Chapter 18

With the floodlights on, and Cecelia and me watching, the crime scene people turned the body on its side – we'd been saying "flip" but it wasn't anything so casual. They did their thing, gathering evidence that I couldn't see and wouldn't know what to do with if I could. I'm a good investigator, yes, but I've never been Sherlock Holmes – I am no expert on all the different kinds of ash a cigar can make, for instance. But forensics is, in a very real sense, nothing more than what Holmes did with his cigar ash and clay and other such things.

It took a fair while for the forensics people to finish their job, and when they were done it was fully dark. Somewhere someone had found Cecelia a heavy jacket that said POLICE across the back, and she was huddled in it – like her blouses and shirts it was too big for her. I gave her a glance, and then moved toward the body.

I squatted down, looking at the slashed clothes. "Multiple stab wounds here too," I said, once again making my mental notes. "Blood ... soaked into the pants. I didn't see that on the front – he must have done more bleeding lying on his back. Maybe the same number of wounds." We'd get the exact numbers and dimensions when the autopsy results came back, but it did look like the perpetrator had been as vicious in back as he'd been in front.

I knelt, and examined the back of the victim's head. "Perhaps a small slash behind the right ear..." I straightened up. "One wound put a knick in the belt ... no others so low."

I went over the rest of the body, not taking as long as my first examination because this time I wasn't looking at the ground and the surroundings and trying to see if anything there seemed important. When I stood up I said, "Well, C, we've got an interesting one here. From the number of wounds you'd think this guy was in a cutting frenzy, but you'll notice that except for that one wound," and I pointed to the nicked belt, "he's confining himself to the torso here." I walked around to where I could point at the front of the body. "And only two wounds here in front are outside the torso, and both could have easy explanations – for instance a victim who's trying to escape or fight and causes the perp to miss ... though if he were fighting you'd expect to see defense wounds on the hands and arms, and you don't. The point is that this perp appears to be disorganized in the number of wounds, but in reality he's highly organized – a lot of wounds, yes, but he restricts them to a specific area. This ain't no Ripper."

"I fail to follow your allusion," Cecelia said, and indeed Stubblefield, who was standing nearby, seemed puzzled to, if his expression was an indicator.

"You ever seen the photo of Mary Kelly?"

"I do not believe so."

"She was the last official Ripper victim – there's some debate over just how many he actually killed, and there are some possibilities before and after the official body count. Anyway, he was inside with her, the only victim where that was the case, and he butchered her ... I use that word deliberately. He hacked off hunks of her and arranged them beside the bed. Even in a grainy photo from the 1890s you can see the bone showing in one of her legs. My point had to do with the fact that her wounds were all over the body, and this was also true of the other victims though not to as egregious a degree.

"But this guy doesn't hack and slash, though it looks like it at first glance. Nor does he attack the extremities, nor the head or face. That nick behind the ear could be anything – maybe it's a wound from the murder weapon, or it could be due to a fall. If this guy drank, and your report on what Bennie said indicates that he did, he could have even picked that up before he met the perp."

Cecelia gazed at the body for a moment. "Does this help us determine who committed this barbarity?"

"Only tangentially. It doesn't point to a specific person. But it does tell us something about whoever did it. Generally serial murderers divide into two types – organized and disorganized. The former plan things out, follow a planned ritual pretty exactly, are neat and clean as far as gloves, cleanup, that sort of thing. Disorganized perps use a blitz attack, overwhelm the victim with sheer speed and power and brutality, and leave more evidence behind, though not necessarily enough to make catching 'em easy. Those are general principles – any specific perp might vary from the type in some area or to some degree, or might move back and forth somewhat, or have both organized and disorganized characteristics.

"This guy looks disorganized. But I'd classify him the other way, because of that interesting distribution of wounds. It looks like a frenzied mauling, but I think the multiple wounds are part of the ritual. They're all in the same area, and though it's impossible to be sure without a close examination of the body itself they seem to distribute evenly front and back. That's an organized perp, in my thinking. I'd seen the same thing in the reports we've looked at, but I didn't draw any conclusions till now, 'cause I wanted to see for myself."

Cecelia nodded. "I had not been aware that the body of a murder victim could tell us so much."

"The real talking will come in the lab, when they test and compare fibers and tool marks and blood and whatnot. If we're lucky – though with the other victims we weren't – there'll be DNA from the perp here, and if we're really lucky that DNA will already be in the database and give us a hit."

"How would DNA from the perpetrator appear on the victim's body?"

"Say the perp accidentally cut himself, and bled onto the body. That would do it – though you'd have to test every square millimeter of the bloody areas to be sure of finding it, and testing costs money and takes time." I glanced at her again. "Or – this is embarrassing – he could have emitted his DNA onto the vic at some point. A lot of serial murderers do in fact find satisfaction at some point in the process – indeed, for most of them that's the only way they really can get satisfaction."

"I appreciate your delicacy; that is thoroughly disgusting."

"Yeah, it is. The whole notion of such a creep being out there is disgusting." After that remark I went on answering her question. "Or he could have shed hair or skin on the vic, which would leave DNA. But finding that can be tough too, especially the skin. They'll do a very very close check for hair and other fibers, but there's no guarantee even with a thoroughly disorganized perp – hair does shed, but not necessarily when and where it'll help an investigation."

Cecelia was quiet for a moment, looking down at the person whom we still hadn't positively identified but were thinking of as Chief nonetheless. "Is there anything else we need here?" she finally asked.