Twisted (34 page)

“You got it.” A pause. “Do you want to hear the rest?”

“What rest? There’s more?”

“Oh yeah. I told you this was worth a Caribbean vacation. I meant it.”

“Continue.”

“The last test we were waiting to complete was the
DNA
test.”

“You found something in
CODIS
. You know who this psycho is.”

“Yes and no. We found something in
CODIS
. As for who it is, that’s your job.”

“You lost me.”

“What we found, we found in the forensic index. Two separate hits. One in New York, the other in New Jersey.”

By this time, Derek was sitting up stick straight, every vestige of fatigue having vanished. “I’m listening.”

“I’m sure you are.”

Three minutes later, Derek burst into Antonio Sanchez’s office. “Tony, we have to talk. Now.”

His drained
SSA
looked up from the pile of unanswered phone messages he’d been putting off returning. He was just about to tell Derek that whatever he wanted would have to wait, when he saw his expression.

“You got a lead?” Tony demanded.

“Better.”

A wave of relief crossed his boss’s face. “That’s news I’d put anything aside for. Come in and shut the door.”

Derek complied, remaining on his feet as he spoke. The adrenaline flowing through him was too powerful to allow him to sit. “Not only do I have a solid lead that will get Chinatown back to normal,” he told Tony, “but it’s possible I can use that same lead to solve the Truman case—and a handful of others. Good enough news for you?”

Tony just stared. “Explain,” he ordered.

Derek did, supplying both fact and supposition, leaving out nothing in the process.

“Damn.” Tony shook his head in amazement. “No one could ever accuse you of providing unimpressive leads.” Even as he spoke, his wheels were turning. “The first thing I have to do is get the
NYPD
on the phone, secure their cooperation.”

“Are you kidding? They’ll celebrate. After the weekend they just had, they’ll be popping open the six-packs before you say good-bye.”

“Not before they issue a Crime Stoppers flyer, written in both Mandarin and English, announcing that a Fukienese woman was killed on Eldridge Street.” Tony was scribbling down notes. “The flyer will clearly state that the police are searching for…” A questioning glance at Derek.

“A white male, light eyes, medium-to-tall in height, solid build, probably between his midthirties and forties,” Derek supplied. “Armed and violent. Tell them to post the flyer all over Chinatown, outside restaurants and shops, on telephone poles, on people’s asses if they have to.”

Tony chuckled. “Once that’s done, I’ll deal with the community leaders, get all the bigwigs off our backs. Word will spread like wildfire. In the meantime, you and the squad talk to your informants. Get them to spread the news in the right places and to the right sources. You and I will handle the official route. We’ll work with
OPA
to issue a formal press release. There won’t be a human being in the tristate area that isn’t aware of the physical description and psychological makeup of the Unsub we’re looking for.”

“Including Xiao Long. This should be more than enough to give him the proof he wants that the Black Tigers aren’t responsible for his girls’ deaths. Nor, for that matter, are any other rival gangs. He’ll back down. Gang tensions will subside. And Chinatown can resume business as usual.”

“So what are you waiting for?” Tony asked, grinning as he reached for the phone. “Go clue in the rest of the squad. You’ve got a lot to accomplish before you head back to Atlantic City to finish solving the Truman case.”

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

New York City

4:55 P.M.

Larry rose from the patch of grass he’d been examining—a small but trampled section of the area cordoned off and designated as Cynthia Alexander’s crime scene.

“The
CSI
team did a thorough job,” he told Sloane. “The Unsub clearly grabbed Cynthia Alexander as she left the building. There was a struggle; you can see that from the flattened and pulled-up sections of grass. If this had been winter,
CSI
probably could have pulled a shoe or boot print from the snow. But there’s nothing here to work with. Just the blood and the hair band they’re already analyzing.”

“No surprise there. The NYPD’s team is the best there is.” Sloane raked a weary hand through her hair. She and Larry had been retracing routes all weekend, examining crime scenes, reviewing victimology. They’d even reinterviewed Tina Carroll, whom Larry had asked some intuitive questions about the Unsub’s demeanor, his level of anger, and his level of aggression.

