Chapter 16

Brandon walked through the precinct and watched several patrol officers jump out of his way. He was not in the mood to be trifled with and his face showed it. His coffee-brown eyes flashed around the room and his face looked stormy. He watched Lloyd walk into the precinct and grab coffee before going to his desk.

“How did you sleep last night?” Lloyd asked.

“I didn’t get any sleep last night,” Brandon said. “I stayed up thinking about the case. I think we need to get all the girl’s files together and see if there are any more details that would suggest who his next victim might be.”

Lloyd brought out all the files and placed the descriptions of the women they had on the table so they could look at them at the same time. Some of the bodies were too decomposed to get a good description of ethnicity, hair color and eye color.

Brandon looked at all the photos of the girls who still had facial features. He noticed something similar about all of them, they had the same hair and eye color, brown.

“Hey, Lloyd, did you notice something about all these girls?” Brandon asked as he put several pictures together. “They all have the same features, brown hair and brown eyes. Some of these girls are Hispanic, and two are from the Lobos gang. At least, the two we know about.”

“Casey Hammond was a member of the gang and so was this Jane Doe,” Lloyd pointed to two pictures. “I recognize her, but I don’t know who she is. Casey wasn’t exactly Hispanic, she just had dark eyes and hair. We can do some searching through the missing persons database and see if there are any matches to these victims. We have teeth for some of the ones who are too decomposed for a visual identification and we should have some DNA from the bones.”

“How old do you think some of these cases go back?” Brandon looked at all of the girls.

“I would think about ten to fifteen years,” Lloyd said.

“Well, Marc Anthony couldn’t have done those,” Brandon admitted.

“Unless you think a nine-year-old raped and strangled this victim,” Lloyd pointed to one of the older victims.

“Well, besides the brown hair and brown eyes, what else do these girls have in common?” Brandon asked as he thumbed through one of the files.

“They are all around the same age, but we knew that,” Lloyd said. “They are all unidentified, so no one is really looking for them, most of them have been strangled and the others we can suspect were strangled since they were buried in the same place and they are all missing underwear.”

“What?” Brandon said, looking at the notes. “What makes you say that?”

“Here is the list of the clothes we found: bras, shirts, shorts, skirts, pants, shoes, torn pantyhose in two cases, but no panties. None, not one.” Lloyd said.

“Maybe they weren’t wearing panties in the first place,” Brandon said.

“So you're telling me that of all the girls he stalked, raped and killed, he was able to find the ones who didn’t wear panties?” Lloyd looked at Brandon. “He is better at profiling than you are.”

“That may be true, for now,” Brandon said.

Lloyd looked at the young man who was flipping through all the lists of items collected from each grave. Brandon was OK with admitting someone was smarter than he was, Lloyd realized. He wasn’t the hothead Lloyd took him for when Brandon first arrived.

“So you are thinking our guy is keeping these for trophies?” Brandon nodded as the idea started to make sense in his head. “I guess we can start creating a profile with all the information we have. We have enough information to build a timeline, an M.O. and what we need to look for in the community.

“Some of these are weeks apart and some are years apart. I don’t get it, what is his motivation? What is the trigger?”

“Does he need a trigger?” Lloyd said.

“Some of these guys have a pretty hard time in between killings, some are on a type of calendar and some are pure psychopaths,” Brandon said. “He might do this as a coping mechanism, you know, when things get hard, he has to kill in order to prove to himself that he is still in control. He might do it to celebrate milestones. That would explain why he is killing every couple of months instead of monthly. Or he is seasonal. It is summer, so he stalks his victims during the season when people won’t miss them too much.”

Lloyd was nodding, warming up to the idea, “Yes, schools would contact the truancy office if a student went missing. They won’t notice if the student doesn’t come back next semester.”

Brandon nodded, wiped off the board and started to take notes, “OK, we know that serial killers are predominately white, twenty-five to fifty-five years old, they don’t stop, the psychopaths are highly educated, the sociopaths tend to be uneducated and they both are very egotistical. We might be able to use that to our advantage.”

“What is that?” Lloyd asked.

“His ego,” Brandon said. “How do you feel about going to the media?”

“I usually don’t favor going to the media,” Lloyd said. “They tend to get in the way and muddy up the water.”

“This time will be different,” Brandon said. “They are going to say what we want them to say, report what we want them to report and we are going to use them to talk to our guy.”

