Eye of the Beholder

The “MansburyMassacre”

A source in the Marion Park Police Department confirms

that the body count is six. Six bodies have been discovered

in the basement of Bramhall Auditorium on the Mansbury

College campus. We have no word yet on whether the bodies

include the missing Mansbury students, Cassandra

Bentley and Elisha Danzinger.

– Carolyn Pendry, Newscenter 4, 1:18 P.M., June 26, 1989

Marion Park Police have arrested Terrance Demetrius

Burgos, 36, a part-time handyman at Mansbury College,

in the murders of six young women who were found murdered

and sexually molested in a campus auditorium.

– Daily Watch, June 27, 1989

1

MONDAY, JUNE 26, 1989, 8:32 A.M.

PAUL RILEY followed his police escort, navigated his car through the barricades, and stopped next to a patrol car. He shifted the gear into park, killed the engine, and said a quiet prayer.

Now the storm.

When he opened the door, letting in the thick, humid air, it felt like someone had jacked the volume on the stereo: An officer’s voice, through a bullhorn, warning the spectators and reporters to respect the police barricades. Reporters shouting questions at any officer they could find, some of them now turning to Riley, a man they didn’t know. Cops and medical and forensic technicians shouting instructions to each other. Other reporters, positioned with microphones, speaking loudly into cameras about the breaking news; hundreds of citizens, gathered from everywhere, speculating on what, precisely, had been found inside Bramhall Auditorium.

Riley knew little more than they. The word was, six bodies, young women, mutilated in various ways. Then there was the one additional fact that had been delivered by his boss in a shaky voice:

“They think one of them is Cassie.”

Cassandra Bentley, he’d meant, a student at Mansbury College, but, more important, the daughter of Harland and Natalia Bentley, a family worth billions. Family money. Political contributors. People who mattered. Even the name sounded wealthy.

Riley looked up at the bruised sky, where three news helicopters circled over this corner of the Mansbury College campus. He clipped his badge-all of three weeks old-to his jacket and looked for a uniform. There were plenty of them, in various colors-blue for Marion Park police, brown for deputies from the county sheriff’s office, white for Mansbury security, black from some other jurisdiction, probably brought in for crowd control.

He gave his name, and his title, something he wasn’t used to saying: “First Assistant County Attorney,” the top deputy to the county prosecutor.

“Who’s in charge?” he asked.

“Lightner,” the cop said, gesturing toward the auditorium.

Bramhall Auditorium took up half the block, a dome-topped structure arising from a large concrete staircase, a threshold supported by granite pillars, with a manicured lawn to each side. Riley counted the steps-twelve-and entered the lobby of the auditorium.

It was only slightly less sticky inside. No air-conditioning. School was out. No one was supposed to be using this auditorium this time of year. Access, Riley thought to himself. Who would have access?

Riley moved cautiously. He was new to this job but not to crime scenes. He’d been an assistant U.S. attorney-a federal prosecutor-for many years, and had spent most of the time working on a street gang that was no stranger to violence. Riley groaned at the number of law enforcement officials inside the place. Fewer was always better, but, as he looked around, he realized that little would be gained from all of the fingerprint dusting going on around him. This was an auditorium, with a decent-sized lobby, and a massive theater that, including the balcony, could probably house several thousand people. It would be easier to figure out who hadn’t left their prints.

To the side of the lobby, a door opened-the door, presumably, leading to the basement and the maintenance locker where the bodies were found. An officer stepped out and lifted his gas mask-with its charcoal-impregnated odor filter-just before he vomited on the floor.

Paul found himself instantly wishing for city cops. As a former federal prosecutor, he had a built-in bias against the city cops, too, but anything was preferable, in his mind, to a suburban cop. But jurisdiction was jurisdiction. He wasn’t working with the FBI anymore.

Riley took the gas mask from the spent officer, who was wiping at his mouth. He told the officer to clean up the mess and get some fresh air. He then took a deep breath and opened the access door.

It was a wide staircase, the steps filthy with shoe prints. He kept his hands off the wooden railing. He hit the landing and turned for the final set of stairs.

There were only two uniforms down there when Riley reached the basement. One of them was in the elevator, which had been shut down. The initial flurry of fingerprinting and photographing had probably already happened.

It was a wide hallway with several heavy doors propped open, several storage rooms already combed over with no results. Riley moved down the hall to the last room in the hallway, the room that mattered, feeling his pace slow.

He steeled himself before he took one shuffle step into that last doorway.

The room was large, with rows of chain-link lockers and shelving units, all containing chemicals and cleaning supplies. Mops and brooms and an oversized garbage can with sprayers containing purple and blue fluids attached. And on the floor, lined up, posed, arms at their sides, legs together, were six corpses.

How to explain? People always said words can’t describe. That wasn’t true. He just wouldn’t have known where to begin or end. He’d seen pictures of Dachau and Auschwitz, but those were photographs, capturing the horror and desperation in only two dimensions. He tried it as a defense mechanism, tried to think of these six butchered girls as photos on a page, ignoring the upheaval in his stomach and the adrenaline pounding through his body. He fought to keep his breathing even, his mind clinical.

The first victim was blond, seemingly a beautiful young girl, though the yellowish hue to her skin made her look more like a wax statue. The blow to her skull could only vaguely be seen from her angled head, near the scalp. Far more prominent was the wound to her chest, where her heart had once been. Calling it a wound was insufficient. It was like the life had been ripped from her.

Second victim: The wound across her neck was so gaping that you sensed if you lifted her the head would detach. Her skin had paled as well. She looked more like a mannequin than a human being, or maybe that was yet another defense mechanism. Maybe it was easier to think of them as objects, at least while you were looking at them. That was usually how the offender viewed them, too.

The victim next to her was also naked, had been burned over her entire body with acid, down to her feet and hands. Most of the skin had been scalded off her face, leaving the skeleton, her eyes protruding from the bone in a ghoulish stare. She would have to be identified through dental records. Looked like one of her hands might still have the skin, too, for fingerprint identification.

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.”

2

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.

The interior of the house on the main floor was relatively undisturbed. Some antique furniture, dilapidated tile flooring, a fairly well-kept, humble presentation.

Riley held his breath and took the carpeted basement stairs down, nonetheless noticing the smell first. To the untrained nose, it smelled like sewage more than anything else. Most people, when murdered, lose control of bowel functions and soil themselves. There were no bodies down here, but Lightner had said there was no doubt that the murders happened in the basement.

He was right.

The basement was not furnished, a concrete floor with a small workout area, with a weight bench and a barbell with modest weights gathering cobwebs. A dartboard hung precariously on one wall next to a target for a BB gun. The room as a whole was probably poorly lit, but the police had installed high-powered lighting, leaving the technicians to work in an odd glow.

