The Judge’s List

17

The following Tuesday, two-thirds of the task force left Tallahassee at 8:00 a.m. for the five-hour drive to Biloxi. Darren, the wingman, drove while Lacy, the boss, read reports, made phone calls, and in general acted the way any interim director of BJC would act. She was quickly learning that managing people was an unpleasant part of her job.

During a lull, Darren, waiting to pounce, said, “So, I’m reading up on serial killers these days. Who holds the American record for kills?”

“Kills?”

“Kills. Dead bodies. That’s what the cops say.”

“Gee, I don’t know. Didn’t that Gacy guy kill a few dozen in Chicago?”

“John Wayne Gacy killed thirty-two, or at least that’s all he could remember. Buried ’em under his house in the suburbs. Forensics found the remains of twenty-eight, so the cops believed his confession. He said he tossed a few in the river but he wasn’t sure how many.”

“Ted Bundy?”

“Bundy officially confessed to thirty but he kept changing his stories. Before he was fried in the electric chair, here in our beloved state, by the way, he spent a lot of time with investigators from all over the country, primarily out West, where he was from. He had a brilliant mind but he simply couldn’t remember all of his victims. It is widely believed that he killed as many as one hundred young women, but it has been impossible to confirm. He often killed several in one day and even abducted his victims from the same location. He gets my vote as the sickest of a very sick bunch.”

“And he holds the record?”

“No, not for confirmed kills. A guy named Samuel Little confessed to ninety murders and was active until ten years ago. The authorities are still investigating and so far have confirmed about sixty.”

“You’re getting into this, aren’t you?”

“It’s fascinating. Ever hear of the Green River Killer?”

“I think so.”

“Confessed to seventy, convicted of forty-nine. Almost all sex workers in the Seattle area.”

“What’s your point?”

“I didn’t say I have one. What’s fascinating is that none of these guys killed the same way. I’ve yet to find a single one who did it for twenty years and killed only those he knew. They’re all deranged sociopaths, some are brilliant, most are not, but none, so far, in my vast research, are even remotely similar to Bannick. Someone who kills only for revenge and keeps a list.”

“We don’t know if he keeps a list.”

“Call it what you want, okay? He keeps the names of those who’ve crossed him and stalks them for years. That appears to be highly unusual.”

Lacy sighed, shook her head, and said, “I still can’t believe this. We’re talking about a popular elected judge as if we know for a fact that he’s killed several people. Murdered them in cold blood.”

“You’re not convinced?”

“I still don’t know. Are you?”

“I think so. If Betty Roe has her facts straight, and if Bannick did indeed know the first seven victims, then it can’t be just coincidental.”

Lacy’s phone buzzed and she took the call.

Dale Black, the Harrison County sheriff, was waiting when they arrived promptly at 2:00 p.m. He led them down a hallway to a small multipurpose room with a table in the rear, and he introduced them to Detective Napier who was in charge of the investigation. Quick introductions were made and they sat around the table. The sheriff began the conversation with “So, we’ve checked you out online and know something about your work. You’re not really criminal investigators, right?”

Lacy smiled, because she knew that when she dealt with men her age or older her charming smile normally got her what she wanted, or something close to it. And if she didn’t get what she wanted she could always count on disarming the men and neutralizing their attitudes. She said, “That’s right. We’re lawyers and we review complaints filed against judges.”

Napier liked her smile and offered one of his own, one with considerably less appeal. “In Florida, right?” he asked.

“Yes, we’re out of Tallahassee and work for the state.”

Darren had been told to remain silent and take notes, and he was complying on all fronts.

Napier asked, “Well, then, the obvious question is why are you interested in this double murder?”

“That is obvious, isn’t it? We’re fishing, okay? We’ve just been handed a complaint against a judge, in an unrelated case, and through our initial work we’ve come across some information on Lanny Verno. You do know that he once lived in Florida, right?”

Napier’s smile vanished and he glanced at his boss. “I think so,” he mumbled as he whipped open a thick file. He licked his thumb, flipped some pages, and said, “Yep, got a DUI over there a few years ago.”

“Do you have any record of him living in the Pensacola area around 2001?”

Napier frowned, kept flipping, searching now. He finally shook his head, no.

Very pleasantly, Lacy said, “We know he lived there around 2000 and worked as a painter and remodeler. This might be useful to you.”

Napier closed the file and managed another grin. “His girlfriend, the one he was living with, said he moved into this area a few years ago, but she has proven to be unreliable, to say the least.”

“And his family is from the Atlanta area?” Lacy asked. It was a question but her tone left no doubt that she knew the answer.

“How’d you know that?”

“We found his obituary, if you could call it that.”

Napier said, “We’ve had little contact with his family. Quite a bit, though, with the Dunwoodys.”

