My closest friend had come to sound just like Raritan, but I ignored it. “Just let me talk to him, Donny. You know I want to find the killer just as bad as you do.”
Instead of answering, Donny just stared at me. Into me. The look on his face was accusatory, but uncertain, too. I could tell he was weighing in his mind whether I’d keep tracking down the Snow White Killer if the tracks led to Charlie Bliss. After another moment, his eyebrows unknotted and his face relaxed. “Okay, Lucas. But what are you going to say to him?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m going to start with whether he knows why the hell two of the four victims of the Snow White Killer have been discovered on his property. That’s as good a place to start as any.”
“Well, hell, if you want to take the direct route, I guess. You may want to ease into it, though.”
At that moment he looked over my left shoulder. “You may want to keep this on the down-low, too, if you know what I mean. Here comes your partner.”
Woodson walked up and greeted us with a forced smile. “Are we all set? I need to get back.” She looked at Donny. “Unless I’m interrupting something here?”
“Oh no, not at all,” Donny said with an equally forced smile. “We’re all finished up here. Y’all have a good night,” he said, tipping the brim of his sheriff’s hat. “Talk to you tomorrow, Lucas,” he added.
“Until then, Donny.”
Woodson and I watched him stoop beneath the yellow tape and amble back toward the crime scene. In the background the coroner’s van backed up to the body. “So. You ready?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ll just—”
Woodson put her hand out to stop me. “Listen. I don’t know whether what you two were just talking about really was private, or if it was about this case, but if it’s about this investigation, then I hope you plan on filling me in.”
“Don’t worry. I will. I promise.” I looked around to make sure Donny wasn’t in hearing range. He was already engaged in a conversation with the coroner in the distance. I turned back to Woodson. “Come with me to the car, and I’ll get you up to speed,” I said. “I promise.”
* * *
Once in the car, I wasted no time relaying to Woodson the link to Charlie’s property that Donny had divulged.
“What do you make of it?” Woodson finally asked.
“Honestly? I don’t know. I’d like to chalk it up to coincidence, but I can’t. First Mara in her grandmother’s basement, now this link to Charlie’s property? I don’t know what to think.”
Woodson nodded thoughtfully and waited for several more miles before speaking again. “You have any idea why, you know, Mara’s father might, you know, be involved?”
“He’s not involved necessarily,” I said, surprised by my own defensiveness. “We should just drive out to talk to him tomorrow and find out what he says.”
Woodson didn’t say anything in response, and we rode in silence after that. As we drove I found my mind swirling with an increasing number of questions, but the one that remained at the forefront of my mind didn’t involve anyone by the last name of Bliss.
I couldn’t shake from my mind the bloody word
CANT
smeared across the latest girl’s forehead.
And instead of questions about Mara, her father, or anyone else, a singular question seemed to hold the entire key to this investigation: What the hell did the SWK think a tan cat couldn’t do?
The next morning Terry walked into my office and closed the door behind him. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
“What is it?”
“We just finished analyzing the DNA patterns from the blood left on the victims’ foreheads with our algorithm. You want to see how the DNA of your unsub compares to DNA profiles of the most infamous serial killers of all time?”
“You really need to ask?”
“Check this out.” He tossed a stack of papers on my desk. “Look at page two.”
Page two of the report contained an upside-down tree-shaped graph showing the individual branches of serial killers clustered into different subgroups. The familiar cluster of Bundy/Green River Killer/Son of Sam sat on the leftmost cluster. Another familiar cluster bore Brady, Gacy, and Dahmer. I scanned the rest of the DNA similarity clusters and finally found our newest blood sample in the collection, SWK, on the far right edge of the two-dimensional dendrogram.
Terry pointed. “We have a new cluster.” He tapped the page as my eyes tracked to the labels in an all-new grouping of DNA profiles on the far right: BTK, Zodiac, and SWK.
“Holy shit.”
