Beautiful Maids All in a Row (4 page)

Luke backed off then, giving me room to breathe. My breath escaped in short bursts. I couldn't tell if I was incredibly angry or incredibly sad. I went with angry. I stood up, hands shaking, blood running red hot. “How
dare
you come into my house after two years and judge me? How dare you tell me how
my
husband would feel! And how dare you tell me how to cope. You can lecture me when
your
wife's head is blown off in front of you. When you've been terrorized and stabbed in the gut. Until then, don't you dare fucking presume to tell me what to do or how to behave.”

He was silent for a minute, his face revealing nothing. Was he even listening to me? I glared at him, willing him to speak. I'd said my peace. I was done. Then, all of a sudden, he left the room. Not the reaction I'd anticipated. I didn't expect to win so easily. I waited to hear the front door slam. It didn't. Instead, he returned with his briefcase, slamming it on the coffee table. Opening it, he tossed files as thick as books with the FBI seal on them onto the table before closing the briefcase.

Luke looked me square in the eye. No emotion, only business. “You're right. I can't know what you feel or how I'd react if I were in the same situation. I can't. But I do know
you.
You were my best friend for years. No, more than that. We have been through war together. I know you, and I know this: You
are
a fighter. You are stronger than you think. You just need to be reminded of that. So I'm here to give you a chance to be you. The
real
you.” He picked up the files, holding them to my face before smacking them down again. “The best of the best are on this, but I know we're missing something.
I
know it.
There are women in danger who need your help. They will die unless you step up. You're the best, something I have
never
doubted for a second, even now. This psycho is out there, and he won't stop until
we
stop him. Help me.” He pulled out a business card from his pocket, tossing it on the files. “My cell number's on there. I have to leave tomorrow morning. I hope to hear from you. If not, goodbye, Iris. I wish only good things for you.” With that, he picked up the briefcase and walked out without the files. I didn't follow. The front door slammed seconds later. He was gone.

I looked down at the fucking files taking over my coffee table with Luke's white business card standing out against the brown folders. Just their presence in my home turned my stomach. I knew what was in there. Evidence of the brutality of man. Women, raped and tortured. Women whose last minutes on this planet were filled with terror and pain, their bodies torn apart simply for one man's sick gratification. I didn't need to see that. I'd seen it hundreds of times. Hell, I'd
lived
it.

With one sweep of my arm, the files crashed to the floor. Pictures flew out like a fan unfolding. I quickly glanced away. I could not,
would
not look at them.

No.

I flopped back down in my chair and turned toward the television. It was a news report about the Woodsman. Of course. I reached for the remote, but it wasn't on the armrest where I normally put it. Which meant…I bent down and spotted it next to one of the loose pictures. With that, my fate was sealed. I'd done it.

I looked at her fucking picture.

Justine Romy was barely recognizable after floating in the Rappahannock River for days. Her skin was the color of snow, with bluish veins scattered over her face like the roots of a tree. Her eyes and chunks of her skin were torn out. Food for very lucky fish. Her auburn hair was a tangled mess of leaves, twigs, and mud, and her mouth was open, as if trying to speak. I wished she could; it would have made our jobs a hell of a lot easier.

“Jesus,” I whispered. I'd barely known her, but I felt rage spreading through my body as I gazed at her battered face. I could see her as she had been: a beautiful, smart woman with her whole life ahead of her. She'd never see her son graduate or get married. She'd never get to play with her grandchildren. She'd never make love again. She'd never heal another body. There would be no more trips to the movies, no more Christmases sitting around the tree. And
he
was out there walking the streets, having dinner with friends while she was lying on a cold metal slab in some morgue. It was just so unfair. And I was an expert on unfair.

Fuck.
I couldn't help myself. I never could. I picked up the file and began what I promised myself I would never do again. I set out to catch a monster.

It was a little past one in the morning when I knocked on the door of room twelve at the Half Moon Inn. I heard shuffling inside, the thump as his feet hit the ground, and finally footsteps. The door opened and Luke stood in an undershirt and NYU sweatpants, his eyes half closed and blinded by the light in the hallway, and his orange hair wild from sleep. I resisted the urge to smooth his cowlick. I wasn't ready for any type of physical contact with him. I didn't even want to be three feet from him.

