The Darker Side (26 page)

“Great.”

“We knew it was going to happen, and we’re ready. I’ve been in contact with the media relations director at Quantico and she’ll be doing a press conference within the next half hour. That will be picked up nationwide and she’ll announce the tip-line number then.”

“Can you get me the names of the two confirmed victims soonest?”

“Within the next half hour. Do you want to see the press conference?”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“It’s not that it’s not important, it’s just not my part of this. My team and I need to stay on identifying the victims. It’s the best thing we can do right now.”

“I understand. I’ll get you those names and will keep you updated. I expect the tip line to go crazy in the next few hours.”

“I’ll be here.”

I put down the phone, pick my pen back up, and click to continue the clip I was watching.

“Please,” she begs.

Please, please, it’s always please. The one-word lyric of the victim’s song.

ALAN IS AT THE DRY-ERASE
board, writing down names and, where known, locations. I hand my list to him and take a moment to examine the data we’ve collected so far.

“All women,” I say.

“A sexual link after all,” Callie notes.

She’s right. If this was all just about truth and his opus on the subject, we’d see some men in there. He probably has no awareness of this, and would be surprised if it was pointed out to him. Murder is murder and it’s always an act of anger. The anger could be direct—he hates women—or it could be misplaced—he hates himself because of something that involves women. It’s intriguing.

“Common age?” I ask.

“We don’t know for sure without actual confirmation of their identities, but based on physical observation, I don’t see anyone older than the age of thirty-five. Most are younger than that.”

“How much younger?”

“All adults. Twenty or older. If he does kill a child, it looks like it would be a first for him.”

“Were all the victims attractive? No, scratch that. Not all the women I saw were classically beautiful. Some were pretty plain.”

“I can confirm that as well.” James nods. “One of the women in my group was obese. Another had a bad case of acne. Appearance is not a crucial part of his criteria.”

“But gender is,” I muse. “Okay. How about locations? How spread out has he been?”

“I’m getting a map printed out so that we can see it graphically,” Callie says. “He’s been a traveler, but with few exceptions so far, he’s stayed within the western United States, primarily California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.”

“Interesting. So Virginia was well outside his common stomping grounds.”

Callie nods. “None of the other victims have been linked that far east.”

A thought occurs to me. “No other transgendered victims?”

“No,” James says.

“So Lisa Reid was another anomaly. She’s the only transgender victim and the only one found so far outside his normal killing zone. Which means that’s exactly why she was chosen.”

“He’s decided to come out into the open,” Alan agrees. “He figured she’d help him make the biggest splash. Killing a child, same thing.”

“Why now?” I wonder. No one answers. “What other commonalities?”

“He stops the clip before the actual murder of every victim,” James says. “As discussed before, he’s showing us that his overall message is more important to him than the deaths themselves. The murders were committed for a purpose, not titillation.”

“He cared for them, or wants us to think he did,” I say. “In one way he strips them naked—the whole secrets thing. But then he pulls the curtain over their last moments. He respects that privacy, preserves their dignity.”

“He never gets angry,” James notes. “He’s firm, but calm with every victim. He’s not above threatening them to gain compliance, but it’s detached. A means to an end, not a fantasy.”

“I take it the secrets theme has been consistent?”

“’Fraid so,” Callie says, “and not just in fact but in form.”

I frown. “Sorry?”

“She means there haven’t been any ‘I stole twenty bucks from Mom’s wallet’ kind of secrets,” Alan provides. “It’s all dark or twisted or sad or all three.” He consults notepad Ned. “Lot of it has a sexual component, of course. There’s some accidental murders that were then hidden, but there are a few premeditated killings in there as well. One woman had been beaten by her husband for years, so she took it out on her baby. With lit cigarettes.” He looks back up at me wearing a humorless smile. “A ghastly fucking gallery.”

My stomach twists once and I feel that voice again, not vocalizing yet, but stirring. Thinking about making itself known. I push it away and force myself to focus on the list of names and what they can tell me.

