Postmortem(28)

Marino turned his flat, unfriendly eyes my way.

“Really? I’m curious. What do you mean by defense injuries? According to your report, she had plenty of bruises.”

“Good examples of defense injuries”—I met his gaze and held it—“are broken fingernails, scratches or injuries found in the areas of the hands and arms that would have been exposed had the victim attempted to ward off blows. Her injuries are inconsistent with this.”

Wesley summarized, “Then we’re all in agreement. He was more violent this time.”

“Brutal’s the word,” Marino quickly said as if this were his favorite point to make. “That’s what I’m talking about. Lori Petersen’s different from the other three.”

I suppressed my fury. The first three victims were tied up, raped and strangled. Wasn’t that brutal? Did they need to have their bones broken, too?

Wesley grimly predicted, “If there’s another one, there will be more pronounced signs of violence, of torture. He kills because it’s a compulsion, an attempt to fill some need. The more he does it the stronger this need becomes and the more frustrated he gets, therefore the stronger the urge will become. He’s becoming increasingly desensitized and it’s taking more with each killing to satiate him. The satiation is temporary. Over the subsequent days or weeks, the tension builds until he finds his next target, stalks her and does it again. The intervals between each killing may get shorter. He may escalate, finally, into a spree murderer, as Bundy did.”

I was thinking of the time frame. The first woman had been murdered on April 19, the second on May 10, the third on May 31. Lori Petersen was murdered a week later, on the seventh of June.

The rest of what Wesley said was fairly predictable. The killer was from a “dysfunctional home” and might have been abused, either physically or emotionally, by his mother. When he was with a victim, he was acting out his rage, which was inextricably connected to his lust.

He was above average in intelligence, an obsessive-compulsive, and very organized and meticulous. He might be prone to obsessive behavior patterns, phobias or rituals, such as neatness, cleanliness, his diet— anything that maintained his sense of controlling his environment.

He had a job, which is probably menial—a mechanic, a repairman, a construction worker or some other labor-related occupation . . .

I noticed Marino’s face getting redder by the moment. He was looking restlessly around the conference room.

“For him,” Wesley was saying, “the best part of what he does is the antecedent phase, the fantasy plan, the environmental cue that activates his fantasy. Where was the victim when he became aware of her?”

We did not know. She may not have known were she alive to tell. The interface may have been as tenuous and obscure as a shadow crossing her path. He caught a glimpse of her somewhere. It may have been at a shopping mall or perhaps while she was inside her car and stopped at a red light.

“What triggered him?” Wesley went on. “Why this particular woman?”

Again, we did not know. We knew only one thing. Each of the women was vulnerable because she lived alone. Or was thought to live alone as in Lori Petersen’s case.

“Sounds like your all-American Joe.” Marino’s acid remark stopped us cold.

Flicking an ash, he leaned aggressively forward. “Hey. This is all very good and nice. But me, I don’t intend to be no Dorothy going down no Yellow Brick Road. They don’t all lead to Emerald City, okay? We say he’s a plumber of something, right? Well, Ted Bundy was a law student, and a couple years back there’s this serial rapist in D.C. who turns out to be a dentist. Hell, the Green Valley strangler out there in the land of fruits and nuts could be a Boy Scout for all anybody knows.”

Marino was getting around to what was on his mind. I’d been waiting for him to start in.

“I mean, who’s to say he ain’t a student? Maybe even an actor, a creative type whose imagination’s gone apeshit. One lust murder don’t look much different from another no matter who’s committed it unless the squirrel’s into drinking blood or barbecuing people on spits—and this squirrel we’re dealing with ain’t a Lucas. The reason these brands of sex murders all profile pretty much the same, you want my opinion, is because, with few exceptions, people are people. Doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. People think and do pretty much the same damn things, going back to the days when cavemen dragged women off by their hair.”

Wesley was staring off. He slowly looked over at Marino and quietly asked, “What’s your point, Pete?”