Autopsy of a Mind

"How long did you know her for?" Nash asked softly. 

"What are you guys… is this something—" he cut himself off as he made wild gestures with his hand. 

Bill had been a cop for decades. He was wise to the fact that acting oblivious to the unusual development of the situation would be a complete red flag in the eyes of the investigators.

Guilty suspects will often try and act naïve to confrontation as a means to avoid it altogether. Truthful suspects would immediately catch on to this and immediately clarify the doubt or confront the investigators about why they were insinuating something like this.

"You said that you were asking about a case, but here I am…" His breathing was slightly heavy as he stared between the two of us incredulously. 

"Director-General. Please understand, your name was mentioned in the passing and we just wanted to clarify some things about the victim." This was a sharp turn that I took from the almost interrogative tone I had earlier. Now, I was consoling and coaxing Bill into believing that we were on his side in this matter. "If we went up to you to your desk and asked those kinds of questions. You know how up there people can see everything?" I gave him a sheepish look. 

"Well, that's okay…" Bill's voice was calmer now.

"So, we wanted to give you some privacy… some confidentiality while talking to you about this."

"Okay," Bill kept interrupting. 

"We know that you are married to a wonderful woman and talking about this in front of people might have been bad… you know how gossip spreads across the station," Nash injected into the conversation. 

I saw a flicker of panic in Bill's eyes and then he looked at the two of us with relief. 

"We wanted to talk to you in a setting where other people don't listen in. That's all…" Nash reassured. 

Whether it was shock or the total reluctance to accept the situation, the Director-General wearily accepted the assurance without further inquiry. 

"So, what was the question again?" Billy reorganized himself. 

"How long did you know her?" Nash reminded. 

I decided to take a back seat as Nash was the more friendly one. He could flatter his superiors much better than I could ever expect. I had a disdain for hierarchy, so I was a lost cause. 

"Wow. It was a really long time ago. What time is it now? I was still a patrol and on-call officer at the time so…" he pretended to jog his memory. Grimacing and shrugging every other second, the exaggerated motions making him look rather comic. "I knew she had some underlying feelings for me at the time. But I was married and I am sure she moved on from her feelings for me."

Nash hummed. "Understood. But roughly how long would you say your acquaintance with her was?" Nash let out a small cough and reached down to take his bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap and took a sip as we gave Bill the time to come up with a reasonable answer. 

This was not about rapid-fire questions at him. This was about the long game.

"I couldn't even say…" he trailed off. He went off into a tangent, explaining things that he didn't need to explain and saying things that weren't asked. He was in a state of hyper-arousal. 

By this behavior, he would go off on unrelated tangents as a means to gain momentary relief. He would go into trivial details things would afford him some time as the eventuality of what was happening revealed itself to him.

This was common in interrogations where the suspect was facing serious charges. In this case, first-degree murder… multiple murders. It was a subconscious coping mechanism according to academic studies. 

He was talking about how old she was, how much he knew about her… things of that nature. 

"So, what you are telling me is that the nature of your acquaintance was a little more than just solitary Samaritan helping someone else out?" Nash asked, sounding a little bewildered. 

"Uh…" he didn't know how to answer that and answered something completely different. "Geez, I'm trying to think what happened around that time. I think I was going through a rough patch in my marriage at the time and things in the job front were also not looking promising," he looked down towards the far end corner of the room's floor. "Let's see…"

I had to frankly say that I was a little impatient and we needed to shut him down before he went into completely inconsequential mumbo-jumbo. "So, before her death, you hadn't talked to her for a long time?"

Bill shrugged. "Yeah. I hadn't talked to her in a long time. I couldn't even tell you how long it had been." Again, he started to throw out years and dates which wouldn't really help us catch him.

"After the marriage and financial problems resolved, I got a higher position at the police force and I was mostly working from behind the desk. So, I had no contact with people I came across during my rough patch."

At least we could solidify our hypothesis on why he started to kill again. 

"Were there other people you were particularly close to from that time period?" I asked.

Billy looked at me strangely but nodded. He gave some names that Nash nodded to. We wouldn't catch up with these people, but who knows, if one of them was also a victim, that would be a sad addition to the plethora of people who had died at the Director-General's hand. 

"What's this about?" he asked again. This was the second time he was challenging us. Once again, the question was avoided.

Nash didn't afford him reassurance any longer. The plan was to ramp up the pressure on him slowly. And to reassure the Director-General at this point would be to make all our efforts fall flat.

"How would you define your relationship with her?" Nash asked. 

It was a subtle but impressive question to put pressure on him. 

"Well… we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend but when she showered me with affection, I felt nice about it. It was a rough patch in my life and having someone like that was a pleasurable change," he commented, his eyes roving over us, looking for acceptance of the almost adulterous relationship he had been in. 

I doubted the victim had anything to do with this man, though. She was possibly talking to him for help with her neighbors but the delusional guy thought she liked him or something. It was unlike his usual pattern, so we had to wonder.

Actually, the timeline between the two murders in his second spree had grown interesting. The first kill was a mother with her children in the house, but he didn't kill the children, locking them away while he hacked away at the mother. But in reality, he had met the next victim before the first kill. 

He had probably not seen her as a potential victim and liked her as a single woman. Almost all of his other victims had been married women or those with long-term partners. There were even some recently divorced or broken-up women in the mix. But this girl was special. She had been an anomaly. 

As the story revealed itself in front of me, I knew that this was the strand I needed to grab to get a possible confession out of this guy. 

"So, after you guys split… were you on friendly terms or nah?" Nash had a way of colloquially putting things in perspective. I didn't understand the source of his terminology, but thankfully, I knew what he was asking.

"I wouldn't say we were close… but we were friendly…" Bill nodded. "I saw her a couple of times on the street."

And the change in his tone showed that he had indeed seen her on the street. He was not lying. But I had a nagging feeling that when he saw her on the street, he was spying on her and preparing for the right moment to kill her. 

"Did you ever meet anyone else in her house? Her mother perhaps? DO you remember what she did for a living?" For the first two questions, I could see the deceptive reflection on his face. He was pretending to remember if he had done those things, but for the third question, you could see him genuinely trying to remember what the victim did for a living.

"I think she was preparing for the civil service exam?" it was more of a question than an answer. "I can't even remember having a conversation about her life goals. I mean… I really wasn't that into her." He shrugged. "I mean… it was so long ago."

He had come into this room trying to fish for information about the BTS Killer case and its progress, but we had got him curious about this one victim he knew personally and he couldn't get out of our web. I had to pat myself on the back for the decision.

"Did you go to any of her brunches?" Yes, the victim invited people to brunch. 

"No," he responded strongly. "I didn't go to any such things. I was on duty and I didn't like meeting people on a personal basis at the time." He paused. "But I don't understand why we are talking about a woman I almost dated a million years ago."

"Do you know what happened to her?" I asked, keeping my voice level. 

"Yeah!" he exclaimed. I noted a hint of exasperation and enthusiasm at that. "I know she got killed!"

I hummed. "What did you hear about that?"

He waved his hand in the air. "I saw a poster at work…"

"Oh. How did you first learn about that?" I pressed. 

"I probably heard it at work."