He and Tina then went over every physical or body-type feature she could remember, and every word her attacker had said, both in Chinese and in English. Larry had listened intently as she took him through the entire encounter, just as she had for the police. But Larry didn’t stop there. He took it a step further, pressing for more detailed answers from Tina.

Had her attacker said or implied anything that would indicate what kind of area he was taking her to—urban, rural, or suburban? When he was standing directly behind her with the knife to her throat, had she picked up on any smells that would provide a clue about that—the odor of hay or manure, the smoky, diesel-fuel smells of the city, the freshly cut grass of the suburbs? Had he used the plural anytime he spoke, indicating that she’d be joining others? Had she caught even a glimpse or a flash of his vehicle, which must have been stashed in the woods? Had there been any time during the days immediately preceding the attack that she’d sensed she was being watched or followed, not only on campus but anywhere else she’d gone?

That last question brought a reaction.

Tina had been repeatedly shaking her head in the negative. Abruptly, she stopped. “I told the police that I felt as if I were being watched every morning when I went out running. But I didn’t think beyond the place where the attack occurred. Now that you phrase it that way, it wasn’t just at Lake Ceva that I had that feeling, or even just at school. It was also at the martial-arts academy. When I walked to my car, when I stepped outside for some fresh air, I had this strange feeling that someone was watching me. Even on the drive back to school, I’d glance in my rearview mirror a bunch of times because I felt like someone was following me. I never saw anyone suspicious, so I figured I was being paranoid. But now that you bring it up, maybe he wasn’t just watching me at school. Maybe he was stalking me, trying to figure out the best place to grab me.”

“Maybe,” Larry had quietly agreed.

That had confirmed what Sloane and Larry already suspected. The Unsub’s victims weren’t random. They were deliberately selected. And the only common threads thus far were the victims’ gender, the settings in which they were attacked, and their connection to Sloane.

She and Larry had been going at this for days. And she had a sinking feeling that they were still stuck at square one.

“We’ve gone over the victimologies ad nauseam,” she stated flatly as she and Larry headed back to their respective cars. “We’ve retraced every step the Unsub might have taken, reviewed every aspect of the kidnappings, revisited all the crime scenes, and reinterviewed every potential witness. Have we learned
anything
?”

“We’ve learned that this Unsub deviates from the typical serial sexual killer in several ways. His victims aren’t random. He’s not interested in gloating over his superior skill and intelligence, because he hasn’t so much as contacted us. Nor has he flaunted his crimes by leading us to his victims’ bodies. It’s possible he’s watching us and getting a charge out of seeing us flounder, but that’s not enough to fuel his need for power and mastery. He’s filled with the kind of leashed violence that has to have an outlet, or he’ll implode.”

“He could be torturing his victims before he kills them.”

“True. But if that’s the case, why not go for easy targets? Why pick such specific and risky ones? No, Sloane, this Unsub has an agenda. It’s up to us to figure it out. Until we understand his specific motivation, we’re not getting anywhere.”

“How do we do that? Where do we start?”

“With you.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s become increasingly obvious that you’re central to this guy’s actions. So instead of profiling
him
, let’s profile
you
. Let’s head over to my hotel, order some food so we don’t faint, and examine the fine print of your life. Who might have an ax to grind with you? Who might have a thing for you, but hasn’t acted on it? Who have you interacted with over the past year who’s new and different from before? Who’s been in your life for ages, but in some peripheral way that makes him invisible to you—your mailman, gardener, pizza delivery guy? That kind of thing.”

“In other words, make a spreadsheet of my life.”

“You got it.” Larry shot her a questioning look. “Are you willing?”

“Absolutely.” Sloane’s hope surged at the prospect of doing something productive. “I’ll compile a list of every human being I know, if I have to. I’ll put asterisks next to the ones I think merit a second look. Any questions you come up with, I’ll answer. And I won’t eliminate the women, because the majority of them have husbands or significant others in their lives, most of whom I’m acquainted with. Hell, I’ll even go through my college and high school yearbooks tonight, if you think that would help.”

