A Blood Stained Ivory Tower

Russ Merrick, the chief of detectives, told me I could look at the investigation file.  When I got to the police department, Russ waved me into his office and pointed to a heavy folder on the desk. “Take all the time you need,” he said. “I have a meeting to attend.  If you finish before I get back, put the folder in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.”

The folder contained reports of the officers who were first on the scene where the body was found, summaries of interviews, laboratory reports, the findings of the medical examiner, and an envelope labeled photographs.  I decided to save that until last or maybe not even open it.

On the day of the murder, Whitney and two other students ordered a pizza about five o’clock.  They ate in the dorm lounge.  Whitney went back to her room a few minutes before six.  No one saw her after that.

Whitney’s roommate went to the library to do research on a term paper early in the afternoon.  Since there was no evening meal served in the dorm on Sunday, she ate some snacks from a vending machine.  She returned to the room at eleven thirty and went directly to bed.  When she woke up at a quarter to eight the next morning, she assumed Whitney had studied in the library until it closed at midnight, and then slipped out of the room quietly to go to her eight o’clock class.

According to the medical examiner’s report, most of the injuries had been inflicted with an object such a wooden club or a length of pipe.  They covered a large area of the body, but the most severe were in the chest area and the upper thighs.  The nose and front teeth had been broken.  The pattern of the wounds suggested the intent of the killer was to maximize the pain and suffering.  The vagina had been penetrated by an object, probably the club or pipe that was used in the beating.  There was no indication of penile penetration.  The estimated time of death was sometime between midnight and 3 a.m.

I opened the envelope of photographs and removed the contents very cautiously.  When I glanced at the color print on the top of the stack, I experienced a wave of nausea and quickly shoved the photos back into the envelope and before returning it to the folder.

I was putting the folder into the file cabinet when Russ came through the door. “Did you learn anything,” he asked.

“More than I wanted to know.  It was even worse than I thought.”

“In my twenty-five years on the force, this is as bad as I’ve ever seen.”

“What are your thoughts about the case at this point?” I asked.

“About all we have is a list of puzzling questions.  Starting from the very beginning things didn’t seem to make sense.  For example, how did the killer get the victim into his car? Everyone we interviewed said she was a smart girl, the kind who would have been careful.  Besides that, when female students first arrive on campus, they get instructions on rules of safety.

“Are you familiar with the place where the body was found?”

“Only that it was on the side of a road a short distance from the campus.”

“It was in a shallow drainage ditch fifteen feet from the edge of the pavement.  It could be easily seen by someone driving along the road from either direction.  There was no question it was going to be found quickly.  You’d expect the killer would hide the body in the woods or bury it in a shallow grave.  That’s what usually happens in a case like this.  It almost seems like the killer wanted the body to be found.

“Then there was the lack of physical evidence.  If the victim put up resistance, there might be skin samples under her fingernails or, in a sex crime like this, you’d expect to find some hair or semen on the body.  Apparently this guy wasn’t into penetration.  He got his kicks in other ways.  There weren’t any fiber samples or footprints either.  When there’s no physical evidence, you have to figure the guy was either very careful or very lucky.”

“What’s left for you to do now?” I asked.

“Just wait.  There’s a possibility we might arrest someone with knowledge of the crime who’d use it in a plea bargain, but that’s unlikely to happen because we can be pretty sure the murderer was alone when the crime was committed, and he’s probably not the type to talk about it.

“The nasty part of this thing is that the best hope we have for finding the killer is if he repeats.  There’s a chance he’s killed before and a strong possibility he will again.  The evidence that this was sexually motivated suggests he got a kick out of it, and sometime in the future, he’s going to want more.”