Eye of the Beholder Read Online Free PDF

grouping of the photographs of the six victims. There were over a dozen of each one, from various angles and distances. “Get me a new folder,” he said to no one in particular. In the meantime, he selected a single photo of each victim, cutting down the number of photos from over seventy to just six. Riley placed the six shots into the new folder. He looked at them a moment, then removed the photograph of the first victim, Ellie Danzinger.
    That left five photos, one each of victims two through six.
    Riley had another thought and rearranged the photos, so they were not in the order in which they had been lined up on the floor.
    “Show him these,” he told Joel. “While he’s eating.”
    “Okay.”
    “Make a note of the order they’re in currently,” Paul ordered. Lightner complied, with the entire room as witnesses, scribbling down the order on a notepad.
    “They’re out of order,” Joel noted, but then he looked at Riley and understood. “And we’re leaving Ellie out of it?”
    “Right.”
    “I like that.” Joel used the bathroom while Riley and the others watched Terry Burgos eat his tacos. Burgos did so with precision, pouring a bit of hot sauce and scooping a small amount of guacamole for each bite.
    Joel walked in with the file of photographs and opened it up for Burgos to see. But the suspect was still enjoying his food. So Joel got out of his seat and walked over to the suspect. “What do you think about those, Terry?”
    Burgos put down his food and his fresh, sweaty Coke. He wiped his hands with a napkin and spread out the five photos, leaned in close for a good look. His face showed neither horror nor recognition. The word that came to Riley’s mind was familiarity. He fixed on each one, first carefully wiping his hands with the napkin and then tracing his fingers over the dead corpses featured in the eight-by-ten glossies. He mumbled to himself but nothing audible. He held a finger in the air, still murmuring, then lightly touched each photo. Joel Lightner was watching the suspect closely but knew better than to start the conversation. Not yet.
    Burgos then took the photos and rearranged them.
    Riley’s heart started drumming. He couldn’t see the order in which Burgos had arranged them but he felt sure that, at that moment, they matched the order he had seen them on that floor in the basement of Bramhall Auditorium.
    Burgos looked up at Joel a moment with curiosity, then back down at the photos. He lifted the manila folder up and looked under it. He pinched his fingers on each photo as if he was looking for another one stuck beneath it.
    “Here we go,” Riley whispered.
    The chief started to speak, “What’s he—,” but Riley threw a palm on his shoulder and moved toward the mirror.
    Terry Burgos looked up at Joel. “Where’s the first one?” he asked. “Where’s Ellie?”

4
    2:20 P.M.
     
     
    T WO OF the detectives in the room grabbed each other. The chief clasped his hands together in relief. Riley had been a part of countless interrogations over the years, and he’d seen it happen in various forms. The breakthrough. The moment the witness gave it up, out of vanity, guilt, frustration, relief, coercion.
    Now the tough part, he thought to himself. There hadn’t been much question of guilt, not since they looked inside Burgos’s house. This was now about something else entirely.
    “I have shown you five photographs of women who were murdered,” said Detective Joel Lightner, suddenly aware of the tape recorder and its inability to pick up what he’d done. “You rearranged them in a particular order. And you are asking—”
    “Where’s the first one? Ellie?” Terry Burgos repeated the question, shaking a photo in his hand and then slamming it down. He jumped from his seat and looked off in the distance. At that moment, Riley would have given anything to get a better look at his face. He could only see his profile, which had been an oversight on his part; Burgos should