Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

shutting down at the time she died. It’s impossible to know for sure, but if I had to speculate, I would guess that she had mere hours to live. But the poison hadn’t acted as fast in her as it did in other girls. As I’ve mentioned before, ricin isn’t like cyanide; it usually takes days to kill when it’s ingested in castor beans. With the other girls, it might have worked to his timeline, but my hypothesis based on the autopsy results is that Katrina metabolized it more slowly than the others. I think he was angry with her for not dying when he wanted her to. It was more important to him that she died when he wanted, even if she wouldn’t die the way that he wanted.

Elle:

Explain what you mean by “might have worked.” All of his victims were found dead on the seventh day, so presumably that means it did work, except in Katrina’s case.

Martín:

That’s how it’s always been reported by police and the media. But I’ve always wondered why TCK waited a year in between killings, and why he always killed in the winter. It could just be part of his pattern. But it might also be for convenience. In the winter, Minnesota is one big outdoor freezer. If any of his victims succumbed to the castor beans before the seventh day, he could easily keep their bodies outside or in an unheated outbuilding where they would be preserved. It would be very difficult for a medical examiner to determine their time of death, especially since the victims were almost always discovered hours after they’d been placed in the public space, so they were usually frozen solid anyway.

Elle:

That’s an interesting theory. And it answers one of my other questions, which was about how Katrina could be the only victim who didn’t seem to die on time. My understanding is that ricin poisoning is relatively predictable, but the timeline leading up to death has a lot of variables.

Martín:

That’s true. I’ve always struggled to believe that all the rest of the girls simply died at the exact right time. It would be a remarkable stroke of luck for him, let’s just say. I think it’s more likely that some died earlier, but he just waited until day seven to “present” them to the public, because that was the most important part to him.

Elle voice-over:

Over the decades, criminal behavior analysts, detectives, internet sleuths, and journalists alike have tried to figure out what the numbers mean. Why TCK was so obsessed with them, and why—if Martín is correct—the time of his victims’ deaths was even more important than the method. This is an anomaly among serial killers, as far as I can tell. Much of the time, the physical act of torture and murder is how they get their release. Psychopaths and compulsive killers can literally spend months planning it ahead of time and then reliving it afterward.

According to John Douglas, the former FBI special agent who made his name interviewing and analyzing serial killers, there is a difference between the modus operandi—the way a crime is committed—and the signature. The signature is what the killer does to achieve fulfillment. The way they kill might change over time, and it won’t necessarily impact the killer’s satisfaction. But every killer has a signature, something they have to do, or the kill won’t give them the release they’re after. Based on what we know, the numbers are his signature. The three girls, three days apart; the seven days of captivity; the twenty-one lashes.

The numbers mattered more than anything else. And that tells us something.

It tells us sticking to them was nonnegotiable, that death by poison was preferable but not essential. If Martín is right, it tells us that even if they died too soon, it was still critical to wait until the seventh day to reveal their bodies. I think the evidence shows that the act of killing probably wasn’t what gave TCK pleasure—it was the satisfaction of doing it within his constructed pattern. This is important when classifying him into a category of serial killers.

Katrina’s violent death proves that the timeline was inflexible. On the seventh day, a girl had to die. And yet, detectives would continue to be too late.

Next time, on Justice Delayed . . .

6

Elle

January 9, 2020

Just as Elle suspected, Martín was sound asleep on the couch when she got home a little after midnight. She crept over and pulled the fleece throw off the recliner next to him. Little sparks of static electricity leapt through the dark, prickling her fingers as she flicked the blanket open and laid it across him. Satisfied she hadn’t woken him, Elle poured herself a glass of wine in the kitchen and went upstairs.

A night of research stretched out ahead of her. Even with the bullet wound in his face, she could tell she had found the right Leo on social media. She went through his profile again, more carefully this time. Last year, he’d changed his status from “married” to “single,” but his ex-wife’s name wasn’t tagged. The people he’d connected with as family on Facebook were all listed as living in various cities in Mexico. It wouldn’t be the first time she had to travel for a case, but she wasn’t sure she could justify an international flight for a tip she wasn’t even sure was legit. Plus, if they lived in Mexico, odds were none of them was the person Leo suspected of being TCK.

Just to be sure, she sent off a couple messages to people she could see he’d interacted with recently on the timeline: photo comments, status likes, et cetera. Your son/brother/cousin told me he had information on a cold case. Do you know anything about that?

It was in poor taste to message about him on the very day of his untimely death, but this was the job she’d made for herself. She was here to get the truth, not make friends. In case