"What are we missing here?" asked Elizabeth in frustration. She stood with Jane and Katherine in front of a video monitor that showed Palmer at the table in the interrogation room.
"I don't know," Jane grumbled with furrowed brows, "but the son of a bitch is good, I'll give him that."
Elizabeth and Katherine had left shortly after Palmer had thrown down the gauntlet to them, agreeing only to sign that he had been read his rights and waived his right to claim them. They had expected a telling off from Jane for not getting a confession out of Palmer.
"But so are you two," Jane now said, to the surprise of the two women. "You've stuck to the script and given him the conviction that he's the purest brainiac compared to us."
"He cut his wife to pieces," Katherine replied, crossing her arms. "We just have to prove it."
Jane shook her head slowly. "You've got to be patient, Kate. This guy has been plying his dirty trade for nearly three decades and hasn't been caught yet. I'm telling you, he knows we're onto him. The son of a bitch is just making us work for it."
"Then we'd better look at the evidence again," Elizabeth suggested. "Maybe we missed something."
Katherine thought feverishly. "Okay, here's a question. All three of us watched the entire interrogation from beginning to end. At what point did Palmer get the most upset?"
"Is this a quiz, Kate," Jane said with furrowed brows, "or do you not remember?"
The psychiatrist looked at her mother long and hard. "I know what I think, and I want to see if you have perceived it too."
"Emigrant hasta," Elizabeth said slowly. "That's what got him upset."
"I'd say so," Jane agreed with a nod of her head.
Katherine took a deep breath. "So would I. He denied he knew what it meant, pointing out it wasn't even his handwriting. And he knows that's something we can prove."
"Wait a minute," Elizabeth replied with her eyebrows drawn together, and she raised a hand. "He said the words were written in two different languages. One of them happens to be Spanish. Palmer has lived in Costa Rica and speaks the language fluently."
Jane shifted her weight from one foot to the other and crossed her arms. "What are you saying?"
"How good is your Spanish?"
"Are you kidding?" asked Jane, dropping her arms again while Katherine grunted to keep herself from laughing since each of the women present knew that Jane's Spanish skills were limited to the very basics.
"Okay," Elizabeth said after clearing her throat to chase the amused smile from her lips, "so when you're communicating with someone who only speaks Spanish, how do you do it?"
"You mean if I can't find a Spanish-speaking cop to translate for me?" A look of realization flitted across Jane's face. "I use the words I know, and the ones I don't, I say in English."
"Just like anyone else would in this situation," Katherine replied.
"So you mean a guy who has lived in a Spanish-speaking country for more than twenty years wouldn't have to write down the words in two different languages?" wanted Jane to know skeptically.
Elizabeth looked at the two women and licked her lips. "It doesn't fit for me."
"Are you saying he slipped up?"
"No," Elizabeth replied, shaking her head. "I'm saying he shouldn't have gotten so worked up over a mistake he knew he wouldn't make. Especially when he knows for a fact that we won't identify the handwriting on the receipt as his."
Jane certainly wasn't an idiot, but she felt like one at the moment. "Kate," she said quietly, "I'm honestly having trouble making sense of everything. And you're the expert on minds, or at least what's going on in them." she gestured toward the monitor. "What's going on in his head?"
Katherine took a long look at her mother and frowned a little. "No need to mortify yourself, because I don't know either," she assured the captain. "He's a tough nut to crack. Let's just sort out whether the writing on the receipt is his or not."
"And we'd better get a move on with that," Jane said, glancing at her watch. "The clock is ticking. And the son of a bitch is right. If we can't charge him with anything but assaulting Liz, he'll get bail. And there's no way we can let him walk."
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Ninety minutes later, the handwriting expert on call for BPD only complicated matters. "It's inconclusive," said Norma Rabin, a peroxide blonde woman whose age was estimated to be at least seventy and whose heavy blue eye shadow reminded Elizabeth of her late mother-in-law. She had worked with Elizabeth and Jane many times before and enjoyed their full confidence when she pointed out similarities between the writing on the receipt and Palmer's signature on the form waiving his rights. "The printing on the paper, the way the cross stroke was done on the t, the c that looks a little bit like a g, it all matches. But there's also a lot that's different."
