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“Sure.” Beth smiled at him. “Find something?”
Leaning forward on the desk, he shook his head. “It’s what I didn’t find that’s a problem. A big problem. There’s been a major cover-up but only on the Night Creeper files. It looks as if Dryer took the lead on all the cases and left Boone to do the grunt work, which because of the lack of evidence was negligible. I looked at a few other cases at random and they’re as detailed as one would expect. In some cases, the murder books on the Night Creeper cases are one to three pages max.”
“Suspects?” Beth leaned back in her chair, stifled a yawn, and stretched her arms over her head.
Styles shook his head. “A few but none of them panned out.” He frowned. “I can’t figure out why they were even considered as suspects. I mean, one guy happened to take a bus past the crime scene and walked a hundred yards or so to his home. It is as if they pulled in anyone just to have a few suspects on the books.”
“Hmm.” Beth checked her coffee and, grimacing, pushed it away. “I discovered a pile of information on Dryer. He didn’t do well at school, was in counseling for being bullied. In high school he slashed a girl on the arm with a broken bottle, which he claimed was an accident. The report from the school counselor is quite revealing. He managed to extract information from Dryer. He’d been out on a few dates with her and they’d had some type of argument. The next day in the school canteen, all the girls were sniggering when he walked by. Dryer wouldn’t elaborate on what had happened and insisted it didn’t have any bearing on the incident with the bottle.” She met Styles’ gaze and a slow smile crossed her lips. “Okay, add to this he came from a broken home. His mom walked out and left him with a violent father. When he turned sixteen, his father was found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft on a construction site. Dryer was sent hereto Roaring Creek to live with his grandma. The year he turned eighteen, she died and he inherited the house. He joined the sheriff’s department a short time later and has been living in his grandma’s house all along.”
Listening with interest, Styles nodded. “You managed to discover all that about him in three hours. That’s remarkable. A violent father can cause damage early. Anything on his mom?”
“Oh yeah, she went into a shelter. The reports I have on her say she escaped with her life and just the clothes on her back. The husband was abusive. She wanted to go back for Dryer but was in fear of her life.” Beth stared at him. “It’s all there, isn’t it? The groundwork for a psychopath. His father was most likely one, and I wouldn’t mind betting Dryer pushed him down the elevator shaft.” She smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first time an abused kid has killed a parent. Then we have the first romance, which went sour. Why? Something happened on the date that made the girls at school ridicule him and then what does he do? He lashes out with a bottle.” She shrugged. “It was probably too messy for him so he decided to teach women like her a lesson by raping and strangling them. The problem is, we know his problem. He couldn’t rape them. Maybe the ridicule was he couldn’t perform with his date either.”
Styles rubbed the back of his neck. “That would have been his trigger, the humiliation at school. So how come he hasn’t killed until now?”
“Maybe, he didn’t date many women or it never went that far.” Beth stood and bent to rub Bear’s ears. “Until he tried again with the same result. I’d say most women would be sympathetic, but some can be mean-spirited. That would be the trigger, and once he’d started, he couldn’t stop.” She glanced at her watch. “I need a break. I figure so does Bear. We have some time before the vehicle is delivered. Mind if we grab a bite to eat and take a walk in the park?”
Styles smiled, surprised by her consideration for his dog. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’ll go and get Dryer’s address and house keys from the sheriff. They’ll likely be in evidence. Then we’re good to go.”
FORTY-SIX
Of course, Beth had discovered the information on Dryer weeks ago during her own investigation. Finding the rune cut into the fob on his keyring during her previous visit to Mischief and the fact he’d attempted to kill her had sealed his fate. Feeding the information to Styles now and having him agree with her findings filled her with a satisfaction she hadn’t known existed. After grabbing burgers and fries and to-go cups of coffee from the local diner, they sat in the park and watched Bear round up ducks and send them waddling into the river. She laughed at his antics. “How come he likes ducks and hates chickens? They don’t look much different, do they?”
