Manette shook her head. “Damn.”
Everyone was quiet, alone with his or her own thoughts. Murder scenes like this one often prompted such a response. Pondering how someone could do such a thing to a human being. But they had seen plenty of murders during the course of their careers and most detectives reached a point where they became numb to stabbings and shooting deaths. But this went beyond what most of them were accustomed to dealing with. Even Vail and Del Monaco, though having seen some of this before, were nevertheless scratching their heads.
“Okay, so let’s look at what we’ve got,” Robby said. “Footprints from outside the property leading along a row of hedges that gives him cover from either the front of the house or the security lights. He gets in, how?”
“Only entry on that side of the house is through the garage,” Sinclair said.
Del Monaco rubbed at his jiggly chin. “Okay, so he waits for someone to leave out of the garage, and he slips in. Linwood hears something, or she’s standing near the garage anyway, and he bludgeons her with a blunt object. Beats her, where?”
“Possibly on the face, but definitely above the left ear,” Sinclair said, kneeling beside the bed and examining the corpse.
“Defensive wounds?”
Robby crouched by Linwood’s right side. “Abrasion right forearm, possibly a couple of fingers, too. Need an x-ray to see if there’re any fractures.”
“So this guy has totally changed his MO,” Vail added. “He’s not interested in talking to this woman. Usually, we figure he enters through the front door, sweet talks them into letting him in. Once in, he hits them and knocks them unconscious. We’ve never found blood near any of the front doors, so it’s just a disabling blow. But with this one, he hits her hard. And she’s facing him when he attacks. Tells me he’s angry at her, or at something she said or did.”
“MO’s can change, right?” Robby asked. “If the offender thinks something might work better, he refines his methods.”
Vail smiled internally. Robby had been reading the materials she had given him. “That’s right.”
“Or, it could’ve been the press conference,” Bledsoe said. “Linwood went after him pretty good, probably pissed him off big time.”
Del Monaco looked away, rested his hands on his hips. “Or, could be we’re dealing with a different offender altogether.”
“Whoa,” Vail said, holding up a hand. “How do you get that?”
“MO’s very different. Yes, it can change when an offender refines his skills to be more successful. But that’s not the case here. He was pretty damn successful before. Very few defensive wounds. He disabled them fairly efficiently. Why change what works?” He shrugged. “Besides, signature’s way different, too. Much more violent. Major damage to face and head. Severing the breasts suggests a sexual component. Was she raped?”
“Chuck,” Bledsoe called, “any signs of sexual assault?”
A technician appeared in the doorway. “Sodomized. Smooth object. Damage to the surrounding tissue. Best guess, postmortem. Don’t know yet if there’s any semen. ME will be able to tell you more.” Bledsoe gave him a nod and the tech returned to his work in the bathroom.
“Also a first,” Del Monaco said. “And now he might be drinking the vic’s blood. These are all very significant variants.”
Vail held up a hand. “Unless this vic holds special significance to him, like we said before. That still makes the most sense to me, Frank. As to the change in MO, he had a different situation here.” She turned to the others, focusing mostly on Robby, to explain: “Some offenders will case the place to see if there are any boyfriends or husbands or roommates they have to worry about. If there are, and the offender still wants this victim, he’ll take out the male first and then go after the intended target. We saw that with Danny Rolling in Gainesville. If Dead Eyes scoped the place, and I bet he did, then he’d know Linwood wouldn’t answer her own door like the other vics did.”
Quiet settled on the room for a moment. Sinclair asked, “She’s married, right? That shipping guy?”
“Yeah,” Bledsoe said. “He’s been overseas. Chief was going to notify him.”
“Maid lives in the servant’s quarters out back,” Manette said. “She’s had the flu past few days. She ordered take-out for Linwood, it was delivered around five. She went back to her place and passed out. Didn’t hear or see nothing. I gotta follow up with the delivery guy, run his sheet, see if he’s got any priors. And get proof of his whereabouts after he left.”
“Where’s Hancock?” Vail asked.
“Office in the back, it’s his base of operations,” Sinclair said. “Didn’t want to talk. Couldn’t get him to say shit.”
Manette turned to Bledsoe. “You want me to go get him, Blood?” She winked. “I think he’ll listen to me.”
Bledsoe nodded. “We need him to talk to us. Let’s do it out in the living room, let the crime scene guys finish up in here. We’ve . . . seen enough.”
“Got that right,” Sinclair said, following Bledsoe out of the room.
HANCOCK SAT DOWN heavily on the couch, his tie pulled loose to one side and his hair a frazzled mess. His eyes were glazed and his movements heavy, as if he had been drinking. Manette brought up the rear and tipped back a phantom cup, confirming that their compadre had, in fact, been dipping into the sauce.
“Well, lookee what we got here. A fuckin’ party. Well, fuck me. So glad y’all could make it.”
“We need to ask you a few questions,” Sinclair said.
“Cops already asked me some questions.” His bloodshot eyes wandered around the room.
Manette, who sat opposite Hancock on an identical sofa separated by a coffee table with espresso-swirl granite, said, “We know you’re pretty upset about the senator.”
His head whipped over to her. “Shouldn’t I be? She was good to me. And I just lost my fucking job.”
Vail frowned, stretched her neck up toward Robby’s ear. “That’s why he’s all bent out of shape. Two hundred K and benees down the drain.”
“Yeah, and look at all the protection it got her.”
Manette threw Vail an angry glance, then turned back to Hancock. “Look, you’re the security guy here. It was your job to look after the senator’s well-being. Where were you when—where were you tonight after six o’clock?”
Hancock’s eyes found Vail. “It’s all your fault. You got her all upset and she wanted to be left alone.” He turned back to Manette. “I went out for a drive.”
Vail felt everyone’s gaze shift to her face, awaiting an explanation. “I was here earlier,” she said, “around six. I’d just found out that the senator was my—my biological mother.” She glanced over at Robby, hoping to find a sympathetic face. “I came by to talk to her about it.”
Del Monaco snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”
“How’d the conversation go?” Sinclair asked.
“She was a rock. She didn’t say a whole lot—”
“They argued,” Hancock shouted. “Vail wanted to know who her father was, but the senator wouldn’t tell her. Vail was pissed off.”
Vail banded her arms across her chest. “I left around six-thirty, I think. I was upset, I went for a drive. When I got home, Bledsoe texted me.” She waited for more questions, a grilling, an interrogation. But everyone was quiet.
Bledsoe’s Motorola sung Beethoven’s Fifth. He fumbled with the handset and walked off.
“I’ll leave you all alone for a few minutes,” Vail said, “so you can talk.” She spun and followed Bledsoe out of the house.
THE FRONT DOOR CLICKED CLOSED. The silence continued, except for the shuffling movements of crime scene technicians who continued to move about, taking photos and transporting evidence from the bedroom to their vehicle. Finally, Hancock spoke. “Vail’s got no alibi.”
“But Karen Vail’s not a killer,” Robby said.
Hancock reached into his sport jacket and pulled out a brown cigarette.
