Kay Scarpet - Postmortem Part 25

He stared thoughtfully at the window. "To get lawyerly with you, Kay."

His eyes drifted toward me, his face grim. "I propose you be very careful. But I strongly advise you not to get so caught up in this that you let it distract you from the investigation. Dirty politics, or the fear of them, can be unsettling to the point you can make mistakes sparing your antagonists the trouble of manufacturing them."

The mislabeled slides flashed in my mind. My stomach knotted.

He added, "It's like people on a sinking s.h.i.+p. They can become savage. Every man for himself. You don't want to be in the way. You don't want to put yourself in a vulnerable position when people are panicking. And people in Richmond are panicking."

"Certain people are," I agreed.

"Understandably. Lori Petersen's death was preventable. The police made an unforgivable error when they didn't give her 911 call a high priority. The killer hasn't been caught. Women are continuing to die. The public is blaming the city officials, who in turn have to find someone else to blame. It's the nature of the beast. If the police, the politicians, can pa.s.s the buck on down the line, they will."

"On down the line and right to my doorstep," I said bitterly, and I automatically thought of Cagney.

Would this have happened to him? I knew what the answer was, and I voiced it out loud. "I can't help but think I'm an easy mark because I'm a woman."

"You're a woman in a man's world," Fortosis replied. "You'll always be considered an easy mark until the ole boys discover you have teeth. And you do have teeth."

He smiled. "Make sure they know it."

"How?"

He asked, "Is there anyone in your office you trust implicitly?"

"My staff is very loyal a" He waved off the remark. "Trust, Kay. I mean trust with your life. Your computer a.n.a.lyst, for example?"

"Margaret's always been faithful," I replied hesitantly. "But trust with my life? I don't think so. I scarcely know her, not personally."

"My point is, your security - your best defense, if you want to think of it as such - would be to somehow determine who's been breaking into your computer. It may not be possible. But if there's a chance, then I suspect it would take someone who's sufficiently trained in computers to figure it out. A technological detective, someone you trust. I think it would be unwise to involve someone you scarcely know, someone who might talk."

"No one comes to mind," I told him. "And even if I found out, the news might be bad. If it is a reporter getting in, I don't see how finding that out will solve my problem."

"Maybe it wouldn't. But if it were I, I'd take the chance."

I wondered where he was pus.h.i.+ng me. I was getting the feeling he had his own suspicions.

"I'll keep all this in mind," he promised, "if and when I get calls about these cases, Kay. If someone pressures me, for example, about the news accounts escalating the killer's peaks, that sort of thing."

A pause. "I have no intention of being used. But I can't lie, either. The fact is, this killer's reaction to publicity, his MO, in other words, is a little unusual."

I just listened.

"Not all serial killers love to read about themselves, in truth. The public tends to believe the vast majority of people who commit sensational crimes want recognition, want to feel important. Like Hinckley. You shoot the President and you're an instant hero. An inadequate, poorly integrated person who can't keep a job and maintain a normal relations.h.i.+p with anyone is suddenly internationally known. These types are the exception, in my opinion. They are one extreme.

"The other extreme is your Lucases and Tooles. They do what they do and often don't even stick around in the city long enough to read about themselves. They don't want anybody to know. They hide the bodies and cover their tracks. They spend much of their time on the road, drifting from place to place, looking for their next targets along the way. It's my impression, based on a close examination of the Richmond killer's MO, that he's a blend of both extremes: He does it because it's a compulsion, and he absolutely doesn't want to be caught. But he also thrives on the attention, he wants everyone to know what he's done."

"This is what you told Amburgey?" I asked.

"I don't think it was quite this clear in my mind when I talked to him or anyone else last week. It took Henna Yarborough's murder to convince me."

"Because of Abby Turnbull."

"Yes."

"If she was the intended victim," I went on, "what better way to shock the city and make national news than to kill the prizewinning reporter who's been covering the stories."

"If Abby Turnbull was the intended victim, her selection strikes me as rather personal. The first four, it appears, were impersonal, stranger killings. The women were unknown to the a.s.sailant, he stalked them. They were targets of opportunity."

"The DNA test results will confirm whether it's the same man," I said, antic.i.p.ating where I a.s.sumed his thoughts were going. "But I'm sure of it. I don't for a minute believe Henna was murdered by somebody else, a different person who might have been after her sister."

Fortosis said, "Abby Turnbull is a celebrity. On the one hand, I asked myself, if she was the intended victim, does it fit that the killer would make a mistake and murder her sister instead? On the other, if the intended victim was Henna Yarborough, isn't the coincidence she's Abby's sister somewhat overwhelming?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"Of course. Nothing is certain. We can conjecture all our lives and never pin it down. Why this or why that? Motive, for example. Was he abused by his mother, was he molested, et cetera, et cetera? Is he paying back society, showing his contempt for the world? The longer I'm in this profession the more I believe the very thing most psychiatrists don't want to hear, which is that many of these people kill because they enjoy it."

