Dodds thought about it. “You’ve got the same problem with him knowing that Kristen was mutilated. Lucky guess? Maybe. The scenes weren’t exactly the same. The two female nursing students’ clothes weren’t neatly folded, like with Smith and Gruber. Their purses and wallets were still there. Their panties were gone. Unlike Gruber, he took the handcuffs off the bodies.”
Will leaned against another gravestone. It was as tall as he was and green with moss. He tried to choreograph it. “So the killer is watching the three of them get it on…”
“How come I didn’t have a college life like that?” Dodds complained.
“I hear you, but stick with me. They’re screwing and making out. It’s arousing the killer, enraging him. One of the girls said she thought someone was watching. At some point, when they’re mellow from the Ecstasy, he comes behind Noah and hits him with something, knocks him out. He threatens the girls with the knife.”
“Why don’t they try to outrun him?”
“Maybe they’re worried about Noah. Maybe he’s got a gun, too. But they submit. They’re scared. They want to live. Happens all the time in rape cases. ‘I’m only going to rape you. So if you want to live, go along with me.’ Or, ‘go along or I’ll kill your friend.’ So they do, until it becomes clear he’s a killer and the one girl makes a break for it, he runs her down and stabs her. It’s also pretty isolated up there where these killings took place. So that would add to their terror. Anyway, either the girl trying to escape or even something else, like car headlights or somebody walking nearby, threw off his timetable for arranging things.”
“Why did he take the handcuffs?”
Will thought about it and had no good answer. “We’ll have to ask him.”
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little criminal minds.” Dodds shrugged. “So keep going. Argue me out of the logical conclusion.”
“It’s more than one person, a gang, claiming to be a single serial killer.”
“Could be,” Dodds said. “That would explain how a trained police officer was overpowered and how the three students were successfully attacked up at Miami. It would make it more likely that one would turn on the other.” He sighed. “But my golden gut says it’s one guy. Strong as hell, too. Try again.”
“Smith killed himself,” Will said. “He killed Kristen. Oxford already liked him for the murder of the nursing students. He was driven crazy by remorse, so decides to off himself.”
“Cold-blooded, man,” Dodds said, admiringly. “But when you think about it: you’ve cut your own dick off, so what do you have to live for? Case closed. But you’d have to be one disciplined dude to pull it off. I couldn’t cut my own dick off if I’d killed everybody above the rank of sergeant, and don’t think I haven’t thought more than once about doing it.”
“The problem is no knife,” Will said. “And no confessing suicide note.” He limped over to the clothes: blue jeans and a cotton short-sleeve shirt, and examined them. “His wallet and keys and underwear are gone. Trophies. I think the guy who wrote the note is the real deal.” He returned to his trusty headstone and again rested against it. “I think he’s the one who stuck the key in the door at Kristen’s condo the other night. Fuck, we were that close!”
The sunlight gleamed off Dodds’ immaculately shaved dark-brown head. He indicated blood spatter with a gloved finger. One long strand of dark red reached under the angel’s wing. “It happened here. The vic wasn’t killed elsewhere.”
Will took it in and agreed. Birdsong and wind through the trees were the only sounds. They had caught a break: All the media were covering Kristen’s funeral.
“How’d he overpower a well-built young man?” Will asked.
Dodds stood, the three medals of valor on his dress uniform jangling. “I would have carried a gun. Ordered him to disrobe, get on the ground, and handcuff himself. Maybe I’d make him think I only wanted to scare him or suck his dick, whatever. Then get out my blade and take care of business.”
“Okay, so you’re the vic. Why wouldn’t you run if you knew you were going to die anyway? Why would you handcuff yourself and take away your last chance to escape or fight?”
“Nobody knows how they’re going to react on the business end of a gun,” Dodds said. “Anyway, look.” He leaned back and yelled for the sergeant. “Did you folks make this?”
“No, detective.” She was huffy about it.
The grass was pulled up a few feet from the body, with fresh dirt exposed. Next to it were indentations on the grass.
“Maybe he did try to fight.”
“Quiet part of a quiet cemetery,” Will said, halfway to himself. “A fight or calls for help wouldn’t be heard. Killer could have gagged him at first. Actually, you can probably get a lot of noise from the trains at Queensgate Yard, especially in the middle of the night. Maybe you can build on the respectful relationship you’ve started with the sergeant and get some unis canvassing the houses across on Winton Road, see if anybody heard anything. We should talk to the groundskeepers, see what kind of security they have here. Looks like a place where anybody can jump the wall and be easily hidden.”
“Smell that?” Will said.
“Bleach.” Dodds pointed to the gore of Smith’s groin. “He poured it down there.”
“Exactly like with Gruber,” Will said. “When I first heard about that I thought the killer might have thought he would mess up the DNA analysis, that he had left semen inside her. But this tells me…”
Dodds completed his thought: “He did it to torture them. Let it burn in the wounds as they died.”
They looked over the scene silently for several minutes.
“This guy’s got balls,” Dodds said. “The killer, I mean, not the vic. He does this guy in public, in one of the most prominent landmarks in the city. If his note is accurate, he set out to kill three healthy young people in one shot. Thinks he’s the god of murder.”
“Those are the ones I like to take down,” Will said. “I’d love to know where the lawyer was over the past twelve hours.”
“You think this Kenneth Buchanan is really the one?”
“I don’t know,” Will said. “He had a connection to Kristen. A motive, too, if he was jealous of her other lovers. A crime of passion, however twisted. But maybe the asshole is really a psychopath? So he kills the girls up at Oxford for the fun of it and then has this guy for dessert.”
Will drifted into thinking again about John, about his stepson’s visit earlier in the week, and about the shoeprint found on Kristen’s boat.
Dodds said, “You don’t like his ass because he reminds you of Cindy’s new husband. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to send a lawyer to the express lane at death row. But we’re going to need more before command will let us lean on him.”
“We can still ViCAP his ass,” Will said, referring to the FBI’s colossal Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database. “He came here with his wife from Atlanta. It will be interesting to see if they have some unsolved homicides with this kind of mutilation.”
Five days, four victims. Will said, “Now we know they were all tied together, but we still don’t know how or why he chose them. Kristen’s a cop on national television. The two vics at Miami were nobodies. Same with this guy. Not only did they have different hair colors and body types, they were different genders. Did you know Cheryl Beth was one of the instructors of those dead students? And Smith asked her to come out and talk to him at the Butler County jail?”
“No shit?” Dodds’ back was to him, as he closely examined the body. “So how was your date?”
“It was nice.”
“How many positions? What does she look like naked? Tell an old married man everything so I can live vicariously.”