“Is Callie with you, Ben?” Sherlock asked.
“Yes, she’s downstairs in the car. I ordered her on pain of dismemberment to stay there.”
Savich said, “Good, no one wants her to see this.”
They studied Danny O’Malley’s body. “It’s like Justice Califano,” Sherlock said. “He really fought, but in the end, the murderer toyed with him, let him think he could pull the chain free, but he couldn’t, of course. The killer is strong, guys, he’s very strong.”
“And sadistic,” Ben said. “He enjoyed this as much as he did strangling Justice Califano, got a real kick out of Danny’s struggles, gave him a whiff of hope, then strangled him right through his fingers.”
Sherlock said, “I wonder if he brought his own wire, then saw Danny’s chain and decided that would do the job just as well.”
Savich nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s probably right. He would have come prepared. He knew he was going to kill him, no doubt in my mind.”
Jimmy Maitland crowded in beside them. “There’s got to be some useful physical evidence this time. The guy was looking for something. Even the bathroom, it looks like a hurricane went through. The killer didn’t care, just destroyed, even the mirror and the medicine cabinet, glass everywhere, all the pill bottles open, pills scattered on the floor. He even ripped up the shower curtain. Still, we’ll go over this place thoroughly, just maybe he didn’t find what he was looking for.”
“Or maybe he wasn’t looking for anything. He was enraged and wanted to destroy everything,” Ben said.
“That’s possible,” Maitland said. “But I hope you’re wrong, and the murderer was looking for something.” Jimmy Maitland rose and went off toward the kitchen.
Savich and Sherlock continued to examine Daniel O’Malley’s body. “Do you smell that? It’s like the Fantastik we use to clean the counters and bathrooms at home.” She raised Daniel O’Malley’s fingers and sniffed. “The bastard scrubbed under his nails, cleaned away any skin and blood, any evidence of a struggle.”
Savich said, “Dr. Conrad is good. If there’s anything to find, he and the forensic guys will find it.”
They rose, stood looking down at the young man’s body, the gray pallor, the bulging eyes, the smell of waste his body had expelled—no, Sherlock couldn’t see him with a bugle now, uniform sharply pressed, standing on the shore of Ireland. Twenty-six years old and he was dead. “He was so young, so—new. Maybe Eliza was wrong, maybe he would have turned out to be Danny Boy, a bugle under his arm, fighting for justice, maybe he wouldn’t have turned into a money-grubbing kind of lawyer. Why was he murdered?”
Savich said, “I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel good.”
“No,” Ben said. “It doesn’t. Why was the place torn apart?”
Sherlock said, “The killer was looking for something. But what? What could a law clerk for Justice Califano have that was so important for him to find?”
Savich said, “There’s lots to consider here, but like I said, I have a bad feeling about this. And about Danny. Let’s speak to Danny’s girlfriend. Hopefully she’ll know what was going on with him.”
Jimmy Maitland was looking both pale and furious when he walked back from the kitchen. “Damnation, this makes me mad, a young kid like this, why the hell did this maniac kill him?” He looked down at Danny O’Malley’s body. “He was so damned young. It burns me to the ground.”
Sherlock said, “You find out anything from the girlfriend?”
“His girlfriend—her name’s Annie Harper—said she and Danny went to a movie Friday night, couldn’t tell me what it was. She said Danny loved Italian flicks, the ones with subtitles. She spent the night with him. She said he was really upset about Justice Califano’s murder when he heard it on the news Saturday morning. I’m going to shut up now. I want you guys to speak to her, form your own opinions, but I’ll tell you, she’s a mess right now, incoherent really. Came over here, had a key, let herself in and found him.”
“It sounds like she belongs in the hospital right now,” Sherlock said. “They’ll probably want to sedate her. And we’ve got to call her family.”
Jimmy Maitland nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s the way to go. Hope to God she’ll know what was on his mind. I don’t mind telling you, I really don’t like this.
“Okay, let me get Annie Harper to the hospital. I’m going to leave it to Dr. Conrad and the two forensic teams. We’ve got people out canvassing the neighborhood. The twelve team leaders are here. Come into the living room when you’re done.”
“Oh yeah, best to put a guard on her, just in case,” Savich said.
Maitland nodded.
Five minutes later, twelve agents stood amidst the wreckage of the small living room. When Maitland spoke, everyone fell silent. “We want every person who knew Danny O’Malley interviewed again as quickly as possible. Check alibis and phone records. The canvassing of Danny O’Malley’s neighborhood hasn’t turned up anything yet, but we’ll continue pounding the pavement, speaking to every neighbor—and you can believe we’ll get all the warrants we ask for.
“You all know the drill. Our murderer worked fast. What was he looking for when he tore up Danny’s apartment? We need to find that out.
“Danny was killed within twenty-four hours of Justice Califano, according to Dr. Conrad’s preliminary examination, which means he was killed early this morning or very late Saturday night. Annie Harper, his girlfriend, didn’t spend the night on Saturday.”
“That was her good luck,” said Agent Ollie Hamish. “She’ll realize that soon enough.”
Maitland said, “Yes, she will, and then she’ll have to live with it. Danny’s murder brings us so close I can taste it. It’s someone in this bloody loop, someone we’ve already met and interviewed, not some deranged stranger, not someone on the outside. Let’s get it done, today, all of it.”
Savich said, “We’re going to focus on the following scenarios. First, there’s some connection between Danny O’Malley and Justice Califano, something in Danny’s background that ties them together. If this is the case, we’ll find out what it is.”
Savich drew a deep breath. “The only other scenario that makes any sense is that when Danny found out about Justice Califano’s murder, he either knew immediately who the killer was, or he’d seen or heard something he shouldn’t have, probably in Justice Califano’s office. And he acted on it.”
Jimmy Maitland said, “I was hoping I was the only one thinking that.”
Ollie Hamish said, “You hate it when young could go hand and glove with stupid. Well, we’ll hope there was another reason, that maybe the two of them were tied together somehow in the killer’s mind.”
Savich nodded. “I simply can’t think of another reason why the killer ransacked the apartment. He had to be looking for whatever it was that Danny was holding over his head. Danny could have also been involved in something with the killer, and not realized that part of the plan was to kill him as well. If it turns out that Danny did know something and tried his hand at blackmail, we’ve got to find out what he knew and how he knew it. So that means we’ve got to track every move Danny O’Malley made.
“We’ll take his bills apart, strip his computer down to the hard drive. If he used them, we’ll know. As to who’s going to do what, Mr. Maitland’s already made up assignments.” He paused a moment, looked out over the devastation, then finally at the men and women who were packed into the small living room. “None of us want Danny O’Malley involved in some sort of blackmail, but the fact is that it’s a possibility, and we’ve got to face it head-on.” He turned to Agent Michaels. “When you interviewed him, Pete, did you get any impression he was keeping something back? Was there any hint that he wasn’t being straightforward?”
Agent Michaels said immediately, “He acted like a choirboy, Savich, playing the hand-wringing innocent, tears in his eyes the entire interview. I should have realized—” Pete cursed under his breath.
Savich said, “Forget it, Pete. We’ll hope it turns out he wasn’t acting. We’ll push harder on everyone else now. As Mr. Maitland said, we’re close. Trust me on this, people. We will get this monster, and we’ll get him soon. First, we have to pin down exactly why he murdered one of Califano’s law clerks.”
Sherlock said, “If it turns out Danny was a blackmailer, what could he possibly have known? He wasn’t anywhere near the Supreme Court Building on Friday night.” She paused a moment, stared around at all the agents. “I hope Danny wasn’t that stupid.”
CHAPTER
