Southern Lights: A Novel

Jack and Alexa walked into Joe McCarthy’s office at the same time, while Charlie waited outside. The DA looked happy to see them both. He was a good-looking man, of Irish origins, with a thick mane of white hair that was always a little too long. He said he’d had white hair since he was in college. It suited him. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a worn-out old tweed jacket and a cowboy shirt. He was known for wearing western gear, even at meetings with the mayor.

“Did you two talk on the way in?” the DA asked, looking at Jack, who shook his head. He didn’t want to steal the DA’s thunder and knew better than that.

“Do we have a new case?” Alexa asked with interest.

“Yeah, I figured we’d keep it out of the paper for another day, until we get everything nailed down,” he said as they sat down. “It’ll probably leak by this afternoon, and then all hell will break loose.”

“What kind of case?” Alexa’s face lit up as she asked him. “Not another shoplifter, I hope. I hate the holidays,” she said, looking disgusted. “I don’t know why they don’t just give them the stuff and forget it. It costs the taxpayers a hell of a lot more than it’s worth to prosecute.”

“I think we’ll be putting the taxpayers’ money to good use on this one. Rape and murder one. Times four.” Joe McCarthy smiled at Jack as he said it.

“Times four?” Alexa looked intrigued.

“Serial killer. Young women. We had a tip. It didn’t seem like a good lead at first, and then bodies started showing up, and the info we had started making sense. There’s been a small task force following him from state to state for the last six months, but they could never catch him at it. All we had were victims and no way to link them to him. The snitch tipped us, from prison, but there was no evidence to support the tip for over a year. I guess our guy pissed someone off before he left the joint, so they gave us a call. The guy is very cool. We had nothing solid on him till last week, and now we’ve got him on two murders almost for sure, and probably two more. We’re going to try and make all four stick. That’s your job,” he said to both Jack and Alexa, as they listened with interest. And then he mentioned that Charlie McAvoy, the kid outside, was on the task force that had been following him around. He said the suspect crossed state lines, so the FBI got into it, but Jack and Charlie had made the collar last night. “All four victims are in New York, so the case is ours,” he explained.

“What’s his name?” Alexa asked him. “Have we seen him before?” She never forgot a face or a name, not so far.

“Luke Quentin. He got out of Attica prison two years ago. He pulled some robberies upstate. We’ve never had him in our court or on anything like this before. Apparently he told someone in Attica that he likes snuff films and watching women die during sex and wanted to give it a try when he got out. He’s a pretty scary guy.” He smiled at Alexa then. “He’s your boy.” Alexa’s eyes opened wide, and she smiled. She thrived on hard cases, and putting away the people who deserved to be segregated from society forever. But she’d never had one as bad as this. Four charges of rape and murder one was a major case.

“Thank you, Joe.” She knew that it was a tribute to her that he had given her the case.

“You deserve it. You’re good at what you do. You’ve never let me down. We’re going to get a lot of press on this one. We have to mind our p’s and q’s. We don’t want the guy getting a mistrial because we fucked up. The task force is working to collect data from the other states he’s been in. If he’s who we think he is, he’s been on a killing spree for the past two years. His MO is always pretty much the same. First his victims vanish into thin air. Then we find the bodies but have no way to link them to him. We found two of them last week, and we got lucky. McAvoy got into his hotel room and got some dirt off his boots from the carpet. There was dried blood in it, and we’re waiting for a final DNA match. It’s a start. We had two other victims murdered in exactly the same way. Raped and strangled during sex. We found both of them in the East River, and two hairs off his carpet that match. That gives us four victims. Anyway, you two are going to have your hands full. I’m putting Jack in charge of the investigation, and you’ve got the case,” he said, looking at Alexa. “Arraignment is at four o’clock.”

“We’d better get busy,” Alexa said, looking anxious. She was itching to bolt out of the office and start reading about the case. She wanted to be sure just how much they could charge him with that day, although they could always add more charges later on, as they got more information, more matches from forensic, and if more bodies turned up when they started checking unsolved crimes. All she wanted now was to put Luke Quentin away. This was what the taxpayers paid her to do. And she loved her job.