“Yes.”
“And you told Sullivan that you did not start requiring your book for your classes until the year after it was published-the following fall, right? Almost a year after you received the quotes and the sonnet?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“That means that, even though the killer had to have read your book in a context outside of the classroom, back then he still had to be a local-a student or otherwise-and familiar enough with the campus to be able to drop off the anonymous notes undetected. Just to be safe, Sullivan took into account your class rosters for the following two years as well-which, in theory, would give us the most practical cross section of male students from which to begin drawing a link to potential suspects. As your classes during this time frame were comprised only of majors and graduate students, and as you were teaching only two classes per semester, the actual pool of potential suspects who might have had direct contact with you is quite small. The fact that the vast majority of these students, both undergraduate and graduate, have been female, only whittles this number down even further.”
“Sam, please don’t tell me that this psychopath actually sat in front of me in one of my classes.”
“No, no,” said Markham with a raise of his hand. “But most likely someone who knew him did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Does the name Gabriel Banford mean anything to you, Cathy?”
“Gabriel Banford? Yes, of course, Gabe Banford. I remember Gabe. He was an undergraduate with us for a time-gosh, going back about seven or eight years now. I don’t really remember him other than his jet black hair and his clothes-a little bit more extreme than the usual Goths that sometimes litter the List Art Center. One of those lost soul types-bright from what I heard, but no direction. I had him briefly in class when he was a freshman but he ended up dropping out and transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design the following fall. His parents were not happy about it-that I do remember. Janet told me about it later-said they were trying to blame the department or something. I guess he had a lot of psychological issues, and later a drug problem from what I heard. I got all this secondhand, of course, from Janet. I hate to say this, but the only reason I remember him is because of what she told me happened to him afterward-after he dropped out of RISD and got involved with the wrong crowd.”
“So you know about how he died?”
“You’re going to have to forgive me, Sam, but all of this happened around the same time as my mother-was in a bit of a fog when Janet told me about it. But, if I remember correctly, it was a suicide, right? Drug overdose?”
“That was the official ruling, yes. But before we talk about that, let me back up a sec. You see, given the small number of male students in the initial suspect pool-a pool that Sullivan treated from the beginning as potentially comprised of direct and indirect suspects in terms of their relationship to you-it didn’t take her squad long to track down the whereabouts of your former students, most of whom are now living out of state. Serial killers, especially the types who hang on to their victims for an extended period of time, tend to almost always hunt their prey in a relatively small area in close proximity to their home. If we take into account the distances between the areas where Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick were abducted, the chance of the killer’s home lying beyond each area in either direction goes down exponentially the farther you travel out of state into Massachusetts and Connecticut. Understand?”
“Yes. Because the murders of Campbell and Wenick occurred in Westerly and Cranston -cities on almost opposite sides of Rhode Island.”
“As did the murder of the goat.”
“Of course. You said the goat was stolen from a farm in Burrillville, which is even farther away from Watch Hill-sort of up in the northwest corner of the state.”
“Right. So we have three murders from which we can begin to plot a possible location where The Michelangelo Killer might live. If we include the anonymous notes that you received five and a half years ago, that actually gives us a fourth location to which we can tie the killer. If we plot The Michelangelo Killer’s home in the middle of these four points, this would most likely place his home south of Providence-closer to Providence and Brown University if we work from the premise that serial killers of this resident type, the type of which The Michelangelo Killer undoubtedly is, most often first become active in areas closest to their homes-i.e., the notes.”
“You mean it’s like they get braver as time goes on? Sort of like an animal that ventures out for food farther and farther from his cave?”
“That’s exactly what I mean, yes. The need for food, if I may use your analogy, begins to overshadow the risk of getting it. Serial killers have a comfort zone from which they like to work just like anybody else. It’s why, as so often is the case, the farther away they get from their comfort zone the easier it is for us to catch them-why so often it’s their later murders that lead us to them. They start to slip up, get sloppy because oftentimes their need for victims clouds their fear of the risk involved, and thus it’s that very risk that ends up being their undoing.”
“But what does all this have to do with Gabe Banford?”
“Even though you claimed that none of your former students fit our psychological and, more important, physical profile of The Michelangelo Killer, following up on your class rosters, Gabe Banford immediately caught Sullivan’s attention because, of all your male students for the time frame we’re looking at, Banford was the only one who was deceased. This automatically ruled him out as a potential suspect. However, a closer examination of his case file opened up the possibility of him being a victim-perhaps The Michelangelo Killer’s first.”
“But how do you conclude that? His death was nothing like Campbell’s and Wenick’s.”
“The case file on Banford paints quite a sad picture of the boy-bright, from a moderately wealthy family in New York City, but psychologically disturbed, in counseling since he was eleven and distant from his parents. The classic example of what we at The Bureau like to call a PEP-child.”
“PEP?”
“Pill for every problem-a kid of the Adderall-Ritalin generation. Throw in some Paxil and Zoloft, and you get a good idea of the stew bubbling in Banford’s head. To make a long story short, yes, before dropping out of RISD Banford became involved with a group of disenfranchised intelligentsia types who were not only regulars at a gay club in downtown Providence called Series X, but who also dabbled in recreational drugs-marijuana and coke mostly, but sometimes they’d snort heroin and pop hallucinogens, too. The police report in Banford’s case file includes a number of statements from his friends claiming that, prior to his death, Banford’s heroin snorting was slowly evolving into a habit of the Trainspotting variety. And in addition to a monthly stipend from his parents and a string of part-time jobs from which he was fired, Banford’s friends told police that they suspected he had begun to support his budding needle habit by other means as well-if you take my meaning.”
“Gabe Banford?” Cathy said in disbelief.
“Yes. Banford’s friends stated to the police that Gabe would often hook up with older men at Series X with the understanding that he would be paid for his services. There was also an ambiguously worded posting on the Men Seeking Men board on Craigslist that the police were able to trace back to Banford when they looked into his computer.”