White Death

There are several types of hangover. There’s Hangover Lite, a mild but insistent ache in the temples; there’s Hangover Medium, where you ride greasy swells of nausea which rear and ebb without warning; and there’s Hangover Max, when a team of roadworkers are jackhammering behind your eyes, your heart is doing a one-man Indy 500, and the thought that you might die is eclipsed only by the fear that you won’t.

And then there’s the kind of hangover Franco Patrese had at the precise moment his cellphone jolted him from sleep with a brutality that was borderline sociopathic.

But Patrese was a pro. In the time it took for the phone to ring once, neither the shock of the rude awakening nor the monumental combination of toxins gleefully racing round his body could prevent him from assembling a few salient points.

First, it was still dark outside.

Second, he was in a hotel room, which he remembered as being on the outskirts of Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Third, there was another bed in the room, and in that bed was a man named Jeff whose snoring had the rhythm and persistence of waves breaking on a shore. Jeff was one of Patrese’s college buddies. A whole bunch of them had hooked up to come see their beloved Pittsburgh Steelers play the New England Patriots in Foxborough this coming afternoon, and, as Patrese hadn’t seen much of his old friends since moving down to New Orleans, they’d decided to make a weekend of it, all boys together. For someone like Patrese, a single guy who lived in party central, this was just another weekend of good times. For those of his buddies who were married with kids, and whose usual weekends were therefore kids’ soccer practice, home-improvement jobs and putting up with the in-laws, this was pretty much their only free time all year, and by hell they’d made the most of it.

Fourth, Patrese had been first a cop and then an FBI agent for more than a decade, so he knew that no one rang that early on a Sunday morning unless there was a good reason for it. And nine times out of ten, a good reason means something bad has happened.

He answered on the second ring. ‘Patrese.’

Well, ‘Patrese’ was what he’d wanted to say. ‘Ngfrujghr’ was how it had actually come out.

‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice. ‘I’m looking for Franco Patrese?’

Bile rose fast and hard in Patrese’s throat. He took a deep breath and forced it back down. This time when he opened his mouth to speak, his tongue felt like a desiccated slug.

‘Hello?’ said the woman again. ‘Hello?’

There was a glass of water by the bed. Patrese reached for it. Felt sick again. Hangover motion sickness, he thought: you move, you feel sick. No matter. He grabbed the glass and drank it down in one.

‘This is Patrese.’ His voice still sounded like Darth Vader with flu, but at least he was now speaking recognizable English.

‘Agent Patrese, my name is Lauren Kieseritsky. I’m with the police department in New Haven, Connecticut.’

No apology for waking him so early. Patrese didn’t expect one. Law enforcement personnel don’t apologize to each other for doing their jobs. In any case, Patrese was already trying to think. New Haven, Connecticut? He’d never been there in his life. Never been, didn’t know anyone there, probably couldn’t even point to it on a map.

‘I got your number through ViCAP,’ Kieseritsky continued.

Patrese sat straight up, nausea be damned. ViCAP is the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a Bureau database which collates information on violent crime, especially murder. ViCAP is linked to police and sheriff departments across the country. Local officers can enter details of crimes committed on their patch and see if these details match anything already in the system. ViCAP is particularly useful in catching serial killers, who often murder in different jurisdictions and over many years: crimes which beforehand had simply been written off as unrelated and insoluble.

ViCAP definitely meant something bad had happened.

‘What you got?’ Patrese asked.

‘Two bodies found an hour ago on the Green.’

‘The Green?’

‘Sorry. New Haven Green. Grass square, center of the city.’

‘OK.’

‘White man, black woman. No IDs on either yet, though we’ve taken fingerprints and are running them through the system. Both been decapitated. No sign of the heads. Both missing an arm. Both with skin taken from their chests and backs.’

‘The arms – that’s why you called me? Limb removal?’ Patrese’s first case as an agent in New Orleans had been a serial killer who, amongst other things, had amputated his victims’ left legs.

‘Yes, sir. Well, not just that.’

