by Leslie Wolfe
“Where were you on February 20?”
“What time?”
“All day.”
He scoffed and leaned back in his chair. “You people are unbelievable. That’s almost a week ago.”
Michowsky waved him on with his hand, and Bolton took the hint.
“I started my day about 10:00AM, then went straight to the studio, after grabbing a cup of coffee on the way. I was at the studio, and had classes almost all day, until seven o’clock. With students, I mean, witnesses.”
“All day? Really? Because you don’t seem like the hard-working type to me, you know.”
“I had a break or two,” he admitted reluctantly, and scratched his chin. “Lunch, and then mid-afternoon. Everyone takes breaks.”
“Where did you take lunch, and how long was your break?”
“Um, I was at Ronnie’s Bar & Grill, from about eleven o’clock until about two-ish. My next class started at three.”
Michowsky chuckled. “So how many classes did you have on the twentieth? Two?”
“No,” he replied, indignant. “Three. It was a full day.”
“Oh, I get it; you work hard. Why do you get paid in cash?”
The unsub flinched when he heard the question, and fidgeted nervously in his chair. “That’s what people want. I don’t take American Express; it’s too rich for me. But it’s their choice to bring cash. I can’t say no.”
“If we traced these cash payments, we’ll find you deposited all of the money in the bank, right?”
Bolton leaned forward again, with his elbows on the table. “What do you guys want?” he asked in a grave, determined voice.
“A DNA sample. To exculpate you from a series of rape-murders you could be going down for, considering you don’t really have an alibi for the twentieth.”
The unsub’s eyes widened, as he took in the implications of the detective’s request.
“Did I mention two of the victims were your students?” Michowsky said, delivering the blow casually. “Give us a DNA sample, and you can go home in minutes. That’s the deal.”
“How about a lawyer? This conversation’s over,” Bolton said, and promptly clammed up with his arms crossed at his chest.
Tess unmuted the line. “Gary, please stay in the room for now. Todd, get outside, where you can talk to me.”
Through the video feed she saw Fradella nod slightly and leave the room.
“Shoot,” he said, once he’d closed the door.
“Where’s the thermostat for that room?” Tess asked.
“Here in the hallway. Why?”
“Turn on the heat and crank it up to 82. Then grab a can of Coke and go back inside.”
Todd laughed quietly. “Remind me to never piss you off, Agent Winnett.”
She watched Todd as he entered the interview room, a can of Coca-Cola in his hand. He almost opened it, then left it on the table when Michowsky glared at him. They were smart cops, both of them, and Michowsky didn’t need to see more than the sweaty can of pop to figure things out and play along.
“Okay, you lawyered up,” Fradella said. “That means you don’t need to say anything until your lawyer gets here. Who’s your lawyer? I’ll call him for you.”
“You think I’m made of money, or somethin’?” Bolton reacted. “I can’t afford a lawyer, but that doesn’t mean I’m not getting one, right?”
“Right,” Fradella replied, then he and Michowsky left the room.
“Hey, you forgot your Coke,” Bolton called just as Fradella was about to shut the door.
He popped his head back into the interview room. “Did you see the look my boss gave me just now? He’ll shove that down my throat if I touch it before break time. Be my guest, or just leave it there; the janitor will take it back later.”
It took Bolton less than ten minutes to pop the can open and thirstily down the contents. A few minutes later, Fradella moved him to another interview room to wait for his legal counsel, then picked up the can with a glove and sent it sealed in an evidence bag to the lab, via courier.
In a few hours, they’d know if Gene Bolton was the rapist unsub, or just a lecherous low-life like many others.
39
Ready
He sank deeper in the recliner, keeping his eyes riveted on the two women. Watching through the one-sided window, he took in every detail. How they moved, and how they talked. The angle of their necks, and the straightness of their spines. The expressions on their faces, and the sounds of their sobs.
