"Yes, yes, I'm coming!" As someone pounded on the front door, the man climbed the stairs with shuffling steps. These guys sounded like they would kick the door in at any moment! There was no way around it, or they would come downstairs to him. Unauthorized.
Cops, he thought, and that's all I'm needing. If they see what I'm doing here ...
He opened the front door.
And looked into the faces of two RRT officers. Behind them stood an African-American, a dishwater blonde, and a brunette, behind them, a graying woman who, it seemed, was shielded from the foremost front.
The gray stepped forward. "You Cedric Miller?"
Miller nodded. After all, that was his name. "What do you want?"
The gray showed her badge. "I'm Chief of Detectives Rizzoli, Boston Police Department." She pointed her thumb behind her. "This is Detective Elizabeth Rizzoli, Detective Nick Simms, Dr. Katherine Isles, and a few more friendly folks whose names don't matter."
"Now what?" asked Cedric.
"Now you come with us. And we'll look around here a bit in the meantime."
"You can't ... can't just take me like that," Cedric stammered. "After all, you have no. No --"
"Warrant," Jane interrupted him, stepping closer to the man. She held up a letter, then another, and pulled down the corners of her mouth. "And this, my friend, is a warrant signed by a judge. You're under provisional arrest on urgent suspicion of homicide of at least one person. Anything you'll say from now on can and will be used against you."
"I'll --" stammered Cedric, "I want to speak to my lawyer."
Jane pursed her lips to stifle a smile. "You may, but first, you're coming with us," she said.
"And where are we going?"
"To the BPD."
"BPD?"
"Boston Police Department."
"And what's there?"
Jane drew dangerously close to his face, then furrowed her brows. "I don't know. Small cells, hard chairs, bad coffee. Just the thing for a one-on-one." She looked at one of the RRT officers and made a definite head movement.
Marc stepped forward and handcuffed Miller without resistance. "Let's go, buddy."
Elizabeth looked at Nick with wide eyes and a grin.
Nick chuckled and raised his eyebrows briefly . "Ladies and gentlemen, that was Chief of Detectives Jane Rizzoli in all her glory and splendor. Please do not grace us again."
Elizabeth laughed before following her mother and the RRT officers.
Jane followed Miller as he was led away by Marc and Phillip and listened to what her daughter had to say, grinning as she was confirmed that her appearance hadn't lost its luster over the years.
xxx
Cedric Miller.
That was the actual name of the man who was a body broker by profession and traded in body parts. But unlike the legal companies, he also single-handedly made sure that people became corpses first so that he could trade in their body parts. Miller's parents were from England; he had grown up an orphan in the United States.
Elizabeth looked at him through the one-way glass. Miller was sitting in the BPD's interrogation room.
After the interrogation, he would be taken by elevator to the prisoner collection center.
Forty-eight hours men and women under urgent suspicion were allowed to be held and interrogated here. Some slept off their intoxication here for only twenty-four hours until they could be released back into society.
Elizabeth looked at the man as he sat teetering on the hard metal chair. Cedric Miller had a pale, pointed face, colorless, reddish-blond hair, protruding teeth, and an unsteady gaze as if he sensed danger on every side. He reminded the detective of a rat, the way his gaze jerked back and forth restlessly as if he expected to be eaten at any moment.
He wouldn't be eaten, but he would be held. If a defendant was urgently suspected of homicide and there was an arrest warrant from the examining magistrate, this prisoner was taken from the prisoner collection center to pretrial detention after forty-eight hours. In the meantime, the suspect could hire a lawyer, file motions for evidence, or call other witnesses. Or come out with the truth.
"You have the right to remain silent," Nick said, sitting across from Miller. "You have the right to get a lawyer. You have the right to a public defender if you can't afford a lawyer."
"Can I ... Can I --," Miller said, gulping and asking, "Can I do anything at all?"
"Well," Nick replied, raising his eyebrows briefly, "honestly, no. The officers are at your ... let's say, work site. And what they found there, I'm afraid, is hardly likely to exonerate you in any way."
"You mean the bodies?"
"The very ones."
"Yes --" Miller said, stretched. "They had it good with me first, though. Igave them what they liked to drink, and most of them liked strong stuff, you know."
"You mean alcohol."
"Yes. They were --" Miller shifted his head forward, sniffling as if there were food where Nick sat. "They were supposed to be having a good time before that long sleep." He stretched the words oddly.
Before that long sleep, Elizabeth thought. This madman had been filling the poor guys, probably homeless; he'd lured them to his house with cheap booze, rendering them defenseless, then killing them.
"Now it was harder ... harder --" Miller said in a strange singsong voice. "Harder to get them. It's too warm."
"Why too warm?" wanted Nick to know with a frown.
"Because --" Miller's eyes lit up because he had something new to tell Nick. A trick from his job. His voice dropped to a whisper as if he were passing along a well-kept secret that wasn't for everyone. "Because I ... make guys come to me a lot easier in the cold winter --" He licked his lips and widened his eyes. "Much easier to lure to my house. Because it was warm at my place." His tongue twitched out, and again he licked his lips. "For now, anyway."
