“I can think of two guys off the top of my head who didn’t get that,” Stuart said.
“So what kind of ritual do you think this one is?” Casey asked.
“I can’t be specific,” Dani said, “but I think it might mean the killer had some sort of fantasy he wanted to act out, and the ritual has meaning within the context of the fantasy. I can make some generalizations. The person who did this probably has a history of mutilating animals as a child. It starts with squishing bugs and then it moves up to frogs or fish, then bigger animals. They’re testing themselves to see how big an animal they can destroy before they start to feel anything. In a way it’s like the rest of us, trying to figure out what life means, but a psychopath is missing something normal people have.”
“A conscience?” Casey said.
“Basically,” Dani said. “He’s missing the voice that says, ‘Don’t hurt that animal—it has feelings too.’ The Bull’s Rock killer clearly had no regard for what his victim might have been feeling. That said, I don’t think he was angry at her. This wasn’t a crime of sudden impulse; this was planned. The way the body is displayed also speaks to acting out some kind of fantasy. Serial killers often arrange their victims’ bodies to conform to some prewritten script.”
“You think this is a serial killer?” Irene asked.
“I can’t say that,” Dani said. “I’m just saying that one indicator of a serial-killer mentality is ritualistic body display.”
“What about the symbol on her stomach?” Casey asked.
“No idea. Another indication of ritualistic fantasy, but what it means specifically, who knows? It might mean something only to the killer. It could be something he saw in a comic book.”
There was a knock at the door, and a uniformed officer told the district attorney that Liam Dorsett’s mother had arrived, along with her lawyer.
“More to come,” Irene said, turning to Casey. “Let’s talk to the boy and see what he can tell us. Interrogation Room 1. Good work, Dani. Could you write up a one-page brief summarizing what you just said?”
“No problem,” Dani said, feeling like she’d passed the test. “But, Irene? I know Liam. I babysat him until he was four. It might be useful if I sat in.”
The DA looked at Casey, who thought a moment, then nodded.
“Detective Casey is the lead,” Irene reminded her, “but I think you’re right. The boy might feel more comfortable if you were there. He’s the only witness we have.”
“Other than Lady Woo-Woo,” Stuart added, pointing at his head and making a circular gesture.
“Who?” Dani asked.
“They found an old woman wandering around in the vicinity, lost in space,” Stuart said. “Apparently she saw little green men landing in the woods. We’re sending a man to Mars to see if her story checks out.”
“I thought little green men came from Ireland,” Dani said.
“This one’s so weird, it wouldn’t shock me if leprechauns
were
involved,” Casey said. “I’m not ruling them out.”
7
.
Tommy recognized the lawyer who arrived with Claire Dorsett only because he knew him as a local real estate attorney who’d helped one of Tommy’s friends close on a house. Claire’s mascara was smeared from crying. The waiting room was stark and featureless, without magazines to read or art on the walls to look at, and the bare linoleum floor gave it the feel of a veterinarian’s clinic.
When a policewoman led Liam in, Tommy stepped aside as the boy rushed to hug his mother, burying his face in her chest and sobbing. At the same time, Dani stepped out of the elevator with three people Tommy didn’t recognize.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked her. “Liam would probably be more comfortable if he had someone there with him. Either me or his mom.”
“He probably would, but no friends or family present during questioning,” Dani said. “Just his lawyer. Did Claire find a good one?”
“She did if you’re trying to sell your house,” Tommy said.
Don’t try to be clever. Just be yourself
.
“This is the preliminary investigation, not the trial,” Dani said. “Still informal. Liam’s not yet a person of interest. I’ll look out for him. What you could do is be with Claire. You can watch in Room 2 on closed circuit if you want.”
The interrogation room was windowless, with a plain desk, chairs, a TV camera mounted in the corner, and a television monitor on a stand. As Dani showed Tommy and Claire where to sit, the monitor showed Liam taking a seat in Room 1, his lawyer beside him.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be,” Dani said. “Liam’s not a suspect. He’s a good kid, Claire—don’t lose sight of that. He needs to know you believe in him.”
Claire sniffed and nodded. When they were alone, she turned to Tommy. “Thank you for being here,” she said. “I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.”
“Can’t think of one,” he said.
“My husband’s in Patagonia, on a fishing trip.”
“I know,” Tommy said. “Liam told me. He was a little hurt because his dad didn’t want to take him along.”
Claire looked surprised. “Liam hates fishing.”
“Not the point,” Tommy said.
On the monitor, he saw the district attorney look to Dani and then gesture toward Liam, asking Dani to begin. Impressive. She’d apparently done well for herself.
“Hi, Liam,” Dani said. “How you doing?”
“Okay,” Liam said, drying his eyes with a tissue and then dabbing at his nose. “I mean, not really. But I’m okay. I guess.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“No.”
“Did they tell you what your rights are?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kind of weird, huh?” she said. “Being read your rights. Just like you’ve seen on TV a thousand times.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s important that you understand them. You do, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Do you have any questions?”
“Am I under arrest?”