Katherine excused herself and left the handwriting expert to Jane and Elizabeth. Inconclusive meant they had to allow for the possibility that Palmer had actually written the words on the receipt. But even if that were true, it still wouldn't explain why he had used two languages.
She wrote the words in capital letters on the plastic board in Jane's office. EMIGRANT HASTA. What did that mean?
Emigrant was clear, someone leaving their country, and hasta was Spanish for 'until'. At first glance, they made no sense. What was going on in his head? Was this a message? That he had left another body behind and was about to flee, to leave the country? Some kind of goodbye, until next time? Hasta la vista, baby? Or was it something else?
Messages can be in the form of a code or chopped up. Is it? Some kind of perverted game he's playing with us? Is he trying to mess with our heads?
Katherine stared at the two words. And suddenly she saw it. Mess up ...
She quickly wrote A-N-A-G-R-A-M on the board in capital letters with a black felt-tip pen.
Could this be? Was Palmer actually trying to tell them something? Katherine couldn't believe that the letters for anagram were in emigrant hasta purely by accident. But that left six letters: T-T-S-H-E-I. She concentrated hard on them and then wrote another word on the board next to A-N-A-G-R-A-M: T-H-E-I-S-T.
She had just finished when the door was yanked open and her sister came in. Elizabeth startled her so much that she dropped the pen. "Good Lord, Liz -"
"I'm sorry if I startled you," the detective said. Then she saw the writing on the board. "What's this?"
"I jumbled the letters and made two new words out of them."
Elizabeth looked closely at the words. "For any particular reason?"
Katherine quickly explained her thought process.
"Okay, I know what an anagram is," Elizabeth said slowly with a questioningly look as her little sister finished, "but what does theist mean?"
"A theist is someone who believes that God is the Creator," Katherine explained.
"Ah yes," Elizabeth said, nodding slowly, "that's where the word atheist comes from for someone who doesn't believe it." She grinned derisively. "Hard to imagine Palmer, or whoever wrote that if it wasn't him, believing in God or anything sacred, like a human life for instance. But I have no clue what anagram theist could mean."
"Maybe he feels omnipotent," Katherine suggested while picking up the pen again. "Because he murdered all those women over two decades and wasn't held accountable?"
"And now he's rubbing it in our faces with the help of word puzzles -"
Katherine paused, suddenly wondering if she was going too far in seeking an explanation for the inexplicable.
Elizabeth sensed her sister's doubt. "A theory is a theory is a theory," she said now. "As I said to the students in your class, if one doesn't get you anywhere, they'll let you go from evidence to a new one. We can check with the police in Costa Rica to see if they've come across any cryptic messages in the bone finds down there. In the meantime, you're coming with me."
"Where?"
"Back to the basement, to the crime lab. With Savarese and Ma. We'll go over the evidence again up close and in person. Maybe one of us will spot something that doesn't show up in a photo."
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Lab technician Renee Eckert, a good-looking redhead in her mid-forties, laid out the scant material from Rosa Castillo's murder on a table. Each was labeled with the places where it was found. On a second table was the even more meager material from the other two murders from twenty years ago.
"Is that all?" asked Jane, almost surprised. "Where's the stuff from the South Boston fire?"
"You mean the mountain of ashes we had three technicians sift through?" asked Eckert, visibly annoyed.
"Okay, I get it," Jane replied, sobered. "It's going to take weeks to find anything there. If there's anything to find at all."
"The only thing I didn't pull out were the bones," Eckert said, her accent suggestive of Southerners. "I thought for sure you wouldn't need them."
Elizabeth examined the large pots in which Rosa's bones had presumably been cooked. "I don't know what good it will do us to look at them again," she muttered more to herself.
They spent half an hour going over everything in detail until they concluded that there was nothing here that they could use to nail Palmer, or possibly anyone else, as the murderer.
