Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 40
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Opening Eddie Heaths file folder, Wesley withdrew a scene diagram drawn by the Henrico County police officer who had discovered the critically wounded boy behind the vacant grocery store. Wesley placed the diagram next to the photograph of Robyn Naismith. For a moment, neither of us spoke as our eyes went back and forth from one to the other. The similarities were more pronounced than I had imagined, the positions of the bodies virtually identical, from the hands by the sides to the loosely piled clothing near the bare feet.
“I have to admit, it's eerie as hell,” Wesley remarked. “It's almost as if Eddie Heath's scene is a mirror image of this one.”
He touched the photograph of Robyn Naismith.”
Bodies positioned like rag dolls, propped against boxlike objects. A big console TV. A brown Dumpster.”
Spreading more photographs oh the table like playing cards, he drew another from the deck. This one was a close-up of her body at the morgue, the ragged tangential circles of human bite marks apparent on her left breast and left inner thigh.
“Again, a striking similarity,” he said. “Bite marks here and here corresponding closely with the areas of missing flesh on Eddie Heath's shoulder and thigh. In other words” - he slipped off his glasses and looked up at me - “Eddie Heath was probably bitten, the flesh excised to eradicate evidence.”
“Then his killer is at least somewhat familiar with forensic evidence,” I said.
“Almost any felon who has spent time in prison is familiar with forensic evidence. If Waddell didn't know about bite mark identification when he murdered Robyn Naismith, he would know about it now.”
“You're talking like he's the killer again,” I pointed out. “A moment ago you said he doesn't profile right.”
“Ten years ago, he didn't profile right. That's all I'm Asserting.”
“You've got his Assessment Protocol. Can we talk about it?”
“Of course.”
The Protocol was actually a forty-page FBI questionnaire filled in during a face-to-face prison interview with a violent offender.
“Flip through this yourself,” Wesley said, sliding Waddell's Protocol in front of me. “I'd like to hear your thoughts without further input from me.”
Wesley's interview of Ronnie Joe Waddell had taken place six years ago at death row in Mecklenburg `County. The Protocol began with the expected descriptive data. Waddell's demeanor, emotional state, mannerisms, and style of conversation indicated that he was agitated and confused. Then, when Wesley had given him opportunity to ask questions, Waddell asked only one: “I saw little white flakes when we passed a window. Is it snowing or are they ashes from the incinerator?”
The date on the Protocol, I noted, was August.
Questions about how the murder might have been prevented went nowhere. Would Waddell have killed his victim in a populated area? Would he have killed her if witnesses had been present? Would anything have stopped him from killing her? Did he think that capital punishment was a deterrent? Waddell said he could not remember killing “the lady on TV.”
He did not know what would have stopped him from committing an act he could not recall. His only memory was of being “sticky.”
He said it was like waking up from a wet dream. The stickiness Ronnie Waddell experienced was not semen. It was Robyn Naismith's blood.
“His problem list sounds rather mundane,” I thought out loud. “Headaches, extreme shyness, marked daydreaming, and leaving home at the age of nineteen. I don't see anything here that one might consider the usual red flags. No cruelty to animals, fire setting, assaults, et cetera.”
“Keep going,” Wesley said.
I scanned several more pages. “Drugs and alcohol,” I said.
“If he hadn't been locked up, he would have died a junkie or gotten shot on the street,” Wesley said. “And what's interesting is the substance abuse did not begin until early adulthood. I remember Waddell told me he had never tasted alcohol until he was twenty and away from home.”
“He was raised on a farm?”
“In Suffolk. A fairly big farm that grew peanuts, corn, Bans. His entire family lived on it and worked for owners. There were four children, Ronnie Joe the youngest. Their mother was very religious and took the children to church every Sunday. No alcohol, swearing, cigarettes. His background was very sheltered. He'd really never been off the farm until his father died and he decided to leave. He took the bus to Richmond had little trouble getting work because of his physical strength. Breaking up asphalt with a jackhammer, lifting heavy loads, that sort of thing. My theory is he could not handle temptation when he was finally faced with it. First it was beer and wine, then marijuana. Within a year he was into cocaine and heroin, buying and selling, and stealing whatever he could get his hands on.“
”When I asked him how many criminal acts he had committed that he had never been arrested for, he said he was doing burglaries, breaking into cars - property crimes, in other words. Then he broke into Robyn Naismith's house and she had the misfortune of coming home while he was there.”
”He wasn't described as violent, Benton,” I pointed out.
“Yes. He never profiled as your typical violent offender. The defense claimed that he was made temporarily insane by drugs and alcohol. To be honest, I think this was the case. Not long before he murdered Robyn Naismith he had started getting into PCP. It is quite possible that when Waddell encountered Robyn Naismith he was completely deranged and later had little or no recollection of what he did to her.”
“Do you remember what he stole, if anything?” I asked. “I wonder if there was clear evidence when he broke into her house that his intent was to commit burglary.”
“The place was ransacked. We know her jewelry was missing. The medicine cabinet was cleaned out and her billfold was empty. It's hard to know what else was stolen because she lived alone.”
“No significant relationship?”
“A fascinating point.”
Wesley stared off at an old couple dancing soporifically to the husky tones of a saxophone. “Semen stains were recovered from a bed sheet and the mattress cover. The stain on the sheet had to be fresh unless Robyn didn't change her bed linens very often, and we know that Waddell was not the origin of the stains. They didn't match his blood type.”
“No one who knew her ever made reference to a lover?”
“No one ever did. Obviously, there was keen interest in who this person was, and since he never contacted the police, it was suspected that she had been having an affair, possibly with one of her married colleagues or sources:' “Maybe she was,” I said.”
But he wasn't her killer.”
“No. Ronnie Joe Waddell was her killer. Let's take a look.”
I opened Waddell's file and showed Wesley the photographs of the executed inmate I had autopsied on me night of December thirteenth. “'Can you tell if this is the man you interviewed six years ago?”
Wesley impassively studied the photographs, going through them one by one. He looked at close-ups of me face and back of the head, and glanced over shots of the upper body and hands. He detached a mug shot from Waddell's Assessment Protocol and began comparing as I looked on.
“I see a resemblance,” I said.
“That's about as much as we can say,” Wesley replied. “The mug shot's ten years old. Waddell had a beard and mustache, was very muscular but lean. His face was lean. This guy”-he pointed to one of the morgue photographs - “is shaven and much heavier. His face is much fuller. I can't say these are the same man, based on these photos.”
I couldn't confirm it, either. In fact, I could think of old pictures of me that no one else would recognize.
“Do you have any suggestions about how we're going to resolve this problem?” I asked Wesley.
“I'll toss out a few things,” he said, stacking the photographs and straightening the edges against the tabletop. “Your old friend Nick Grueman's some kind of player in all this, and I've been thinking about the best way to deal with him without tipping our hand. If Marino or I talk to him, he'll know instantly that something's up.”
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