by Lisa Gardner
“I don’t panic,” she muttered, still looking away. Then, because she simply had to know: “Is the dog okay?”
“Staying at the neighbor’s, which I gather was already like a second home to her.”
“She was covered in blood. The dog, right? Only way a smear this big . . . The dog’s legs, stomach, would have to be covered in blood. From the mattress. From lying down next to her owner and the mounds and mounds of flayed skin . . .”
“We can go home, D.D., anytime you’d like.”
“When the wind blows,” she murmured.
“What’s that?”
She merely smiled, then got her head up and her shoulders back. “And down will come baby, cradle and all.”
She continued down the hall.
• • •
THEY HAD LEFT THE SCENE relatively intact. The body was gone, of course. But the blood-soaked mattress, bottle of champagne, fur-lined handcuffs, remained. And the bloody sheet, now tacked up on a bare wall. D.D. had witnessed the technique before, bedding, clothes, even entire sections of flooring, suspended at the original crime scene to enable better spatter analysis. Even then, she had to steel herself as Alex flipped on the overhead light, chasing away the thickening shadows and revealing the full bloody glory.
“I asked them to leave as much of the initial scene as possible,” Alex said quietly. “Allow me the opportunity to study it in situ.”
D.D. nodded. Her left shoulder had started a deep, throbbing ache.
“Same bottle of champagne,” she observed, looking at anything but the suspended sheet.
“Phil believes the killer brings everything with him—the champagne, handcuffs, rose.”
“Props for his play.”
“He wants it to be just so,” Alex said. “Not just any bottle of wine, or any kind of flower. But these specific items.”
“Ritualized.” She’d thought this before. They were looking at a killer’s highly developed fantasy. Now other thoughts returned to her, like shadows of a dream. “ViCAP?” she asked, referring to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which included a searchable database filled with pertinent details from criminal cases all around the country. Investigators could use it to match a crime in their jurisdiction with similar deeds from other localities.
“I’m sure they’re checking it.”
“He makes it appear romantic,” she murmured. “Flowers, champagne, lovers’ toys. But it’s about control. Him, in control of everything.”
Alex didn’t say anything. He twisted behind them and pointed the tight beam of his high-intensity light back toward the hallway. The bright white beam immediately illuminated dozens of stains, mostly bloody paw prints from the dog pacing back and forth. Then he turned his beam onto the floor in the master bedroom and D.D. was immediately captivated by the contrast. A series of paw prints led from the queen-size bed to the door; then a thinner smear appeared on the floor near the right-side nightstand, where there had been blood, but the killer had made an attempt to wipe it up.
Otherwise . . . nothing.
Here, in the room that had served as center stage for one of the most gruesome homicides D.D. had ever seen, there was almost no blood evidence. Not on the floors. Not on the walls.
“But . . . but . . . ,” D.D. found herself sputtering. Then, more firmly: “Not possible. No way you can fillet a human being without being positively coated in blood yourself. And no way the killer could then move around this room, let alone exit the house, without leaving an obvious trail. Even if he cleaned up after himself with a bleach-soaked mop, you can’t get it all. It’s the whole magic of your job. Even when you can no longer see blood with the human eye, it lingers, just waiting for the right high-intensity beams or proper chemical solution to tell its tale. This”—she waved her hand toward the relatively blood-free expanse of hardwood floor—“I’m seeing it, but I’m not believing it.”
“As I mentioned, the Boston PD wouldn’t mind some help with this one.” Alex walked deeper into the room, his beam sweeping methodically right, left, right. “Shall we start with the bedsheet? I believe it serves as the beginning of the story.”
She nodded once. Responding to his hand signal, she obediently killed the overhead lights. In the near gloom, it was easier to focus on Alex’s high-intensity light and the way it cast a single fitted sheet into a terrible inkblot of dark, deadly stains.
