by Tom Lowe
“Maybe.”
“After working with you on this case and the one before it, I’m dedicated to you, too, Elizabeth. And I don’t mean just on a professional basis … you are a good woman with a heart of gold. I know the pain of Molly’s death is always just under the surface. I see it in your eyes when you talk about your students and how proud you are of them, especially the young women you’ve nurtured as a college professor.”
“I try hard. For the majority of them, young women and men, I hope I get it right. I want to present something that will resonate with them for life and make their curiosity start to itch. I suppose time will tell if I succeeded.”
“You’ve already succeeded. As a dedicated and notable university professor, you don’t have to take time away from your job to help police agencies profile perps. You don’t have to administer mental competency exams to criminals. And, you don’t have to volunteer, unpaid, to be an expert witness in murder trials. But you do it. And you’ve made a big difference. You care, and when you talk about victims like Wanda Donnelly, it’s very apparent how much you care.”
“When I look into her husband’s eyes … I feel his pain to the core.”
“I hope Wanda’s family, and that of the other victims, watched some of the news coverage. It’s too early for them to find some sort of closure. That won’t happen until the trial when Baxter is sentenced for Donnelly’s murder, and we’re able to charge him with the other two. But maybe today brought them more hope. There’s so much news coverage. I was flipping through the channels to see who got it wrong and who got it right.”
“I hope we didn’t get it wrong.”
“Ah, and now we come to the real point of your phone call. What do you mean, Elizabeth?”
“Nellie said something earlier tonight that I keep thinking about.”
“What’s that?”
“After almost ninety years on the planet, Nellie has a unique perspective on everything. Primarily, because she’s lived and survived almost everything. Over dinner on her porch, she said whoever killed Brian, Olivia, and Wanda hates them real bad. Nellie emphasized those two words … real bad. She said the killer wants to leave a message of hate. We just have to find out why. If Baxter is the killer, and I know there’s evidence in Wanda’s case that indicates he could be … what is the why factor? Why would Baxter hate three people from three completely different walks of life? What is the common denominator that makes the circle complete?”
“These could be random killings. People like Wanda, Brian and Olivia simply could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever it is that drives a psychopath like Baxter to kill, it takes over and leaves bodies in the wake.”
“There’s truth to that. But it doesn’t explain the staged crime scenes. It doesn’t explain the orchestrated and sadistic posing of the bodies. It doesn’t explain the circle of blood around a tattoo, Wanda’s tattooed wrist exposed from a grave, the cross placed in Brian’s hands. There is something askew deep down that’s driving the killer to carry it to those lengths. Would that be Baxter? If so, how did these victims enter his life, and what, in his mind, did they do to justify the type of execution and death scenes he created after he killed them? Is he settling an eerie score?”
“That’s more in your area of expertise.” Bradford looked at the remaining swallow of scotch in his heavy crystal glass. “As a detective, I always try hard to find out what motivates a killer. Usually, it has to do with money and greed, sex, jealousy, or some form of revenge. But sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason behind serial killings. Some serial killers have traveled the country, killing when the urge rises up, never knowing their victims. Others, like John Wayne Gacy, cut their victims from a herd they watched, preying on kids. Gacy was a sharp businessman, a practicing Catholic, Pogo the Clown at kid’s parties, and he even had Secret Service clearance when he posed in a picture with Jimmy and Roselynn Carter. Yet, he murdered at least thirty-three people. And, in one of the interviews, he blamed the families of his victims. How sick is that?”
“Very sick, but is that what we’re dealing with here in Forrest County? Is Boyd Baxter … let’s assume he’s the guilty one, eventually going to admit guilt and blame the families of his victims … or will it be something else?”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“No, but we do know, as Nellie suggested, the killer—and I think we’re dealing with one killer here—had a bold and blatant hate for the three people he killed or what they represented to him. I believe, somehow or somewhere, there is a direct connection. What is it? Where is it? And will we find it in Baxter? I have my doubts.”
