“What kind of items?”
“Things that I believe he took from his victims. A key ring, a couple of driver’s licenses. A belt buckle. Personal items that represent souvenirs of his kills. Several of the remains found in the field had bits of masking tape clinging to the clothes. We found tape in the trunk in the Keeler attic, and I’d bet my next promotion it will match the tape we found on the victims. Plus rope, a shovel. Everything one might need to tie up and bury a-”
“God, I just can’t believe it.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “He brought me roses… he swore he had nothing to do with this.”
“I doubt he’d be confessing right about now. And maybe he was looking for an ally. Maybe he figured you for a supporter.”
“You met him, you talked to him. You really think he’s capable of these terrible murders?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is the evidence that was found in his house.”
“Stop talking like a textbook and tell me what your gut says,” she shot back. “Isn’t that what you always ask T.J.? ‘What does your gut say?’ ”
Mitch was silent for a moment, then replied, “My gut never talked to me quite the way T.J.’s talks to him. But for the record, between you and me, going only on my personal impression of the man, I never would have pegged Fritz Keeler for this.”
Lorna hung up the phone and paced, trying to sort it all out. She was out of her league and she knew it. Finding such evidence in the Keeler home was pretty conclusive, and yet she couldn’t reconcile what she knew of Fritz with a ruthless killer.
Though, what had she known of Fritz? Did she really know him at all?
All she knew at the moment was that she probably wouldn’t have made a good cop. How did one keep one’s personal feelings from influencing an investigation? She didn’t know if she ever could.
She called T.J. and left a message on his voice mail, and then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she called Regan and left a message for her as well. She tried to work for a while but was too distracted. She wondered if Fritz had a lawyer, wondered if the search of his house was legal. She’d seen something on TV once about a search that had been declared unlawful because the police had looked inside dresser drawers to find evidence, and the owner of the property had testified that he had given permission for the cops to “look around,” which the judge had deemed to mean items that were in plain sight. Maybe a lawyer would know.
Then again, if Fritz was in fact a killer, why would she want to help him?
Her cell phone rang and she jumped on it. She looked at the call number.
“T.J.,” she said, relieved.
“Hey, are you all right? Your message sounded a bit jumbled. Want to run through all this for me again?”
She did.
“Does it sound right to you?” she asked after she’d related the events of the entire afternoon. “Did you think it was Fritz?”
“Well, like Mitch said, you have to look at the evidence,” he said carefully. “But no. I didn’t have that feeling about him. On the surface, he does seem to fit the…”
When he paused, Lorna said, “You can say it, T.J. He seems to fit the profile.”
“I hate to fall back on that. Profiles can be misleading. You can get way too wrapped up in all that; you can miss other key information if you let yourself believe too much in your own fiction.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that profiling isn’t an exact science, but a lot of people think it is. A profile is only as good as the person compiling it, and it’s not something that’s written on stone tablets. At best, it’s a guide. At worst, it can blind you to the truth.”
“If you were to work up a profile on this killer, would you have come up with Fritz?”
He fell silent for a long moment.
“Maybe not.” He thought for another few seconds. “Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I felt all along that the killer was obsessed with hiding, not just hiding his crimes, but hiding who and what he really is.” He paused, then added, “If I were to guess, I think the killer picked up these boys, had sex with them, and then killed them. I think he’s been repressing his homosexuality for a long time.”
“Refusing to admit even to himself that he’s gay.”
“Exactly. I think the killer is someone who fought long and hard against his feelings, and when he finally gave in to what he wanted, he had to get rid of the evidence. He killed his partners.”
“Like a black widow.”
“Sort of. But he wants to keep them close to him, he doesn’t want to part with them. So he keeps something of them, then buries them someplace nearby. It’s enough for him to know that his victims are right there, right down the road.”
“If your theory is right, then Fritz can’t be the killer. Fritz hasn’t repressed the fact that he’s gay. He’s kept it under wraps here at home, in deference to his family’s wishes, but he doesn’t deny it and he’s had a relationship with the same man for many years. Does that sound like someone who’s repressed enough to behave the way you just described?”
“No,” T.J. admitted. “When did Fritz discuss this with you?”
“Earlier today. After Mitch questioned him. He brought me some roses from his garden.” She bit her bottom lip, thinking, then said, “You don’t think he made that up to throw me off, do you?”
“Not unless he thinks like a cop. And he might. Someone who kills over a long period of time has learned how to be cagey. Manipulative. Perhaps he’s good at it. There’s always the possibility that Fritz is actually a really good manipulator.”
She sighed heavily. “Maybe so. Maybe I just don’t know him at all.”
“Look, I’m a little tied up right now, but as soon as I can break free, I’ll head on up there and you and I can talk this through. I’ll see you in a while.”
Lorna hung up and tried to go back to work, but it was futile. Something was nagging at the back of her brain, and she couldn’t keep her mind on the numbers until she remembered what it was. It had to do with her brother. And the reason why he left home as soon as he could, and never came back.
She logged off her computer and went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and went out the back door. Her mother always said she did some of her best thinking while she was weeding. Lorna figured it was worth a try. Besides, if she was going to scatter the last of her mother’s ashes in the garden, as she’d promised, it had better be cleaned up a bit.
She found her gardening gloves on the ground near the gate, where she’d dropped them a few days earlier. She pulled them on and started to work on the nearest of the beds. She weeded through the lilies and around the herbs, all the while trying to put her finger on whatever it was that had been eluding her.