Blood patterns, D.D. had learned by now, varied depending on the velocity of the blow and the porosity of the surface area. Bedding, such as blankets and mattresses, was obviously very soft and porous, meaning the blood spatter soaked straight in versus ricocheting or forming a starburst pattern on impact. In fact, the white sheet now bore a single, very long, almost cylinder-shaped bloody print, broken in two places by bars of white. She and Alex both stepped closer, inspecting the outer edges of the print.
“I don’t see any signs of fine mist,” D.D. murmured, “such as blowback from high-velocity gunfire.”
“Victim wasn’t shot. Blood patterns indicate a low-velocity impact.”
Which was consistent with most stabbings, D.D. knew. She still frowned. “But there’s no spatter at all, not even random drippings from the handle of the knife or edge of the blade. How do you explain that?”
“Killer’s not stabbing. Cause of death is unknown. But given the lack of defensive wounds, arterial spray and spatter, the victim was dead before the killer began removing her skin. I’m just a criminalist, not a behavioralist, but it would appear the crime is about control, not about pain and suffering. What we’re seeing here is purely the result of postmortem work.”
It should’ve been a reassuring thought. That the victim was already dead before the first slip of the cold blade beneath the surface of her skin . . . And yet, D.D. found herself almost slightly more horrified. A sexual-sadist predator with an overwhelming compulsion to inflict pain and suffering was something she could almost understand. But this . . . a killer who skinned his victims for sport?
“The voids?” she whispered now, pointing to twin patterns of clean white sheet amid the large cylinder of blood.
Alex got out a pencil. With his left hand, he started pointing and explaining. “Remember, the postmortem mutilation is mostly to the torso and the upper thighs. If you look at the bloodstain, you can see feathering at the top, and imprints here, which I believe are from the victim’s shoulder blades pressing into the sheet and limiting the absorption of blood. Orienting ourselves, then, here is the head, the shoulders, the torso, the legs. Given that . . .”
“The voids are on either side of the victim’s thighs.”
“From the lower part of the killer’s legs, I presume. Essentially, he was straddling her body, the front part of his shins pressing against the mattress on either side of her thighs, which shielded that part of the sheet from blood.”
“He incapacitates his victim,” D.D. murmured, trying to form a sequence of events in her mind. “Then, most likely, he sets the scene. The champagne, handcuffs, single rose. He’d want to get everything out before things get too . . . messy.”
Alex turned, sweeping his high-intensity beam across the nightstand where the champagne bottle and other props awaited. The light didn’t expose a single drop of blood.
“Fair assumption,” he said.
“Next . . . he would have to strip the victim. Expose her skin.”
Light beam to the left-hand side of the bed, where D.D. now saw a puddle of dark clothes.
“Black sweats, oversize Red Sox T-shirt, underwear,” Alex reported.
“Sounds like suitable PJs for a single woman. He cast them aside.”
Another nod.
“Then”—she turned toward the bed—“he climbs aboard, positions himself astride the victim’s naked body, and begins to . . . skin her. Why?”
Alex shrugged. “Part of the ritual? Maybe the
killer is really some kind of necrophiliac, and it’s these moments with the body that are most fulfilling for him. The strips of skin are thin, and based on the ME’s study of the first victim, they’re precise, methodical. In his estimation, the killer spent at least an hour on the filleting process, if not two or three.”
“Semen?” D.D. asked. “Signs of sexual assault?”
“First victim, no. Second victim, results still pending.”
“I don’t get it. He gains access, incapacitates his victims. Drugs them?”
“Tox screen also pending.”
“Then . . . starts in with the knife. For at least an hour?”
“With some skill,” Alex provided. “ME suggests either a hunter or maybe even a butcher. But based on the smooth, even strokes, our killer has some experience.”
“Kind of blade?”
