“You were never seriously on.” Shanks raised his eyebrows. “Show me what you got. Then get some coffee.”
“Last time that happened, I wound up making a pot for the entire office.” Ben took several rubber bands off the case folders and began to spread them out. “If I’m gonna do a service, I should get paid.”
“You’re paid in caffeine.” Shanks shoved two mugs into his hands. “Go.”
Kicking him out allowed Shanks to look at what the kid had amassed. It was organized, it was neat, and it was thorough. It took Ben ten minutes to return, and by that time Shanks had already started reading the Katie Doogan file. He was so absorbed in the material that he didn’t look up when Ben came in, just grabbed the handle of his mug, sipped, and kept reading. After he gave the file a first pass, he flipped back and forth between the pages. Finally, he put it down.
“Pretty accurate in your predictions.”
“I was just using Ellen’s case as my reference point.”
“The spots where you chose to search were close to where you found the grave.” Shanks looked in the kid’s eyes. “The Sandias encompass a lot of area. Why’d you search where you did?”
“It all goes back to my theories.”
“What are your theories?”
“What they’ve always been. I must have told you a zillion times.”
“Well, I’m paying attention now. Talk to me.”
Ben sipped coffee for a minute, organizing his thoughts.
“This isn’t someone local. Instead it’s someone who’s familiar with New Mexico, someone who’s been here, maybe even stayed here for a few months, but doesn’t make his home in the state. He’s confident enough to stalk girls, he’s confident enough to snatch them off the street, he’s confident enough to rape and murder them, and he’s confident enough to bury them in a deep grave that he no doubt dug even before he committed the crime. This was premeditated.
“But he’s not confident enough to go deep into the national forest and get himself back out without help. You know how thick and dense the forest can be in summertime. That’s when Ellen was abducted. Katie was abducted in the spring, but it was warmer down in Albuquerque than it was in River Remez. In the forest, everything looks the same. It’s all trees and brush, all greens and browns. And it’s dense, with filtered sunlight at best. Without a compass, you get mixed up because the trees throw off lots of shadows. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell east from west. Unless you’re a very experienced hiker who can read a compass and unless you know the area very well, you’re going to get lost. Especially at night. In the dark, there are other things to worry about. Bears are out there, mountain lions are out there, maybe even jaguars. And there are always coyotes. You’re not going to chance going deep into the interior. My sister was strangled. She wasn’t shot. My take on this dude is he’s not all that familiar with firearms. He gets his kicks out of killing up close and personal.
“Sam, this is a guy who needs to be near roads. But he has to go into the forest to get rid of the body. So, once he’s in the forest, he needs to orient himself. He needs to be near some kind of natural landmark. It’s not going to be a tree or a boulder. It’s going to be something that he can rely on. It can’t be small rias or creeks because in the spring, with all the winds, they dry up and usually don’t become wet again until the monsoons start up in late July and August. That means he’s going to need something larger, like a big creek or a stream, something that’s always running. The banks of the waterway also provide a natural guide. The water itself provides sound for orientation and for privacy. The soil is different. It gives underneath your feet. It’s softer, easier to dig a grave in. The smell along riverbanks is different. Mustier, filled with decomposed material that’s moldy because of the constant moisture. A riverbank provides just enough of a difference from the rest of the forest to give him a little direction, so he knows where he’s going.
“Last, he needs relatively easy access from the road to the burial spot and back. He has to be out of the way to do his dirty work. But the pathway has to be easy enough for him to climb down lugging a dead body and then it’s got to be easy enough to climb back up. Both Katie and Ellen were buried directly into the ground. It’s a lot easier to lug something in a suitcase or garbage bag. But he prefers to carry dead bodies. He probably gets some kind of kick out of it. I don’t know what his motivation is by burying them as he did, and I don’t care. I’m just interested in frying the guy.”
Ben sat back and folded his arms across his chest. Then he sat up and took a sip of coffee. “This is lukewarm. Can I get myself a refill?”
“Go ahead.”
“How about for you?”
Wordlessly, Shanks handed him the mug. As soon as the kid was gone, the detective started skimming through his other files. Katie Doogan’s was the only file that Ben had connected to Ellen Vicksburg’s murder. He knew there had to be more files that Ben didn’t bring.
The kid just wouldn’t let go.
That was the nature of police work. It bred obsessive personality disorder. When the teen came back, Shanks said, “You want to explain your system of filing? The colored dots? These orange-dotted folders look like Demon victims.”
“They are.”
“When did you put all these cases together?”
“A year or two ago.”
“You linked together these women with Billy Ray Barnes way before he was arrested.”
Ben nodded.
“Okay. I’m impressed.” Shanks sorted through the six orange-dotted files. “You got two women who haven’t been positively identified as victims of the Demon. This one—Christine Hernandez—I know that APD is waiting on DNA for her. However, this one from Teasdale, Oklahoma . . . Bristol Carrington.” Shanks held up the file. “She’s not on the radar. How’d you find her?”
“Teasdale PD homicide reward. Then once I saw the place, I worked backward. Teasdale is a small town; the closest bigger town is Norman, Oklahoma. If you look at a map, Norman is a straight shot through Amarillo to Albuquerque. And Bristol’s profile seemed to fit with the rest of the Demon victims.”
“Okay.” Shanks stood up. “I’m calling up Ortiz right now. I’m going to borrow this file. It’s going to take a while.” And it did. By the time Shanks had related all the information and faxed the papers, forty minutes had gone by. When he returned, Ben had fallen asleep. The detective gently shook the boy’s shoulders.
Ben lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. “I think I need more coffee.”
“How about we go get some dinner? No shoptalk for at least a half hour.”
“I won’t object.” He stood up and started to pile the folders atop one another.
Shanks said, “You know you’re going to have to leave these with me.”
“They’re yours. I already made copies.” He handed the pile to the detective.
“I have this sneaking suspicion that these aren’t all of your files, right?” When Ben didn’t answer, Shanks repeated, “Right?”