They were different, these two. The new one had a heartened mien, as if nothing could break her; she was cold and unimpressionable. She hadn’t seen everything yet; she still had a lot to learn, and that cold, brave attitude would soon be washed away by tears. Be it enough of those, and all that fortitude will fade away, like sand carried away by torrents, or stone carved by rain.
The other one still made his heart skip a beat whenever he glanced at her beautiful face. She looked just like his mother. If she’d somehow mastered the passing of time, she could be his mother. She had his mother’s beauty, her elegance. She even walked like her, and when she flipped her long hair over her shoulder, she was her.
He still remembered his mother well, because he’d cherished her fading image in his mind, forbidding himself to forget. He’d hidden a picture of her under his mattress, before his father destroyed all memory of her in the backyard firepit, and still stared at it for hours sometimes, remembering all about her and the way she used to be before the storm came.
This woman was the spitting image of his mother, but not only in physical form. When he had his rope around her neck she was defiant to the point of turning self-destructive, looking him in the eye and spouting her contempt in words spoken on raspy gasps of air. A true free spirit, she’d ignored his orders and had inspired resistance in the new girl. He wanted them naked, yet they both kept their clothes on. He wanted the whores to groom each other under his hungry eyes, yet they did none of that. Every time he took her to the other room, he stripped her of her clothes and punished her for her defiance, but it didn’t matter. As soon as she returned to the holding room, she dug through the pile of abandoned garments and chose something that fit. There was no breaking her, and that drove him mad. He wanted her defeated, pleading for mercy and forgiveness; she gave him none of that.
He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. The whore was ruining it… messing everything up. He needed to go in there and teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget. What would his father have done with a bitch like that? His nostrils flared, filled with rage.
Slowly, he uncoiled the rope he’d pulled from his pocket, and felt its ruggedness between his fingers, while keeping his eyes on the woman who defied him. He was ready.
40
Early Morning
She’d been up since about four in the morning, grateful for the peace that engulfed the hospital hallways, and eager to leave that place behind her once and for all. The harsh words of Dr. DePaolo still resounded in her mind, but didn’t erode her decision to be released immediately. She’d promised him she wouldn’t leave until he came back for one last exam, and he’d promised her she wouldn’t have to wait too long for it.
She fired up her laptop and went through emails, then connected the remote camera and examined the victimology matrix drawn by Todd on the Palm Beach County case board. There were a lot of commonalities between victims, and that normally was a good thing, because it allowed investigators to reel in suspects who intersected the lives of the victims at the points of commonality. Gene Bolton, the sleazeball who was spending his night in Palm Beach County lockup waiting for the DNA test result, was an example of how such a commonality in victimology helped. Even so, only two of the victims had been involved with yoga, and Gene Bolton looked less and less like a viable suspect.
Tess shifted a little to get more comfortable against the pillows and typed an email to Donovan, then opened the case file and studied the crime-scene photos in the dim light of
her night lamp. The glimpse of death, the positioning of the victims, and the preening ritual that was so important to the unsubs were the most disturbing aspects of the case. All serial offenders were disturbing to her, but this case simply gave her the creeps. She closed her eyes and cringed, imagining how Lisa and Sarah must have felt, probably Katherine too, having to endure through the killer’s rituals. They were subjected to the physical and psychological tortures of laborious cosmetic procedures, some quite painful, like the Brazilian waxing was, under the lecherous eyes of a lust rapist.
Tess repressed a shudder and pushed away the nightmarish images from her mind. Sometimes, when such nightmares invaded her and raised ghosts from her own past, she saw herself pulling the trigger and ridding the world of such scum. Not anymore though… she had to catch them, if she was ever going to survive the committee hearing about her kill ratios. She forced some air into her lungs and soon the darkness that had invaded her mind cleared enough to let her focus on finding the two degenerates who’d taken so many lives.
