“Tea would be lovely.”
He lowered and folded his long body like origami paper to sit across from me. Somehow, he fit in the limited space without spilling over. I flagged the server, and Dermot ordered tea and biscuits. He happily dunked the dry cookie-like crackers into his tea and nibbled on a few before speaking.
“Sorry about that,” he said, brushing biscuit crumbs off the table. “I missed breakfast this morning. My wife and I were babysitting our granddaughter and had to see her off to school. Anyway, let’s get to it, shall we? Your mother.”
I set aside my coffee as he lifted the document folder onto the small tabletop. It was better if I didn’t have anything to spill in the immediate vicinity, since the subject at hand might cause me to react unexpectedly at any moment.
“As I told you over the phone, I was the only detective who continued searching for the Box Cutter Killer long after he had supposedly stopped killing.” Dermot laid out several pages of notes. The paper was torn, dirty, and stained in some places. His handwriting was cramped and impossible to read. “Sorry about the state of them. They’ve been sitting in a box in my garage for years.” He added a stack of photos, facedown, to the pile. “Don’t look at those quite yet, unless you want to lose your lunch.”
He tucked the document folder behind his back, folded his hands, and cleared his throat. “From what we’ve discussed, you know some of the truth about the Box Cutter. He was a serial murderer who operated in Surrey, Greater London, and Kent. At least, that was where most of his victims were found. His preferred weapon of choice, obviously, was a box cutter. He also enjoyed torturing certain victims with various types of tools: screwdrivers, drills, nails, and the like.”
Dermot paused, noticing the color had drained from my face, and gave me a moment to recollect myself. “He did not torture your mother,” he added. “That was reserved for women that he was able to lure away from the public eye, specifically women who had rejected his advances outwardly in the first place. He often intentionally came on harshly to handsome women, hoping to provoke an angry reply. When they obliged, he made them his next target.
“Because of the nature of his weaponry, I had a hunch the killer was someone who worked closely with those tools,” Dermot went on. His educational tone helped me keep it together. I felt like I was sitting in a criminal psychology class rather than listening to a retired detective tell me about the man who murdered my mother. “I also noticed the attacks were often located near an active construction site. I began investigating the men who had worked at more than one of those sites. The list was long, but I finally managed to narrow it down to one name.”
“Which was?” I asked hoarsely.
Dermot flipped over the topmost photograph. It was a mugshot of a fairly normal-looking man with classic English features: a round head, fair hair and skin, light eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks.
“Dillon Moore,” he said. “He was a construction worker for a company that did a lot of work around London during that time. More than once, the company suspended him for yelling profanities at passing women while he was on the job. I interviewed several witnesses who said they saw Dillon in the company of his victims whilst they were still alive, but that wasn’t enough to convict him. So I got a search warrant for his home and found his famed box cutter. He hadn’t bothered to clean it, so confident he would never get caught. It still had the blood of his last victim on the blade.”
I rested my forehead in my interlaced fingers, reminding myself to breathe. In and out. Inhale, exhale. There, on the table, was the answer to why the last decade of my life had been in such turmoil. A single man with a nasty misogynistic streak had happened upon my mother in a neighborhood park and decided to end her life because she hadn’t paid him the attention he wanted. The processing chip in my brain broke. I had no words.
“I know this is shocking,” Dermot said, his voice lovely, smooth, and soothing. “But I wanted to meet you because it’s important you know the truth. This man”—he jabbed his finger against Moore’s photograph—“is dead. He was killed in prison, three years after I put him there. From what I heard, he suffered greatly before the end of his life. He never found a niche while incarcerated. He was beaten, humiliated, and manipulated by other inmates according to their personal needs.”
“Enough,” I finally said, lifting a hand to stop him. “I don’t need to hear that.”
“I thought you’d want to know he got what he deserved,” Dermot said. “That’s what you wanted, right?”
“Yes. No. I suppose.” I flipped Moore’s picture over again so I wouldn’t have to look at his face anymore. “I guess it’s not as cathartic as I thought it would be. I don’t rejoice in other people’s suffering, even if they’re killers. Yes, he deserved it, but I don’t wish to know the details.”
The left side of Dermot’s mouth turned up in not quite a smile but more a confused expression of approval. “Not many are like you.”
“Why didn’t the press cover this?” I asked. “The Box Cutter Killer was a huge story, but I couldn’t find anything about Moore online or in the news.”
“After murdering seven people in London, including your mother,” Dermot said, “the Box Cutter Killer disappeared. The police were stumped, as was I. Years passed, and no one reported additional deaths at his hand. We began to suspect that he killed himself. People forgot
