“No possible injection sites you found when you posted her?” Phillis gets to that.
“None we could see,” I reply. “Her skin wasn’t in great condition, but we went over her very carefully with injection sites in mind, with any injury in mind. What seems probable if not evident at this point is she was last home on the early Friday evening of April twenty-seventh, fed her cat, unset and reset her alarm system at about six p.m., when she headed out with her pocketbook and keys. Most likely she drove off in her Mercedes and had an encounter that ended in a place where she was held hostage and killed. Possibly the same place where her body was frozen or kept in cold storage until she was weighted down and dumped in the bay as recently as yesterday or the night before.”
“If the same person killed Mildred Lott, I wonder why her body’s not been found,” Phillis says.
“Not found yet.” I know what Benton’s opinion is, that the killer keeps the bodies because he doesn’t want to give them up. “Part of the fantasy may be the aftermath, not letting them go, continuing some bizarre relationship he has with them,” I explain.
“Necrophilia?”
“No evidence with Peggy Stanton, but I can’t absolutely rule it out. Although I doubt it, to be honest. But if Mildred Lott was his first victim, his attachment to whatever she symbolized, his fantasy, in her case likely is stronger. She may be more personal to him, but that doesn’t mean his interest is overtly sexual. Benton thinks it’s about degrading, about power, about destruction.”
“She disappeared about six weeks before this one did.” Before Peggy Stanton did, Phillis means. “Any other missing women we know of who might be even earlier?”
“There are always missing people. But no similar case comes to mind. If Mildred Lott was his first, he likely has stronger feelings and fantasies about her,” I repeat emphatically, because I believe she is the key. “She might represent something different to him, a bigger prize.”
“A billionaire’s socialite wife is a pretty big prize.”
“That might not be why she would be a bigger prize to him. Her status and wealth may have nothing to do with why he targeted her. More likely it has to do with what she represented and what that triggered in him,” I answer, and I should be concerned about the FBI in my conference room and how late I’m going to be.
But I have other troubling matters on my mind. Murdering Howard Roth may have been expedient, as Benton described. But it also was poor judgment. It was impulsive. It probably wasn’t necessary, and I fear it is a harbinger of things to come. If someone crosses the killer’s path, that person may be next.
“But if Mildred Lott was his first victim, I can’t help but feel that she’s important to him, that he has a stronger attachment to her,” I say. “Which might be why her body hasn’t been found. He may still have it.”
“Possibly a drug he slipped into their food or drink,” Phillis considers. “Saying she met her killer in a restaurant or some public place.” She’s talking about Peggy Stanton. “Maybe someone she met on the Internet, on Craigslist, Facebook, Google Plus. On one of those dating sites, what I’m constantly telling my kids not to do, for God’s sake.”
“I really doubt it,” I reply. “I can’t imagine Peggy Stanton, or Mildred Lott, for that matter, hooking up with strangers on the Internet, and there’s no evidence they did. But to be safe we should screen for Rohypnol, gamma-hydroxybutyrate, ketamine hydrochloride.” I go through the list of date-rape drugs, despite my conviction that the killer has an MO, a method of operation, that he repeats, and it doesn’t include having a date or even a social encounter with whoever is on his violent radar.
Mildred Lott was a dominant, assertive, yet extremely cautious woman who was quite tall and worked out diligently in the gym. She would not have made it easy for someone to take her anywhere she did not want to go, and her husband was adamant that if anyone tried to harm her, she would resist.
After listening to what he said about his wife and knowing what I do about Peggy Stanton, I’m convinced the killer finds a way to incapacitate his victims and likely uses the same method each time. I don’t think these women went anywhere willingly with him. I think they were