Riley turned to the back of the basement, where Burgos had a small workshop-a power saw and some hand tools and saw-horses. The floor was spotted and dirty. Bloodstains, most likely that Burgos had attempted to wipe clean. A number of technicians were gathering hairs with tweezers, placing other items in paper evidence bags near the workshop area, where it appeared the murders had occurred.

Riley walked up to the small workbench and sucked in his breath. Resting on the bench was an ordinary kitchen knife, a good five- or six-inch blade, covered with dried blood and other particulate. The first two victims, Elisha Danzinger and an unidentified girl, had been treated to that weapon. Next to the knife was a handsaw, its blade similarly covered in blood, other bodily fluids, and what appeared to be bone. That was the weapon he’d used to dismember the fourth victim.

A freestanding bathtub rested in one corner, looking like something plucked from a garbage dump, with significant corrosion inside. Riley had no doubt that this was where Burgos had scalded the one victim with acid. Sitting on top of a nearby washing machine was a car battery and a glass vial.

Four down, two to go.

Riley already knew that upstairs, in the master bathroom, police had found hairs in the drain of the bathtub, which was presumably where one of the victims had been drowned. And in the garage, they had uncovered a single bullet and a.32-caliber handgun-presumably the gun used to shoot Cassie Bentley through the back of the mouth, either before or after Burgos had beaten her almost beyond recognition.

That covered them all. The guy hadn’t gone to great lengths-any lengths-to cover this up. He’d left the murder weapons in full view. He’d left trace evidence of the victims in his basement, car, and garage. He’d left the victims’ identification-purses, driver’s licenses, clothes-in a garbage bag in his bedroom. Yes, he’d confined the murders to his property, or so it appeared at first blush, but otherwise Terry Burgos had made little attempt to clean up or discard his weapons.

On the workbench, resting next to the knife and handsaw, was a King James Bible, with bloody fingerprints along the pages. A single sheet of paper, tacked to the poster board on the wall behind the workbench, listed a number of passages from the Bible, chapter and verse. He leaned over the bench to get a close look at the sheet, which was written in red ballpoint pen. At the top, set apart, was a verse from Jeremiah 48:10:

Cursed be he that doeth the work of the LORD deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.

Beneath this verse, descending down the page with numbers next to them, were other biblical passages, by citation only:

1. Hosea 13:4-8

2. Romans 1:24-32

3. Leviticus 21:9

4. Exodus 21:22-25

5. 2 Kings 2:23-24

6. Deuteronomy 22:20-21

In the last of the six citations, a reference to Leviticus had been scratched out in favor of a passage from Deuteronomy. The edit had been done with a thin black Magic Marker.

Riley let out his breath. Six girls dead, six verses from the Bible.

Okay. Enough. The crime scene wasn’t his specialty, he’d just wanted a taste. Riley appreciated the fresh air when he stepped outside again. He found Lightner near the garage. Lightner’s body language suggested a fully charged cop working the biggest case of his career, but his eyes showed something dark and evil. They had just seen two gruesome crime scenes. Now it was time to connect them.

“Let’s go get a confession,” Riley said to him.

3

1:17 P.M.

PAUL RILEY nursed a cup of water and watched the suspect through a one-way mirror in the observation room. You learned more from your eyes than you ever did from your ears. Innocent people were nervous in custody. Guilty people often weren’t.

Terry Burgos was sitting alone in an interrogation room, wearing headphones he’d been allowed to bring, moving his head and tapping his foot to the beat, sometimes playing drums on the small table in front of him. The guy looked the Mediterranean part, short, beefy in the chest and torso, dark around the eyes, lots of thick, curly dark hair. Had a baseball cap pulled down and appeared to be humming to himself. He had drunk two cans of Coca-Cola and gone to the bathroom once. Had not requested a lawyer and had not received Miranda warnings.

Burgos had sat idle in the room for over an hour. Riley had wanted time for the police to gather whatever information they could before questioning the suspect. That, and he wanted Burgos hungry for lunch. Riley had hoped for more time, but there was no way anyone was letting go of Burgos, and there was only so long you could hold someone and keep lawyers away. Everyone, soon enough, was going to know about Terry Burgos, and it wouldn’t take long for an attorney of some kind or another to be knocking on the door.

Various cops and prosecutors came in and out of the observation room, peering in on the suspect with morbid curiosity. There was a palpable intensity in the police station because they knew they had their man, and it was the biggest thing this town had ever seen.

Burgos did not have a clean sheet. Two years earlier, he’d been arrested on suspicion of battery of a young woman, but it ended in a nolle prosequi, meaning the charges were dropped. Paul assumed the woman had failed to show for the hearing. Last year, he had been charged with sexual assault, but the case had been pleaded down to a misdemeanor battery, and he hadn’t done any time.

Elisha Danzinger had gone to the police to swear out a complaint against Terry Burgos in November of the previous year, 1988. She had alleged that Burgos, at the time a part-time handyman at Mansbury, had been following her around the campus, making threatening comments and generally making her feel uncomfortable. The police had brought Burgos in but hadn’t charged him. There was nothing on which they could charge him. Paul knew, from the Mansbury staff, that this past January Ellie had gotten an order of protection against Burgos, a civil action not contained in the police file, which had prohibited Burgos from coming within five hundred feet of her.

Burgos was age thirty-six, lived alone, and had worked two jobs. The first was a part-timer for Mansbury until he was fired this February, primarily landscaping but occasional cleaning assignments as well. For his second job, which he still held, he worked in an off-campus printing company owned by Mansbury College professor Frankfort Albany.

Terry Burgos, by all accounts, was moderately intelligent, if undereducated, and introverted; didn’t get an A plus for hygiene; didn’t complain much; and seemed generally indifferent to life. The unconfirmed word was he’d had a difficult childhood growing up in Marion Park, spousal abuse charges between his parents, and very poor school performance, ending short of a high school diploma.

Joel Lightner was standing next to Paul, watching through the one-way as Burgos jammed to his music. Lightner was bouncing on his toes, like a pitcher in the bull pen who was about to get the tap on the arm from the coach. “When do we start?” he asked.

“Do we have the photos?” Riley asked.

He nodded, handed Riley a file.

There was no reason to wait much longer. Unless Burgos’s nerves had completely overtaken him, which Riley doubted from looking at him, Burgos was probably hungry. Things like withholding food were bases for a defense attorney to argue coercion.

Riley sighed and stretched his arms. “You up for this, Detective?”

Lightner nodded efficiently. “Marion Park’s not Mayberry, Paul. I’m no virgin.”

That was true enough. Marion Park, a nearby suburb, didn’t have the city’s crime, but at least one prominent gang, the Columbus Street Cannibals, had begun to have a presence down there.

“Doesn’t mean I’m not open to suggestions.”

“Okay” Paul looked through the one-way mirror again. “Hands off, first of all.”

