Look Away (Broken Blood Ties)

Chapter 1

GRAYSON

The head was ten feet from the body this time. It must’ve rolled in the sewer muck, because black and brown tar cakes the man’s eyes and nose, and twigs and leaves have crusted into his short hair. I tap my pen on my notepad, waiting for the coroner to finish up.

Last time, the severed head was next to the body. So either the killer flung it in a fit of rage, or an animal dragged it off and abandoned it. Wind? Slope? I jot down the possibilities. The forensic team will have a field day with this one.

They found the man’s body off Neponset River Trail. Early-December winter keeps many joggers from venturing out, daylight or not. We’re lucky a runner spotted it when they did. The river’s already half frozen, its banks dusted with snow and Boston’s city runoff.

I look around, blowing out a hot breath that curls into the chilled air in a pale cloud. It hangs there for a second before I step through it on my way to the car. It dissolves into nothing.

Westward, the sun dips closer to the trees along the horizon. Long shadows inch toward the crime scene outlined in yellow tape, and the sky smudges from the bruised gold to gray-blue.

When I reach my sedan, I catch my reflection in the window—wind-tossed hair, dim, tired eyes that echo the dusk setting in. Hell, this case is going to eat me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My stomach rumbles, reminding me I’ve skipped them all today.

I open the driver’s side door and grab my windbreaker to combat the cold air blanketing the trail. After I put it on, I reach inside, pulling out my pack of emergency Camels. I hit the bottom against my palm.

“Thought you’d quit?” Reed strolls up behind me.

I wrinkle my nose at him and shrug, slipping a cigarette between my lips. Then I fumble around for my lighter in the other pocket. Which … is missing.

“What the hell. Damn it,” I mumble, cigarette still pinched in my mouth.

Reed laughs. “Here.” He flicks his lighter, the flame dancing in the breeze.

I lean in and light my cigarette. The first drag hits like a sucker punch, all too familiar. My lungs don’t need this, but my nerves do. With the second drag, my thoughts slow and it eases the hellhole this case has been the past two months.

I’d sworn I was done. Two years back, I white-knuckled my way out of the habit when my niece was born. My parents and brother told me they didn’t want me around her if I was smoking, so like any good uncle, I gave it up. It was hell, but I did it. My lungs thanked me even if no one else did.

It didn’t matter in the end. They found other excuses to keep me away—my job is too dangerous, too many tattoos scare the baby, not at church enough.

Eventually, they cut me off completely. And my parents?

Spineless shitheads. They decided cutting contact with their oldest son was worth it to see their grandchild.

They’ve always fawned over my younger brother, thought he could do no wrong.

That favoritism never faded. It trickled into adulthood, and now, at my age of thirty-five, they’d rather orbit my brother—the one with the wife, the baby, the life they approve of.

I don’t conform to their picture-perfect family. Never have. I’ve seen too much shit to sit in a pew with people who pretend to do good and then judge those actively out here trying to make the world a better place. All because they smoke and have a few tattoos?

I take another drag of my cigarette and watch the smoke tangle between my fingers.

You know? Part of me doesn’t blame them.

People look at the black hair, the shadowed eyes, the tattooed build better suited for breaking jaws than solving murders, and they decide who I am before I open my mouth.

They expect a hothead, someone loud and reckless, but I learned quick in my years as a rookie cop that silence gets you more than muscle or power ever will.

Ironically, it’s the stillness that’s more unsettling.

The way my mind buries itself in the heaviness of the job.

I wouldn’t want to be around me either. So it’ll be another Christmas alone. Another New Year’s in the office.

When the second murder with the same MO hit two months ago, we knew it was only a matter of time before a third body surfaced.

Now, here we are with the fourth. Reed and I got the case after the first body turned up in downtown Beacon Hill.

Boston’s sleepy historic area that doesn’t compute with gruesome murders and severed heads.

After the second killing, even outside our jurisdiction, they kept us on it.

“Grayson, come on. The ME’s waving us over.” Reed jerks his thumb over his shoulder. His muddy-brown hair, gelled to perfection, doesn’t budge while mine beats against my forehead in the rising wind. His sharp green eyes flick to the cigarette in my hand. “You’re going to have to put it out, Gray.”

“No shit.” I toss it down and stomp it into the ground.

There aren’t any streetlights this far, and the nearest traffic hums from an overpass in the distance. No pedestrians. No gawkers. Just the blue and red lights bleeding across the thin, uneven patches of grimy slush. It clings to my boots and splatters up on my suit pants with each step.

The body lies off the path, fancy boots askew, limbs twisted like a rag doll tossed aside. The torso’s intact, but as established, the head isn’t.

Reed and I duck under the tape perimeter.

“Based on temp and lividity, I’d say he’s been dead eight to twelve hours—probably dumped between three a.m. and five a.m. this morning,” the ME mutters, squatting low beside the torso.

He uses his knuckles to push the wire frames back up his nose.

As he moves, the green felt elf hat he’s wearing, tapered into a drooping tip, jingles.