"Well, that was a waste of time," Jane summed up what everyone was thinking as they waited for the elevator.
"Still worth a shot," Elizabeth replied, trying not to feel quite so bad.
At that moment, the elevator opened, and Anita Aitken from Forensics came out. "Hello, folks," she said cheerfully. "Captain," she added, duly acknowledging Jane's rank. "What brings you all down to the basement?"
"The Bone Case," Elizabeth answered without mincing words.
"What swamp have you been wading around in?" asked Savarese, glancing at Aitken's mud-covered gumboots.
"Boston Harbour," Aitken replied. "Patrol responded to a nuisance call and found a dead body."
"How did he die?" asked Jane now.
"Actually, we think it's a suicide," Aitken replied. "But one of the weird kind. The guy slashed his own stomach and stuffed a bath towel in to soak up the blood."
"Really?" asked Katherine, whose curiosity was piqued.
Aitken was surprised by her reaction. "Pardon me for saying this, Doc, but you seem to have a strange weakness for the macabre."
"You obviously don't know your serial killer history," Katherine playfully rebuked.
"A subject I wish I knew even less about," Jane muttered.
But Elizabeth picked up on what her sister was obviously getting at. "You mean someone has tried that before?"
"Not as a suicide," Katherine replied. "But back in the twenties, a pervert named William Edward Hickman kidnapped a little girl and cut her up. After he cut her open, he used a towel to soak up the blood." She paused, almost as if listening to a replay of her words in her head.
"Oh my goodness, Kate," Jane gasped, her eyes wide. "Is that what they teach you in basic forensic perversology?"
When Katherine looked at Aitken again, her expression was serious. "Are you sure it was suicide?"
"The only shoe prints in the mud are from the victim himself. And he still had the knife in his hand."
"What kind of low do you have to be at to even think of doing something like that to yourself?" said Savarese, as if Aitken's answer had sealed the deal.
But Katherine didn't let up. "Did the man have anything else on him?"
"No ID, if that's what you mean. Just a nearly empty pack of cigarettes and a book of matches."
"And nothing in the vicinity either?"
"No offense, Doc, but you're starting to make me feel like I'm missing something," Aitken replied.
"Not at all," Katherine assured the other woman.
Elizabeth impatiently shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "What are you getting at, Kate?"
"I'm probably just clutching at straws," the doctor said, dismissing her initial excitement with a shrug. "Good luck with the case," she wished Aitken.
"Thanks, but once we catalog the evidence, I'll be done by trial, if there ever is one," Aitken replied. "But since I have you here right now, does anyone have any idea what accents ho finer might mean?"
Jane laughed briefly. "Sounds like an autobiography of a schizo. Why?"
"Because that's what my dead guy wrote on the inside of his matchbook -" That was as far as the woman got when Katherine grabbed her by the arm. "That hurts, doc. And besides, you're starting to scare me."
"Where's the matchbook now?" asked Katherine urgently.
"My partner Joey just brought it into Lab. Do you want to see it?"
It wasn't a minute before they had all gone back to the lab. Aitken put on gloves and searched through her evidence for the matchbook.
"You think this is one of those anagrams?" asked Elizabeth, looking at her sister with furrowed brows.
"Get the receipt from where Rosa's evidence," was all the doctor replied.
"Anagrams? What the hell is she talking about?" shouted Jane after Elizabeth, who was already running to get the receipt while Aitken presented the matchbook in her open hand. "What the hell are you talking about, Kate?" she turned to her other daughter.
It occurred to Katherine that her mother didn't know anything about her musings on Jane's board more than an hour ago. "Just wait and see, Ma," Katherine countered as they both looked at the words on the inside of the matchbook, "and it will explain itself."
"Accepts ho finer," Jane read. "What on earth could it mean?"
"I don't think it means anything at all," Katherine muttered as her sister brought the receipt in a sheet protector. "More important, possibly, is what is contained within those words."
Jane was now officially confused. "And what's that supposed to mean now?"
But Elizabeth and Katherine were too busy comparing the handwriting on the receipt with the words on the matchbook.
