“Well, what you have here is a big knife that looks just like the big knife in the picture,” Sergeant Kenny said. “I don’t suppose they made more than five or ten thousand knives just like this.”
“In the photo, Sergeant,” Olivia said, “those… spots, I suppose is the word… on the blade are sperm. We can make a DNA comparison.”
He looked at her for a long moment but said nothing.
“Was there a camera, Sergeant?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, there was. Looked like brand-new. One of those digitals.”
“Our doer left a digital camera at the scene. We took those photographs from it,” Matt said.
“And a mask?”
“A black ski mask.”
“What we believe, and what the psychiatric profiler believes, Sergeant,” Olivia said, “is that our doer has previously done what he did in this case. That is, stalk a young woman until he feels comfortable in breaking into her home. He then ties her to her bed with plastic ties…”
Kenny turned and went to the closet, returning with a Ziploc bag full of plastic ties.
“Like these?”
“Like those,” Matt said.
“… and when she is terrified sufficiently, and her clothing has been cut off,” Olivia went on, “he humiliates her sexually and takes photographs of various stages of the assault.”
“And then kills them?”
“No. We don’t think so,” Matt said. “We think he didn’t mean to kill our victim. It just happened.”
“Would you agree, Sergeant,” Olivia asked, “that there is a similarity in the modus operandi of our doer and what this man was apparently about to do last night?”
“I think you could reasonably conclude something like that,” Kenny said. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Matt confessed. “I have no idea what the legal procedure is. But I know there’s enough here to tell my lieutenant about it.”
Sergeant Kenny pointed to the telephone on his desk. Matt started to reach for it, then stopped.
“Would it be possible for us to have a look at this man?” he asked. “I don’t mean interview him. I just have a feeling I ought to have a look at him.”
Olivia looked at him in surprise and disapproval.
Kenny considered Matt’s request a moment, then nodded, stood up, and nodded again, this time toward the door.
“If you’ve got weapons,” he said, as he unholstered his pistol and laid it on his desk, “it’d be better to leave them in here.”
Matt and Olivia laid their pistols on his desk, which gave Matt a chance to take a closer look at Kenny’s shiny revolver. It was, Matt saw, more than a little surprised, a Smith amp; Wesson Model 29 in. 44 Magnum caliber. Identical, except for the five-inch barrel on this one, to the weapon Clint East-wood had made famous in the movies.
Well, hell, why not? As big as Kenny is, he probably doesn’t even feel the recoil.
Sergeant Payne’s experience with jails was limited to those in Philadelphia, and a cell in the Spring Lake, New Jersey, jail in which, at sixteen, he and Mr. Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV, also sixteen, had been confined overnight, charged with disturbing the peace of that seashore community by taking a midnight swim in the Atlantic without bathing attire.
The Daphne jail was like none in his experience. It reminded Matt more of a hospital than a jail. It was spotless. The walls were of white tile. The bars on the six cells were white. The in-cell toilets were of stainless steel, and there was no graffiti on the walls.
The first cell was empty. Sergeant Kenny pointed to the second. It held a large, crew-cutted man wearing white coveralls on the chest of which was embroidered DAPHNE JAIL in red.
Matt stepped in front of the cell and looked in. Olivia stepped up beside him.
Homer C. Daniels, as if he was trying to be friendly, at first smiled-if a little uneasily-at the young couple standing with Sergeant Kenny looking into his cell.