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She stared at nothing. “Do the knots mean anything?”
“Our killer probably had commando training of some kind,” I said. “The knots are to break the larynx and silence the victim.”
“Or maybe he’s just a sadist,” Bailey said. “The Internet is full of information that Jack the Ripper couldn’t have thought up.”
Cormac Watts had been standing in the background. “Can I have a look?” he asked.
“Sorry,” I said, and stepped aside.
He leaned down and studied Axel’s face and the garrote and the baton. He straightened his back and looked at us.
“What is it?” I said.
“The garrote is cosmetic,” he said. “It’s there to mislead us.”
“I’m not following you,” I said.
“Look at the discharge on the shank of the baton,” he said. “Devereaux was alive when it went down his throat. He looked straight into the eyes of the guy who did this to him. There’s a tear sealed in one eye. The killer isn’t just a ritualist. He enjoyed this one.”
A fly was buzzing on the ceiling. Helen turned to Sean. “You saw a woman run outside?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“White or black, fat or thin, what?” she said.
“I couldn’t make her out, Miss Helen.”
“That’s great,” she said.
“Pardon?” he said.
“We look like the dumbest fucks on the planet,” she said. “We can’t even protect our own.”
Sean’s face seemed to shrink and the blood to go out of his cheeks.
“Devereaux wasn’t one of our own,” I said.
I felt her eyes on the side of my face. I walked out to the front yard. The medics were wheeling in the gurney, a body bag folded on top. Helen followed me. “Don’t ever correct me in front of others again, Pops.”
“You were too hard on Sean,” I said.
Her head seemed to wobble like a balloon on a string, her eyes blazing. “He blew it. He has to man up and take his medicine.”
“You’re putting this in his jacket?”
“He should have called it in. We could have had this lunatic in custody.”
“We should have flushed Devereaux from the department years ago. The onus is on us.”
“I can’t help what happened ‘years ago.’ The guy who killed Devereaux is going to kill again, and we could have had him, but now we have nothing. Excuse me if I’m not as charitable as you. You not only piss me off, Dave, you disappoint me.”
“Sean went back after he passed the house,” I said. “Had he gone in earlier, thinking Devereaux was involved in a domestic argument, he’d probably be dead, too.”
Her face was pinched, her fists balled on her hips. “All right.”
“All right, what?” I said.
“I’ll talk with Sean. No paperwork.”
