Chainey sat on the edge of one of the tables, a thick manila file in his hands and a stoic expression on his face.
“What you got?” Kate asked before turning to see Rosebud stuffing his face with yet another chocolate muffin. “Seriously? Again?”
But Chainey began speaking, so she returned her attention to him.
“I got a copy of their case file. Well, the important bits.”
“And?” Rosebud asked in between bites.
“There were quite a few young men suspected at one point or another, but all of them were crossed off the list. They still don’t have a single good lead.”
“Anyone connected to our current cases?”
“No. Well, Father Miller led the funeral service, but that’s not relevant. At least I don’t think so.”
“And how can you say that for certain?” Kate asked, slightly annoyed that her gut had been wrong. She could have sworn something fishy was going on with their local churches. Well, something fishy that didn’t involve molestation. Those beans had long been spilled and exposed.
“Miller’s obviously not twenty-six years old. More like seventy-six or eighty-six. Plus, I checked, and he had an alibi for the day Thompson died. He was hospitalized. Confirmed with the hospital records. The man had a minor heart attack. He left the hospital after Thompson died. He just did the service.”
“Can we not catch a break?” Kate asked before exhaling loudly.
“There is one thing I found out.”
“Please let it be good. Fuller’s going to crucify me if we don’t bring him something. Anything—”
“Crucify you?” Rosebud interjected between mouthfuls. “I think this case has been messing with your brain.”
“Well, it’s been weeks. Three lives have been lost, and we still have nothing to show. Not a fucking lead worth anything.”
“Hold on, Murphy. We may have one. Guess what Thompson did for a living?”
“No time for games, Chainey.”
“Home-school teacher.”
“And?” Kate’s desire to grab Chainey by the collar and give him a little shake was growing by the second. Doesn’t he get the urgency of the situation?
“Care to venture a guess as to who he taught?” Chainey asked.
Kate could feel her face get hotter as she did her best to hold back her boiling anger. “Shit or get off the pot, Chainey!”
“Indulge me. For just one little guess.” Chainey flashed his pearly whites at her and waggled his bushy eyebrows, forcing a faint smile to grow on Kate’s lips, even though she fought it with all of her might.
She had to relax.
Getting upset at her colleague wasn’t going to help her solve the case any faster. Plus, she was seriously exhausted. They were most probably feeling the same way.
Kate shook her head, giving up on getting Chainey to get serious. “Father Matthews?”
“You really have something against that guy, don’t you?” Rosebud said as he crumpled his brown paper bag and tossed it toward the garbage can, missing his target by a solid foot.
“Who then?” Kate asked, choosing to silence the one-liner she wanted to throw at Rosebud and his serious lack of athletic skills. How had he gotten through police academy? Or did all of his health and fitness evaporate after he became a detective?
“Two young twins named Anderson and Penelope Carson.”
Kate’s head turned back toward Chainey. “Anderson as in Candidate Anderson?”
“The one and only.”
Kate couldn’t have gotten up faster if a firecracker had been lit under her ass. Was this it? “Did Anderson have an alibi on the day of Thompson’s death?”
“Yep. Officially, he was never a suspect. No motive they could think of. He hadn’t been in contact with his teacher for several years. He was questioned by the detectives and answered that”—he flipped open the file to pull from it—“he’d left home, gotten himself an apartment, and then entered seminary after their home-schooling ended. That was the last time he’d seen Mr. Thompson.”
“Did they even ask him where he was the day Thompson was killed?”
“They did. They confirmed it, too. He was here in Boston, helping out with mass. Some other priest confirmed it. And no, it wasn’t Father Matthews. It’s not a conspiracy.”
Kate sat on the edge of the table, making it lift from the other side. “Fuck!” Kate brought her palm to her forehead, pushing it up toward her hairline as though the mere motion could bring forth a stroke of genius. But nothing.
“What was the cause of death? Strangulation?” Kate asked.
“Nope. Died of a heart attack caused by some sort of poison.” Chainey pulled out a photo of an old, bald man with a belly rounder than the Pillsbury Doughboy. He was curled up on the floor, laying in a pile of his own vomit.
“Do you have the toxicology report?” Kate asked, finally hopeful that something useful could come out of this.
Chainey nodded and flipped through pages in his file. “Here it is.”
“Great! Let’s redo our toxicology requests for all victims and include this specific blend of chemicals. With any luck, this will match our current cases, and we’ll finally have results.”
“That’s still going to take several days. At least,” Rosebud said.
“Don’t I fucking know it. But what else can we do?” Kate looked at Rosebud and Chainey, both looked as exhausted as she was herself. “Did they determine how the poison was ingested?”
“They found a bottle of Californian red wine that tested positive for the same chemicals found in his body.”
“Wine… That could be how our killer has been drugging our victims as well,” Kate had begun pacing the floor without realizing it.
“Were there prints on Thompson’s bottle?”
“Just his.”
Kate continued walking the floor, her head focusing on the industrial carpet as she thought aloud. “He could have roofied their drinks, they passed out, he dragged them to their bedrooms…”
“But who’s he? Have we eliminated women for certain now?” Chainey asked.
“Fuck if I know who our killer is,” she said. “I used to think it was Matthews. But now it looks like Anderson Carson. But then again, we’ve got nothing on him right now. Nothing but a weak link—”
“But he’s also twenty-six years old,” Chainey interjected.
“Hate to break it to you,” Rosebud told Chainey, “but the fact that his age matches an anonymous tip from California and that he was home-schooled by a guy who got murdered isn’t enough for a warrant. You’d have to be running a lucky streak to get a judge to approve one on so little. Especially when he has an alibi for Thompson’s murder and for some of the latest ones. Plus his arm’s in a cast, making lifting and carrying a person upstairs nearly impossible—”
“Then again, we can’t assume the killer acted alone or that the victim hadn’t walked herself to her final location,” Kate said. “Plus there’s the bug… Anderson had easy access—”
“You said it yourself when we spoke to Fuller. Anyone could have placed it on Coffedy’s robe—”
“It’s a robe, right? Coffedy lectured me when I called it that!”
“What did he call it?”
“An alb or something—”
“Guys! Enough!” Chainey said, putting an abrupt end to their tangent.
“Anyways,” Kate said, grateful that Chainey had stopped her. She was in no mental state to hold a straight-up conversation. “We don’t have enough right now. But let’s keep digging. I’ll look into Anderson. Rosebud, you look into his sister. Maybe she’s involved, somehow. Chainey, did the New Bedford detectives mention her?”
He shrugged. “Nope, but I didn’t ask either. There might be something in this file here.”
“Okay, fill me in on what else you learned about Thompson. One of the details has to mean something. We just have to find it.”