Lacy offered another smile and asked, “Is it fair for me to ask if you have a suspect?”

Napier frowned at the sheriff, who returned the scowl. Before they could say no, Lacy said, “I’m not asking for the name of a suspect, I’m just curious as to whether you have any solid leads.”

Sheriff Black blurted, “There are no suspects.”

“Do you have one?” Napier asked.

“Maybe,” Lacy said without a smile. Both cops exhaled loudly, as if suddenly relieved of a burden. Darren would say later that he caught them glancing at each other as if they wanted to pounce on her single word: “Maybe.”

Lacy asked, “What can you tell us about the crime scene?”

Napier shrugged as if this might be difficult. Black said, “Okay, what are the rules here? You’re not law enforcement, you’re not even from this state. How confidential is this little chat? If we talk details they stay here, right?”

“Of course. We’re not policemen but we do occasionally deal with criminal behavior, so we understand confidentiality. We have nothing to gain by repeating any of this. You have my word.”

Black said, “The crime scene revealed nothing. No prints, fibers, hairs, nothing. The only blood belonged to the two victims. No signs of resistance or a struggle. Verno was strangled but also had a severe head wound. Dunwoody’s skull was splintered.”

“And the rope?”

“The rope?”

“The rope around Verno’s neck.”

Napier was about to respond when Black stopped him. “Wait. Can you describe the rope?” he asked Lacy.

“Probably. A thirty-inch piece of three-eighths nylon, double twin braid, marine grade, either blue and white or green and white.”

She paused and watched as both faces registered disbelief. Then, “Secured at the base of the skull with a double clove hitch knot.”

Both cops recovered quickly and regained their poker faces. Napier said, “I take it you know our man from somewhere else.”

“Possibly. Can we take a look at the photos?”

Lacy had no idea of their frustration. For five months now, every lead had gone nowhere. Every Crime Stopper’s tip had done nothing but waste more time. Every new theory had eventually petered out. Verno’s murder was so carefully planned that there had to be a reason for it, but motive eluded them. Little was known of his unremarkable past. On the other hand, they were convinced that Dunwoody had simply picked the wrong spot. They knew everything about him and nothing suggested a motive.

Could Lacy and the BJC be their first break?

They spent half an hour poring over the gruesome crime scene photos. Sheriff Black had important meetings elsewhere but they were suddenly canceled.

When Lacy and Darren, still silent, had seen enough, they packed their briefcases and got ready to leave.

The sheriff asked, “So, when do we talk about this suspect of yours?”

Lacy smiled and replied, “Not now. We see this meeting as the first of several. We want a good working relationship with you, one built on trust. Give us some time, let us do our investigation, and we’ll be back.”

“Fair enough. There is one other bit of evidence here that might be helpful. It’s not in the file because we’ve been sitting on it since the murders. It seems as though our man may have made a mistake. We know what he was driving.”

“Helpful? Sounds pretty crucial.”

“Perhaps. You saw the photos of the two cell phones he took from his victims. He drove about an hour north of here to the small town of Neely, Mississippi. He put them in an envelope, a five-by-eight-inch padded mailer, and addressed it to my daughter in Biloxi. He dropped the package into a standard blue box outside the post office.”

Napier pulled out another photo, one of the mailer with the address.

The sheriff continued. “We tracked down the cell phones within hours and found them in the box in Neely. They’re still at the state crime lab but so far have given us nothing.”

He looked at Napier, who took the handoff. “Someone saw him stop at the post office. It was about seven p.m. on that Friday night, roughly two hours after the murders. There was no traffic in Neely because there never is, but a neighbor saw a pickup truck stop at the post office. A man walked to the box and dropped in the package, the only one deposited after five p.m. on that Friday. Not much mail in Neely either. The neighbor thought it was odd that anyone would choose that time to drop off some mail. He was on his porch a good ways off and he cannot identify the driver. But the truck was a gray Chevrolet, fairly late model, with Mississippi tags.”

“And you’re certain it was the killer?” Lacy asked, a very nonprofessional question.

“No. We’re certain it was the man who dropped off the cell phones. Probably the killer but we’re not sure.”

“Right. Why would he drive up there to ditch the phones?”

Napier shrugged and smiled. Black said, “Now you’re playing his game. I think he was just having some fun with us, and especially with me. He had to know that we’d find the cell phones in a matter of hours and that they wouldn’t be mailed to my daughter.”

Napier added, “Or maybe he wanted to be seen driving a vehicle with Mississippi tags because he’s not from Mississippi. He’s pretty clever, isn’t he?”

“Extremely.”

“And he’s done this before?” asked the sheriff.

“We believe so.”

“And he’s not from Mississippi, is he?”

“We think not.”