Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [58]
“Nope,” said Detective Butts.
Nelson stared at him.
“Detective Butts is the primary on this case,” Morton said, “since the first vic turned up in his precinct. I’ll be overseeing the investigation from here, but for day-to-day details go to him.”
Detective Butts shifted in his chair, a look of satisfaction on his broad, pockmarked face.
“Mmm,” Nelson said, placing the photos on Chuck’s desk. “What do we know about the victims?”
“The first one we know for sure was his was Marie Kelleher,” Butts replied with a glance at Lee. “A sophomore at Fordham. Nice Catholic girl, religion major, steady boyfriend, no known enemies.”
“Yeah, right,” Nelson muttered. He looked down at the stack of photographs. “What about this girl?”
Detective Florette held up the crime scene report. “Annie O’Donnell, twenty-one years old, a senior at Brooklyn College, philosophy major. Ditto with the nice Catholic girl. Boyfriend—not so steady, but seems like a nice kid.”
“So he goes for nice girls,” Nelson remarked, staring out of the grimy windows at the gray February sky. “If this Jane Doe Number Five—”
“Pamela,” Lee said.
“Right. If she’s his too, she’s probably a nice girl as well.”
“Okay,” said Morton to Lee. “What can you tell us so far?”
“Well, first of all,” Lee said, “these fantasies have been in place for a long time—way before he committed his first murder.”
Detective Butts stared at him. “So now you’re a mind reader?”
“Okay, Detective, that’s enough,” Chuck snapped. He turned to Lee. “How do you know that?”
“In part because it’s usually true of serial killers, but here in particular the crime is very specific, very ritualized. There’s been a lot of forethought and planning—it’s not in any way an impulse killing.” He glanced over at Nelson, who nodded his approval.
“Okay,” said Morton. “What else?”
“He’s likely to have a history of arson, abuse of animals, maybe a few arrests for Peeping Tom type activities—maybe even stalking. On the other hand, he may have no criminal record at all.”
“That’s not much of a help,” Butts muttered.
“We can infer a lot from the way he leaves the victims. He displays them in a very specific way—”
“No kiddin’,” Butts muttered under his breath.
“—but it’s not for us.”
“Really?” Florette said. “Then who is it for?”
“If we knew that we’d have him,” Nelson grumbled.
“He’s motivated by rage,” Lee said, “but it’s directed at God as much as at women. He defiles these women before God, so he’s taunting God as much as he’s taunting us.”
Butts leaned forward in his chair, which creaked on its ancient hinges. It was an old-fashioned office chair on rollers, the kind of heavy oak furniture common in the 1930s. Chuck’s desk sergeant had brought it into the office to accommodate the extra people. “What about hair, fiber, prints on the second girl?” he asked.
Morton shook his head. “Nothing.”
“But she put up a fight this time,” Florette pointed out.
“Not only that, but he brought her to the church conscious this time—last time he just used one as a dump site,” Butts added.
Chuck picked up the glass paperweight on his desk and tossed it lightly from one hand to the other. “We’re pretty sure he’s wearing gloves.”
Lee frowned. “Lack of forensic evidence means he’s knowledgeable in the field of criminal investigation.”
“Right,” Nelson agreed, leaning against the dirty radiator, which hissed at him in protest. “Probably reads detective magazines. Maybe even has fantasies of being a cop. You might look through your files to see who’s applied but been rejected in the last few years.”
Morton groaned. “That could take forever. Do you realize how many inquiries we have in a given year?”
“Hey, maybe he is a cop,” Butts suggested. When the rest of them stared at him, he said, “Look, I just don’t think we should entirely eliminate the possibility. Some of those guys are pretty weird, lemme tell you.”
“Detective Butts has a point,” Lee said. “The worst thing we can do right now is to close off any options.”
“What I don’t get,” Florette said, “is why there’s no sign of sexual molestation.