CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

It was 4:47 when Avery and Ramirez pulled up to the residence of Phillip Bailey. As Avery parked the car, Ramirez was getting off the phone with someone from records at the A1. When he ended the call, he looked out to the house on their right and nodded his head.

"Well, his record sure as h.e.l.l checks out. This guy is a creep, all right. According to the reports, there was one thing that Wallace left out of the story about Bailey sleeping on those graves."

"What's that?"

"He was mostly naked and when they found him, he was...well, he was aroused."

"Well, if this guy isn't the one we're looking for, it seems like he's certainly worth looking into," Avery said. "Especially if he is actively trying to get jobs at crematoriums."

"You sure you don't want me to call this in?" Ramirez asked. "This guy is straight up spooky if you ask me."

"No, not until we know for sure. If I'm wrong on this, it could be my a.s.s."

With a shared look that was filled with far too much emotion and anxiousness to make sense of, Avery and Ramirez opened their doors and stepped out onto the street. Bailey's house was a modest-looking home, complete with a rickety porch swing hanging from old chains.

They came up to the front door quietly, seeing that the door was open, leaving the house protected by only a flimsy screen door. As they approached, Avery could hear the slight murmur of a television from inside. Elsewhere, very faintly, she could hear muted tapping noises. It sounded almost as if someone was hammering something from within the house.

Avery knocked on the screen door and waited for a response but all there was to hear was the TV. It sounded like it was tuned to a late-afternoon talk show. Then, after ten seconds or so, the tapping noise sounded again. This time, it was louder. Almost violent.

Avery knocked once more, louder this time. The screen door rattled, drowning out the television. "Phillip Bailey?" she called through the screen door.

Almost immediately, the tapping sound stopped.

"Was that hammering?" Ramirez asked quietly.

Avery shrugged and then called through the door. "I'm looking for Phillip Bailey. This is a police matter."

There was still no response. Avery thought things out and wondered if perhaps she should have remained quiet. She looked to Ramirez and said, "Head around back to see if there's a back door or cellar he could leave through. If I don't see you in twenty seconds, I'm going to a.s.sume there is a back way and you're standing by it. At that point, I'm going in."

Ramirez gave a nod, hurried down the stairs, and sprinted around the side of the house. Avery turned her attention back to the screen door and started counting. As she did, she peered into the house through the screen door.

The place was a bit of a mess. A small coffee table was littered with papers and magazines. A laptop sat on a small couch that was cluttered with more paper, a plate with half of a sandwich, and several crumpled paper towels. Further back, she could see part of a hallway, but little else.

When she reached twenty seconds in her head, she knocked once more, waited, and then opened the screen door. She stepped in and saw that the TV was indeed tuned to an afternoon talk show. She went to the laptop on the couch and saw what looked to be a resume in progress. At the bottom of the screen, along the task bar, she saw the Google Chrome icon. She pulled it up and saw that whoever had been using it was logged into a career website.

She stepped away from it and started toward the hallway.

That's when the smell hit her.

It was ghastly, like being slapped in the face with the carca.s.s of an animal that had been rotting on the side of the road. It was so powerful that Avery took a step back and held her breath. Making a conscious effort to breathe through her mouth, Avery continued down the hallway. To her right, a small kitchen opened up to reveal a surprisingly clean counter and sink. A bowl of fruit sat decoratively on a tiny kitchen table.

The smell was not coming from here. More importantly, she noticed that the sounds of faint hammering had stopped as soon as she had come inside the house. If Phillip Bailey was here, he apparently knew that he was not alone now.

She nearly called out again but if he was inside, there was no sense in purposefully giving herself away. She continued down the hallway. Every door she pa.s.sed was open, revealing a bathroom, a bedroom, and a cluttered study. Inside the study, another laptop glowed from a tattered desk otherwise littered with books.

Her instincts told her she'd find answers in there but right now, she was more worried about locating Phillip Bailey. She turned away from the office and started forward again. The hall came to an end ahead of her, but not before one more door broke up the hallway to her left. It was closed, but light shined through the cracks along the bottom and the sides.

She reached for the handle, turned it, and was surprised to find that it opened. She pulled it open and found herself staring not only at a set of stairs that led down into a bas.e.m.e.nt, but at a man standing on those stairs.