"It's hard to say," Elizabeth said with a strained look. "The writing on the matchbook looks as if the writer was in a great hurry, while the writing on the receipt looks more deliberate. Norma Rabin will have to look at it."
But her sister's mind was elsewhere. "Is there a computer here I can use?" she asked, lost in thought.
Aitken gestured to the terminal where forensics teams entered evidence. She typed in her password so the psychiatrist could access it. "What do you need?"
"Just the Internet," Katherine explained, sitting down at the keyboard when Aitken finished. She typed anagram generator into Google and got a lot of websites to choose from. By the time her mother and sister joined her, she had already typed accepts ho finer into the search function of one of the sites.
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder; she wanted to soften the blow in case her sister realized the theory was going nowhere. "There's no proof this was even a homicide," she whispered. "It happened in a different borough. And the victim is male, not female."
But Katherine only had eyes for the results of her search query; there were oodles. She realized she couldn't do this quickly on the side in the crime lab. And before that, there was something else to sort out. "Can you call the medical examiner and see if she can come here?"
"Now?" asked Jane in surprise. "What for?"
"So we can look at the bones from all the cases again. With her."
Elizabeth looked indecisively at her mother and frowned deeply. "She will assume we think she screwed up."
"Then tell her she can't have missed something she wasn't even looking for," Katherine replied as she lifted her gaze and looked at her sister.
Jane straightened up and looked at her younger daughter closely, almost sternly. "And what exactly are we looking for?"
Katherine suddenly chewed the inside of her cheek and for a brief moment, her eyes were unfocused. "I'm not quite sure yet. But something's wrong."
Jane snorted, aghast. She wasn't satisfied with that. "You'll have to explain that in more detail."
Katherine was beginning to lose her patience, and everyone who knew her knew it. "I'm convinced you want to solve this case as much as I do, maybe even a lot more, Ma. And if that's the case, please call Dr. Ross. I'm beginning to think the answer is in these bones."
Jane took a long look at her, took a deep breath, and nodded before pulling out her cell phone and hitting a speed dial.
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Said bones, arranged of the four victims, lay out on separate tables in an unused but clean autopsy room when Katherine and the three cops arrived back in the morgue an hour later. Ross paced back and forth between them as if she were the keeper of a 21st-century high-tech crypt. "If it isn't the Spanish Inquisition," she quipped, "except none of you look like Torquemada."
"That was a man," Savarese replied, pointing at Katherine. "The whole thing was her idea."
"Well, at least Dr. Isles and I speak the same language," Ross said, quirking a brow.
"Too much of an honor," Katherine replied, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. "I may have completed my pathology internship like any other well-behaved medical student, but that doesn't make me an expert. I'm going to need your help."
"Your wish is my command," Ross said, gesturing expansively across her realm of the dead. "What are we looking for?"
"For anything in which the bones of each victim differ from the other. Have you arranged everything as asked?"
"I did," replied the M.E. "You can't determine which bones belong to which crime until I tell you." She picked up two magnifying glasses and gave one to Katherine. "Your magnifying glass, Holmes."
The three cops took a step back and watched as Katherine studied each bone from each skeleton. After the first one, she shook her head and moved on to the second. Spent a while doing that. Nothing. But shortly after she began to examine the third skeleton more closely, she stopped abruptly at the left shoulder. "Hey," she called out to Ross, raising her gaze. "Take a look at this." Ross hurried over to the psychiatrist and peered through the magnifying glass. "See? On the inside of the shoulder joint?"
Ross nodded slowly and moved on to the knee joint. "Same here. Same marks."
"Are you going to let us in on the big doctor secret, or are we just supposed to stand here and be annoyed that we were too stupid to go to medical school?" asked Jane, who stood waiting with her arms crossed over her chest against a wall as only she could.
Katherine slowly looked up with furrowed brows at her sister, who rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly.