“You’ve got a natural affinity for this.” A hint of a smile curved Larry’s lips. “When you decide to rejoin the Bureau, maybe you should consider applying to the
BAU
.”

“My rejoining the Bureau isn’t up to me,” Sloane reminded him. “It’s up to them. And to this.” She held up her hand.

“You’ll get there. I have faith.”

Sloane’s cell phone rang, and she stopped to scoop it out of her purse. “It might be Bob Erwin,” she told Larry. “He’s trying to determine whether Lydia Halas was another of our Unsub’s victims. More and more, it’s looking like she was.”

Larry made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Go ahead. Take the call.”

Sloane punched on her phone. “Sloane Burbank.”

“It’s me.”

Her brows arched at the sound of Derek’s voice. “I thought you were locked up in hell.”

“I was. I’m not anymore. Is Larry with you?”

“Yes. We’re finishing up at John Jay. Why?”

“Because the
DNA
from that butchered prostitute in Chinatown came back.”

“Wait a minute. You’re confusing me. I read about the murdered prostitute, and I assumed that was part of the emergency you mentioned when you canceled our weekend plans. But I had no idea there was
DNA
evidence, and I still have no idea why you want to share this information with Larry and me.”

“Because the offender’s
DNA
matched the
DNA
of the blood splatter found at Tina Carroll’s crime scene, and the
DNA
of the sweat and hair found on the custodian uniform at Southern New Jersey Medical Center—worn by whoever stole all those drugs and slit the head nurse’s throat.”

Sloane stopped dead in her tracks and leaned against a tree. “Are you telling me we’re talking about one killer for both sets of crimes?”

“Yup. We know for a fact that the same Unsub was responsible for the three crimes I just described to you. With regard to this last murder—which was the mutilation of a Fukienese prostitute—there’ve been a string of identical crimes in Chinatown these past few months, all with the same pattern. And with regard to the kidnappings, you know as well as I do that we have strong evidence indicating that the Unsub who attacked Tina is also responsible for the disappearances of Penelope Truman and Cynthia Alexander.”

“And Lydia Halas,” Sloane added woodenly.

“Who?”

“She was my nurse at Cornell Medical Center when I was recovering from my surgeries. She left four months ago, with no word to anyone and no notice to the hospital. And the pattern…” Sloane proceeded to describe the when and where to Derek. “Bob’s looking into it now. But I don’t have a good feeling.”

“Shit.” Derek made a frustrated sound. “It makes you wonder how many more victims he’s grabbed that we don’t know about.” A pointed pause. “And how many more he plans to grab—including you.”

“Larry and I are addressing that issue now,” Sloane replied. “I’m obviously central to these kidnappings. So we’re taking the opposite approach. Rather than profiling the Unsub, we’re profiling me. We’re heading over to his hotel now and putting my entire life down on paper, hopefully to figure out what’s motivating this psycho.” A thoughtful pause. “What you just told me is a big help. It answers one of the major questions Larry’s been grappling with—where our Unsub is unleashing his violence.”

“Yeah; well now you know.”

Larry had heard enough of the conversation to figure out what was going on. He waved his hand, getting Sloane’s attention.

“Derek, hang on a minute.” A quizzical look at Larry.

“Ask Derek if he can get us case files on the murdered prostitutes. Whatever’s not classified, right down to the smallest detail. It could be a huge help.”

“I heard what Larry asked. Consider it done,” Derek responded. “I’ll have the files brought over to Larry’s hotel
ASAP
. I’m doing the same with Bill down in Quantico. I just spoke to him. By the way, this new development changes things significantly, so Bill’s putting off our conference call until he and Larry have each had the chance to review and discuss everything.” Derek broke off as Jeff called out something to him in the background. “I’ve gotta run,” he told Sloane. “I’ve got a shitload of things to tie up at this end. I’ll call you as soon as things quiet down. Good luck with your profile.”

Hunterdon County, New Jersey

10:15 P.M.

Sloane was so exhausted when she pulled into her driveway that she could hardly focus. She’d never delved as deeply into her own life as she had today. Her brain felt like it had turned to mush.