Edna had prayed about Richard many times, and over and over the same message came to her: Richard had been an innocent lamb, unjustly led to slaughter. Only his own mother had believed in him. Well, someday they’d find out. After all, weren’t those terrible murders happening again right now? Just a week or so ago there had been that woman over on Boylston. Not that Edna felt very sorry for her; after all, she was a whore. But then just the night before last there had been that poor woman who lived up the street from Rory. And both of them killed just the way those others had been, the ones they blamed poor Richard for. If only they hadn’t killed Richard, they’d know the truth now, and he’d be able to come home to his mother where he belonged. But it was too late. Sighing heavily under the burden of her sorrows, Edna Kraven pulled the front door of Rory’s building open, went in, and climbed the steep flight of stairs to the second floor.
Pausing on the landing to catch her breath, she peered with distaste around the dimly lit corridor. The paint on the walls was peeling and the strip of threadbare carpet that ran down the cramped hallway was curling back at the edges. What had she done to deserve a son who would live in a place like this? She’d told him before that it wasn’t a fit place for her to visit; today she would put her foot down. If he didn’t move, he needn’t expect her to visit him again.
She plodded down the hall to Rory’s door, lifted her hand to knock, then realized that the door wasn’t quite closed. Just like Rory to go out somewhere and not even bother to lock his door — anyone could rob him blind! Pushing the door wider, Edna stepped inside.
“Rory?”
There was no answer, but Edna suddenly felt uneasy. The place just didn’t feel empty. Scowling, she moved toward the open bathroom door, but before she’d gone more than a step or two, she stopped short.
The walls — the grubby beige walls she’d never been able to get Rory to paint — were streaked with red.
Bright red.
Bloodred.
“Rory?” Edna Kraven said again, but this time the name of her younger son was uttered softly, almost inaudibly, as if she already understood what had happened here. “Rory?” she repeated. “It’s Mommy, Rory, come to take care of you.”
As if guided by an unseen force, Edna edged toward the bathroom door, terrified of what she might find there, but unable to keep herself from looking. When she was finally able to see exactly what lay in the bathtub, Edna Kraven’s stomach heaved. She lurched into the bathroom, bent over, and threw up into the sink. Only when her stomach had completely emptied itself was she finally able to creep back out to the single room in which her younger son had died and call the police.
CHAPTER 47
“Holy Jesus,” Mark Blakemoor swore as he gazed at the ruined body of Rory Kraven. “What the hell is going on?”
He and Lois Ackerly had been reviewing the files on Shawnelle Davis and Joyce Cottrell, searching without success for anything that might link the two women together — a friend in common, a distant relative, even a casual acquaintance — when the call came in.
Now, lying naked in his bathtub in a crappy apartment, was Rory Kraven, the kid brother of the man whose crimes had been copycatted by whoever had killed Davis and Cottrell.
Just like Davis and Cottrell, Rory Kraven’s chest had been cut open, and his lungs and heart had been torn out. But unlike the mayhem to which the two women had been subjected, what had been done to Rory Kraven appeared to have been carried out with almost surgical precision.
Also unlike either Shawnelle Davis or Joyce Cottrell, Rory Kraven’s throat had been slashed. There was blood everywhere — pools of it on the carpet, dark stains on the furniture, even reddish smears on the walls. It was obvious that Rory Kraven hadn’t died instantly. From what they could see, it was clear that even after he was injured, he’d still been able to move around the apartment. Yet there didn’t seem to be much sign of a fight — none of the furniture was overturned, nothing was broken. From the appearance of the room, it looked as if Rory Kraven’s assailant had slashed his throat, then stood aside and let the mortally injured man lurch around the apartment until he finally bled to death. Still, given the victim’s hideous wounds, it seemed as if someone, somewhere, surely must have heard something.
As the team from the lab set to work photographing the scene and sifting for evidence that might have been left by Rory’s killer, Mark Blakemoor began the laborious job of checking the other apartments. Granted, most of the people in the building would have been at work, but all these buildings seemed to have at least a few tenants who rarely went out except to buy food. Lois Ackerly sat gingerly on the edge of the couch where Edna Kraven still huddled, her heavy breasts heaving as she tried to deal with what she’d seen in the bathroom.
“Do you need a doctor?” Lois Ackerly asked. Edna Kraven’s face was pallid, but Lois recalled that Richard Kraven’s mother, whom she’d interviewed at least four times in the past few years, always looked rather pale.
“What can a doctor do for a mother’s grief?” Edna asked, dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief she’d found deep in the bottom of her purse.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Edna shrugged helplessly. “He was sick this morning. Then I kept calling him, and when he didn’t answer his telephone, I thought I’d better come over. He’s my son,” she added in a tone that struck Lois Ackerly as almost defensive. “What else could I do?”
Lois led Edna through her recitation of the day’s events twice more, but as she expected, the minor details never varied. Edna was uncertain exactly what time she’d gotten on the bus, or which bus she’d taken up Fifteenth, but Ackerly had long ago discovered that people too well-equipped with details are often the ones who are lying. She was just finishing when Mark Blakemoor beckoned to her from the door. Leaving Edna on the sofa, she joined him in the corridor.
“No one heard anything,” he told her. “I found two people who haven’t been out of their apartments all day, and neither of them seems to be deaf. If Kraven put up a struggle, why didn’t anyone hear it? And believe me, if the woman in 2B had heard a fight, she would have called the police. It just doesn’t jibe: if there wasn’t any struggle, how come there’s such a mess?”
Lois Ackerly had barely begun to think about her partner’s question when one of the techs stepped out into the hall. “Well, at least this one’s going to be pretty simple,” he said as he handed Blakemoor a transparent Ziplock bag. It contained a piece of yellow paper that Ackerly instantly recognized as a large Post-it Note on which someone had handwritten a message. “It was stuck on the refrigerator door, as if it were a shopping list. We got pictures of it in place, and we’ll check it for prints.” Blakemoor read the note, then wordlessly passed it to Lois Ackerly.
I hate a copycat.
I especially hate an inept copycat.
Killing for the reasons Rory killed is not simply immoral; it’s wasteful. Loathing waste, I have therefore put an end to Rory’s carnage. I doubt anyone will be too upset that Rory is gone. After all, he could never be me, no matter how hard he tried.
“Does this say what I think it does?” Ackerly asked as she finished reading the note. “It sounds like whoever whacked Kraven thinks Rory killed Davis and Cottrell. But how could he know? There isn’t even any absolute proof both of them were murdered by the same creep. So far, it’s all just speculation.”
“It’ll be easy enough to check now,” Blakemoor observed. “We’ve got a pretty good set of right-hand fingerprints from the knife at Cottrell’s, and there were a couple of smudges of a palm print from Davis’s kitchen. If they all match Rory, then it looks like we’ll have a bingo.” Blakemoor shook his head in disgust. “Some crappy world, huh? One creep thinks another creep did something, so he comes in and whacks him.”