A quiet chime alerted her to a new text message from Donovan, “If you’re awake, please call this line,” then a link to a conference call was pasted in the text message, complete with call number and secure access code.
She checked the time; it wasn’t even 5:00AM yet. She put on her headphones and dialed the number, then entered her passkey. The system connected her with the call already in progress, and she recognized Michowsky, Fradella, and Donovan on the call.
“Good morning,” she said quietly.
“When do you ever sleep?” Michowsky asked.
“I don’t. Not while those freaks are still out there. Not while they have Katherine and Stacy.”
“If there’s any consolation, neither do we,” Donovan replied.
“Let’s start with some bad news,” Michowsky intervened. “That schmuck, Bolton, is not our doer; his DNA doesn’t match. As much as it pains me to say it, I cut that perv loose.”
“I was expecting that,” Tess replied. “We need to find someone who had access to all victims; Bolton only had access to two of them. He was a long shot to begin with.”
“And the physical appearance match?” Fradella asked.
“Just a coincidence, I guess.” Tess replied, trying to ignore the pang of fear that churned in her gut. What if the portraits were useless, more of a distraction and a time waste than a useful tool? Only time would tell, but for now it didn’t look too good.
“BOLO’s out on the sketches anyway,” Michowsky added. “And we’ve been busy. We’ve talked to every friend and close relative of the victims, and we started on Katherine’s and Stacy’s. Are you busy this morning, Winnett?”
“What do you think?” she scoffed. “Why?”
“There’s a Constance Gilliam on staff at the hospital. She and Katherine were best friends, by her husband’s account. Will you save me a trip?”
“Sure, as soon as the day shift starts, I’ll get to it.”
“I got some interesting stuff that popped up from searches tonight. Deeply buried data, that’s why it took so long to dig it up,” Donovan said. “All financials are pristine, for all the victims and their immediate families. No debt, no unusual transactions, nothing to mention. Katherine Nelson has these cash withdrawals that I can’t correlate with any activities; maybe her bestie Constance Gilliam can shed some light.”
“How much?” Tess asked.
“At least six or seven hundred a month, two or three hundred at a time.”
“Okay, I’ll look into it. What else?”
“A few commonalities, but they’re partial. The Thomas family and the Nelsons used the same plumbing company recently. Lisa Trask and Katherine Nelson lived relatively close to a recently released sex offender who matches the physical description and the behavioral profile.”
“Bring him in,” Tess said. “Maybe it’s that simple.”
“Is it ever?” Michowsky replied with a hint of sarcasm. “We’re on our way there now.”
“We still don’t have someone who had access to all of them. Keep looking, Donovan, please.”
“I’m running out of ideas, what to look at and where to dig.”
“Maybe it has something to do with their children,” Tess offered. “All these women were young mothers; maybe that’s the connection.”
“I’ve already checked day care and nannies, pediatricians and nurses, even baby food choices. Nothing.”
“Let’s go back to the women, then. What about their professional backgrounds?”
“Nothing there, at least on the surface. Four victims, four different companies, and four different professions. Couldn’t be more scattered.”
Silence took over the line, and the usual amplified hum made itself heard.
“These women have more than a few things in common. Young mothers, we looked at that. How about their depression? Anyone self-medicating? Seeing a shrink? How about their cheating? Maybe the same man asked them out? Take another look on their social media profiles.”
“They’re married, Tess,” Fradella said, “they’re not going to post their lover’s name and number on Facebook.”
“You’re right, Todd, I’m reaching; I’m getting desperate. It’s just that… I don’t know how much longer they’re going to keep Katherine alive, that’s all. It drives me crazy.”
Silence took over the line again, except for the sounds of Michowsky’s car, driving fast over the concrete slabs of a bridge.
“Listen, guys, I know it’s farfetched, but I have this gut feeling, you know? I think the unsub is choosing them because they rejected him. It’s something about this grooming ritual that makes no other sense.”
“What do you mean?” Fradella asked, “and which unsub are you talking about?”
