We met in Thorne’s office, all of us crammed around his desk on folding chairs.
Six of us were at the briefing: Ellen, Ralph, Radar, Lieutenant Thorne, me, and Detective Annise Corsica, a severe-looking woman in her forties with short, choppy hair, thin lips, and probing, astucious eyes. Annise had been on the force more than twenty years and, to put it mildly, had not been happy when I’d been promoted to homicide detective seven years earlier in my career than she’d been.
I’d seen her exhibit what I could only call incompetence on cases, and the amount of respect we shared for each other was mutual; however Thorne liked her and, apparently, she was on the case.
He kicked things off with introductions and then turned the floor over to Ralph. “I’ll let Agent Hawkins explain exactly why we’ve brought the FBI in on this. It has to do with more than Vincent and Colleen Hayes.”
That, I hadn’t heard. I directed my attention to Ralph.
“There are two bodies that’ve been found,” he said, “one in Champaign, Illinois, one in Ohio, near Cincinnati. We’ve been doing our best to keep it under the media’s radar-” He glanced at Brandon. “Why do they call you Radar, anyway?”
Thorne answered for him: “He zeroes in on people. Finds ’em. He’s got gut instincts like no one else.”
It was true. Radar did seem to have uncanny instincts, and that bugged me, not because I envied him, but because I don’t trust hunches, gut feelings, intuition. I trust facts and logic, and when Radar’s unfounded inferences led to results, it always confounded me.
“Gotcha,” Ralph said. “Anyway, we’ve been playing this close to the chest…trying to keep a few details from the public.” He looked around the room soberly. “Forensics has determined that the intestines of one of the victims and the lungs of the other, both women in their early twenties, were consumed. The killer doesn’t remove the organs all at once. Takes his time. Keeps the women alive while he does it.”
“How could you tell the lungs and intestines had been eaten?” Detective Corsica asked. “And not just, well…discarded?”
“He cooked ’em on the victims’ stoves. We found pieces on frying pans and on a fork, but no saliva. No DNA.”
No one said a word.
Without bite marks on the bodies, I imagined it would be hard to determine with certainty that the offender had exhibited anthropophagic behavior, but now, with our case’s connection to Dahmer-and the amputation of Colleen’s hands-the proximal timing and removal of body parts spoke to more than just coincidence, which I didn’t believe in anyway.
Before we could tell if the incidents were actually linked, we would need to do a comparative case analysis, or CCA. By studying the physical evidence, eyewitness reports, crime scene locations and characteristics of the victims, we could judge the likelihood that the crimes were committed by the same offender.
“We found a small soil sample at the scene of the homicide in Champaign,” Ellen explained. “The FBI Lab was able to use the NRCS’s soil data surveys to-”
“NRCS?” Corsica asked.
“National Resources Conservation Service. Part of the Department of Agriculture. They have soil sample data from every county in the U.S. Anyway, they matched the sample to southeastern Wisconsin. Two counties-Milwaukee or Waukesha.”
Nice. Maybe these guys were the real deal after all.
“That, however, was released to the media,” Ralph grumbled. Then he echoed what I’d been thinking. “Obviously it’s not one hundred percent certain, but now, with the timing, the severing of Ms. Hayes’s hands, the links to cannibalism, to Dahmer, well, there’s a good chance that what happened there and what’s happening here are linked.”
“You have case files from the other homicides?” I asked him.
A nod. “I’ll get them as soon as we’re done here. But for now, I want you to fill me in on what happened last night.”
I did most of the talking, with Radar, Corsica, and Thorne offering a few details I hadn’t heard yet:
(1) Colleen Hayes had been home from the time she talked to her husband at 6:35 p.m. until 9:15 p.m. when a neighbor saw a car pull away from the street behind her house.
(2) According to Colleen, the blood in the kitchen came from a cut on her left hand when she was struggling with her attacker, who had a knife.
(3) There was no sign of forced entry at the home.
(4) A small square of tinfoil was found on the floor of the bar, but it contained no prints other than Vincent’s.
When we finished, Ralph turned to Thorne. “Your department was responsible for bringing in Dahmer. What do you make of this wack job coercing the guy to leave a handcuffed man in that same alley?”
He reflected on that for a moment. “In ’ninety-one, it was a cuffed African-American man close to the same age as Lionel who eventually led us to Dahmer. The alley, of course, is where Konerak Sinthasomphone was found cuffed and naked. Maybe our guy’s trying to say that Dahmer got caught; but that he’s better than Dahmer, that he won’t. What do you think, Corsica?”
She’d been lead on the Dahmer investigation. “I agree. Definitely.” But then she saw the skepticism in my eyes. “What is it, Patrick?” My friends call me Pat, so I was cool with her calling me Patrick.
“I think it’s premature to try guessing what this guy was trying to communicate by his actions or to conclude anything ‘definite’ about them.”
“Well,” Ralph said to me, “you were there last night. Any ideas on possible motive?”
“I’m not one to speculate on motives. The real issue here isn’t ‘why it happened’ but ‘what happened.’ On the surface there’s a connection, but-”
“Hang on.” Ellen adjusted her glasses. “You don’t speculate on motives? What does that mean-you don’t look for them?”
“No. I don’t. I’d rather-”
“Patrick doesn’t believe in motives.” It was Corsica, a clear challenge in her tone.
“Actually,” I countered, “that’s not quite right. I do believe in motives, but more specifically in reasons. We all have reasons for the things we do. All behavior is, to some extent at least, undertaken to achieve a goal, but since trying to figure out specifically what that goal is-considering that the person doing it might not even know why he’s doing it-ends up being fruitless, nothing more than a guessing game, I don’t put much stock in the process. Besides, nowhere in our justice system does the law require showing motive.”
“But what about first-degree murder or arson?” Corsica pressed me. “You need to prove intent in arson cases; premeditation to get a first-degree murder conviction.”
“Premeditation and intent are different from motive.” There was no way I should’ve had to be explaining this to her, especially not here in front of everyone. But she wasn’t letting it drop and if she wanted a lesson, I could give her one. “Intent is what you’re trying to accomplish, premeditation is how you’re going to go about it, but motive is the reason why. The first two can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, the third cannot.”
She gave me a dubious look, and I took it as a prompt to go on. “People act certain ways because of needs, desires, unconscious impulses, habits, goals, personality differences-all those things affect our choices and actions, and all of them intertwine with each other. It’s impossible to untangle them and surmise their collective, or even their respective, influence in one word like ‘greed’ or ‘lust’ or ‘hatred.’ Besides, in the end, the why is always the same. Ultimately, all criminals commit their crimes for the same reason.”
Ralph eyed me curiously. “And that is?”
“Because they believe it will make them happy.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Everything they do?”
“Yes. Just like us.”
“Come on, Patrick.” Corsica sounded like she was mimicking a schoolteacher reprimanding a child. “Even you don’t believe that everything everyone does is just because they’re trying to be happy. You’re just trying to be provocative and this isn’t the time or place for those kinds of games.”
Alrighty, then.
We could do this.
I took a breath and picked up the gauntlet that’d been tossed at my feet.