Dani looked at Irene, who shook her head.
“No,” Dani said. “We’re just trying to clear things up and figure out what happened.”
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know if I know anything, but I’ll try.”
“This is Detective Casey,” Dani said. “He has some questions for you. If you have any questions about how to respond, you can ask your lawyer what the right thing to do is. Right now, we’re just trying to collect information so we can sort it out later.”
Claire took her eyes from the monitor in Room 2 and turned toward Tommy. “Do you know this man Casey?” she asked.
“Never saw him before now.”
Liam told the detective that he’d been to a party the night before. He knew his mom wouldn’t wake up when he got home because she’d taken one of her sleeping pills and had two glasses of sherry, which you weren’t supposed to mix.
“She always has trouble sleeping when my dad’s out of town,” he said.
“I did not have two glasses of sherry,” Claire said.
“You don’t have to convince me,” Tommy said.
Liam told the detective it was just a party. Yes, there was alcohol at the party, and marijuana too, but he didn’t smoke any pot because he was an athlete, and he’d heard high schools were talking about implementing drug testing for sports and he didn’t want to be kicked off the team.
“It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be caught,” Liam said. “I don’t like pot. It makes me hyper.”
“You’ve tried it?” Casey asked.
“Sure,” Liam said. “Once. But I hated it. Really. You can ask anybody.”
“Can I ask the other kids who were at the party?” Casey said. “Who else was there?”
Liam hesitated.
Tommy saw Claire lean forward in her chair, silently urging her son to tell the truth.
“I understand that you want to protect your friends,” the detective said. “They probably want to protect you too, but if we don’t know who they are, we don’t know who to talk to. You know how this works, don’t you? If only one guy says he didn’t do it, we don’t take him at his word, but if six guys, independent of each other, tell me Liam Dorsett had nothing to do with it, then we pay attention. But if we don’t have those other names, all we have to go on is what you tell us.” He paused. “I’m sure they’d like to get all of this cleared away, just like you do. You want to go home again, don’t you?”
“They can’t hold him overnight, can they?” Claire asked.
“They can hold him for twenty-four hours as a material witness,” Tommy said. “After that, they have to either charge him or let him go. Or take him into protective custody.”
Claire looked doubtful.
“I took a criminal procedures class,” he explained, hoping to reassure her.
“Dani told me you went to high school together,” she said.
“Middle school too. And part of grade school. But we ran in different circles. Correction—I ran in circles and she ran in a straight line.”
Liam looked like he was going to cry again. It appeared to be dawning on the boy, Tommy guessed, that he was in bigger trouble than he’d thought.
“You know, Liam,” Dani interjected, “we’re going to learn the names eventually, so it would be a lot better if you told them to us now.”
“She told me she used to babysit Liam,” Tommy said to Claire.
“She was our favorite,” Claire said. “I think she was the only babysitter we ever had who did the dishes once Liam was asleep. Never had any boyfriends over either. Never had any boyfriends, period, as far as we could tell.”
Tommy had always assumed Dani must be dating somebody older and smarter who didn’t go to East Salem High.
Liam hesitated, then rattled off a list of names: “Logan Gansevoort, Terence Walker, Parker Bowen, Amos Kasden, Julie Leonard, Rayne Kepplinger, Khetzel Ross, Blair Weeks.”
Tommy recognized three of the last names from reading the
New York Times
financial pages. And Khetzel was the daughter of Vivian Ross, actress of stage and screen. Tommy had met Vivian several times, though he doubted she’d remember.
Liam told the detective the party had been at Logan Gansevoort’s house because his parents were out of town.
“And you guys were just getting drunk or high?” Casey said. “Nothing more than that?”
“That’s all,” Liam said.
“What was it? Beer? Wine? Hard liquor?”
“Liquor,” Liam answered, running his hand across the top of his close-cropped head and scratching behind one of his large ears.
“You ever drink hard liquor before?” Casey asked.
Liam shook his head.
“Did you drink hard liquor at the party?”
Liam nodded. “But I had too much,” he said. “I thought I was going to throw up.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” Casey said. “You understand that, don’t you? I don’t care if you did or didn’t drink alcohol as a minor. That’s nothing anybody has to worry about.”
“I understand,” Liam said.
“So what happened after you all got drunk?” Casey continued.
“I don’t remember,” Liam said. “Honest to God, I don’t remember. I passed out.”
“You don’t remember anything getting a little crazy?” Casey said. “A little out of hand? Somebody got mad at somebody? Or somebody wanted to go do something stupid? That’s part of the fun of being drunk, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I guess,” Liam agreed, scratching his ear again.
“So what happened?” Casey said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t know,” Liam said. “I don’t remember anything.”
“I don’t think you’re telling me the truth,” Casey persisted.
Liam said nothing.
“Okay,” Casey said. “In that case, I’m going to show you some pictures. I’ll show you what happened, and then maybe you can tell me what the pictures mean.”
Dani rose from her chair, crossed to where the detective was standing, and whispered in his ear. Casey looked annoyed, and then the two of them left the room.