“Good,” Gregor said. “What about Aileen Wournos?”
“I remember her,” John said. “Serial killer in Florida. The first female serial killer. Prostitute who killed her Johns, I think. Or guys who tried to pick her up. Whatever does this have to do with what we’re doing?”
“The thing is,” Gregor said, “it was all about sex: Myra Hinckley, Jeffrey Dahmer. It was all about sex.”
“I can’t believe this,” John said. “We’ve got at least three people on the run, if I’m to believe your friend about Dennis Ledeski, every single one of them suspects in a serial murder case, and you’re telling me about sex?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that there’s been no sex with this thing?” Gregor asked. “Serial killers are mind-numbingly unoriginal. They rape and then kill, or they kill and then rape. The murder is a response to the sex or a cause for the sex. The sex is the point. And here we are, and there is no sex.”
“Personally,” Rob said, “I think he’s trying to kill his mother. It would fit, don’t you think? They’re all about that age. Well, most of them. Conchita Estevez was younger. Oh, and Rondelle Johnson.”
“And besides,” John said, “what can you possibly make out of a motive for anything else in this thing? Did any of these women have any money? I can’t remember that any of them did. Maids. Secretaries. Retail store clerks. Book-keepers. These were not a well-heeled bunch. The only person in this case so far with money, real money, is Henry Tyder, and nobody is killing him. Or, at least, I hope they’re not. Oh, Christ, that’s all we’d need.”
The phone on John’s desk rang again. He picked it up and immediately stopped shouting. Gregor shot Rob a look, and Rob shrugged.
“He’s a little exercised,” Rob said. “You can hardly blame him.”
“I don’t blame him,” Gregor said. “I find this sort of behavior a little dys-functional as a management style, but it seems to work for him.”
“The thing is,” Rob said, “I thought you said that this wasn’t a murder case. That all the murders weren’t connected. Or something like that.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “That’s true. If you go by the assumption that all these murders are the work of the same person or persons, you’re dead in the water, because they’re not. For instance, Dennis Ledeski killed Elyse Martineau, but not any of the others.”
John was just putting down his phone. “What?” he said. “What did you say?”
“Dennis Ledeski killed Elyse Martineau,” Gregor repeated. “I can almost guarantee it. And he didn’t kill any of the others because if Dennis Ledeski ever took to serial murder, it would be serial murder with lots of sex in it, and it would probably be serial murders of young boys. So he’s not a serial murderer; but he killed Elyse Martineau because she was his secretary, and she was on to his hobbies.”
“Oh, the pedophiliac,” Rob said.
“You haven’t even met Dennis Ledeski,” John said. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“Well, I could be wrong,” Gregor said, “but you can check that out. And I’m not. Wrong, I mean. It must have been Marty and Cord who investigated Ledeski, though, because if Ledeski had child porn on his computers somewhere, any competent first-year detective should have been able to find it, and they didn’t. My guess is that Ledeski was flabbergasted that he got away with it, and he figured he wasn’t going to get away with it much longer. So he bolted, and now he’s out there, too, doing God only knows what. I do think that if you impound all those computers, though, you’ll find what you’re looking for. Whether you’ll convict him of the murder of Martineau depends on just how stupid he is, and right now I have no way of judging that.”
“It’s all right,” John said, taking a deep breath. “We do have bulletins out for him. And for Bennie Durban. And for Henry Tyder. Maybe I could just declare martial law and get it over with.”
“It matters that there is no sex in this, John. It matters very much. Serial killers are not cartoon monsters. They’re not even Hannibal Lecter. They’re sexual obsessives. Or at least the men are. With the exception of Wournos, as far as I know, women are only sexually obsessed serial killers when they kill in partnership with a man. Hinckley and Brady abducted young girls, raped and tortured them while videotaping the process, then used the videotapes as porn when they had sex with each other. Hrmolka and West did the same, although I don’t remember if there were tapes. The sex matters, John. It really does.”