“Most likely something small and razor-sharp, perhaps even designed especially for the job. Here’s the other point of consideration. Often in these kinds of crimes, the killer will eventually set down his weapon. You know, resting for a moment, readjusting his grip, or even laying down the knife while getting on and off the bed. A reflexive movement, not even thought about, but an act that leaves a bloody imprint of the blade behind as further evidence. In a case where a killer spends this much time with a body at a scene this bloody, it’s the kind of evidence you’d almost expect. Except . . .”
“He didn’t do it.”
“Or he was aware enough, controlled enough, to rest it in the middle of another bloodstain, the kind of place where he thought it wouldn’t leave a pattern.”
D.D. glanced at her husband. “You just said he thought it wouldn’t leave a pattern . . . ?”
Alex smiled faintly. He had returned to the bloody sheet hanging on the wall and was hitting it up close and personal with the beam from his flashlight. “In this kind of attack, where the victim is bleeding out from multiple wounds over an extended period of time—”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“You get blood-on-blood patterns. Blood, as it starts to dry, thickens, the edges turning yellow from hemoglobin that’s separating from the platelets. The old blood starts to form a surface for the new blood to drip upon.”
She could almost picture this. “Meaning if the killer set down a knife covered in fresh blood upon an area of drying blood, it could leave an imprint on the surface of the old blood.”
“Precisely.”
“And in this case . . .”
Alex, his face a mere two inches from the stiff, red-encrusted surface: “I think . . . I can see an outline. Faint, but there. I would guess a filleting knife, but to be fair, it’s hard to know sometimes if you’re seeing what you want to see or what’s really there. We can fine-tune this, however, enhance the contrast using some chemicals back at the lab. Certainly it’s worth pursuing.”
“Certainly,” she agreed.
He frowned one more time, peering intently. For the sake of argument, D.D. did the same, but the nuance of a stain within a stain was lost on her. Mostly, she was aware of the overwhelming stench of blood. So much. This sheet. This mattress.
And yet, as she turned around, not in the rest of the room.
Alex followed her lead, once more sweeping the walls and floors with the high-intensity beam, as they considered the final step of the murderer’s process.
“Cleanup,” D.D. muttered.
“Definitely,” Alex concurred. “He cleaned up.”
He worked the beam in slow, rhythmic patterns around the perimeter of the queen-size bed, illuminating paw prints, another larger smear stain near the bedroom door that matched the one down the hall. Lily the dog, once more lying down.
“The dog didn’t bark?” D.D. asked.
“Not that anyone heard.”
“And yet, clearly the dog was distressed.” She indicated all the paw prints, back and forth and back.
“Distressed, but maybe more confused? Remember, as strange as it sounds, this wasn’t a violent attack. At least we have no evidence of a killer breaking into the home and overpowering the victim. Whatever happened, it was . . . subdued. Even the postmortem mutilation. He would’ve sat upon the body. No screaming, no struggling, no outward signs of the victim’s distress.”
D.D. shuddered. She couldn’t help herself. “He had a plan,” she stated out loud, refocusing. “He enacted the plan. And then . . .”
“And then he tidied up after himself,” Alex said, then frowned. “Which is the part I don’t understand. Even if it’s not a chaotic scene—no running, no chasing, no restraining—the amount of blood, seeping from the victim’s body, soaking into the mattress . . . The killer’s hands, forearms, would be covered in it. Not to mention his legs from sitting astride the body, his feet . . . This floor should be a case study of blood evidence. If not covered in bloody footprints, spatter, etcetera, then, at the very least, covered in smear patterns from him attempting to wipe up all of the above. So why isn’t it?”
D.D. saw Alex’s point. She could count more than a dozen paw prints from the dog tracking back and forth across the floor. And that was it.
“He cleans up in the bathroom afterward?” D.D. considered. “Maybe showers? I’m sure Phil had the team swab the shower and sink drains for bodily fluids.”
