The Caller

‘God, if I’d known it was going to be that easy, I would have called Marc months ago.’ Her laugh was shrill. Anna was silent.

Chloe jumped in. ‘Oh, listen to me being so insensitive. Of course you needed all that time—’

‘Please,’ said Anna. ‘Email me the details.’

‘Of course. Done. Darling, thank you. Thank you so much.’

Joe leaned into the mirror in the men’s room, snipping away the nasal hair that had spent three hours soaking up the smell of death. He never figured out if it was a practical or a psychological routine or both. He didn’t like seeing his face up close, seeing the new lines around his eyes, the extra gray hairs at the side of his head; more things that were out of his control. He went to his locker and grabbed a bottle of tea-tree shower gel that Anna had given him. He got undressed and threw his suit into a plastic bag.

‘The smell of that crap,’ said Danny walking in. ‘I think I’ll go back to the autopsy.’

‘Screw you,’ said Joe. ‘I’d rather smell—’

‘Like weird-ass tea—’

‘Like – clean, than how you go out with your cheap foaming shit that doesn’t cover up nothing.’

‘If a woman can’t handle the smell of death from a man—’

‘She can’t go out with a deadbeat.’

‘Shit,’ said Danny, closing his locker door. ‘I’m all out of shower gel. Give me some of that crap.’

Joe went back to his desk and checked his email. Danny walked over a few minutes later, smelling the back of his hand and frowning.

‘Get over the fucking shower gel,’ said Joe.

‘Let me pull that file,’ said Danny. ‘The one I told you about – Aneto.’

Joe made space on his desk, laying a stack of files on the floor beside him. Danny came back and opened William Aneto’s file in front of him. Aneto was thirty-one, slightly built, handsome, with collar-length black hair. Joe looked at his head shot and saw a TV actor’s face; the four-line max guy, two or three steps back from the main action. His role in a Spanish language soap opera was the friend of the brother of the leading man. He was killed almost a year earlier, his body discovered in his Upper West Side apartment by a female friend. The case had quickly gone cold. As a victim, William fell into the high-risk category, promiscuous on the gay scene, known for disappearing at the end of a night with a stranger. Danny and Martinez had interviewed hundreds of Aneto’s friends, acquaintances and lovers and had gotten nowhere. His murder was down as a hook-up gone bad.

Joe pulled out the next photos and laid them in rows on the table in front of him. Danny stood beside him. Like Ethan Lowry, the body was found in the hallway. But behind William Aneto, hair smears of blood curved across the gray tiled floor like tracks through red paint from a dried brush.

‘Yeah. It’s all coming back to me,’ said Danny. ‘Most of the action happened in the kitchen. He was killed there and then dragged to the front door to be finished off. Wait ’til you see the kitchen. Hand prints, footprints, all over the floor, up the wall – kindergarten art class. You know – if all the paint was red. And the children were Damian.’

Joe studied the photos of the kitchen. He pointed to the bloodied corner of a granite counter top. ‘So I’m the perp, standing here behind the vic, bashing his face off this.’ Blood was spattered onto the wall, the counter, the floor, misted across the granite.

Danny nodded. ‘Yup.’

They looked at a wide shot of the hallway – the crumpled corpse, the spatter of a gunshot wound, the pooled blood under his head.

William Aneto’s face was more damaged than Ethan Lowry’s, destroyed by injuries that left the entire surface pulped and bloodied. His right eye socket was completely impacted from one of the blows, obliterating the entry wound from the bullet that, based on the autopsy results, followed a similar trajectory to Lowry’s.

‘Yeah. It’s a no-brainer,’ said Danny.

‘The caliber was too low,’ said Joe.

‘Funny guy. Shit, the phone – look,’ said Danny, pointing to the tiny silver cell phone beside Aneto’s body. ‘I forgot about that.’

Like Ethan Lowry, it looked like William Aneto could have made a call just before he died. Joe flipped through the file to a statement from a Mrs Aneto.

‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘His mother said the call was just to say goodnight.’

‘Maybe you should talk to Mrs Aneto again.’

‘She no likey me,’ said Danny, making a face. ‘Maybe Martinez could warm her up again.’

‘Yeah, that’s one I won’t be tagging along for.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Maybe you should ask Martinez,’ said Joe.

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

‘See how he looks at me? I’m a homewrecker. He had eleven good months with you, I show up, you take me back, the guy’s life is over.’

Danny shook his head.

‘He gets that glint in his eye when you’re around,’ said Joe.

‘Screw you. What you are seeing is professional admiration.’

‘Come on. Let’s go talk to Rufo.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Rufo when they walked in.

‘We got a link,’ said Joe. ‘Between Ethan Lowry and William Aneto.’

Rufo frowned. ‘The guy I’ve been getting all these calls about this week?’

Danny nodded. ‘Yeah. The year-anniversary-still-no-answers thing.’

‘Interesting timing,’ said Rufo. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Both happened at home, no sign of forced entry, similar facial injuries, similar twenty-two caliber gunshot wound, phone found beside both of them, bodies left in the hallway behind the door.’

Rufo nodded. ‘That’s good enough for me.’

Shaun Lucchesi lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. The stereo blasted the same lyrics over and over: left behind/left behind/left behind. It had been almost a year since his girlfriend, Katie Lawson, was murdered. They had met on the first day in school when he arrived in Ireland and they had been inseparable until she died. What made things worse was that Shaun had started out as the prime suspect, convicted by most of the small village until they learned the truth.

For months after Katie’s death, Shaun had woken up with a void inside him that had ached like nothing else he had ever known. On the good days, he was lifted by memories. On the bad ones, he was trapped in a loop of images that started from the time he picked her up that night and ended at the last moment he saw her. Everything now seemed unimportant. He came back to New York and met his old friends and went to the old hang-outs, but it was such a different life to the one he had with Katie, it was surreal. His life with her was stripped down to how they felt about each other, how they made each other laugh, how they lay on his bed wrapped around each other for hours, just talking or watching movies. It wasn’t about who your friends were, where you went, what you owned, who you were sleeping with, who had the latest cell phone, who had the fastest car. Sometimes he was so overwhelmed at the thought of never being that happy again, he almost couldn’t breathe. He turned off the stereo and went to his closet. From the top shelf, he pulled out a small, chunky round tin. A thin layer of wax coated the bottom of it and a short black wick twisted from the center. It was Katie’s favorite candle – Fresh Linen. He took a lighter from his drawer and lit it. He could only burn it for a few minutes at a time, it was so low. He couldn’t bear the thought it would ever burn out completely.

Everyone else would remember the anniversary of Katie’s funeral three weeks from now. But this night, one year ago, was the night he nearly had sex with her for the first time. But then they had fought. And then she had run away from him. And then she was killed. He lay down on his bed, closed his eyes and, for half an hour, let the tears run down his face onto the pillow. Then he sat up and grabbed his cell phone and scrolled through his photos. Katie at school. Katie on the beach. Katie in his room. Delete. Delete. Delete.

FIVE (#ulink_d1c138c0-b4b6-5bd8-8fd5-e61cfc2a9533)

Joe sat at his desk, pressing his fingers against his forehead, pretending to read a report that had started to blur a few minutes earlier. His phone rang. It was Reuben Maller from the FBI, Eastern District – the office that covered the whole east coast. They got on well since their first case together. The last one they worked was Donald Riggs.