Eight in the Box: A Novel of Suspense - By Raffi Yessayan Page 0,2

made a mistake this time.”

“What’s that?”

“We found a sneaker print in the dirt by the cellar door. No signs of a forced entry, so it may not mean anything. We’re taking a plaster mold, just in case. If he didn’t come in through the basement, then we’re thinking McCarthy may have let him in. Maybe they had a date and then he decided to kill her.”

“Who found the scene?”

“Nine-one-one call. Never says a word, leaves the phone off the hook. Just like the Hayes case. Dispatcher figures someone accidentally hit the preprogrammed emergency button. Kids do it all the time. We have to send a cruiser out anyway. Uniforms get here in less than five minutes. Side door’s wide open. Kitchen phone’s still off the hook. Then they find the bathtub and the blood. Looks like our boy wants to personally call us out to see his work.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“Upstairs. You’re not going to throw up on me, are you?”

“I’ll never live that one down, will I? That woman’s body was rotting for days before the neighbors smelled the stench. And you clowns didn’t warn me to put VapoRub under my nose.”

“Just busting your chops.” Alves smiled. He turned and led Connie into the kitchen. The kitchen looked perfectly ordinary, nothing out of place except for the telephone receiver dangling from its cord.

“The guys that answered the call knew what they were doing. They didn’t touch anything. We’re going to take the phone off the wall and fume it for prints. And we’ll need elimination prints from all family members.”

Much of what Connie knew about police work he’d learned from Angel Alves, especially during ride-alongs when he could watch Alves in action. Walking through this normal house, knowing that a person had been killed upstairs, Connie remembered one of the first lessons Alves taught him, about the importance of watching a person’s hands. As Alves put it, “No one is ever going to shoot or stab you with their eyes or their feet. If someone’s going to kill you, it’ll be with his hands.”

As they made their way to the second floor, Connie thought about the terror Susan McCarthy must have felt as she took her final breath. He paused at the top of the stairs and looked down the hall where a woman had lost her life. How true Alves’s words were.

CHAPTER 3

Swiping his key card through the scanner, Connie entered the South Bay District courthouse. He started toward the stairs leading to the district attorney’s satellite office. Shit. He was covering arraignments this morning, a bad way to start the week. Another swipe of his card and he wove his way through a maze of desks to the front counter of the clerk’s office. There he picked up the stack of police reports from the weekend arrests. Busy weekend. Hopping over the counter into the front lobby, he jogged up the main staircase to the third floor.

Through the glass doors of the DA’s office, he saw the secretaries answering phones and checking in witnesses who had been subpoenaed to court. At least ten people were crammed into a waiting area designed to hold five. It was like standing room only at Fenway for a Sox–Yankees game, except no one was happy to be here. They were either victims or witnesses to crimes. The last thing they wanted to do was come to court and testify.

“Good morning, ladies,” Connie said as he hurried past the secretaries, careful not to make eye contact with any of the witnesses. He hated treating them like homeless people asking for change, but he had work to do and no time to answer the questions they were sure to ask.

The long corridor ahead of him was on the north side of the building, a wall of windows broken up by the assistant district attorneys’ work cubicles. Except for Liz Moore, the supervising ADA, none of the lawyers had their own offices. Their cubicles faced out onto Roxbury’s Dudley Square and toward the distant, mirrored glass of the John Hancock building.

As he came around the corner, Connie almost ran into Nick Costa, who was leaning back in his swivel chair. Nick looked sharp in one of his trademark tailored suits and Italian ties, his expensive wardrobe complementing his Mediterranean looks. And he didn’t have to live beyond his means to look good. He was well taken care of by his parents: Greek immigrants who had achieved the American dream by founding a floral shop that