Nick nodded slowly with a look that said, He's out of his mind after all. "People were warm while they could still feel the warmth. When they were dead, they didn't care about temperature. Right?"
"Exactly!" Miller nodded vehemently. "Then they got cold."
"So that means," the detective said. "Some of the people you killed?"
"Well --" Miller jerked from one buttock to the other in his chair. "Not really. But a little bit ... yes."
Elizabeth listened with interest. Rarely was the question of guilt as easy to answer as it was here. Unless the guy was going to be declared insane, which Elizabeth didn't think was impossible. The next day the case would be with the prosecutor, then with the judge, and he would finally decide on the arrest warrant. Then Miller would be remanded in custody. Without bail. Because if you were suspected of killing someone, even the highest bail wouldn't get you out of custody for a while.
Miller looked down at himself. Looked down at his shoes.
"And that autonomous guy?" continued Nick. "The stone thrower down in the basement? Did you kill him, too?"
"No!" said Miller emphatically. It wasn't feigned but genuine indignation. "I found him there like this. Found him!" He crossed his arms as if offended. "But then I said to myself, something so good --" he seemed to be thinking, "something so good, I said to myself, you can't leave it lying around for someone to throw away."
Elizabeth screwed up her face, which was the sort of thing Maura had told her about food at the time. Eat it yet, Liz, it doesn't have to go bad, or we'll have to throw it away the day after tomorrow.
"Did you see who killed that man?"
"No! No! No!" Miller shook his head mechanically.
"Have you always done this kind of thing?" Nick tactically changed the subject, only to return to Miller's possible testimony afterward, but from a different angle.
"I used to ... I used to --" Miller began to stammer. "I used to work in the slaughter house, and that was terrible! Terrible!"
"What exactly was terrible?" the detective asked. From his face, Elizabeth could tell he was pretty happy for Miller to open his mouth on his own, so he didn't have to tease everything out of the man.
"There was little money ... little money," Miller mumbled, frantically running his tongue over his lips a few times, then pulling his upper lip up. Like a rat picking up a scent. The smell of corpses, perhaps.
"Getting sick wasn't allowed ... You weren't allowed to get sick," Miller huffed, "You weren't allowed to report injuries. And time ... you never had time --"
"Time for what?"
"Time for the animal." Miller leaned forward as if Nick knew what he meant. But Nick didn't know. And neither did Elizabeth.
"What animal?"
"My God, the animal! The animal that's being slaughtered!" Miller seemed beside himself that Nick didn't immediately understand. "You have five to ten minutes before an animal is ready after it's slaughtered... For cutting up." Miller slipped his tongue across his lips. "The conveyor belt moves so fast, you don't have time to sharpen the knife." He looked around again. Looked at the glass pane. Saw himself there. Right where Elizabeth was standing just behind the glass. He seemed to be looking straight into her eyes. Elizabeth flinched briefly, but Miller didn't see her because the glass was mirrored from the interrogation room.
Miller continued to speak. "Blunt blades, they make the job harder ... much harder. And they lead to --" he seemed to be thinking, "to --" he rolled his eyes as if searching for a tricky word, "to injury. You cut yourself more easily with blunt knives."
Elizabeth nodded behind the glass with her arms crossed. You cut yourself easier with blunt knives, which is what her wife used to say. She had to smile at the comparison.
"And sometimes," Miller continued, "it was so fast, you had to ... you had to cut the animal up, even if it was still alive." He leaned forward. "That's why my people are ... they're --" He was silent for a few seconds, then blurted out, "They're dead."
Nick nodded slowly. "I see."
"But it was good, too! Good!"
"What was good?"
"That's where I learned that! ... That!"
"What did you learn there?"
"The boning. How to get the limbs off, and you can do that with animals and even on people!"
Elizabeth saw Nick narrow his eyes. Apparently, he was picturing what Miller was saying.
"I separated the skin from the bones and sold the bones extra. Yeah, yeah ... clever, isn't it?"
"Who got the bones?" the detective asked. He deliberately didn't go into the self-praise, and Miller should feel he still had something to prove. And cough up some more information.
"A company," the man said, "they do osteosynthesis."
Elizabeth was amazed that Miller knew this term and pronounced it flawlessly after stammering and stuttering on many other words. Perhaps it was because such terms were part of his job.
"The company, they had to know all about bones. Because they made plates ... and screws. For broken bones and ski accidents. Yes. Yes!" He looked at Nick and nodded eagerly. "The hospitals help the poor people with broken bones. And the company helps hospitals. And me, I help the company." He nodded again. "I'm a good person."
"No doubt about it," Nick said.
Miller was still nodding so vehemently that he didn't even notice the irony in Nick's voice. But he probably wouldn't have noticed it even if he hadn't nodded.
On the other side of the mirrored glass, the door to the surveillance room opened, and Katherine came in and stood next to her sister.
"Forensics just called," the younger woman said.