“I’m sure Phil did. But how did the killer get there? Levitation?” Alex swept his beam from the bed to the doorway of the master bath. The floorboards didn’t offer up one glimpse of stain. He lit up the brass doorknob as well. Equally clean of bodily fluids. Then, just to be thorough, he swept the high-intensity light beam across the cracked linoleum floor, tired white bathtub, pedestal sink, toilet. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Some kind of special cleaner?” D.D. thought next. “He scoured the space with a toothbrush and bleach, got every square inch. . . .”
“Possible, but probable?” Alex’s expression remained dubious. As he had stated, blood was nearly impossible to remove 100 percent. Hence, criminalists could build entire careers using blood evidence to catch savvy killers who’d bleached walls but forgotten the window latch, or loofahed off a layer of their own skin but forgot about the wind-up dial of their watch. Killers could clean only what they could see. While thanks to tools such as high-intensity lights and chemicals such as luminol, a savvy investigator essentially approached every scene with X-ray vision.
D.D. was struck by a fresh thought. “Let’s consider this from another angle. We have a killer who not only entered undetected but also left that way. Except on the way out, he should’ve appeared disheveled, even bloody from all the knife work. So how did he disguise all that?”
Alex shrugged. “Most obvious solution would be for him to shower after the killing, as you suggested. He washed off all traces of blood, changed into fresh clothes, then walked out the front door, just another guy in the neighborhood.”
“Except, as you said, we’d see traces of blood leading from the bed to the bathroom, not to mention on the bathroom floor, shower, sink. Meaning . . . What if he was naked? What if, after subduing his victim . . . before getting started with the main event, the killer removed his own clothes?”
“Prudent,” Alex said. “Blood is easier to remove from skin than clothes.”
“Other thing I’m noticing is that there don’t seem to be any towels missing from the victim’s bathroom. There’s a hand towel in the hand towel ring, and two bath towels on the rack. So if he showered here, what did he use to dry off?”
Alex nodded shortly, considering.
“Maybe,” D.D. continued, “as long as the killer is bringing in props for the murder, he’s also providing his own cleanup kit. Packed a couple of towels, maybe even his own bath mat, for the floor next to the bed. See this mark here?” She gestured to the lone smear pattern, near the right-side nightstand. “He lays down the bath mat, strips off his clothes, t
hen climbs on the bed to do what he’s going to do. Afterward, he steps from the bed back onto the bath mat, wipes himself down with his towel, replaces his clean clothes, socks, shoes. Then it’s a simple matter of rolling up the mat, bloody towel, knife, etcetera, tucked safely inside. Sticks everything back in his duffel bag and he’s good to go. Certainly that would explain the lack of blood evidence in the rest of the house, including the bathroom.”
“Not just prudent,” Alex amended. “Clever.”
“Experienced,” D.D. emphasized. “Isn’t that what the ME said? This guy knows what he’s doing. And he’s controlled. From the beginning through the middle to the end. We’re not going to find any magic answers here.”
Alex turned on a bedside lamp, snapped off his flashlight. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Removing his clothes may limit his risk of blood-transfer evidence, but it increased the killer’s chances of leaving behind hair, fiber, DNA.”
“Fair enough.”
“And there’s still the small matter of he has to incapacitate his victims somehow. Once the ME figures that out, we’ll have something more to pursue.”
They turned away from the bed, toward the hallway, the descending flight of stairs.
“I don’t want to be injured anymore,” D.D. heard herself say, gazing toward the staircase.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to feel this weak and useless. I want to be on the job. I want to be tracking this killer.”
“Do you remember anything more?”
“You mean like why I tried to fly down a staircase? Or fired my gun three times into drywall?” She shook her head.
“You’ve helped tonight.”
“Not officially. Officially, I’m a detective who returned to a crime scene all alone and may or may not have discharged my weapon without probable cause. As things stand right now, I’m a liability for the department, and we both know even if my left arm miraculously heals overnight, they’re not going to simply return my badge. I’m an unanswered question, and cops hate that.”