“You think these two were killed by the same person who killed Josephine,” Eric said. He’d laid three sheets of paper beside each other. They looked like the front page of a medical chart, except, that in addition to a smiling headshot, probably from an ID, on each page there was also a picture of the woman’s head after death. The pale slackness of death made them bear only a passing resemblance to the people they’d been when alive.
There was also a large bold note with cause of death on each sheet.
The page bearing Josephine O’Connor’s name said, “Unknown COD, Presumed Respiratory Arrest.”
Yep, not having the brain connected to the heart was a pretty sure-fire way to cause respiratory arrest.
“Possibly,” Annalise was saying, “but I’d like Dr. Hayden’s opinion.”
Walt refocused on the tablet, swiping to the next picture and then enlarging it to study the details while the rest of them continued to talk.
“Why?” Eric pulled a picture out of his folder. A woman’s body in multiple pieces, laid out like a jigsaw puzzle on a steel autopsy table.
“Why do they do it? As I said, to satisfy their need—sexual, emotional, physical, intellectual.”
“Intellectual?” Walt looked up at that.
Annalise nodded. “Britain and America have—and please take no offense, Dr. Hayden—”
“None taken, we’re a dumpster fire a lot of the time.”
“—a high number of, and therefore an extensive body of work on, serial killers.” Annalise settled in her chair, leaning ever so slightly closer to Jakob. There was something about the two of them together that made him even more certain that they were in love. However, Walt couldn’t tell if they’d acted on those feelings. They both seemed rather reserved with each other. Maybe they were just being professional in front of the fleet admiral.
“The Americans are nuts. Go on,” Eric prompted.
Walt kicked Eric under the table, and the big man snorted in amusement. Everyone showed him so much deference, Walt felt like it was his job to take the Viking down a few notches whenever possible.
“Let’s focus on the dismemberment and work under the theory that cutting up the victims is the act that satisfies the killer’s need.” Annalise pulled several papers out of her folder and spread them out, facing Eric and Walt. “The Cleveland Torso Murderer killed and dismembered at least a dozen people in Cleveland—that’s a city in America.”
Walt snickered. “My family traveled there once when I was a kid. My mama was determined to see the Great Lakes. Did you know the house from A Christmas Story is there?”
Eric scowled and pointed at the tablet. “Don’t make me shoot your eye out.”
“You get that reference but not the Star Trek one?”
“I got it. I just didn’t think it was funny.”
Annalise glanced over at Jakob, who shrugged.
“Sorry for the interruption, Annalise,” Walt said. “Please continue before Eric has an aneurysm.”
“Yes…well… The bodies in Cleveland were found in pieces, sometimes in boxes or a shallow pond or wrapped up in baskets.”
Eric stiffened at the word basket. Walt had seen the picture of Josephine’s head sitting in a basket, placed atop a cabinet in the famous Long Room of Trinity College Dublin’s library, blood dripping down the glass of the display case. It had been horrific, and Walt hadn’t even known her.
“This particular case offered potential insight into the need—the killer sent Agent Ness, the man in charge of the investigation a letter, stating,” Annalise glanced down at her notes, “‘I felt bad operating on those people, but science must advance. I shall soon astound’—spelled incorrectly a-s-t-o-n-d-e in the letter—‘the medical profession.’”
“He was using them for medical experimentation,” Eric said softly. “That could mean the rest of Josephine’s body…”
The tense silence was broken only when Annalise flipped to another page.
“That is one possibility. Another is that the dismemberment was not the focus, not the source of the need, but secondary. Józef Cyppek dismembered his victim after killing her, claiming it was in order to transport the body. But viewed through a modern abnormal psychology lens, I’d say that dismembering the victims—only one confirmed, but reports indicate that Cyppek also killed dozens of children in addition to an adult female—had more to do with dehumanizing them. He needed to dismember them, not in a defensive sense but offensive.” Annalise paused for a moment, seeming to consider how to phrase it. “If you butcher a human like an animal—remove the organs, setting aside those that are edible, removing the intestines for disposal, separating muscle from bone—you have stripped away the humanity of that person. Turned them into meat and offal.”
Walt had seen plenty of gross shit in his time and yet her words made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. “An indication of remorse?” he asked. “They feel bad they killed someone?”
Annalise pursed her lips. “Close. They are distancing themselves from the reality of the act, which may not be remorse but denial.”
Walt looked back at the pictures. One of them was bugging him, but he flicked away, back to the image of the second body, which had been cut in half at the waist. “This body still had its internal organs.”
“True, so again, it doesn’t quite fit.”
“The torso killer is closer,” Eric said. “So you think the killer is a wannabe doctor?”
“Possible, but if the person you are hunting had that pathology, I’d suspect the volume of kills to be higher. Also, isolated in a central place.” She shuffled papers and pulled out several sheets, placing them beside each other so she had a map showing Europe and North Africa. There were color-coded dots spread far and wide. “If they believe they are performing medical innovation or experimentation, they would be centralized around a private space, somewhere they think of as a lab or operating room.”
“But this fucker killed whomever Petro told him to,” Eric snarled.
“Every victim was selected by