“Only way I do it.”

“Let’s make it a courtesy, for starters. Don’t let him leave, obviously, but tell him he can. See if he tries.”

“We’ll do lunch,” he suggested. Riley’s thought exactly. A conversation over lunch was more casual. So they were on the same page. It was standard practice for detectives to interrogate suspects, not ACAs. Paul could overrule that and take it himself, but then he’d be a witness and disqualified from prosecuting the case. There were some other ACAs floating about right now, guys Paul had summoned from the city, including the chiefs of the criminal prosecutions and special prosecutions bureaus. But Paul made the call, right there, that Joel Lightner would get first crack. He had caught the case and it was his. Besides, if they were right about this guy, he wasn’t going anywhere, whether he confessed or not.

“Record it,” Riley said, as Lightner walked out of the observation room. Paul brought in the bureau chiefs, plus Chief Clark and three other of his detectives. All of these people could verify anything that the tape recording couldn’t. Riley also wanted to hear their thoughts on the progress made so far.

They all watched, in silence, through the one-way mirror. Terry Burgos was quietly bopping along to the music from his headphones. He didn’t even look up as Joel Lightner entered the room, carrying a tape recorder. Lightner placed it down on the small wooden table and extended the cord to the wall socket. Only when he felt the vibration of the recorder hitting the table did the suspect take notice.

Lightner took a seat opposite Burgos and gestured with his hands that he should remove the headphones. Burgos fumbled with the player, finally turned it off, and removed the tiny speakers from his ears.

“Appreciate you coming down, Mr. Burgos. Do you mind if I record this conversation?”

Burgos looked over the detective, in rolled-up shirtsleeves. Joel placed his finger on the RECORD button. “The time is 1:25 P.M. on Monday, June 26, 1989. My name is Detective Joel Lightner, chief of detectives for the Marion Park Police Department. I’m sitting with Terrance Demetrius Burgos. Mr. Burgos, do I have your permission to tape-record this conversation?”

The suspect continued to look him over, then gave a halfhearted shrug.

“Can you answer out loud, Mr. Burgos?”

“Okay,” he said. He spoke quietly, hesitantly.

“Okay, I can tape-record our talk?”

“Okay” He smoothed his hands over the table. “Got any more Coke?”

“You want a Coke? No problem.” He went to the door and issued the request. “You’re probably hungry, too, aren’t you? Missed lunch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you feel like?”

He didn’t answer. Maybe he took the question more literally.

“A burger and fries?” Joel asked. “A sub?”

Burgos looked at Joel. “I like tacos.”

“Tacos? Great. I know a place.” He spoke again to the officer outside the door. Then he returned to the table, settled back into his chair. Lightner’s way was laid-back, slouching and crossing a leg. Some guys didn’t have the natural ease about them, try as they might, and came off looking like someone who was trying too hard to look at ease. Joel, he had it, Riley could already see. “I want to thank you for coming down here. I want you to understand, Mr. Burgos, that you’re here as a courtesy. You can leave if you want to. Okay?”

The suspect shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

“Good,” Paul said aloud. Joel had been to school. He had told the suspect he was free to leave, which meant Burgos technically was not in custody and Miranda warnings were not required. But Joel had made sure to offer the guy a meal on the house before mentioning he was free to go. Now Joel could have a nice, casual chat without ever mentioning the word lawyer. Terry Burgos was about to learn that there was no such thing as a free lunch.

“What-cha been doing this morning, Terry?”

The suspect shrugged. “Not much.”

“Listen to the radio at all?”

“I listened to my music.”

“You haven’t listened to the radio today?”

“Nah.”

“What about TV? Watch any television today?”

“Nope.”

“Have you spoken to anyone today? Neighbors? Anyone?”

Burgos shook his head. “Nobody.”

Paul’s confidence in the detective was growing. Lightner had just cleared the weeds. By the time the police got to Burgos’s house late that morning, it would have been possible that Burgos had already heard about these killings from news reports on the radio or television. Now, thanks to Lightner confirming that Burgos had not listened to any media sources, any knowledge that Burgos might admit to could not be attributed to TV or radio, or even neighbors. If he knew something, it would be from his personal knowledge.

“You, uh, you did odd jobs at Mansbury, is that right?” Lightner asked.

“Yeah.”

“Painting, blacktopping, rake leaves, shovel snow. That sort of thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Cleaning?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I cleaned. Whatever they told me.”

Joel scratched a cheek.

“I don’t work there no more,” Burgos added.

“No? You don’t work at Mansbury anymore?”

Burgos shook his head.

“Why not, Terry?”

“I dunno.” Burgos shrugged. “They fired me.”

A uniform arrived with the Coke, and Burgos seemed more animated. He popped off the top and took a swig. Paul wasn’t in the habit of second-guessing, but he wasn’t thrilled with these last few questions. He would have told this information to Burgos, not asked, to let Burgos know that he already knew, no bullshit. Lightner was playing dumb.

But there was more than one way to a confession, and Joel needed to do it his way, as much as Riley wanted to intervene.

“Terry,” Lightner said, “when you did work there, did you ever work at Bramhall Auditorium?”

Burgos studied his soft drink like it was a prized diamond. Licked his lips, took another swig. “Yeah. I’ve done that,” he said.

“Ever go down to that basement, Terry? Where the cleaning supplies are?”

Well, Joel was cutting to the chase a bit, but this was one of those great questions for an interrogator, damned if you say yes or no.

“Yeah,” he said.

Riley turned to Chief Clark, who was standing next to him. “Tell your officer not to deliver that food until you say so.” What Riley meant was, not until Riley said so, but there was no need to step on toes.

“Can anyone go down there, Terry? Like, could I just walk down there and go to that basement?”

“You need a key,” he said.

“Do you have a key?”

“When I worked there, I had keys to all the buildings.”

Paul held his breath. This was one of those moments. In an interrogation, you were always looking for the breakthrough. Sometimes, it came remarkably easily. Otherwise, it was a game, where any number of questions could potentially open the floodgates. The interrogator’s job was to poke around the dam, look for the hole.

Burgos had ducked the question.

“I mean now,” Lightner said. “Do you still have keys?”

“I had to return them.”

Ducking again. Yes, he had returned the keys. But had he made a copy?

The assumption-the only cautious assumption that could be made-was that Burgos had made copies of every key to the Mansbury facility. So the dean, Janet Scotland, had canceled classes indefinitely and declared all school areas off-limits, while law enforcement scoured every single nook and cranny of every facility to ensure there were no more dead bodies. They had the whole school on lockdown; students there for summer school, which had been scheduled to begin that day, were confined to their quarters, with police guarding every residence hall. Between the university campus and the printing company where Burgos worked part-time, almost the entire police department was searching for bodies and evidence.

