Blood Stone

by Michael Lister

  It was a fascinating profile and made me think about the UNSUB we were after.

  In what ways is he like the Ripper? How is he different?

  I was thinking I was beginning to see some similarities and some differences.

  The Ripper was frenzied in his attacks and murders. The Stone Cold Killer was not. He was careful and controlled.

  The Ripper was blunt and brutal and messy. The Stone Cold Killer was precise and clean and his manner of murder was hands off, even indirect and bloodless on his end.

  Both the Ripper and the Stone Cold Killer had major issues with women, their power, their sexuality, and though they responded differently to the fear and paranoia and threat they felt, I believed they in some ways had the same motivation.

  As much as Douglas’s profile of the Ripper was helpful and inspiring, it was another segment of the show that gave me the next piece of the puzzle.

  It had to do with the killer’s name—Jack the Ripper.

  The two names originally used for the UNSUB were the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.

  Jack the Ripper came later in the form of a letter penned by someone claiming to be the murderer. The letter was distributed to the papers, and the name stuck. One hundred years later he was still being called by it. But the letter wasn’t written by the murderer. It was written by someone as a sadistic sort of joke, or more likely, a member of the media attempting to intensify interest in the case and the number of newspapers sold.

  And then it hit me.

  Though I didn’t expect to get him, I called Frank at home.

  To my surprise he answered.

  “I figured you’d still be talking to Dorsey,” I said.

  “Then why’d you call?”

  “Couldn’t help myself. Have an idea. How’d it go with Dorsey?”

  “We couldn’t find him. Wasn’t in the park or at his home. We’ll try again tomorrow. Whatcha got? I only have a second.”

  “You got a handwriting analyst?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think we need to compare the writing of the letter we got with samples of Daphne Littleton’s,” I said. “I think she wrote it so she could gin up interest in the story and name the killer herself. I think that’s why he killed her. I think he made her write the note we found under her microphone. That’s why what was written doesn’t fit what the killer’s doing.”

  “I’ll get it checked out as soon as I can. See you in the morning.”

  43

  “Hey,” Summer said.

  I had just walked into the empty lobby from the back door.

  “Hey.”

  “I figured you’d be out by now,” she said as she shuffled papers behind the counter.

  As I got closer I saw what the papers were. She had one of my file folders from the case with several pages of notes, witness statements, crime scene photos, and autopsy results in it.

  “What’re you—”

  “Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Figured you’d be sleeping and not need them tonight. I was trying to see if I could pick up something, if some detail or statement or something would spark a connection for me so I could help you catch him.”

  “Wish you would’ve asked.”

  “I meant to.”

  “If anyone sees you with those I’ll be thrown off the case,” I said.

  “Oh, shit. Sorry. I—here, take it back. I’m—I had no idea. Was just trying to help. I would never . . .”

  She handed me the file.

  “Did you pick up anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Had just started to look at it. Why’re you up?”

  “Couldn’t fall asleep.”

  “I could help with that if I wasn’t stuck behind this . . .”

  I smiled and could feel myself getting erect as memories of our lovemaking from the night before floated through my mind.

  “How quick can you be? I could leave a note on the counter like I do when I go to the bathroom.”

  I smiled. “Quick would not be a problem.”

  She gave me a warm smile of her own, withdrew a Be Back in 5 note from beneath the desk, and placed it on the check-in countertop next to the bell.

  She disappeared through a door to her right and reappeared next to me on this side of the desk a few moments later.

  Taking my hand, she led me up the large, curving staircase.

  “I’ve never made love to a woman in uniform before,” I said.

  “You’re gonna like it,” she said. “But don’t get too used to it. This is a temporary gig. Soon as we catch the madman I’m retiring this thing.”

  “Then I better make the most of it while I can.”

  The second floor restaurant was dark and empty.

  “Are you sure no one’s up here?” I asked.

  “Positive. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? We get caught? Embarrassed? Or I lose a job I’m only doing to—”

  “You had me at positive.”

  She let out a young girl’s giggle.

  We weaved around the round tables and chairs to a set of French doors that led out onto the balcony.

  In the moonlight streaming in through the little panes of glass and the spill from the lamps in the parking lot, she lifted her uniform skirt and shimmied out of her panties.

  It was sexy and seductive and sweet.

  She then unbuttoned her blouse, unhooked her bra, and pulling her coat and shirt back and her bra up, exposed her beautiful bare breasts.

  Taking my hands she guided them up and placed them on the warm skin of her erect nipples.

