Body Count (5 page)

Lividity refers to the way the blood settles after death. Once your heart stops, blood stops pumping around your body. Gravity takes over and blood settles. Jean's back shows pink-red discoloration evenly across her buttocks and upper back. That means she died lying on a flat surface and the blood settled evenly when it stopped flowing. If she'd died in the position her body
was found, the discoloration would be concentrated and darker around her right buttocks and hip.

“Anything else from lividity?” I ask. Sometimes if the body is transported soon after death discoloration can appear in definite patterns. The body can even show you an imprint of a car jack if the body was in someone's trunk.

“Nothing.”

“That's something in itself, I guess.”

Sam looks at me, puzzled.

“Jean was lying on a smooth surface.”

Sam looks at the autopsy photo again. “Very smooth.”

We pause for a moment.

“He likes to get to know them,” says a voice… It's my voice.

“You don't think it's just the power? To prolong the experience and have them at his mercy?”

I think about it, unsure where my revelation came from. “Not just that, this time. He's taken a lot of care. He's had her for the whole five days. He spends time with them. To get to know them. There was rape, I presume?”

“Yeah. But not as violent as we often see. No bruises around her thighs or hips. No tearing. The fucker was gentle,” Sam says, her nose wrinkled with disgust.

“He thinks of them as his girlfriends.” A shiver runs up my spine. “He's not rough with them. He's tender. They're special to him in some way.”

“Charming,” Sam says, staring distantly at one of the photos of Jean's body.

“So, would Jean have played along?” I ask.

“Everyone who knew her said she was smart. Real smart. So she may have if she thought it was going to save
her life. The full victimology is around here somewhere.” Sam shoves the photos to one side and shuffles through the papers. The photo of Jean alive falls off the table and I pick it up. This is our only reminder of her as a living person. It's precious.

“Here it is.” Sam hands me a typed report.

I take the document but rest it on the table. I've got more questions first. “Let's get back to this later. No semen, I take it?”

“Nope. Safe sex for our guy, in every sense of the word.”

I nod, picking up Sam's double meaning—no risk of sexual disease and no risk of DNA. “Any other trace evidence? Hairs, fibers, prints?”

“Nothing. He's clean.”

“Let's face it, a lot of perps know how to clean up after themselves these days, especially with all the press on DNA. Anything on the knife?”

Sam flips through the coroner's report and paraphrases it. “Could be any sharp kitchen knife. Based on the incision length and angles, our guy's left-handed and the knife is between seven to ten inches.”

I do the mental conversion to centimeters. Between seventeen and twenty-five centimeters. “The left-hander narrows things down.”

“You bet. Once we have some suspects, that is.” Sam pulls out a chair and sinks into it. She looks defeated, which is unusual for Sam. Even her bright green eyes aren't as dazzling as usual. Her hair falls from behind her ear across her face.

“What about positioning when the cutting was done?” I ask.

“Angles indicate the vics were lying down and he was standing over them.”

“Supports the flat surface from the lividity.”

“Yep.”

“Nothing else?”

“Our guy's a real pro. No fingerprints or footprints that haven't been accounted for.”

“What about tire treads? Where'd he park when he nabbed Jean?”

“No treads, but we're assuming he parked on the street out front or back. No one saw anything.”

“Victim's fingernails?” I ask in a last-ditch attempt to find something, anything.

Sam shakes her head. “Scrubbed clean and clipped back. Like I said, a real pro.”

“But this is his first on record?”

“Officially, yes. It may be the first we know about, but it certainly ain't the first time he's killed.” She stands up again and starts pacing, glass of wine in hand.

It is too perfect, too rehearsed for a first-time kill, unless the guy had done his research and planned for months, or perhaps if he's a cop who has decided to try murder for himself. But it's more likely he's killed before. One of the two thousand-plus serial killers doing their rounds in the good old U.S. of A.

“What about VICAP?” I ask.

