Three
A GUT FEELING
I RETREATED FROM the room after I’d been inside less than thirty minutes.
I honestly had no idea how to feel about what had just happened.
Fear kind of ran over all of the other reactions I might have had.
Fear for my own sanity. Fear of him... maybe even terror of him.
Fear of what he’d done... what I was having increasing difficulty convincing myself had only been some kind of auditory hallucination. Fear around the sinking feeling I had that Quentin Black’s mention of being locked up in the police station only “temporarily” hadn’t just been idle bragging. I didn’t think his confidence on that point stemmed from normal, sociopathic delusion, either... which is how the cops listening would have heard it.
It’s likely how I would have heard it too, if that’s all I’d heard.
But how could I possibly warn the others?
Quentin Black must have known I wouldn’t be able to warn them.
Despite everything running through my head, some part of me almost forgot that the police watching our interview missed a good portion of my exchange with Black. Therefore, when I knocked on the interrogation room door and it opened to Nick and Glen standing there in the hallway, I was shocked to see the blatant smiles in both of their eyes.
They didn’t say anything aloud until they’d closed the door on Black, of course.
They didn’t even crack real smiles until then.
Once the door had closed, however, Nick grinned openly, slapping me on the back with one hand. “See?” he told Glen in a gloating kind of voice. “What did I tell you?”
I gave him an eye roll, fighting to keep my expression blank as I combed fingers through my hair. Glancing back at the closed door, I tried to shove Mr. Quentin Black out of my mind, at least well enough to act normal for the next few minutes until my heart stopped pounding like a damned jackhammer.
I gratefully accepted a cup of fresh coffee handed to me by Angel Deveraux, another homicide inspector who worked the Northern District. The coffee cup’s paper jacket proclaimed it as being from The Royale Blend, which only sharpened my gratitude.
Glad of the distraction if nothing else, I grinned at her. “You’re not fetching coffee for these bozos now, are you?” I asked, taking a sip as I quirked an eyebrow.
Angel Deveraux gave a derisive snort.
A buffed, black, ex-beat cop from one of the roughest parts of the city, Angel had stunning light brown eyes and a prominent jaw on a sharply beautiful face. Angel and I went to the same martial arts classes as Nick, and often got thrust together as sparring partners since we were roughly the same height and weight, even though Angel was a few belts above me. She usually kicked my ass, but I learned a ton from her, so I didn’t really mind.
Angel had known Nick even longer than I had.
They grew up in the same neighborhood near Hunter’s Point.
Maybe because of that, they often bickered more like family members than friends.
“No,” Angel said, giving Nick a pointed look, as if the comment had come from him and not me. “It’s just that some of us have a little thing called manners.” She smiled at me. “Truthfully, I didn’t even know you were here, doc. I called up from the coffee line at Royale, knowing these jokers didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and might be slumped drooling over their desks. Instead I find them up here, giggling like little boys as they watch you make the only progress we’ve had all day with our exciting new serial killer...”
“Technically, he’s not a serial killer yet,” I informed her.
“He’s killed seven now,” she told me, daring me with her eyes to disagree.
“Seven people,” I conceded. “Two incidents. Still only a killer... technically.”
“Technically, my ass,” she snorted. “What about the wedding theme?”
“A weird killer,” I corrected. “Make that an alleged, weird killer... still not a serial killer, or even an alleged serial killer, not until he hits magic number three. You might be able to make a strong argument for a spree killer, though. Depending on motive.”
Angel rolled her eyes, aiming a thumb at me while she shook her head at Nick and Glen.
“Get a load of doc here, all hoity-toity now that she got Mr. Quentin Black to give her a fake name and play his little head games with her for a spell.”
I laughed as I started to follow the three of them back down the florescent-lit corridor with its lime-green tile.
“Fair enough,” I conceded, grinning as I took another sip of the scalding hot coffee. “Still sounds like a solid point for the head-shrinker and a big, fat zero for the fuzz.”
Angel snorted a laugh, shaking her head as she glanced back at me.