Bradford finished his drink. “As you said earlier about your students … time will tell. My money’s on Baxter with his doctrine of hate, his neo-Nazi pledges, his pulling words from the Bible to justify his actions. And, finally, I’m going back to the seed of evil that made him.”
“What do you mean?”
“His father, Charles Baxter. I spoke with two retired detectives who knew the father well. Before he was caught and found guilty of racketeering, assault with a deadly weapon, and planning the hit that got his boss knocked off, he was a suspect in at least three other murders. Charles Baxter ran with the Dixie Mafia, and for them it was all about extortion, drugs, prostitution, and turf. Daddy Baxter was in the thick of things. And his influence, in my mind, among other things … created the Frankenstein monster we have in his son, Boyd. In southern Mississippi, in those days, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Still doesn’t.”
Elizabeth stroked Jack’s shoulders and said, “Everything you said is true and accurate regarding the father and the influence over Boyd he could have had. But, he also had a mother and grandparents cut from a different mold who seemed to have influence on him, too.
“Who knows if the grandparent’s relationship was healthy? The reverend at New Shepherd indicated the grandfather had an odd take on some of the passages in the Bible. That could be where Baxter developed a warped, bi-polar attitude for religion.”
“What you didn’t say, Mike, and what we haven’t discovered is what is the link—the powder in the bullet that drove Baxter to kill at least three people—the score. Is there something in common? The cause of a fever may be a tick bite. Excuse the metaphor, but somewhere in the skin of Wanda, Brian, and Olivia, a tick head is buried. We just have to find it to answer a question posed not by me or anyone in law enforcement … but by a woman approaching her ninetieth birthday … why did Baxter hate each one real bad?”
“We won’t get that answer from him.”
“But we’ll get it … we have to. Goodnight, Mike.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Two days later, under a morning sky as gray as tarnished silver, attorney Clyde Conner walked toward a barrage of reporters waiting at the entrance to the county jail. He was there to meet with his client, Boyd Baxter, about the preliminary hearing. Conner was keenly aware of the national interest in the upcoming trial, and he planned to leverage his case to benefit his client by dropping breadcrumbs to the media, leaving subtle hints of Boyd Baxter’s innocence. Publicity could be good or bad in a capital murder trial, depending on the desired net result.
It could help if he wanted to petition the court for a change of venue, move the trial to Jackson. It could help should he advise Baxter to enter a plea of insanity. But that might be a last resort because he knew a jury in South Mississippi might consider the move to be a get-out-of-jail free card. In this case, prison would be substituted for a state mental hospital where Baxter’s incarceration could be as long as a prison sentence.
But there would be no death penalty on the table.
Conner wore a tailored blue suit, white shirt, blood red tie, and custom-made ostrich skin boots. He carried a vintage leather briefcase as a half-dozen reporters nearly surrounded him on the sidewalk leading to the jail’s main entrance. “What’s your strategy for the preliminary hearing?” asked a newspaper reporter with wire-rimmed glasses and a nickel-sized
coffee stain on his pale blue shirt.
“Our strategy is simple,” said Conner, stopping and waiting a few seconds so all the microphones could be pointed toward him. “Boyd Baxter is innocent. And that will be apparent to any jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”
A female reporter in a red jacket and black pants said, “But police say they have irrefutable, physical evidence that puts Baxter in the cemetery where Wanda Donnelly’s body was found.”
“Mr. Baxter was there for one reason … and that was to lay a bouquet of fresh-cut magnolia flowers on his grandmother’s grave. It’s something he does regularly. And my client is a member of New Shepherd Baptist Church, meaning he is often there. So, his presence at the church cemetery is not, in any way, incongruous to his normal routine. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m late for an appointment.”
