He had, in fact, spent long, intimate hours with the likes of Theodore Bundy, David Berkowitz, Sirhan Sfrhan, Richard Speck, and Charles Manson, in addition to the lesser-known black holes who had sucked light from the planet Earth. I remembered Marino telling me once that when Wesley returned from some of these pilgrimages into maximum-security penitentiaries, he would look pale and drained. It almost made him physically ill to absorb the poison of these men and endure the attachments they inevitably formed to him. Some of the worst sadists in recent history regularly wrote letters to him, sent Christmas cards, and inquired after his family. It was no small wonder that Wesley seemed like a man with a heavy burden and so often was silent. In exchange for information, he did the one thing that not one of us wants to do. He allowed the monster to connect with him.

“Was it determined that Waddell was psychotic?” I asked.

“It was determined that he was sane when he Murdered Robyn Naismith.”

Wesley pulled out a photograph and slid it across the table to me. “But frankly, I don’t think he was.”

The photograph was the one I remembered most vividly, and as I studied it I could not imagine an unsuspecting soul walking in on such a scene.

Robyn Naismith’s living room did not have much fur niture, just several barrel chairs with dark green cushions and a chocolate-brown leather couch. A small Bakhara rug was in the middle of the parquet floor, the calls wide planks stained to look like cherry or mahogany. A console television was against the wall directly across from the front door, affording whoever sintered a full frontal view of Ronnie Joe Waddell’s horrible artistry.

What Robyn’s friend had seen the instant she unlocked the door and pushed it open as she called out Robyn’s name was a nude body sitting on the floor, back propped against the TV, skin so streaked and smeared ` with dried blood that the exact nature of the injuries could not be determined until later at the morgue. In the photograph, coagulating blood pooled around Robyn’s buttocks looked like red tinted tar, and tossed nearby were several bloody towels. The weapon was never found, though police did determine that a German made stainless steel steak knife was missing from a set hanging in the kitchen, and the characteristics of the blade were consistent with her wounds.