Our algorithm was designed to recluster all the serial killer DNA samples whenever a new DNA sample was added. When the DNA profiles of the fifty-two original serial killers in our database were clustered, they gave seven subgroups. BTK and Zodiac had always resided in separate clusters. Now, after Terry had added the SWK’s genetic profile to the mix, the algorithm identified eight subgroups. The three DNA samples from BTK, Zodiac, and SWK now formed a new category unto themselves.
“You know,” Terry observed, “it took twenty-plus years to catch BTK, and Zodiac was never caught.”
I stared at the results tree and focused on the names in the cluster. BTK–Zodiac–SWK.
I finally spoke. “Maybe it all fits, you know? SWK’s crime scenes are spotless. And he’s obviously on a mission … exactly what kind, we don’t know yet.”
“God complex?”
“God, messiah, something. Just like Zodiac and BTK. But one thing doesn’t fit.”
“What’s that?” Terry asked.
“BTK and Zodiac both mocked the police, almost to an absurd extent. They were big-time taunters, as if in the end they killed less for the thrill of it and more just to be able to continue their one-sided rapport with law enforcement.”
“But our guy isn’t like that,” Terry said. “At least not yet. I mean, unless the message SWK’s been leaving on the foreheads of his victims
is
the taunt.”
I weighed the possibility. “You may be on to something there. Maybe. But I still would have expected him to communicate with law enforcement more directly. That kind of guy just can’t stand it if he’s being misinterpreted, or worse, ignored.”
“Hey, he’s still out there. He may communicate with us still.”
I shrugged, about to speak, but at that moment a knock sounded on Terry’s door.
“Come in,” he said.
Woodson appeared in a navy blue skirt, white blouse, and navy coat. “Ready to go visit your friend Charlie?”
I shook my head and motioned toward Terry’s screen instead. “Come on in,” I said. “You’ve got to see this first. You’re not going to believe it.”
* * *
After Terry and I explained to Woodson that the DNA profile of SWK was more similar to BTK and Zodiac than any of the other serial killers we’d profiled, the three of us plotted our next courses of action.
Terry would go back to constructing a jeopardy map based on the four body dump sites to try and come up with the jeopardy surface we’d promised at the debriefing. The end result would be a three-dimensional, contoured map of probabilities indicating likely spots where the killer might live, as well as places where the killer might strike again.
Woodson went back to reanalyze the toxicology data, while I was going to screen the original autopsy reports to check whether any of the other victims had pinpricks on their fingers.
We decided we’d try to get all of this done before Woodson and I paid a visit to Charlie Bliss in the afternoon.
* * *
At three o’clock I stood from my desk, stretched, and felt the slightly painful pull in my back where Mara’s stab wound continued to heal. I hadn’t found anything indicating pinpricks in the autopsy reports and hadn’t reached any of the MEs, for that matter, either. Regardless, Woodson and I needed to get on the road.
Woodson sat in her office, typing on the computer, when I walked in. “You ready?” she asked.
“No, but no time like the present,” I said. “I guess it’s time we go talk to Charles Bliss. Hey, by the way, I was able to find out that the other two victims weren’t dropped on land that Charlie owns. So maybe this is just another bogus coincidence.”
“You trying to get out of this?” Woodson squinted her eyes as she asked the question.
“No, not in the least,” I answered. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“You got it,” Woodson said, sliding her laptop into her briefcase and standing. “Let’s go.”
* * *
An hour later I watched in my rearview mirror as Woodson drove behind and followed me onto Highway 26. A gas station with old pumps shimmered into view in the distance on my right, the West Poplarville Gas and Oil Mart.
Soon the Bliss residence came into view in the middle of a clearing on the right, an old antebellum farmhouse, yellowed white, with two stories and a screened-in porch. As I pulled in to the gravel driveway I caught sight of an old bloodhound lying on the sidewalk in front of the steps. Charlie had gotten a new dog.
Woodson and I walked side by side through the ankle-deep grass of the front yard. The dog opened one of its eyes, witnessed us, then closed its eye and immediately went back to sleep.
On the screened porch, rusty metal chairs sat next to a huge, overturned wooden spool, the kind used for rolling up telephone cables. A deck of playing cards sat scattered about the top of it in a half-finished game of solitaire.
