Criminal Minds (23 page)

Even though Denson’s story had checked out—at least according to the cop’s ex-wife and his associates—the man had seemingly disappeared. The tail Hotchner had set up with local agents had lost Denson—hard to tail a cop, at least for long—and now no one could find the detective. In fact, no one had seen him since he’d turned over the Bangs Lake files to the BAU.

Hotchner hoped that was because Denson had taken his advice to stay away from the case, that the man was taking it easy somewhere and staying out of trouble.

Morgan looked up from his laptop screen to ask Hotchner, ‘‘Did you ever get the second picture from the forensic artist?’’

Hotchner swung around in his chair. ‘‘After you left yesterday, the Demerol they gave Minchell for his broken nose kicked in, and he passed out before the artist could even get started. Artist is back over there now.’’

Reid and Rossi entered, fresh from the latest crime scene. They took seats around the table and filled Hotchner and Morgan in about the new murder.

Hotchner wadded up a piece of paper, which was about as much emotion as he was willing to show. When he looked up, the others all stared at him.

‘‘Sorry,’’ he said, and twitched a smile. ‘‘Frustration. We’ve been a step behind this UnSub since we got here. We still don’t know how he picks the victims, and we don’t know which killer he’s going to imitate next. How do we get out in front of him until we figure out how he’s choosing the killers and victims? He’s gone right down the line, Berkowitz, Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, Wuornos . . . there’s no way to know who’s next.’’

‘‘Alphabetical order,’’ Reid said quickly.

All eyes went to Reid.

‘‘Simple,’’ Hotchner said. ‘‘And I noticed that a long time ago, Reid; but it doesn’t help us. Obviously not every serial killer in history is on his list—we could fill in plenty of others between all of those names. . . ."

Very quietly, Rossi said, ‘‘He skipped a chapter.’’

They all turned to him.

‘‘What?’’ Hotchner asked.

‘‘He
skipped
a goddamn
chapter
,’’ Rossi said, and pounded the table with a fist. ‘‘Damnit. I didn’t put it together, Aaron, till you listed them just now.’’

‘‘Put what together?’’

Rossi’s laugh was bitter. ‘‘I know how he’s picking which killer to imitate next. I was fooled because he skipped a chapter. Literally.’’

Frowning, Morgan said, ‘‘Dave—what are you talking about?’’

‘‘Max Ryan’s book,
Serial Killers and Mass Murderers:Profiling Why They Kill
. Max Ryan, Jason Gideon’s mentor, my colleague. The UnSub, he’s doing the chapters of the book . . . in order.’’ Rossi held up a forefinger. ‘‘Except for one—he skipped Herman Kotchman. That’s probably what took me so long to put this together. He’s done them all, in order of the chapters in the Ryan book . . . except Kotchman.’’

Reid said, ‘‘Herman Kotchman was a serial killer in the early seventies infamous for abducting middle-aged men who reminded him of his sexually predatory father, and burying them in coffins in his backyard. Dubbed ‘The Premature Burialist’ by the media, he claimed innocence, since he always gave his victims a ‘fighting chance,’ burying them with a hammer, a gallon of water, and a vent pipe for air.’’

‘‘Right,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘I helped catch the sick bastard.’’

No one said anything—not even Reid.

Quietly, Rossi said, ‘‘One of our first cases—hell, we weren’t even the BAU back then. We were just a bunch of guys who thought that if you studied enough offenders, you could learn things from their behavior. Things that would help you stop them.’’

Hotchner said, ‘‘You were right.’’

Rossi said, ‘‘You know, at his trial? Kotchman said, ‘They had at least a week before they died of thirst. I’m innocent. If they died, it was because they decided not to free themselves.’ We might not have caught him at all, but his last victim
did
get free, and led us right to Kotchman’s damn door.’’

A sick feeling ran through Hotchner’s gut. ‘‘Kotchman’s crimes took time—a long time. What if he
hasn’t
skipped a chapter?’’

Rossi frowned. ‘‘What?’’

Hotchner’s intensity heightened. ‘‘What if he’s
already
committed the crime, and hasn’t mailed a picture because the victim is buried out there somewhere, and isn’t dead yet?’’

His teammates’ expressions did nothing to alleviate Hotchner’s queasy stomach. In fact, they all looked a little ill.

