Mulligan felt like throwing up. That reminded him of his last question.
“Why did the killer vomit in the backyard?”
“For the same reason athletes do after running the Boston Marathon-low blood sugar and dehydration. That’s how physically taxing the attack was.”
January 1992
The boy fetches his father’s hatchet from the garage, dashes back into the house, and skips up the stairs to the second floor. He stops in front of his sister’s bedroom door and smirks at the “No Boys Allowed” sign. Then he turns the knob, steps inside, and pulls the door shut behind him.
The bed is covered with a frilly pink comforter and two matching satin pillows. A Michael Jackson poster hangs over the headboard. Beside the maple bureau, its top covered with jars of mysterious girly stuff, stands a bookshelf crammed with Barbie dolls.
Blond Barbies, brunette Barbies, redheaded Barbies. Barbies draped in prom gowns. Barbies stuffed into two-piece bathing suits. Barbies in tight tennis shorts. Barbies in revealing go-go outfits. Barbies in demure nurse’s uniforms. Barbies in colorful summer dresses.
He selects a nurse Barbie, tears off her uniform, and lays her naked on the floor. He studies her for a moment. Then, whack! He chops off her right leg.
He grins, pretending he can hear her scream.
Whack! Her other leg.
Whack! Her right arm.
Whack! Her left arm.
And finally, her head.
He does the same with bathing beauty Barbie.
Then a go-go Barbie.
Then another.
And another.
A half hour later, he sits there with his penis in his hand, surrounded by dismembered dolls in an imaginary pool of blood.
10
July 1994
On the twelfth day after the Stuart murders, Mulligan parked Citation on the street across from the murder house, got out, and started knocking on doors again. He figured he was wasting his time. The police had already talked to everyone in the neighborhood more than once. But he was haunted by what he’d learned from Schutter. He couldn’t sit around doing nothing.
He’d just finished listening to a middle-aged woman prattle about the good-for-nothing police department when he spotted a black teenager riding a bicycle no hands down the middle of the street. It looked like the same kid he’d talked to outside the Medeiros house two years ago. What was his name? Oh, yeah. Kwame something.
“Hey, Kwame!”
The kid rolled up to the curb and braked.
“You’re that reporter.”
“That’s right. Mulligan, from the Dispatch.”
“Are the cops ever gonna catch the guy or what?” Kwame asked. “My mom’s really scared.”
“They’re doing the best they can,” Mulligan said.
The kid had grown several inches since he’d last seen him. And he had a gauze bandage on his right thumb.
“So, Kwame. How’d you hurt your thumb?”
“A dog bit me.”
“That right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Mulligan reached for the hand. The kid jerked it back.
Mulligan grabbed for it again and ripped the bandage off. Underneath was a clean, two-inch cut closed by what appeared to be eight or ten stitches.
“That’s no dog bite,” Mulligan said.
“The hell it ain’t.” The boy threw him a defiant glare. “You’re just hassling me ’cause I’m black.”
“Look, kid. The cops think the person who killed your neighbors cut himself in the attack. If you hurt your hand breaking into a house or something, I don’t give a shit. Just tell me the truth, okay?”
“I won’t get in any trouble?”
“That’s right.”
Kwame looked up at the sky as if he were thinking it over-or maybe making something up.
“A week ago, when I was riding my bike, I saw this car that had a CD player sitting on the front seat. I been wanting one, you know. So I broke the car window with a rock and took it.”
“And you cut your hand on the glass?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout cars.”
“Was it an old one?” Mulligan asked. Window glass in newer models would have shattered into harmless pellets.
“I don’t remember.”
“Where did this happen, exactly?”
“Corner of Gordon and Taplow over by Oakland Beach Elementary.”
“Okay, then. That explains it.”
“Can I go?”
“One last thing. What’s your shoe size?”
“Ten,” the kid said.
The reporter slid his foot next to the kid’s. Mulligan’s Reeboks were size eleven. Kwame’s Nikes were bigger.
Mulligan watched the kid pedal down the street. Then he strolled to his car, drove to Gordon and Taplow, and scanned the pavement for broken glass. He even got down on his knees to search.
He didn’t find any.
Mulligan drove to the Warwick police station and checked the reports to see if someone had complained about a car being vandalized near the school. No one had.
He walked upstairs to the detective bureau and asked for Jennings.
“You think a child could have done this?”
“I think it’s worth checking out.”
“Come on, Mulligan. You heard the FBI profile. The guy we’re looking for is in his mid- to late twenties. Besides, the kid you’re talking about is black.”
“Black? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Black serial killers are extremely rare. And they only kill other black people.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Andy, but would it hurt to run this by Schutter and see what he says?”
It took them ten minutes to make their way through the FBI phone tree and get the BSU agent on speakerphone.
“This kid is how old?” the agent asked.
“Fifteen,” Jennings said.
“He would have been thirteen at the time of the Medeiros murder?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, Detective. The bureau has compiled detailed files on hundreds of serial killers. The youngest one we ever encountered started killing at seventeen. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them were at least twenty-one, and the average age at first kill is twenty-eight and a half.”
“Maybe so,” Mulligan butted in, “but if Diggs isn’t involved, why the lies about his shoe size and the cut on his hand?”
“He could be covering for something worse than breaking a car window,” Schutter said. “Perhaps a housebreak or a robbery.”
“Or murder,” Mulligan said.
Schutter had nothing to say to that.
“Something else about the kid is nagging at me,” Mulligan said. “The footprints in the Medeiros house were size twelve, but the ones at the Stuart house were size thirteen. Unless we’re looking for two different guys, which you say we’re not, our killer is still growing.”
“I wouldn’t put any stock in that,” Schutter said. “Prints made by stocking feet can be deceptive.”
“In what way?”
“They vary in size depending on whether the socks are loose or pulled on tight. No way this kid’s your killer. Don’t waste your time on him.”
After they hung up, Mulligan pulled out a cigar and set fire to it.
“Not supposed to smoke in here,” Jennings said. Then he shrugged, slipped a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket, and got one going.
“I still think it’s worth looking into, Andy.”
“Tell you what. After we finish recanvassing for the third friggin’ time, I’ll talk to the kid, see what he has to say. And Mulligan?”