The Judge’s List

19

From her extensive reading about serial killers, Jeri knew that almost none of them stopped until they were caught or killed, either by the police or by themselves, or otherwise forced into retirement by age or perhaps prison. The demons that drove them were relentless and cruel and could never be exorcised. They could be neutralized by death or incarceration, but nothing else. The few killers who attempted to come to grips with their carnage did so from a prison cell.

According to her timeline, Bannick had once gone eleven years without killing. He murdered Eileen Nickleberry near Wilmington in 1998, then waited until 2009 to catch the reporter, Danny Cleveland, alone in his apartment in Little Rock. Since then he had killed three more times. His pace was quickening, which was not unusual.

She reminded herself that her timeline was essentially worthless, because she had no real idea how many victims were out there. Could there be bodies still unfound? Some killers hid them, then forgot years later where all of them were buried. Other killers, like Bannick, wanted the victims found, and with clues. As an amateur profiler, Jeri believed Bannick wanted someone — the police, the press, the families — to know the killings were related. But why? It was probably his warped ego, a desire for acknowledgment that he was smarter than the police. He took such great pride in his methods that it would be a shame not to be admired, even if by strangers from a distance. It was likely that he wanted his work to become legendary.

She had never believed that Bannick wanted to get caught. He had status, prestige, popularity, money, education — far more going for him than the average serial killer, if there was such a thing. But he loved the gamesmanship. He was a sociopath who killed for revenge, but he thrived on the planning and execution, and the perfection of his crimes.

Eight murders, at least in her book, in seven states, over twenty-two years. He was only forty-nine years old and probably in his prime as a killer. Each murder gave him even more confidence, more thrills. A veteran now, he probably believed that he could never be caught. Who else was on his list?

The paper was standard copy, plain white, 8.5×11, purchased a year earlier at a Staples in Dallas. The envelope was just as plain and untraceable. The word processor was an ancient Olivetti, one of the first generation with a small screen and little memory, circa 1985. She had bought it second- or third-hand in an antiques warehouse in Montgomery.

Wearing disposable plastic gloves, she carefully placed several sheets of copy paper in the tray and opened the screen and stared at it for a long time. The knot twisted in her stomach and she couldn’t keep going. Finally, she managed to type slowly, awkwardly, one key at a time:

Typically she ate little, and was surprised when her stomach flipped, and she raced to the bathroom where she vomited and retched until her chest and back ached. Moving around gingerly, she drank some water and eventually made it back to her desk. She stared at what she had written, a note she had composed a thousand times in her mind, words she had uttered and practiced again and again.

How would he react? Receiving the anonymous letter would be catastrophic, devastating, life-altering, terrifying. Or at least she hoped so. He was too cool and cold-blooded to panic, but his world would never be the same. His world would be rocked, and he and his demons would drive themselves even crazier now that someone was on his trail. There was no one he could tell, no one to confide in, no one to run to.

She wanted to rock his world. She wanted Bannick to watch every step, look over his shoulder, jump at every noise, study every stranger. She wanted him to stay awake at night, listening to every sound and trembling in fear, the way she had lived for so long.

She thought of Lacy and again debated the strategy of exposing her. Jeri had convinced herself that Bannick was too smart to do anything stupid. Plus, Lacy was a tough girl who could take care of herself. At some point soon Jeri would warn her.

She printed the note on a sheet of the copy paper and put it in the envelope. Typing his name gave her another chill. R. Bannick, 825 Eastman Lane, Cullman, Florida, 32533.

The stamp was generic and applied without saliva. She was sweating and lay down on the sofa for a long time.

The next note was also on white copy paper, but from a different manufacturer. She typed:

Unsteady as she was, she managed to laugh out loud at the image of Bannick reading her poem. She laughed at his horror, his disbelief, and his rage that a victim had caught up with him.

On Saturday, Jeri left Mobile and drove an hour to Pensacola. In a suburban shopping center, she found a blue postal box sitting between a drop-off for FedEx and one for UPS. The nearest security camera was far away, over the door of a coffee shop. Wearing gloves and staying in her car, she placed the first letter into the slot. It would be postmarked Monday at the Pensacola distribution center and delivered to the box beside the front door of Bannick’s home no later than the following Tuesday.

Two hours later she pulled off the expressway at Greenville, Alabama, and dropped off her poem at the city post office. It would be collected Monday and trucked to Montgomery where it would be postmarked and sent back south to Pensacola. Bannick should have it by the following Wednesday, Thursday at the latest.

She took the backroads home to Mobile and enjoyed the drive. She listened to jazz on Sirius and kept checking her smile in the mirror. The first two of her letters had been mailed. She had found the courage to confront the killer, or at least set in motion his endgame. The hunting phase was over, and for that she was elated. Now she moved into the next phase, still unnamed. Her work was not over, by any means, but the heavy lifting had been done, all twenty-two years of it.

Now Lacy had the case, and she would eventually bring in the state police, maybe the FBI. And Bannick would never know who stalked him.

Late that night she was reading a novel, sipping her second glass of wine, and fighting the temptation to go online and dig more. Her phone pinged with an email arriving on one of her secure accounts. It was KL, or Kenny Lee, and he asked if she was awake. She was suddenly weary of sleuthing and just wanted to be left alone, but he was an old friend, one she would never meet.

She wrote back: Hey there. How’s life?

As always, Jeri grimaced at the news of another murder, and, as always, she jumped to the conclusion that it was Bannick. But she’d had enough and didn’t want to spend more money and waste more energy. How similar?

She reminded herself that three hundred people a year were murdered by strangulation and about 60 percent of those cases were eventually solved. That left 120 cold cases, far too many to blame on one man.

Let me sleep on it. In other words, don’t start your clock at $200 an hour. Kenny Lee had led her to four of Bannick’s victims and she had paid him enough.

Still snowing up there? She mailed him cash payments to a post office box in Camden, Maine. She assumed he lived somewhere around there.