The Christmas Killer (16 page)

Gail smiled when she saw the doughnuts.

‘I remembered,’ said Jake.

She laughed. It was lunchtime, and Gail had told him she was squeezing this in between clients. Jake sat opposite her at his desk in the detective bureau and poured a coffee. ‘Any word on Johnny?’

‘It’s too early to say. I got him into a programme. He’ll have a few individual sessions with me then I’ll move him to a group. It will help, but it’s too soon to predict how much.’

‘Sure,’ said Jake with a slow nod.

‘He missed his session this morning, but that’s typical of patients with schizo-affective disorder.’ She tilted her head to the side as she said, ‘I’m delighted you care about his welfare.’

‘I brought you in to discuss a different case.’

She looked up at the scraps of paper pinned to the wall around Jake’s desk. ‘The eye-popper. Will he kill again?’

‘Almost certainly – unless we can catch him. But … I’m drawing a blank on how to go about this.’

She offered him a gentle smile. ‘Is that difficult?’

He tried to smile back, but his face felt too tight with irritation and frustration. ‘Asking for help? No. The health of my ego can suffer when it comes to the safety of the town.’

She smiled and nodded. For a fleeting moment she even looked impressed. ‘You know I’m not an expert on criminal psychology. I’m on the panel because someone in the area has to be.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Jake. ‘What I need is the depth of knowledge a psychologist like you would have. What would be great is if we could look through the files together, bounce ideas around and see if we can’t build a profile of our killer. It’ll help us eliminate suspects, and also tell us what levers to use when we have someone to interrogate.’ Gail looked hesitant so Jake quickly added. ‘No pressure. I’m not expecting miracles. The profiling is just one strand of the investigation.’

‘OK, Detective. Go ahead.’

Jake had the files on his desk and he laid out the photos of the victims in front of her.

‘Oh God,’ she said and winced as she saw the mutilated faces. But she didn’t turn away. She picked them up one by one and examined them. ‘These are three very different women,’ she said, ‘which isn’t typical of a serial killer, as I understand it. They usually stay to type with Caucasian men killing Caucasian women and African-Americans killing African-Americans.’

‘That’s what I thought. It’s not making my life any easier.’

Jake pulled out some other photographs, general shots of the crime scenes and dump scenes. Gail looked at them all carefully, but shook her head. They told her nothing. In twenty minutes he laid out the whole case. He showed her the crime scene reports, the limited forensics, the ME’s initial reports. She asked a few questions, but in general let him talk.

At the end they sat and faced each other. The coffees were cold, the doughnuts untouched. There was a silence. Finally Jake said, ‘I’ll get fresh coffee, then we can get working on trying to make sense of all this.’

When he returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups, Gail was sitting back on her chair, a puzzled look on her face. She had three photographs in front of her, one of each victim. He noticed she had chosen two nicer pictures, Marcia Lamb from a photograph her neighbour and babysitter had given them, and a picture of Belinda Harper taken at a recent charity event. The third photograph was truly horrifying. It was too soon after the discovery of Candy for them to have obtained a similar picture of her.

‘What links women of three different ages and three different places in society?’ she asked.

Ethnicity links Marcia and Candy,’ said Jake. ‘And they were both poor.’

‘That’s not a link,’ she said. ‘There’s a huge difference between a single mother with two jobs, and a sex worker who’s living one step above the street. There’s more linking Candy and Johnny, than Candy and Marcia.’

He was surprised. ‘Is the difference that big?’

She nodded. Then she hesitated and went silent.

‘Go on,’ he urged.

‘It’s a bad thought.’

‘This is a murder investigation. They’re all bad thoughts.’

She looked away from him for a moment, then looked back. ‘Have you considered the possibility that Belinda Harper was a user?’

Jake was surprised. No, they hadn’t. But he knew that drugs were not unknown among the legal and professional circles in which the Harpers moved. It wasn’t crack cocaine they used, but the guys who sold crack sometimes sold the upper-end product too. It was worth checking out. If Belinda had traces in her blood, they would look for the dealer who supplied both women. Jake doubted that this dealer, if he existed, was a suspect, but any step in any direction had to be worth taking at this point.

‘That’s an interesting thought. I’ll have the ME do a tox screen.’ Jake looked at her; she was still thinking. ‘There’s more,’ he prodded.

She nodded. ‘You should ask about her sexual history. Anything unusual that might have made her vulnerable.’

Jake didn’t mention the accountant Belinda had had an affair with, but the thought stuck. It was another avenue to look into.

Just then the door opened. Sara stuck her head in and scowled. ‘Visitor for you,’ she said.

Jake tried to sound affable when he said, ‘I’m in the middle of something, Sara.’

