The Graves Read online

  A sergeant is positioned at the foot of an unpaved alley, which is framed by two abandoned factory buildings, both pocked with shattered windows and gang graffiti. He barks out orders. “Bag and tag that broken Smirnoff bottle. Fan out. Check inside the buildings.” When he sees me, he points to the end of the alley. “ADA Endicott, your vic is behind the Dumpster.”

  The overwhelming stench of garbage and decomposing flesh makes me gag. I keep perfume in my purse for these occasions, to mask the odors, but Freddie and his cousin broke the bottle. I rummage around in my tote until I find a sampler of Obsession, double-check the label to be sure it’s not pepper spray, and spritz the side of my neck.

  I glove up and lean on the wall to steady myself as I slip a pair of paper booties on over my suede pumps, taking pains to avoid facing the cameras. My parents are disappointed enough with my career choice; no need to rub salt in the wound. I don’t want them to flip on the local news and see pictures of me poking around in a vermin-infested alley.

  Medical examiner Reggie Rene is a few feet away, sharing his wisdom with a couple of young technicians. “When you put her on the gurney, be sure not to dislodge anything that could be in her throat. Scrape the red stains from the side of the Dumpster. Bottle up a few of those live insects.”

  At five three, Reggie is a couple of inches shorter than I am, but he’s a commanding force, a master choreographer, who runs a murder scene like it was a Hollywood film set. Definitely more De Palma than Capra.

  “Do we have a cause of death?” I say.

  “It’s hard to tell because the rodents got to her, but I found bruising and abrasions on her throat.”

  “Strangulation?”

  “Looks that way,” he says. “I’ll confirm after I get her on the slab.”

  “Sounds similar to Rose Driscoll, the BU student,” I say.

  Reggie nods. “Both bodies were moved postmortem, and posed. We could have a serial killer on our hands.”

  I’m both repulsed and intrigued. This is uncharted territory, a new level of threat. I’ve had double murderers before, even a triple once, but never an actual serial killer; the biggest difference being marked by a cooling-off period between attacks. If we are dealing with a serial killer, there could be more victims—past, present, or future.

  Reggie reaches into the back of the van and opens up a first aid kit. He tosses me a bottle of iodine, a roll of surgical tape, and a piece of gauze. “You don’t want that thing to get infected,” he says. He shines his flashlight on my knee.

  I stuff the items in my tote. “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Listen to the doc. Cover that wound.” Detective Kevin Farnsworth is walking toward me. “This place is crawling with disease.”

  I haven’t seen Kevin in months. His close-cropped hair has a new dusting of gray, and he looks taller than his six-foot-two-inch frame, especially standing next to Reggie. It looks like he’s gained some muscle tone, which brings him up to about negative 10 percent body fat.

  The last time Kevin and I were together was in the Mass General, waiting for Ty to get out of surgery. Kevin had just killed the man who put a bullet in Ty’s chest. I was in shock, too numb to realize I was walking around on a broken ankle, and too stunned to appreciate that I had come close to losing my own life. After the incident, my boss was concerned about posttraumatic stress. I promised to see a shrink—and I will, at some point, maybe.

  In the weeks after the shooting, Kevin and I talked on the phone a few times and made plans to get together, but something always came up. Or at least that’s what we claimed. Really, we were avoiding each other. I was afraid of what might happen between us, because as the days went by, reality set in; Kevin had saved my life. We already had a playful attraction, but after the shooting, it intensified tenfold. I was vulnerable and not sure I could resist the temptation. I suspect he felt the same.

  “Can we seize the Dumpster and its contents?” I say.

  “It’s your party,” Kevin says. “You got a spare bedroom back in your fancy condo. How’s about I ask crime scene services to haul it to your place?”

  “It’ll clash with the furniture,” I say. “Have it towed to the garage in Southie.”

  Kevin is holding a surgical face mask, and he tries to hand it to me. I look around, note that I’m the only woman on scene and that no one else’s face is protected. I wave him off.