“Drink your coffee, doc,” she advised, waving over her shoulder at me with one hand, her tone mocking. “You best keep that smart mouth of yours busy for a little while, or we might have to drum up some charges against you... especially since from what I heard, it sounded like your serial killer...” She emphasized the words. “...Maybe has a bit of a crush on you.”
“Who doesn’t?” Nick said, winking at me.
Glen laughed, giving me an over-the-shoulder smile, too.
I fought to keep the smile on my face, couldn’t that time.
Instead I sipped more coffee to cover it.
By then we were all back inside the glass-enclosed observation room, standing and leaning by the two tables that filled the rectangular space. The room had the dark, bluish cast of an aquarium, with the only window aiming into the interrogation room itself.
I found myself putting my back decisively to the view of Quentin Black.
“Did you just come from the scene?” I asked Angel.
She nodded, hands on her hips. She leaned on the edge of a table shoved up against the back wall. “Yeah,” she said, sighing. “You’re glad you missed that one, doc.”
“Where’s the body now?” I said, looking at Nick and then back to Angel. “Does the coroner’s office have it yet?”
Nick gave me a surprised look. I didn’t usually ask him for details like that. Not when it came to that end of the forensics.
“Yeah,” he said. He had a coffee of his own I noticed. He pulled it off the same low table where I leaned my butt, then sat on one of the two folding chairs, looking up at me. “Why?”
“I thought I might look at it,” I said. “The body. You know. Get an idea of the m.o.”
Angel gave me a look that time, too.
She glanced at Nick and Glen. She didn’t say anything though.
“Sure thing, doc,” Nick said, his shrug a little too studied. “Anything you want.”
“Is it that weird I’d want to see it?” I said, smiling a little.
“It’s a little weird,” Glen volunteered. “You hate blood, doc.”
Grimacing a little, I nodded, then looked back at Nick. “You’re running that name, right?” I pressed. “The Quentin Black one?”
“Sure. I sent it over as soon as he said it,” Nick said. That puzzlement leaked to his voice.
I watched the three of them exchange another look, right as Glen cleared his throat.
“You okay, doc?” Nick said then. “That guy rattle you?”
Looking around at the three of them, I realized they were all watching me now, their cop faces on higher alert. Some of them were doing a better job of hiding it than others. Letting out a sigh, I combed my fingers through my hair again.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Maybe.”
“You did so well in there,” Nick said. “I would have never known.”
“You were a real pro,” Glen seconded, leaning against the same table as me and folding his massive arms before he gave me a sympathetic smile.
Angel said nothing.
Looking between the three of them again, I exhaled in annoyance. “I’m fine, okay? It’s just... you know. There’s something about him.”
“Yeah,” Nick snorted, anger leaking into his words. “He’s a murdering nutcase.” Looking at me more carefully then, he said, “Well? What kind of nutcase is he, Miri? You going to tell us? Or is it a secret?”
He had his cop voice on again.
I realized he was right.
We hadn’t gone through the whole “brain-picking” part of this exercise, where they asked me questions about what I thought of the suspect and what he might do.
I wished I could just skip it for this one.
I really didn’t want to do a psychological profile on Quentin Black. Not until I had a much better idea of what the hell just happened in there. Truthfully, I felt like I’d just be throwing darts at this point. Or lying to them in a sense, giving them the book stuff when I wasn’t sure I believed it. But I also knew Nick wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily.
It was, after all, why he’d brought me here.
Glancing over my shoulder in spite of myself, I gazed through the window at the man sitting inside the interrogation room.
I flinched a little when I saw him staring back at me through the one-way glass.
Once again, I could almost imagine him seeing me in here.
“Okay,” I said, exhaling in an irritated-sounding sigh. I looked away from the window, folding my arms. “But not here. We should go somewhere else.”
Nick’s eyes flickered in surprise, right before he glanced at the one-way mirror himself. I practically felt the question on him as he frowned in the direction of Quentin Black. Despite his cautioning me earlier, I’d never reacted to a suspect like this.
Nick knew that, as well as I did.
“Why?” he said finally, his voice openly wary as he looked back at me. Seeing my arched eyebrow, he frowned. “We always debrief in here.”
He was right of course. We did always debrief in here.