Sara replied with an equally bad version of an apologetic tone: ‘Father Ken wants to see you.’

‘Can you send him down to Mills or one of the others?’

Gail laid a hand on Jake’s arm. ‘Give him five minutes. I could use some time to think.’

Jake shrugged. ‘OK, Sara.’ He quickly gathered up the photographs on the desk and put them back into a folder. ‘Send him in.’

Moments later slow footsteps sounded in the hallway. Jake tried not to let his irritation show. Standing, he stretched out a hand. ‘Father Ken, how can I help you?’

Broad-shouldered and with a craggy face, the priest looked like a man who had laboured among his flock rather than led them from the library. He couldn’t have contrasted more with the priest at the church where Jake’s mother had worshipped when he was in his teens.

‘I hope you don’t mind me imposing,’ he began.

‘Not at all,’ Jake said, the lie making his head pound. ‘Take a seat. This is Gail Greene, a psychologist. She’s helping with the investigation.’

The priest smiled as he shook her hand. ‘Irish or Scottish?’ he asked.

‘Is the red hair such a giveaway?’ she said with a chuckle.

‘You know, they say that red hair is dying out; that fifty years from now, it’ll be gone,’ said Father Ken.

‘I’ll be grey by then,’ she replied.

‘What can I do for you, Father?’ Jake asked, wondering how affable he sounded now.

‘We are organizing an ecumenical service for the victims of this killer. Rabbi Weiss has agreed to take part in the service. We will hold it on Saturday, outside the Church of Christ the Redeemer. That’s the old church being knocked down for the interstate. We thought it would be fitting for its last service to be a significant one. Bill Harrington will also help out. He’s the Episcopalian minister.’

Jake looked at him blankly. ‘Er, that’s great, Father. How … er …’

‘We would love it if you and some of the other detectives could attend,’ said the priest.

Jake felt his eyebrows knit – he couldn’t keep the puzzled look off his face.

‘This is for the survivors,’ said Father Ken. ‘We want to show them that the community is standing shoulder to shoulder with them in this difficult hour.’

‘I see your point, Father. I will do my best to be there,’ Jake said, taking a half-step towards the door, hoping the priest would get the hint and leave.

‘Can you spread the word around the precinct?’ Father Ken asked. ‘Colonel Asher said—’

‘Of course. That goes without saying.’ Jake was now actually walking towards the door. The latent, lapsed Catholic in him was mortified that he was almost literally hustling a priest out of the room, but the latent, lapsed Catholic in him was not working a triple homicide.

The priest smiled as he stood up and walked in Jake’s wake. ‘Bless you. It saddens me that this is last service at the old church before the bulldozers reach her. We’ll even have to host it outside, as they’ve already gutted the inside. Let’s hope it’s not
too
cold, eh?’

‘Yes,’ said Jake, not giving him any more than that. It was all he could do to not wrench the door open and let the gesture speak for him. But the priest was receiving the message, offering Jake a surprisingly strong handshake before shuffling from the room.

Jake blew out a deep breath as he let the door close behind Father Ken. When he turned back, he could see Gail’s raised eyebrow.

‘Will that throw your weekend plans?’ she asked.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he replied.

She grinned. ‘Of course not. You wouldn’t be caught dead going to that service. Am I right?’

He laughed and felt the rubber band of tension lift a little. ‘You’re good.’

‘You don’t need to be a profiler to see you aren’t the sort of person to let anyone into your head. Least of all God.’

Jake didn’t answer.

Gail winced. ‘I’ve said too much.’

‘Maybe.’ She was right about Jake not wanting people in his head, especially a smart shrink.

‘But can I offer a word of advice?’ she asked. Jake motioned for her to go ahead. ‘You might consider going along to this church thing. The killer could be there. It will be a chance to glory in the chaos he’s created.’

Jake sat back in his chair. He knew she could be right, but somehow it didn’t fit. ‘This guy has a short cooling-off period. He glories in the chaos by committing new ones,’ he said. ‘It’s … his
work
, and he wants to continue it.’

‘True. But I’ll bet my diploma he’ll be there. Or that he’ll insinuate himself into the investigation in some way. Serial killers are normally cop-lovers.’

Jake leaned forward and forced a smile. ‘Case closed,’ he said. ‘We arrest Colonel Asher right now.’

The soft tinkle of her laughter prompted a hazy, indistinct memory of sharing a moment like this with Leigh. Remembering this made them feel even further back in his past than they were.

He went back to the files. ‘Serials are normally meticulous and organized, or frenzied and disorganized …’ he prompted.

‘From what I have seen, you’re dealing with an organized killer,’ she replied.