Ross pointed to the bones on the other tables. "These three victims, the two victims of twenty years and the Jane Doe from the South Boston fire the other day were dismembered in identical fashion. Namely, with almost surgical precision. Expertly executed, in a way that suggests the perpetrator had a practical knowledge of anatomy." She then moved to the bones, which Katherine continued to examine. "Rosa Castillo, however, is a different story. There are cut and chisel marks in all the joints, although barely visible. Compared to the others, it's as if Rosa was cut up by someone who didn't have anywhere near that level of finesse or anatomical knowledge."
"Or by someone who was very angry and perhaps in a hurry," Elizabeth said in a reproachful tone, looking disapprovingly at Ross. "I wouldn't rule out any possibility -"
"Don't put it on me, Rizzoli," Ross replied defensively.
"She's right, Liz," Katherine agreed. "Rosa's bones have lots of other marks on them, probably from being shaken around in the perpetrator's vehicle. The trace I found in the joint could easily be confused with that." She glanced at the two cops. "And as for the suggestion that the perpetrator was in a hurry, Liz, I don't see it that way. Rosa was dismembered in the middle of this wooded area around a park. Literally not a soul for miles. Why would Palmer have been in a hurry out there?"
"Maybe he thought someone had seen him and wanted to get back out there quickly." The wheels were rattling in Elizabeth's head. And all at once, she had the answer. "Or it wasn't Palmer."
Katherine nodded slowly. "I think that's right."
Jane's face darkened and one could see she would have loved to jump out of her skin as she pushed herself off the wall. "The two of you carved out a dead certain circumstantial case against Palmer, and now all of a sudden you're saying he didn't do it?"
Katherine set aside the magnifying glass. "Put yourself in Victor Palmer's shoes," she said calmly but forcefully. "He's not a surgeon, but he is a chef, and that means he knows how to expertly handle a piece of meat. He takes pride in his work. He murders the two women in Boston twenty-five years ago, two bodies that were forgotten because there were no clues and all the cops in town were looking for Charles Hoyt. Then he moves to Costa Rica and continues his killing spree. Call the police down there, and I'll bet you a week's pay, their medical examiner will confirm that every single bone in the twenty-two victims is undamaged, no nicks, no scratches."
Jane looked at Savarese for a long moment. "Call Costa Rica," she said, before turning back to Katherine. "Go ahead, Kate."
"Okay. Palmer murders his wife and moves back to Boston. It's entirely possible he's killed other women we just haven't found. But let's assume he didn't. And then all of a sudden he hears about a bone find in a garbage can -"
"Hold on, wait a minute," Jane interrupted her daughter, rubbing her left temple as she felt a headache coming on. "There's just one problem. Rosa Castillo's murder is not public knowledge until today. We've kept it under wraps. How would Palmer know that she -" She broke off in mid-sentence at a look from Elizabeth before the answer to her own question occurred to her a second later.
"Palmer's friend, the Chief of Police," Elizabeth spoke up. "He must have told him over dinner or whenever."
Jane closed her eyes and slowly licked her lips before exhaling loudly. "That's why he said he had to step down if Palmer was the killer," she sighed, "because if Palmer had never found out about Rosa, our Jane Doe might still be alive."
"Gee, that's hard to believe," Ross said in amazement.
"Not a word about this to anyone," the captain turned to the M.E. "Not even to your boss. First, we have to answer a few more questions." Her gaze went to Katherine. "Like how you know about the other body."
"Which one?" asked Ross.
"The bizarre suicide in Boston Harbor," Elizabeth enlightened her.
"You mean the guy who tried to cut himself in half?"
"It was most likely murder," Katherine replied. "Also a copycat murder, from a horrific murder of a little girl in 1920s. The connection is the words on that victim's matchbook and on the receipt found with Rosa's bones."
Jane made a desperate effort to grasp it. "So we're dealing with a lunatic who goes around mimicking obscure serial killers and plays word puzzles with us to boot? Why?"
"Because, Captain, our lunatic is a perfectionist just like Palmer. And he wants to know if we are as perfect as he is," Katherine answered bluntly.
Elizabeth understood. "He's testing our collective IQ," she said slowly. "To see if it's as big as his."
