The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,56

about LaBrecque’s face, about the bloody rolling pin. Only at these two scenes was the weapon recovered. After each victim was beaten badly enough to be half conscious and manageable, they were restrained so the killer could begin what we now know is a ritual—the stabbing and biting to the sexual areas of the body. But even that was different with Anne Chambers, the first victim. With Anne, the brutality went beyond the lower back, buttocks, inner thighs. Anne had been penetrated with the knife. Her clitoris and nipples had been removed. The medical examiner counted over a hundred stab wounds—inconceivable rage and lust, a frenzy like we have not seen in four of the more recent organized scenes, as if, in this first killing, there was some connection in life, some extraordinary hatred and anger. I needed to compare the lab reports on LaBrecque to see if the humiliation theme ran as deep with him.

David Brooks had known a different killer from Anne Chambers. His killer had ended his life quickly and from behind, silently, and then covered his body to protect his dignity. There was no physical evidence to indicate any sadistic behavior. Sadism is about victim suffering, about getting off sexually on the victim’s terror and pain. By definition, sadistic behavior cannot include postmortem activity because the victim is no longer conscious, cannot suffer, cannot beg or cry out to their tormentor. All the bites and stabbings to the sexual areas on Brooks had been postmortem. David Brooks couldn’t have felt the pain of them. So they were about something else, something sexual and ritualistic, something the killer craves.

Anne Chambers suffered more, was kept alive longer and sexually mutilated. LaBrecque was so badly beaten I hardly recognized the mush that had been his face. Brooks suffered less. He was the only one of the three to share a link to civil law, yet they all had one thing in common: Wishbone’s signature staging, stabbing, and biting to the same areas of the body. What did it mean?

I leaned back and closed my eyes. I had to speak to Rauser. I wondered if he’d read his copy of the third Wishbone letter yet and what he thought about it. I prayed it wasn’t already on the way to the newspapers. Dread swelled up, then turned to sandpaper in my throat.

18

From the southbound lanes of I-85 just a couple of miles south of downtown and Turner Field, the airport was a glowing smear in the distant, jet-streaked sky. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is a mammoth, bustling municipality all its own, a borough without community or heart, a city of unnamed passersby, and an excellent place to blend in.

Hartsfield-Jackson overwhelms. The very place we are told to be most vigilant these days is the place that also makes it nearly impossible. From the moment the sliding glass doors open into the enormous terminals, one is confronted with announcements, posted instructions, recorded messages, moving sidewalks, bars and lounges, escalators, video screens, security checks, shops, food, underground trains, the roar of forty-three thousand employees, soldiers, cops, bomb-sniffing dogs, and travelers. One of the world’s busiest international airports is sluggish in all the wrong places, and everywhere else it is a blizzard of information and sound and light. Unless one is there to observe, to watch while others are absorbed. The singular concerns of travelers render them only vaguely conscious of those around them, despite the new threats and heightened awareness. With some simple changes to the appearance—a pair of glasses, a baseball cap, plain clothes, unremarkable in design and color—one could pass a close acquaintance without detection or linger in the same newsstand without a glint of recognition. In a place like this, people don’t really look at one another. They see in categories and stereotypes—a traveler, a customer, a cop, a businessperson. Being invisible in a public place is a very easy thing to do.

A couple of hundred yards away from the gate where I arrived with other passengers on the flight from Denver, Concourse B took an abrupt dive into steep escalators that led to the underground sidewalks and trains. From the top of the slow-moving metal steps, I surveyed the crowd of strangers. I was trained for this. I knew how to spot a sudden movement, the odd footfall, something off in the crowd, someone paying too much attention. I was wearing Levi’s and a sleeveless pullover and still my body temperature had hit about two hundred, it felt, on