she’d decided to roll the dice toward domestic bliss and actually move in with the baby’s father. She’d sold her North End condo, said sayonara to the four pieces of furniture she’d managed to acquire over the years, and moved into Alex’s tiny suburban ranch. He’d graciously given her the entire closet. She was trying to stop hogging the covers. They both loved the nursery.
Alex was supportive, caring, and most importantly, as a crime scene expert who taught courses at the police academy, wise enough to allow her plenty of space to do her job. He’d spent the previous night taking his turn being up all hours with the baby, so Alex definitely wasn’t the reason she was cranky.
Granted, this was also her first major case after her eight-week maternity leave, but given the past two weeks of office paperwork, fieldwork seemed a great idea and definitely was not the reason she was cranky.
Frankly, she didn’t want to talk about it. She just wanted others to feel her pain.
D.D. pushed her way through the growing crowd of gawkers piling up on the sidewalk, then flashed her shield at the uniformed officer standing outside the crime scene tape. He dutifully entered her name and badge number in the murder book. Then she was ducking under the yellow tape and slipping on shoe booties and a hair net, before finally mounting the peeling wooden steps of the faded gray tenement building.
Scene was on the second floor. One-bedroom unit of the low-income housing project. Victim was a forty-something Caucasian male, which from what D.D. could tell, made him the only white guy in an eight-block radius. Apparently, he lived alone, and they’d only gotten the call when neighbors had complained of the smell.
D.D. hated tenement houses. If you could take despair, give it four walls, leaking ceilings, and very few windows, this is what it would look like. She hated the punk ass teenagers that eyed her boldly as she approached, already so grim they might as well piss off a Boston cop, because what else did they have to lose? She fretted over the shrunken, eighty-year-old grandmothers, forced to carry heavy bags of groceries up three flights of stairs to a bone-cold efficiency unit in the winter, or a 120-degree boiling kettle in the summer. She despaired over the packs of feral kids gazing distrustfully out of doorways, because at the ripe old ages of four, five, six, they’d already been taught to hate all authority figures.
Race relations in Boston. Inner-city socioeconomics. Label it whatever you wanted; tenement buildings stood as a constant reminder to D.D. of all the ways her job was still failing a significant portion of Boston’s population.
Guy here had been murdered. D.D. and her squad would investigate. D.D. and her squad would arrest the killer. And life for everyone in this building would suck just as much tomorrow as it did today.
Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren was cranky. But she did not want to talk about it.
D.D.’s squadmate, Neil, met her on the second-floor landing. The thirty-two-year-old lanky redhead used to work as an EMT before joining the BPD, and was their go-to man for all things gory. Currently, he was holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose, which D.D. took as a bad sign.
He took one look at the expression on her face and recoiled slightly.
“The baby?” he asked tentatively.
“Not why I’m cranky,” she snapped.
He had to think about it. “Alex left you?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake…” She loved her squad and her squad loved her. But just working with her was enough for them to believe that Alex, who lived with her, must be a saint. “Not why I’m cranky.”
“You don’t have to go inside,” Neil ventured. “I mean, if you’re worried about the smell, or, or…” His voice trailed off. The warning look in her eyes was enough; he stopped talking.
“My parents are coming!” D.D. blurted out.
“You have parents?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Florida,” she muttered. “They live in Florida. Where they play golf and bridge and do all the things old people do. They like being in Florida. I like them being in Florida. Just because I have a baby is no reason to mess with a good thing.”
Neil nodded, then waited. When it became clear she was done speaking, he leaned forward slightly. “Do they have names?”
“Patsy and Roy.”
“Oh. Well, that explains it. Can we talk about the murder vic now? Please.”
“Thought you’d never ask. What do we got?”
“Two GSWs to the head. Probably three to four days dead.”
D.D. raised a brow. “Bloated, gassy?” she asked, meaning the corpse.
“Well, been brutally cold, which helped,” Neil offered.
True. A four-day old corpse in the heat and humidity of August D.D. would’ve smelled a block away. As it was, standing three yards from the door of the apartment, she caught only the dull undertones of something rancid. Thank heavens for the mid-January deep freeze in Boston.
Then she thought of something. “What about the apartment’s heating unit?” she asked with a frown.
“Turned off.”
She arched a brow. “By the victim, or the killer?”
Neil shrugged, because of course he couldn’t know that yet, which didn’t mean he hadn’t wondered himself. D.D. often thought out loud, which, out of sheer self-preservation, her squad had learned not to take personally.
“Who’s here?” D.D. asked now, meaning the other investigators.