Still, the feeling that we’d be overheard if we stayed here––or, more specifically, that the three cops would be overheard––persisted.
The feeling was strong enough that I dug in my heels.
“We should go downstairs, Nick,” I said, my voice firm. “I think better in natural light. And I need more sugar for my coffee anyway,” I lied. “Besides, I don’t think we’re going to learn any more by taking turns staring at Mr. Black.”
Angel laughed at my words. Glen smiled, too.
Nick didn’t.
I also didn’t miss the questioning glances I got from all three of them, although Angel did better with hiding hers than the other two.
I didn’t take sugar in my coffee.
Angel and Nick knew that, at least. I had no idea if Glen knew my coffee quirks or not.
Even so, when I motioned towards the door a second time, they all rose to their feet and shuffled out, walking in the direction of the elevators along with me.
I couldn’t help wondering if Quentin R. Black felt us go.
I DIDN’T END up telling them much.
I knew it frustrated Nick especially, probably more so that I made them change venues just to tell them jack squat. It frustrated him enough that he offered to go with me to the morgue, likely to see if he could pull more details out of me while I looked over the body.
I knew he was still puzzled by the morgue request too.
Usually I only looked at the body if they hadn’t caught the perp yet. Meaning, if I was trying to give them a profile based on the crime scene versus having a real-life human being to assess. When they had an actual suspect in custody, I often just looked over the paper. They were pretty thorough with the documentation these days and I wasn’t a medical examiner, so seeing the forensics assessments was more valuable for me anyway.
Most of the time, seeing the body in person wasn’t going to help me do my job.
Nick had me go with him to the coroner a few times in cases like this anyway, when he thought it might help me get a better handle on a suspect or victim. But it usually caused a fair bit of groaning on my part, and I don’t think I’d ever asked to go before.
Part of that was the war, I knew.
A probably bigger part of it was, I still couldn’t help associating the morgue with Zoe, even after all these years. The first time I’d ever been inside one of these cold, chemical-smelling rooms was when I got called in to ID my sixteen-year-old sister.
By then, our parents were already dead, so I was the only one left to do it.
I’d been eighteen. Just old enough to make the cut.
Not long after that, maybe only a few months later, I joined the military. The military paid for my undergraduate degree. Scholarships and loans paid for the rest. And before I got my degree, while I was in the Middle East, I met Nick.
My life kind of went where it went after that.
No regrets. No looking back.
Even so, I’d never really recovered from Zoe’s death. It hit me harder than the death of my parents somehow, although I couldn’t have said why exactly. Truthfully, I think I was pretty numb for the first few years after I saw her lying on a slab in a room a lot like this one.
I couldn’t help flashing to that experience now, as I stood over a different stainless steel table with yet another young girl lying dead and naked on top of it.
This time, it was easier to keep that professional veneer, if only because I could feel Nick’s eyes watching me every second we spent in that windowless room.
Nick knew I hated this stuff. He’d joked that it was funny I never got squeamish during the war but put the body in a sterile room and cover it with a sheet and I acted like I was afraid the damned thing might rise from the dead and try to kill me.
He was right. I hated these cold, dead-feeling rooms.
I’d never liked gore in wartime either, although he was right––I could push past it to do the job. It just wasn’t my thing, to rubber-neck any part of the more violent aspects of life. To me there’s something deeply disrespectful about looking for any reason other than an absolute necessity to do my work. But now I stood over a strange young woman’s body while the coroner explained to me and Nick how she’d been murdered.
“So these cuts that were done for purely cosmetic purposes,” I said, interrupting him again. “...You’re sure they had nothing to do with either killing her, or anything that could be construed as part of a struggle?”
The coroner nodded, looking up at me.
His gaze sharpened on my face.
I had that affect on some of the older guys.
I think how I looked maybe bothered some of them. Or possibly my sex... or my age, even though I’m thirty years old. Or maybe it was the lack of scientific letters after my name. Or how blunt I could be.
Whatever it was, they never expected me to clinical-speak them, or say things without a nervous question mark at the end. They also never seemed to expect me to have a brain, and seemed deeply suspicious of me once they realized I did have one.
