time sobered his ass up, and now he claims his entire confession was a bold-faced fabrication!”
“To end an eighteen-hour, marathon interrogation,” countered Darwin.
“Were there sketches at the Portland murder scene?” Jessica asked.
“Matter of fact, yes.”
“Charcoal drawings?”
“Yes.”
“And what did they depict?”
“The dead woman and her horses.”
“Horses?”
“She loved horses… a real horse lover.”
Sands broke in. “Didn't the husband say she slept with her horses?”
“Actually, he said she'd rather have fucked a horse than ever get down with him again,” replied the resident expert on Towne, Darwin Reynolds, and this brought on laughing jags all around and a halt to the discussion, and everyone took a moment.
Dr. Sands turned his attention back to the body and began probing the ugly wound, taking a few more measurements. Abrams said he needed a smoke, but remained.
Reynolds didn't let it drop, however. “Look, the victim was white, and Towne's only prior was an aggravated battery charge, a domestic, and that only once, but him being a black man-”
“Oh fucking hell, here we go again with the poor black man's wrongfully accused defense because he's black shit,” countered Abrams. “Pah-lease, Darwin.”
“A black man beating on a white wife,” continued Darwin. “It conjured up every redneck's primal prejudice- images of O.J. and Nicole-and it was all that came up on every Portland cop's radar screen.”
“The woman was found with her spine ripped out,” stated Abrams. “And his prints were all over the place.”
“The man lived there for years. And as for her spine, it was never recovered. Neither was the one in Minnesota or here to date.”
“Aggravated battery, hell, I'd be looking close at him for his wife's murder even without that, but with it on his record, Darwin, it's not about race,” argued Abrams, his face reddening.
“I'm not so sure. Way people behave in this life, seems everything is about race. And you know the fact is the other two victims were white women approximately the same age.”
“Yeah, so what, Darwin?”
“Dr. Coran, will you please tell these backward Milwaukee yahoos how damned rarely a serial killer kills outside his own race? Tell 'em, Dr. Coran.”
“True. There's even less chance, statistically speaking, for a black man to kill outside race,” she added.
“Towne was convicted on highly suspect, circumstantial evidence alone. And now, with this at our feet, hell, it becomes even more suspect!” Darwin paced, adding,”The first victim two years ago in Millbrook, Minnesota, also lived alone, no relatives. She was found clutching a charcoal sketch, too.”
“All information the cops up north let out to the press, so anyone could copycat it,” added Sands, tsk-tsking his disapproval.
“No one was ever apprehended for the murder.”
Jessica recalled what little she knew of the Millbrook case-a small burb outside the Twin Cities. She told Reynolds, “FBI field office wasn't called in. It was handled as a local murder by the Millbrook authorities. Kept relatively quiet given the sensational way in which she was dispatched.”
“Case went nowhere,” replied Darwin. “There were no repeats, so for the most part, authorities were pleased it just went away, that it didn't become a recurring nightmare.”
“Then it happened over a year ago in Portland,” said Abrams.
“A year in between the first and second killing,” said Sands. “Not your typical bad boy, this one, and now this, a year later.”
“Agreed,” said Jessica. “Highly unusual if all the killings were done by the same man. Spacing his killings so far apart.”
“The Oregon black mountain man case,” began Chief Abrams, “got play on Court TV. High-profile case. Guy was put on psychoactive drugs and claimed later, after getting his head straight, that he didn't do it.”
Reynolds finished for Abrams, adding, “Towne then refused any appeals made on his behalf. He's on death row, end of story for everybody who wants to look the other way-just about the whole world, because he's decided to regain control himself with institutional suicide.”
“I remember reading something about it at the time,” said Jessica.
Reynolds added, “Towne has till the end of the week, a handful of days.”
“Then he's toast,” Abrams put in.
“He's been on death row for over a year now,” added Darwin. “Third Strike law… Nature of the crime… Speed Law of the West.”
“Everybody's anxious to see him die. Isn't that right?” asked Sands as he worked to place a stray particle of lint beneath a slide. “Even he wants an end to it.”
Jessica, returned to the body to continue her pre-autopsy examination.
“Are you that anxious to see him die?” asked Reynolds of Abrams.
Sands looked up to see Abrams's reply.
Abrams said, “Frankly, until this discovery here… Frankly, Darwin, I hadn't given much thought to the case.”
“Until now.” Reynolds held his gaze. “Until this.” He indicated the Olsen body.
“Right… until now. Now that we have a spine-theft murder in our own backyard-what to me appears a copycat of Towne's work.”
“There's not a shred of evidence to say so.”
Abrams waded back in, his eyes traveling the room to see who was paying attention. “Look, Reynolds, the man tried the insanity defense and lost, and then he wanted a sanity defense? And now he wants a quick execution?” Abrams punctuated this with laughter. “Come on!”
“That's some new Johnnie Cochran-style twist his lawyers must've come up with,” added Pete as she wandered in from the kitchen.
“Yeah, who's he got? O.J.'s dream team?” commented another tech team member.
A third leapt in with, “Come up with the insanity to sanity defense. Straight out of the Johnnie Confuse em' Cochran School or that guy Roy Black.”
Jessica stayed out of it and kept working.
Reynolds kept on Abrams, ignoring the side remarks. “Look, Abrams, his lawyers are saying he deserves another hearing in light of the way his confession was gotten, in light of this crime, and the fact he couldn't be tied to the one in Minnesota.”
“If Robert W. Towne is innocent I'll-”
“You'll what? If Towne is innocent, and we find out too late, how will that play, Chief?”
Jessica had motioned for the photographer to take close-ups of the head wound she'd cleaned, and the man moved in with purpose. Jessica said to Darwin, “Are you personally involved in the Oregon case, Darwin? You seem to be.”
“I see a wrong I'd like to right. That's the extent of my personal involvement.”
Jessica considered this as she finished the depth measurements to the killing wound down the length of Joyce Olsen's back. “My guess, Dr. Sands, some sort of surgical scalpel, a large one… A very controlled cut.”
“Didn't use a machete or a scimitar, that's for sure.”
“The M.E.'s in Portland and Minnesota concluded the same,” said Reynolds firmly, his gaze probing hers. “In all three cases, there are commonalities, Dr. Coran.”
“Those being?”
Darwin spread the fingers of his enormous left hand and ticked off each item. “The obvious-a missing spine- for one. Each victim lived alone. Each had next to no family. Led a sedate life. Heavily committed to their pets-their pet preoccupations, as it were. And each of the victims had sketches drawn of themselves while involved in a favorite pastime with their pets, and there's the way the guy smeared the blood with a mop or a broom to cover his