Rossi said, ‘‘We have got to catch him—
right now
.’’

Morgan snapped his fingers, and all eyes went to him. He said, ‘‘Rossi, you said you know which one he’s doing next. Who is it? Who is the next chapter in the book about?’’

‘‘Richard Speck,’’ Rossi said.

Reid said, hollowly, ‘‘Speck killed eight nursing students in one night. Right here in Chicago . . . but what happened to alphabetical order?’’

Rossi said, ‘‘Max’s book was divided in two sections—serial killers first, mass murderers second. Speck as the first of several of the latter discussed.’’

‘‘My God,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘The son of bitch built acceleration into his overall scenario!’’

‘‘Eight young women,’’ Prentiss said, the whiteness of her face heightened by her bloodred lipstick. ‘‘Facing a death sentence . . .’’

As Hotchner’s eyes traveled the conference room, the faces looked back at him with the same obvious concern.

F
inally, things were moving.

The UnSub would re-create the Speck murder next. That much the BAU team knew—but not the killer’s identity or where precisely he would strike, much less when.

But they had taken the first step in the thousand-mile journey and, with any luck, the next step would be easier.

They began with Dr. Spencer Reid filling them in on what had happened the day Speck committed his atrocities.

‘‘July 14, 1966,’’ the young agent said. He was on his feet, the others seated at the conference table. ‘‘Richard Franklin Speck entered the two-story townhouse at 2319 East One-Hundredth Street in the Jeffrey Manor neighborhood of Chicago. Speck claimed his intention to commit a simple burglary. Nine student nurses shared the dwelling, and Speck took them all prisoner, as each returned home. Then he brutally stabbed and killed seven of his captives. The eighth and final victim, he raped, then stabbed to death. The ninth woman in the house, Corazon Amurao, escaped by hiding under a bed. Famously, Speck seemed to have lost count of his hostages during the murders, and left thinking he had killed them all.’’

Even these hardened profilers could only fall into a grim silence, hearing of the madman’s spree.

Reid continued: ‘‘At nineteen, Speck went to a tattoo parlor and had the words ‘Born to Raise Hell’ applied to his left forearm. This was one of the things police used to identify him when Speck was arrested on July seventeenth, three days after the crime and his own attempted suicide. In an interesting sidebar, when he was in prison, Speck once found an injured bird. He nursed it back to health, tied a string to its leg and let the bird ride around on his shoulder. When he was told he couldn’t have the bird, because the prison had a policy against pets, Speck threw the bird into a running fan. When a guard said, ‘I thought you liked that bird.’ Speck replied, ‘I did, but if I can’t have it, no one can.’ ’’

‘‘Well,’’ Morgan said, ‘‘that’s a little selfish.’’

‘‘Speck is generally categorized as a mass murderer,’’ Reid went on, ‘‘but he was a suspect in the deaths or disappearances of eight other women other the years, as well as an individual rape. So other experts classify him a serial.’’

Reid looked around for any questions, then lifted his eyebrows and twitched a smile, like a nervous kid who’d just finished a school report. He took a seat at the conference table.

Hotchner asked Rossi, ‘‘Do you remember the other names in the mass murderer section of Ryan’s book?’’

Rossi’s eyes were tight with thought. ‘‘The emphasis was on serial killers, with a relatively small section on mass murderers. I know Howard Unruh, first of the so-called lone gunmen, and Charles Whitman, the University of Texas tower sniper, were written up. I believe there was one other, but I don’t recall who.’’

‘‘Byran Uyesugi,’’ Reid said. ‘‘The Xerox murderer.’’

Rossi chuckled dryly. ‘‘That memory of yours does come in handy. But we could still use a copy of that book. If it’s the UnSub’s bible, having it around could be helpful.’’

Hotchner dispatched Reid to a track down a local bookstore with a copy of
Serial Killers and Mass Murderers:Profiling Why They Kill
. The book was not available for download, and it wasn’t as if they could print a copy from Reid’s memory. No one said so, but they all knew that if they failed to stop the Speck reenactment, they would need every tool available to prevent the next performance on the UnSub’s list.