Neil rattled off several names. Their other squadmate, Phil, the family man. A couple of crime scene techs, latent prints, photographer, the ME’s office. Not too big a party, which D.D. preferred. Space was small, and extra officers, even so-called experts, had a tendency to mess things up. D.D. liked her crime scenes tight and controlled. Later, if things went wrong, that meant it would be on her head. But D.D. would rather shoulder the blame than ride herd on a bunch of uniforms.
“What else do I need to know?” she asked Neil.
“Won’t tell you,” Neil announced stubbornly.
She glanced at him, startled. Their other squadmate, Phil, was known to go toe-to-toe with her. Neil not so much.
“If I tell you and I’m wrong, you’re gonna be pissed,” Neil muttered, no longer looking at her. “I don’t tell you, and I’m right, you can feel good about yourself later-and take the credit.”
D.D. shook her head. Neil would be an excellent detective, if only he didn’t hide behind her and Phil so much. He seemed content to let them be the forward members of the crew, while he spent his days overseeing autopsies at the morgue.
She wondered if the medical examiner, Ben Whitley, was here. Neil and Ben had been dating for a little over a year now. Not an office romance, per se, but an industry one. Made D.D. uneasy about what might happen in the event of a breakup. On the other hand, given that she was forty, unwed, and now mother to a ten-week-old baby boy, she figured she wasn’t in any position to give personal advice.
Life happened. All you could do was ride the ride.
She sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and felt the full weight of her ride’s current sleeplessness. Jack had been snuggled into his carrier when she’d left him this morning. All wide blue eyes and fat red cheeks. When she’d kissed the top of his head, he’d waved his pudgy little fists at her.
Did a ten-week-old baby know enough to miss his mommy, because a ten-week mommy sure knew enough to miss her baby.
D.D. sighed one last time, squared her shoulders, and got on with it.
FIRST SCENT THAT HIT D.D.’S NOSTRILS WAS the overwhelmingly astringent odor of ammonia. She recoiled as if she’d hit a wall, her eyes already tearing up as she frantically waved at the air in front of her, an instinctive motion that made no difference.
She glanced down and noticed the rest of the story: piles and piles of animal feces, which accompanied at least a dozen pools of urine.
“What the hell?” she demanded.
“Puppy,” Neil supplied. “Cute floppy-eared yellow lab. Was shut up for multiple days with the body. Obviously, not good for housebreaking. Puppy survived on toilet water and a box of crackers it chewed its way into. Animal control already took her away, if you want a puppy for Jack.”
“Jack sleeps, eats, and poops. What’s he gonna do with a puppy?”
“Hmm,” Neil said, nodding sagely. “It’s probably just a phase.”
D.D. stepped carefully over the puppy piles and followed Neil through the tiny living area into the even tinier kitchen. She waved to a couple of crime scene techs as she went, easing around them in the tight space. Each nodded in greeting but kept working. Given the smell, she couldn’t blame their desire to get in, out, and done.
Off the kitchen was an open doorway that appeared to lead to the single bedroom. Inside, D.D. spotted her other squadmate, Phil, sitting at a tiny desk with his back to the kitchen. He was wearing gloves, his fingers flying over the keyboard of the vic’s laptop. As their technical expert, he was the most qualified for preliminary data mining. Later, of course, he’d deliver the laptop to the techies for a full-scale forensic eval. But in any investigation, time was of the essence, so Phil liked to see what he could learn sooner, rather than waiting for the full forensic analysis, which would follow weeks later.
“Hey, Phil,” she called out to her older squadmate.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, raising one arm absently in greeting, then, spotting her face, performed a double take.
“Is it Jack?” he asked. Phil had four kids.
“Not why I’m cranky,” she gritted out.
“Alex…”
“Not why I’m cranky!”
“Her parents are coming,” Neil supplied from behind her.
“You have parents?”
D.D. glared at Phil. He quickly returned his attention to the victim’s computer, which allowed her to return her attention to the kitchenette, where a small wooden table had been shoved against the far wall. It featured two rickety wooden chairs, one of which was currently occupied by a corpse.
The ME, Ben Whitley, was leaning over the body. He looked up at D.D. as she approached, but she noticed he was careful to keep his gaze away from Neil.
Hmm, she felt like saying. It’s probably just a phase.
She switched her attention to the vic, an either really fat or really bloated white guy with greasy brown hair and twin bullet holes through the left side of his forehead.
“No one heard the shots?” she asked. Her eyes still stung from the stench of urine. She understood Neil’s handkerchief now and resiliently forced herself not to gag.