"I reached that conclusion a long time ago," I angrily told him.

"I think the killer in Richmond is enjoying himself," he calmly continued. "He's very cunning, very deliberate. He rarely makes mistakes. We're not dealing with some mental misfit who has damage to his right frontal lobe. Nor is he psychotic, absolutely not. He is a psychopathic s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t who is above average in intelligence and able to function well enough in society to maintain an acceptable public persona. I think he's gainfully employed in Richmond. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if he's involved in an occupation, a hobby, that brings him in contact with distraught or injured people, or people he can easily control."

"What sort of occupation, exactly?" I asked uneasily.

"Could be just about anything. I'm willing to bet he's shrewd enough, competent enough, to do just about anything he likes."

"Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief," I heard Marino say.

I reminded Fortosis, "You've changed your mind. Originally you a.s.sumed he might have a criminal record or history of mental illness, maybe both. Someone who was just let out of a mental inst.i.tution or prison-"

He interrupted, "In light of these last two homicides, particularly if Abby Turnbull figures in, I don't think that at all. Psychotic offenders rarely, if ever, have the wherewithal to repeatedly elude the police. I'm of the opinion that the killer in Richmond is experienced, has probably been murdering for years in other places, and has escaped apprehension as successfully in the past as he's escaping it now."

"You're thinking he moves to a new place and kills for several months, then moves on?"

"Not necessarily," he replied. "He may be disciplined enough to move to a new place and get himself settled in his job. It's possible he can go for quite a while until he starts. When he starts, he can't stop. And with each new territory it's taking more to satisfy him. He's becoming increasingly daring, more out of control. He's taunting the police and enjoying making himself the major preoccupation of the city, that is, through the press and possibly through his victim selection."

"Abby," I muttered. "If he really was after her."

He nodded. "That was new, the most daring, reckless, thing he's done - if he set out to murder a highly visible police reporter. It would have been his greatest performance. There could be other components, ideas of reference, projection. Abby writes about him and he thinks he has something personal with her. He develops a relations.h.i.+p with her. His rage, his fantasies, focus on her."

"But he screwed up," I angrily retorted. "His so-called greatest performance and he completely screwed it up."

"Exactly. He may not have been familiar enough with Abby to know what she looks like, know that her sister moved in. with her last fall."

His eyes were steady as he added, "It's entirely possible he didn't know until he watched the news or read the papers that the woman he murdered wasn't Abby."

I was startled by the thought. It hadn't occurred to me.

"And this worries me considerably." He leaned back in the chair.

"What? He might come after her again?" I seriously doubted it.

"It worries me." He seemed to be thinking out loud now. "It didn't happen the way he planned. In his own mind, he made a fool of himself. This may only serve to make him more vicious."

"How violent does he have to be to qualify as *more vicious'?" I blurted out loudly. "You know what he did to Lori. And now Henna a"

The look on his face stopped me.

"I rang up Marino shortly before you got here, Kay."

Fortosis knew.

He knew Henna Yarborough's v.a.g.i.n.al swabs were negative.

The killer probably misfired. Most of the seminal fluid I collected was on the bedcovers and her legs. Or else the only instrument he successfully inserted was his knife. The sheets beneath her were stiff and dark with dried blood. Had he not strangled her, she probably would have bled to death.

We sat in oppressive silence with the terrible image of a person who could take pleasure in causing such horrendous pain to another human being.

When I looked at Fortosis his eyes were dull, his face drained. I think it was the first time I'd ever realized he was old beyond his years. He could hear, he could see what happened to Henna. He knew these things even more vividly than I. The room closed in on us.

We both got up at the same time.

I took the long way back to my car, veering across the campus instead of following the direct route of the narrow road leading to the parking deck. The Blue Ridge Mountains were a hazy frozen ocean in the distance, the dome of the rotunda bright white, and long fingers of shadow were spreading across the lawn. I could smell the scent of trees and gra.s.s still warm in the sun.

Knots of students drifted past, laughing and chatting and paying me no attention. As I walked beneath the spreading arms of a giant oak, my heart jumped into my throat at the sudden sound of running feet behind me. I abruptly spun around, and a young jogger met my startled gaze, his lips parting in surprise. He was a flash of red shorts and long brown legs as he cut across a sidewalk and was gone.

Chapter 13.

The next morning I was at the office by six. No one else was in, the phones up front still coded to roll over to the state switchboard.

