“And you think these two cases are connected?” Cavallo asks.
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
She gives a noncommittal shrug. “Right here, it says the knife that killed Olivares was probably four inches long, and you just said the other one was seven inches.”
“That’s the thing,” he says. “This killer isn’t attached to a particular weapon. He seems to use a variety of blades. Personally, I think he brings one with him as a backup but always makes a point of looking for available alternatives at the scene. Let me keep going and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
He rattles off three cases from 2001-Kathy Ann Morrison, Tonya Stall, Mira Echeverría-before he gets to Amber Dawson from 2002, who was found in a ditch. He passes around a couple of crime scene photos. The young prostitute’s body, displayed on a coroner’s stainless autopsy table, is bloated from being in the water, her torso crosshatched with slashes.
“Those wounds could have easily been made by a Ka-Bar.”
“And they look nothing like what was done to Simone Walker,” I say.
“A killer’s profile can change over time. His technique evolves and develops.”
Next is a Jane Doe. Then a restaurant server. And then he gets to a familiar case, perking Cavallo up.
2004, Tegan McGill, age 29
Woodlands homemaker found in backyard swimming pool. Raped, stabbed, mutilated by kitchen knife, recovered at scene. Husband charged but found not guilty at trial. Alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
“But the husband did do it,” Cavallo says.
“You know that for a fact?”
“It’s common knowledge. The prosecution bungled the case, but that doesn’t make him any less guilty.”
“If you’d asked me six months ago, I would have said the same thing. Knowing what I know now, though, seeing the pattern here, the husband’s story makes a lot of sense. He left her by the pool and went upstairs to shower, and when he came back she was dead. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Unless you know there’s a killer with this exact MO and stalking his victims is how he gets off. Trust me, I’ve gone over the case file and this one fits like a glove.”
I suppress a sigh, but Lauterbach is undeterred. He opens the file on another prostitute, Janice Smith, summarizes the notes, then sets it aside for another vaguely familiar name.
2004, Dawn Nickerson, age 25
Houston paralegal found in bathtub, throat cut, similar circumstances to 2001 Tonya Stall homicide. Investigators theorized connection, but no suspect was charged. Mentally disturbed person confessed to both crimes after media coverage. Follow-up eliminated him from suspicion.
“It’s not me saying there’s a connection with Tonya Stall; it was the original HPD investigators. As a matter of fact, I have the documentation right here.” He thumbs through the nearest stack of reports, withdrawing a thin folder he’s marked in advance with a sticky note. Inside, a two-page report that I immediately recognize as one of my own. “You worked this case, didn’t you?”
The case was Ordway’s, but he had asked for help from Wilcox and me. While I was busy trying to dig up dirt on my bystander project, Wilcox came up with the connection to the 2001 case. Covering for my disengagement, he’d handed the find over to me. Write this up and it’ll look like you’re pulling some weight around here. So I’d knocked the report out and gotten on with my extracurricular work, forgetting all about the brutally murdered paralegal and the nurse from 2001. I feel a sickness radiating like heat through my chest. What had I told Wilcox this morning?
I cut some corners. I dropped the ball.
Clichés to hide behind. Both Lauterbach and Cavallo are looking at me, expecting some kind of response. I slide the report back without comment: “Keep talking.”
A cell phone company manager from 2005.
Another restaurant worker in 2007.
A third grade teacher for HISD in 2008.
“If Guzman’s your suspect,” I say, “he’s in the system. It was a DNA test that cleared him of killing Nicole Fauk. We have prints from the Walker scene, which don’t connect to him.”
“Those prints belong to the homeowner,” he says. “I’ve read the file, remember?”
“The homeowner is looking like a suspect.”
Lauterbach greets this news with a smile. “I don’t think a fifty-something English teacher is the person behind all this.”
“There’s not one person behind all this,” I say. “All these names, all these poor, dead women. Pile the paperwork up and I feel like we’ve been asleep on the job. And I’d love to be able to pin all this on some larger-than-life villain, so I can understand what’s motivating you right now. Problem is, you’re chasing the bogeyman. All this”-I sweep my hand over the spread of files-“it’s the work of many hands.”
“We shall see.” He folds the page in his hand over, examining the last entry. “We’re this far, so I might as well finish. .”
2009, Ramona Sanchez, age 30
Harris County fitness trainer, body discovered in swimming pool at private gym. Multiple stab wounds, mutilation, sexual assault. Several clients interviewed, no suspects. Weapon believed to be an 8” “survival knife” as in 2005 Mary Sallier slaying. Strong similarities to Simone Walker homicide investigation led by hpd Det. Roland March.
“Back in April,” he says, “I started off with the assumption that one of Ramona’s male clients did this to her. She had quite a few, and it wasn’t unusual for her to be at the gym after-hours. That hypothesis didn’t pan out, and when the ME came back with the description of the weapon, this time I immediately thought of Mary Sallier.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“The cell phone manager,” Cavallo says.
Lauterbach nods. “We went over the details a couple of times, me and Dr. Green, so when your case came up and it looked like a similar knife was used, she gave me a call.”
“Was this before or after Brad Templeton put your list of cases together for you?”
He glares. “You’re confusing things. I don’t make any apology for consulting Templeton. It’s not like you haven’t. When I first met him, I’d been working on Ramona Sanchez for months without getting very far. I suspected there was a serial killer, but I’m experienced enough to know that making that kind of claim before the facts are in can be risky. There are always small-minded people looking to cover themselves.” He turns to Cavallo, stabbing a thumb at me. “Case in point.”
“The problem,” I say, “is that Brad Templeton isn’t an expert on serial killers. He’s a writer with a nose for sensationalism. He’s also prone to hero worship, and I can see he’s moved me off the pedestal and put you on it. You talked about water being essential to the fantasy, but the real fantasy here is the one you and Brad have cooked up. You’re enabling each other.”
Cavallo pauses me with a half-raised hand. “But, March, there are some connections here.”
Et tu, Brute? When I told her I wanted an honest opinion, I never considered the possibility of her giving it while Lauterbach was on hand to smile and nod.
“If you gather enough material,” I say, speaking slowly, choosing my words, “and you look at it from enough perspectives, you’re inevitably going to find some commonality. You should know that, Cavallo. Remember that thing a few years back-the Bible Code? They put the text into a computer and discovered all these hidden messages by connecting the dots. The Bible predicted the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War, Adolf Hitler, pretty much everything. Only it turned out you can do the same thing with Dickens or whatever else you fed into the computer-probably even the phone book. You could find messages that really weren’t there.
“There’s no difference between that and this. If you strip a bunch of cases down to only the details that match, then hold them up side by side, they probably do look interrelated. But you could do the same thing with a hundred other cases, even if you had a hundred confessed murderers already behind bars. That’s what’s happening here. Donald Fauk confessed. He killed his wife. And all the similarities and parallels in the world don’t cancel that out. And besides, all of this, it forgets one thing.”