  “Suit yourself,” he says, “but you don’t have to prove you’re Superwoman. The whole department got that memo a couple of months back.”

  I step around some used condoms and broken glass, and feel a sharp pain in my right ankle. I hope I didn’t reinjure it when the bike messenger crashed into me. Following Kevin, I try to keep my weight on my left foot, careful not to draw attention to myself.

  “You’re hobbling around.” Kevin says. “Is your ankle bothering you?”

  “No.”

  We stop a few feet from the Dumpster.

  “Prepare yourself,” Kevin says. “She’s in pretty rough shape.”

  Kevin knows that, for me, this is the worst part of the job—meeting my client. The horror of this moment will only be equaled by seeing the expression on her mother’s face when she listens to me deliver my carefully filtered description of what her daughter looked like when we found her.

  Kevin and I have a system. Before I look at the body, he describes it. This always cushions the impact. The visual will make me nauseous. It always does. But worse, as soon as I see her, she’ll become a part of me, another source of sorrow that I’ll carry wherever I go.

  “She’s partially nude,” Kevin says. “Her eyes are open, and her arms are crossed.”

  “What else?” I say.

  “Her legs are buried under a pile of trash: a Campbell’s Soup can, a deflated tire, an empty Windex bottle. Her flesh has started to turn green, like rotting meat.” He pauses.

  “Keep going.”

  “The tips of her fingers have been chewed off.”

  I inhale, exhale. “Animals?”

  “Probably.”

  I peer behind the Dumpster and look at my victim, look away, then look back again. She’s beautiful, even in the early stages of decomposition. What’s left of her stylish dark pixie is wet with a curdled milk-like substance. A shredded, once-white now-brown sheet is wrapped loosely around her waist. When I lean in closer, I see a smudged ink stamp on the back of her hand.

  “Some kind of design, like a cat or something,” Kevin says. “I can’t make out the words.”

  “Crazy Fox,” I say. “It’s a bar in Cambridge. I went there a few times in college.”

  A cluster of maggots seems to have settled into the woman’s left ear. I feel dizzy as a small pool of vomit swells in the back of my throat. Now I’m glad I didn’t have enough money for dinner.

  A bulletproof SUV, driven by a plainclothes detective, pulls up to the perimeter. My boss, District Attorney Max Lombardo, opens the front passenger door, but before his Florsheims hit the pavement, he’s barraged with questions from the reporters. Like any elected official who wants to keep his job, he pauses to respond.

  “Are there any suspects?” a reporter says.

  “Not yet,” Max says.

  “What about the victim? Do you have a name?”

  “Boston Police are in the process of making an identification. We’re asking for anyone with information to contact our tips line. All calls will be anonymous.”

  Max starts to walk toward the alley but another reporter calls out.

  “What can you tell us about her?”

  “She was female, approximately twenty years old. Right now all we know is that she died at the hands of a monster. Rest assured, we’re going to catch whoever is responsible.”

  Carl Ostroff steps up. “Is it true you’re planning to run for mayor?”

  “Now’s not the time for politics, Carl.”

  Max breaks free and makes a beeline toward me. He looks good, sober; more the powerful in-command leader of ye
ars past, less the booze-addicted, aging basketball player of late. His tie is uneven, but that’s par for the course.

  “Abby, what the hell are you doing here?” Max says.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” I say.

  I try to distract him by fixing the knot on his tie, but he waves me off.

  “I don’t want you at scenes until Thanksgiving—it’s not even Halloween.”

  Most people go on vacation during the holidays. My family jets off to Saint Moritz, or one of the Palms—Beach or Springs—but I prefer to stay in Boston. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s are the busiest times in department stores, retail outlets, and the district attorney’s office. The days grow shorter, the weather turns cold, and families spend lots of quality time together, cooped up inside, eating, drinking, watching football, and reminiscing about past slights. Tempers flare and bloodshed often results.

  “I just happened to be in the neighborhood when the call came in,” I say.

  Max looks around, takes in a couple of raccoon-sized rats, and raises his eyebrows.

  “We’re a long way from the Back Bay,” he says.