VICAP is the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a nationwide database that contains details of murder cases and other violent crimes around the States to analyze patterns and track criminals that may cross law-enforcement boundaries. Pretty effective too. Cops
enter in the details and the database comes back with any similar crimes. Of course, it relies on all law-enforcement officers entering their cases into the database in the first place, something that doesn't always happen. Some cops think VICAP is just more red tape and paperwork.

“Flynn and Jones entered in both D.C. murders and got two matches in Chicago. They followed up with Chicago Homicide. It looks like it was our perp, but there weren't any significant leads or suspects in Chicago, so it was a dead end. I talked to the VICAP guys myself and they're going to get someone onto it. Do a fresh, more detailed computer search and then get one of their best analysts to look at the cases manually. Should have the results in a couple of days, but the guys are swamped down there. Our perp could have been active in states that don't use VICAP, so he could have been getting away with murder for years.”

“True.” I move back to the table and pick up my glass of wine. I take another sip.

Sam also takes a contemplative sip. “I think the perp has moved here recently. God knows how many he's done in other states. I'll bring it up at tomorrow's meeting and see if anyone recognizes the MO.”

“Good idea. I don't think he's transient, though. I think he's set up shop here.”

“Well, I'm not complaining about that. Those wandering bastards are hard to pin down.” She takes another sip. “How about a work transfer? Or maybe the cops were getting too close for him and he decided to move on?”

“Possibly.”

“Pretty stupid to move to D.C. near all the profilers.”

And then it hits me. “Maybe that's the point. Maybe he wants to see if he can get away with it under the Bureau's nose. Under our noses.”

“A thrill killer? Living on the dangerous side?”

“This might be his idea of fun. And the evidence does point to a high-risk offender.”

“Soph, this could be disastrous.”

I nod. “He'll hit hard and fast to show us up.”

“But he's only done two in five months.”

“He may know it takes a little while before the Bureau steps in.”

“Waiting until he has our attention?”

“Could be.”

“We need to get this guy sooner rather than later.”

I'd like to get them all sooner rather than later, but Sam is right. If he has come to D.C. for the thrill of killing under the Bureau's nose, he'll step things up once he knows we're involved.

“We need to get to know Jean a little better,” I say.

 

An hour later we've reread the victimologies for both girls, analyzed every crime-scene photo and double-checked the coroner's reports and all the police reports. We both sit at the table.

“So what do you think?” Sam plays with her empty wineglass.

“He hasn't left us much.”

“Time to pull a rabbit out of a hat.” Sam laughs.

“This is a science,” I say, playing along. Since its inception nearly twenty years ago, the unit has been struggling with the notion that profiling is all subjective
mumbo jumbo. It's really a sensible combination of psychology and the profiler's ability to walk in the killers' and victims' shoes. To give your mind over to them—their lives, their habits, their actions and responses.

“Okay. So the second victim, Teresa Somers,” Sam says. “She was abducted in the parking lot of her apartment building. Her car keys were found on the ground and we're assuming she struggled.”

My mind replays my dream of a girl walking to her car, but the girl in my dream was a redhead and Teresa's a brunette—not the same girl. I push the image aside.

Sam puts the photo of Teresa, alive, on the top of the pile. “She was strong and fit. She put up a good fight.”

“Besides the keys, anything else to indicate a struggle?”

“She was already decomposing when we found her, but the coroner noted a cracked rib.”

“From the struggle?”

Sam looks at the photos of Teresa's body. “Possibly. The perp may have got more than he bargained for.”

“This guy likes a challenge. For the moment, let's assume he's chosen D.C. for a reason. For us. He's pushing his ‘skills' to the limit.” I stand up and start pacing, on a roll. “He doesn't go for the easy targets. He chooses a woman, a professional woman, and stalks her, waiting for his opportunity. He gets to know her routine. So I think he knew Teresa worked out every day. That she'd done self-defense classes. That she was a strong woman.” I stop in front of Sam and lean closer to her. “I mean, for God's sake, she was a high-level manager at CIBC Bank. And that's what turned him on. She was smart, educated, self-sufficient. Yet he could still get her.”

