David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

The fourth victim looked more recent than the first three, more of a natural hue to her skin, but still, to Riley’s eye, not a recent death. Her arms and legs had been severed yet were positioned in the appropriate places, like she was a broken, battered doll. Her eye sockets were bloody, empty crevices. The eyes had been gouged out with a blunt instrument.

The fifth victim’s eyes were wide-open, like her mouth, and the petechiae on her neck and face suggested suffocation.

The last of the victims was the most recent, he assumed from the color of her skin, and because it seemed clear that whoever did this was placing them in chronological order. Her face was swollen from premortem bruising, her nose crushed, the bones above her eyes and on her cheeks clearly smashed as well, the top of her skull battered to mush. Her dark hair was sticking out in all directions, matted from the blood and brain matter. This, from what he’d been told, was Cassandra Bentley.

Six young women had been lined up like sides of beef, murdered and mutilated in various ways.

Okay, he’d seen it. It was important to view the crime scene, if you were going to prosecute a case. And there was no doubt Riley was going to handle this one.

His limbs electrified, his head woozy, Riley made his way back up the stairs. Neither the hallway nor the staircases showed any signs of blood. The fun hadn’t taken place here. They’d been murdered somewhere else and transported to this auditorium.

When he opened the door into the lobby, a tall, skinny man with dark curly hair nodded at him. “Paul Riley? Joel Lightner. Chief of Detectives at M.P.”

Riley removed his gas mask and shook Lightner’s hand. Lightner looked midthirties and baby-faced. Riley wondered how many detectives a small town like Marion Park could possibly have.

“Chief Harry Clark,” Lightner said, motioning behind him. Clark was one of those guys who would look sloppy without the uniform, bad posture, a sizable midsection, soft in the chin, with small eyes, and a military cut to his thin hair.

“And Walter Monk, head of security at Mansbury.”

They all shook hands and exchanged notes. Lightner flipped open his notepad and read off the list of injuries. The first girl, a blow to the skull and her heart had been removed; second girl, throat slit near the point of decapitation; third girl, burned with sulfuric acid; fourth girl, arms and legs severed, eyes gouged out; fifth girl, strangulation, or drowning; final girl, beaten savagely about the face and skull, with a single gunshot wound through the back of the mouth.

“There was intercourse in each case,” Lightner added. “The M.E. thinks the first victim is about a week old. Each one seems more recent than the-it looks like maybe it was one murder a day, for a week. The last one, they figure, was probably yesterday.”

“They were down here a whole week and no one noticed?”

Monk, the security guy, had to be near sixty. His long, beaky face nodded slowly. “Between spring semester and summer school, there’s a two-week period off. The whole school basically shuts down.”

And whoever did this, Riley thought, knew that.

“The last one is Cassie Bentley?” he asked. “The rich girl?”

Monk sighed. “Hard to tell for sure, she was beaten so badly.”

Riley surely agreed with that. The poor girl’s face had been crushed. They’d need dental records for confirmation.

“But, yeah,” Monk said, “I think so. Especially because the first one’s Ellie, so it makes sense.”

Riley perked up. He was playing catch-up here.

“Elisha Danzinger,” Lightner explained. “Ellie. She and Cassie shared a dorm room. Best friends.”

Riley turned to Monk. “How many kids here at Mansbury?”

He made a face. “About four thousand.”

“Four thousand. And how is it you know these two girls so well? ”

Monk grunted a laugh. “Oh, well, everyone knows Cassie Bentley. She’s a Bentley.” His face turned sour. “And she’s had her share of trouble. Disciplinary things. Cassie’s a little-kind of a troubled young girl.”

Lightner hit Monk with the back of his hand. “Tell him what you just told me about Ellie.”

“Yes, Ellie.” Monk took a breath. “Ellie had had some trouble with a college employee. A part-time handyman. He did odd jobs. Painting, blacktopping, maintenance. He’d been assigned this block of buildings when he worked here.”

“And?”

“And he’d been following Ellie around campus. Stalking her. She’d gone to court last year and gotten a restraining order. And we fired him, of course.”

Riley thought about that. A handyman. Keys to buildings like this auditorium. Knowledge of the school schedule. “Ellie’s the one, her heart was ripped out? The first one?”

They all nodded.

“So you know this guy? This handyman?”

“His name is Terry Burgos,” Monk said. “I have his home address right here.”

Riley looked at Lightner. Did he really need to say the words?

“I’m taking a couple cars with me,” said Lightner.

“Wait,” Riley said. “I need a phone. And someone find me one of the ACAS. We’re not taking any chances. Surround the house right now. If you can get his consent for a search, then go in. Otherwise, freeze the situation until I say so.”

Lightner shot Riley a look. Cops had all kinds of ways of obtaining consent, or saying they did after the fact.

“We’re not fucking this search up, Detective,” Riley said. “Are we clear?”

Riley left the cops and found an assistant county attorney, sending her off to a judge for a warrant. Then he found a phone in the school’s administrative office and dialed the number for his boss, County Attorney Ed Mullaney. “You’ll need to call Harland Bentley,” Riley told him. He looked out the window at a news copter overhead. “If he hasn’t already heard.”

12:35 P.M.

BY THE TIME Paul Riley pulled up to Terry Burgos’s house, the Marion Park Police Department had been there for an hour. Burgos had answered Detective Joel Lightner’s knock at the door and had not resisted when Lightner had asked him to wait on the front porch while an assistant county attorney obtained a warrant to search his home.

A news copter hovered overhead. Reporters were lining the po lice tape. The neighbors were out, some of them dressed for work, others in robes, clutching their small children, as they looked on. The news had spread naturally. A killer lived at 526 Rosemary Lane.

The house was nondescript, one of a series of bungalows where the “townies” lived just west of campus. The police were everywhere, looking for trace evidence and footprints in the dirt out back, scanning the garage, where some blood and hair had been found, and working on Burgos’s Chevy Suburban parked in the driveway.

Burgos had been taken to police headquarters, where he would be questioned. Riley wanted to be there, but he wanted a look at the house first. He’d already had a preview. The master bathroom, garage, and truck held some obvious promise, but most of what they needed to know was in the basement.

His stomach was swimming, but he had to keep his composure. This was his case. Everyone would follow his lead. He nodded to Lightner, who was on his way to the garage. He was going to wait for Riley before heading back to the station, but the instructions had been clear enough to the uniforms taking Burgos into custody: No one talked to Terry Burgos until Riley said so.

Riley followed the path of rocks up to the house. The yard had been neglected, brown spots littering the dry lawn. The screen door, which had seen better days, had been removed by one of the cops, leaving the front door, which was propped open by a rock from the front steps.