  She then began to unbutton and unzip my jeans as we kissed.

  Eventually, she eased down on the floor before me, pulling up her skirt and opening her coat and blouse again.

  “Sorry we don’t have time for more,” she said.

  “I’m so grateful for this,” I said, kneeling down between her legs and sliding into her.

  There was something enormously erotic about her still being partially clothed, hiking up the skirt of her work uniform and opening her hotel blouse and blazer.

  It was the first time I had made love to a clothed woman. There was something about it that made her unclothed parts, the flashes of pale flesh, seem all the more naked, all the more exposed.

  It was also the first time I had made love in a public place, and I found the experience equal parts exciting and anxiety inducing.

  But she felt so good, so like the embodiment of serenity, and soon I wasn’t aware of our surroundings or worried about someone catching us.

  We made love in the small rectangles of moonlight, the silent, magnificent mountain our only witness.

  Afterward, as we were lying in each other’s arms, looking up at the mountain, she said, “I’d like us to make love up on top of it someday.”

  I nodded as I thought about it.

  She added, “Just picture bending me over a boulder, pulling down my panties, hiking up my skirt. Up that high, that much closer to God. It’s got a pure, sacred energy, an ancient magic. It’s a holy place. Nothing he can do can change that.”

  And then I saw it, got a better glimpse of what I had been struggling to make out before.

  “What is it?” she said. “Where are you going?”

  44

  After thanking her for the amazing experience and the flash of inspiration, I walked Summer back down to the front desk, kissed her, then ran out of the lobby and back to our room with the file folder.

  Something she had said had ignited a piece of kindling in me and fired up connections with other thoughts, ideas, inspirations hovering at the fringes of my mind.

  Summer had said that the mountain was sacred, that to be on the top of it was to be closer to God, and that had been the reminder I needed to make the other blurry images come into focus.

  Now I knew, or thought I did, why there was no rape or sexual assault—except of Daphne—why there was no torture or pre or post-mortem mutilation. I knew why he
cleaned and washed them, why he cut them, and why he built a fire.

  He was offering sacrifices.

  He was climbing to the mountain top to present his offerings to God like so many had done before him.

  That was why there had to be a fire, had to be the shedding of blood, had to be a cleansing.

  It was why I had been thinking of the word ritual when I thought about what he was doing. He wasn’t a thrill killer. He was a ritualistic killer who saw himself as a man of God making sacrifices for his and their sins.

  Most of my things, including my Bible, were still in the old farmhouse on Flakes Mill Road, but I knew there would be a Bible in the bedside table in our room.

  I rushed in and flipped through the first book in it until I found the story of Abraham offering his only son on an altar on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22:1-19.

  Running my finger across and down the page I read the passage.

  1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

  “Here I am,” he replied.

  2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

  3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

  6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together,7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

  “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

  “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

  8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

  9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

  “Here I am,” he replied.

  12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

  13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

  15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

  The brutality and barbarism of both humans and animal sacrifice was almost as ancient as humanity itself.

  For the adherents of the world’s many and diverse religions the concepts of sacrifice—both animal and human—have a sheen of acceptability and even orthodoxy, particularly when seen as historic events in the evolution of the understanding of the divine and the divine-human relationship.

  Indoctrinated from an early age, they are told these things were required to appease the gods or the God and they read them in the pages of texts they are told are sacred and even God-inspired.

  It wasn’t difficult to imagine a mentally-ill psychopath justifying his murder of young women by claiming that what he was doing was offering sacrifices to please the Lord—just like Abraham, Moses and Aaron, Samuel and David.

  I had heard sermons preached and read articles encouraging people to lay down what they held dear on Mount Moriah, to give to God their best and most precious gifts as offerings acceptable in the sight of the Lord.

  Is that what you’re doing? Is that why you don’t rape them? Why you take them up there, build a fire and bind them? Is Stone Mountain your Mount Moriah? Are these young women your Isaacs? Are you offering sacrifices to God? For their sin or yours? Or are you offering them in an attempt not to sin, so remove the temptation altogether?

  45

  “While the rest of us were sleepin’ last night,” Frank said, “John was working his ass off on the case and having some major breakthroughs.”

  Our core group plus a few extra GBI agents and park police were gathered in the small conference room.

  Though Frank looked the worst, everyone looked weary and dejected.

  “First,” he said, “he theorized that the letter we received was written and sent not by the killer but the reporter and most recent victim, Daphne Littleton.”

  “Was it?” Walt asked. “Did that . . . write a fake letter and . . .”

