The Silent Wife (Will Trent 10)

“Anyway,” Nick continued. “The profile hits Daryl Nesbitt in the sweetmeats. Stepdad was a successful business-owner, at least until the law caught up to him. He never formally adopted Daryl, so the kid felt unwanted. Mom was a speed freak who tricked herself out. She OD’d when Daryl was eight. He dropped out of high school at sixteen and worked a series of menial jobs. He thought he was gonna be Tony Hawk, but he ended up being a day-laborer taking cash under the table to get out of paying taxes.”

Sara said, “I don’t want to make sweeping statements, but the entire family was considered bad news. The stepfather’s shop was busted a few years ago for stripping stolen cars for parts.”

Will said, “You’d need a machinist’s hammer for that.”

“Correct,” Nick said. “All the evidence pointed right at Daryl Nesbitt. He lived in the vicinity. He had access to the hammer, which was a very particular type, even though it was readily available. He was connected to the victims. Motive, means, opportunity. It was all there.”

Faith chewed at her tongue so she didn’t counter with the obvious, which was that their suspect was still out there killing, so the evidence wasn’t really evidence, it was more like a debunked alternate theory.

She said, “Maybe, in the beginning, the killer wanted to get caught. But then he realized that he could make it more exciting by getting away with it.”

Will cleared his throat. “If he’s really learning with each kill, then spreading his victims out all over the state is a smart move.”

Faith said, “Bundy did that, too.”

Amanda gave her a stern look of warning. Faith shrugged. She could only say the truth, and the truth was they were talking about a serial killer.

Sara said, “To Faith’s point, if you want to discuss the thanatological aspect of the crime, I have some statistics.”

Amanda never shut Sara down the way she did with everyone else. “They are?”

“In sixteen percent of serial murders, you see some form of post-mortem mutilation. Desecration falls at under ten percent. Necrophilia and cannibalism less than five. Three percent of the time, there’s posing of the body for some kind of shock value.”

Amanda asked, “Would you say Caterino and Truong were posed?”

“They were effectively paralyzed, but both found on their backs. We have to assume the killer posed them that way. Alexandra McAllister could’ve been left on her back, but the predators fought over her body, so she was moved post-mortem.”

“Okay.” Faith had to make a chart to keep track of this. “We’ve got four solid links between Humphrey, Truong and McAllister. The hammer to the head, the blue Gatorade, the paralyzing, and the mutilation. Caterino had the hammer, the Gatorade, the paralyzing, but not the mutilation. Truong and Caterino were missing personal items, the headband and the banana clip, respectively.”

Will said, “Gerald Caterino hedged on the missing headband. It could be that things were missing because things were missing.”

Faith looked at the grid she’d drawn on the page. She silently checked through the other victims from Daryl Nesbitt’s newspaper articles. She had to try one more time with Amanda.

She asked, “Can we just go there for a minute?”

Amanda knew where the where was. “Thirty seconds.”

“You’re telling us that we can’t call this guy a serial killer, that we have a hunch but not concrete links because there’s no evidence that he’s killed three or more women, right?”

Amanda looked at her watch.

“So, we’ve got eight possible victims from the newspaper articles. In order to get evidence that they were murdered and not all coincidentally a bunch of clumsy hikers, we’d have to talk to the investigators and coroners and any witnesses on all of those cases, right?”

She was still looking at her watch.

“So.” Faith punched out the word. “Why aren’t we talking to those coroners and witnesses and cops to ascertain whether or not there are more victims?”

Amanda looked up from her watch. “Right now, the number of victims is immaterial. We have a murderer. We know he is a murderer. We also have something that we seldom get in these situations, and that is the element of surprise.”

Nick said, “He doesn’t know that we know he’s still out there.”

“Correct,” Amanda said. “If we start knocking on the doors of eight different jurisdictions that have anywhere from ten-to-fifty different officers standing around looking for gossip, how long do you think that element of surprise will last?”

Faith asked, “But what do we lose?”