Lightner apparently decided not to press the issue of the keys. He saw, as they all did, that Burgos was sensitive to it. He had decided to tread lightly for now. He asked about what Burgos had been doing, and where, going back the last two weeks. The medical examiner had been confident that the murders had all happened within two weeks, maximum. That worked out to roughly a victim every other day, at the least, and possibly one every day.

The police had recovered the driver’s licenses of all six women, by this point, from a dresser in Burgos’s bedroom. So the names were known, and they had been run for sheets. There were the students, Ellie Danzinger and Cassie Bentley, and then there were four other women who were not enrolled in Mansbury, each of whom had been picked up at least once for solicitation, which was a nice legal term for prostitution. Two students and four hookers.

Officers were already fanning out to find the victims’ friends so that a time line could be set. It was always harder to pinpoint when prostitutes went missing because often the traditional sources-employers, parents, spouses-were absent. Still, it could probably be done, most likely through their landlords, if they had a regular place to stay. It would have been nice to know, before questioning the suspect, when exactly these women went missing. Then the questions on Burgos’s alibi could be framed with more precision.

But there wasn’t time for that now. Burgos could lawyer up at any time, and it seemed abundantly clear that an attorney would muzzle him. So Joel had to go back two weeks and ask about each day.

A pattern emerged during this line of questioning, as it would with most people’s lives. Terry Burgos had no day job at this point, since he had been fired from Mansbury, but he worked every night, Monday through Friday, at the printing plant owned by Professor Frank Albany.

“Who works with you there at the printing plant, Terry?”

“Usually, just me-at night.” He wiggled the empty Coke can, then belched and giggled.

“This is our mass murderer?” asked one of the prosecutors in the room with Paul.

“What hours do you work?” Lightner asked.

“Whatever.” Burgos shrugged.

“What does ‘Whatever’ mean, Terry?”

“Whatever they need. Usually, I start at six. Then I go to whenever.”

When pressed by Lightner, however, the suspect could not be specific on the recent hours he’d worked at the plant. That would be easy enough to find, and it was critical information.

As for daytime over the last two weeks, Burgos was even less forthcoming. Stayed in the house a lot, sometimes went for a drive in the country in his truck, but he wouldn’t be pinned down on any particular thing on any particular day.

“How do you record being at the printing plant?” Joel asked, changing the subject back. A common tactic in interrogations. Return to something uncomfortable and watch the reaction. “When you work the night shift, Terry, do you sign in or punch a clock?”

“I sign in.” Burgos wiggled in his seat. A little claustrophobia, maybe hunger, was setting in.

“So it’s like an honor system, right, Terry? If you signed in, then left, no one would know?” Joel shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, you told me no one else worked nights but you.”

“Yeah. I guess I could do that,” he agreed, a little more readily than Paul would have expected.

Riley looked at his watch. It was twenty past two. “Give him his food,” he said to the chief. A few moments later, the officer stepped in with the bags of food he’d kept in an oven in the department’s lunchroom.

They needed a segue. Joel seemed to sense it and came out of the room. He entered the observation room, sighed, and rolled his head. “He’s not an idiot,” he said to Riley. “He knows what to admit and where he can squirm. The guy has no commitments during the day, and he works alone at that plant at night.”

Riley looked around the room. “Any thoughts?”

There were plenty, from the various prosecutors and detectives. Everyone wanted a part of this thing. Strong-arm him. Accuse him. Make him think he’s not a suspect. Ask for his help. All of those positions could make sense.

But all Riley could think was, this guy had been sitting in po lice custody going on two hours and he hadn’t demanded an explanation of why he was being held. So much of this, in the end, was going with your gut.

Riley went to the grouping of the photographs of the six victims. There were over a dozen of each one, from various angles and distances. “Get me a new folder,” he said to no one in particular. In the meantime, he selected a single photo of each victim, cutting down the number of photos from over seventy to just six. Riley placed the six shots into the new folder. He looked at them a moment, then removed the photograph of the first victim, Ellie Danzinger.

That left five photos, one each of victims two through six.

Riley had another thought and rearranged the photos, so they were not in the order in which they had been lined up on the floor.

“Show him these,” he told Joel. “While he’s eating.”

“Okay.”

“Make a note of the order they’re in currently,” Paul ordered. Lightner complied, with the entire room as witnesses, scribbling down the order on a notepad.

“They’re out of order,” Joel noted, but then he looked at Riley and understood. “And we’re leaving Ellie out of it?”

“Right.”

“I like that.” Joel used the bathroom while Riley and the others watched Terry Burgos eat his tacos. Burgos did so with precision, pouring a bit of hot sauce and scooping a small amount of guacamole for each bite.

Joel walked in with the file of photographs and opened it up for Burgos to see. But the suspect was still enjoying his food. So Joel got out of his seat and walked over to the suspect. “What do you think about those, Terry?”

Burgos put down his food and his fresh, sweaty Coke. He wiped his hands with a napkin and spread out the five photos, leaned in close for a good look. His face showed neither horror nor recognition. The word that came to Riley’s mind was familiarity. He fixed on each one, first carefully wiping his hands with the napkin and then tracing his fingers over the dead corpses featured in the eight-by-ten glossies. He mumbled to himself but nothing audible. He held a finger in the air, still murmuring, then lightly touched each photo. Joel Lightner was watching the suspect closely but knew better than to start the conversation. Not yet.

Burgos then took the photos and rearranged them.

Riley’s heart started drumming. He couldn’t see the order in which Burgos had arranged them but he felt sure that, at that moment, they matched the order he had seen them on that floor in the basement of Bramhall Auditorium.

Burgos looked up at Joel a moment with curiosity, then back down at the photos. He lifted the manila folder up and looked under it. He pinched his fingers on each photo as if he was looking for another one stuck beneath it.

“Here we go,” Riley whispered.

The chief started to speak, “What’s he-,” but Riley threw a palm on his shoulder and moved toward the mirror.

Terry Burgos looked up at Joel. “Where’s the first one?” he asked. “Where’s Ellie?”

4

2:20 P.M.

TWO OF the detectives in the room grabbed each other. The chief clasped his hands together in relief. Riley had been a part of countless interrogations over the years, and he’d seen it happen in various forms. The breakthrough. The moment the witness gave it up, out of vanity, guilt, frustration, relief, coercion.

Now the tough part, he thought to himself. There hadn’t been much question of guilt, not since they looked inside Burgos’s house. This was now about something else entirely.

“I have shown you five photographs of women who were murdered,” said Detective Joel Lightner, suddenly aware of the tape recorder and its inability to pick up what he’d done. “You rearranged them in a particular order. And you are asking-”

“Where’s the first one? Ellie?” Terry Burgos repeated the question, shaking a photo in his hand and then slamming it down. He jumped from his seat and looked off in the distance. At that moment, Riley would have given anything to get a better look at his face. He could only see his profile, which had been an oversight on his part; Burgos should have been facing the one-way mirror.

