What Have You Done Page 4

  “She’s bad, Sean. I hardly recognized her. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I called you.”

  “As usual.”

  Liam chuckled, defeated. “Yeah.”

  Sean looked at his little brother. Liam’s gaze was distant, the shock of what was happening beginning to take control. “You need to act like this is just another crime scene. No emotions. Keep it together.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.” He looked around and watched the activity around them for a few moments, then turned back to Liam. “Did you ever tell Kerri about what Mom did to us?”

  “We talked about it once.”

  “You think it could be a suicide? Maybe she reenacted a scene from your childhood to get back at you for reconciling with Vanessa?”

  Liam shook his head. “This was no suicide. A person can’t do that to themselves. Not what’s up there. Besides, she broke it off with me. That wouldn’t make sense.”

  Sean leaned in close to whisper. “Does anyone here know about your relationship with her?”

  “No.”

  “Do they know you knew her, even casually?”

  “No one knows anything. Jesus, Sean, I thought you’d be a little more shocked or freaked out instead of moving right into covering our asses. I played it as straight as I could. It took me by surprise, you know? Seeing her like that.”

  “I know. And I am shocked. I just need to know where we stand with things so I can keep everything consistent.”

  “You think we should tell someone I knew her?”

  “Yes, but not yet. These things can get hairy fast. No one else needs to be in the loop for now. Just continue with the investigation, and keep your head up.”

  “Last night was her birthday.”

  “Damn.”

  “Who could’ve done this?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure that out later, and we’ll start with the people who knew about you and Kerri and what happened with Mom. Those flowers and her hair are too unusual to be a coincidence. Keep your cool, and we’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “Okay. Let’s go take a look.”

  The two brothers broke from the corner and began to make their way to the stairs. From the bottom landing, they could hear activity and shouts of instruction from B11. The Forensics team had returned to the room.

  Teddy and Rob were gently guiding Kerri’s body to the floor as Jane released the extension cord from the bed. Keenan remained just inside the doorway, watching. Sean and Liam entered the room.

  “Hey, Sean,” Keenan said when he saw the detective. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Liam thought I might know the victim.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Keenan looked at Liam and held out his hands in surrender. “Something you could’ve mentioned. Pretty important, don’t you think?”

  Liam feigned a smile and shrugged. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t want to cause a big scene. I just wanted him to take a look.”

  “Still, you could’ve said something.”

  “Sorry.”

  The two techs slipped the victim into a black body bag that was spread out on the stained carpet as Jane gathered the slack from the cord she’d been holding and stuffed it in the bag with the victim. The makeshift noose remained tied around the girl’s neck. No one was to remove it until the transporting team was in the autopsy room with the medical examiner in case there was additional evidence to be found.

  Sean walked toward the body bag and bent down.

  Liam was right. She was barely recognizable. Her hair had been cut short and then shaved sloppily, clumps in some sections, shaved down to the scalp in others. It was just like his mother had done to herself that day. His stomach seized, and he could feel his face growing hot. He reached out to pull the edge of the bag farther from her face but noticed his hand trembling, so he stopped and put it in his pocket.

  “What was the name again?”

  “Kerri Miller.”

  “No. Don’t know her.” Sean stood back up and cleared his throat. He turned toward Keenan, his head swimming in the vision of the girl in the body bag. “Have you found anything yet?”

  “You trying to come in on my case?”

  “Relax, I’m just asking.”

  Keenan glanced at his notebook. “Owner’s name is Francis Guzio. He was running the window last night. Says he always runs the window and remembers the woman coming in slumped over a male. The male paid cash for the night, and that’s pretty much it. He didn’t notice anyone leave, and one of his maintenance guys discovered the girl’s body this morning. A Raul Montenez. We took a statement and let him go. Jane lifted a few prints and took some pictures. Teddy took some hair samples off the carpet and some fiber samples for testing. We found half a boot print in the blood. Between all that and the autopsy, we should come up with something.”

  “You get anything on the camera over the front door?”

  “Owner said it hasn’t worked for years.”

  “How about a name on the registry?”

  “He signed in as Johnny Cash, so, no, we don’t have a name. The owner says he didn’t think there was much screaming or carrying on during the murder because he had the other two rooms on either side booked all night, and no one complained or mentioned anything.”

  “They were probably too busy to notice.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  Sean walked to the bed and picked up the evidence bag that held the paper flowers. He worked to steady his hands as he turned the bag over a few times. “You get anywhere with these flowers?”

  “Nope. Seems like normal tissue paper to me. We’ll send it out and see if we come up with anything. I’ll do some digging on the significance. Could be nothing. Could be something. Who knows?”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “Saint Martin’s for the autopsy,” Jane replied. “Liam, will you be there?”

  Liam shook his head. “No. I’m going to take the prints back to the lab and start the reports. You guys go on to Saint Martin’s, and we’ll compare notes when you get back.”

