“We don’t know. We’re still puzzling it out.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Like I said”—he exhales through his nose—“we don’t know. The motive’s abnormal.”
“ ‘Abnormal’?”
“We can’t explain it yet.”
“So you don’t think it’s someone close to her, then? Isn’t it usually a boyfriend?”
“Bev”—he shakes his head—“don’t.”
“Please,” she says softly, rubs his neck.
“I don’t think it’s family, okay?”
“Why not?”
He sucks his teeth, but she knows he’ll answer.
“Men like this, they don’t kill family.”
“ ‘Men like this’?”
“I’ve met plenty of killers before who think they’re saints because they never harmed their family.”
Beverley frowns. “But it’s okay to kill strangers?”
He holds his hands up as if he can’t explain it.
“One guy even quoted the Bible at me. ‘Behold!’ ” He adopts a Southern drawl. “ ‘Children are a heritage from the Lord.’ ” He pauses, straightens, as if realizing he is getting carried away.
Beverley moves her hand to his knee, gently traces the skin, coaxing him.
“This isn’t some domestic-violence situation”—he shifts his legaway from her—“not some jealous husband, or someone who got rejected.Thosecrimes, where victims know their killers, they’re intimate, messy—facial lacerations, black eyes. It’s almost like…with this guy, the victims don’t matter. It’s more about thewayhe does it.”
“So, is it easy to get onto the golf course?”
“All right, no.” His demeanor quickly hardens. “No more talking about this. It’s not right.”
“I’m just…” She pauses. “I’m just trying to figure something out, okay?”
She feels Roger shoot her a warning glance.
“Don’t you think there’s a chance that this is linked to the Herrera case?”
He seems alarmed. “Beverley!”
“You said she was a prostitute.”
Roger is shaking his head, but these murders did not take place that far away from each other, and neither of them follows the rules of your “standard” killings. Roger said it himself—they don’t seem like crimes of passion or relationship disputes. The arrow, the tattoos—there has to be meaning to those. This could be the same killer trying to send some sort of warped message.
“What about prints? Have you found fingerprints on anything?”
He glares, and she knows she is overstepping. Of course they checked for prints.
“Why are you doing this, Bev? What are you trying to prove?”