“I don’t know about ‘cosmetic,’” he said, his voice gruff. He sniffed in some emotion I didn’t bother to pin down. “But,” he conceded more grudgingly. “You’re correct in that the evidence doesn’t suggest an immediate reason for some of her non-fatal injuries, and at least one of them appears to have some meaning. In fact, quite a few of them are post-mortem... so the possibility that he did them for more psychological reasons presents a reasonable theory, even apart from the symbol we found.”
He hit the word theory a tad hard, I noticed.
I ignored that too, nodding.
I found myself lost in thought, staring down at the cuts along the ribs and belly of the dead girl. Mostly, though, I found myself staring at the symbol the coroner had just referenced. A series of three spirals, it mirrored the same exact symbol Nick showed me just a week before on the bodies of all of the victims found at Grace Cathedral. About the size of my palm, it had been carved in the same place on all of the victims as well, right in the middle of their chests, almost like some kind of chakra or ancient heart symbol.
“This one happened while she was still alive though... right?” I said.
“Correct,” the coroner said. “Same as with the other victim. Since the design is perfectly symmetrical and the exact same size in every case, we think he used a custom-made implement to leave the mark. Probably made of something like razor blades... or a scalpel. Roughly that type of edge. It’s too fine to have been done with most knives.”
I nodded, still staring down at the precise cuts.
Nick’s voice startled me out of my trance, bringing my eyes sharply up to his.
“Any theories on why that’s important, doc?” he said softly. “Related to today, I mean?”
The coroner gave him an annoyed look.
I wanted to laugh when I realized he was offended Nick was implying I was a real doctor.
I didn’t though. Laugh, that is.
I shook my head. “Not really. Not yet.”
“Liar,” he chided, softer. He gave the coroner a brief glance before leaning closer to murmur in my ear. “You’re hiding something from me, Miri... I want to know what. And why.”
I rolled my eyes, giving him an irritated look. “Hardly,” I said.
“Then you’re not sharing something,” he rephrased, speaking in his normal tone of voice. “...Which is the same thing. You’ve got something you’re following here. Spill it.”
Sighing, I smoothed my hair with the back of my wrist to avoid touching it with the gloves. I’d put it into a ponytail to come in here. Glancing between Nick and the coroner, I thought for a minute more, then more or less told them both the truth.
“That man you had me talk to,” I said, aiming my words at Nick. “The one calling himself Quentin Black. There’s something about his personality that doesn’t mesh with this. With the way the murder took place, I mean.”
Nick frowned. I could tell he hated this theory already.
All he said was, “Go on.”
I shrugged, throwing up a hand. “There is no ‘go on.’ Not at this point.”
“You have something, doc. Why do you think that?”
“It’s nothing substantial. I’d prefer to wait.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
Sighing, I gave him another look. Then I gave in.
“All right,” I said, turning slightly to face him. “The man I met today didn’t strike me as theatrical, Nick. Not in any way. Quite the contrary. He’s hyper-practical. Goal-oriented. Not a time-waster. It feeds into his narcissism, I suspect... or self-importance, at least. He views his time as infinitely too valuable to spend on anything not directly related to his immediate ends. I suspect he views his time as worth significantly more than that of most people... and his goals as more important certainly. Perhaps even ‘save the world’ important. Certainly well beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of us mere mortals...”
“But not you,” Nick said, studying my eyes.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, I’m sure I make the list too. He was entertaining himself with me. But I wouldn’t say that put me at his ‘level,’ in his eyes.”
Seeing Nick frown, clearly disagreeing, I shrugged.
“...Anyway, if I’m right, the profile doesn’t fit,” I said, my voice carefully flat. “While I would definitely believe him capable of murder, I don’t see him cutting up a girl for fun... much less dressing her in a wedding outfit and posing her the way this one did. That implies passion. Eroticism of some kind. Revenge at least, or some form of sadism... even religious fervor possibly, given the odd symbol and its placement. Black might be a sociopath... and he’s likely a narcissist. But I don’t think he’d...”
I paused, still thinking aloud as I waved a hand over the body of the dead girl.
