Evil Season by Michael Benson

Joyce Wishart pushed closer to cold-case status.
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    On February 24, police learned of two more Bike Man sightings. Two Sarasota women, Martha Fuller and Barbara Sperling, reported to police that on the day of the murder, a thin, middle-aged white man on a bicycle had creeped Fuller out, riding past her slowly in the street and staring at her. A man named Douglas Berdeaux reported seeing a man on a bike on the night of the murder, standing at the corner of Pineapple Avenue and Ringling Boulevard. The man was staring back toward the crime scene for such a long time that Berdeaux became concerned about his behavior.
    During another night in February, a man was discovered wandering alone through downtown Sarasota. The guy turned out to be an insomniac who loved antiques. “It’s safer to walk here than where I live,” he explained. Police swabbed him, anyway.
    The owner of a furniture store reported that a strange man came in and said her shop’s carpets smelled like “gunnysacks used to hold dead bodies.” The odd customer added that he was a stump remover by trade, and owned a wood grinder that could grind up “anything, including a dead body.”
    Another man aroused suspicion when he told his bartender he’d heard that the killer cut out Joyce Wishart’s ovaries. Police found the guy, who said he’d heard the rumor from his boss, who, in turn, said he’d overheard it from another customer while having coffee at Sarasota News and Books, a place where you could browse while simultaneously sipping award-winning coffee.
    More than a month after the murder, weirdos were still coming out of the woodwork. One man reported that a man he knew was a murderer who made snuff films.
    Detective Grant had a chat with the new tenants of the Provenance’s space and advised them what to do if anyone appearing suspicious entered the premises. What a way to start a new business! When the space reopened, it was under police surveillance, and one man was investigated because he stood for an extended period of time at the approximate spot where Wishart’s body had been posed.
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    Posing bodies in order to make an “artistic statement” was not a new concept. The most famous instance of this was the still-unsolved “Black Dahlia” murder in 1947 Los Angeles. It was the most famous American murder case not involving a celebrity. The victim was Elizabeth “Beth” Short, a twenty-two-year-old wannabe starlet, who was drifting around Southern California, depending on the kindnesses of strangers. Her body was found naked, severed into two pieces at the hips, the pieces arranged at the edge of a vacant lot, only inches from a sidewalk. Faceup, her arms were over her head; like Joyce Wishart’s body, the legs were spread. Short’s upper body was parallel, but off line with her lower half. A Sardonicus smile was carved into her face. Portions of her breast and thigh were cut out. A rose tattoo, or perhaps a rose-colored birthmark, on her leg had been removed and the skin containing it shoved up her rectum. The crime scene was exquisite, emulating as it did artwork of the grotesque aesthetic school. The murderer wanted everyone to see the beauty in this unthinkable ugliness.
    It is typically more common just to pose bodies in order to shock. One of the most vivid examples of this occurred in Florida with the gruesome murders of the “Gainesville Ripper,” who turned out to be Danny Rolling. During the late summer of 1990, five students from that college town were found murdered and mutilated in their apartments. Most famously, one coed’s head was severed and placed on a bookshelf facing the door.
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    Mrs. Marcia Corbino, Jon Corbino’s widow and author of the crime scene magazine article, had thought that she would be among the first to be interviewed by police, but it wasn’t until February 11 that Detective David Grant