Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)
21
“You’re going to go see Alec Hardiman,” Bolton said without looking up as I walked into the conference room.
“I am?”
“You have an appointment this afternoon at one.”
I looked at Devin and Oscar. “I do?”
“This office will be monitoring the entire visit.”
I sat down in a seat across from Devin, a deep cherrywood table the size of my apartment between us. Oscar sat to Devin’s left and a half dozen Feds in suits and ties filled the rest of the table. Most of them were talking on telephones. Devin and Oscar didn’t have telephones. Bolton had two in front of him at the other end of the table, regular and special Batphone, I guessed.
He stood up and came down the table toward me. “What did you and Kevin Hurlihy discuss?”
“Politics,” I said, “the current value of the yen, things of that nature.”
Bolton put his hand on the back of my chair and leaned in close enough for me to smell the Sucrets in his mouth. “Tell me what you talked about, Mr. Kenzie.”
“What do you think we talked about, Special Agent Bolton? He told me to back off the Warren investigation.”
“So you fired a round into his car.”
“Seemed an appropriate response at the time.”
“Why does your name keep coming up on this case?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why does Alec Hardiman want to talk only to you?”
“Again, no clue.”
He snapped the chair back as he walked around the table, stopped behind Devin and Oscar and put his hands in his pockets. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“I need answers, Mr. Kenzie.”
“I don’t have any. I faxed Devin copies of my case files on the Warren case. I sent over photos of the guy with the goatee. I told you everything I remember about my meeting with Kara Rider. Beyond that, I’m as in the dark as you guys.”
He pulled a hand out of his pocket, rubbed the back of his neck. “What do you, Jack Rouse, Kevin Hurlihy, Jason Warren, Kara Rider, Peter Stimovich, Freddy Constantine, District Attorney Timpson and Alec Hardiman have in common?”
“This a riddle?”
“Answer the question.”
“I. Don’t. Fucking. Know.” I held up my hands. “Clear enough for you?”
“You have to help us out here, Mr. Kenzie.”
“And I’m trying, Bolton, but your interviewing technique is about as socially skilled as a loan shark’s. You piss me off, I’m not going to be able to be much help, because I won’t be able to think past my anger.”
Bolton walked to the back wall at the other end of the room. It was the width of the office, at least thirty feet, and about twelve feet tall. He tugged at the sheet covering it and when it came away in his hands I was looking at a corkboard that covered ninety percent of the wall.
Photographs and crime scene diagrams, spectral analysis sheets and evidence lists were stuck by pushpins and thin wires to the cork. I came out of my seat and walked slowly down the length of the table, trying to take it all in.
Behind me, Devin said, “We’ve interviewed everyone involved in either case that we know of, Patrick. Plus interrogations of everyone who knew Stimovich and the latest victim, Pamela Stokes. Nothing. Nothing at all.”
All the victims were represented by photos, two each of them living, several of them dead. Pamela Stokes looked to have been about thirty. One of the photos showed her squinting against the sun, her hand held over her forehead, a bright smile lighting up an otherwise bland face.
“What do we know about her?”
“Saleswoman for Anne Klein,” Oscar said. “Last seen leaving The Mercury Bar on Boylston Street two nights ago.”
“Alone?” I said.
Devin shook his head. “With a guy wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a goatee.”
“He’s wearing sunglasses in a bar, and nobody’s suspicious?”
“You ever been to the Mercury?” Oscar said. “It’s filled with très chic Euro-trash wannabes. They all wear sunglasses indoors.”
“So there’s our killer.” I pointed at the photo of Jason and the guy with the goatee.
“One of them anyway,” Oscar said.
“You’re sure there’s two?”
“We’re working on that assumption. Jason Warren, without a doubt, was killed by two men.”
“How do we know that?”
“He scratched them,” Devin said. “Two different types of blood under his fingernails.”
“Did the families of all the victims receive photographs of them before they were killed?”
“Yes,” Oscar said. “It’s the closest we have to an MO. Three of the four victims were killed in places other than where their bodies were found. Kara Rider was then dumped in Dorchester, Stimovich in Squantum, and what was left of Pamela Stokes was found in Lincoln.”
Below the current victims’ photos were photos under a heading “Victims. 1974.” Cal Morrison’s slightly cocky, boyish face stared out at me and even though I hadn’t thought of him for years until that night at Gerry’s bar, I could immediately smell the Piña Colada shampoo he’d worn in his hair, and I remembered how we’d all razzed him about it.
“All the victims have been cross-referenced for similarities?”
“Yes,” Bolton said.
“And?”
“Two,” Bolton said. “Both Kara Rider’s mother and Jason Warren’s father grew up in Dorchester.”
“The other?”
“Both Kara Rider and Pam Stokes wore the same perfume.”
“What kind?”
“Lab analysis says it was Halston for Women.”
“Lab analysis,” I said as I looked at photos of Jack Rouse, Stan Timpson, Freddy Constantine, Diandra Warren, Diedre Rider. There were two of each. One from the present, the other at least twenty years old.
“No clues whatsoever as to motive?” I looked at Oscar and he looked away and then over at Devin and Devin passed the ball to Bolton.
“Agent Bolton?” I said. “What do you have?”
“Jason Warren’s mother,” he said eventually.
“What about her?”
“She’s occasionally been consulted as a psychological expert in criminal trials.”
“So?”
“So,” he said, “she provided a psychological profile of Hardiman during his trial that effectively crushed his insanity defense. Diandra Warren, Mr. Kenzie, put Alec Hardiman away.”