  Teddy and Rob each took an end of the body bag and lifted it off the floor. The others in the room stepped aside as the men shuffled out into the hall. When the body was removed, Keenan grabbed the evidence bag from Sean. “I gotta go process this. We’ll catch up later. I heard you had a nice get-together with Cutter Washington this morning.”

  Sean nodded. “Yeah, we got him.”

  “The kid gonna be okay?”

  “Touch and go right now.”

  Keenan made his way out into the hall. When he was at the top of the stairs, he stopped and turned back. “Yo, Sean.”

  “What?”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t know her.”

  “Thanks.”

  The two brothers watched as Keenan followed the procession to the first floor. When they were alone in the silence of the empty hotel room, Sean started looking around, kneeling to search under the bed, crawling around the bloodstains that soaked the dirty carpet. He stood up and snapped his gloves off. “What do you want me to do here?” he asked. “The case has already been assigned. I can’t get involved.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t step on toes, Liam. Even with something like this. You saw Keenan get pissy just from me showing up. If I start interfering, he’s going to go crazy. I’d feel the same way if the situation was reversed.”

  “I said, I know. I’m not trying to jam you up. I just needed you here.”

  Sean sighed, looking up at the pipe in the ceiling Kerri had been hanged from. “I’ll stop by Kerri’s apartment and make sure anything relating to you is gone. That’s the best I can do for now.”

  “You sure I shouldn’t just come clean about me and Kerri? If we don’t say anything and they find out, it could look suspicious.”

  Sean shook his head. “Did you see her? This isn’t a drive-by or a ho
me invasion gone bad. She was strung up, hanged, and cut. Someone needs to pay for this. Heckle and Keenan will need to clear this case. The lieutenant won’t let this one go away quietly. Whether you tell them about your affair with Kerri now or they find out later, you’re going to be a suspect. Hell, I could be too. The paper flowers and the head shaving tie us even closer to it. Better to just lay low and see where this thing goes. If they nail a suspect in the next few days, no one has to know anything about your affair. If we have to come clean, we will. Just not yet.”

  “I figured honesty would work best here.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Of course not.”

  Sean stepped closer to his brother. “What happened to you last night? You were going to the boat to grab the sweatshirt you left on board the other day, and then you were supposed to meet me for drinks. You never showed. Where were you?”

  “I . . . can’t remember.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t remember. I woke up this morning in my tub, of all places, and I have no recollection of anything from last night.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were you with Vanessa?”

  “She said I came home late, drunk, and passed out on the couch. But I don’t remember going to any bar or drinking.” He paused for a moment. “You think I could’ve been drugged?”

  “Maybe, but who would do that?”

  “Same person who did this?”

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s something else,” Liam said.

  “What?”

  “Kerri left a message on my phone last night. Around eight. She mentioned that she got my text, but I didn’t text her.”

  “But her number came in on your phone the same night she was killed?”

  “Yeah. I called her back this morning. It went right to voice mail. I also tried her when I got to the station. Voice mail again.”

  “And now your number’s on her phone. Twice.”

  “If you think I had anything to do with this, you’re crazy.”

  “But you can’t remember where you were last night.”

  “I didn’t kill her, Sean. How could you even think that?”

  Sean grabbed Liam by the shoulder and walked him out of the hotel room. “I don’t think you killed her, but you just proved my point. You see how this can look if we tell them up front about your affair? The less they know about you and Kerri, the better it’ll be at this point. It’ll give us time to figure out what happened. If you come clean now, you’ll be their primary suspect, and they’ll build a case against you while whoever really did this is running around free. You get it?”

  “I guess.”

  “You need to get those phone records and erase your number before Heckle and Keenan get their hands on them.”

  “And how does that not make me look even more guilty?”

  “You won’t look guilty if they find the guy who did this. Our priority has to be to keep this between us for now. Otherwise, you become the primary suspect, and the real killer goes free. If they’re wasting their time investigating you, then no one is carrying out a proper investigation. You need to stay quiet for now. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sean looked on as the team began to exit the hotel. “Meet me at the dock tonight at seven. We need to think this through, and you need to try and remember where you were last night. Those flowers scare me. Somebody knows something.”

  8

  Sean leaned against the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were red and slightly swollen from crying. He splashed water on his face and dried himself with a paper towel. The men’s room was deserted. No one was there to see him like this, and he intended to keep it that way.

  Kerri was dead. The scene at the hotel was almost too much to bear. Seeing her like that—her body mutilated, her hair chopped off, the blood—was overwhelming, despite how many crime scenes he’d worked in the past. He knew this girl. She had been sweet, kind, and innocent. She had only wanted the best out of life, and now that life had been cut short. She was gone, and although death was an inevitability for everyone, the reality of her death—of her murder—really shook him. Seeing her in that body bag brought it all home again.

  Sean crumpled the paper towel and tossed it in the wastebasket. He took one last breath, pulled the door open, and walked back out into the station. It was time to get to work.