• • •
Conner sat at a gunmetal gray table in a guarded and locked-down receiving area of the county jail, waiting for Boyd Baxter to be escorted into the room. There were four cameras, one mounted in each corner. The table was about the size of an average kitchen table. The difference was that this one was solid steel, bolted to the floor, as were the two metal chairs.
He removed a legal pad from his briefcase and thought about his strategy with Baxter, and he thought about some of the people he’d represented in capital trials, knowing he’d won cases he should have lost, and he’d lost cases that he should have won. But his batting average in the winning column was much higher than the losing column.
With the nation’s eyes watching, this was his opportunity to expand his notoriety, reputation and client base. This case might not be equivalent to the O.J. trial, the Unabomber, or the Oklahoma City bombing, but it was spurring national interest due, in part, to the heinous nature of the murders and the staging of the bodies for visual effect. He thought about the brief interview he had just done outside the jail, referring to the flowers on the grave of Baxter’s grandmother. In front of a jury, Conner knew it would not sugarcoat the physical evidence.
The heavy steel doors unlocked and Boyd Baxter, wearing a county-issued, orange jumpsuit, stood at the threshold with three guards. One on either side. The third stood behind him. “Let’s go,” ordered a thickset guard. Baxter didn’t look at the man. He looked at Conner and began walking across the concrete floor, his legs in shackles, the chain scraping against the scuffed floor.
Two of the guards walked with him, the third remained at the entrance, locking the door. They escorted Baxter to the table and then retreated back to the corners of the room. Baxter sat, resting his cuffed hands on the table. “Get me outta this shithole,” he said. “In the preliminary hearing, you’d better make that crazy judge allow me bond.”
“I’m working on it,” Conner said, removing an ink pen from the inside pocket of his suitcoat and slipping on a pair of reading glasses. “Okay, I wanted to talk about your defense—to strategize with you as we prep for the preliminary hearing and trial. The physical evidence they have is strong in the Wanda Donnelly case. That doesn’t mean we can’t beat it, but it won’t be a walk in the park either.”
“Are you gonna ask me the big question?”
“What’s that?” Conner didn’t smile.
“Are you going to ask me if I did it … if I killed ‘em people?”
“You’re innocent ‘til proven guilty, Boyd. It’s not my job to prove you guilty. It’s my job to disprove the assertions by the state and to convince a jury that you didn’t do it. That’s why I choose to represent clients as a defense attorney.”
“But aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know if I did it?”
“Not unless you want to tell me. I’m assuming that you didn’t do it.”
Baxter said nothing. He cut his eyes up at one of the cameras pointed in the direction of the table. He placed his hands, palms down, on the table’s surface. He could feel the heat and moisture of his hands against the cool metal. Baxter leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said, “I didn’t do it, but there are some things you need to know about me.”
“The more I know, the better I can defend you later.” He held his pen over the legal pad. “What do you want to tell me?”
“Write this down. Our government trained me to become a killing machine—to look at the enemy as somebody who would and could slit your throat as easy as takin’ a piss. In my opinion, this country’s out of control. Lobbyist’s money has taken a huge dump across the Constitution. In God We Trust means nothin’ to way too many people. Call me crazy, but I believe Hitler got a lot of it right, and I believe he was a Christian following God’s orders.”
Conner stopped writing, looked over the rims of his glasses and decided a different approach was needed to defend Boyd Baxter.
• • •
Elizabeth opened the door to the university’s School of Criminal Justice, her purse over one shoulder, a paper cup of coffee in one hand. The receptionist looked up from her desk and said, “Oh, good morning, Doctor Monroe … two Fridays in a row. I think you’re coming in just to keep the messages from piling up on my desk,” she said with a smile. “You do have more messages. One is from an Associated Press reporter. She wanted to talk with you about the profile of the man they just arrested for those murders. She wouldn’t give me any more information. One of your students, Lindsey Phillips, called about a missed homework assignment, and the last message is from a man in Natchez.” She handed Elizabeth the phone messages and said, “His name is Otto Emerson. Said he was good friends with you and asked that you return his call.”