I opened the screen door and we stepped into the shade of the porch. I pressed the yellow doorbell and waited.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” a muffled voice called from inside, over the chimes.
A second later Charlie Bliss’s dark face came in to full view. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“How you been, Mr. Bliss?” I immediately fell into the old comfortable parlance, despite my strongest inner desire to stay professional.
He was dressed like a Southern gentleman, crisp tan pants and an aqua-blue shirt. He leaned pleasantly upon a polished wooden cane, but his smile vanished as he noticed Woodson standing behind me, and his eyes narrowed. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, in fact,” Woodson answered. “We were hoping to talk to you for a bit.”
The older man looked from my partner to me. “I suppose so, come on in.” He held the door open as we walked inside. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dark interior. Charlie’s shadowy form moved down the dimly lit hallway. As he tilted unsteadily with each step, I wondered why he now had a limp.
Dark rectangles on the walls revealed themselves to be framed pictures. And suddenly the beautiful, mesmerizing eyes of Mara Bliss stared at me from all directions.
I did a double take when I spied a picture of Mara and myself among them. “Where was this photo?” I pointed and asked, but Charlie cut me off.
“I don’t know. I just always liked that picture of you two.” Without waiting to continue any further chitchat, he opened a swinging door on the left and ushered us into a small dining room just off the kitchen and sat down.
“Is this about what happened to my little girl? And you?” Charlie asked as he took a seat across from us, with a break in his voice. “My little Mara,” he said simply, then added, “you know she’s not well, Lucas.”
I glanced at Woodson before I spoke. “I know, Charlie. I know that now.”
“Didn’t always used to be like that.” Charlie stood, walked over to a small triangular table in the corner, and picked up a small picture frame. He brought it over and set it on the table between us. Woodson picked it up.
“It’s a nice picture,” Woodson said, handing it to me.
It was a picture of Mara and her mother and father, taken a good twenty years ago, during what had been a terrible summer. My mother had died the year before, then Mara and her family disappeared. I only saw Mara a few times that summer, and whenever I did, she seemed sullen and distant, incredibly different from the girl who’d led me into the graveyard the first night we ever met, to give me my first kiss. That summer, she and her ever-faithful mother eventually stopped coming to church.
That same summer my father kept specifically alluding to racism in every sermon. If Christ had shared the good news with a Samaritan woman, he’d ask, then how could we foster such prejudice in our enlightened day and age? Even at the age of thirteen, I somehow knew my father was referring to Mara’s father as he admonished the congregation. It seemed in every sermon he repeated the old saying, “Evil is what happens when good men sit by and do nothing,” or something to that effect. I just never knew why. I handed the picture frame back to Charlie. “Nice.”
“She won’t talk to me anymore, Lucas. Not about what happened down in her Nana’s basement, not about anything. She doesn’t even let me visit her anymore.”
“She’s been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Oh yeah? Well then, why don’t you fill me in? I still don’t know what happened. Why her?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
A brittle laugh from his lungs held no solace whatsoever. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know any more about Mara than a person on the street, nowadays.”
I pressed further. “Mara’s psychiatrist says there may have been a traumatic event in her childhood. We’d like to know about it. Anything in her childhood we should know about?”
Charlie leaned back, and an empty smile holding no true emotion creased his lips. “Everybody thinks all the problems go back to childhood. It’s not the person’s fault. It’s their momma’s or daddy’s fault.” He snorted in derision, but then his face grew instantly wary. “Why are you asking me? You think I did something to my little girl?”
“No, Charlie,” I said. “I don’t think anything right now. I’m just asking you if anything happened in her childhood.”
“But I still have to tell you officially that I didn’t do anything to her, right?” He glared at me. “For your goddamned record.”
“You know what, Charlie? And I shouldn’t even have to tell you this. But yes, you need to tell me and Agent Woodson whether you know if anyone sexually abused her—you or anybody else. For the goddamned record, as you put it.”
The anger pulsed through the small capillaries in his eyes, but he bit it back. In a strained voice he replied, “I never laid a hand on my daughter that way. No one ever did.”