“What do we gain?” Amanda countered. “There are no autopsy reports because the deaths were not ruled suspicious. In half the cases, the bodies were cremated. No investigations were started, let alone completed. We already have access to the details of the women’s disappearances. We already know where they were found, how long they were missing, their names, their addresses, their occupations, the names of their relatives. What more do you think we’ll get?”

“Maybe one of the detectives was uneasy with the coroner’s finding.”

“Weigh that against CNN following our every move. Or Fox doing a prime-time special. Or the newspapers or the reporters or the police officers talking off the record about every finding or possible lead or suspect.” Amanda said, “Now think about the killer watching those shows, hearing those leaks, adjusting his M.O. Possibly going underground or moving to another state where we have no contacts and no authority.”

Faith couldn’t articulate a defense, but she knew in her gut that talking to people was the best tool, sometimes the only tool, a detective had.

Amanda said, “We can discuss the newspaper articles in here, inside these walls, until you are blue in the face, but not one phone call gets made, not one source gets tapped, without my permission. Understood?”

“Does it matter what I answer?”

“No,” Amanda said. “Dr. Linton? Do you have anything further to share?”

Sara shook her head.

“All right, let’s get to the Gerald Caterino of it all.” Amanda said, “Faith, you’re up. Please feel free to start with the articles.”

Faith had planned to do just that, but she gave a heavy sigh that Emma would’ve been jealous of. She turned back through the pages in her notebook as she took Sara’s place at the podium. She felt like Barney Fife following Charlize Theron. Sara had done some kind of John Hughes nerd thing where she’d slapped on some make-up, took off her glasses and was suddenly Julia Roberts. Faith looked like what she was—a single mother who spent ninety percent of most mornings asking a two-year-old how something got wet.

Faith had spent half the night collating information and most of the morning on the phone, but she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to take a dig at Amanda. “All of this is scanned into the server if you want to dig into the details, but for now, we’ll do exactly as Amanda ordered and start with the victims from the articles.”

Amanda remained stoic.

“Joan Feeney. Rennie Seeger. Pia Danske. Charlene Driscoll. Deaundra Baum. Shay Van Dorne. Bernadette Baker. Jessica Spivey.” Faith clicked the remote for the Smart Board, pulling up the images she had pre-loaded. “Gerald Caterino had copies of all the coroner’s reports. As has been stated, no autopsies were performed on any of the victims because no foul play was suspected. Gerald spoke by phone or in person to friends and family members. He talked to some of the local investigators. Extrapolating from his notes, I think we can remove Seeger, Driscoll, Spivey, Baker and Baum.”

“Because?” Amanda prompted.

“Seeger had a history of suicide attempts. Driscoll was suffering from postpartum depression. Spivey was an obvious trip-and-fall. Baker had a jealous husband and two even more jealous boyfriends. Baum drowned in shallow water, which is suspicious, but not our kind of suspicious.” Faith pointed to the remaining women. “Joan Feeney. The coroner’s report states animal activity around her breasts, anus and vagina. Pia Danske. Animal activity, unspecified. Shay Van Dorne. Animal activity in ‘sex organs,’ according to the dentist who serves as the Dougall County coroner.”

Will provided, “Gerald Caterino didn’t know about the mutilations, so he didn’t ask.”

Sara said, “As far as I know, Tommi never spoke about what happened to her, and Leslie Truong’s case is technically still open, so it’s not subject to a freedom of information request.”

“Correct,” Amanda verified. “Faith?”

Faith did not appreciate being needled, but she clicked back to images she had culled from Gerald’s murder wall.

She said, “Pia Dankse’s best friend reported that Pia was very worried because her grandmother’s silver hairbrush was missing. Joan Feeney had to borrow a headband from a friend in exercise class because the one she always kept in her gym bag had gone missing. Shay Van Dorne was driving in her car with her neighbor’s daughter. The kid asked to borrow a comb. Van Dorne seemed very concerned that the comb was missing. Also, according to Gerald, all three women reported independently to a friend or family member that they were feeling uneasy before their disappearance, as if they were being watched. So, without any of the bodies, we’ve got two connections. The missing hair accessories and the feeling of being stalked or watched prior to death.”