As usual, Katherine, sitting in the back seat of the car, nodded briefly. She flipped through Nick's printouts before they left for North Dorchester. "I don't know," she said. "The murders are way too drastic for twelve weeks of rehab. And the modus operandi is completely different. What do you think, Liz? Do you think this is our guy? The modus operandi is completely different."
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder for a moment. "Different from our killer?"
"Yes. According to the records, the one here, this Burns is a drunk and a brutal thug, a pimp with an antisocial background."
Elizabeth looked briefly at her partner, Nick, who was driving the car and furrowed her brows. "Doesn't quite fit. That's what I said earlier. But apparently, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So at least we've got one wanker nailed, even though he might not be our guy."
Katherine raised her eyes with a deep frown and nodded slowly. "Yeah, I said in my lecture that psychopaths like our killer who have a specific mission want to wrap others around their finger, then confront them with their weaknesses and make them stand there naked. They are intelligent and proceed both strategically and tactically. Kind of like Hannibal Lecter with Clarice Starling. You remember?"
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder again, furrowing her brows. "Of course, I remember. I saw that movie, too, after all."
"This one, on the other hand," Katherine said, shaking her head, "is a brutal drunk, unthinking and emotional. One strikes and then turns on the brain - or what's left of it, especially if he beat his former partner to death. Obviously, in the heat of the moment, something like that wouldn't happen to a real psychopath or our killer."
"Hannibal Lecter." Elizabeth smiled briefly. "Indeed, that's not who this Burns reminds me of."
"No. One wants dominance and control, and the other consumes alcohol and accepts the loss of control." Katherine shook her head emphatically. "Burns is not our man."
xxx
They had reached the North Dorchester apartment. Elizabeth glanced up at the weathered facade. The residential neighborhood was considered a problem area, and an invisible death strip drew the line more than half a century ago. On one side were expensive townhouses; on the other were migrants and welfare recipients.
Some people feared whether they had enough money for a hot meal a day, whether the rent could be paid next month, or whether the electricity would be cut off tomorrow. For the people on the other side of the street, the question was whether and how 'living without compromise' is possible in the penthouses and townhouses, as the advertising said, whether with seamless stone in earth tones or a shower terrace made of natural pebbles. The new Townhouses formed one of the first 'guarded cities' or 'gated communities' in Boston. Here old met new, rich met poor.
Burns was undoubtedly part of the both factions.
They descended the grimy stairs of the winding stairwell. Mark and Philip, two RRT officers, led the way with assault rifles and the battering ram.
"Oh God, he's got a basement apartment," said one of the RRT officers.
Burns, it said in smudged ballpoint ink on a yellowish doorbell sign.
"Go?" whispered Mark, bringing the battering ram into position.
"Go," Elizabeth whispered back, clenching her hands before pulling her Glock from her tactical thigh holster.
xxx
It smelled like blood, fire, and alcohol. And of death.
"If that's Burns, it couldn't have been him," Nick said with a deep frown.
"Not anymore, anyway," Katherine added, looking at her husband.
With the fire department's help, forensics had pulled a badly mangled body from the well shaft that was part of the musty basement. Mark, Philip, and two other officers from the RRT stood by in their black masks, tactical uniforms, and assault rifles, feeling somewhat redundant.
Elizabeth's gaze roamed over the dead man's bloated face. She tried to ignore the smell of incipient corpse rot, the stench of a completely neglected apartment, and the exhalation of alcohol as best she could while she looked at the body. The man's jaw and face were covered in blood. The skin on his cheeks was scraped. The cheekbone and nasal bone shattered. The skull fractured, and brain matter flashed slickly from between Burns' greasy hair. His face had long lain in its vomit, so some of the skin had peeled away from exposure to stomach acid. Parts of the tissue were visible underneath, and a bit of chin bone gleamed. The house, seared by the vomit, and the head, which sat lower on the neck than usual due to the compression, gave the corpse a bizarre appearance, except for all the blood and the shattered cheekbone.
Elizabeth held a paper handkerchief to her nose, although she would have also liked to hold it to her eyes. Fortunately, it was much cooler in this dark cellar vault than outside, or the corpse would indeed have smelled very different. It was almost cold down here, at least coming down from the day's sweltering heat.
"He fell headfirst down the well," Nick said, pointing his fingers toward the well shaft. "And from the smell of this place, he wasn't completely sober." The man's nose had been so affected that it protruded from his ravaged face like a bloody bent knob.
"His neck is probably broken and spine crushed from the fall, too," said Maggie with a deep frown, who had just entered the room with a colleague from her department, an doctor's bag in hand.
A police photographer began taking photos before the body was taken to the BPD morgue for an autopsy.
"He's pretty fucked up," Nick said irreverently, and his wife gave him a warning look.
"Yeah, if I can tell from all the vomit, blood, and mucus," Elizabeth countered with a deep frown. Colorful shadows danced before her eyes from the camera flash. Shuddering, she looked at what was left of the man's face and peered into eyes that were somehow askew and twisted in their sockets. "The fall also fractured the orbital floor," she said. "The man must have fallen head-on there. Or --"
Nick looked at her long and hard. "Or?"
Elizabeth looked at him slowly. "Or someone helped him along. I'm sure the guy's been drunk for a while from the smell of this place and the way it looks. And then someone may have given him one last kick."
Nick took a deep breath, which he subsequently regretted. "Sounds cumbersome to kill him that way. It looks like the guy fell down the well in a drunken stupor. Surprising, it didn't happen to him sooner."
"Exactly," Elizabeth replied with a bit of emphasis. "That's exactly what I'm surprised about!"
Nick made a face for a moment. "I suggest he be taken to the morgue right after the CSRU is done here."
Maggie pressed her lips together and nodded in agreement.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to reply something when her cell phone rang. She sighed and fished it out of her back pocket. "Rizzoli."
"Detective Rizzoli. My name is Brandon Torres, I'm the Highway Patrol. I spoke with Carl Martinek a few minutes ago, and he advised me to contact you immediately."
Elizabeth noticed her heart beating faster with excitement. Had they found someone? "Don't tell me you found one of the people on the missing person list?"
"That's what it looks like at the moment. A woman, about fifty. From the looks of it, it's Samantha Conway."
Samantha Conway, the detective thought. The psychiatrist whose son had had his carotid arteries cut by the killer. "Where is she?"
"My men picked her up on the city highway. She's not doing well and is in the ICU at Hospital East Boston."
"Is she responsive?"
"I can't say. She must have had a few words with my officers."
Elizabeth looked at Maggie and Nick with wide eyes. "All right. I'll get over there right away!" She ended the call. "We got one," she said, barely able to contain the excitement in her voice. "The latest second-order victim. Frank Conway's mother!"
"Samantha Conway?" Nick nearly dropped his flashlight.
"She's at Hospital East Boston. I'm going there right now." Elizabeth was almost on her way to the stairs. "I'll see if I can talk to her. Let me know when the autopsy is through with Burns."
"Sure thing, Liz," Nick said dutifully. "Great moments are shared with family."