J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Okay,” I say, putting the photos back. “Get in there and make the arrest. Have Nguyen put him in the car for transport. I want all of this photographed in situ .”

“You coming?” he asks.

“In a minute.”

As he creaks across the joists, I return to the window, gazing down on a scene Bayard must know by heart. The voyeur, aloof and untouchable, seeing everything. Present with the women when they thought they were alone.

He would have come up here, rolled a joint, and enjoyed the show, taking photos, printing the most meaningful, the most intimate.

His secret place, his nest.

And when Agnieszka spotted him and Hill had the strategically placed trees planted, what did Bayard think? He must have been enraged. Maybe frightened. But the Polish girl left and the trees came down. The new tenant, Simone, had no idea she was being observed.

Looking through the same window, standing in the same place, I imagine what he must have felt. The photos play back in my head.

I need to remember this. I need to capture it. The voyeuristic glee. The sense of intimacy with these strangers, feeling as close to them as a lover. Did he know their names? Had he met them in ordinary life? Did he experience an illicit thrill when he encountered them, reveling in his secret knowledge?

He must have sent the first email from here. Not on the curb in front of Dr. Hill’s house. From this spot he could access the neighboring wireless network just fine. Our sudden arrival on scene must have spooked him, forcing him to change up.

We have enough to make the arrest. We have enough for a conviction. But I want more. I want to put the crowbar in and crack him open. I want him to look in my eyes and admit what he did. He stabbed both women over and over. He broke into my house, he went after my wife, and tried to do to her what he’d done to them.

“March.” Aguilar’s voice.

I cross the joists and reenter the finished room. Bayard stands at the center of the room, arms pulled back, wrists cuffed. His face bloated and red, eyes moist. Nguyen guides him to the top of the stairs.

“I don’t understand,” Bayard says. “What are you people doing?”

Aguilar follows. I bring up the rear.

“This is insane,” Bayard calls back. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Are you ready to make a statement, sir?”

“You want my statement? You want my statement? ” He stumbles, but Nguyen rights him. They reach the landing and Bayard turns. “ Here’s my statement, Officer: I want my lawyer.”

“You disappoint me, Dave. You really do.”

Bayard’s lawyer is a slender woman in pearls and a red pantsuit, unflappable even in the face of the photographs recovered in her client’s attic. They’ve already been processed by the crime scene unit, along with the Molotov, but I hand each one over in its evidence bag, making her look through official plastic.

“That’s the kind of man you’re representing,” I say.

She doesn’t respond, just moves through the photos. “There’s one victim depicted here. What about the other?”

“The first pictures were of her.”

She shakes her head. “In those, she’s still alive. I’m talking about the other crime scene. There are no photos of that. All this proves is that someone likes to snap photos from the window. That doesn’t make him a killer.”

I hand her the most incriminating shot. “This one was taken standing over the body.”

“That’s debatable.”

“When we find the camera that took those pictures,” I say, “we might recover photos from the Oliszewski scene, too.”

“You might. Then again you might not.”

“Either way, we’re going to want to talk to your client.”

“He’s not prepared to make a statement at this time. You took your shot. You can process him and put him in a cell. We’ll go before the judge first thing.”

She gathers her things and heads for the conference room door.

“By the way,” she says. “I’m also representing Mr. Bayard’s son. You have him here as well, don’t you? Are you planning to charge him, too?”

Bascombe, who’s been watching from the corner the whole time, opens his mouth for the first time. “The son is cooperating with our investigation.”

“Not anymore he’s not.”

She lets the door slam behind her. I exchange a look with the lieutenant.

“What do you think?”

“What do you mean, what do I think? It’s down. Good work. The ADA’s gonna want to sit down with you and go over everything.” He checks his watch. “Let’s plan on first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I wanted to take a crack at him.”

“I know,” he says. “But we’ve got more than enough.”

“Nothing beats a confession.”

He shakes his head. “That guy’s not gonna talk, March. I could see it right off. You need to be thinking about the forensics. Those photos, the binoculars, the improvised explosive-we need results on all of that. We need to check his prints against the ones on the outside table, too. And you didn’t find the missing laptop, so we need to know where else he might have hidden it. There’s plenty to do on this thing yet.”

He leaves me to box the evidence from the table. I put everything away, then fit the lid on, carrying it all back to my desk. Ordway lingers in the aisle between cubicles, trying to scare up some company for a celebration.

“Libation time, gentlemen,” he keeps saying, but the rest of us ignore him.

I call Charlotte.

“Where are you?”

“Home at last,” she says. “I’m gonna take a nice, long bath. Are you working late?”

“Not anymore. My suspect is behind bars. My lieutenant is pleased with my work. My colleagues are organizing a pathetic after-hours bar crawl. .” I say this last bit a little louder, prompting a jeer from Ordway. “So I think I’m gonna call it a day.”

On my way home I stop at the grocery store and buy a vaseful of white flowers, pausing a moment to remember Simone Walker’s funeral earlier this morning. I’ve done right by her, as right as I can. The man who killed her is in jail and I’m going to see to it he remains there. The memory of looking through that window, my thwarted effort to get into his brain and use the resulting insight to drag out a confession, leaves me uncomfortable.

Standing at his window, looking at his photos, I’ve seen Simone the way he saw her. And I can’t help feeling guilty about that. Tainted. Sharing in something so dark, trying to understand it even for a moment, to stand in those shoes. See through those eyes.

The fragrance of flowers fills the car, making my nose itch. Making me want to sneeze. When I get to the house, Carter and Gina are just leaving. Dinner with Murray Abernathy, they say. After tucking Gina into the passenger seat, Carter pulls me aside.

“I’m staying at the outreach center,” he says. “I think you were right. I’ve got to make the best of the situation.”

I say goodbye and go in. Up the stairs, bearing my coming-home present in both hands, I pause at the battered bathroom door, reproaching myself for not having had it fixed already. Over the threshold, she sits glistening in the tub, a hand on her shoulder, her hair pinned up. She smiles at the sight of me.

“Roland,” she says. “You brought me flowers.”

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17–10:00 A.M.

Another case goes into the black. Two bodies accounted for and a killer behind bars. But the work doesn’t stop there. The ADA takes another run through the evidence, frowning at the gaping hole where Bayard’s confession goes as if she’s never heard of a conviction without one, then with the usual admonition to dot and cross, pronounces her tentative satisfaction. I exit the meeting with a checklist of things to follow up on, mostly aimed at covering unlikely challenges from the defense. There’s plenty of forensics still out too, so it falls to me to make the inevitable series of badgering phone calls.