“Sorry I woke you,” I said, not at all sorry I woke him. He'd intruded in my life, so it was only right that I intruded on his sleep. Fair was fair.

“No, it's okay. Come in.” He stepped aside, and I entered his room. “There's a light over—”

I flicked on the light before he could finish. “I've been here before,” I said with a quick smile.

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I forgot.”

It was the motel that Hayden took me to on our third date. I wouldn't forget it. “Are you surprised to see me?” I asked, clutching the files he gave me to my chest.

“No, I'm not. Surprised it took you this long.” He walked into the bathroom and turned on the tap.

“You gave me four separate files, each with dozens of pages of evidence,” I called out at him. “I went as fast as I could.”

He walked out of the bathroom and shut off the light. “So, what do you think?”

“I think you're fucked.”

A small smile crept across his face. “Why do you think that?”

I smiled back at him, pulling the chair from the table. It was time to dazzle him. “It's an incredibly high-profile case,” I began. “Four young, smart, beautiful, gainfully employed white single mothers were kidnapped in plain sight with no witnesses. They were subsequently drugged, raped, tortured, and strangled. Then their bodies were dumped in water and used as a fast-food joint for any lucky animal that came across it. And this is just what the public knows.

“My guess is your boss is riding your ass to solve this and solve it now. But that isn't easy, considering you have no suspects and no physical evidence thanks to the marvel of H2O. Your current profile and team are leading you nowhere, so you decide, ‘Hey, I'm only a couple hundred miles from North Carolina—might as well look up Iris and get her take on it, even though she's batshit crazy now. I'm desperate. If I can't close this case I'll never get to be director or even executive assistant director like dear old Dad, and then my whole life would have been a waste.' Am I on the right track?”

“You got all of that from those files?”

“No, hon', I got all of that from you showing up at my office. I haven't even
begun
with what I got from those files.”

We looked at each other for a moment. I could tell he was impressed. The sides of his mouth twitched trying to suppress a smile. “Okay, let's begin at the beginning,” he suggested. He pulled out the chair opposite me to sit before opening the file on Sarah Illes, the first victim.

Sarah Celine Illes, age 35 at time of death. Height: 5'4”. Weight: 121 lbs. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Green. Divorced from Kyle Illes. Occupation: Tax attorney at Lemmings, Tarlatan, and Sullivan in New York City. Children: Peter, age 4. Home address: 11389 Willow Rd, Stamford, CT. Believed abducted from Amtrak parking lot March 9 between 9:30–10
P.M.
Reported missing by Enid Banks, housekeeper, at 8:10
A.M.
Date of Discovery: March 11 in Bear Mountain State Park in New York State by George Hammer while hiking. Estimated Time of Death: March 10, between 1:30–3:30
A.M.
Body identified by Kyle Illes. Cause of Death: Manual strangulation. Ligature marks around neck pre and postmortem. Removal of left atrium and ventricle postmortem, removed from aorta to apex. Blood positive for Zoloft, thiopental sodium.

I moved on to the next three files.

Amanda Suzanne Denker, age 34. Height: 5'1”. Weight: 108 lbs. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue. Husband: Harry Denker, deceased. Children: David, age 8; Harry, age 3. Occupation: VP Marketing at Consolidated Inc in New York City. Home address: 146 W 27th Street, Apt 3A, NYC. Believed abducted from underground parking lot in Wilson Building on April 20 between 12–1
A.M.
Reported missing April 21 by Charles Denker, father-in-law. Date of Discovery: April 27 in Storm King State Park in Cornwall, NY by Mary and Stewart Gibbs. Estimated Time of Death: 3-4
A.M.
Body identified by Charles Denker. Cause of Death: Manual strangulation. Ligature marks pre/postmortem. Removal of left atrium and ventricle postmortem. Blood positive for thiopental sodium, ibuprofen.