He was startled, but also looked as if he had been caught doing something. She a.s.sumed he had been creeping up the stairs as she had been investigating the house, hoping to get the drop on her.

"Are you Phillip Bailey?" she asked.

"I am," he said. "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

Before she answered, she made a show of slowly reaching for her sidearm. She started to answer him but then saw his hands. They were covered in something that was either black or very dark red.

"I'm Detective Avery Black with the Boston Police," she said. "Homicide."

Bailey looked confused at first but then smiled. "Really?"

"What's on your hands, Mr. Bailey?"

He looked to his hands as if he hadn't known there was anything on them. As he studied them, Avery was very much aware that the smell that had nearly bowled her over earlier seemed to be coming from below the stairs.

"Would you believe paint?" he asked.

"Mr. Bailey," she said, drawing her gun. "I'm going to ask you to lift your hands in the air, turn around, and lead me into the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"We don't need to do that," Bailey said.

"Oh, I think we do. Do it now, Mr. Bailey." She then leaned her head to the left and gave a quick shout. "Ramirez! Come on in!"

With a sigh of defeat, Bailey did as he was asked. When he did, Avery saw more of the black or dark red substance on his shirt.

That's blood, she thought. No way in h.e.l.l that's not blood.

She followed Bailey down the stairs. The smell grew stronger and she started to realize that it was two separate things she was smelling. The first was of something very much like the smell a dead animal leaves on the side of the road.

The other was the unmistakable smell of smoke and something that had been badly burned.

We got the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she thought. I can't believe it was this easy, but we- But when she reached the bas.e.m.e.nt floor and looked to Phillip Bailey's grisly work area, she wasn't so sure.

She had been right: Phillip Bailey had been worth checking out. He might not be guilty of the recent deaths they were investigating, but he was certainly guilty of something.

Behind her, Ramirez came down the stairs. "Everything okay down h-?"

But his words were cut off when his eyes fell on the same scene Avery was trying to understand. He then found his words, changing his question.

"What the f.u.c.k?"

Phillip Bailey looked at them rather dumbly and then back down to his blood-streaked hands. "s.h.i.t," he said. "Am I in trouble?"

Neither of them answered. They were too busy trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

On a large oak table covered in a tarp, the body of a large cat was split open from neck to stomach. There was surprisingly little blood, as the incision looked neat. Beside the cat, a small Tupperware dish contained the contents of the cat, again surprisingly tidy and well tended to.

On the floor, pushed against the wall, there were several large coolers. Avery stepped toward them. Beside her, Phillip Bailey took a step forward.

"Nope," Ramirez said, aiming his gun at Bailey. "You don't move."

"The cat on the table is a stray," Bailey said, as if it explained everything. "I don't think it had an owner. No one will miss it."

Avery barely heard any of this as she peered into the fist cooler. She gagged a bit when she saw the contents. Inside was another cat. This one had not been gutted but had been burned quite badly. Its head was little more than a skull. Rotted black tissue was exposed along its ribs. Next to the cat was what looked to have once been a gerbil or guinea pig. Currently, though, it was little more than a black and pink charred ball with legs.

"Jesus," Avery said, fumbling for her phone to call it in.

This gruesome find actually made her quite sure that Phillip Bailey was not their killer, but the maniac needed to be locked up regardless.

"You can't call," Ramirez reminded her. "Let me do it."

She nodded as she looked into the next cooler. There, she found a medium-sized dog that had been partially burned, along with two more cats. She scanned the room and saw a small rack with other tarps and plastic sheeting. There was a can of gasoline, too. On the floor there were slight maroon stains, indicating that Bailey had been at this for quite some time.

She listened to Ramirez call it in while she turned slowly toward Bailey. She did all she could to keep her voice level and calm. She flicked the barrel of her Glock toward the stairs. "Lead me upstairs."

He sighed, as if this was a ma.s.sive inconvenience, but did as he was asked.

Upstairs, she checked every room as Bailey led the way. Ramirez joined her, making the search go a bit faster. When she went to the laptop in the room she supposed served as a study, she pulled up the browser and checked Bailey's internet history. She was looking for any sort of evidence of Bailey having looked for the correct way to burn a human body, but found nothing.