Elizabeth looked at the phone number. She said, “We are old friends. Otto was one of the people who helped create the FBI’s Behavioral Analyses Unit. He’s retired. Maybe he’s following the Baxter case.” She turned to leave.
“Oh, Doctor Monroe, since you mentioned that case, I was reading the obituaries of those two kids killed in the De Soto National Forest. The university actually did very nice obituaries in both the alumni and student services blogs. Don’t you attend St. Patrick’s Catholic Church?”
“Yes, why?”
The receptionist looked down through her bifocals at her computer screen. “It says here that Olivia Curtis and Brian Woods were members of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church as well. They were supposed to be married there next year. It’s so sad.”
Elizabeth looked away from the receptionist, through the wide glass doors to the parking lot. She remembered what Wanda Donnelly had said one evening at the restaurant before she was murdered. “Thank God I have tomorrow, Sunday, off from work?”
“Do you have plans?”
“No, we try to take the kids to church every chance we get. We attend St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. Brandon was raised Irish Catholic. I’m a convert, raised up Baptist, but I gotta tell you, there’s something about that church I love. It’s so beautiful inside, and Father MacGrath has a way of making God’s word more understandable.”
“I attend St. Patrick’s, too. Haven’t been as often as I want.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there tomorrow.”
“Doctor Monroe,” said the receptionist. “Are you, all right?”
Elizabeth turned toward the woman and said, “Yes, Claire. I need some quiet time in my office. Please don’t put any calls through for the next half hour.”
FIFTY-SIX
Attorney Clyde Conner took more than a legal page of notes when he looked across the table at Boyd Baxter and said, “Son, when we go to pickin’ a jury, let’s hope that the prosecutor doesn’t dwell on how you’re a big admirer of Adolf Hitler and believe he was following a mission ordained from God. Even in the deepest recesses of Mississippi, that kind of speech might sour any jury.”
“It don’t mean I killed Wanda Donnelly or those other two people. I killed a whole lot more on duty than that in Iraq, but that means nothin’ in the big picture.”
“Everything can mean something in the big picture if you know how to use it to paint the picture we want to achieve.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is we’re gonna need every damn thing we can get, and we might start considering a different strategy.”
“What do you mean … different strategy?”
“Not guilty by reason of insanity. We try for that. It immediately takes the death penalty off the table.”
“But it immediately means I did it, at least in the eyes of everybody.”
“That’s right.”
“But I didn’t do it!”
“Keep your voice down, okay? Your guilt will be up to the prosecutor to try and prove. It’s our job, the two of us, to rebuke his efforts to keep from beyond the parameters of a reasonable doubt.”
“And then I get sent to a mental institution where I’ll eventually have to prove my sanity to get out. Something tells me that provin’ my sanity in one of those places would be harder than proving my insanity.”
“Maybe, but that’s the risk we take.” Conner paused, looking across the room at one of the guards, leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But here’s a strategy we can use, especially in view of the physical evidence the prosecution has … we can petition the court to determine if you’re mentally competent to stand trial.”
“Why? What would that buy us?”
“Time, public perception, your life. You told me how your father used to severely beat you and your brother. You told me about your horrific time in Afghanistan and Iraq—the subsequent, severe PTSD. You said you pulled a knife on one of the guys you work with because you believed he had a gun in his hand, and what he was really doing was waving at you. So, there are issues, no doubt. If you’re found to be bi-polar or suffer from schizophrenia, or both … that could make a positive difference.”
“What the hell’s positive about the deep shit I’m in now? Ain’t a damn thing positive. And, half of the population has been diagnosed with bi-polar these days.”
“Insanity is not as much of a medical term as it is a legal term, at least in some murder cases. The positive is that we’re not asking to determine innocence by reason of insanity … we’re looking at a ruling of not guilty due to a mental state at the time of the crimes.”