Cruel and Unusual ks-4

by Patricia Cornwell

  “The prints are fairly high above the back of the toilet,” I observed. “I think he vomited, and when he stood up got dizzy, lurched forward, and raised his hands just in time to prevent his head from slamming into the wall. What do you think? Remorse or was he just stoned out of his mind?”

  Wesley looked at me. “Let's consider what he did with the body. He sat it upright, tried to dean it with towels, and left the clothes in a moderately neat stack on the floor near her ankles. Now, you can look at that two ways. He was lewdly displaying the body and thereby showing contempt. Or he was demonstrating what he considered caring. Personally, I think it was the latter.”

  “And the way Eddie Heath's body was displayed?”

  “That feels different. The positioning of the boy mirrors the positioning of the woman, but something's missing.”

  Even as he spoke, I suddenly realized what it was. “A mirror image,” I said to Wesley in amazement. “A mirror reflects things backward or in reverse.”

  He looked curiously at me.

  “Remember when we were comparing Robyn Naisznith's scene photographs with the diagram depicting the position of Eddie Heath's body?”

  “I remember vividly.”

  “You said that what was done to the boy - from the bite marks to the way his body was propped against a boxy object to his clothing being left in a tidy pile nearby - was a mirror image of what had been done to Robyn. But the bite marks on Robyn's inner thigh and above her breast were on the left side of her body. While Eddie's injuries - what we believe are eradicated bite marks - were on the right. His right shoulder and right inner thigh.”

  “Okay.” Wesley still looked perplexed.

  “The photograph that Eddie's scene most closely resembles is the one of her nude body propped against the console TV.”

  “True.”

  “What I'm suggesting is that maybe Eddie's killer saw the same photograph of Robyn that we did. But his perspective is based on his own body's left and right. And his right would have been Robyn's left, and his left would have been her right, because in the photograph she's facing whoever is looking on.”

  “That's not a pleasant thought,” Wesley said as the telephone rang.

  “Aunt Kay?”

  Lucy called out from the kitchen. “It's Mr. Vander.”

  “We got a confirmation,” Vander's voice came over the line.

  “Waddell did leave the print in Jennifer Deighton's house?”

  I asked.

  “No, that's just it. He definitely did not.”

  12

  Over the next few days, I retained Nicholas Grueman, delivering to him my financial records and other information he requested, the health commissioner summoned me to his office to suggest that I resign, and the publicity would not end. But I knew much that I had not known even a week before.

  It was Ronnie-Joe Waddell who died in the electric chair the night of December 13. Yet his identity remained alive and was wreaking havoc in the city. As best as could be determined, prior to Waddell's death his SID number in AFIS had been swapped with another's. Then the other person's SID number was dropped completely from the Central Computerized Records Exchange, or CCRE. This meant there was a violent offender at large who had no need of gloves when he committed his crimes. When his prints were run through AFIS, they would come back as a dead man's every time. We knew this nefarious individual left a wake of feathers and flecks of paint, but we could surmise almost nothing about him until January 3 of the new year.

  On that morning, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a planted story about highly prized eiderdown and its appeal to thieves. At one-fourteen P.m., Officer Tom Lucero, head of the fictitious investigation, received his third call of the day.

  “Hi. My name's Hilton Sullivan,” the voice said loudly.

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  Lucero's deep voice asked.

  “It's about the cases you're investigating. The eiderdown clothes and things that are supposedly hot with thieves. There was this article about it in the paper this morning. It said you're the detective.”

  “Right”

  “Well, it really pisses me off that the cops are so stupid.”

  He got louder. “It said in the paper that since Thanksgiving this and that have been stolen from stores, cars, and homes in the greater Richmond metropolitan area. You know, comforters, a sleeping bag, three ski jackets, blah, blah, blah. And the reporter quoted several people.”

  “What is your point, Mr. Sullivan?”

  “Well, obviously the reporter got the victims' names from the cops. In other words, from you.”

  "It's public information.”

  "I don't really give a shit about that. I just want to know how come you didn't mention this victim, yours truly? You don't even remember my name, do you?”

  "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't say that I do.”

  "Figures. Some fucking asshole breaks into my condo and wipes me out, and other than smearing black powder everywhere - on a day when I was dressed in white cashmere, I might add - the cops don't do a thing. I'm one of your fucking cases.”

  "When was your condo broken into?”

  "Don't you remember? I'm the one who raised such a stink about my down vest. If it wasn't for me, you guys would never have even heard of eiderdown! When I told the cop that among other things my vest had been taken and it had cost me five hundred bucks on sale, you know what he said?”

  "I have no idea, sir.”

  "He said, What's it stuffed with, cocaine?’

  And I said, 'No, Sherlock. Eider duck down.’

  And he looked around nervous as hell and dropped his hand close to his nine-mil. The dumb-shit really thought there was some other person in my place named Eider and I'd just yelled at this person to duck down, like I was going to pull a gun or something. At that point I just left and-"

  Wesley switched off the tape recorder.

  We sat in my kitchen. Lucy was working out at my club again.