  “Kevin’s allowed back out on the street,” I say.

  “That’s the commissioner’s call, not mine.”

  “It’s because he’s a man. That’s not good politics.”

  “Nice try,” Max says, “but the gender card isn’t going to work. I’ll pull the case from you and assign it to Cassandra.”

  Surprised that he’s called my bluff, I change tacks. “How about a compromise?”

  Max eyes the reporters. “Fine. Keep it, but you don’t need to be out in the field. Let the detectives do the shoe leather.”

  “Deal,” I say.

  The medical examiner’s assistants hoist the woman onto a gurney.

  “I have your word,” Max says. “You’re going straight home.”

  “Absolutely.” I hold up my hand as if I’m taking the oath in court. “I solemnly swear that I’ll go directly to my apartment.”

  I call out and move toward Kevin.

  “Can I hitch a ride?” I say.

  He opens the passenger door to his SUV.

  “Sure. Hop in. I’ll drop you off at your place.”

  I look around, see that Max is preoccupied with the press, well out of earshot.

  “Thanks,” I say, “but I’m not going home.”

  “But your boss—”

  “I can handle him. I’ll say something came up, something that couldn’t wait.”

  “He’s not going to buy that.”

  “He’ll understand.” I get in the car, buckle myself in. “Let’s go. We have a murder to investigate.”

  Chapter Five

  Dunkin’ Donuts on Causeway Street is one of the few places in Boston where you can get a cup of coffee at two o’clock in the morning. Kevin double-parks out front. Racks of doughnuts are visible through the windows: frosted, glazed, powdered, drizzled. The glare of the neon-orange-and-hot-pink sign gives me a slight headache.

  “The usual?” Kevin says.

  “I take my lattes with soy now. I became lactose intolerant after the shooting.”

  “Stress will do crazy things to your body.”

  “And to your mind.”

  In my bag, I have a travel mug for coffee. I dig it out and hand it to him.

  “Your purse is like a bottomless pit,” he says.

  He gets out of the car and uses his remote to lock me in. It’s not a dangerous neighborhood, but the sports bars around the TD Garden are just finishing last call, and scores of drunk hockey fans, wearing black-and-gold Bruins sweatshirts, are wandering around, yelling, looking for a fight. We’re number one. Fuck the Canucks. What are you looking at, asshole? A group staggers and stumbles toward the parking garage. Soon they’ll get behind the wheels of their cars.

  Kevin returns with the coffees and a small package, wrapped in wax paper.

  “Egg white flatbread,” he says. “Chock-full of protein. I figure you haven’t eaten in a good twelve hours.”

  “I appreciate it,” I say, “but I would’ve appreciated a chocolate cruller even more.”

  Kevin merges onto Storrow Drive. Winding along the Charles River, we pass a series of iconic landmarks: the Hatch Shell, where every Fourth of July, the Boston Pops perform Tchaikovsky’s tempestuous 1812 Overture, and where last March, a jogger was sexually assaulted and beaten. The domed statehouse, where two hundred years ago, Paul Revere laid his copper sheathing, and where last summer, a tour guide was stabbed five times in the gut. The sixty-two-story glass John Hancock Tower, the tallest building in Boston, where two years ago, a twenty-six-year-old father of twins was shot in the chest and died instantly.

  When we’re parallel to Beacon Street, Kevin catches me eyeing the back of my condo building. Ty is probably home, sprawled out on the sofa, listening to jazz or watching an old black-and-white movie on TV. I feel a tinge of guilt for sneaking out of the Liberty without telling him where I was going.

  “Last chance to get out while you still can,” Kevin says.

  “I’m not going home,” I say.

  “Yeah, I figured.” Unlike Ty, Kevin understands the draw of a new murder.

  The brownstones and high-rises in the Back Bay and Kenmore Square are dark. Even the blinking Citgo sign has been dimmed for the night. Kevin veers onto the Anderson Bridge, takes us across the Charles River, out of our jurisdiction and into foreign territory: Middlesex County.