“That would fit in with Jean, too. Professional. Hardworking. Only difference is that she was at the start of her career rather than the pinnacle.”

“Well, she was five years younger.”

“Did you notice they look the same age, though. Teresa was thirty-five, but she looked about thirty, thirty-one,” Sam says, selecting the two photos of our victims when they were alive.

I look at the photos again. “Yeah. I think our guy's in his late twenties or early thirties.”

“And he's been killing for a while. If he's like most serial killers, he probably started between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, so he's probably been killing for quite a few years.”

“So, how would Teresa have reacted?” I say out aloud, verbally going through the process I usually go through in my head.

“She would have fought. All the way. She was hard. Tough. In business and pleasure, by all accounts.”

“Yes, but she would also have tried to negotiate. She was a businesswoman. It's one of the things she did best,” I say, sitting back down.

“So she was tied up to a table or something, being sliced, yet she was still trying to bring the dynamic around.” Sam keeps pacing. “The fucker would have thought it was amusing. He wouldn't have been threatened.”

I nod. “He's experienced. He's worked his way up to women like Teresa. He would have loved it. Got off on it even. Ultimately he knew he had all the power. He knew that, deep down, she must have been scared shitless, despite the business front.” I finger two photos of
Teresa—one from the crime scene and one from when she was alive. It's hard to recognize her features in death.

“So he played with her. Maybe even made her think he was coming around. That he was going to release her,” Sam says.

“Yep. He would have beaten her down. He wanted her to go from believing she still had some sort of control over the situation to admitting defeat.”

“At his mercy.”

“Then as soon as she broke, he killed her. He'd won and the challenge was gone.”

In Teresa's case he'd inflicted multiple cuts, like Jean, but the cause of death had been one massive knife wound across her throat.

I look at the photos, then at Sam. “How long did he have her?”

“The body wasn't found for a while, but the coroner's time of death puts us at eight to twenty days after abduction.”

“The lower end sounds more likely, given the pattern with Jean.”

“I agree,” Sam says.

“That whole time was a war between their minds. After eight days or so, she finally begged him for pity. For mercy.”

“And he gave it to her, in a form. The son of a bitch killed her.”

We both pause for a moment.

Sam sits down on the sofa. “It looks like he raped her several times. Again, the coroner says it's hard to say because of the length of time and the lack of bruising and other signs of sexual violence.”

“How do you think she would have responded to the rape?”

“Maybe used it in her negotiations. Made him think sex was something she could offer him. A bargaining tool.”

“She was tough, all right. She lasted through eight days of torture. I think we can assume that after the first struggle, she may have stopped struggling. She would have been planning her escape. Looking for a way out. Maybe even trying to convince him to undo her hands and legs under the pretense of being able to sexually satisfy him.”

“But her tied up at his mercy was what aroused him.”

“Yeah. Still, I reckon she tried damn hard to get out,” I say.

“Concentrating on getting out alive. Negotiating or escaping.”

“She would have distanced herself emotionally from what was going on, so she probably didn't struggle too much with the rapes. This would have fed his fantasy of her as the girlfriend.”

I'm drawn back to Jean by a photo of her. I pick it up and look into her eyes. They are open in death, and the killer has chosen not to close them. It's the same with Teresa. Jean stares back at me and I can imagine her tied down, wondering if she is going to live or die and praying for release. Just as she looked at the killer and begged for mercy, now she looks at me and begs for justice.

I answer her call. “Let's go back to Jean.”

I will have to think about the case properly later, when Sam isn't here. Usually about now, once I have all the facts, I close my eyes and imagine the killer. I see the killer.
I become the killer, stepping into his world. Somehow my subconscious takes over, and I find myself so fully immersed in the process that I don't usually come to for hours. I don't know whether it's like that for the others or not. I probably shouldn't get so involved in the cases.