“The rapist. I know he’s not killing them himself, but he chooses them to be killed while he rapes them. We talked about it when we built the profile. Now, see? Women spruce up before going on dates, right? In this case, and in the mind of the profoundly deranged rapist unsub, before cheating. But the lust rapist objectifies women; he doesn’t care about pretending he’s on a date.”
“I’m confused now, what are you saying?” Michowsky asked.
“I think we should disentangle the unsubs’ fantasies,” Tess replied. “I think the grooming ritual supports the killer unsub’s fantasy, and we’ve already established that the rapist unsub is most likely to be the one who chooses the victims. I think it plays like this: the rapist sees the woman, approaches her, and is rejected. That feeds both his lust and his urge to possess the woman, to get sexual gratification contingent on her death, as a form of supreme punishment. It’s called erotophonophilia, or sexual arousal contingent on the death of a human. He can’t kill them himself yet, so he needs the strangler unsub to do the job for him.”
“Well… that puts things in a new light,” Michowsky commented. “How about the strangler’s fantasy? How do you see that playing?”
“He’s the one who dictates the physical appearance of the victims. He has a type, because he’s an anger-retaliatory killer, and he repeats something he needs to remember, just like Bill said. That something is centered on a traumatic memory involving a woman who looked a certain way. I believe the killer unsub dictates the specific physiognomy type, but the rapist goes out there and chooses the victims, and later the killer stalks them and shows them the glimpse of death. These two unsubs are completely symbiotic. Their fantasies intertwine and complete each other.”
One of them whistled quietly, but Tess didn’t recognize who that was.
“When did you come up with all this?” Michowsky asked.
“I had a lot of time on my hands,” she replied dryly. “See why I think these women might have met the rapist unsub? I believe he approached them, and they rejected him. I have no rational evidence to support that thought; it just makes sense to me, in my gut.”
“Yeah, but Stacy’s gay,” Fradella said. “You said these unsubs are highly organized;
how did they miss that?”
“You’re right. Stacy being gay is an exception in our victimology matrix, and we don’t understand this exception yet. Ultimately, Stacy being gay can only mean she rejected him if he approached her. I say, go back and talk with all the girlfriends; maybe the victims shared that they met someone recently, someone who approached them and they didn’t accept. Maybe it was someone creepy, or too shy, or just… not the right guy. Maybe we get lucky, and one of these girlfriends saw him.”
41
A Shower
When Melissa entered Tess’s room, her hands trembled slightly, holding tightly to the envelope with the prints of the photos she’d taken a few days before. She felt tired and jittery, living off coffee and adrenaline, both fueling her rampant anxiety. She’d spent the night wide awake, pacing the living room in her socks so she wouldn’t disturb Derek, avoiding him.
She couldn’t look him in the eye; not with the terrible suspicions that whirlpooled in her mind. She was afraid he’d see right through her in a matter of seconds, and ask her questions she didn’t want to answer. She’d spent the evening curled up on the couch and wrapped in a blanket, blaming her state on nonexistent PMS and some nonexistent cramps. Later, when Derek had gone to bed, she started pacing the floor, unable to sleep, unable to rest.
A night’s worth of anguish had brought no answers; only more questions, more fears. Yet, after all that time spent twisting the same hypotheses in her weary mind, she’d decided to look again, just to be more than sure. This time, she wanted to put the photos side by side, the ones she’d taken herself, and the one Tess kept in the case file. What if they were two different women, who just happened to look alike? What if her terrified mind had played an ugly trick on her?
Her palm sweat and stained the envelope. She gripped it firmly, terrified of what could happen if somehow the photos fell to the floor under the gaze of the fearsome Agent Winnett. She walked inside the room and fumbled to push the door shut, because her right hand clutched the photos, but she made it to the cabinet without incident. Then she breathed for the first time in what seemed like minutes, but it had only been seconds.