The faulty refrigeration groaned to a shuddering halt after two hours, and she almost wept in relief again, but her eyes were dry and her throat drier. The floor was concrete, and the metal drawers where the dead were kept weren’t any warmer, even if she’d been willing to crawl into one. She managed to fall asleep sitting on her haunches, her arms wrapped around her legs and her head tucked into her knees as the room warmed again, the August heat of the warehouse outside the cold locker slowly raising the heat inside of it.
She dreamed of clothes. Piles of them. Whispering to her. Weighing her down.
She thought she heard Sweeney return and rolled against the door and clung to the lock, knowing that if he came back now, she wouldn’t have the strength to stop him.
But the door did not rattle, and the stool was not removed, and she considered climbing the shelves once more, but her head spun and her legs trembled when she tried to rise, so she stayed put, her back against the door.
The temperamental system whirred up again at nightfall, and she hardly noticed when it clanked off again. Or maybe she’d simply gotten too tired to feel it.
“Where is Francis Sweeney?” Malone repeated, louder. Eliot flinched but met his gaze.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, crestfallen. “I have several units walking the Third and scouring the Run and surrounding streets looking for him, but no word yet.”
“You don’t know?” Malone shouted. The activity around them ceased as the whole room stopped and stared.
“He was released last week, and I’ve been trying to get a court order to get him locked up again. We’ve had a tail on him ever since, but he’s enjoying himself, jumping on and off the streetcar suddenly to make his detail scramble, buying drinks for his ‘shadows’ at the bars and then slipping out the back door. He’s loving every minute of the chase, and we keep losing him. Then this happened.” Eliot tossed his hands toward the evidence tables. Flesh, bones, buckets, and battered clothing were being photographed while clinicians watched with clasped hands and blank faces.
“Find Francis Sweeney,” Malone bellowed, including the gawkers in his command. Policemen, medical examiners, lab technicians, officials, insiders. They all stared.
“Malone!” David Cowles was pushing toward him, panic in his stride, but Malone didn’t care.
“His name is Dr. Francis Edward Sweeney. He’s your guy. He’s your Butcher. He did that!” Malone pointed at the remains of the two most recent victims. “He’s done all of it. And none of you—none of us—have stopped him.”
Eliot tried to pull him back, but he lurched toward the macabre exhibit, ready to upend the tables. A soiled yellow quilt was spread beside a greasy display of bones, like a picnic for the Butcher’s dead, and for the first time, Malone’s eyes focused on what he was seeing.
He froze, his fury giving way to shock. His thoughts scattered and then merged, and that’s when . . . he knew. He knew where Francis Sweeney killed his victims. He understood the clue.
“Eliot?” he asked.
“Yeah?” Eliot’s arms were still wrapped around him, but Malone was perfectly still.
“Where did you find that quilt?” It was a bright patchwork, frayed at the edges and dirty with the gristle and grime of death, but he recognized it all the same.
“It was wrapped around the torso of the dead woman. Cheerful, isn’t it?” Eliot whispered.
“Nettie,” Malone moaned.
“What?”
“That’s Nettie’s quilt.”
“I don’t know who Nettie is, Mike. Who’s Nettie?” Eliot kept his grip on his shoulders. Malone was grateful; he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Check those remains, Cowles,” Malone barked. “That woman in the quilt was already dead when Sweeney got to her. He didn’t kill her, he just took her body and hacked it up. He’s messing with us, Ness. He’s toying with us.”
“What are you talking about?” Eliot begged, still not following.
“Remains were taken from the indigent morgue on Mead Avenue where Dani works. Back in April. I saw that quilt wrapped around a dead woman’s body months ago. Dani said her name was Nettie.”
Sweeney took Nettie. Oh God. Oh Dani. But taking the body was just theater, one of Sweeney’s merry stunts. The theft itself wasn’t what shook Malone. It was the realization that Francis Sweeney, the Butcher of Kingsbury Run, had been using Dani’s morgue all this time.
“That’s where he’s killing them, Ness,” Malone insisted. “Where he’s killed . . . all of them.”