Riley couldn’t see the order in which the photographs had been rearranged by Burgos, either, but at this point he had no doubt that they were in the order in which the bodies had been placed in that custodian locker.

Burgos’s breathing escalated. He seemed incredibly uneasy all of a sudden, but his feet were planted. A couple of the people in the room with Paul jerked at Burgos’s physical movement, but Riley held out a hand. Joel Lightner was the consummate professional, expressing no alarm whatsoever at Burgos’s mild outburst. Though Joel had left his gun outside the door, he knew there were dozens of officers who could rush in on a moment’s notice.

Burgos, still standing at his chair, slowly pointed to the first photo in the sequence, presumably the second victim, because Ellie Danzinger’s photo had been left out of the mix. This was the woman whose throat had been slit, almost decapitating her.

“Colombian necklace,” Burgos said.

“Colombian what?” Chief Clark whispered.

Colombian necklace. Paul drew a finger across his throat. A figure of speech, slang, in the drug trade. The Colombians would slit the throats of competitors.

Burgos turned to the next photo, presumably of the third victim. “Assault with a battery.”

That didn’t register. Assault and battery? The third victim had been burned. But he hadn’t said assault and battery. He’d said assault with a-

“Battery acid,” Riley mumbled. “Inventory his books,” he called out to no one in particular. “His music, too. Now.” Riley heard some orders issued behind him, and someone left the room.

Burgos pointed to the next victim, presumably the one whose limbs had been removed and eyes gouged out. “Eye for eye, limb for limb.”

A biblical reference, which was consistent with what Riley had seen in Burgos’s basement.

Burgos kept going to the next one, who’d been drowned. “Someone taught her to sleep underwater.”

“This fuckin’ guy,” someone mumbled behind Paul.

Burgos pointed to the next one, the last victim, Cassie Bentley. Cassie’s face had been beaten almost beyond recognition. Paul thought of his own daughter and what it would be like to find her in such a bloody and battered condition. Joel Lightner had told Riley that it would be years before he could eat lasagna again.

“Now it’s time/to say good-bye/to someone’s family,” Burgos said. Paul felt a chill. He was saying it to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club, for God’s sake. “Stick it right/ between her teeth/and fire so happily.”

Both rooms-the observation room and interrogation room-fell silent. Riley felt a collective shudder among his colleagues. The suspect was making the details of his gruesome murders sound like a corny nursery rhyme.

Stick it right between her teeth, Burgos had said. Yes. Though Cassie Bentley’s face had been beaten severely, the M.E. had found a gunshot exit wound in the back of her head and gunpowder residue in her mouth.

Detective Lightner seemed in no hurry to interrupt the recitation, but, after a good minute, it was clear that Terry Burgos, still standing by his chair, eyes on the photos, was going to require some prompting. Riley, trying to keep his emotions out of this, was impressed that Lightner seemed able to do that very thing.

“You mentioned a ‘first one,’ Terry?” Lightner’s voice was trembling. “You mentioned a name?”

“Ellie.” The suspect-the killer, there was little doubt now-pointed at nothing in particular. “He opens a heart once so cruel.”

Opens a heart. Ellie Danzinger’s heart had been removed.

Paul realized he’d been holding his breath, that he was perspiring. He looked at the chief, who returned the same look that Paul assumed was on his own face-not knowing, really, what to think of this spectacle. It was horrific and bizarre and, yes, exciting.

And they had their man, in less than half a day.

“You’re talking about Ellie,” Lightner said.

Burgos seemed lost in thought a moment.

Of course, Riley knew, Burgos was talking about Ellie Danzinger. Opens a heart. He had sliced her heart out-postmortem, according to preliminary findings. They were already trying to contact the Danzinger family in South Africa. This was the man who had been stalking their daughter, the one against whom they had obtained a restraining order. Paul wondered how hard the family had lobbied for Ellie to leave Mansbury, to get distance from Burgos. One thing he knew for sure: That thought would forever haunt the family.

“She was a gift,” Burgos mumbled.

Lightner cocked his head. “Say again, Terry?”

“Ellie.” Burgos lifted a hand, then slowly raised it to his forehead. “She was a gift from God.”

“Ellie was a gift from God. Okay.” Lightner wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that. He held his breath a moment, even shot a glance toward Riley and the others, though he couldn’t see them.

“What was it you were saying about Ellie?” he asked. “‘Opening her heart’?”

Burgos had drawn his arms around himself. His head angled downward, as if in deep thought. A long moment passed. Lightner held completely still, watching Burgos.

Slowly, Burgos brought an index finger to his lips. His mouth opened, and everyone in the viewing room craned forward.

He spoke just above a whisper: “A girl who is cool to someone at school until he opens a heart once so cruel.”

Paul remembered the restraining order Ellie Danzinger had obtained against Burgos. He’d been harassing her, stalking her. A girl who was cool to someone at school.

“Hmm.” In the interrogation room, Joel was trying to sound nonchalant, harmlessly curious. He twirled his finger. “Sounds like-a poem or something.”

On the other side of the glass, Chief Clark turned to Paul. “We’ll go through his books,” he said.

“Could be a song.” Paul gestured toward the headphones and Walkman resting next to Burgos in the interrogation room. “Start with that music right there,” he said.

Someone behind Paul asked, “What’s this shit about a ‘gift from God’?”

“Talk to me about Cassie Bentley, Terry,” Lightner said to Burgos. “Was she a gift from God, too?”

“Cassie.” Burgos shook his head slowly, brought a hand over his heart. “Cassie saved me.”

“How’s that?” Lightner scratched his cheek, doing his best to be casual. “How did Cassie save you, Terry?”

Burgos rubbed his eyes furiously, then clasped his hands together on top of his baseball cap. It was as if he hadn’t even heard Lightner.

“You said, ‘A girl who is cool to someone at school,’ Terry.” Lightner was trying another way in. “Is that ‘someone’ you, Terry? Did someone treat you badly at Mansbury? Maybe deserve what they got coming? You mean Ellie, right?”

Paul winced. Lightner was trying to bring Burgos back to the table. Trying everything in the book-empathy now. Maybe trying too hard.

“Did Ellie piss you off, Terry? Did she need to be taught a lesson?”

Terry Burgos looked around the room, put his hands on his hips. His eyes seemed to move in all directions except toward Detective Joel Lightner.

“I think I’m ready to go home now,” Burgos said.

5

6:45 P.M.

TIME BECAME an irrelevant concept. Orders were given, information retrieved. New revelations came every few minutes. The forensic pathology staff had worked immediately on the bodies, coming back with preliminary reports on each of them. Information was coming in slowly about the various victims, and about Burgos. Riley knew that the overload would have to be contained. Several days, at a minimum, would be needed to process and categorize all the information.

