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“Blood all over,” she said. “Which was amazing because there was no sign of the killer walking away through it and very little forensic evidence other than the body and the box cutter.”
The early investigation had focused on Jameson’s ex-wife, Claudia, and their tempestuous marriage and acrimonious divorce. Claudia had recently petitioned the court to increase her alimony payments, which the surgeon had opposed.
“She seemed like the obvious choice,” Parks said. “Or herlive-in boyfriend, the top tennis pro on Kiawah. But both Claudia and the pro had ironclad alibis for the evening of Jameson’s murder.”
Parks started driving again. The second killing, she told me, came five weeks later, when Dr. Sandra Handle, an ob-gyn, was strangled in her home across the street from the seventh tee in another golf-course community on Johns Island. Her husband found her corpse upon his return from a fishing trip.
We pulled up in front of the Handles’ former home.
“Different method but the same attention to detail,” the detective said. “Even though it was a violent death, we found no DNA under Dr. Handle’s fingernails or on her body or anywhere, for that matter.”
“Enter Thomas Tull,” I said.
Parks’s jaw shifted a little. She put the car in drive and headed for Daniel Island. “That’s right. Within a week of Handle’s murder, he showed up, said he felt in his bones that this was going to be his next book.”
“You just let him into the investigation?”
She did that thing with her jaw again. “Thomas sort of slid in after sweet-talking the police chief and the mayor. I mean, he was kind of a celebrity. Everybody I knew read his books, including me.”
I waited until we were on Daniel Island and approaching the third murder scene before I said, “When did you start sleeping with the writer?”
CHAPTER 47
DETECTIVE PARKS’S JAW STAYEDset as she pulled over onto the shoulder of a road.
“Suzanne Liu tell you that?” she demanded.
“She told me she called you the other day and you hung up on her,” I said.
“Damn straight I hung up on her. She all but called me a whore. I mean, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. She slept with the guy all the time!”
I held up both hands. “I didn’t know that and I’m not making any judgments here.”
“Well, I hope the hell you do, Dr. Cross! My reputation is at stake!”
“I’m just running down leads, same as you would do in this situation. Did you sleep with him?”
Parks took a deep breath. “For almost two years. Thomashas … he has a way of making you fall in love with him and not think too badly of him when he dumps you.”
“You called Tull after Liu called you.”
“First time in two years. But I thought he should know what his former editor was saying about him.”
“He threatened her,” I said. “I heard the recording.”
“I certainly had nothing to do with it if he did.”
“Tull never mentioned the affair in the book.”
“Thank God. My mother would have been mortified.”
“I’m sorry, but did you know Tull also had affairs with the female detectives inElectricandNoon in Berlin?”
Parks swallowed hard. “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Like I said, he has a way of making women fall in love with him.”
After that, she took me to the site where the third Charleston doctor had been murdered, an area of big homes, all with docks that reached far out across the tidal flats to the Wando River.
“Peter Mason—an ear, nose, and throat specialist—died out there,” Parks said, pointing to the T at the end of the nearest dock. “Beaten to death with an oar. The last two murder scenes are a few miles north. We believe the killer came in off the river via the docks.”
