Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

He put it quickly from his mind, and turned his attention back to the room.

‘You should also bring the FBI in on this,’ squawked Negley from the box.

Patrese was about to say he’d suggest the same thing – he knew Caleb Boone, the head of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, and thought him a good guy – when he saw Chance look at Beradino, and Beradino shake his head.

‘We don’t think that’s appropriate at this juncture, sir,’ Chance said.

Patrese knew Chance was a political animal; few people rose as high in the force as he’d done without being one. But he was also first and foremost a cop. Therefore, as he’d demonstrated at Patrese’s disciplinary hearing, he was flatly opposed to anything or anyone which threatened the integrity and independence of the police department.

The FBI was top of that list. It was a turf war, and it was as atavistic and ineradicable as all conflict. There would always be turf; therefore there would always be war.

‘Why the hell not?’ Negley snapped.

‘Because all they’ll do is muddy the waters, sir. The more agencies you involve, the more confusion, which helps no one but the killer. Besides, we’re perfectly capable of handling this investigation ourselves.’

‘The FBI has unparalleled resources. It also tracks extremists – Islamic extremists, other religious fanatics – who might have wanted to do this.’

‘Running to the G-Men at the drop of a hat doesn’t send out the right message, sir. These are crimes against Pittsburghers. Pittsburghers want to see their own police force solve them.’

‘It’s obvious you’ve got a serial killer here, so you must call the FBI in. The Bureau has infinitely more experience than you in dealing with such people.’

Chance actually licked his lips before replying.

‘I’m afraid not, sir, on both counts.’

‘I’m warning you…’

‘We don’t yet have a serial killer, sir, not necessarily. We have two murders, not necessarily linked. If they do prove to be linked, the FBI’s own criteria state a minimum of three before a murderer can be considered serial. And even then, we don’t have to call them in at all. Whether or not to seek the Bureau’s help is the decision of the local police department. Right now, we choose not to invite them.’

‘Allen, you know me well enough to know I’m not a man you want to annoy.’

‘And, sir, you know me well enough to know I’m not a man who needs to be told how to do my job. I don’t tell you how to run the city; don’t tell me how best to catch this man.’

Negley was drawing breath to say something else, but Chance beat him to it.

‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, sir, we have a killer to catch.’

Press conferences were usually humdrum, routine affairs; a few crime correspondents, a couple of detectives, and a department press officer who was underpaid and under-motivated in equal measures.

They’d discuss a bar shooting, a domestic murder, a gang hit. The police would give their side of the story; the reporters would dutifully check names and details; the press officer would make random interjections to remind everyone he existed.

Small-time crimes, small-time meetings. Ninety-nine times over a hundred, they could have convened round a table at Starbucks.

The hacks didn’t tend to question the official version of events. If they did, they’d gradually find themselves frozen out of information and access; then their jobs would go to someone else, someone more prepared to toe the line.

Besides, the public appetite for other people’s disasters was insatiable. It didn’t really matter what the news was, as long as it was bad. Every media man knew the truth of the axiom: ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’

But every now and then, those leads slipped from the crime beat to general news.

It could be something shockingly grotesque. There was the floater the cops had pulled from the Monongahela whose skin had slipped off the hands like a pair of gloves; the dog who’d chewed off his owner’s face because she’d died and there was no one to feed him; and, most celebrated of all, most gasped at and laughed over, the schizo who’d cut open his stomach and pulled out his guts before cutting them into neat pieces with a pair of tin snips.

Or it could involve someone important. Someone like Bishop Kohler.

The police department found the largest room available, and even so it was bulging at the seams. Reporters brandishing notebooks and voice recorders annexed every chair going; TV cameras ringed the back and sides of the room like a monk’s tonsure.

Chance led Beradino and Patrese into the room, holding his hands up as he did so; though whether to acknowledge the assembled multitude or shield his eyes from the popping of flashbulbs, Patrese couldn’t tell.

Three chairs had been arranged behind a table. Chance sat in the middle, gesturing that Patrese and Beradino should park their butts either side of him, as though he were Jesus and they the thieves.

Chance’s presence was largely symbolic. He was there for one reason only: to show the police were taking this murder so seriously that an assistant police chief would deign to come and break bread with the masses.

This was a double-edged sword, of course. If Patrese and Beradino found the killer, Chance would share the credit. If they failed, they’d fail alone.

Even though he was the junior man, and even though he’d been up half the night consoling his sisters – both of them predictably devastated by Kohler’s murder – Patrese did most of the talking.

Beradino despised the media, and made little secret of it. He disliked being second-guessed by reporters he considered uninformed at best and irresponsible at worst, and he hated their tacit demands that the police work to news deadlines rather than at an investigation’s natural pace.

Patrese took a more pragmatic approach. He figured that the media were part and parcel of every major homicide investigation, so he might as well accept it. Better to have them inside the tent pissing out than vice versa. The more he could run them, the less he ran the risk of them running him.

Picking questioners with a practiced hand, Patrese performed the traditional detectives’ balancing act in such situations: give enough to keep the media happy, not enough to jeopardize the investigation.

He pointed to a man with a mane of hair that would have shamed a lion.

‘Ed Sharpe, KDKA. You believe these killings are connected?’

‘We’re keeping an open mind, but obviously we’d be foolish not to be looking for connections. Burning bodies isn’t especially common, either as MO or signature.’

MO, modus operandi , is the way a killer goes about his business, the things he needs to do to effect the murders as efficiently as possible. Signature is what he needs to do to make the murder worthwhile, be it emotionally, physically or sexually.

The problem for Beradino and Patrese was this. They couldn’t be sure whether burning was signature or MO without knowing the killer’s internal logic, but finding that logic might be impossible unless they worked out the burning’s significance; whether the killer had burnt Redwine and Kohler because it had been the easiest option available to him, or because he’d felt compelled to.

‘Andy Rose, Post-Gazette . Were the victims alive when they were burned?’

‘Not as far as we can establish.’ Patrese was proud of his poker face. ‘We believe they’d been asphyxiated first, and then set on fire.’

And so, when the crazies started ringing up – as they would, sure as night followed day – and started claiming to have used a silk scarf or gimp ball on the victims, Patrese and Beradino could dismiss them out of hand.