“He videoed every crime, obviously,” James says, “but the changes in video and sound quality show us that he’s been at this for some time. He probably started out on super eight or a similar medium and graduated up to better technology as the years rolled on. He’ll be fairly proficient technically, nothing earth-shaking, but more knowledgeable than the average computer user. He’d have to be to digitize old mediums and to create the various video clips, edit them, and so on.”

“It gives him credibility,” Callie observes, her tone grudging. “He’s been documenting his actions from the start, waiting for the day he’d bring his ‘case’ to the world.”

“How could he be sure?” Alan muses.

I look at him and frown. “What do you mean?”

“Well, when he started this, the Internet didn’t exist, at least not for public consumption. He always planned to show his face and it’s pretty clear that he planned to use the videos to do it. Go back a few decades and we’d have gotten a stack of VHS tapes.”

“So?”

“Well, that would have been direct. Him to us. But this?” He gestures at the computer. “He put these clips up on a public website. How could he be sure he’d get our attention?”

“He chose carefully,” James answers. “The website he posted those clips on is the most viewed viral video site on earth. I imagine if we hadn’t taken notice on our own, he would have followed up with an e-mail or a letter.”

Alan nods, seeing it. “Maybe even a phone call.”

“Any way to track the clips themselves?” I ask.

James shakes his head. “No. CDs, DVDs, even printer pages can be traced to some degree, but a digital clip doesn’t have a watermark or buried signature by default.”

“What about the upload? He had to contact the Web somewhere to get these clips onto user-tube.”

“I already have computer crimes checking on that, honey-love,” Callie replies. “They’re rolling on the warrant as we speak.”

“Probably a dead end,” Alan observes.

“Probably,” I agree, “but…”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes the bad guys are stupid.”

“Sometimes. Anything else?”

“Yes,” James says. “Again—where is he getting his information?”

The biggest part of the mystery. Lisa Reid left her story in a diary, fine, but the others?

“Maybe he’s a priest,” Alan muses.

“A traveling priest?” I say. “I don’t think so. Again, too high profile. Even if he was just posing as one, Father Yates didn’t mention anything about visiting clergy. Rosemary didn’t recognize her attacker.” I shake my head. “Not a priest.”

“It’s the question to answer, though,” Alan says.

“What about my earlier suggestion?” I ask. “Support groups? With these kinds of secrets, we’d see plenty of substance abuse problems.”

“Like Rosemary and Andrea,” Alan agrees. “And look at how quick Andrea was to spill her guts.”

“It doesn’t have to be a single pool he’s drawing from,” Callie points out. “He could find the kind of person he’s looking for in any number of places. Churches involved in heavy community outreach, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, choose your poison. He’d infiltrate as a fellow addict or alcoholic or whatever, gain the confidence of his peers, and lend a sympathetic ear.”

“Good point,” I say. “We need to look for that as a point of commonality in the victims.”

“Let’s list out what we do know about him,” James says.

I nod. “Sure. I’ll start: He’s high functioning and probably attractive. He’ll be confident around women. They’re not a threat to his self-image. They don’t make him angry, at least not overtly.”

“He might be a virgin,” James murmurs.

I raise my eyebrows. “How did you arrive at that?”

“Think about it. He’s rational. His attitude with the victims is always calm. Any threat of violence against them is as a means to an end, not self-excitement. Of the victims whose bodies we’ve been allowed to find, there’s no evidence of sexual violation or unnecessary violence. His fantasies are cerebral. They revolve around religion and truth and thus, by extension, purity.” He shrugs. “The act of sex isn’t just absent, it’s nonexistent.”

“Madonna and the whore,” Callie muses.

“Come again?” I ask her.

“Oh you know, that old saw. Men want to marry Madonnas, but they want to have sex with whores. A wife who likes sex is not a wife, blah de blah.”

“Right—but where’s the connection here?”

“He doesn’t have sex with these women. Why? Because he reveres them.”

There’s a shutter click inside my head, like the rapid fire of a high-end camera. It is the feel of something shivering into place from out of nowhere.

“Yes,” I say, staring off. “That feels right. But how can he revere them with the kinds of secrets they’re carrying around? How?”