What she did find was every single one of the videos he took while working at the crematorium. She also saw where he had watched a few YouTube videos of cremations, even ones from Nepal where they burned the bodies of deceased loved ones on a river near religious temples. There was also the entire video of the concert fire back in the '90s when the one-hit wonder rock group Great White shot off pyros and just about everyone at the venue burned alive.

She wasn't sure how long they searched the house-maybe ten minutes. When the first police car arrived by that time, she wasted no time in heading outside. She barely heard Ramirez update the officers as she took a seat on Phillip Bailey's front steps.

After a few moments, Ramirez sat with her as they both listened to the commotion from inside the house. Avery was trying her best to make sense of what they had found in the bas.e.m.e.nt but she was also waiting for O'Malley to bring the hammer down on her. He had not arrived at the scene yet but she was pretty sure he'd blow a fuse when he did. She could have easily split the scene when Ramirez had called it in but decided that was the coward's way out. This was her find and Ramirez was her partner. She'd stick with him through this, not to take the credit for the discovery but to take the fall for it if they turned out to be wrong.

Avery breathed in the fresh air of a gathering dusk.

"What the h.e.l.l is wrong with people?" Ramirez asked.

"That's a loaded question," Avery said.

One of the officers who had first arrived stepped out onto the porch. He looked a little pale in the face, but determined.

"The creep is still down in the bas.e.m.e.nt," he said. "He hasn't asked for a lawyer yet even though he's essentially under arrest. You need anything else out of him?"

It took Ramirez a moment to realize that the officer was speaking to him, not Avery. He seemed to be having trouble remembering that Avery was, as of right now, not officially on the case.

"No. Book him and take him in."

The officer nodded and turned back into the house. Avery and Ramirez remained on the porch steps. Avery badly wanted him to put an arm around her but he remained professional.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. That was just...unexpected."

"I'll say. I don't think I'll ever-"

A car pulled up across the street, coming to a shuddering stop. They both recognized it at once. They fell into silence yet again when O'Malley stepped out. He saw them sitting on the stairs, honed in on Avery, and shook his head in frustration.

"This should be fun," Ramirez joked as O'Malley came marching across the street. "You mind if I stick around and watch the s.h.i.t hit the fan?"

"Please do," she said with a smirk, and she got to her feet to meet O'Malley.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

As night settled in and word of Phillip Bailey's arrest filtered through the A1, the headquarters started to smell of freshly brewed coffee and an overworked Xerox machine. Avery was starting on her second cup of coffee of the night as the members of a late and hastily thrown together meeting concerning the arrest filed into the conference room.

A sense of closure was starting to fill the room as everyone was under the impression that although there was no definitive proof, Phillip Bailey was the man they were looking for. There were still questions, of course, but the severity of what they had found in Bailey's bas.e.m.e.nt seemed to line up with most of what they had expected to find in a killer. Even Avery was unable to get the sight from her mind and the smell from her nose.

Avery didn't think it quite fit, though. In the same way the childlike manner of George Lutz had not aligned with what she was looking for in a killer, there was something about Phillip Bailey that didn't quite fit, either. There was something about the nearly aloof way he had reacted to being caught that didn't sit right with her.

Am I in trouble?

He'd asked the question as if the whole thing had been a laughing matter. But the way the bodies they had found had been dispersed made her think that there was nothing playful about their killer. The carefree att.i.tude Bailey was showing didn't seem to line up with the personality she was expecting their killer to have.

In other words, she felt that they had busted someone that certainly did not belong in society, but she didn't feel that Phillip Bailey was responsible for the deaths of Keisha Lawrence, Sarah Osborne, and the as-of-yet unidentified third victim.

Even if he'd started working up his nerve with humans, there was no way he could have burned bodies in that bas.e.m.e.nt. Wallace even said that someone doing such a thing would need a dedicated room or building for such a thing.

Her thoughts were broken as O'Malley took the floor in his usual way-like a concerned father that was doing everything he could not to vent all of his anger and frustration out over his kids. She was relieved to see, though, that he looked mostly happy. She a.s.sumed this was because he was also under the impression that they had nailed their killer.

"First and foremost," O'Malley said, "Black is back on this case. So as we wrap it all up, everyone defer to her. Got it?"

A few murmurs of agreement trickled across the table. Some of those in attendance rolled their eyes in disbelief. It was a look Avery had long ago gotten used to.