‘Poole,’ Tatiana said, waving a fry about as she stood at his desk. ‘I knew that’s who you were talking about. He’s intense looking.’
‘You’re only saying that ’cause I showed you the arrest report. I thought he looked boring,’ replied Bryan.
‘Just this morning I would’ve said that vacant stare of his makes him look kinda dull, but now that I know he pushed his own grandma down the stairs, it’s looking a little twisted. A little Charlie Manson in the early days, actually.’
‘After he tried to rape her.’
Tatiana made a face as she read the charges off the arrest form: ‘Attempted murder, agg batt, attempted sex batt, animal cruelty. How old was he?’
‘Sixteen. The story I’m getting outta that report is that he was living in Deltona with his mom. Dad had abandoned the family when Poole was four. That’s what the shrinks are probably gonna say fucked him up, Maldonado, if it turns out that this is our guy. Mark my words: “Daddy left and everything went to shit in my world. I had no father figure.” Then in January of eleventh grade he gets sent to live with Grandma in Haines City. What does that tell you? Tells me Mom couldn’t handle him.’
‘Or something happened to her,’ Tatiana speculated. ‘Maybe Mom went nuts, had a drug problem, ran off, had a health problem, died, got remarried.’
‘Nah. Keep reading. It doesn’t say nothing about her being in jail or rehab or a nuthouse. It says, “He went to live with his grandmother at his mother’s request.” That means he was a problem she couldn’t handle. You worked Crimes Against Children; you know kids get pawned off on grandparents all the time because the parents can’t control them. He’s there for three months, going to high school, probably creeping the cheerleaders out with those Charlie Manson peepers. He can’t get any from any of them, he gets frustrated, so he goes for Grandma.’
Tatiana looked up from the report and cocked an eyebrow. ‘That’s definitely not in there,’ she said. ‘That is pure speculation.’
‘Then he drowned her poodle in the pool while she watched. Name was Princess. There’s your animal cruelty. That’s in there.’
‘Rape is a crime of rage, not passion.’
‘True. But I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m willing to bet some dinero that our boy didn’t fit in at his new high school, grew more and more frustrated and angry with everyone, especially the girls, and got bad grades. He made no friends, and took his pent-up anger out on Grandma, who probably looks a lot like his mother, who he privately detests. Couldn’t get to Mom, so the intent transferred to Grandma in the heat of the moment.’
Tatiana put the report down. ‘That’s an awful lot to reach at from an A-form and a couple of reports; not sure if I’m with you. So what happened? He’s obviously out and about in society now. And he’s a CPA, so he somehow managed to get his grades up that you just speculated he was failing.’
Bryan shrugged. ‘According to the close-out memo, the attempted sex batt charges were dropped. Grandma wouldn’t testify about the rape attempt; she wanted him to get help for what she thought was a drug problem. So they pled him to the agg bat, which was a felony, because they didn’t need her cooperation to go forward on that. They dropped the animal cruelty. He was sentenced as a Youthful Offender to the Orange Youth Academy in Orlando – a high-risk juvenile facility. He spent two years there. Came out a new man with a GED and a new name: Derrick Alan Poole. That year the case was sealed so he could start fresh.’
‘The arrest is under the name Derrick Alan Freeley. Where’d he get Poole?’
‘Look at the victim list.’
She took the arrest form back, and flipped it over to see the victim/witness list. ‘No way! “Linda Sue Poole” – the bastard took his grandma’s last name. Talk about passive-aggressive when plain fucking aggressive doesn’t do the trick.’
Bryan shrugged. ‘Can’t do anything to stop a name change.’
‘I bet he’s not invited for Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s.’
‘I don’t think she’s hosting any more holiday dinners; she’s in an institution with early-onset Alzheimer’s. To his credit, Linda Sue was a relatively young grandma when he tried to get funky with her.’
Tatiana made a face and reached for another greasy fry. ‘Sorry – not much of a comfort. How’d you find that out?’
‘I ran a CLEAR, found the address, called the home. She’s been there four years.’
‘So much for proving your “transferred intent” theory; Grandma’s not gonna remember sonny’s name now, much less if he groped her on her way down the stairs twelve years ago.’
‘There’s always Mom, Maldonado. Maybe she’ll talk to us. I ran her, too; she lives in Phoenix. Moved west in 2003 – a month before Derrick got out of lock-up. Interesting, eh?’
Tatiana nodded thoughtfully and looked down at the arrest form. ‘Grandma? Yuck. I haven’t heard that one before, and I’ve heard a lot of shit.’
‘I’m liking this guy, the more I read, Maldonado.’
‘Totts,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘A lot of what you’re thinking, you didn’t read – you made up,’ she said.
‘It’s called profiling. What matters right now is this guy looks like our sketch and he used to live in Wellington, which kisses up on the cane fields of Belle Glade and is close to a couple of our dump sites. He’s got a violent sexual criminal history with women, and he kills animals, which is a classic manifestation of a psychopathic personality disorder.’
‘So what now?’ she asked, crumpling the French fry bag and tossing it across the desk into a waiting wastepaper basket.
‘We gotta keep looking at the other names on the list, to be safe and thorough. I’m gonna pull whatever I can on Poole: school records, work history, and whatever I can get from that Youth Academy. Then I’ll head back out to the Animal, see if anyone recognizes our boy in a photo lineup, sit up on him a few days and see if maybe he takes us somewhere interesting. Serials sometimes revisit their crime scenes,’ he added.
Tatiana frowned and looked at the file box that he had written CANE KILLER on in big block letters. ‘A serial, huh? You really think that’s what you got going on?’
‘I do. And until Amandola assigns you your own caseload, it’s what we got going on.’ George Amandola was the lieutenant who headed up homicide.
‘What does he think about the idea that this guy might be a serial?’
‘Another body might do it for him.’ Bryan shifted in his seat and tapped his pen on the file box. ‘Are you, ah, doing better?’
She stared at him for a good couple of seconds. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to bite him or hug him and he immediately regretted caring enough to ask the question. ‘You sounded upset, is all,’ he explained, putting his hands in the air in a show of surrender. ‘Sorry for asking.’
‘Yes, thanks,’ she finally replied. ‘I only had a bag of fries and about ten tortilla chips for lunch, thanks to that last comment of yours, so I’m starving.’
‘Trust me, in about three hours your stomach will be thanking me. Actually, since it won’t know how sick it could have been, it will take feeling well for granted. I’ll take you to lunch.’
She raised an eyebrow.
‘When you’re in a better mood. In the meantime, they got spicy Fritos and Entenmann’s chocolate-chip cookies in the vending machine down the hall.’
She passed him the arrest form. ‘You wanna do a photo lineup with the kid and mom, then? Get a positive ID on Poole?’
‘I’m worried about confusing the kid: she’s so young. This guy looks radically different in his DL. She’s already gonna be an easy witness for a defense attorney to discredit; let’s not give them more ammo with a faulty ID.’
‘So whatta ya want to do?’
‘A photo lineup with mom. If she IDs, we build a solid case against Poole. Then we do a live lineup with the kid if we think she’s strong enough to handle it.’
‘Do you think mom will ID? She’s definitely holding something back about that night.’
Bryan put the report into a manila folder, slid it into Santri’s accordion and put the whole thing into the file box. ‘Maybe she’s just feeling guilty because of the outcome, what happened to Santri,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Maybe she’s got a few reasons of her own why she didn’t come forward till her kid spoke up. I think she’ll ID, though. Because now she knows what happened to this guy’s last victim. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be responsible for what happens to his next.’