Michael Connelly: The Poet

Though the body had nearly completely bled out, there were indications of postmortem lividity, which meant some time had passed between the victim's death and the mutilation. Possibly, according to the report, as long as two or three hours.

Another peculiarity was the timing of when the body was left in the park. It was discovered approximately forty hours after investigators believed Theresa Lofton had been killed. Yet the park was a popular running and walking spot. It was unlikely that the body could have been in place in the open park field for that long without being noticed, even though an early snow considerably cut down on the number of people who passed through. In fact, the report concluded that the body had been in place no more than three hours when it was spotted after dawn by an early morning jogger.

So where was it all that time? The investigators couldn't answer that question. But they had a clue.

The fibers analysis report listed numerous foreign hairs and cotton fibers that had been found on the body and combed out of the hair. These would primarily be used to match a suspect to the victim, once a suspect became known. One particular section of the report had been circled. This section dealt with the recovery of a specific fiber-kapok-found on the body in large quantity. Thirty-three kapok seed hairs had been removed from the body. The number suggested direct contact with the source. The report said that while similar to cotton, kapok fibers were uncommon and primarily found in materials requiring buoyancy, such as boat cushions, life vests and some sleeping bags. I wondered why this section had been circled on the report and asked Wexler.

"Sean thought the kapok fibers were the key to where the body had been during the missing hours. You know, if we found a spot where we found that fiber, which isn't all that common, then we'd have the crime scene. But we never found it."

Because the reports were in chronological order I could see how theories were considered and discarded. And I could sense a growing desperation in the investigation. It was going nowhere. It was clear that my brother believed Theresa Lofton had crossed paths with a serial killer, the toughest criminal to track. There was a return report from the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime containing a psychological profile of the killer. My brother had also kept a copy in the file of a seventeen-page check-list survey of aspects of the crime he had sent to the bureau's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. But the VICAP computer's response to the survey was negative. The Lofton killing did not match any other killings across the country in enough details to warrant further attention from the FBI.

The profile the bureau had forwarded was produced by an agent listed on the report as Rachel Walling. It contained a host of generalities that were largely worthless to the investigation because while the characterizations were in depth and possibly even on target, they did not necessarily help the detectives winnow down the millions of men who might qualify as suspects. The profile projected that the killer was most likely a white male, twenty to thirty years old, with unresolved feelings of inadequacy and anger toward women, hence the gross mutilation of the victim's body. He was probably raised by a domineering mother and his father probably was not present in the household or was absorbed in earning a living and forfeited child rearing and development to the mother. The profile classified the killer as "organized" in his methodology and warned that his seemingly successful completion of the crime and escape from detection could lead him to try further crimes of a similar nature.

The last reports in the first file were investigative summaries of interviews, tips that were checked out and other details from the case that might have meant nothing at the moment they were typed up but could be pivotal later.

Through these reports I could chart Sean's growing attachment to Theresa Lofton. In the initial pages she was always referred to as the victim, sometimes Lofton. Later on, he began referring to her as Theresa. And in the last reports, those filed in February before his death, he called her Terri, probably having picked up the diminutive name from her family and friends, or maybe from the back of the photo of her first day on campus. The happy day.

With ten minutes left I closed the file and opened the other one. This one was thinner and seemed to be filled with a hodgepodge of investigative loose ends. There were several letters from citizens offering theories on the killing. One letter was from a medium who said Theresa Lofton's living spirit was circling somewhere above the ozone layer in a high-frequency sound belt. She spoke in a voice so fast that it sounded like a chirp to the untrained ear, but the medium could decipher the chirping and was willing to ask her questions if Sean wanted to. There was no indication from the file that he did.

A supplemental report noted that Theresa's bank and auto repair shop were within walking distance of the campus. Three times detectives walked the routes between her dorm room, the day care center, the bank and the repair shop but came across no witness who remembered seeing Theresa on the Wednesday after classes ended. Despite this, my brother's theory-outlined in another supplemental-was that Lofton had been abducted sometime after calling her mechanic from the day care center but before she got to the bank to get money to pay him.

The file also contained a chronological record of the activity of the investigators assigned to the case. Initially, four members of the CAPS squad worked the case full-time. But as little headway was made and more cases came up, the investigative effort was winnowed down to Sean and Wexler. Then just Sean. He wouldn't let it go.

The last entry in the chronological record was made on the day he died. It was just one line: "Mar 13-RUSHER at Stanley. P/R info on Terri."

"Time."

I looked up and Wexler was pointing to his watch. I closed the file without protest.

"What's P-slash-R mean?"

"Person Reporting. It meant he got a call."

"Who is Rusher?"

"We don't know. There's a couple people in the phone book with that name. We called them, they didn't know what the fuck we were talking about. I ran something on NCIC but with just a last name didn't get anything to work with. Bottom line is, we don't know who it was or is. We don't even know if it's a man or woman. We don't know if Sean actually met anybody or not. We found nobody at the Stanley who saw him."

"Why would he go to meet this person without telling you or leaving some kind of record about who it was? Why'd he go alone?"

"Who knows? We've gotten so many calls on that case, you could spend all day just writing notes. And maybe he didn't know. Maybe all he knew was that someone wanted to talk to him. Your brother was so caught up on this one, he would have gone to meet anybody who said they knew something. I'll let you in on a little secret. It's something that's not in there because he didn't want people around here thinking he was loony. But he went to see that psychic-the medium-that's mentioned in there."

"What did he get?"

"Nothing. Just some bullshit about the killer being out there wanting to do it again. I mean, it was like-yeah, no kidding, thanks for the tip. Anyway, that's off the record, the psychic stuff. I don't want people thinking Mac was a flake."

I didn't bother to say anything about the stupidity of what he had just said. My brother had killed himself and yet Wexler was engaged in trying to limit the damage his image might suffer if it was known he had consulted a psychic.

"It doesn't go past this room," I said instead. After a few moments of silence I said, "So what's your theory on what happened that day, Wex? Off the record, I mean."