  “Hold on to your Miranda card,” Kevin says. “We’re entering the People’s Republic of Cambridge.”

  I look out the window and wonder about my newest victim, who she was, where she lived, how she died. Then I think about Rose Driscoll, how gut-wrenching it was to meet her parents, first when there was still hope that she might be found alive, and again after her body was discovered. In an instant, Mrs. Driscoll’s frenetic energy shifted into inconsolable despair.

  “You think this case is tied to Rose Driscoll?” I say.

  “I hope so,” Kevin says. “Otherwise, we have two maniacs on the loose.”

  “Did anyone call in a missing persons?”

  “Not yet.”

  We pass the Kennedy School. The shops and restaurants that line JFK Street are dark. Stacks of magazines are piled in front of the Out of Town News kiosk.

  “When I was in college,” I say, “I could fall off the radar for days.”

  “Didn’t you have roommates?” Kevin says.

  “Suite mates—that’s what they’re called at Harvard.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Ivy League,” he says.

  “They’d assume I was in the library, pulling an all-nighter, or with a new boyfriend.”

  Sometimes it was neither. I’d take the Acela to New York and visit MoMA or, when I was feeling claustrophobic and decadent, I’d fly to Paris and spend hours wandering around the Musée d’Orsay. These days, a trip outside Suffolk County is rare; the last time I left town was to speak at a homicide conference in South Carolina. The only reason Max authorized the travel request was because when I told him it was in Charleston, he thought I said Charlestown.

  We wait at the red light in front of Harvard Law School’s student center. Kevin and I accidentally lock eyes for a split second. He clears his throat, as though he’s going to say something, but remains silent. Being this close is more awkward than I had anticipated. The sexual tension between us is palpable.

  I stare out the window, where a homeless woman is sleeping on the pavement under a limestone archway. I grab the Dunkin’ Donuts bag, jump out of the car, and leave my egg sandwich by the edge of her wool utility blanket.

  As I climb back in the car, the light turns green.

  “Bet you wouldn’t have been so quick to give away a chocolate cruller,” Kevin says.

  When Kevin smiles, the corners of his eyes have a new set of crinkles. The shooting aged us both. Recently, my hairstylist noticed a cluster of gray along my part line.

  Kevin pulls b
ack into traffic, past the library and the classroom buildings, where I studied torts and contracts.

  “When I was a one L, I thought practicing law would be an intellectual exercise,” I say. “I dreamt of appearing before the Supreme Court and arguing about the unenumerated rights found in the Fourteenth Amendment.”

  “I’m guessing Harvard didn’t teach classes on how to bitch-slap a mobster on the stand,” Kevin says.

  “No, I learned that my first year on the job, watching you in the interview room.”

  There aren’t a lot of pedestrians in the area. A lone student makes his way back to his dorm, or house as it’s called at Harvard.

  “I always wondered what made you want to be a prosecutor,” Kevin says. “I mean, with all that family dough—you could buy an island in the Caribbean, retire, and drink piña coladas for the rest of your life.”

  “Third year of law school, I volunteered in a clinic, where I got to represent real people with real problems. My first client was a woman who wanted a restraining order against her boyfriend. She was nine months pregnant, with a black eye, a chipped tooth, and a sprained wrist. I listened to her story, sat with her while she sobbed, stood with her in front of the judge. We were in it together. For once, I was doing something worthwhile.”

  “We all remember our first victim. Did you ever find out what happened to her?”

  “The next day, she came to my office and practically spat at me. She was furious. She screamed and swore, accused me of pressuring her into testifying. Then she dropped the charges and threatened to sue me.”

  “And, still, here you are.”

  “Those were the good old days,” I say, “when my victims could yell at me, because my victims were all alive.”

  Chapter Six

  We pull onto Porter Street and park in front of the Crazy Fox. The neon lights in the window are dark, and the handle on the steel-reinforced door is locked, so we walk around the corner, to the rear of the building. Kevin pounds on the emergency exit.

  “The bar is closed,” a staticky voice says through the intercom. “Come back tomorrow.”