Death Never Sleeps by David Grace

Death Never Sleeps by David Grace

Author:David Grace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: suspense, mystery, murder mystery, police procedural, serial killer, grace, david grace, crime novel, detective novel, homicide detective


Chapter Thirty-Two

Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a lead buried in at least one of the two files. That’s what Chris kept telling himself. He again went over what they didn’t have: no prints, no DNA, no surveillance video, no witnesses, no suspects and no clear motive. While motive was not legally required to convict a person, it usually pointed investigators toward the killer, or at least toward a group of suspects. The major exception was random crimes, crimes of opportunity where there was no pre-existing link between the criminal and the victim. That’s why serial killers were so hard to catch.

When someone is killed the murderer is likely their spouse or lover or business rival or personal enemy or someone with something to gain. These motives lead investigators to a pool of suspects and finding the killer becomes an exercise in checking out the suspects’ alibis, geographical locations, purchases, financial transactions, and whatever people or things may tie one of the suspects to the murder weapon or to the crime scene or access to the victim. But if the choice of the victim is random, just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time, all of those techniques and tools go away.

Chris did not believe that either Darja Novorska or Brian Truman had been random victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The method of death and their association with each other mitigated against that. But if their deaths weren’t random then what was the killer’s motive? Darja wasn’t married and Truman’s wife surely hadn’t built a winch and then hoisted her husband’s body up a flagpole. Neither victim had anyone who would have profited financially from their deaths. Yes, Truman had a life insurance policy but the beneficiary was the wife and she was an extremely unlikely suspect. If Darja’s throat had been cut or if she had been found in an alley a block from The Naughty Lady then Johnny-Boy would have looked good for it, but her being strangled and then shoved into a wood chipper in a park out in the Valley was definitely not Johnny-Boy’s M.O.

Which brought Chris back to the “whack-job serial killer” scenario. A serial killer who murdered both men and women? Who hanged one victim and strangled another? A serial killer who killed twice and then stopped? None of that fit.

Chris had not only gone through the local crime files but had searched VICAP as well, looking for outrageous public body displays of strangled victims. He found both too many and too few. Every year thousands of people died by strangulation. Most were killed by lovers, spouses, robbers, rapists or the like, not by serial killers.

Narrowing the search to victims of possible serial offenders still left thousands of deaths and dozens if not hundreds of suspects. Subtracting out crimes where the killer had been caught reduced the number further but that still left hundreds of strangled victims who might have been killed by dozens of serial killers, until you looked at the crimes one-by-one.



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