“In this neighborhood?” Neil replied wryly.
D.D. pursed her lips, acknowledging his point.
Dead guy’s considerable mass was just beginning to contort inside the sausage-like casings of his jeans and button-down red flannel shirt. The force of the shots had sent his head back, where his features had probably locked in the first two to six hours due to rigor mortis. Within two to three days, however, rigor had passed, the muscles slackening, the flesh of his jowls seeming to slide down his face like wax melting from a candle. Next step in the decomp process: putrefaction. Within twenty-four hours, bacterial action inside the body produced gases, leading to swelling and a very distinct odor known to homicide detectives and MEs the world over. Skin around the lower abdomen and groin turned blue-green, while stomach contents started to leak out through the mouth, nose, and anus.
Nothing pretty about decomp, which meant that all in all, D.D. was pleasantly surprised by the corpse’s intact condition. Bacterial action was just starting up, versus already running amok through the dead guy’s intestines. Made the scene more bearable, though she still wouldn’t want to be standing as close to the body as the ME was.
“So you’re thinking three to four days?” she asked Ben now, the doubt obvious in her voice.
He pursed his lips, considering. “Cold temperatures impede decomp. Given the apartment’s chilly ambience, I think that explains the slow putrefaction process. But won’t know for sure until I open him up.”
“First thoughts?”
“Cause of death is most likely twin GSWs to the left side of the forehead,” he stated. “Double tap, up close and personal. Notice the powder burn ringing the entry wounds, as well as the tight pairing. GSW one and GSW two are not even half an inch apart.”
“Execution style?” D.D. asked with a frown, venturing closer in spite of herself. “Any defensive wounds?”
“Negative.”
D.D. trusted Ben implicitly-he was one of the best ME’s the city ever had. But she couldn’t stop from glancing at the vic’s hands because the lack of defensive wounds didn’t make any sense. Who sat at his kitchen table and just let himself be shot?
“You’re sure it’s not suicide?” she asked Ben.
“No gun at the scene. No GSR on his hands,” the ME reported, then added, as a slight rebuke for her questioning his findings, “Unless, of course, he was wearing gloves which he kindly removed after shooting himself to death and hiding the murder weapon.”
D.D. got his point. She glanced back at Neil. “Forced entry?”
The lanky redhead shook his head. He appeared smug. “First responders had the building manager let them in. No sign of tampering with the lock. Windows are intact, not to mention too warped to open.”
D.D. eyed her squadmate. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope.”
“All right, all right,” she muttered. “Game on.”
She continued her analysis of the scene. Entry wounds to vic’s forehead appeared tight and round. Given the lack of exit wound, she assumed a small-caliber weapon, such as a. 22. Easy enough handgun to conceal until the last minute, especially this time of year when everyone was bulked up in winter jackets. But also a questionable choice for a murder weapon-not much bang in a. 22. Gun aficionados generally referred to such handguns as “plinking” guns. Good for shooting at cans and squirrels, or maybe hurling at an opponent if all else failed. But plenty of people got shot by. 22s and lived, making the small-caliber handgun a dubious choice for an execution-style homicide.
D.D. moved on with her analysis: Shooter was most likely someone the victim knew. Victim not only opened the door, but let the unknown subject into his apartment. Furthermore, sitting at the kitchen table implied hospitality. Would you like something to drink, that sort of thing.
D.D. crossed to the kitchen sink. Sure enough, two chipped blue mugs sat inside the grimy stainless steel basin. With gloved hands, she lifted the first mug and peered inside. No noticeable dried residue, so either a clear liquid or the mugs were rinsed.
She returned the mugs, which would be bagged and tagged by the evidence techs, then did a double take.
Mugs had been rinsed, then placed in the sink? Because nothing else inside the apartment looked like it had been rinsed, wiped, or otherwise tended in at least six months. The countertops were sticky and grungy. Ditto with the urine-splattered floor, grime-covered floorboards, and stained walls.
She glanced back at the wooden table, which also appeared suspiciously pristine. She ran a gloved finger along the battered surface. Old yes, battle-scarred definitely, but clean. So two mugs rinsed, one wooden table wiped.
She looked up at Neil, who was smiling even more broadly now.
“Shooter cleaned up after himself,” she murmured.
He wouldn’t reply, but given his terrible poker face, he didn’t have to.
Next up, D.D. wrenched open the refrigerator door. She discovered an opened can of dog food that smelled even worse than the rest of the apartment, a six-pack of beer, wine coolers, Hostess Twinkies, containers of leftover Chinese, half a dozen condiments, and the remains of a rotisserie chicken dated ten days prior.
