'I'm a detective,' Byrne said. 'I've noticed that.'
I le took a few steps back, gestured to the cut of his new suit, which Jessica had to admit looked pretty good on him. It was a charcoal gray two-button.
'Think about it,' he said. 'If I put all that stuff in my pockets it would ruin the line.'
'The line?' Jessica put her hand on the butt of her weapon. 'Okay, who are you and what have you done with my partner?'
Byrne laughed.
'Well, now that you carry a bag,' Jessica continued, 'you should keep in mind one of the first things they taught us at the academy.'
'I may be older than slate, but I seem to recall going to that academy myself. Over on State Road, right?'
'That's the one,' Jessica said. 'But what I meant by 'us' was, well, women.''
Byrne braced himself, said nothing.
'They taught us to never, ever, carry your weapon in a purse.'
There was that word again. Byrne looked at the sky, back at Jessica. 'This is going to go on for a while, isn't it?'
'Oh yeah.'
The CSU team was still processing the scene on Federal Street, which now had crime-scene tape crossing both ends of the alley. As always, a crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings. It always amazed Jessica how no one ever saw anything, heard anything, witnessed anything, but as soon as the investigation got underway, as soon as there was some sort of urban circus to attend, everyone was suddenly available to gawk and rubberneck, conveniently off work and out of school.
When Jessica and Byrne came around the corner there was a meeting of supervisors. Among them was ADA Michael Drummond.
'Counselor,' Byrne said.
'Twice in one day,' Drummond replied. 'People will talk.' He turned to Jessica. 'Nice to see you, Jess.'
'Always a pleasure,' Jessica said. 'But what brings you out here?'
'I've got court in about an hour, but these were orders from Valhalla. New DA, new initiatives. Anything that happens this close to a school gets priority. My boss wants to watch this one from the beginning. He barks, I fetch.'
'Gotcha.'
'Copy me in on everything?' Drummond asked.
'Not a problem,' Jessica said.
Jessica and Byrne watched as Drummond crossed the street, positioning himself far from the crime scene. Jessica knew why. If an ADA was close to the action, he might witness something, and therefore be called as a witness on his own case, which was grounds for dismissal. It was a game they all knew how to play.
Jessica watched as Byrne walked up to the mouth of the alley, spoke to the uniformed officer. The uniform pointed to the two buildings behind the crime scene, nodded his head. Byrne took out his notebook, began to jot down details.
Jessica had seen it before.
Murder had been done here, and Kevin Byrne was in his element.
Chapter 9
Byrne walked down the alley, his senses on high alert, his adrenalin surging. It was odd, to say the least. No matter how fatigued he was — today, on a 1 to 10, he would clock in at a bone-weary 7 — it all seemed to melt away when he got to a crime scene. Crime scenes were crack for investigators. Addictive, euphoric, replenishing, ultimately depleting. There was no other feeling like it. The best meal, the finest wine, even soul-shaking sex did not come close.
Okay, Byrne thought. Maybe sex.
He took in the approach to the area where the body had been found. The air was suffused with the stench of rotting fruit coming from the Dumpster a few yards away, and the unmistakable aroma of death coming from the shoe store.
He walked down the stairs, opened the door. Although the smell was almost overpowering in here, it was not the first thing he sensed. Instead, that was a feeling, an impression that he had just stepped across the boundary of a killer's mind, had just become an interloper in a realm of madness.
There is a pairing, a balance, a partnership.
Byrne stopped, waiting for more. Nothing. Not yet.
In addition to his upcoming appointment with the sleep-study clinic, he had his annual MRI screening. He'd had yearly MRIs for the past five years, ever since he had been nearly fatally injured in a shooting. He knew everyone in the hospital radiology department, and the mood was always light-hearted when he went there, but they all knew what it was about. There was, and always would be, a possibility of a brain tumor. He'd read all the books on symptoms and signs — blackouts, voices in your head, sometimes unexplained smells.
In a separate incident, many years earlier, he had confronted a suspect in a bar beneath the Walt Whitman Bridge. During the course of the arrest Byrne had plunged into the frigid Delaware River, locked in combat with the suspect. When he was pulled out of the water Byrne was declared dead. One full minute later he came to.
Not long after that the visions had started. They were never fullblown apparitions. He did not show up at a scene, close his eyes, and see any sort of recreation of the crime in Technicolor and THX audio. Instead, it was more of a feeling. Sometimes it crossed over into the dominion of sense and sensation, but mostly he got a feel for the victim, the perpetrator. A thought, a dream, a desire, a habit.
Byrne had been to group-therapy sessions of every kind, even going to a regression-therapy group that tried to take him back to that moment when he'd plunged into the river, an attempt to bring him back to the person he had been before the incident. Byrne now knew that was impossible.
The visions had diminished over the ensuing years as had the accompanying migraines. These days they were few and far between.
He had not had anything close to a full-blown migraine lately, but he knew something was happening inside him. More than once, in the last few months, he had experienced something… not pain, more of a presence, a thickness in his head, along with a slight blurring of vision. And with these feelings came the clearest inner visions he'd ever had, now accompanied by sounds. Then, sometimes, a blackout.
He was still undecided on whether or not to mention these things to his doctor. Telling a doctor something like this only led to more tests.
He stepped into the room where a dead man lay on the floor. Byrne's heart picked up a beat, quickening with the knowledge that a killer had stood in this spot no more than twenty-four hours earlier, breathing the same air.
Just when he was about to begin his routine, a warm sensation filled his head. He held onto the door jamb for a second, attempting to ride it out. With the warmth came the knowledge of…
… something that has burned for many years, a feeling of loss and desire, a dark passion that will forever be unfulfilled, a love story unwritten, unwritable, the hunger to create a legacy…
Byrne knelt down, snapped on a latex glove, then instantly thought better of it. He removed the glove. He needed the feel of the flesh. A dialogue happened between the skin of the dead and his senses. A superior officer, or a representative of the medical examiner's office would surely object. That didn't matter at the moment. He was alone with the dead, alone with what had happened in this room, alone with the rage that drove someone to brutally take a life.
Alone with himself.
Kevin Byrne reached out and touched a finger to the dead man's lips. He closed his eyes, listened, and the dead man spoke.