Riley glanced at his watch and couldn’t believe it was evening. There had been a shift change but none of the cops on duty had left, and even those off duty that day had come into the station to volunteer. The station house was swollen with law enforcement personnel ready to do whatever was necessary to put Terry Burgos away.

Marion Park was close to the city, but still-it wasn’t the city. It had its share of crime, but this particular crime was in a different category. And this had happened at Mansbury College, one of the most prestigious liberal arts schools in the country, a school that had propped up this small suburb, made its name known across the country. The town wasn’t just horrified. It was outraged.

Terry Burgos had refused any further questioning. Detective Lightner had given him Miranda warnings at that time and asked him pointed questions about each of the victims by name-Elisha Danzinger, Angela Mornakowski, Jacqueline Davis, Sarah Romanski, Maureen Hollis, and Cassandra Bentley. Burgos had refused to answer or even look at Lightner, moving toward the corner and tapping the wall lightly with his foot. So Lightner had processed Burgos, and the investigation had turned to pursuing several angles to bolster the case.

Riley was reading the Bible, looking at the passages cited on that piece of paper in Burgos’s basement, when the buzz in the station house suddenly grew quiet. Riley looked up and saw County Attorney Edward Mullaney walking with two people, immaculately dressed and well-coiffed. He had never met the Bentleys before but he recognized them immediately, anyway. Mullaney caught Riley’s eye. Riley followed them into the chief’s office.

Chief Clark was shaking Harland Bentley’s hand when Riley walked in. Natalia Lake Bentley was sitting passively in a chair, her face swollen and red. Mullaney took Riley’s arm and whispered in his ear: “Mrs. Bentley just identified Cassie.”

Riley nodded and introduced himself. Harland Bentley was all business, giving his name while he gripped Riley’s hand, relying on the formalities of a business transaction, familiar territory for him. The formality was forced. A defense mechanism. He could see the anguish across Mr. Bentley’s face, his wavering attempt to contain his emotions.

Mrs. Bentley briefly looked up at Riley. She had been raised well, and kept her posture perfect, but her face was wound tightly, her eyes deep and sunken-the eyes of a mother who had just identified a cold, beaten body as her only child.

“Mrs. Bentley,” Riley said. “I’m so sorry. We found the man who did this.”

“Tell me what he did,” Harland Bentley said, his mouth curled. “I want to know everything he did.”

Riley stiffened, and nodded toward Mrs. Bentley.

“I just identified what was left of my daughter,” she said, without looking at him. “Do you think that anything you’re going to say will shock me?”

The medical examiner had already made preliminary findings. Riley preferred to think of it in clinical terms: fractures of the mandible, maxilla, lachrymal, hyoid, ethmoid, and frontal bones-fractures of virtually every facial bone and most of the cranial bones-but it came down to the simple fact that her face, and most of the front and top of her skull, had been crushed by multiple powerful blows. Pieces of bone were lodged in her brain. Most of her teeth were found in her throat. They would need dental records to make the identification formal, but all Riley needed to do was look at Mrs. Bentley’s face to know that it was Cassie.

And stated in clinical terms or otherwise, the Bentleys had seen their daughter, or what was left of her. They knew what Burgos had done to her face. That wasn’t what Mr. Bentley was asking about.

“Postmortem,” Riley said, “he fired a single.38-caliber bullet through the back of her mouth.”

Mr. Bentley held his stare. He knew that, too.

“There was intercourse,” Riley conceded. “Postmortem.”

Harland Bentley closed his eyes, his jaw clenched. For a long moment, he said nothing. He seemed unsteady on his feet.

“And Ellie, too?” Mrs. Bentley asked.

“Yes, ma‘am.”

Natalia Bentley placed a hand near her throat, struggling for a moment. There would be time to question her, but Riley wasn’t one to wait.

“Mrs. Bentley, I’m sorry to ask-there’d been some talk of Cassie having some trouble? Some disciplinary issues?”

“Disciplinary issues didn’t get my daughter murdered,” said her husband.

Riley didn’t respond. Surely, even in their grief, they could understand the reason for the question.

“I would say emotional issues.” Mrs. Bentley’s eyes grew foggy as she weighed the memory. “She was trying to find her place. She hadn’t yet succeeded.”

“Like any girl her age,” Harland added.

“No, not like any girl.” Mrs. Bentley looked in his direction but not at him. “Any girl isn’t born into such wealth and privilege. It’s a burden that is hard to appreciate. It isn’t easy forming relationships when everyone is thinking about how much money you have, and what that money could do for them.”

It made sense. But Riley wasn’t sure if Natalia was talking about her daughter or herself. It was hard not to detect a rift between husband and wife. He made note that Mrs. Bentley had not even looked at her husband.

“I thought of it as testing boundaries,” she added. “She could be dramatic. But she never hurt anyone but herself.” She looked up at Riley, who clearly wanted something more specific. “She’d become insular. She’d miss class, refuse to eat, refuse to talk to anyone. Things like that. But she never projected anything onto anyone else. And inside, she was as sweet and generous a person as you will ever meet.”

“Enough,” Mr. Bentley said. He turned to the county attorney. “I want this man dead.”

Mullaney nodded. “Of course we’ll seek the death penalty, Harland.”

Bentley then looked at Riley. “You can prove it was this man?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“No plea bargains. I want this man dead.” He looked again at Ed Mullaney, then reached for his wife’s arm. She pulled it away. She could not be placated.

After some words of comfort from the county attorney, Harland Bentley shook his and Riley’s hands and left with his wife. Mullaney’s posture collapsed as soon as they were out of the office. “Christ, you should have seen Nat when she came out of the morgue,” he said. “I thought we’d need a body bag for her.”

Riley nodded. Distraught families had not been his custom as a federal prosecutor. New terrain for him, and he didn’t like it.

Mullaney drew close to Riley. The man knew how to put on a face for a press conference after a homicide, the wide Irish brow furrowing in sobriety. Riley had seen him do it several times. But this was a different face. This was no ordinary murder. This was a mass homicide. And his biggest financial supporter’s daughter was one of the victims.

“I’ve been to their home,” Mullaney said. “I’ve met Cassie. She was a beautiful, sweet girl.” He squeezed Paul’s arm hard. A vein appeared in his forehead.

“Needless to say, Paul,” he said, “we can have no mistakes.”

6

7:45 P.M.

BY THE TIME Riley visited Ellie Danzinger’s off-campus apartment, the technicians had done their work. He believed in visiting the scenes, regardless, and there was every reason to believe that the first crime Terry Burgos had committed took place in this apartment.

The apartment was well appointed, though Riley understood it had come prefurnished, which made sense for a student on a summer rental. There were four apartments in total, each a duplex, facing a courtyard in the center that made a square.