“...Lower himself to playing with his food. Understand?”
“No,” Nick said. He shifted his weight on his feet, folding his arms. “No, I don’t understand. What the hell are you talking about, Miri?”
I sighed. “I said it was just a theory.”
“What makes you think the whole ‘ritual’ of this isn’t part of Black’s goals?” Nick said, which told me he’d been listening to me at least. “You said he wouldn’t waste time on something not a part of his whole ‘thing,’ right? What if this is his thing, Miri? What if it means something to him? Something we just don’t understand yet?”
I met his gaze over the body of the dead girl, then shrugged.
“It’s possible,” I conceded.
“Possible? But you still don’t think so?”
“No. Not without evidence to actually suggest that, Nick.”
“Why not?” he said, his voice openly frustrated. “You aren’t even going to entertain that idea a little bit, are you, doc?”
Looking back down at the girl, I found myself focusing on the heavy coating of make-up on her face, all the way down to her neckline.
It must have taken time to apply.
There was so much of it, and it was so flawlessly smooth on her cheeks and forehead and around her eyes, it made her look like a porcelain doll. Or really, paradoxically, like a child. It wasn’t sexy make-up, by any means. Rather, it seemed to age her downwards, implying a kind of flawless beauty more associated with pre-pubescence.
The only thing breaking the illusion was the few spots of blood that made it above her neck, and the smear on her throat which probably happened when they moved her. Still staring down at her face, feeling a sudden pain in my chest as I realized how young she was in reality, I shrugged. Her true age had been partly obscured by the half-inch of foundation and blush and powder, as well.
She couldn’t be more than twenty-five.
“I’m not ruling anything out,” I said.
“You sure about that, Miri?”
The sharpness in his voice caused me to lift my eyes a second time. When I spoke next, my clinical voice had more bite.
“Reasonably sure,” I said, leveling my stare. “But I’m not going to spend a lot of time on leads that you like simply because you’re too attached to your current suspect, Nick. Especially when I can tell your emotions are coloring your view of him.”
Nick made a disbelieving sound. “My emotions?” he said. “Coloring my view, doc? You sure that’s what’s going on?”
“You asked for my opinion,” I said coldly. “My clinical opinion.”
“And is that what I’m getting?” he said.
I blinked at him. I glanced at the coroner, who was watching and listening to the two of us. He pushed his dark-rimmed glasses up his nose before he re-folded his arms, smirking at me. Seeing the smug look behind those thick lenses, I focused back on Nick, deciding to ignore it.
Guy was obviously kind of a prick.
“I’m just not sure it’s his style, Nick,” I said, letting some of the cooler, more clinical tone drop from my voice. I decided to be more honest, talk to him more as my friend. “I can’t explain that fully yet, which is why I wasn’t trying... but I strongly suspect you might need to at least look for a possible accomplice. If you hadn’t pushed me, I would have waited until I had something more concrete in that regard, okay? As it is, you’re just going to have to trust me that I’m looking at this objectively. Or pull me off the case and find another forensic psychologist.”
There was a silence.
I’d been trying to crack through that more suspicious thing of Nick’s, to hit him with sincerity in an attempt to get him to lower his guard.
When I studied the gaze of Homicide Detective Naoko Tanaka through that silence however, I found myself thinking that I’d taken the wrong approach.
In fact, my words had the exact opposite effect from what I’d hoped. A warier look had risen in the background of his stare. I also saw the cop veneer harden over his expression, and the more concentrated scrutiny he aimed at me as a part of that.
He thought I was managing him.
He thought I was using my intellect and training to snow him into backing off.
Hell, he might even be right.
Moreover, I got a glimmer of exactly what lay behind his sudden re-appraisal of me.
Realizing as I did that my “glimmer” might have been exactly what Mr. Quentin Black had been accusing me of inside that interrogation room, I shut that down, too, but not before the memory of our exchange heated my face.
Unfortunately, Nick saw that, too.
He also took my sudden blush in decidedly the wrong way.
I could feel it... even though I didn’t want to.
Then again, I’d always been able to feel a lot more than I really wanted to.