"Right," her sister confirmed, nodding. "And it's about time we show him."
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She sat in the homicide squad room in front of her sister's computer and was back on the anagram website. There was no longer any reason to hide in her mother's office or sneak in or out of the building. Before long, everything would be out in the open, including her involvement. She called Galloway to inform her, not wanting her to find out from the news. She promised everything would be over in a few days, and she asked for Galloway's understanding. She was trying her mentor's patience, but she also knew when it was all over, Galloway would have reason to be proud of her. But Katherine needed to be able to be proud of herself as well, and knowing the killer's motives wasn't enough for her. Nailing Victor Palmer wasn't enough for her either. She needed to know what the words meant. She needed to know who had killed Rosa Castillo.
She had already typed accepts ho finer into the search engine, poring over the myriad possibilities, wondering when the obvious answer would pop into her mind when Elizabeth came up behind her and glanced over her shoulder. "How's it going?" she asked, handing her younger sister a cup of coffee.
"Tough," Katherine sighed. "How about you?"
"All settled. The press conference is scheduled for seven tonight. You're supposed to be mentioned."
"No problem," the psychiatrist replied after taking a sip from her cup. "I have permission from Dr. Galloway."
"I hope you swore her to secrecy as well," the detective said, sitting down in the chair that was supposed to be for her visitors.
"Yes," Katherine replied, running a hand wearily through her hair and without taking her eyes off the screen. "And I didn't tell her anything anyway."
"Katherine," Elizabeth said in a serious tone that caught the psychiatrist's attention.
Katherine swiveled the chair around and looked at her sister for a long moment. "What's wrong?"
"They want you to be on the podium with us."
Katherine was speechless. "Please don't tell me you -"
"I don't have that kind of guts."
There was only one other possibility, and it stumped the doctor. "Ma?"
"Ma told the Chief of Detectives, the Chief of Police, and the Mayor that it all wouldn't have been possible without your involvement. As far as Ma is concerned, you are officially one of us. She said she would personally make you a detective if she could." When Katherine didn't answer, Elizabeth realized that her sister's mind was on the screen. "Did you even hear what I said?" she asked.
"Perfection," Katherine replied slowly, staring at the screen. "It's about perfection."
Elizabeth followed her gaze. In the list of anagrams, her sister was now looking at combinations of three words that began with perfect. "Perfect?"
And suddenly Katherine saw it. What she had been looking for. She wrote it on a notepad next to the keyboard. Accepts ho finer = Perfect in chaos.
"What the hell are you two up to?" asked Jane suddenly from behind them. "We -" Then she saw what Katherine had written on the note. "You sure?"
"As sure as I can be," the doctor replied as she looked up at her mother. "And here's something else. I think he wants us to know who he is. Or at least who he thinks he is." She wrote ANAGRAM THEIST on the yellow pad.
"You said theist refers to a belief in God. Do you still think this butcher believes in God?" asked Elizabeth with a furrowed brow.
Jane looked at the two women and they could hear her brain rattling. "Maybe he thinks he's God."
"Almost," Katherine agreed, rewriting the words again. "If I take the first three letters of theist, I have the. And if I add the last three letters to anagram, I get -" She wrote it in strong capital letters on the piece of paper.
"The Anagramist," Elizabeth added, leaning back in her chair.
Katherine tapped the sheet with her pen. "That's what he calls himself.
Jane shook her head slowly with furrowed brows. "Maybe his friends Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman can lead us to him," she joked. "This case is weirder than a fucking comic book."
"We'll have to change the script, Ma," Katherine said as she looked up at her mother. "Just a little."
Jane looked at her thoughtfully and a deep frown dug into her forehead before she looked at her watch. "You wrote the damn thing. So change it. You still have an hour before the show starts."
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"Thank you all for coming," Boston Mayor Mark Glassman said into a forest of microphones in front of the lectern in front of the BPD. The place was packed, and after a few opening words, Your Honor handed off to Chief of Police Farrell, who stood to his left. Despite the inevitable consequences for him, Farrell maintained an inscrutable countenance. Behind the two stood Chief of Detectives Kirkland and Jane in front of Katherine, who was flanked by Elizabeth and Savarese. The badges of the two detectives hung on a chain around their necks.