  "The B-and-E this Hilton Sullivan's talking about was in fact reported by him on Saturday, December eleventh. Apparently, he'd been out of town, and when he returned to his condo that Saturday afternoon, he discovered that he'd been burglarized," Wesley explained.

  "Where is his condo located?”

  I asked.

  "Downtown on West Franklin, an old brick building with condos that start at a hundred grand. Sullivan lives on the first floor. The perpetrator got in through an unsecured window.”

  "No alarm system?”

  "No.”

  "What was stolen?”

  "Jewelry, money, and a twenty-two revolver. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that Sullivan's revolver is the one that was used to kill Eddie Heath, Susan, and Donahue. But I think we're going to find that it is, because there's no question that our guy did the Band-E.”

  "Prints were recovered?”

  "A number of them. The city had them, and you know how their backlog is. With all the homicides, B-and-Es aren't a top priority. In this instance, the latents had been processed and were just sitting. Pete intercepted them right after Lucero got the call. Vander's already run them through the system. He got a hit in exactly three seconds.”

  "Waddell again.”

  Wesley nodded.

  "How far is Sullivan's condo from Spring Street?”

  "Within walking distance. I think we know where our guy escaped from.”

  "You're checking out recent releases?”

  "Oh, sure. But we're not going to find him in a stack of paper on somebody's desk. The warden was too careful for that. Unfortunately, he's also dead. I think he sent this inmate back out on the street, and the first thing he did was burglarize a condominium and probably find himself a set of wheels.”

  "Why would Donahue free an inmate?”

  "My theory is that the warden needed some dirty work done. So he selected an inmate to be his personal operative and set the animal loose. But Donahue made a slight tactical error. He picked t
he wrong guy, because the person who's committing these killings is not going to be controlled by anyone. My suspicion, Kay, is that Donahue never intended for anyone to die, and when Jennifer Deighton turned up dead, he freaked.”

  "He was probably the one who called my office and identified himself as John Deighton.”

  "Could very well be. The point is that Donahue's intention was to have Jennifer Deighton's house ransacked because someone was looking for something perhaps communications from Waddell. But a simple burglary isn't enough fun. The warden's little pet likes to hurt people.”

  I thought of the indentations in the carpet of Jennifer Deighton's living room, the injuries to her neck, and the fingerprint recovered from her dining room chair.

  "He may have sat her in the middle of her living room and stood behind her with his arm yoked around her neck while he interrogated her.”

  "He may have done that to get her to tell him where things were. But he was being sadistic. Possibly forcing her to open her Christmas presents was also sadistic," said Wesley.

  "Would someone like this go to the trouble to disguise her death as a suicide by placing her body in her car?” I asked.

  "He might. This guy's been in the system. He's not interested in getting caught, and it's probably a challenge to see who he can fool. He eradicated bite marks from Eddie Heath's body. If he ransacked Jennifer Deighton's house, he left no evidence. The only evidence he left in Susan's case was two twenty-two slugs and a feather. Not to mention, the guy altered his fingerprints.”

  "You think that was his idea?”

  "It was probably something that the warden cooked up, and swapping records with Waddell may simply have been a matter of convenience. Waddell was about to be executed. If I wanted to trade an inmate's prints with someone, I'd choose Waddell's. Either the inmate's latents are going to come back to someone who is dead or - and this is more likely - eventually the dead person's records will be purged from the State Police computers, so if my little helper is messy and leaves prints somewhere, they aren't going to be identified at all," I stared at him, dumbfounded.

  "What?” Surprise flickered in his eyes.

  "Benton, do you realize what we're saying? We're sitting here talking about computer records that were altered before Waddell died. We're talking about a burglary and the murder of a little boy that were committed before Waddell was dead. In other words, the warden's operative, as you call him, was released before Waddell was executed.”

  "I don't believe there can be a question about that.”

  "Then the assumption was that Waddell was going to die," I pointed out.

  "Christ.”

  Wesley flinched. "How could anyone be certain? The governor can intervene literally at the last minute.”

  "Apparently, someone knew that the governor wasn't going to.”

  "And the only person who could know that with certainty is the governor,” he finished the thought for me.

  I got up and stood before the kitchen window. A male cardinal pecked sunflower seeds from the feeder and flew off in a splash of blood red.

  “Why?” I asked without turning around. “Why would the governor have a special interest in Waddell?”

  “I don't know.”

  “If it's true, he won't want the killer caught. When people get caught, they talk.”

  Wesley was silent.

  “Nobody involved will want this person caught. And nobody involved will want me on the scene. It will be much better if I resign or am fired - if the cases are screwed up as much as possible. Patterson is tight with Norring.”

  “Kay, we've got two things we don't know yet. One is motive. The other is the killer's own agenda. This guy is doing his own thing, beginning with Eddie Heath.”

  I turned around and faced him. “I think he began with Robyn Naismith. I believe this monster has studied her crime scene photographs, and either consciously or subconsciously re-created one of them when he assaulted Eddie Heath and propped his body against a Dumpster.”

  “That could very well be,” Wesley said, staring off. “But how could an inmate get access to Robyn Naismith's scene photographs? Those would not be in Waddell's prison jacket.”