‘Then what?’

‘The dead man. We found him on the steps of a church, and he’s wearing a signet ring with a cross emblem on it. We think it’s the Benedictine medal. We think he’s a monk, a priest, something like that.’

Before Patrese had been a Bureau agent, he’d been a Pittsburgh cop. He’d taken down a killer nicknamed the Human Torch, whose victims had included a bishop – a bishop who, as a young priest, had befriended Patrese’s family and done the kind of things to a teenage Franco that no human being should ever inflict on another.

Patrese ran to the bathroom and threw up.

3 (#ulink_219be7cb-6ae8-5c1d-bbd0-67006ee019f5)

New Haven, CT

Early on Sunday morning, no traffic on the road and a crime scene to get to, it took Patrese dead on two hours to make it from Foxborough to New Haven. He drove fast but not ridiculously so: he was still way over the alcohol limit, so the last thing he wanted was to get stopped. It was a dollar to a dime that any highway patrolman who did pull him over would let him go on his way once Patrese had explained the situation, but it wasn’t inconceivable that Patrese would run across a trooper who disliked the Bureau (most people did), didn’t see what the hurry was (the folks were dead, right? They weren’t going nowhere), and would take great pleasure in busting his ass for DUI (‘The law’s the law, sir’). Either way, better not to risk it.

Kieseritsky had said she’d hold the crime scene for him once he’d made it clear he was just down the road rather than in New Orleans. Patrese had texted his buddies back in Foxborough to explain his absence, and chuckled to himself at the thought of the ragging he’d endure in absentia once they eventually hauled their sorry asses out of bed. He’d have given an awful lot to be at the stadium this afternoon rather than poking round the entrails of yet more lives snuffed out, but when the dead said jump, anyone who dealt with homicide could only ask one question: ‘How high?’ That was the way it was and always would be. You don’t like it? Get another job.

The crime scene came with the sound-and-light show that all major incidents did: rotating blues and reds on top of patrol cars, men and women in sterile suits and shoe covers talking urgently to each other or into handsets, striped tape flapping in the breeze, and a crowd of onlookers both thrilled and appalled to be part of all this. A uniformed officer was subtly videoing the crowd: some killers like to hang around the crime scene.

Patrese parked up on a side street, opened his door, checked to see no one was looking, shoved a couple of fingers down his throat, and parked what was left of the contents of his stomach into the gutter. He hadn’t vomited at a crime scene for many years, but the way he was feeling right now, he couldn’t guarantee continuing that streak. It would do his image and authority no good if, the moment he saw the corpses, he started yakking his guts up like a teenager who’d had too much Coors. Hence the precautions: get it all out now.

When he was sure his stomach was well and truly empty, he popped some gum in his mouth, got out of the car and strode towards the Green. The Green was the kind of space which would have made the Founding Fathers purr: a large expanse of grass criss-crossed with paths and surrounded – protected – on all sides by buildings which reeked of civic pride. A neoclassical courthouse with columns out front; red-brick office blocks designed in Georgian Revival; and what looked like an enormous Gothic castle gatehouse.

A uniform checked Patrese’s badge and lifted the tape for him to duck under.

‘Detective Kieseritsky’s over there, sir.’ The uniform pointed to a small lady in a charcoal trouser suit. Patrese nodded his thanks and walked towards her.

‘You must be Agent Patrese,’ said Kieseritsky when he was still ten yards from her.

She was mid-thirties, all lines and angles: hair parted at the side and cut short at the back, cheekbones tilting above a pointed chin, arms forming triangles as she splayed her hands on her hips. If there was any warmth in her voice or bearing, Patrese couldn’t detect it: then again, he wouldn’t have been full of the milk of human kindness either if he’d spent the first part of his Sunday at a double homicide.

‘Looked you up while you were on your way,’ she added. ‘You ready?’

‘Sure.’

‘Any preference?’

‘Preference?’

‘Which one you want to see first.’

‘Whichever’s nearer.’

‘John, then.’

‘John?’