Veronica pulled a package of mushrooms off the shelf in the produce section of the local grocery store and placed it in a small basket she hung on her arm. Veronica and her mother, Judith, were shopping for that week’s menu, Veronica would get all the produce and Judith would pick up the dairy then they would both meet in the meat department. Judith taught Veronica how to pick good vegetables and fruits but she still needed to make sure Veronica could pick out good meats.

Veronica grabbed a few other items on the list and went to take the vegetables to her mother’s cart. She went to the meat department to wait for her mother who was walking towards her. Veronica walked towards the cart and was cut off by Nancy Ridgewood who crossed in front of Judith to get to the ground meat.

Judith smiled and a gleam came into her dark chocolate eyes, “Nancy, is that you?”

Nancy whipped her head around and saw Judith Conway. She knew she needed this family to like her family. They could open so many doors as far as growing her husband’s business. She also knew there was some sort of misunderstanding between her husband and Veronica Conway. She had to patch it up if she wanted to continue the business partnership.

“Hello, Judith,” Nancy said. “How are you doing? I hope everyone is OK.”

“Yes,” Judith said. “Everyone is doing well. I hope Keith doesn’t hold that nasty accident against Veronica. She is just a child, after all.”

Veronica rolled her eyes, but she knew what game her mother was playing.

Nancy didn’t notice Veronica’s reaction to her mother’s statement, “Yes, everything is healing fine. It has been a while, the stitches are out and he has cream for the scar, which is slight. He was lucky.”

Judith nodded as she smiled at Nancy, “We were horrified to learn our daughter can be that irresponsible. Don’t you worry, we handled the situation appropriately.” She turned to Veronica and sharpened her tone for Nancy’s benefit, “Isn’t that right, Veronica Marie Conway?”

Veronica knew how to play her part, “yes ma’am,” she said in a contrite voice. “I am sorry for the harm I inflicted on you and your family, Mrs. Ridgewood.”

Nancy’s heart went out to the girl, after all Judith Conway was right, she was just a child. “That is OK, my dear. I am sure you didn’t know it was Keith.”

Veronica just nodded and stood by the other end of the basket in order to let the women talk. Maybe her mother, being as clever as she is, could make Nancy reveal something. She would have to be patient and listen closely.

“Oh, I was wondering if you wanted to volunteer at the women's shelter a couple of days a week,” Judith asked as if the idea just entered her head. “We are always looking for more volunteers. And, I was told that you would be a good addition to our garden club. A lot of women from the most prominent families are part of that club. I could recommend an invitation.”

“Oh,” Nancy was overwhelmed with the woman’s enthusiasm. “I will have to talk to Keith about all this. He will need to know how that will affect his schedule.”

“Ah, yes,” Judith said. “The ever-popular schedule. We mustn’t mess that up.”

“No, I can’t,” Nancy said, remembering the past few weeks after Veronica Conway attacked her husband. She didn’t want to go through another week where he was unhappy with her. “I will have to talk to Keith, and I don’t know how he would feel about me volunteering when there is work at the house to be done, the children need to be taken care of and food needs to be prepared. Speaking of which, I really need to go, he is coming home on time and will expect a hot meal.”

“Of course,” Judith said. “I am on my way home too. Just making sure Veronica will know how to run a house as soon as she is old enough to make one. We will chat later this week.”

Nancy just nodded and walked towards the checkout stations. Both Judith and Veronica watched her make her way to the lines and Judith shook her head.

“Now there is a woman who is completely under the thumb of her husband,” Judith said. “I bet her father was the exact same way.”

“If Keith Ridgewood told her to jump off the Fred Hartman Bridge over the Houston Ship Channel, do you think she will do it?”

“Honey, Nancy Ridgewood would dive head first off the Causeway over Galveston Bay if she thought that would make Keith Ridgewood happy,” Judith said. “You heard her, it is all about his happiness. Now, let’s go, I have my own family to feed today and the roast should be about done.”

“Isn’t that a little hypocritical?” Veronica said as she picked up a whole chicken and picked out the steaks.

“Of course not,” Judith said. “If I get home late, your father will have everything on the table waiting for us. If she gets home late, there is hell to pay.”

If Nancy Ridgewood would jump off a bridge, would she lie for her husband? Veronica thought.