Reed looks at me, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am. This is lucky. Every other body was found several days after death. This is the freshest.

“Same as the others. Head severed postmortem. No arterial spray, no defensive wounds.” He points a gloved finger at the headless neck.

“Cut was clean. Most likely a sharp blade. I see no evidence of hesitation or any indication this was rushed due to a fit of rage. I’d say this was calculated, but I’ll know more once I can perform a full autopsy.

Unfortunately, I don’t see any obvious cause of death, but it might be safe to assume intravenous drugs like last time. ”

Reed nods and scratches notes down while I study the body.

“Gloves?” I ask.

ME Lloyd stands, pulls an extra pair from his coat pocket, and hands them to me.

I wrestle them on then squat near the body.

Not much blood. I lift the left arm, inspecting the fingernails.

Dirt and debris cake the stubby, chewed-down nails.

“The body was relocated postmortem. There’s no way he bled out here; it’s too clean. ”

Reed points his pen toward the trail. “No way the killer tried to hide this body. There are better places to dump around here. Why leave it so close to the trail?”

I glance around, blowing out another puff of air. “Whoever did this wanted the body found. Could be a convenient location for the killer, or something around the area resonates with him … or her.”

Lloyd shakes his head. “Doubt it’s a female. The cut’s too clean. The force to sever a head isn’t an easy one unless your female is jacked. Which I’m not discriminating or nothin’, but I’d wager with about eighty-five percent certainty your killer is male.”

“You said seventy-five percent last time,” Reed pipes in.

“Considering this is the same MO, the odds it’s a male just went up.

There’s always the possibility of a partnership—female administers the drugs, male handles the dismemberment—but statistically, I’d still bet on a male.

The team has bagged and tagged, so we’ll run DNA.

If it’s the same killer, I doubt we’ll find anything. They’re clean.”

My eyes roam over the body, looking for any identification markers. Reed moves over to the area where they found the head.

“What’s this red here?” Reed points to the eyes.

“It’s called petechial hemorrhaging. He may have been asphyxiated first, which would be a deviation from the standard drugs in the previous three. We’ll know more once tox comes back.”

Reed rotates the head, seemingly unfazed this man was alive less than twenty-four hours ago. “Oh, shit,” he groans.

“What?”

“You better come look at this. Son of a—”

I stand striding to the head and crouch next to Reed.

He points. “Look at that.”

A tattoo behind the man’s right ear gives me pause. A mermaid tail.

“Shit,” I mutter. “Damn Irish Mob.”

Reed nods. “I’m not telling her. You can.”

I shake my head as the roar of a motorcycle revs in the distance. “Looks like we both get to.”

None other than Aoife O’Donnell herself rolls up on her Ducati.

The leader of the Irish Mob. At first, I figured they were a myth.

Until Kieran O’Donnell and his so-called merry band of bastards stepped out of the shadows and proved me wrong.

Then four years ago, when his daughter turned twenty-one, she took over for him.

It’s ridiculous, the department’s willingness to work with the mob like they’re some sort of partner in crime.

They are the crime. But I was told to sit down and shut up whenever I raised concerns about letting the Mob operate freely in Boston.

According to the chief, the Irish keep the Yakuza in check and scare off the “bigger, deadlier” outfits that want a piece of Boston.

I hate it. I hate it all, but I do what I’m told.

I wish I had my cigarette.

She pulls her bike nose to nose with the front of my car, and I frown.

Her blonde hair spills from beneath her helmet, cascading to the middle of her black leather jacket.

The leather continues down, wrapping her curves in black pants as well.

When she lifts her helmet off and sets it on her bike, Reed lets out an audible whine.

I roll my eyes. Yes, Aoife O’Donnell is beautiful. Everyone knows it. I’ve only seen her in passing once, and hers is a face you can’t forget. Eyes doe-eyed and bright blue, a button nose, and blonde hair in loose waves that frame her face.

She marches down from the trail, and I hate how most of the officers part for her like she’s the damn chief herself. She doesn’t ask, and no one stops her when she lifts the crime scene tape and walks over. As she gets closer, I swallow.

Damn.

Her full cheeks are flushed, but she’s not all sharp-jawed and bony like some women. Her lips are plump, lush, but pulled into a frown. When I glance up, the bright blue in her eyes is dull and somber.

“That’s Finn, isn’t it?” She pulls out her phone and swears. “It is. His tracker leads right—” Her face contorts into terror as she stares at the head Reed and I stand near. I move quickly to block it. “Is that …”

I grimace. “She shouldn’t be here. Escort her back to my car.”

A single tear escapes from her lashes, and she bats it away, then steps forward, sucking in a wavering breath. “What happened? What the hell is going on?”

Reed approaches her, extending his arm to cover her shoulder and turn her around. He attempts to guide her back toward the scene perimeter, but she contends with his touch and pushes him away.

I linger on the severed head, my thoughts gnawing, until Lloyd does his thing and carts it away to the lab.

I sigh, then clench my jaw.

The man was in the Irish Mob, which means this case just got a whole lot more complicated.