Greening stood at the whiteboard that served as the Laurie Hernandez murder board, adding information about the victim herself. At the beginning of any investigation, especially a murder, all he had to work with was a snapshot. There was no narrative, no story, just the circumstances. In Laurie Hernandez’s case, he had a body, a location, and the manner of death. Before he or Ogawa could move forward, they had to go back and build a series of pictures of the past.
He didn’t like to judge a victim. To him, no one ever “asked for it” or “had it coming,” or “got what they deserved.” Victims deserved justice regardless of their characters, and he gave every case 100 percent. That wasn’t to say his personal feelings didn’t seep into his thinking. After a long and depressing day talking to coworkers, family, and friends about Laurie Hernandez, he’d come to the conclusion that she wasn’t a very nice person.
Coworkers—present and past, of which there were many as she didn’t seem to hold on to a job for long—struggled to find a good word to say about her. “Difficult” had been the most complimentary thing anyone could offer. She ducked her duties, leaving others to pick up the slack, and was rude to customers. Rumors circulated that she stole money from purses and wallets in the staff locker room, although no one had anything concrete. She looked to be cut from the same family cloth as her siblings and parents. All but one had a rap sheet consisting of minor crimes, running from passing bum checks to DUIs. Her father had asked him if there’d be a payout from the city and the property developer since she’d been killed at Pier 25. Her friends squeezed out crocodile tears for their Mother Teresa-esque friend, while ignoring her laundry list of petty offenses, which included shoplifting, disturbing the peace, and public intoxication.
The picture he’d built up was of a young woman who skated through life with little drive or concern for anyone other than herself. Regardless of her failings, she hadn’t deserved the brutal death she’d endured—and she had endured. The coroner’s preliminary report estimated she’d suffered forty lashes. Even though a flogging like that seemed as if it would have been enough to kill her, it had been a knife wound to her heart that had been the cause of death. The coroner surmised she would have blacked out at some point during the whipping. He couldn’t imagine the pain and torment she’d endured.
Poor kid, he thought.
The Tally Man was a sadistic piece of shit. He couldn’t wait to arrest the bastard. The unfortunate side of the justice system was that the Tally Man would never experience the same level of pain as his victims had. Society was supposed to be better than its criminals, never stooping to their level of depravity. In the Tally Man’s case, he wished society could make an exception. He deserved to suffer like his prey had and then some.
He stepped back from the whiteboard and perched himself on the corner of Ogawa’s desk to get a look at the big picture. The murder board looked distinctly lopsided. It was divided into columns with information on the various persons of interest. Columns for Zo? Sutton, Holli Buckner, and Laurie Hernandez were fleshed out. Little information existed for the Tally Man, other than his murder weapons and methodology. The columns for Victims I, II, and V were blank. Ogawa hadn’t liked there being real estate on the murder board dedicated to victims outside their investigation and, more than likely, their jurisdiction, but Greening thought they deserved mentioning. If they managed to put names to the numerals, the potential correlations could help connect them to the Tally Man.
Ogawa walked in. “Hey, I thought you’d left for the Mono County Sheriffs’.”
“I will when I’ve wrapped this up.”
Ogawa pulled up his chair and sat alongside Greening. The two of them stared at the board.
“Tally Man, really? You had to use the name the press gave him?”
Greening had tired of just seeing “Perpetrator” up there. In most cases, they had suspects with names and identities to put on the board. In this case, they had nothing other than a nickname. Despite the cheesiness of the nickname, it kept him mindful of this guy’s agenda—a killer who kept score.
“What would you prefer—perp or evil-doer?”
Ogawa snorted. “I prefer douche, but I’ll take anything over what a journalist invented.”
“Got anything to add to the board?”
Ogawa shook his head. “Our guy is a careful son of a bitch. He left nothing at the crime scene, other than Laurie Hernandez.”
Considering he’d notched up six victims without being caught, it wasn’t surprising. He would have gotten good at his craft.
“He gained access to Pier 25 by boat,” Ogawa said. “No security cameras pointed out at the bay. His choice of weaponry is bad news for us. We’ve yet to create a national database for whips, and the knife he’s using is a common hunting knife. If he’d used a gun, at least we’d have ballistics to point us somewhere.”
“He’s not infallible. He already screwed up the Sutton/Buckner kill by letting Zo? escape. He’ll screw up again.”