So the question was, would Bill show his predatory nature in the context of me showing him the whys and wherefores of legal research?
Answer: yes. He listened and he learned, with a vengeance. Nothing escaped him. I saw him observing me as well as the law books and cases. He was the student, but I was the subject rather than the teacher.
Of course, being focused and judgmental did not mean that Bill was a killer, but then again, if he hadn’t been able to be so focused he certainly could not have been guilty of anything. If he’d been dumber or more scattered, he’d have to have been innocent.
Now I sat down next to him, mere inches away.
And I admit that, all the time we chatted, I kept looking at those ham hands of his, I kept imagining the sensations they had experienced. Those thick, stubby fingers had crushed throat cartilage, burst veins, torn flesh. They had killed grown women and they had killed a baby. What had that felt like? What was it comparable to? You know how people always say any mystery meat—from rattlesnake to dog—tastes like chicken? Well then, what does strangling someone with your bare hands equate to for those of us who haven’t taken that dark path?
I cannot even imagine, I don’t even like forming hamburger patties.
However, I do have to say that as I sat with Bill, I had the odd sensation of talking to him and being outside myself watching myself talk to him at the same time. I was trying not to be tricked into his world—I was there to manipulate him, and not vice versa—and yet I realized later that my paranoia and focus split me in a way not unlike the way Bill sees the world. I personally had no incentive to violence, but at that moment the world had become a different place for me simply because I was now looking at it differently than before. I was now in Bill’s world after all. The serial killer exists on multiple planes of consciousness and focus that require utter vigilance and complete emotional detachment at the same time. Killing results from a singular release/burst of pain, confusion, and concomitant rage that suddenly floods through this intricate, geometric, high-rise reality, not unlike orgasm I am afraid to say. And that is as close as I can get to seeing that murder could get you hard.
“Bill,” I said after we’d been talking for a while and he was starting to get anxious, seeing the clock winding down and knowing that our visit would soon end and his trip to Death Row would not be far behind, “let’s be real. Let’s say we get your convictions thrown out on appeal because it was prejudicial to try all these cases together. Then you get retried on the strongest case. So you get convicted of that last murder, Eleanor Casares.”
“And Cheryl Coker, too,” he said.
“Really?”
“I’m not saying I did it, I’m just saying the evidence—the evidence the police planted—is strongest in those two cases.”
“I see.” I wracked my brain to see what was most damning about Coker—both Casares and Coker were breast-removal cases—and then I realized what had Bill so concerned: Coker was the case where a condom had been found nearby. The DNA match to the semen in the condom was no big deal, it matched Bill but it was a low-percentage match. That is, it didn’t eliminate him, but it did include about a few million other people in the immediate vicinity, like most white males. So why was Bill concerned about it?
Because leaving the condom there had been a mistake. He’d been so careful in all the other killings, but this time he’d left behind actual evidence. Out of haste or neglect or arrogance, that condom had gotten knocked out of the back of his van when he was carting out the body to toss her and pose her atop the pile of branch clippings in a dumpster bay.
Bill had fucked up, and that made him feel out of control, and that made him feel guilty. Not guilty of murder, guilty of screwing up “perfect” murder.
Maybe this was one of the only times he’d actually even come during a killing rather than later. Maybe he’d lost his bearings and then lost the condom because the whole sexual experience with Coker had been so WOW! Certainly something had happened to take his mind off his meticulous post-homicide rituals during which he carefully stowed condoms, garrote, bonds, knife, and the other tools and trophies of his trade.
I eyed Bill—he was far away, no doubt back at the murder scene.
“The condom, Bill?” I suggested.
“Never use them. Can’t come in them,” he stated emotionlessly.
Right. So it was the condom that had him spooked. I decided to play along but press any other button I could find. “Maybe the right breast being cut off then, think that damns you somehow?”
“I’ve been thinking about that since you asked before. You know, there is the myth of the Amazon Women—maybe that’s what it’s all about.”
“Yes?”
“An Amazon Woman would cut off her own right breast so it wouldn’t get in the way of her using her bow and arrow.”
Of course, how silly of me not to have thought of that before. “So we’ve got a killer into mythology? What’s his point, cut off their breasts because that makes them seem like Amazons and then he’s a bigger deal for having brought them down? Or is it just his way of saying that, no matter what they are, he’s bigger and badder and he can hurt them anytime he chooses? And why cut some but not others?”
“I have no idea,” said Bill Suff, but he was fidgeting and fidget-ing and fidgeting, nervous as a cat.
“All right, let’s talk about Casares,” I said.
The Casares case was the one where tire tracks at the orange grove murder scene matched all four of Bill’s mismatched tires. This was the case where Bill admitted to the cops that he’d been at the scene and seen the body, but she was already dead. His story was that he’d stopped to pick fruit late at night, saw the body, and panicked because he rightly surmised that everyone would think that he—convicted baby killer—must have been involved. The problem with his story was that he had taken home Eleanor Casares’ clothes and then laundered them, and even Bill Suff couldn’t really explain why he would have done that.
The naked body had been discovered with a coat draped over its head and face. According to Bill, her clothes were piled along-side her, and he just grabbed up the pile and fled.
None of this nonsensical story was admissible at trial, as previously noted, because the cops ignored Bill when he begged for a lawyer before he answered any questions. He now says he was so tired and scared by the cops, he would have said anything. But he still can’t explain why he took home Eleanor Casares’ clothes. Maybe he just thought she didn’t need them anymore, so why let them go to waste.
“I’ve read your own defense investigator’s report on this, Bill,” I said, “and even though Tricia Barnaby’s a big ally of yours and thinks you got a raw deal by the illegal way you were arrested and then tried, she’s got a real problem with your story about seeing Casares’ body in the orange grove.”
“I admit I was there. And I admit I saw it.”
“The problem is, Tricia showed you photos of Casares in life, and you said they didn’t look like her.”
“I couldn’t really tell if they were her or not.”
“Yeah, but when you saw her in the orange grove—the only time you ever saw her, according to you—her face was covered up by a coat. So how do you know what she looked like?”
Bill didn’t skip a beat. “It wasn’t Casares that Tricia showed me photos of—it was Kelly Hammond.”
Tricia Barnaby had showed Bill photos of every victim, and her reports were quite clear. She had specifically advised the defense lawyers about the “problem” with Bill’s identification of Casares because, up to that point, Tricia had almost convinced herself that Bill was innocent.
Bill and I stared at each other. He knew that I knew he had just lied to me.