  “We’re gathering samples of her handwriting now,” Frank said, “but her camera man already made a statement this morning saying she did in fact write the letter.”

  Frank paused for a moment as most everyone in the room reacted audibly to the revelation.

  “That means she gave him the name Stone Cold Killer,” he said. “It means none of the words in the letter were his. Meaning . . . we have to rethink how we view the killer, what he’s doing, how we catch him.”

  “What about the note?” Joe asked. “She write that too?”

  “The note found under her microphone on the mountain does appear to be written by her, though I’m not so sure he didn’t tell her at least some of what to say. Just don’t know. We’ll have it analyzed—and not just the handwriting itself. He may have had her actually write it but told her some of what to say.”

  Erin looked at me. “That’s why the thrill kill thing didn’t match up with what he was actually doing, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Which leads to the next thing John came up with last night,” he said.

  “Wait just a second,” Bud said, clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. “Before you . . . get to that. Sorry, but . . . we need to take a closer look at the Littleton woman’s camera man. What’s his name?”

  “Stan,” Walt said. “Stan the Camera Man.”

  “He’s always with her,” Bud said. “They’re inseparable—hell, he even knows she’s the one who wrote the letter—but he’s not with her when she goes to meet with the killer? Have a hard time buying that.”

  Frank was nodding. “You’re exactly right,” he said. “Good thinking. Who wants to—”

  “I got it,” Walt said. “Let you know what I find out.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “Back to John’s theory of what the killer is actually doing. John, why don’t you explain?”

  I did.

  I walked them through some concepts of sacrifice and what was involved—mountains, fire, water, the shedding of blood—shared with them the story of Abraham.

  “It’s just a theory,” I said, “but—”

  “It fits,” Bud said. “I think you’re right.”

  “Thing about killers like this one,” Frank said, “is . . . nothing’s gonna fit exactly. They’re not completely consistent and certainly not motivated by rational thought, but . . . yeah I think it’s accurate. I think it should be our working theory.”

  “If it’s right,” I said. “If any of it is . . . it gives us insight into the killer—what he’s doing and why. Hopefully something about that will help us catch him.”

  Erin’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “So,�
� she said, “let’s tie this to an actual suspect. What if a rapist—someone like Patrick Dorsey, say—was trying not to rape women anymore. So instead of raping them . . . he offers them to God as some sort of sacrifice.”

  I nodded. “That’s good. He could blame them for what he has done in the past. Blame the victim. So he sees killing them as punishment for their sin. Or . . . as in the case of Abraham . . . he wants them so badly . . . wants to possess and use, control and dominate them . . . that he sees what he’s doing as offering up—actually sacrificing—what he most wants, his best gift.”

  “Damn,” Walt said. “That’s some deep shit. What the hell kinda cop are you?”

  Erin said, “A smart one.”

  Frank said, “The fact that we found traces of semen on Daphne could prove what we’re saying. With her the killer slipped up and sinned again.”

  “Yeah,” Walt said, “shot his sin all over her.”

  Ignoring him, Frank said, “Something he could’ve been doing all along and just washing it off or . . .”

  “Because she was different than the others,” I said, “he didn’t feel the same about her. She wasn’t one of his pattern sacrifices, so he wouldn’t see it as sinning—or at least not as bad because of who she was. Or what she wasn’t.”

  “We’re gonna bring Patrick Dorsey in for questioning today,” Frank said.

  “If we can find his ass,” Walt said. “Might be in Mexico by now.”

  “We’ve decided to forego the casual conversation at his home or job approach and bring him in for a formal interview. And we’re gonna let Erin conduct it. See how he reacts to having a woman do it.”

  “That should be interesting,” Joe said.

  “Final thing,” Frank said. “FBI is sending someone from their Atlanta field office tomorrow. Starting then they will be assisting in this investigation. Few things we all need to remember. They’re assisting, not taking over the investigation. They’ll be working with us. They will be an asset and can really help us. Welcome them and help them. But the thing is . . . it won’t be quick. It will take a little while for them to assign agents and for them to get up to speed on the case and really start working it with us. And that leads me to my most important point. Work this case like we’re solely and ultimately responsible for it. Because we are. The FBI isn’t going to come in and solve it for us or catch the killer. We have to do it with their help, but I’d rather do it sooner than that. I’d rather us do it before they’re even up and running—and not because it’ll make us look competent and it’s our job, but because it will save lives. So act like today is the last day you have to solve this case and save the life of someone you care deeply about, okay?”