by Tom Lowe
“Is that what you did?”
“Still do. It’s a constant walk in the garden of good and evil.”
Lee shook his head and began searching through the other rooms.
Braford said, “Looks to me like you’re nibbling on the forbidden fruit, Boyd. You said some pretty sexually offensive and vile things to Wanda Donnelly.”
“I got to blame that on one shot more of Tennessee whiskey than what I should have consumed.”
“So that’s your excuse, huh—the booze did the talking? Unfortunately, that’s often a true look into a man’s personality when the alcohol erodes the façade or bullshit.”
Baxter grinned. “I’m only human. Besides, Wanda Donnelly ain’t exactly Snow White. Before she got married, pregnant with her first baby, that gal had some mileage on her, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. Regardless, her past does not and never will give you the right to violate her present and have a negative impact on her future and that of her family.”
Baxter pushed back in a chair exposing the frayed, blue fabric at the armrests. His eyes were empty, resembling a junkie who had just shot heroin into his bloodstream. He mumbled, “You got a unique way with words, Detective.”
“Let me put this into words that resonate with you. I want you to tell me where you were the night Olivia Curtis and Brian Woods were killed. Maybe you saw a car following them. Maybe someone had pulled off the road to offer help when their car ran out of gas. Why were you following them? Did you try to help them, but something happened, and it escalated to violence? Did Brian pull a gun on you?”
“You’re talkin’ fiction. Like I said, I was right here.” He gestured toward the television. “Watchin’ TV. I’m sort of a homebody. Home is where the heart is, don’t you agree, Detective Bradford?”
“You have no alibi, Boyd. You know what I’ve noticed about you in the short time we’ve spoken?”
“I suppose you’re gonna tell me, right? Or can we just sit here and listen to the breeze through the trees. I love to hear the wind rustling through the willows.”
“What I’ve noticed, Boyd, is how your voice one moment sounds like a preacher regaling his congregation, and the next minute it changes … sort of like you go into another personality, and it sounds different. Do you suffer from personality disorders? Nothing to be ashamed of, okay? Millions of people do. You sometimes hear voices, or suggestions in your head and no matter what you do … how you want to silence them, they always creep back. Are these voices telling you to do something?”
Baxter stared at the glass-eyed bobcat and then looked up at Bradford. “No, sir. Can’t say I hear anything but the sounds around me. How ‘bout you, Detective, you hearin’ voices callin’ out to you? What are they sayin’?
At that moment, Detective Lee leaned around a corner from the hallway and said, “Mr. Baxter, one of my favorite lines is from an old TV sitcom. It goes, ‘You got some ‘splaining to do. Can you explain what’s in one bedroom, and why it appears like a shrine to the Nazi’s and Adolf Hitler?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Detectives Mike Bradford and Bill Lee were almost speechless. They stood inside a bedroom that had been turned into some type of memorial or shrine to Adolf Hitler. “What the shit is this?” mumbled Lee, looking at the walls.
Boyd Baxter stood just inside the room and said nothing. Bradford opened the closed drapes and slowly turned around in the center of the room. There were dozens of framed photographs of Hitler on the walls. There was a collection of Nazi swastikas, many framed and under glass.
One wall had images of holocaust victims led into the gas chambers at Nazi death camps, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. And there were dozens of pictures of their deaths, bodies burned to ashes. One picture showed Nazi soldiers, a dozen at least, rifles aimed, standing in front of a freshly dug mass grave. More than fifty people—men, women, children and women holding babies, about to be executed.
Bradford walked to a desk in one corner. There were neat stacks of Nazi pamphlets, contemporary brochures and study guides about how the Nazi party is more relevant today than in 1940. There was a small, flat screen television above the desk and a stack of DVDs near the literature. He looked at some of the labels. “Faces of death,” Bradford said, turning toward Baxter. “You like to watch video of dead or dying people, huh?”
“Some people collect butterflies,” Baxter said. “Others collect stamps or tie fishing flies. My hobby is in this room.”
