“Back up a second,” Rayesh said. “Which eye?”
“The left one. Always the left eye.”
“Well, Marilyn Shaw’s right eye is the one he stabbed this time.”
Why had the killer made a change? Was he trying to taunt us?
What was it about the Staten Island case that made me so uneasy?
Chapter 27
It was after lunch by the time I got back to the office. The Staten Island crime scene still bothered me. Not the way Elaine Anastas’s had, with the blood and gore, but because of the subtle changes in the killer’s procedure.
The blotter on my desk was bloodstained. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. All the bloody crime scenes I had visited were finally messing with my head.
I used the end of a pen to touch a droplet of blood. It was fresh. I looked at the floor and saw another drop a few feet away. I followed the drops like an old tracker and was not the least bit surprised when they led me to Brett Hollis.
I stood next to my young partner’s desk, staring at his bandaged nose. It looked a little worse today, even though it was healing, since now he had two black eyes to go with it.
I said, “What were you doing at my desk?”
“What makes you think I was at your desk?”
I gave him a look and pointed at his own desk, which was speckled with a design of tiny red drops that looked like the solar system.
Hollis quickly touched his nose, then looked down at the blood on the end of his finger. He mumbled, “Shit.” Then he looked at me and said, “I was reading some of the reports that came in to you from San Francisco. I’ve also been searching the internet for similar cases, like the ones we found in Atlanta.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Just that there may have been an uptick in unsolved, brutal homicides in major cities. The kind of homicides that aren’t obviously related to the drug business or classified as crimes of passion. It doesn’t take a whole lot of murders like that to raise the average in the whole country. That’s why I think it’s significant. But I can’t say for sure the homicides are related to our cases.”
I nodded. This kid was showing some real signs of creativity and intelligence. I could work with that.
Before I could even make it back to my desk, I noticed Dr. Jill St. Pierre barreling through the office at the only speed she knew: fast. The Haitian-born forensic scientist had been profiled by New York magazine for her brilliance in the lab. I’d worked with her—I didn’t need to read an article to know how smart she was.
She smiled as she approached and said, “Being engaged agrees with you, Bennett.”
“That’s nice of you to say, but any benefit I’ve gotten from being engaged has been negated by these homicides. Please tell me you have something for us, that you didn’t come all the way uptown to compliment me.”
“Eh, I wasn’t really complimenting you. It just seemed like the socially acceptable thing to say.” St. Pierre let out her signature laugh. Her acerbic wit rivaled that of any detective I’d ever met.
She plopped down in the wooden chair next to my desk.
I leaned in close and said, “What’s up? The look on your face tells me it’s not good news.”
“I deal with death and sorrow every day. I never have good news. Only news that can help an investigation or slow it down. Which some detectives view as bad.”
I nodded. “So which kind of news are you bringing me?”
“I can almost guarantee this will be…confusing news.”
“Let me have it.”
First, she gave me a physical profile of our killer. “Forensics says he’s probably a male about five foot ten, right-handed, and fairly strong based on the wounds on each of the victims. Statistics would indicate we can assume he’s probably Caucasian if we’re dealing with a serial killer.”
I could see her hesitate, as if there was no way I was going to like what she was about to say next.
“An initial analysis of the blood found at the Elaine Anastas crime scene on 30th Street has come back.”
I had to break the suspense routine. “C’mon, Jill, you’re killing me. What did you find?”
“There are two different sources of blood in the apartment.”
“So you agree with theories that there was a second victim?”
St. Pierre shook her head. “Not necessarily. We didn’t find much blood from the second sample.” She paused. “I also think that blood may have been deliberately placed rather than spilled.”
Another bizarre piece of the puzzle? “What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Because of where that blood was located—we only found the second sample on some baseball figurines.”
I remembered the bobbleheads that had caught my attention at the scene, and she confirmed that was what she was talking about. Could the killer have cut himself? Was he marking his crime scene in some way?
“Were there multiple blood sources found at any of the other crime scenes?”
“Not that we’ve located so far, but now that we know there might be, we’ll be going back over the evidence we’ve collected to see if anything was missed.”
“Any chance you can figure out where the blood from this scene came from?” I asked the forensic scientist.
“Once we have the full DNA profile, I assure you we’ll run it through every database we can. If there’s an existing profile related to our sample, we’ll find it.”
Even as I thanked her, my mind was starting to drift off to the endless possibilities. None of them were good.
Chapter 28
I was still processing the information about there being two sources of blood at Elaine Anastas’s apartment.
I must’ve been staring off into space as I considered what this new forensic discovery meant for my case when I heard “Nice to see NYPD so hard at work.”
I turned to see a man about my age, dressed in a sharp Armani suit, standing next to my desk. He had Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses perched on an otherwise shiny, bald head. Just another guy trying to project that he was younger than he looked. It wasn’t working.
He stuck out his hand and said, “John Macy, advisor to the mayor.”
I took his hand and mumbled, “Michael Bennett.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why I just drove all the way uptown and waded through your maze of security.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Macy? I’m a little busy at the moment.”
He sat down, uninvited. “Yes, I could see you were tearing it up as I walked through the office. You looked more like a poet dreaming about the beauty of a waterfall than a detective hunting for a serial killer.”
I bristled at his tone. If he was laughing or joking, I didn’t mind the comment. But this guy seemed pretty serious.
I had to say, “Looks can be deceiving. I would’ve guessed you were a model. Maybe the before picture in a Rogaine ad.”
He let out a forced laugh. “I love cop humor. You know I was with the NYPD.”
“Sure. Remind me in what capacity?”
“I was a beat cop.” He paused and smiled. “For about five minutes. Then I got smart and went to law school.”