Skeletons in the Closet

Chapter 33

After meeting with detective Foulkrod, my mind was more than preoccupied with our discussions of the case. I headed back to mom's -- I still wasn't sure if I could even go back to Charlie's, but I wasn't sure I really wanted to, either. She wasn't home, so I let myself in and set up shop in the kitchen. Pouring myself a cold glass of water, I sat down at the table.

Was Corey Swanson really our guy? I had my doubts, but in cases like this, the most obvious suspect was usually the right one. I needed to go back through my notes, look back into these cases again and decide for sure if I thought he was the man behind these killings.

Thanks to detective Foulkrod, I had an in-depth file on Swanson, something no one outside a police precinct would have. That was as good a place to start as any.

Flipping through the pages of his file, it was clear that Swanson had a rough go at life. Even back as a teenager, his rap sheet was longer than most: misdemeanor assault involving a girlfriend at the time, petty theft, and a laundry list of other crimes that kept him in trouble, but not enough trouble to keep him locked up.

Once he attended university and began his work as an aid, it seemed as though he'd managed to finally right the ship until his ties to several pending murder investigations became enough for the university to terminate their need for him.

Though he's managed to stay off of police radar as anything more than a person of interest, Foulkrod's team has kept him under a watchful eye. Swanson has gotten by working minor jobs here and there, living in squalor in a project development just south of downtown. He isn't doing well for himself.

Knowing that, I found it hard to believe that this was our guy. The Butcher seemed organized and careful; Swanson had a level of chaos to his life that just didn't seem to fit. Really, what were the odds that our guy would have such an extensive history on the radar?

Foulkrod's team hadn't seen him doing anything illegal in the years since he was let go by the university and eventually stopped surveilling him altogether. You can only use resources on a guy who isn't breaking the law for so long before it eventually stops.

So personal history wasn't favoring Swanson here. A violent past, especially with women, made it more than plausible that he was capable of committing crimes of such a violent, horrific nature. Still, there were enough questionable items that I couldn't be sure. Something didn't feel right, but I also couldn't ignore this potential lead.

Closing his file, I opened my laptop and immediately began going through the notes and files I had on the various cases The Butcher had been responsible for.

Even after a peripheral glance, a motive was starting to make sense for Swanson. Perhaps feeling as though he'd been mistreated and abused by those better off in life, he turned his rage towards these women. Successful, promising young women. Women he felt were better than him. Lashing out at them, hurting them, would have been a way for him to get back at a society where he felt less than. It really wasn't much of a stretch, was it?

It was when I began to go back through the individual cases that I noticed his name appearing more and more. Of the twenty-four names on the Butcher's list, Swanson came up as a person of interest in several, simply because of his history and proximity of his halfway house to the scene their respective murders. He had been questioned in at least five of these cases, though each time Bathurst PD had gotten enough from him to move on to other leads and suspects. Still, you don't become a person of interest in that many violent crimes cases for no reason.

It seemed as though BPD had him dead to rights on the case of Melanie Seagraves, the twelfth victim. A witness at the scene claimed to see a man bearing a striking resemblance to Swanson and he had no alibi for his whereabouts the night of her death. They tried to find something more solid, something to physically tie him to the scene, to no avail. That wasn't enough to bring him to trial and he was eventually free to go, another twelve victims added to the list since.

There were certainly signs pointing in Swanson's direction. It was hard to ignore the mounting circumstantial evidence and pass it off as mere coincidence. Still, there was nothing to explicitly show that he'd committed these murders. Physical evidence at one of the scenes was never found. As much as I wanted it to be him, to know that physically taking the bastard down was the next step, I had my doubts.

I knew what the next step would have to be: I'd have to pay a visit to Swanson's apartment. See if I could find anything tying him to these cases, to prove that he was the monster behind all of this madness.

Circumstantial evidence would never be enough to get someone like him, even with his record, off the streets for good. I had to find the proverbial smoking gun. And, damnit, I was going to.

I fought down the sudden tightness in my chest, knowing that this had to be done. I just hoped I wasn't doing something incredibly stupid. Making sure my mace was firmly attached to my keychain, I headed out the door, about to do one of the dumbest things I had ever done in my life. But it had to be done.

If Corey Swanson was the Butcher of Bathurst, I had to find out as soon as I could.