Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

His partner, Oscar Lee, was the first cop I recognized. Oscar is the largest guy I’ve ever met. He’d make Refrigerator Perry look anorexic and Michael Jordan look like a midget, and even Bubba looks puny beside Oscar. He wore a leather watch cap over a black head the size of a circus balloon and smoked a cigar that smelled like beachfront after an oil slick.

He turned as we approached. “The hell’s Kenzie doing here, Devin?”

Oscar. My friend in need, my friend indeed.

Devin said, “The card. Remember?”

“So you might be able to ID this girl, Kenzie.”

“If I could see her, Oscar. Maybe.”

Oscar shrugged. “She’s probably looked better.”

He stepped aside so that I had a clear view of the body lying under the streetlight.

She was naked except for a pair of light blue satin underpants. Her body was swollen from the cold or rigor or something else. Her bangs were swept back off her forehead and her mouth and eyes were open. Her lips were blue from the cold and she seemed to look at something just over my shoulder. Her thin arms and legs were spread wide, and dark blood—chilled to slush—puddled out from the base of her throat, the heels of her upturned palms, and the soles of her feet. Small, flat circles of metal glinted from the center of each palm and each upturned ankle.

It was Kara Rider.

She’d been crucified.

“Three-penny nails,” Devin said later as we sat in The Black Emerald Tavern. “Very basic. Only two thirds of the homes in this city have them. Preferred by carpenters everywhere.”

“Carpenters,” Oscar said.

“That’s it,” Devin said. “The perp’s a carpenter. Pissed

off about that Christ thing. Taking it upon himself to avenge the hero of his trade.”

“You writing this down?” Oscar asked me.

We’d come to the bar looking for Micky Doog, the last person I’d seen Kara with, but he hadn’t been seen since the early afternoon. Devin got his address from Gerry Glynn, the owner, and sent a few patrolmen by, but Micky’s mother hadn’t seen him since yesterday.

“There was a few of them in here this morning,” Gerry told us. “Kara, Micky, John Buccierri, Michelle Rourke, part of that crew used to run around together a few years back.”

“They leave together?”

Gerry nodded. “I was just coming in as they were going out. They were pretty hammered and it wasn’t even one in the afternoon. She’s a good kid, though, that Kara.”

“Was,” Oscar said. “Was a good kid.”

It was close to two in the morning and we were drunk.

Gerry’s dog, Patton, a massive German shepherd with a coat of black and dusky amber, lay on the bar top ten feet away, watching us as if deciding whether he’d be taking our car keys or not. Eventually he yawned, and a great bacon strip of a tongue lolled from his mouth as he looked away from us with what seemed a studied disinterest.

After the medical examiner had shown up, I’d stood in the cold for another two hours while Kara’s body was carted into an ambulance and shipped off to the morgue and then while the forensics team swept the area for the evidence and Devin and Oscar canvassed the homes fronting the park for anyone who might have heard anything. It wasn’t so much that no one heard anything, just that women screamed in this neighborhood every night and it was sort of like a car alarm—once you heard it enough times, you stopped noticing.

From the cloth fibers Oscar noticed stuck to Kara’s teeth, and the lack of blood Devin found in the nail holes that bored through the frozen dirt under her hands and feet, they assumed the following: She’d been killed at another location after the killer had shoved a handkerchief or piece of shirt in her mouth, then made an incision in the base of her throat with either a stiletto or a very sharp ice pick to demobilize her larynx. He’d then been free to watch her die from either severe shock trauma, a heart attack, or slow suffocation due to drowning in her own blood. For whatever reason, the killer had then transported the body to Meeting House Hill and crucified Kara to the frozen dirt.

“He’s a sweetheart, this guy,” Devin said.

“Probably just needs a good hug,” Oscar said. “Straighten him right out.”

“No such thing as a bad boy,” Devin said.

“You’re damn skippy,” Oscar said.

I hadn’t said much since I’d seen her body. Unlike Oscar and Devin, I’m no pro when it comes to violent death. I’ve seen my share, but not on a level even remotely comparable with either of these guys.

I said, “I can’t handle this.”

“Yes,” Devin said, “you can.”

“Drink more,” Oscar said. He nodded in the direction of Gerry Glynn. Gerry’d owned the Black Emerald since the days when he was a cop, and even though he usually shuts down at one, he never closes his doors to people on the Job. He had our drinks in front of us before Oscar finished his nod, and he was back at the other end of the bar before we even realized he’d been by. The definition of a good bartender.

“Crucified,” I said for the twentieth time that night as Devin placed a fresh beer in my hand.

“I think we’re all agreed on that point, Patrick.”

“Devin,” I said, trying to focus on him, pissed off that he wouldn’t remain still, “the girl was barely twenty-two years old. I’ve known her since she was two.”

Devin’s eyes remained still and blank. I looked at Oscar. He chewed a half-smoked, unlit cigar and looked back at me like I was a piece of furniture he hadn’t decided where to place.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Patrick,” Devin said. “Patrick. You listening?”

I turned in his direction. For a brief moment, his head stopped moving. “What?”

“She was twenty-two. Yes. A baby. And if she’d been fifteen or forty, it wouldn’t be any better. Death is death and murder’s murder. Don’t make it worse by getting sentimental about her age, Patrick. She was murdered. Atrociously. No argument. But…” He leaned haphazardly on the bar, closed one eye. “Partner? What was my but?”

“But,” Oscar said, “don’t matter if she was male or female, rich or poor, young or old—”

“Black or white,” Devin said.

“—black or white,” Oscar said, scowling at Devin, “she was still murdered, Kenzie. Murdered bad.”