Morgan felt great respect for Max Ryan, David Rossi, Jason Gideon and the other pioneering profilers; they had built all this up from nothing. The BAU had worked a case with Ryan several years ago, helping the retired agent crack an old unsolved case that had haunted him. With the exception of Rossi, the old guard was gone now. Hotchner led a new generation of behaviorists. Mind hunters, the press called them.

The mind they were hunting this time belonged to an utter sociopath bent on killing as many people as possible in his sick bid for power and recognition. And knowing that the reenactment of individual killings was headed toward re-creations of mass murder was a chilling thought, even to a seasoned veteran like Morgan.

While Jareau dealt with the media, Prentiss stayed in touch with Garcia, who sought to locate groups of nursing students living together who might mirror the configuration of Speck’s original atrocities.

Reid was out getting the Ryan book, and Hotchner was searching for the missing Jake Denson via phone and computer. Rossi, along with detectives Tovar and Lorenzon, was headed for One Hundredth Street, the site of Speck’s invasion.

Meanwhile, Morgan dug into the Herman Kotchman case. Born in California in 1948, Kotchman grew up with an alcoholic mother who turned a blind eye to the abuse of her two sons by her bisexual second husband, perhaps because that lessened his presence in her bed, sparing her to some degree the man’s physical and sexual abuse. One night the abuse turned to murder, when the stepfather killed Herman’s brother, who had dared try to escape his grasp, and the boy was buried in the backyard of their rural home in what was forever referred to as ‘‘a terrible accident’’ and ‘‘our family secret.’’

In 1966, the same year Speck was making a name for himself, Herman Kotchman, not content to wait for the draft, had joined the army. With the Vietnam War escalating, the army seemed willing to take just about anybody. Kotchman, however, couldn’t make the grade even with lowered standards, and was mustered out on a dishonorable discharge, after savagely beating another soldier in the shower. Seemed the man had been looking ‘‘funny’’ at Kotchman’s penis.

Once back home, Kotchman chose not to return to the house of his mother and stepfather. Instead, he took an apartment in nearby Modesto, California. A year later, the stepfather died of cirrhosis of the liver, and his grief-stricken drunken mother’s first call had been to Herman. To help keep his mother from starving, the dutiful son entered into a plan with her to bury the stepfather in the backyard and continue to cash his social security checks.

The stress of all those years of abuse and secrets finally cascaded over into Herman’s reality once he was living in the house again. His pent-up fury at his late stepfather consumed him and he began trolling gay bars and nightclubs for victims that reminded him of the balding, pudgy man. He would bury them in the backyard, too, but with a gallon of water, a claw hammer, and a vent pipe for air.

Kotchman always told them, ‘‘And another of his disciples said unto him, ‘Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father’ ’’—a quote from the book of Matthew, possibly somewhat misinterpreted by the killer.

Convicted of four counts of murder and one count each of kidnapping and attempted murder, Kotchman, sixty now, was serving a life sentence in a California prison.

Morgan kept digging into Kotchman’s background (much as the FBI had earlier dug into his backyard), studying the address of Kotchman’s home, the dates of his kills—anything that might give them a leg up on locating a potential victim who had presumably been buried and was possibly still alive. He was still doing that when Reid came in with a copy of Max Ryan’s book.

Morgan asked, ‘‘How long will it take you to reread that?’’

Reid sat at the conference table, smiled just a little. ‘‘I read it on the ride back from the bookstore.’’

He’d been driven to and from the bookstore by local agent Kohler, who’d been doing odds and ends for the team.

Morgan asked, ‘‘And?’’

Reid shrugged. ‘‘The book didn’t tell me anything we didn’t already know, per se.’’

‘‘Per se?’’

‘‘Well, it did get me thinking. What would you need to re-create one of Kotchman’s crimes?’’

Morgan shrugged. ‘‘Not much—a shovel, some plywood, some PVC pipe for the vent.’’

‘‘And where would you get these things?’’

‘‘I can think of quite a few places,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘But I know just who can narrow the search for us.’’ He tapped some keys on his laptop and Garcia’s face appeared on his screen.

‘‘What’s up?’’ she asked.

‘‘We’re looking for someone who might have gone shopping—he could have gone any number of places, but he’d have a very distinct list. He would’ve bought maybe three ten-foot sheets of plywood, ten feet of PVC, and probably a shovel. Can you do your magic and see how many times that’s happened in the Chicago area in the last say . . . three weeks?’’