Patricia Lucy Curtis, age 32. Height: 5'4”. Weight: 110 lbs. Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue. Divorced from Carl Curtis, restaurant owner. Children: Martin, age 10; Carl, age 5. Occupation: Director of Public Relations at Simon and Lewis in Baltimore, MD. Home address: 36752 Parliament Ct, Baltimore, MD. Believed abducted from O'Mally's bar parking lot on May 18 between 11:35–11:40
P.M.
Reported missing by Frances Gardner, sister. Date of Discovery: May 23 in Patapsco Valley State Park near Oakland, MD by Laurence and Craig Shipley. Estimated Time of Death: May 19 between 3–4
A.M.
Cause of Death: Manual strangulation. Ligature marks pre/postmortem. Removal of left atrium and ventricle postmortem. Blood positive for Prozac, lithium, and thiopental sodium.

Justine Sally Romy, age 36. Height: 5'3”. Weight: 100 lbs. Hair: Red-Brown. Eyes: Blue. Divorced from Laurence Mount. Children: Gabriel, age 5. Occupation: Emergency Medicine doctor, Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Washington, D.C. Home address: 6724 Lincoln Dr, Arlington, VA. Believed abducted from home address on June 6 between 4–5:30
A.M.
Reported missing by Charles Winkler, boyfriend, on June 6. Date of Discovery: June 10 in Shenandoah National Park in Luray, VA by Gary and Robert Jarvis. Estimated Time of Death: 7–9
A.M.
Cause of Death: Manual strangulation. Ligature marks pre/postmortem. Removal of left atrium and ventricle postmortem. Blood positive for thiopental sodium.

I closed Justine's file. Luke gazed up at me, waiting for me to say something. He grabbed a pad of paper to take down my thoughts. “What do you think?”

I took off my reading glasses to pinch between my eyes. “This guy's an asshole.”

“I know that. But what do you think?”

“I think this is a very smart, very savvy guy. He abducts them in a public place and always manages to do it without a single witness present. Which means he has to know their schedules, when they leave the office, and when they're an easy target. He stalks them, and he does it without anybody noticing, right?”

“Yes; when we did the interviews, nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary. In the hours before their abductions, the victims didn't mention anything to anyone of that nature either.”

“So he finds the opportunity and takes it. He comes up from behind and grabs them, most likely putting his hand over their mouths so they can't scream. With his left hand, he injects thiopental sodium into their left jugular vein. The drug takes effect anywhere from before it's fully injected to a minute after. It only works for about half an hour, but from the multiple needle wounds on their bodies I'd say he injected them several times. It's a painkiller, but when the drug wears off the person has something called emergence delirium. Basically they wake up disoriented, restless, and emotional.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“I looked it up in Hayden's medical books. It's an ultra-short-acting barbiturate used primarily in surgeries but also in hypnosis. It's not something you can get without a prescription. He'd have to have ready access to it. He uses it instead of just hitting them over the head because with the drug, he knows how long it lasts and can time accordingly. All the dump sites were within two hours of where they were abducted.”

I waited for Luke to finish writing. “Okay,” he said.

“So after they're incapacitated, he drives them to a wooded area near a river. This is part of his ritual. He may feel most at home in the woods.” I picked up Sarah Illes's file and glanced at it. “He carries the vic to the ideal spot, which he most likely scouted beforehand, and puts her down. He doesn't drive up because he doesn't want to leave tire tracks. His hiking boots are untraceable, as they're found in almost every sporting goods store in America. As is the nylon rope he uses to tie their hands and neck.”

“He knows forensics.”

“Yep. He knows not to leave tire tracks, to wear popular shoes, probably wears a condom, and he knows that water will wash away most trace evidence. I'll bet he doesn't use gloves. We can't lift prints off a body that's been in the water that long.”

“Let's go back to the rapes.”

“What a wonderful suggestion,” I said with a note of sarcasm. “It's obviously to get him off, and not just sexually. He hates women but is also threatened by them. He ties them up before they're awake so they can't fight him, hence no defensive wounds on any of them. He seems almost afraid of them.”

“So he's a loser with the ladies. Should narrow it down.”

“Actually,” I said, “he's probably quite good with the ladies. The weaker ones, at least. He needs to feel power over women, and there are plenty of them willing to play the part of a doormat.”

