Southern Lights: A Novel

Quentin was known to be a jogger in prison. He ran track, and jogged daily in the yard. And he had continued running once he got out. They had watched him in parks several times, and it was often where the victims were found, but they still couldn’t tie him to them. There were no witnesses to the crimes. The fact that he had run in the same park didn’t mean that they had died at his hands. There hadn’t been a single drop of sperm in any of the women, which meant that he had used a condom or had a disability of some kind, which maybe led him to rape. He was brilliant at what he did, if it was him.

Quentin was arrogant, but not a braggart. He waited for their questions and offered nothing else. He met their eyes, and from time to time glanced at the window where Alexa watched with a serious expression. Without realizing it, she had smoked half a dozen cigarettes by then.

“You know I didn’t do it,” Quentin said after a while, looking straight at Jack and laughing at him. His eyes had drifted past Charlie, dismissing him with a glance. “You guys just need someone to pin it on, to make you look good. You’re playing to the press.”

Jack decided to dispense with the amenities, as he met Quentin’s eyes. There was nothing there, neither guilt nor fear, nor even concern. The only thing he saw there was contempt. Luke was laughing at them, and thought they were fools. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, which suspects often did. The lights were hot. All the cops in the room were perspiring profusely, while Quentin looked cool. But they were wearing street clothes and bulletproof vests, he was in a thin jumpsuit, and totally at ease.

“There was blood in the dirt on your shoes,” Jack told him calmly.

“So what?” Quentin looked completely indifferent. “I run every day. I don’t look at the ground when I run. I run through dirt, dog shit, human excrement every day. I could have run through blood. It wasn’t on my hands.” And it wasn’t on his clothes. They had already gone through everything he owned. It was only in the dirt on his shoes. And he could have been telling the truth, although it was unlikely. “You can’t hold me forever. And if that’s all you’ve got, your charges won’t stick. You know that as well as I do. You’ll have to do better than that. You’re full of shit and you know it. The arrest is no good.”

“We’ll see. I wouldn’t count on that,” Jack said with a confidence he didn’t fully feel. They needed some hard evidence to use in the case. They’d had enough to arrest him, although not enough to convict him yet. Hopefully it would come, with a few more lucky breaks. They had good men on their team. Maybe another snitch would turn up, although Quentin didn’t look like a guy who talked. He was much, much smarter than that. And the forensic evidence they were waiting for would nail him.

The questioning went on for several hours, about where he’d been, what he’d done, who he knew, who he met, the women he’d gone out with, the hotels where he’d stayed. It checked out that he’d been in the cities where the women were killed, but so far there was nothing conclusive to tie him to the other girls. They were hanging by a slim thread, but it was good enough for now, and they were counting on the forensic lab to give them more with DNA.

“You’ve got to prove a hell of a lot more than that I ran in the same park.” But the blood and hair would do for now. Even Luke Quentin knew that.

They had never mentioned his passion for snuff films during the entire interrogation. They didn’t want to tip their hands yet. They had offered to have his public defender with him that morning, but Quentin said he didn’t care. He was not afraid of cops, and he thought public defenders were jokes, they were always young and innocent, and most of the guys they defended were convicted anyway. The fact that they were guilty was irrelevant to him. And the PD he’d been given was no better. She’d been in the public defender’s office for a year. He didn’t care. He figured it would never get to trial, and for lack of evidence, they’d have to let him go. They couldn’t prove a goddamn thing, and blood on his shoes wouldn’t be enough.

The blood from all four victims came from scratches they’d gotten on the ground when they’d been raped, or dragged away, one from a cut on a victim’s arm. The site of the bleeding hadn’t been the cause of death. They had been naked when he raped and killed them, and when they were found. He always took their clothes off and didn’t bother to dress them again once they were dead. The first two girls had been found in a shallow grave in the park, dug up by a dog. The other two had been dumped in the river, which was harder to pull off, but the killer had found a way, without being observed. The other bodies in the other states had been found disposed of in similarly casual ways, and some still hadn’t been found, but were almost surely dead. They had disappeared and never returned, often while jogging in the very early morning, or at night, in parks.