I walk over to the dry-erase board and stare at it hard, trying to force the thing that eludes me to show its face. My team is silent, waiting. They’ve seen this before.

“Well?” Alan finally asks.

I exhale in frustration. “I can’t get my hands around it yet.”

“Then move along, go to something else,” Alan prods. “It’ll come.”

I know he’s right. Try to remember where you left your keys and you’ll never find them.

“What’s the next plan of attack, oh Great One?” Callie asks.

“Missing persons,” I say. “If he’s stayed off our radar for this long, he’s been hiding the bodies, making sure they wouldn’t be found and that we wouldn’t know about him until he was good and ready.” I turn and look at the rows of names. Name after name, so many. Too many. “I’m guessing we’re about to break a hundred plus unsolved missing-persons cases in the worst way possible. We need to find out who these people are.”

“Fast,” Alan agrees.

Death’s promise isn’t on the horizon anymore. It’s standing next to us. Every now and then it checks its watch and grins.

26

“PARDON MY FRENCH, AGENT BARRETT, BUT IT SEEMS TO ME
like we’re now in the middle of a grade-A, eight-cylinder cluster fuck.”

“That’s a fair assessment, sir.”

I’d answered my cell phone to find the Director of the FBI at the other end. I’d wondered for a moment how he got my number, but only for a moment. He is the Director of the FBI, after all.

“It’s bad, sir, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“I guess you missed out on the executive reassurance seminar.”

“I prefer the truth.”

“Fine,” he retorts. “Dazzle me with some truth.”

“The truth, sir, is that this is huge and messy and I don’t envy you the media side of things. But it’s also true that this frenzy exists because he came out into the open. He’s provided us with a list of his victims’ names through the video clips. He’s got a unique MO. If we don’t catch him with what he’s given us, we should all be fired.”

“Don’t give me any ideas.” He sighs. “You’re saying by cursing us with his publicity, he’s blessed us with the way to catch him.”

“Yep. And a very pithy way to put it too, sir.”

“Leave the smart mouth to Agent Thorne, she does it better.”

“Agreed and understood, sir.”

“Tell me what you see, Smoky. Bottom lines.”

I consider my answer for a moment. This conversation seems simple enough, but I am talking to Sam Rathbun. He’s not just the Director of the FBI, it’s rumored that he was a gifted interrogator once. Maybe he’s being sly, putting me at ease so I’ll give him enough verbal rope to hang me with later.

I sigh to myself. I don’t have time for Machiavellian strategizing, and I’ve never been any good at it anyway. I understand evil men, not ruthless ones.

“I see one hundred and forty-three dead women, sir. I see a lot of families that are going to get the worst news possible. I see that he’s made a fatal mistake by showing himself. We’ll catch him, and we need to do it before he kills again.”

He takes a moment. Mulling things over, I guess.

“Get back to work, Agent Barrett.”

He hangs up before I can get the “yes, sir” out.

I dial AD Jones right away. Politics may not be my strong suit, but even I know this rule: when the boss of bosses talks to you, you let your boss know about it, posthaste.

“What?” he answers.

“Is this a bad time, sir?”

“Yes. But you wouldn’t have called without a good reason.”

“I got a call from the Director.”

“He called you personally?”

“Yes, sir.”

I hear him muttering, cursing under his breath.

“What did he want?”

I relay the content of our conversation.

“Okay. I know what’s going on there.” He sounds mollified. “He’s got someone asking him questions. Probably the President.”

I thought I was fairly immune to the whole concept of people in powerful positions. They fart in private just like the rest of us, even if it is through silk. The President of the United States, I find, still gives me pause.

“Not sure how I feel about that, sir.”

“Feel nervous, it’s an appropriate response. Thanks for the heads-up.”

Again, I’m hung up on before I can get my “yes, sir” out. Frustrating.

I check my watch. It’s 7:00 P.M. The night is young. I still have a lot to do, but I want to check in with Bonnie before diving back into the maelstrom.

“Hi, Smoky,” she says. Her voice is troubled.

“Something wrong, babe?”

Silence.

“I watched some of those video clips.”