So the victim liked fast food and had a sweet tooth.
D.D. tried some of the cupboards, discovering paper products in lieu of plates, plastic products in lieu of silverware, as well as multiple shelves of chips, crackers, cereals, and store-bought cookies. Last cupboard seemed to be for the dog-bags of dry puppy food, plus more canned food.
D.D. continued to build her mental profile. Middle-aged single white male, living a bachelor life in a low-income housing project.
Why this building? White guy had to stand out, feel uncomfortable. Lonely? Was that why he got a puppy? But he entertained. Had someone here, whom he invited in for a drink, perhaps, maybe come over, see my new puppy. Have a drink, have a snack.
D.D. got that feeling. It was a distinct physical sensation that started at the base of a good detective’s spine, before zipping straight up the vertebrae to the back of her neck, where the tiny hairs stood up and made her shiver.
She glanced at Neil, who beamed larger.
“No fucking way!” she said.
“Way.”
“What’s Phil found?”
“Don’t know about the computer, but we already discovered two shoeboxes of photos tucked beneath the bed.”
“Is the vic in the system?”
“No hits thus far, though we’re still running his name and prints through the national database.”
“But the photos?”
“All boys, all under the age of twelve, mostly black, but other ethnicities as well. I’d say he selected his victims based on opportunity, rather than race.”
“Son of a bitch!” D.D. exclaimed. “He’s a pedophile. Set up shop right in the middle of his target population-unloved, unsupervised, highly vulnerable kids. Gets their attention when he’s walking his puppy, then invites them up for a cookie, chips, a bottle of beer. Son of a bitch.”
“D.D.”
She glared at the dead guy, the twin holes in his forehead, the melted wax face. “Kid struck back,” she muttered, then considered the carefully wiped down surfaces. “Or maybe a parent or an older sibling or a friend. Someone got wise, then he got dead. Good.”
“D.D.”
“What?”
“It gets better.”
“What’s better than one less pervert in the city?”
Phil came walking out of the bedroom, snapping off his gloves. “You tell her yet?” he asked Neil.
“Tell me what?”
“You were on maternity leave,” Phil said, as if that explained everything.
“Tell me what!”
“Not one less pervert in the city,” Neil said happily. “Mr. Wanna See My Puppy over there makes two.”
PHIL AND NEIL HAD TO WALK HER THROUGH IT. It was four weeks back, meaning Jack had been six weeks old, a plump little form that spent his days curled up on her chest, feeling like a hot water bottle except fragile and in need of constant diligence, so she’d spent hours just sitting in the rocking chair with him, counting fingers and toes and touching the impossibly soft wisps of hair that cradled his skull-so she’d definitely not been watching the news, because she’d been being with her baby in a way she’d never been in any moment before. Totally. Completely. Without word or thought or interest in anything else. Alex would come home from work each day, glance at her and Jack in the rocking chair and smile at her in a way no man had ever smiled at her before. Then she’d get a strange feeling in her chest. Of belonging. Of being. Contentment maybe.
For her eight weeks of maternity leave, she’d reveled in it.
So, four weeks prior, D.D. had been nesting with her baby in Waltham, while a level 3 sex offender had been shot in his apartment near the Suffolk County hospital. Not in his kitchen, Phil was quick to add. In the entry. As if he’d answered the door, and boom. Double tap from a. 22, expertly placed.
No witnesses, though a couple of neighbors reported having seen a young man, maybe a teenage boy, loitering about. Further search of the vic’s home had revealed pornographic videotapes as well as an extensive collection of photos on the vic’s computers, all showing boys and girl between the ages of six and twelve involved in various sex acts.
Just owning the computer was a violation of the victim’s, Douglas Antiholde’s, parole, so investigators felt it was safe to assume the vic had gone off the straight and narrow and was back in the business of destroying young lives.
“Leads?” D.D. asked now.
Phil shrugged. “If you see a white male between the age of sixteen and twenty-five in a dark winter coat with a navy blue knit cap, let us know.”
“Bet the hotline’s ringing off the phone with that one.”
“Please, the neighbors are just doing the happy dance he’s dead. No love lost there, and that was before they heard what was on his computer.”
D.D. pursed her lips. “Did he have a puppy?”
Phil shook his head.
“We’ll have to cross-reference the photos of the victims,” she mused out loud, and immediately felt something inside her recoil. To go from Jack to those images…
She hesitated. Beside her, Phil, father of four, appeared equally queasy.
Neil spoke up. “I’ll do it.”
Phil and D.D. looked at him.
