The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3) by Brian Shea (ereader manga TXT) 📕

a gunshot wound to the head, shot at close quarters in a church where the open space was designed to reverberate sound, yet nothing was heard. Either people didn't hear it, or it was designed not to be heard. A bullet missing from the scene, along with no shell casing, pointed to the latter. Lots of holes, none of which were good.

Kelly figured it was time to pick Gray's brain without anyone else around and get a feel for what the Bureau had to offer.

8

Kelly entered The Depot and pulled up a seat beside Gray. He had a laptop open and was scrolling through something when he looked over at Kelly.

"What are you working on?" Kelly asked, expecting the federal agent to close the screen and pleasantly surprised when he didn’t.

"Remember yesterday, when I said I might be able to give you a little guidance in the case and maybe explain what those marks on the hand might mean, the significance of them?"

"Of course, been waiting for you to open that can of worms."

"Yeah. Sorry about the delay. I was playing catch-up on what you guys had been working on. It's a pretty extensive crime scene and very meticulously handled. Kudos to you, your team, and in particular your crime scene technicians."

"Thanks. They're top-notch," Kelly offered in return.

"I had to wait to get clearance before I could share this information with you. You've got to understand how things work where I come from.”

Kelly nodded. He understood the bureaucratic red tape. There was plenty of that to go around at his agency. Not a big leap to assume it was commonplace everywhere else.

“What I'm about to show you stays within the confines of this team and this team alone. That means you, Barnes, Mainelli, and Sutherland. Outside of that group, I would have to go back and speak with my superiors to get authorization to disseminate it any further.”

Interesting. It usually worked the other way, with the upper echelon controlling access to the people on the ground level who needed it most. It was refreshing to hear the opposite was true. Kelly wondered if this came at Gray’s direction.

Kelly's interest was thoroughly piqued. Up until now, Sterling Gray had offered little in the way of assistance during his short time in Boston.

Gray appeared to have taken a step back, allowing Kelly’s team to process yesterday’s crime scene uninterrupted. He was more of a fly on the wall, listening to the back-and-forth banter and the heavy resistance offered by Mainelli.

Smart move to enter into any new organization and observe, just as Kelly had done when he came to Homicide as their newest investigator. He’d found it best to watch and get the feel of things rather than assert himself before he’d learned the protocols.

Gray had obviously reached his comfort level and received the approval required for sharing whatever he had to offer.

"I'm all ears. What do you got?" Kelly asked, trying to look beyond Gray's shoulder at the monitor.

Gray turned it toward him. The digital image of a hand—in particular, the meaty web of the left hand—was similar to the side-by-side comparisons of Danny Rourke, Phillip Smalls, and the most recent victim, Benjamin Tomlin. In fact, when Kelly first looked at Gray’s screen, he thought for a moment the photographs were from their case files. The close-up showed the flesh near the web of the hand and the X cut into it.

"That's not one of ours, is it?" Kelly asked.

"No, and that's the real reason I'm here."

Kelly was quiet for a moment as he processed Gray’s words. "So, you have been working cases where you’ve seen this before? Where you've come across this X pattern in other victims? Are we looking at a serial here?"

Gray let out a shallow exhale. "It's not an X."

"What do you mean it's not an X? I'm looking at it. It's an X." Kelly was suddenly tense.

"It's a cross.”

Gray hit a button and the image on the screen shifted, rotating ninety degrees to the right.

Kelly was immediately kicking himself for not seeing it earlier. How long had he stared at the wound on his partner’s hand? How many times had he sought its meaning? Once the image had been rotated, it became readily apparent that one of the lines was a fraction longer than the others, and when turned to its current position, it clearly showed a cross.

X, cross, a mark is a mark, right? Kelly sought, to no avail, to absolve himself for his shortsightedness. "What's the significance of the cross?"

"We're clear on the fact that everything I say stays here, correct?" Gray asked.

"Of course." In Kelly's past experiences with his department’s upper echelon and the recent cover-up he had tried to expose, his circle of trust was extremely small, and currently limited to the members of his immediate team. "You can trust me."

"I got that feeling about you," Gray said.

"I'm guessing its meaning is something significant?"

"We've been hunting this person for a long time."

"You know who he is? You’ve got a line on our killer and you waited until now to let us in on it?" Kelly asked, leaning toward frustration.

"Well, yes and no," Gray said flatly. "BAU has done an extensive workup on our guy. He's been busy, not just here in Boston but around the northeast and across the country."

"So we are dealing with a serial killer?"

"Yes and no."

"You keep saying that. I’m hoping you plan on getting around to filling me in."

"Well, to answer your first question…Yes, we do know who he is. But not in the way you’re thinking.”

“Do you always speak in riddles?”

Gray gave a wire-thin smile. “The more definitive answer is we know the type of person he is. BAU has done an extensive workup based on the findings we've accumulated over the years."

Kelly knew the reputation of the FBI's prestigious Behavioral Analysis Unit, made famous in recent years by the TV show Criminal Minds, Hollywood’s representation of the unit. Their true capabilities were far different from the