  “This may be just one more thing that Ben Stevens helped with. Remember, I told you that he was the one who got the photos from Archives. He could have had copies made. The question is why would the photos be relevant? Why would Donahue or someone else even ask for them?”

  “Because the inmate wanted them. Maybe he demanded them. Maybe they were a reward for special services.”

  “That is sickening,” I said with quiet anger.

  “Exactly.”

  Wesley met my eyes. “This goes back to the killer's agenda, his needs and desires. It is very possible that he'd heard a lot about Robyn's case. He may have known a lot about Waddell, and it would excite him to think about what Waddell had done to his victim. The photographs would be a turn-on to someone who has a very active and aggressive fantasy life that is devoted to violent, sexualized thought. It is not farfetched to suppose that this person incorporated the scene photographs - one or more of them - into his fantasies. And then suddenly he's free, and he sees a young boy walking in the dark to a convenience store. The fantasy becomes real. He acts it out.”

  “He re-created Robyn Naismith's death scene?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you suppose his fantasy is now?”

  “Being hunted.”

  “By us?”

  “By people like us. I'm afraid he might imagine that he is smarter than everybody else and no one can stop him. He fantasizes about games he can play and murders he might commit that would reinforce these images he entertains. And for him, fantasy is not a substitute for action but a preparation for it.”

  “Donahue could not have orchestrated releasing a monster like this, altering records, or anything else without help,” I said.

  “No. I'm sure he got key people to cooperate, like someone at State Police headquarters, maybe a records person with the city and even the Bureau. People can be bought if you have something on them. And they can be bought with cash.”

  “Like Susan.”

  “I don't think Susan was the key person. I'm more inclined to suspect that Ben Stevens was. He's out in the bars. Drinks, parties. Did you know he's into a little recreational coke when he can get it?”

  “Nothing would surprise me anymore.”

  “I've got a few guys who have been asking a lot of questions. Your administrator has a life-style he can't afford. And when you screw with drugs, you end up screwing with bad people. Stevens's vices would have made him an easy mark for a dirtbag like Donahue. Donahue probably had one of his henchmen make a point of running into Stevens in a bar and they start talking. Next thing, Stevens has just been offered a way to make some pretty decent change.”

  “What way, exactly?”

  “My guess is to make sure Waddell wasn't printed at the morgue, and to make sure the photograph of his bloody thumbprint disappeared from Archives. That was probably just the beginning.”

  “And he enlisted Susan.”

  “Who wasn't willing but had major financial problems of her own.”

  “So who do you think was making the payoffs?”

  “They were probably handled by the same person who originally made Stevens's acquaintance and sucked him into this. One of Donahue's guys, maybe one of his guards.”

  I remembered the guard named Roberts who had given Marino and me the tour. I remembered how cold his eyes were.

  “Saying the contact is a guard,” I said, “then who was this guard meeting with? Susan or Stevens?”

  “My guess is with Stevens. Stevens wasn't going to trust Susan with a lot of cash. He's going to want to shave his share off the top because dishonest people believe everybody is dishonest.”

  “He meets the contact and gets the cash,” I said. “Then Ben would meet with Susan to give her a cut?”

  “That's probably what the sc
enario was Christmas Day when she left her parents' house ostensibly to visit a friend. She was going to meet Stevens, only the killer got to her first.”

  I thought of the cologne I smelled on her collar and her scarf, and I remembered Stevens's demeanor when I'd confronted him in his office the night I was looking through his desk.

  “No,” I said. “That's not how it went.”

  Wesley just looked at me.

  “Stevens has several qualities that would set Susan up for what happened,” I said. “He doesn't care about anyone but himself. And he's a coward. When things get hot, he's not going to stick his neck out. His first impulse is to let someone else take the fall.”

  “Like he's doing in your case by badmouthing you and stealing files.”

  “A perfect example,” I said.

  “Susan deposited the thirty-five hundred dollars in early December, a couple of weeks before Jennifer Deighton's death.”

  “That's right.”

  “All right, Kay. Let's go back a bit. Susan or Stevens or both of them tried to break into your computer days after Waddell's execution. We've speculated that they were looking for something in the autopsy report that Susan could not have observed firsthand during the post.”

  “The envelope he wanted buried with him.”

  “I'm still stumped over that. The codes on the receipts do not confirm what we'd speculated about earlier - that the restaurants and tollbooths are located between Richmond and Mecklenburg, and that the receipts were from the transport that brought Waddell from Mecklenburg to Richmond fifteen days prior to his execution. Though the dates on the receipts are consistent with the time frame, the locations are not. The codes come back to the stretch of I-95 between here and Petersburg.”

  “You know, Benton, it very well may be that the explanation for the receipts is so simple that we've completely overlooked it,” I said.

  “I'm all ears.”

  “Whenever you go anywhere for the Bureau, I imagine you have the same routine I do when traveling for the state. You document every expense and save every receipt. If you travel often, you tend to wait until you can combine several trips on one reimbursement voucher to cut down on the paperwork. Meanwhile, you're keeping your receipts somewhere.”