Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,36

workers who’ve cycled through . . . Shana doesn’t talk about him. The boy she stabbed when she was eleven, I know about him. The ho, in her terms, she had to gut when she was first incarcerated at sixteen, I know about her. But the Johnson boy. She never goes there.”

I frowned, considering. Shana could be very explicit in her talk of violence. Fantasies about gutting this person, killing that person. There didn’t seem to be anything too shocking, too graphic, too offensive, for her to say. Then again, if you boiled all her words down, parsed them away . . . She babbled. She offered forth exactly the kind of violent chatter you’d expect of a multiple murderer. Homicidal white noise that drowned out the rest of the conversation and kept you from continuing.

I could tell you now that if I asked Shana why she killed Donnie Johnson, she’d shrug and say because. Shana considered herself to be a superpredator, and superpredators didn’t apologize. Superpredators didn’t feel they owed their prey that much.

But it might be interesting to ask her why she didn’t talk about the boy. Or why she hadn’t responded to the journalist. Or perhaps even more interesting, why she had never mentioned any of the letters to me.

Thirty years later, what did she still have to hide?

“Can I take these?” I asked Superintendent McKinnon.

“Be my guest. Are you going to call the reporter?”

“I might.”

“And you’ll talk to Shana?”

“Would it be okay if I returned tomorrow?”

“Under the circumstances, yes.”

I nodded, picked up the batch of letters, my mind already racing ahead. But just as I went to stand, I felt, more than saw, the superintendent’s hesitation.

“Anything else?” I asked her.

“Maybe one last thing. Any chance you caught the morning’s paper?”

I shook my head. Given my own evening’s . . . activities, then the call from the prison, I hadn’t had the opportunity to catch up on current events.

Now Superintendent McKinnon slid the Boston Globe across the smooth surface of her desk, one finger tapping a headline in the lower right-hand corner, below the fold. A local woman had been murdered; I gathered that immediately from the headline. It wasn’t until my gaze skimmed down the next few paragraphs to the details of the crime, strips of skin, expertly removed . . .

I closed my eyes, feeling an unexpected shiver. But they couldn’t . . . I didn’t . . . I cut off the errant thought savagely. Now was not the time or place.

“If memory serves . . .” the superintendent began.

“You are correct,” I interrupted.

“If I could spot the similarities between this murder and your sister’s work, your father’s crimes, others will as well.”

“True.”

“Meaning things for you and your sister could get worse.”

“Oh yes,” I agreed, gaze still locked on the desk and not meeting the superintendent’s eyes at all. “Things are about to get much worse.”

Chapter 10

THE COAKLEY AND ASHTON FUNERAL HOME had been serving families in Greater Boston for more than seventy years. D.D. had visited the establishment, a graceful, white-painted Colonial, twice before. Once for the passing of a friend, and once to honor a fellow officer. On both occasions, she’d been struck by the powerful odors of fresh flowers and preserved flesh. It was probably not something a homicide detective should admit, but funeral parlors creeped her out.

Maybe she simply knew death too well, so to view it in this kind of carefully sanitized venue made it feel alien to her. Like meeting a long-lost lover who looked nothing like you remembered.

The funeral director, Daniel Coakley, was waiting for her arrival. An older gentleman with broad shoulders and a shock of thick white hair, he wore an impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit and exuded the kind of calm demeanor meant to soothe distraught family members and encourage close confidence.

D.D. shook his offered hand, then followed him through the wood-paneled foyer, down the dark-red-carpeted hall to his office. In contrast to the somber, old-world feel of the rest of the place, Coakley’s office was surprisingly light and modern. Large windows overlooking a grassy common area, white painted built-in bookshelves, a natural-stained maple-wood desk topped with a discreet state-of-the-art laptop.

D.D. could almost feel herself start to breathe again, except, of course, for the ubiquitous floral arrangement that dominated the windowsill.

“Gladiolus,” she observed. “Is it just me, or do they appear in most funeral arrangements?”

“The flower signifies remembrance,” Coakley informed her. “So they are a popular choice for funerals. They also symbolize strength of character,