While coffee was dripping, I stepped into Margaret's office. The computer in answer mode was still daring the perpetrator to try again. He hadn't.

It didn't make sense. Did he know we had discovered the break in after he tried to pull up Lori Petersen's case last week? Did he get spooked? Did he suspect nothing new was being entered? Or was there some other reason? I stared at the dark screen. Who are you? I wondered. What do you want from me? The ringing started again down the hall. Three rings and abrupt silence as the state operator intervened.

"He's very cunning, very deliberate a"

Fortosis didn't need to tell me that. , "We're not dealing with some mental misfit a"

I wasn't expecting him to be anything like us. But he could be.

Maybe he was.

"a able to function well enough in society to maintain an acceptable public persona a"

He might be competent enough to work in any profession. He might use a computer on his job or he might have one at home.

He would want to get inside my mind. He would want to get inside my mind as much as I wanted to get inside his. I was the only real link between him and his victims. I was the only living witness. When I examined the contusions, the fractured bones, and the deep tissue cuts, I alone realized the force, the savageness required to inflict the injuries. Ribs are flexible in young, healthy people. He broke Lori's ribs by smas.h.i.+ng his knees down on top of her rib cage with all of his weight. She was on her back then. He did this after he jerked the telephone cord out of the wall.

The fractures to her fingers were twist fractures, the bones violently wrenched out of joint. He gagged and tied her, then broke heir fingers one by one. He had no reason except to cause her excruciating pain and give her a taste of what was to come.

All the while, she was panicking for air. Panicking as the constricted blood flow ruptured vessels like small balloons and made her head feel as if it were going to explode. Then he forced himself inside her, into virtually every orifice.

The more she struggled, the more the electrical cord tightened around her neck until she blacked out for the last time and died.

I had reconstructed all of it. I had reconstructed what he did to all of them.

He was wondering what I knew. He was arrogant. He was paranoid.

Everything was in the computer, everything he did to Patty, to Brenda, to Cecile a The description of every injury, every shred of evidence we'd found, every laboratory test I'd instigated.

Was he reading the words I dictated? Was he reading my mind? My low-heeled shoes clicked sharply along the empty hallway as I ran back to my office. In a burst of frantic energy, I emptied the contents of my billfold until I found the business card, off white with the Times masthead in raised black Gothic print across the center. On the back was the ballpoint scribbling of an unsteady hand.

I dialed Abby Turnbull's pager number.

I scheduled the meeting for the afternoon because when I spoke to Abby her sister's body had not yet been released. I didn't want Abby inside the building until Henna was gone and in the care of the funeral home.

Abby was on time. Rose quietly showed her to my office and I just as quietly shut both doors.

She looked terrible. Her face was more deeply lined, her color almost gray. Her hair was loose and bushy over her shoulders, and she was dressed in a wrinkled white cotton blouse and khaki skirt. When she lit a cigarette, I noticed she was shaking. Somewhere deep within the emptiness of her eyes was a glint of grief, of rage.

I began by telling her what I told the loved ones of any of the victims whose cases I worked.

"The cause of your sister's death, Abby, was strangulation due to the ligature around her neck."

"How long?" She blew out a tremulous stream of smoke. "How long did she live after a after he got to her?"

"I can't tell you exactly. But the physical findings lead me to suspect her death was quick."

Not quick enough, I did not say. I found fibers inside Henna's mouth. She had been gagged. The monster wanted her alive for a while and he wanted her quiet. Based on the amount of blood loss, I'd cla.s.sified her cutting injuries as perimortem, meaning I could say with certainty only that they were afflicted around the time of death. She bled very little into surrounding tissues after the a.s.sault with the knife. She may already have been dead. She may have been unconscious.

More likely it was worse than that. I suspected the cord from the venetian blinds was jerked tight around her neck when she straightened her legs in a violent reflex to pain.

"She had petechial hemorrhages in the conjunctivae, and facial and neck skin," I said to Abby. "In other words, rupture of the small, superficial vessels of the eyes and face. This is caused by pressure, by cervical occlusion of the jugular veins due to the ligature around her neck."

"How long did she live?" she dully asked again.

"Minutes," I repeated.

That's as far as I intended to go. Abby seemed slightly relieved. She was seeking solace in the hope her sister's suffering was minimal. Someday, when the case was closed and Abby was stronger, she would know. G.o.d help her, she would know about the knife.

"That's all?" she asked shakily.

"That's all I can say now," I told her. "I'm sorry. I'm so terribly sorry about Henna."

She smoked for a while, taking nervous jerky drags as if she didn't know what to do with her hands. She was biting her lower lip, trying to keep it from trembling.