“I have to admit, it’s eerie as hell,” Wesley remarked. “It’s almost as if Eddie Heath’s scene is a mirror image of this one.”
He touched the photograph of Robyn Naismith.”
Bodies positioned like rag dolls, propped against boxlike objects. A big console TV. A brown Dumpster.”
Spreading more photographs oh the table like playing cards, he drew another from the deck. This one was a close-up of her body at the morgue, the ragged tangential circles of human bite marks apparent on her left breast and left inner thigh.
“Again, a striking similarity,” he said. “Bite marks here and here corresponding closely with the areas of missing flesh on Eddie Heath’s shoulder and thigh. In other words” – he slipped off his glasses and looked up at me – “Eddie Heath was probably bitten, the flesh excised to eradicate evidence.”
“Then his killer is at least somewhat familiar with forensic evidence,” I said.
“Almost any felon who has spent time in prison is familiar with forensic evidence. If Waddell didn’t know about bite mark identification when he murdered Robyn Naismith, he would know about it now.”
“You’re talking like he’s the killer again,” I pointed out. “A moment ago you said he doesn’t profile right.”
“Ten years ago, he didn’t profile right. That’s all I’m Asserting.”
“You’ve got his Assessment Protocol. Can we talk about it?”
“Of course.”
The Protocol was actually a forty-page FBI questionnaire filled in during a face-to-face prison interview with a violent offender.
“Flip through this yourself,” Wesley said, sliding Waddell’s Protocol in front of me. “I’d like to hear your thoughts without further input from me.”
Wesley’s interview of Ronnie Joe Waddell had taken place six years ago at death row in Mecklenburg `County. The Protocol began with the expected descriptive data. Waddell’s demeanor, emotional state, mannerisms, and style of conversation indicated that he was agitated and confused. Then, when Wesley had given him opportunity to ask questions, Waddell asked only one: “I saw little white flakes when we passed a window. Is it snowing or are they ashes from the incinerator?”
The date on the Protocol, I noted, was August.
Questions about how the murder might have been prevented went nowhere. Would Waddell have killed his victim in a populated area? Would he have killed her if witnesses had been present? Would anything have stopped him from killing her? Did he think that capital punishment was a deterrent? Waddell said he could not remember killing “the lady on TV.”
He did not know what would have stopped him from committing an act he could not recall. His only memory was of being “sticky.”
He said it was like waking up from a wet dream. The stickiness Ronnie Waddell experienced was not semen. It was Robyn Naismith’s blood.
“His problem list sounds rather mundane,” I thought out loud. “Headaches, extreme shyness, marked daydreaming, and leaving home at the age of nineteen. I don’t see anything here that one might consider the usual red flags. No cruelty to animals, fire setting, assaults, et cetera.”
“Keep going,” Wesley said.
I scanned several more pages. “Drugs and alcohol,” I said.
“If he hadn’t been locked up, he would have died a junkie or gotten shot on the street,” Wesley said. “And what’s interesting is the substance abuse did not begin until early adulthood. I remember Waddell told me he had never tasted alcohol until he was twenty and away from home.”
“He was raised on a farm?”
“In Suffolk. A fairly big farm that grew peanuts, corn, Bans. His entire family lived on it and worked for owners. There were four children, Ronnie Joe the youngest. Their mother was very religious and took the children to church every Sunday. No alcohol, swearing, cigarettes. His background was very sheltered. He’d really never been off the farm until his father died and he decided to leave. He took the bus to Richmond had little trouble getting work because of his physical strength. Breaking up asphalt with a jackhammer, lifting heavy loads, that sort of thing. My theory is he could not handle temptation when he was finally faced with it. First it was beer and wine, then marijuana. Within a year he was into cocaine and heroin, buying and selling, and stealing whatever he could get his hands on.“