“It’s not like I want to,” he said, shrugging awkwardly. “But I don’t have kids. And both of you…So, you know, it’d probably be easier for me to study them. ’Sides, I handle the bodies all the time. How much harder can this be?”
“Way harder,” Phil said immediately. “Dead people…worst has already happened. These kids…”
Neil shrugged again. “Somebody’s gotta do it, right? Better me than you.”
Phil nodded slowly. “I think he’s growing up nicely,” he told D.D.
“Obviously we’ve raised him right,” she concurred.
Neil rolled his eyes at both of them. “Since it’s my first time through, any advice?”
“Don’t just look at the people,” D.D. informed him. “Cross-referencing the victims is step one, but you also want to examine the backgrounds of each photo-look for patterns in curtains, carpets, bedding. Sometimes, it’s not the who that matches, it’s the where. Either one gives us a link between our dead pervs. When you’re done, we’ll send the photos to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where they have trained experts who will do the same thing all over again, except comparing them against a national database. They also have some facial recognition software, which helps them get the job done.”
Neil looked at her.
“We gotta get you to the National Academy,” she informed her younger partner, as she did at least once every six months. The National Academy was a ten-week course in advanced police training offered at Quantico, considered de rigueur for any up and coming cop. When D.D. had attended, she’d spent an entire day with the folks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which not only helped her understand the resources they had to offer for local law enforcement agencies such as the BPD, but also made her grateful she was a city detective and not a criminologist swimming against the tide to rescue sexually abused children.
She stared at Neil now. He looked away, as he did every time the subject of the National Academy came up.
“Perpetrator’s right-handed,” he mumbled, changing the subject. “Given the angle of the gunshot.”
“Doesn’t limit our suspect pool that much,” D.D. retorted with a shrug.
“Daytime shootings,” Neil offered next.
“How do you figure?”
“Because in both neighborhoods, nobody would open their doors after dark.”
“But no witnesses,” D.D. pushed back.
“Because in both neighborhoods,” Neil repeated, “people are trained not to see anything. And they certainly aren’t gonna tell us about it if they do.”
“True.” D.D. turned to Phil. “While Neil handles the photos, I need you to oversee both victims’ computers. Pedophiles are networkers. They visit chat rooms, post blogs, seek out others like themselves. Even if our two victims never met each other in person, doesn’t mean they haven’t crossed paths online. Find that common denominator, and maybe we can get some traction.”
“The Antiholde computer has already been processed,” Phil informed her. “Meaning we just gotta dissect this one, and I’m ready to rock and roll.”
“We’ll pull local video,” D.D. mused out loud, referring to the various video cameras that dotted any Boston city block, whether owned by the city or an area business, or even in some cases by a concerned citizen trying to protect him- or herself against crime. “You never know, maybe we can find footage of a sixteen- to twenty-five-year-old white male in a black winter coat with a navy blue knit hat.”
Phil and Neil smiled at that, but D.D. wagged her finger at them. “Seriously! Forget the wardrobe and age range. Think white kid. How many of them do you see outside? In this neighborhood, Caucasians stand out. Let’s use that to our advantage.”
“Gonna get the media involved?” Phil wanted to know.
She had to think about it. “Maybe, if we can get a better profile of the shooter. Until then, I don’t see the point.”
Neil seemed surprised. “But there have been two shootings, second one already half a week old. Meaning, maybe even now, we got a perpetrator out there, targeting a third victim.”
“Third pedophile, you mean,” Phil muttered.
D.D. was more circumspect. “Two homicides performed by the same shooter? Are you sure? Do you have a witness telling you he or she absolutely saw the same person here and there? Do you have a report from ballistics stating the slugs recovered from this crime scene absolutely positively match the slugs recovered from the Antiholde crime scene?”
Neil shook his head.
“Well then,” D.D. declared briskly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I wouldn’t want to panic the good citizens of Boston unnecessarily. And…maybe I wouldn’t want to encourage the city’s pervert population to practice undo caution either.”
Neil’s eyes rounded slightly. He got the implication of D.D.’s decision, glancing quickly at Phil, whose face was just as stony as D.D.’s.
“Wow,” Neil murmured. “And I wondered if motherhood would make her soft…”
His voice trailed off. At the last minute, the youngest member of the squad seemed to realize he probably should’ve kept that thought to himself.
But D.D. just clapped him on the back. “Missed you, too,” she informed him, cheerfully. “Now then. Nothing personal, but I gotta be home by five, which gives us,” she glanced at her watch. “About six more hours to catch a killer. Let’s do it.”