Prime Witness by Steve Martini Page B

a believer.
    “Except for the last two, he doesn’t know his victims,” she says. They have deduced this from the fact that the faces of the victims were untouched, not battered or mutilated. Psychologists have determined that it is usually only in cases where the killer knows his victim that the face is battered. The closer the relationship, the more severe is the facial disfigurement.
    “You say except for the last two. What’s different there?”
    “I’ll get to that,” she says.
    “He’s probably white,” she says. Statistics show that in mutilation murders the victim is most often of the same race as the killer.
    They gauge the age at between twenty-five and forty. Teenagers who kill are usually violent and impulsive, not the measured ritual of the Putah Creek killer. And anyone too old would have had his hands full with the male victims.
    According to the profile the killer probably lives alone. This is almost a “touchy-feely” surmise, I think. But the shrinks reason that the killings evidence signs of alienation—the murderer sees himself as an outsider, not part of any family group or close social setting. This may account for the fact that he always takes couples, his way of lashing back.
    “We think he’s spent a lot of time around the creek, he might live near there, or maybe he worked there in the past,” she says.
    They have come to this conclusion based on the ritual nature of the crimes; the meticulous arrangement of the bodies on the ground, the careful array of clothing around the victims all indicate that the killer was taking his time, confident that he would not be disturbed.
    “He sees this area as his turf,” she says. “He feels safe here.”
    The cops are now keying on this last one, canvassing the area for anyone who might have worked or been seen living in the area, a field hand on one of the ranches, maybe a transient who camped there for awhile.
    One aspect of the psychological profile is most troubling.
    “Killers who rely on ritual,” she says, “don’t usually stop until they’re caught.” It is a sobering thought, but it gets worse.
    “We don’t know if he’s becoming more violent,” she says, “or if maybe he might have known the Scofield woman.”
    I look at her, a question mark.
    “He appears to have gouged the eye from her head,” she says. “We’re still trying to figure why.”
    Since the panties were drawn tight over her head, I could not see this at the scene.
    We talk in more general terms about the investigation. Except for the profile, the cops are dabbling in the dark. According to Sellig, police can find nothing that connects any of the couples killed.
    “The last ones, the Scofields, present a real problem,” she says.
    I look at her, my interest piqued.
    “Their age,” she says. “He’s broadened the boundaries. He’s not confining himself to the college-age crowd anymore.”
    “Maybe it’s not age,” I tell her. “Maybe the common link is the academic set, the university.”
    She makes a face like this is a possibility. But she is still troubled. It is an axiom of serial crime that, when killers depart from the usual order of things, those pursuing them have even more reason to worry. The fact that the Putah Creek killer has now taken victims in their fifties injects a random element into the equation of pursuit. We talk about this, but she is stymied. Until Sellig gets the autopsy report on the Scofields she can form no real conclusions.
    “What about the thing in the trees?” I ask. “The platform.”
    She’s taking her shoes off now, moving toward a locker against the wall. It appears that even the half-heels were a concession to the company dress code, something used only for greeting the public. She is warming to me now, a little more casual. I take this as a sign of trust.
    I ask her whether this perch in the trees is connected with the murders.
    “We’re still looking into it,” she says.
    I probe her on what they