“And he fell into the water?”
“CSU techs were out there most of the night. Agent O’Dell and I went back out. We tried to retrace his steps. He and his daughter may have been out in a rowboat when the killer arrived. The river’s about a hundred feet from the back of the house. There were bed sheets on the clothesline that blocked the view.”
He paused and took a sip of his coffee. Watched Gwen spread jelly on her toast. She noticed and caught his eyes. They stared at each other a beat too long. He looked away, took another sip. So he did feel it, too. She had no idea what to do with that piece of information.
“So they came back to the trailer and interrupted?” she asked. She needed them to stay on a professional track right now. She had only a couple of hours of sleep which didn’t count since she was sitting in a hard hospital chair and wearing pantyhose.
“I think it was like Katie said it was. Her dad recognized that something was wrong before they got to the trailer. He must have told her to hide in the cellar. Maybe he thought he could go get help or find a weapon.”
“The killer came out of the trailer and saw him.”
He nodded. “But the killer didn’t see Katie. So she must have already been in the cellar. Agent O’Dell saw her peeking out the door. That’s how we found her. I think she was peeking out the door when the killer shot her father.”
“If the killer didn’t see Katie, he has no reason to believe she exists. So why have the deputies outside her room?”
“You know the way these investigations are when it happens in a small town or rural area where everyone knows everyone. As soon as we release the victims’ names someone going to remember that this guy had a young daughter. Maybe even know that she was with him.”
“Where everyone knows everyone? Are you saying you think the killer is someone the victims knew? Someone Katie knows?”
Chapter 16
“Property taxes list Louis and Elizabeth Tanner as the owners,” Maggie told Ganza.
She was working the computer as he studied a piece of carpeting the CSU techs had cut out and brought.
“Katie called the victims Uncle Lou and Aunt Beth. I still haven’t figured out Katie’s last name or her father’s.”
“No I.D. in his pockets?”
“Could be at the bottom of the river.”
She took a break to stretch and ventured over to Ganza’s side of the counter.
“Did the techs recover any shoe prints?” Maggie asked.
“They said this was one of the best ones. I have three others.” He slid a stack of photographs to her. “And we have these.”
“But all of them are bare foot prints.” She started going through the photos and laying them out like cards from a deck. “The girl had blood on the soles of her feet. She must have gone inside at some point.”
She had to work her way through the various shots of the blood spattered walls along with several close-ups of the wounds filled with maggots. Cunningham wanted her at the autopsies. Not a problem. She had attended dozens. But she hated maggots. Still, something else bothered her.
“There was a lot of blood. He had to be close enough to slit Mr. Tanner’s throat. It splattered all over the walls. It would have sprayed him, too. Why are there none of his footprints?”
“Maybe he had his shoes off, too. Some of the footprints are smeared so badly we probably won’t be able to determine size. Sure the girl might have gone in with bare feet, but maybe he did, too.”
She came across the photos of the ceiling.
“He had to tie up Mr. Tanner and suspend him from the ceiling before he cut his throat,” she told Ganza. “How difficult would that be?”
“Not as difficult as it seems.” He reached over and pointed at a close up photo of the hook. “Hard part was probably subduing the victims first. He had to tie their hands and feet. Then once he looped the extension cord around this hook, all he had to do was pull down on it. It’d work like a pulley, yanking the body up.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to kill him first?”
“Maybe that wasn’t a part of his plan.”
“You think he wanted him to suffer?” Maggie asked.
“Hey, I analyze the evidence. You psychoanalyze the killers.”
“There was no forced entry. So he knew them well enough to come on in. But he didn’t know about Katie and her father.” She came to the photographs of the pie. “Usually killers take trophies from their victims. This killer felt it necessary to leave something. And why the spleen? Does the spleen signify anything you can think of?
Ganza shook his head.
“He uses a knife to kill both victims inside the trailer but when he needs to stop Katie’s father he shoots him in the back. So he had gun. Why not just shoot all three of them?”
“Bullets can be traced back to a gun.”
“Could just throw it in the river.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to get rid of his gun.”
Maggie thought about that. “Very few serial killers have used guns. Not personal enough.”