Chapter 63

HE FOUND HERin the Georges River Killer task force room, of course. She’d finally busted her way in. When Chief Morris came through the door, he saw exactly what he expected. The short, wiry Detective Blue was going at her nemesis Nigel Spader with all the blind ferocity of a Jack Russell terrier. Above her on the case board the evidence she’d been blind to in the months since the killings had started fluttering a little in the fray. All the officers in the room were silent. Some were half-heartedly trying to pull the woman off her victim.

“How could you be so completely wrong?” Blue howled. “How could you be so completely, completely useless! You pathetic piece of—”

“That’s enough!” Chief Morris stepped forward, took Blue’s arm. He felt her shaking. “Detective Blue, you get a hold of yourself right now or I’ll have the boys escort you out onto the street.”

Blue whirled around and looked at him. The shock and heartache of a betrayed kid, eyes wide, disbelieving, all the exhaustion of the former case now vanished from her features. Her cheeks were flushed and her teeth gritted. Just as she did when she came around from a near-knockout in the boxing ring, Chief Morris watched as she shook it off and set her mind to what she’d do next to survive. She shoved past him. He felt the gentle brush of her shoulder like the slam of a sledgehammer.

That’s it, Blue,he thought. You’re not done yet.

When she’d gone, the case room was somber. The men standing there looked silently at him, waiting for direction. Yes, none of them had ever been on the friendliest of terms with the little firecracker in their station. Harriet Blue was too determined, too brash, too obsessed with the job to fit in with these guys. But they still didn’t like having to do this to her. How could anyone? A sex crimes detective’s brother turns out to be the worst homicidal sexual predator in decades, maybe ever. Pops felt the humiliation. It was thick as smoke in the air.

He went to the case board and looked at the photographs there, interior shots of Samuel Jacob Blue’s apartment taken during the search. Grainy surveillance images of the beloved brother walking in the street on the night of the first victim’s murder, hundreds of meters down from her apartment, a dark ball cap pulled down over his face. The Chief absentmindedly pulled down fingerprint analysis from the first two victims. Turned it over and over in his hands, uncertain.

“We’re right, aren’t we?” he said aloud, his eyes wandering over the huge collection of evidence. He found that his throat was tight. This was really hitting him. It had been years since he’d felt this troubled.

“We’re right,” Spader said, taking the sheet from him and pinning it back on the board. “It’s him. He’s the killer. We checked and double-checked. And after we make an arrest, we’ll get a confession. It won’t take long. There’s nothing you can say in the face of this stuff.” He gestured to the board. “It’s open and shut.”

“It better be,” Chief Morris said. If it was all a mistake, and they’d brought in an innocent man, the Chief was sure he’d have lost one of the greatest investigative minds he’d seen in his policing career. Blue wouldn’t come back to the force that had turned against her. She wouldn’t trust him anymore, his people. It had been enough of a mission to get her settled in the first place. She wasn’t good with institutions. They’d mishandled her as far back as she could remember.

But worse than all that, all the embarrassment and mistrust, all the heartache and accusations and damage it would do to Blue and her relationship with the force, if they were wrong about Samuel Jacob Blue, it would mean one thing. That the monster was still out there. And they had no idea who he was.

Harry had taken down the central picture in the case board, a photo of her and her brother, their faces pressed together. It would be puzzling for her, how her brother could be such an evil being when every cell in her own body was inherently good. The Chief knew the answer. It wasn’t about good and evil—it was about fire. It took a white-hot flame in a sick, terrible mind to drive Sam Blue to do what he did. So much energy. So much destruction. The Chief had seen that fire in the eyes of plenty of horrible men. He’d seen it most in the ghouls who lurked in the back of prison cells, those vicious dogs who were deemed unfit to ever reenter society. He’d seen it burning, too, in the eyes of heroes he’d worked with on the job, the cops who got up and rushed toward the sounds of screaming when everyone else was taking cover.

That same fire burned in Detective Harriet Blue. The Chief knew her brother’s arrest wouldn’t put it out. It would make it burn brighter.