There was no sign of forced entry. There was a window overlooking the street that was closed. Couldn’t rule out the possibility that Burgos had come through the window in the dead of night, but it seemed unlikely. Riley saw it for himself, the dust that had accumulated on the locks on the window. The downstairs contained a living room, bedroom, half bath, and kitchen. All undisturbed. No trail of blood.

“The fun happened upstairs,” Lightner said. They took carpeted stairs up to a great room and a master bedroom. The top floor looked more lived in, a stereo and television in the great room, a tiny kitchenette that seemed to serve more as a bar. Lightner gestured toward the dishwasher. “It was full. Everything inside was washed.”

So nothing could be taken from any of the glasses. But that seemed like a dead end, anyway. There was no chance Ellie Danzinger had invited Terry Burgos in for a drink.

Riley walked slowly into the bedroom. The bed was unmade. The comforter was bunched at the bottom of the bed. There were spatters of blood on the wall and some on the bed, but not much. To the left of the bed, however, was a sizable bloodstain, encrusted on the carpet fibers.

“The M.E. thinks she died on the bed,” Lightner explained. “She was hit over the head, and she bled out right there.” He motioned to the bloodstain. “M.E. says she lost over a liter and a half of blood.”

Riley didn’t know if these details were significant.

Lightner got close to the bed but not too close. “M.E. figures Ellie was lying on the bed, faceup, right? Her head was hanging over the side of the bed. That’s the only explanation.”

“Why is that the only explanation?”

“The amount of blood,” he answered. “Other than ripping her heart out-which we know he did at his house-the only other wound on her body is the blow to the head. A significant blow, but not normally enough for her to bleed that much. Gravity played a part. Her head was lower than the rest of her body.”

Okay. That made sense. “This is relevant?”

Lightner shrugged. “To bleed out that much, Ellie must have been lying there for at least an hour. The M.E. says there’s no way she would have bled that much any quicker.”

Riley thought it over. “So he didn’t move her right away. He waited at least an hour. Why?”

“Maybe for nightfall to come,” Lightner speculated.

“But she’d been in bed.” Riley shook his head. “It would’ve already been night.”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” Lightner looked tired. It had been quite a day for all of them.

“Maybe that’s when he had intercourse with her,” Riley suggested. “It is a bed, after all.” It was quite the image. The intercourse, according to the M.E., had clearly been postmortem.

It was a possibility. But Lightner didn’t know. Nobody knew, yet.

“They find that professor yet?” Riley asked. “The guy who employed Burgos?”

“Albany,” Lightner said. “We’ll find him.” He hit Riley on the arm. It was time to head back to the station. Nobody had any illusions about going home anytime soon.

7

11:45 P.M.

IT WAS NEAR MIDNIGHT. Someone had turned on a television in the police station. The local channels had been covering this all day, flashing in and out of soap operas and game shows and, later, prime-time offerings. The “Mansbury Massacre,” they were calling it.

Riley and several others pulled together two detectives’ desks to form something like a conference table. Riley played with a cup of lukewarm coffee and looked around the table at Chief Clark and Detective Lightner. None of them had eaten all day. Clark had subsisted on coffee and cigarettes; Lightner, coffee only. Riley’s stomach was crying to him but he knew he couldn’t eat. Nothing would go down if he tried. The station, at this point, smelled like a locker room. They were coming down from the initial high of the brutal murders and then, in the same day, catching the killer. Everyone was catching his breath. Virtually everything had been done, and what hadn’t yet been done could wait. But Paul already knew that the physical evidence would tie up Burgos. He wanted to know more about the hideous poetry Burgos was reciting when describing the murders. He knew this wasn’t about guilt or innocence anymore.

It had been a song, as they’d suspected. And it hadn’t taken them long to find it. Burgos had been listening to the tape on his headphones before the questioning. The tape was amateur grade, bearing a makeshift label with the name of the musical group-“Torcher”-handwritten in bloodred ink in a thick Gothic font like calligraphy. The title of the tape-“Someone”-was written beneath it in the same manner.

The song with the relevant lyrics bore the same title, “Someone,” a song that lasted less than three minutes. It started slowly with an acoustic guitar playing single notes, but then all hell broke loose, violent guitars, thumping bass, incessant drumming, while the vocalist screamed the lyrics like machine-gun fire. If you closed your eyes and listened, you wouldn’t comprehend anything. But they had a copy of the lyrics, which they had found handwritten on a piece of paper in Terry Burgos’s bedroom.

The lyrics from the first verse of “Someone” described six murders, in more or less the precise manner that Burgos had committed them:

A girl who is cool to someone at school until he opens a heart once so cruel

Thespian lesbian glamorous actress rejection so reckless Colombian necklace

His poetry flattery just didn’t matter she told him to scatter assault with a battery

A senior so prim her figure now trim since she got rid of him eye for eye limb for limb

A neighbor’s daughter nobody fought her until someone taught her to sleep underwater

Now it’s time to say good-bye to someone’s family stick it right between those teeth andfire so happily

The lyrics, however sophomoric, were filled with rage. Riley imagined an outcast, rejected by women, probably by everyone. Terry Burgos likely would fit that bill. But Burgos hadn’t written the lyrics. And what was really bothering Riley were the biblical verses that Burgos had cited on the paper found in his basement. Six different passages. He’d read them all, thanks to a cop who had a King James Bible in his locker. All but one of them was from the Old Testament and could be attributed in some way to these acts of violence.

The book of Hosea said that for nonbelievers, God would “rend the caul of their heart”-or “open a heart once so cruel.” Romans wrote of lesbians being worthy of death, which corresponded with the “lesbian” in the song. Leviticus talked of burning a promiscuous woman to death, which could be loosely translated to being scalded with battery acid. Exodus referenced the infamous eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-tooth, limb-for-limb language for those who practice abortion-in the lyrics, a senior “now trim since she got rid of him” probably referred to a senior who’d had an abortion. The book of Kings suggested death to those who mocked a prophet. The biblical verse hadn’t mentioned anything about drowning, but presumably the “neighbor’s daughter” in the song had mocked the song’s author, who evidently considered himself some kind of prophet.

That left the final murder described: Now it’s time, to say good-bye, to someone’s family, stick it right between those teeth and fire so happily. This last murder in the first verse had a different quality in the song; the percussion and bass disappeared, and the singer had sung the lyrics a cappella to the tune of The Mickey Mouse Club.

And Burgos had followed these lyrics. He had stuck a gun between Cassie Bentley’s teeth and fired a bullet through the back of her mouth. He had done so after beating her severely. The corresponding biblical passage, from Deuteronomy, had described a different act of violence-the stoning of a whore. The lyrics and the biblical passage weren’t compatible. Burgos had followed them both; he had stoned Cassie and shot her.