“So he rapes them and strangles them to death with his bare hands, not the rope.”

“He's an anger-excitation rapist, but with heavy leanings toward anger-retaliatory. The medical examiner's report said there was extensive tearing and bruising to the vaginal wall and cervix, meaning they were raped more than once. There were also several sets of thumb indentations on their throats made by the same hands. First time he rapes her while strangling, then takes time to recharge his battery. Then he does it again and again until she's dead. She dies while he's raping her, thus enhancing his high and her pain. He's probably into bondage and has an extensive hard-core porn collection. He's also a thrill junkie.”

“A thrill junkie?” Luke asked.

“He's most likely into extreme sports, car racing, bungee jumping, etcetera.”

Luke wrote this all down quickly, nodding at my assessment. “So, then they're dead. Why cut out their hearts?”

“Half of their heart,” I corrected him. “The left half of the heart. Details, Agent Hudson. Details.”

His eyes narrowed. He was not amused. “Why the left?”

“The left half gives oxygenated blood to the whole body. It's the half of the heart that
gives.
By cutting it out he not only gets a trophy, but he makes a statement. These women don't give.”

“Give what?”

“Love, support, whatever. He chose the heart for its symbolism. It also, obviously, means they have half a heart. The heart is the trophy, since their jewelry was found with their clothes and purses. It's fetishistic. It's his way to always possess these women.”

“But why the heart? Why not a finger or nose? Something easier to get to?”

“He felt they rejected him. They wouldn't give him what he wanted, at least not in his mind. He takes what they won't give.”

“And why tie them up to a riverbank? Why not just dump them?”

“He wants them to be found. He wants us to see how smart he is. Dare us to catch him. Even more of a thrill.”

Luke wrote this down furiously. “Why these women?”

I looked down at a recent picture of Justine with her son. The boy had her smile and bright eyes. His mother held him in her lap, her arms around his waist like a seatbelt. I turned the picture to Luke and pointed at Gabriel. Luke looked down at the picture, then back up at me. He didn't understand what I was getting at.

“That's why.”

“I don't get it.”

I sighed as I put the picture down. It was hard being the smartest one in the room. “All the women fit the same profile, correct? Mid-thirties, brown hair, light eyes; all hold time-consuming jobs, which causes them to work overly long hours. Those jobs take them away from their sons. The fathers, for the most part, are out of the picture, which leaves the mother as the sole caregiver, but they don't have time for the kids because of their careers.”

“He kills them because they're professional single mothers.”

“Bingo.”

“Still doesn't tell me why
these
women.”

“His mother.”

“His mother?” he asked.

“I told you. He has heavy leanings toward the anger-retaliatory classification. The rape is to get him off. The murder…that's revenge. We both know the majority of rapists don't end up murdering their victims. The rape and murder are separate entities, at least in this case. He hates his mother. She hurt him, and this is his retaliation. These women are his proxy.”

“Why does he hate her?” Luke asked.

“Most likely she was a demanding, cruel, distant woman who probably sexually abused him from an early age.”

“Between four and seven.”

“Correct. The UNSUB's father was out of the picture, either dead or too weak to stand up to his wife. Our guy had no real strong male role model and latched onto Mom. She was a professional woman, ran her own business or had a job that kept her away from her son. He resented this. He wanted her all to himself.”

“Oedipal complex,” Luke added.

“Big time. It was engrained into him at the early stages of development. His mother probably told him all good boys love Mommy and respect her. They never talk back and do whatever she says. And in return for this she'll pay attention to him whenever she can. She was his whole universe.”

“How long did the abuse last?”

“If she's not dead, it could still be going on. But I think she died a long time ago. Most likely of something natural or an accident, before he realized what was happening was wrong. He didn't have time to retaliate against her, so this is his way of doing it. The women resemble her, have some of her personality traits, and have a young son. That's all he needs. Mommie Dearest was too busy for our UNSUB, so his bad behavior went unchecked. He learned he could do anything and get away with it. So he did. He's gregarious, very personable, and charming, but unable to have a standard sexual relationship.”