“You have some issues,” Lee said, folding his arms across his chest.
“I choose not to judge you, Detective. Although, I bet that many people, including police officers, have some dark, little secrets you’d rather no one ever discovers. Am I right about that?”
“This, pal, is all about you and your sick little world back here.”
Baxter said nothing, staring out the window, watching hens and roosters peck at seeds around the chicken coops. Bradford fought back the urge to backhand Baxter across the room. He said, “You know, Boyd, at Auschwitz alone, during the height of the mass murders, the Nazis were cremating more than six-thousand bodies every day. Earlier you told us how you believe that all creatures have a right to life, just like us. Yet, you have horrific images of holocaust victims on your walls. You have what boils down to a shrine to all things Hitler and the Nazi party. What a contradiction you are, Boyd.”
“Way I look at it is like this … I broke no laws. It’s not a crime to have a historic collection like this in the privacy of my house. So, if y’all are done with all your negative assumptions, why don’t you go on and get off my property, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay,” Bradford said. “This is much more than a hobby, Boyd. It’s some peculiar carnival collection. This is a lifestyle that you subscribe to and one that you propagate to others. All those brochures aren’t sitting here collecting dust. Do you hand them out at Klan rallies? Or maybe places like Charlottesville when you and your fellow advocates show up to create public disturbances, right?”
“I don’t have to answer that.”
“Maybe not right now, Boyd. But you will because I believe all of this is connected to the execution murders of Brian Woods and Olivia Curtis. And, it’s just a matter of time before Detective Lee and I come back to see you.” Bradford used his phone to snap pictures of the walls and materials on the desk. He stared at Baxter and said, “You told us every man has his own weakness. Devil’s always putting temptations of the flesh in his way. You’ve just taken it to the next level, Boyd. I’d strongly suggest that you stick around Forrest County for a while. We’ll see ourselves out.”
Bradford and Lee left, walking across the porch, the rifle still propped up near the plaque on the wall. Bradford pointed to a vanity license plate on the front of Baxter’s pickup truck that read: NO FEAR - 1 Peter 3:14. The pit bull uttered a low growl in the back of its throat, eyes shiny and dark like twin pools of black ice.
Lee said, “Let’s get out of here. Although I didn’t see any more guns in Baxter’s house, he could be pulling one out of a hiding place as we walk to our car.”
“I think he’s weird and eccentric, but I don’t believe he’s crazy enough to kill two sheriff’s detectives in his front yard. We don’t need to stay too long to prove or disprove my theory. We should have Elizabeth Monroe speak with this guy. He’s got a lot of issues. Maybe she can tell us if one of them led to murders.”
The men opened the doors to their car just as strong wind came from the south, rattling large limbs and sending the chickens squawking and darting towards their coops. The force of the wind formed a dust devil that rose like an apparition in the center of the hard-packed land. The pit bull laid down on his stomach. The detectives watched the small twister a moment, the wind against their faces, grit flying. The dust devil ascended to the height of a tall man. It twisted, pirouetted, and sucked dead leaves and small sticks into its vortex, like a hungry phantom.
And, suddenly, it di
sappeared. The wind motionless. The only sound was the caw of a crow in the distance.
TWENTY-SIX
The next day, Elizabeth decided to break one of her own classroom rules. She didn’t like to do that, but when it came to murder—or the chances of solving murders, she relinquished. She sat at a small desk in her classroom, grading papers and waiting for her students to arrive. To the left of the stack of essay papers was her cell phone. In most circumstances, Elizabeth would leave it in her office. She’d asked students to refrain from using their phones while in class, in what she humorously called a “no phone zone.” The last thing she wanted was not to practice what she preached.
She was finishing the last paper when her phone buzzed on the desk. Two students entered, a guy and a girl, backpacks on, chatting. They took their seats. Elizabeth smiled as she looked at the caller ID. She had to take this call. Couldn’t wait until class had adjourned. “Hi, Mike.”
“Hope I got you at a good time,” Detective Bradford said.