“Ah, but we don’t know if animals communicate, do we? As in speak each other’s languages.” Styles chuckled. “Maybequack, quackmeans hello and a chicken’s squawk means someone is coming to cut off your head. Who knows?”
Laughing, Beth shook her head. “And people callmecrazy.”
They headed back to the sheriff’s office and found the rental parked outside, keys in the glovebox as directed. They climbed inside and headed along a tree-lined road toward Dryer’s home. The sun had appeared at last and new leaves spread spotted patterns across the blacktop. It was an old suburb, with log-builthomes. Most had long driveways and red-roofed barns out back. They climbed out and went to the porch. As Styles opened the dilapidated front door, she waited without luck for him to notice the distinctive keyring. An old-lady smell filled Beth’s nostrils as she followed him into the house and, shuddering, she pulled on a face mask. The recognition came from living with an old lady and her son for a time and brought back memories she’d rather forget. The middle-aged greasy-haired overweight son had crept into her bedroom at night and watched her. Sometimes pulling the blankets from her and touching her legs. She’d wanted to kill him. The bread knife had been in her hand as he walked up behind her one morning before school and it had taken all her willpower to drop it into the sink. That morning she’d packed her lunch and a few meager possessions and run away.
Dragging her head back to the now, she pulled on gloves and followed Styles. They moved through the rooms and found Dryer’s bedroom. It stank of stale sweat and the bed linen hadn’t been changed for a year. They searched the drawers and beside her Styles whistled. She turned to look at him. “What?”
“Jackpot.” He held up a small box filled with photographs. He turned them over in his hand. “Home-printed images of his victims. There are many here we didn’t know about. It seems he took a few vacations in other states. He liked to spread his murders around. He has dates and places written on the back of each one, but no names.”
Looking over his shoulder at the gruesome images, Beth shrugged. “They didn’t have names to him. They meant nothing to him. It was all about domination. He needed to show them he was the man.”
“Just a minute.” Styles dove into the box again and pulled out a thumb drive. “What do we have here? Can you see what’s on this?”
Beth went back to the small room Dryer used as an office and easily opened his computer. She stared at the videos, all neatly kept in dated files. “This is all we need to prove he was the Night Creeper.”
“We’ll keep doing the sweep.” Styles dropped the thumb drive into an evidence bag. “He’s not stupid enough to be in any of the videos and I don’t want any doubt.”
They spent some time hunting through each room and discovered a rolled-up yoga mat in the garage. Beth looked at it and raised one eyebrow. “We’ll need to take that as well. It looks like it would fit the imprint in the weeds where we found Layla Cooper. This is Wolfe’s case. He might find trace evidence on the mat. How confident was Dryer to keep this? He never believed anyone would suspect him.”
“And yet the Tarot Killer did, didn’t he?” Styles turned back toward the house. “There are garbage bags in the kitchen. I’ll grab one and we’ll take the mat with us. Take some images of the mat in situ before we leave.”
After taking the images, Beth helped to bag the mat. “I can’t see anything else of interest.”
“Nope, we’re done here.” Styles tossed her Dryer’s keys and then picked up the mat. “The keys will need to be returned to the evidence locker.” He headed for the rental.
The perfect opportunity to prove the case against Dryer without any doubt, had just fallen into Beth’s hands. She stared at the keys “Ah, Styles, wait up. I figure these keys need to go to Wolfe as well.”
“How so?” Styles dropped the mat into the trunk and pulled the bag of photographs from his pocket and laid them beside it.
Walking to his side, Beth held up the metal stick with the rune etched into the end. “I think I found his branding iron.”
“Well, I’ll be darned.” Styles examined the keyring closely. “It sure looks the same. We’ll need to get this to Wolfe ASAP.” He smiled. “I’ll give him a call.”
Beth moved closer. “Put it on speaker. I want to be in the conversation too.” She climbed into the rental.
