David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

The professor looked around the decidedly hostile table, smoking his cigarette nervously. “Look, the point of the class was, these lyrics were harmful. Part of a larger problem about society’s view of women. I can’t imagine how Terry could have come away with anything different from our class.”

“Terry took the class?” Riley sprang forward.

Albany’s eyes cast downward. “I let him sit in, yes. Terry-Terry wasn’t educated, but that didn’t mean he was dumb. He was-curious is a good word. I gave him many things to read and consider. He didn’t bother anyone. He sat in the back of the class and didn’t say a word. Until, that is-well, you know about Ellie.”

“Until he developed a fixation on Ellie Danzinger,” Lightner said. “That’s where he met Ellie, right? And Cassie Bentley? In this class of yours.”

Albany nodded. “Obviously, I didn’t have the slightest idea that anything like this -”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

“Tell me about Cassie Bentley,” Riley said.

The professor pinched the bridge of his nose. “A sweet girl. Very sensitive. Moody. Unable to trust people. But very sweet inside.” He took a breath. “I know she’d had some attendance problems. She had them in my class, too.”

“Paint me a picture,” Riley requested.

“A picture.” Albany looked up. “Quiet. Shy. Very polite and respectful, always. Lost, maybe.” He nodded his head. “Lost is the word. I know some people thought she was anorexic. She’d go through spells where she didn’t go to class, didn’t eat-sort of locked everybody out. Even Ellie, her roommate.”

“What about recently?”

“Recently?” Albany tapped his fingers on the table. “Recently. Yes, I’d heard that she was doing that kind of thing. I mean, I didn’t have her this semester in class, but I did run into Ellie not very long ago-right before finals-and she said Cassie was ‘up to her old tricks,’ I think she said. Not leaving her room. Not even studying. More of the same, really. It seemed like a roller coaster with Cassie. Up, down, up, down. Recently was down.”

Joel Lightner asked, “You keep in touch with Cassie, personally?”

The professor shrugged. “It’s a small campus. I’d see her. But she’s ‘Cassie Bentley,’ you understand. Everyone knows about her. I think that explains, more than anything, why she was so private. You won’t find five people that knew her well.”

“How about one?”

“One? Ellie Danzinger,” he said with no trace of irony. “I know Cassie had a cousin who came into town sometimes. She’d fly in and fly out. You know, life of the rich and famous. I can’t help you beyond that.”

Lightner deflated. But Riley figured this was a dead end, anyway. Harland Bentley had had a point, in the office earlier today-Cassie Bentley’s emotional problems hadn’t gotten her killed.

He wanted to get back to the real cause of Cassie’s death. “We have some reason to believe there’s a religious aspect to these murders,” he said. “The Bible, in particular. Do you teach anything about that?”

Albany gave a faint nod. “Actually, with regard to this song-Tyler Skye gave an interview where he justified the depictions of violence by what was in the Bible. It was, I think, his way of shooting back at critics.”

Riley took the list of biblical verses and slid it across the table. Albany picked it up and read them. “Yes, exactly,” he said. “These are the verses. Oh, Jesus.” He hooded his eyes with a hand. “Did Terry think-oh, God.” He looked up at them. “Look, I don’t teach that the Bible tells us to kill women like this. I’m simply showing that the attitudes against women are well rooted in our history. Tyler, himself, made that point. It’s just a class, guys. Oh, my God.”

He dumped his cigarette into an empty Coke can. “I take it, this is how Terry killed those girls? In accordance with these lyrics?”

The chief nodded at Albany. “You tell us.”

“Well, surely you don‘t-” A look of fear spread across his face. “Listen, it’s all over television.” He placed a hand on his chest. “You can’t think I’m responsible for this.”

Riley didn’t think so, but there’d be time for that.

Riley nodded toward the list of verses he’d put in front of Albany. “The last murder,” Riley said. “Burgos wrote down something from Leviticus, then crossed it out and wrote in something from Deuteronomy.”

Albany took a moment to recover, then looked over the list and slowly nodded. “Tyler Skye had cited Leviticus as the justification for that murder. Death to those who commit adultery.”

“What about Deuteronomy?”

Albany shook his head. “I don’t know. Tyler Skye didn’t mention Deuteronomy here. What does that passage say?”

Riley told him-it mentioned the stoning of a whore.

But Albany didn’t know. “Tyler didn’t cite that. Stoning? No, that’s not what Tyler meant.”

“Right,” Riley agreed. “ ‘Stick it right between those teeth and fire so happily.’ He’s not talking about stoning. He’s talking about shooting someone. And he said that came from Leviticus?”

Albany nodded. “Leviticus doesn’t mention shooting per se, of course. Just death to those who commit adultery. But Skye definitely meant the use of a gun. We know that because of what Tyler Skye did, ultimately.”

Riley stared at him. Albany clearly held the room’s attention.

The professor cleared his throat. “About a year ago, Tyler Skye killed himself. He shot himself in the mouth.”

Stick it right between those teeth and fire so happily.

“Apparently, his girlfriend left him because of his infidelity.”

The others in the room reacted with appropriate disdain. But Riley was focused. Tyler Skye, purportedly justifying his lyrics through the Leviticus passage, had committed suicide, following the lyrics to the letter-putting the gun between those teeth, meaning his teeth.

But Burgos hadn’t followed that example. He had beaten Cassie with a stone, or some similar object, and introduced a new passage from Deuteronomy to justify it. And then he had fired the bullet in her mouth-but had not turned the gun on himself.

He hadn’t been faithful to the lyrics. It was a positive development, no doubt, for the prosecution. But it also raised a question.

Why? Why had Burgos decided to improvise, to introduce a new biblical passage never cited by Tyler Skye or suggested by his lyrics?

“Can’t say I’m sorry to see Mr. Skye go,” Chief Clark muttered.

“Well, maybe you should be,” Albany replied. “Torcher has sold twice as many records since Skye’s death. Now,” he added ominously, “he’s a legend. He has a cult following.”

“How many people we talking about?” Chief Clark asked, his eyes downcast. “How many psychos we got running around here, waiting to act out these lyrics?”

“I would say Torcher has thousands of listeners. Not tens of thousands.”

Paul frowned, not at Albany’s estimation, but at the chief’s acknowledgment in his question. He was suggesting what was inescapable now: Terry Burgos had been following the lyrics to a song, or at least pretending to. And he’d matched the lyrics to verses in the Bible.

Terry Burgos killed those girls because God told him to.

He could envision the defense now. Burgos was going to claim that the lyrics were preaching God’s word-burning and beating and torturing young women for various sins. He had interpreted these asinine song lyrics as a coded directive from the Almighty Himself. Tyler Skye, in his twisted way, had mimicked biblical passages, and Burgos had taken them as literal direction.