Jake groaned inwardly. An organized killer was, by nature, difficult to track down. An organized killer accounted for the possibility of making mistakes – accordingly, he tended to make fewer of them.

‘His choice of victims doesn’t seem opportunistic,’ Gail continued. ‘The one thing his victims do have in common is that they are women. He’s targeting them. He approached Marcia Lamb just as she was nearing home. He attacked Belinda Harper in her home. The last victim, Candy, was a prostitute. My guess is that he picked her up on the street, posing as a john. She would have gone with him without a protest.’

‘Probably his easiest kill,’ said Jake, his impotence reflected in the lazy burn from the ulcer he had almost managed to forget until Father Ken had come calling.

‘On the surface,’ said Gail, ‘he will appear to be a normal man, leading a mundane life. He’ll have a job, friends, a certain status in the community. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s married.’

Jake was surprised. ‘A family man?’

‘He might have a wife, but there will be difficulties in the marriage. At the very least a coldness.’

‘That’s every married man in Littleton,’ said Jake.

Gail shot Jake a look.

He reddened a little. He’d given away too much and he wanted to get the subject off himself. ‘His MO is very distinctive.’

‘Yes, but MO doesn’t tell us much. When we consider the minds of evil men, the signature is far more important. The MO is only how he
carries out
the attacks. It’s a system he has that works for him. It meets no needs but the practical one of securing his victim. He approaches her in a friendly and non-threatening way. That gets him to where he wants to be. But we have to ask, what makes these crimes unique?’

She opened the folder that Jake had closed before the priest’s visit. She looked at the face of the first victim, Marcia Lamb. When Gail spoke, there was a sense of urgency to her voice.

‘I think it’s what he does to the head. The mouth is crushed. That’s not his MO. That’s his essence, his signature. Is he trying to
silence
the women? Does the talk of women offend him, or belittle him?’

‘And the eyes …’ said Jake.

‘The eyes are just a by-product,’ Gail replied. Answering Jake’s quizzical look, she continued: ‘They don’t mean anything to him. In the last murder one of the eyeballs was lost, and he didn’t spot that. He didn’t really care. The
mouth
is the signature.’

Jake nodded, thinking. It was certainly interesting stuff, but would it get him any closer to his killer?

‘So what are we looking for?’ he asked.

She began ticking points off on her fingers. ‘One, he’s not a hobo or a street person. He holds down a job and contributes to society. Two, he may be married, but not happily. Three, he’s not a young man.’

Jake looked surprised.

‘Young men tend to be sexually immature and are afraid to handle an adult woman. So they normally attack either prepubescent girls or the elderly. A man in his early twenties, especially a virgin or a sexually inexperienced man, would not attack someone like Marcia Lamb or Belinda Harper. And he certainly wouldn’t have approached a prostitute on a street corner. You’re looking for a man in his late thirties at the youngest. A man who thinks he knows the world, and doesn’t like it very much.’

‘Anything else?’

‘His choice of victims is a little unusual.’

‘They have nothing in common,’ said Jake.

‘Not quite true,’ said Gail. ‘Not only were they all women, but in their own way they were all
strong
women. Even Candy had street smarts. Why might he be angry with strong women?’

Jake was interested in this new line of thought.

‘You’ll find his father was a distant figure, and his mother overbearing. His father may well have abandoned the family, and he blames his mother for that.’

‘Impressive,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’ She blushed and looked away for a second. ‘You’re not totally useless yourself. How do you know about profiling?’

‘We watch the TV shows like everyone else.’

But Gail Greene was not buying it. ‘Spill,’ she said. ‘There’s more.’

Now it was Jake’s turn to feel uncomfortable. ‘It’s just … something I have a bit of a …’

‘What?’ she said, stepping towards him. ‘A talent for?’

‘You could say that.’ He was hoping that would be the end of the matter, but when he realized she was neither going to blink nor avert her questioning gaze, he elaborated: ‘I see things. When I am at a crime scene, I can walk through the scene as if I’m there, as if I’m the killer. I see through his eyes – or what I imagine are his eyes.’

Gail looked at him like he was a subject in a particularly intriguing lecture. Jake didn’t like that. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘You think I’m a freak?’

‘It’s called dissociation. You can get out of your own mind and see things in a new way. It’s not a problem, as long as you are in control of it. If you dissociate deliberately, at will, it’s a useful tool. But if it happens automatically, then you could be heading for trouble.’

There was an edge in her voice. Jake didn’t answer.

She reached into her wallet and took out a business card. She scribbled a number on the back.

‘Here’s my home number. Anything I can help on, just call.’

As Jake took the card their fingers touched. For a moment he felt a tingle. This was getting dangerous. He was flirting with a woman, and he had got her number.

I need to focus.