But Burgos had originally written down a different verse, not from Deuteronomy but from Leviticus, which had talked about adultery, and which called for death to both the adulterer and the adulteress. Why had Burgos changed biblical passages?

Riley didn’t know. It was just the first day of a long investigation. But he could already see his arguments forming. He would need to find discrepancies between the lyrics and Burgos’s actions. An insanity defense was inevitable-Burgos had killed at the direction of God-and Riley would need to show that Burgos hadn’t followed that direction faithfully.

A cop knocked on the door to the room and told them that Professor Albany was here. Riley had very much wanted to make the professor’s acquaintance. Albany owned the printing company where Burgos worked nights. And, more important, they had learned Albany had taught a class that both Cassie Bentley and Ellie Danzinger had attended.

Frankfort Albany walked into the room looking every bit the college professor in an off-white shirt, open at the collar, with a tweed sport coat, and slacks in desperate need of an ironing board. He wore his hair long and off his face. All he was missing was the pipe. His washed-out expression resembled those of many people Riley had seen this long day, people who had gone through a range of emotions.

They sat, Riley, the chief, Joel Lightner, and Professor Albany, around the desks with the tape recorder in the center. The professor looked around the table at each of them, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know where to start. Ordinarily, Paul would break the tension, but he wanted to hear what Albany would say.

“I really-I just can’t believe this.” He reached into his jacket and removed a small metallic case, opened it up. Cigarettes. “Does anyone mind?”

“Not if you’re sharing,” the chief said.

The professor’s movements were tentative. He was shaken up, and falling back on ritual comforts, tapping the cigarette, flipping open the lighter, squinting into the fire as he lit up. He slid the case over to the chief, his eyes catching on the course materials sitting in front of Paul.

“Tell me about Terry Burgos,” Riley asked.

“I-I have to say I like Terry,” Albany said with a trace of apology. “He did his work without supervision and got it done. He was good at setting the artwork, careful with detail. He never left a job half finished. He kept a clean work space. He was-well, he was a loner. Even after he lost his day job at Mansbury, he wanted to continue working nights. I think he liked working alone. And since he got the work done, I had no reason to say no.”

That was an interesting point. Burgos had requested the night shift even when he had nothing to do during the day. Paul was working on the assumption that the prostitutes, at least, were abducted and murdered during the evening-that was when most streetwalkers plied their trade.

“What hours did he keep?” Lightner asked. “Burgos said he worked ‘whenever.”’

“That’s more or less correct. His hours were variable.” Albany crossed his leg. “We’d have overflow-work that didn’t get completed during the day-and we’d leave it for Terry. Sometimes it was two hours’ worth of work. Sometimes five.”

“Sometimes none?” Lightner asked.

Albany shook his head. “When is there ever nothing to do? No, there’s always something.”

“What kind of a job has variable hours?” Riley asked.

“A job,” Albany said testily, “where you’re trying to give someone a break. He needed the work, and he did a good job on the overflow. It worked out for both of us. Is that okay with you?”

“You have records of his time entries,” Riley said. “We’ll need them.”

Albany nodded absently.

“And no one else worked with him at the plant?”

“Correct. It was just Terry at night.”

“How did you know he entered his time correctly?”

“I-well, I didn‘t, I guess,” Albany conceded. “I trusted him.”

Paul noticed that Joel Lightner was watching Albany closely.

“What class did you teach with Ellie and Cassie?” Riley asked.

Albany nodded. Riley figured the professor was aware that Cassie Bentley and Ellie Danzinger were two of the victims. Everyone was, by now.

“It’s called ‘Violence Against Women in American Culture.’ We discuss the glorification of hostility toward women in pop culture. Movies, television, music.”

Violence against women in music. How appropriate, under the circumstances. Riley snapped to attention, as Lightner did the same.

“Wait a second.” Riley slid the paper with the song lyrics across the table to Albany. “Does that music look familiar to you?”

Albany looked at it for only a moment. “Of course. This is Tyler Skye’s song. ‘Someone.”’

“For God’s sake.” The chief leaned forward. “You teach this?”

Albany looked at the chief like he’d look at a student. “Study it, is a better description. Yes, of course. Can you think of a more appropriate song?”

“And who’s Tyler Skye?” Riley asked.

“The man-well, really, the boy who wrote these lyrics. He was a high school student. I mean, this is the anthem of the rejected boy, no?” When no one responded, Albany cleared his throat and explained. “Tyler Skye was a student who wrote this diatribe and posted it, one night, all over his school. They discovered he was the author and expelled him. A year later, he’s a high school dropout and the lead singer in a garage band called Torcher. And he committed these lyrics to song, obviously. Torcher was very big in the underground music scene on midwestern campuses. The lyrics aren’t particularly well written, but they are certainly edgy. That appeals to students, the controversy, the rebellion. That’s often more important than the substance.”

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.

That would be a problem. It made the job more difficult. It would be a nice, simple story for the jury to understand, without fancy terminology like psychosis and sociopathology. The guy thought the song was a call to him and he acted on it. He must be crazy. Could you imagine anyone doing this who wasn’t insane?

They worked on Albany for a while longer. But Paul was no longer listening. There was no doubt that Terry Burgos committed the crimes. The evidence, less than a day into it, was overwhelming, and he’d more or less admitted it. This was no longer about guilt. This was about insanity. If the state still used the modified ALI definition of insanity, then Burgos had to prove two things: that he was suffering from a mental defect at the time he committed the killings, and that he didn’t understand that he was committing a crime.

But Paul knew, already, that he could find discrepancies between these acts and the lyrics of the songs. That would be key to showing that, if Burgos thought he was following the word of God-or the word of the prophet Tyler Skye-he hadn’t done a very good job. He already had more than one discrepancy-Burgos had introduced a new biblical passage and he hadn’t killed himself, like he was supposed to. And Burgos had engaged in sexual intercourse with each of the women-the prostitutes before their death, the students postmortem-and there was nothing in the Bible about that. He had committed these crimes during summer break, before the start of summer school, understanding that once summer school started the bodies would be found. He knew, in other words, that what he was doing was a crime, so he was doing it quickly before someone would find the bodies. They also knew that the four prostitutes had worked different parts of the city, which suggested that Burgos was smart enough not to return to the same place. Again, this demonstrated his appreciation that he was breaking the law, and not wanting to get caught.

And Paul was just getting started. By the time this went to trial, he’d punch enough holes in Burgos’s conformity to the lyrics, and to the Bible, to sink a ship. And he’d have plenty of evidence to show that Burgos knew that what he was doing was illegal.

Professor Albany was in tears a half hour later. Paul didn’t blame the guy for what happened, but he didn’t have the time or energy to care. There was only one person he cared about now, only one person he would care about for the next nine months.

Terry Burgos, he was sure, didn’t stand a chance.