  The sky had finally opened up. The rain was coming down in sheets, hissing like a snake as it slapped the pavement. Cars passed slowly to avoid the water that was rushing along the gutters, minirapids carrying the debris of strewn litter toward the grates that were already beginning to overflow at the end of the blocks. The day was drawing to a close, and with the rain, the sidewalks would be empty soon. Across the street, under the dome of city hall, people rushed to catch the subway.

  Don sat alone at his desk, filling out paperwork from the takedown earlier that morning. He liked the quiet. It helped him think with more clarity. He’d often go to the library across town when he had to work through a difficult case. The serenity of the reading room gave his mind freedom to wonder without the constant interruptions he got at the station house. The shouting, the ringing phones, the general noise of movement. The library had none of that. But this was the rare, thin line of time between shifts, when the division was quiet and he could actually get some work done. It was, undoubtedly, his favorite time of day.

  Footsteps shuffled up the stairs and into the empty Homicide Division. It was Sean, soaked from the storm. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Changeover.”

  Sean peeked into Phillips’s office. It was empty. He came back and sat at his desk across from his partner. “Lieutenant still at the hospital?”

  “Yeah. The kid’s out of surgery. Gonna be a touchy forty-eight hours, but the doctors are optimistic. They think he’s gonna make it.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “Cutter came out of surgery about a half hour after you left. He was transported to a secured wing where four uniforms are standing with him. He should be able to be transferred to lockup in a few days.”

  Sean nodded and looked around the empty floor.

  “You okay?” Don asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shook up about Kerri?”

  “Yeah.” Sean leaned in toward his partner. “Look, I gotta ask you a favor, but I know you won’t like it because it goes against procedure, and to be honest, it could end your career if anyone ever found out.”

  Don perked up. “This I gotta hear,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  “I need you to go to her apartment tonight, before Heckle and Keenan have a chance to get in there. Remove anything that has Liam attached to it. Notes, pictures . . . anything. I gotta get my firearm discharge report in, or I’d go myself. There’s just not enough time. Heckle and Keenan will finish up with their prelim memo tonight, and then it’s off to the victim’s apartment, so we have to move ASAP. We gotta keep Liam’s involvement with Kerri quiet until we find out what happened.”

  “You’re keeping his affair with her quiet?”

  “For now.”

  “You think that’s a smart idea?”

  “I just need a few days to figure this out. If Liam confesses to his affair, they’ll look to build a case against him. Once that happens, it’s over. I need to give Heckle and Keenan time to investigate.”

  “You and I knew her too,” Don replied. “Does that put us in the same pickle?”

  “It could.”

  “You don’t think Liam had anything to do with it, do you?”

  “No way. Not a chance.”

  “Right, so why not come clean now so it doesn’t come back to bite him—or us—if they find out later? I’ve known that boy almost all of his adult life. Practically raised him alongside you. Inside and outside of this department. I can’t see him being involved. Makes no se
nse not to let Heckle and Keenan know up front.”

  “I will. But for now we need to keep it quiet. I’d rather face the consequences of not telling them up front instead of telling them everything and have Liam become their prime suspect. I just need to understand what went on before I can decide the next steps. Can you do that? Keep it quiet for a few days?”

  “You know I can. I got you. Career ender or not.”

  “And Kerri’s apartment?”

  “I’ll go tonight.”

  “No traces of anything involving my brother.”

  “I understand. I’ll take care of it.”

  The shift change was over. The room began to fill, and the background noise of a busy homicide division was born once again.

  9

  It was Sean who had saved him. When they had first entered the house, their mother had hit Sean over the head with the Louisville Slugger their father had bought him after he made his first Little League All Stars Team. That single blow had knocked him unconscious. Her plan was to drown Liam first and then his older brother; then she would place each of her children on one of the mattresses, wrap their tiny fingers around the stems of the paper flowers, take an entire bottle of sleeping pills, and lie on the third. One happy family going home to see their father.

  But the blow with the bat hadn’t been severe enough. Sean had come to and snuck into the bathroom. He had hit his mother across the back of her skull with that same Slugger, using what he called his perfected Mike Schmidt swing. As she lay motionless and bleeding on the bathroom floor, Sean had jumped into the tub, pulled Liam out, and dragged him through the house and onto the front porch, screaming for help the entire time. Neighbors had poured from their homes. Jacob Stevens, a high school kid from across the street who spent his summers as a lifeguard in Wildwood, had given Liam CPR and brought him back before the ambulance arrived. Jacob had got him breathing again, but Sean had saved his life.

  The dock was just north of Penn’s Landing, almost under the Ben Franklin Bridge. Between the rain and the darkness, Liam couldn’t see much more than the wooden pier ahead, illuminated only by streetlamps above. The stores that lined one side of the small marina had disappeared with the night. Sean’s thirty-foot Bayliner rocked gently in slip 28, its interior lights glowing through the windows. Its captain was already aboard.