Elizabeth looked at the doctor for a moment. "So?"
"Not only is the basement full of body parts, but so are the adjoining rooms. There are six freezers there." Katherine screwed up her face. "Probably four bodies, if not more."
"Do they know who the dead are?"
"From the state of care, they appear to be homeless." Katherine joined the detective in looking into the interrogation room, where Miller gestured at Nick as if he were trying to get the detective excited about his job because he wanted to hire a new employee.
"This guy's got a chip on his shoulder," Elizabeth muttered.
Katherine took a deep breath and nodded. "And not by a small margin." She unearthed a file. "I took a look at the file. Miller worked on the assembly line at a large slaughterhouse. Sawing apart pig halves, removing the innards. Kind of like working on the assembly line at an automaker. Not with cars, though, but with animals."
"That's right," Elizabeth said. "He was just telling Nick about that, and that's where he learned to debone, according to him."
Katherine nodded as well. "Yes, he really seems to have mastered that. After all, Maggie already noticed that with the torso from the stone thrower in South End. There's something else, though."
Elizabeth looked at her sister again and drew her eyebrows together. "What's that?"
"He used to work for a mortician, but he got kicked out of there. Pretty quickly, actually."
"And why?"
"It just says something about nervous overstimulation. To me, though, that can only mean one thing."
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. "And what's that?"
Katherine looked a little pained. "The guy's a bit of a necrophiliac."
"My God. Do you think he abuses the bodies?"
"You can only abuse what's alive," Katherine replied, raising her index finger. "If you have sex with a corpse, that's not abuse; that's necrophilia at best."
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly and gritted her teeth. "Thanks for the lecture, Professor!" Sometimes her sister could get on her nerves. "But did he really have sex with --"
"No." Katherine raised her hand. "I don't think so. But contact with corpses doesn't disgust him like most normal people. I don't think he's sexually attracted to corpses, but still feels in their presence ... how shall I say ... he feels very comfortable in their presence."
"He must be if he has six in his basement."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Katherine said, "if he's even sad about giving the dearly departed bodies to the pharmaceutical companies. That's why he keeps getting more. Still --"
"What?"
"I still don't think he's the killer, Liz. He's not the killer we're looking for. Maggie's right: it's completely different cuts. A completely different modus operandi. Also, the killer of Stephen Foreman and Cody Wilkins apparently had tremendous body strength." Katherine pointed to the body broker, bending toward Nick with a sniffing nose, briefing him on the details of deboning. "I guess you can't say the same for that guy. He couldn't take down a biker boss with his bare hands."
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. "Can't imagine it, either."
"You and me," the doctor said, "see it the same way. Ma does, too. Only there's still a problem." She lowered her voice. "I just went to see Bell. And he's hoping it was the same killer." She exhaled audibly. "Bell's even going so far as to try to fix everything so that the real Angel of Death is the Body Broker. And that would close the case once and for all. Bam, one more file off the table, one less case." Katherine mimicked Bell's voice. "Then surely the Body Broker is the L.A. killer we're looking for." She laughed bitterly and shook her head.
Bell, Chief of Police Boston, boss of us all, Elizabeth thought. He was very good at collecting funds for his agency from the Senate because he was a good bureaucrat. A good investigator, however, he was not - which didn't stop him from interfering with Elizabeth and her team's work now and then when he thought he was right and they weren't.
"Well, that's very nice if Bell is so sure about that," Elizabeth said with a frown. "I wish it were that simple, too. But if there are two killers, I find it hard to imagine the real killer stopping the killing just because a certain Bell wants him to."
Katherine nodded slowly. "Indeed."
"What are we gonna do? Of course, we can hope that this closes the case. On the other hand, we can hardly ask the real killer, whom we don't even know, to stop killing because it suits our Chief of Police."
Bell was a good bureaucrat and power player, but getting into the psyche of offenders wasn't exactly his strong suit.
"Well, Bell has to live with that," Katherine said. She hesitated before adding, "But he's got wind now that Williams and Brooks are coming to Boston."
"So what?"
"He thinks it's overkill for the FBI to get involved now when in his opinion, the killer is already halfway to jail anyway."
"Williams and Brooks are very good at their jobs, aren't they?"
Katherine nodded slowly. "They're the best. Williams trained me with, among others, back in the day. And Brooks - no one knows the Angel of Death like he does."
Elizabeth pointed her chin toward the window and Body Broker aka Cedric Miller. "Well, it sure isn't that one." She thought for a moment. Then she said, "You know what? We tie Bell into everything, and we'll make it look like he's coordinating a joint operation with the FBI."
Katherine laughed in amusement. "Make him look strong when he's basically doing nothing? So we can have our peace of mind?"
Elizabeth smiled conspiratorially at her sister. "You have to manage your superiors, not the other way around. Only then can you work in peace." Her cell phone rang. "Rizzoli."
"Maggie here. We took a look at one of that body broker's victims, he's a hell of a bad guy is all I can say."
"You mean the Body Broker, not the victim?"
"Of course, who else."