“Class is just about to start. I have a couple of minutes.” Three more students entered, lowering their voices. They’d never seen their forensic psychology professor using a phone in her class. “Must be important stuff,” mumbled one girl as she took her seat in the center of the classroom.
Elizabeth lowered her voice and said, “Mike, I’ve been thinking about the voice of the killer recorded on Olivia’s phone.”
“What about it?”
“First, did you speak with the man who bothered Wanda Donnelly? You said his name was Boyd Baxter.”
“Yes, I did. We had Judge Landon sign a search warrant. Rode out to his place with my partner, Bill Lee. We both came away thinking that Baxter is a loose cannon. His eyes reminded us of the pictures of Charles Manson—eyes filled with something beyond hate … as if that bug-eyed stare was trying to see right through you. Baxter has no alibi for the day and time the medical examiner believes Brian Woods and Olivia Curtis were murdered. He told us he doesn’t need one because he’s only accountable to God. Said he was home all night.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“He is now. We have teams following him. We want to know where he goes and who he sees. He works as a tree trimmer—one of those guys who scampers up trees like a squirrel and uses a chainsaw to trim limbs. He has a fearless, cavalier attitude about him. Without saying it, he wants to dare you to cross a line because he believes he’s superior to you.”
“That’s a curious observation. The verse in Latin, it keeps nagging at me. And, of course, translated to English, you know it means … you shall be strengthened by His presence in the hour of your death. Seems like the perp has the psychological makings of someone who fits a category of psychopathy first coined by a neurologist turned psychologist, Ernest James, back in 1945, after he witnessed the horrors and atrocities of Nazi Germany during the war. He said people, such as Hitler, had what he called a God complex. They believe they’re superior to everyone on earth—convinced they are absolutely infallible.”
“Funny you should mention Hitler. I need to share this with you over coffee. Based on what we saw, I’d put Boyd Baxter in that psychological category. But, of course, I’m not the expert … just the detective. Maybe Boyd Baxter will be the poster child for your profile of the killer. Can we meet?”
“After class I’m scheduled in meetings most of the day. Are you able to meet me at the Front Porch Café in the late afternoon—close to five?”
“Okay. Oh, we noticed something else at Baxter’s. Maybe it’s his personal mantra. There’s an engraved plaque mounted to an exterior wall by his front door. When I see you, I’ll tell you what’s on it. When I asked Baxter about it, he said it’s self-explanatory and, if I needed an interpreter, I was filled with deceit. Also, there’s a vanity license plate on the front of his pickup truck that reads: NO FEAR - 1 Peter 3:14. See you soon.” He disconnected.
Elizabeth set her phone down and looked up to almost twenty faces staring back at her. She smiled and said, “I know I broke my own rule with the phone, but I think I might be able to use some of the information I’m learning as teachable moments. As you know, I’m working with police investigators on the recent double murder of the young couple in the forest. Everything I experience in the field, I try to, at least to some extent, bring it into the classroom for learning opportunities. I want you to better understand criminal psychology beyond the theories, beyond the textbooks and clinical case studies.”
She stood, placed her phone in her purse and walked over to the whiteboard. She removed the cap from a marker, looked at the eyes in her classroom and said, “Who did this and why? She wrote:
Who? Why?
Elizabeth placed the cap back on the marker and turned to her students. “Your homework assignment was to look at what we knew up to that point and come up with whether you thought the killer was a sociopath or a psychopath and why. So, who wants to go first and share what they came up with?”
Two hands shot up. Elizabeth pointed to a girl in the front of the classroom, black hair in a ponytail who said, “I believe he’s an impulsive sociopath. Seems like this is a classic case of road rage; and, in particular, he has major anger issues against women. This guy walks up to the car, shoots the male driver in the head, then goes around to the other side and pulls the girl out of the car. When he approached the car, she could have said something that really ticked him off. My guess is that he has major issues stemming from his environment. Maybe his mother was strict and shoved religion down his throat or punished him severely and hammered Bible verses into his head to guilt him out of his seemingly bad behavior.”