Farrell was barely audible over the clatter of camera releases as he announced in a few words his resignation from the office of Chief of Police that he had so loved. Katherine knew it was hogwash. Farrell submitted his resignation to avoid the public outrage he was sure to receive. If anyone found out what he had told Victor Palmer. As a parting gift to the mayor, he announced Palmer's arrest for the two murders of over twenty years ago and of Jane Doe in South Boston. It all lasted five minutes, during which Katherine had to stand there and force herself to wear the grim expression she had always seen on the faces of participants at similar press conferences. That, too, was part of the script.
"Before I take questions, I'd like to ask Captain Jane Rizzoli, the head of Homicide, to come forward, whose detectives investigated and solved the case."
As Jane stepped up to the lectern, Katherine involuntarily wondered if her mother would be able to manage a sentence without using the F-word. But she had often seen the professional, polished career cop Jane Rizzoli herself.
"Not that I want to correct my supervisor," Jane began, looking directly into the TV cameras, "but the arrest of Victor Palmer would not have been possible without the invaluable expertise of Dr. Katherine Isles of Massachusetts General Hospital. This is the first time Dr. Isles has worked with us, and the BPD and the City of Boston owe her a debt of gratitude. Dr. Isles will continue to be available to us as a consultant on two other cases I'd like to report on now."
The cameras clicked and whirred, but now they were focused on Katherine, who continued to just stand there, looking straight ahead intently, acknowledging Jane's praise with a nod of her head. Her face remained serious even as the captain continued to read from her script.
"The arrest of Mr. Palmer has been led by an investigation into a murder that occurred more than two weeks ago. You will receive handouts and photos in a press kit regarding what I am about to tell you. The victim in this brutal murder was Rosa Castillo, twenty-four, from Boston. Her remains were found in a trash can four days after she disappeared. Initially, we suspected Mr. Palmer of Ms. Castillo's murder because the MO seemed consistent with the other cases for which Mr. Palmer was arrested. However, new evidence has now led us to believe that Mr. Palmer cannot be responsible for Ms. Castillo's death. Therefore, her murder remains a cold case, and bringing it to justice is a top priority for BPD. We're asking anyone who may have information about the case to call us at the number on the screen. You can ask the questions now."
Katherine relaxed her posture and tried hard not to doubt her tension. The most important moments of the press conference were yet to come.
"Do you have a lead or a suspect?" asked a veteran television reporter.
"Come on, Louie, you know we can't put our cards on the table here," Jane replied with her famous grin, and the remark elicited laughter from the press corps. It was typical for Jane to be cavalier in front of the cameras. "But we think Ms. Castillo was randomly selected by a copycat," she said.
"You mean someone who mimicked the murders committed by Victor Palmer?" another reporter shouted.
"And the other killers," Jane replied. "We're still working on a second case, which I can't tell you about right now, but which may be related to this one. I can tell you, however, that the MO is completely different from Ms. Castillo's case but similar in every detail to a murder committed in 1920."
A female reporter from the Boston Globe came forward. "Can you tell us what exactly led you to believe that Mr. Palmer did not kill Ms. Castillo?"
"Not nearly as accurately as you'd like, Marissa," Jane replied with a slight frown, "but I can tell you this: compared to Mr. Palmer's work, the person who tried to copy him did a terrible job."
"What do you mean by 'terribly'?" asked the next reporter.
"Well, let's just say Palmer's impersonator is sloppy, as one is when they don't do proper research and preparation. For Palmer, murder was an art form. Compared to him, this impostor's work is preschool finger painting. He's a bloody amateur."
Katherine blanked out the questions to her mother. Though her expression remained serious, she was now more confident and convinced she had accomplished her task. What Jane had just said in public was the most important part of the script she had written. If Rosa's killer was all about chaos and words, perhaps words could be his undoing.
They would just have to wait and see.