“What?”
Sam pulled up her legs and sat cross-legged on Price’s small desk. “We had a floater this morning. Black prostitute named Tammy Boxer, alias Mona Lisa. We thought she had drowned, but the post showed the same necrosis that was present in both Shelby’s and Jordan’s organs. This may have been your very first victim.” She held up a hand, anticipating Baldwin’s next question. “And yes, I’m having the tox run on the fire vics. Maybe that’s your commonality, I don’t know.”
Baldwin was shaking his head. “Wow. This guy is getting around. How long had she been in the water?”
“At least a couple of weeks. Taylor suggested she might have been a test case.”
“That’s an excellent thought, given the timing. This case is so screwed up.” He turned to Taylor, who was enthusiastically blowing her nose. “Better?” She nodded, blew out a breath. “Good. How was your conversation with Shelby’s mom?”
Taylor tested her voice and found it working properly. “She wanted us to know Shelby had been date-raped. More than once, according to her mother. She called and told her the weekend before she died. She wouldn’t tell her who had done it; she was scared to death of the guy. But she promised that she was going to go to the campus police and report the rape. That’s probably why her roommate was so evasive when we asked if she was seeing anyone. I got the sense she suspected Shelby was involved with someone. She was involved, all right, with some son of a bitch who was forcing her to have sex with him. Bastard!”
“There’s our motive for Shelby’s murder. She tells him she’s going to the police, and he has to kill her to make sure he’s not found out.” Baldwin’s eyes drifted off, and he was silent for a moment. His eyes came back into focus, and he gave them a huge grin. “That’s it. That explains the herbs you found on Shelby. They were burial herbs.”
Both Sam and Taylor were looking at him blankly.
“You don’t get it? Okay, roll with me for a minute. He left her at the Parthenon. The ancient Greeks, hell, most of the ancient cultures used herbs during a burial to ensure that the spirit of the deceased made it into the spirit world without problem. That’s what he was doing. In his mind, he was giving her a proper burial. I’ll be damned. And I’ll bet he put her at the Parthenon so we would understand, that we would pick up on the connection and know that he was reluctant to kill her but had no choice. That he gave her the most proper and sympathetic burial he possibly could. And the aconite. The aconite!”
Taylor and Sam were staring with their mouths agape. Either he was right on target, or he’d gone round the bend. He shook the hair out of his eyes and launched back in.
“You know Socrates was unjustly sentenced to death and was forced to create his own execution? So in order to maintain his dignity, he drank hemlock, effectively committing suicide?”
They still looked confused, but Taylor motioned with her hand. “Go on, Baldwin.”
“Man, didn’t you guys ever study the classics? Anyway, there’s always been some debate over whether it was actually hemlock that he drank. The descriptions of his death weren’t completely consistent with hemlock poisoning. In some circles, they believe it was aconite.”
“Wait a minute. So you’re saying that the herbs were a burial rite, and the aconite was to symbolize Socrates’s death?” Sam was shaking her head, looking at them like they were crazy. But Taylor took it a step further.
“I see where you’re going, Baldwin. The guy knows the classics. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, the fathers of modern logic. The ancient Greeks and their rash of poisonings. This MO was logical to him. If he gave the girls poison, they would be purged, cleansed, right? You said early on that he was sacrificing them. Socrates had to sacrifice himself to save his dignity, to make sure no one thought he was a coward. What better way to sacrifice them than by following the lead of one of the greatest philosophers in the world?” She trailed off.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “In his world, Taylor. In his world. We’ve got him.”
58
Jill began to wake. She had been dreaming of something, but she couldn’t remember it exactly. She felt peaceful and happy, so it must have been a good dream.
She started to get out of the bed and realized where she was. Locked in a room by a man she thought cared for her. She started screaming his name as loud as she could, desperate to know what was going on.