A couple of students laughed, and Elizabeth said, “Some people do grow up in horrible environments and, unfortunately, develop mentally ill traits from their experience.” Then she asked the class, “If someone is that impulsive, reaching the point of rage from something another driver does, might this person not shoot both victims in the same location and flee the scene? Remember, the killer left the car door open, took the young woman into the woods and killed her. Then he took the time to carve a cross in her skin before hanging her nude body from a tree. What might those actions suggest to you?”
A shy blonde girl raised her hand, then put it back down.
Elizabeth said, “Yes, Ashley? What can you share with us from the profile you came up with?”
“I think the killer is a psychopath. It appears to me he was following them for some reason. Then he kills the guy quickly. And, as you said, took the girl into the woods where he spent more time there with her … all the while leaving the car door open, which could have attracted attention because the overhead light in the car would have been on. Therefore, I believe he didn’t think consequences applied to him. Couldn’t that suggest he’s a serial killer and has become comfortable in what he was doing? And couldn’t that mean there was something about her he wanted to have us notice?”
“That’s a thought-provoking profile, Ashley,” Elizabeth said. “Also, you asked two really good questions—the answer to both could be yes. Anyone want to add their thoughts?”
Several hands went up, and Elizabeth pointed to a guy in the back row wearing an Atlanta Falcon’s sweatshirt. He said, “The killer left a Latin phrase behind—the one you put up on the board last week, and a cross carved on the young woman’s back for an eerie staging. This tells me the crime was thought out. But what confuses me is that his actions seem to be both organized and chaotic at the same time.”
“That’s a good observation, Kevin.” Elizabeth walked over to the whiteboard and wrote:
Organized - Disorganized - Mixed
Elizabeth pointed to each word on the board and continued. “The FBI’s Crime Classification Manual places serial killers into these three categories. Organized killers often plan their crimes methodically, usually abducting their victims, killing them in one place, and leaving their bodies in another. Disorganized killers are more impulsive, often killing with random weapons, and usually do
n’t attempt to hide the body. And, mixed—they’re both organized and disorganized. A serial killer, however, can start out disorganized and become organized as he develops confidence and a stylized modus operandi or M.O.”
A male student, Southern Miss black and gold T-shirt on, raised his hand and asked, “Some of us couldn’t help from overhearing you on the phone earlier. You mentioned God complex. What’s that?”
She smiled and said, “If you heard me say that, then you probably heard me define it. Someone with a God complex believes he or she is superior to everyone on earth. They’re convinced they are absolutely infallible. This term was first used in 1945 by a man who studied with Freud. His name was Ernest James.”
“Doctor Monroe,” said a female student near the back of the class, raising her hand.
“Yes, Meagan?”
“The person who killed Brian Woods and Olivia Curtis … assuming a guy did it, does he have a God complex?”
“Some of the signs are pointing in that direction. Later today I’m meeting with one of the detectives on the case. I’ll have a better idea after that.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Elizabeth thought about what Mike Bradford said as she was parking her car in the restaurant lot. “There’s a vanity license plate on the front of his pickup truck that reads: NO FEAR - 1 Peter 3:14. Elizabeth looked around the lot. It was half filled, at least a dozen pickup trucks mixed with cars and two motorcycles parked near the entrance, close to the three spaces designated for the handicapped. She locked her car and walked to the steps leading up to the wide porch. An elderly man and a little girl sat in two of the many rocking chairs on the porch, the child clutching a new teddy bear.
“Hold the door,” came a voice from the parking lot. Elizabeth turned around as Mike Bradford locked his unmarked sheriff’s car.
Elizabeth smiled at the old man in the rocking chair. He nodded and returned the smile, his loose dentures too wide for his small mouth. She glanced at the little girl, two pink barrettes keeping her soft brown hair out of her faint blue eyes, the color similar to a mid-winter sky. Elizabeth bent closer and said, “What’s your bear’s name?”