Free BLUE MERCY by ILLONA HAUS

me like I’m stupid. There’s more to me than you think, Detective.”

    Undaunted, Kay drew herself to the edge of her chair, leaned across the table again. Close enough she could see the pores of Eales’s oily skin. “Does Patricia know why you’re in here, Bernard?”

    “Course she does.”

    “Does she know everything? Does she know you like your women dead ? That you hack up their wrists and play with them once they’ve stopped breathing? What else did you do, Bernard, hmm? Did you have sex with them? Maybe you couldn’t get it up while they were alive. Is that why you murdered them?”

    Nothing.

    “And what would your girlfriend do if she found out? I wonder. What would she think if I showed her the pictures of your little hobby? You think she’d still visit?”

    “Fuck off.” He shoved away from the table then, dropping the dwindling butt to the floor and crushing it under one laceless sneaker.

    Behind her, Kay heard the guard shift at the cell’s gate. “So what about your brother, Bernard?”

    “What about him?”

    “His name’s not on your visitation records. He doesn’t come see you?”

    “He lives in Pittsburgh.”

    “And he can’t drive four hours to visit his big brother?”

    “He’s got his own life.”

    “No, that’s not it. You probably make him sick, don’t you? Probably can’t stand the thought of you. Your own brother doesn’t even want to see you.”

    He grabbed up the pack of smokes, tucked them in the cuff of his jumpsuit. “We done here?”

    She’d lost him. She’d let her anger take over, and Eales had clammed up. “Sure, Bernard. We’re done.”

    The room came alive with the rattle of chains as Eales stood. Kay pushed back her own chair and followed him.

    At the cell door, Eales turned unexpectedly, causing Kay to come up short. But not short enough.

    He was too close. “I’m glad that lying bitch is dead,” he whispered between clenched teeth.

    “I don’t see why,” she said, refusing to back down. “I’m more of a threat to you than she ever was.” In the narrow space that separated them she could feel the heat coming off his huge body. “They’ve already got a cell reserved for you over there in Supermax. You’re headed to death row, Bernard, because you killed my partner. And I’m the strongest witness in that case. I’m the one who’s going to guarantee you make it to that cell.”

15

    IT WASN’T HER USUAL CROWD at Rocky’s Iron Pit on Pratt Street. Not the late-night muscle addicts who were too absorbed by their own routines to take note of hers. Who never looked twice when she threw a few morepounds on the leg press and shook as she barely made the twelfth rep, then did it all over again.

    Trying to ignore the stares reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors past the Nautilus circuit, Kay wished she’d waited until her usual time. But after leaving the State Pen, with the residue of Eales still crawling along her skin, she’d needed the release. Needed to sweat out the disgust that raged through her body.

    Her muscles burned and her arms quivered as she lowered the weights back onto the stack. Still, she couldn’t abolish the image of Eales. And Valley, her burned remains on the flooded warehouse floor. And finally, Spence.

    Sitting, she took the setscrew down yet another notch, adding more weight, and felt the stares as she settled into the last set.

    She closed her eyes. Tried to picture Spence. But it was harder now. She hated that Eales’s face was easier to conjure up than Spence’s. Hated that the one image her mind always came back to was of Spence as the life seeped out of him on that filthy corner of Baltimore City. She tried to remember his quick smiles and his easygoing laughter, his tireless patience as he’d taught her the ropes. But the memories were fading.

    When the weights came down this time, they stayed. There was nothing left in her. Mopping her pooled sweat off the vinyl bench with her towel,