I peel my eyes open and am greeted by Josh’s face. He’s propped up on his arm, watching me.
He kisses me gently on the shoulder. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“You were having a bad dream.”
“Was I?” I ask a little too quickly. “What was I doing?”
“You were tossing and turning and talking, but I couldn’t make out the words.”
“Mmm.” I don’t remember it. Not last night’s.
“You often have nightmares?”
“Yeah,” I say, hesitant to reveal this fact to Josh.
“The cases?”
“I think so. I usually can’t remember the dreams. You sleep okay?”
“I got a bit of shut-eye in there somewhere.”
I smile. We both woke up a couple of times for repeat performances, not being able to get enough of each other. I roll onto my back and splay my arms out. “I’m exhausted.”
“Me too.” Josh’s free hand runs over my stomach. Perhaps I haven’t tired him out enough. But the touch turns into a cuddle and he draws my body close to his and gently kisses my neck.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“A quarter after seven.”
I sit up. “Shit, I was supposed to go over that profile for Sam. I told Rivers it would be on his desk this morning.”
“Do it at the office.”
“I’m supposed to be doing it after hours. In fact, Rivers pulled Sam off the case and he thinks I’m doing the whole thing.”
“Really? I didn’t pick you for a rebel.”
“I’m just helping out a friend.”
“Why don’t I drive us in, you can go over the profile in the car.”
“That still won’t be enough time.”
“At least you can have a quick look at it.”
It’s my only option. Besides, my car’s still in Dumfries.
The car ride is filled with silence as I read then reread the profile, making notes in my diary. There’s more. More to the killer.
My first stop at Quantico is Sam’s office. I’ve got a lot to talk to her about, personal and professional. I’m going to tell her I dreamt of Jean and Susan, and what happened to them. I wonder what she will make of it.
I wind my way through the corridors. The building is still quiet and my heels clip the linoleum floor loudly. About half the offices I pass are dark and unopened, while the other half show signs of people just settling in. Sam’s office is dark and locked.
I was counting on her being here so I could spill my guts. She must be running late. A huge pressure is building inside me and I need to release it. Where the hell is she?
Once in my office, I ring and leave a message for Sam and send her an e-mail.
I try desperately to refocus my mind on my cases. I try not to think of Josh, to replay the events over and over in my mind. Him touching me…me touching him… The only way to get my mind off last night is to absorb myself in a profile. I pick up my files and choose my next case. The Whistler case in Canada.
I’ve only just read the coroner’s report when Sam drops by.
“You rang, honey?”
I smile, beckoning her into my office.
“That’s a big smile,” she says, obviously already guessing or hoping something’s happened between Josh and I.
I nod and smile again, confirming her suspicions. Sam closes my office door.
“So, what happened?” she asks with glee.
“We trained. We had dinner. And we wound up back at my place.”
“It’s about time. How was it?”
“Great. Really great.”
“So Marco showed you a good time?” she says with a wink.
“Yes,” I say and feel myself blush.
If Sam was Australian, within a couple of minutes she’d have me giving her a blow-by-blow reconstruction of the whole evening’s events. An Australian woman wouldn’t be satisfied with yes as a response.
“You can’t wipe that grin off your face, can you?”
I laugh.
“And you’re an official double agent now.”
“I guess so. But I presume I’ll only be hearing that term from you. I certainly won’t be telling anyone else about this yet.”
“When’s your next date?”
“I don’t know.” I furrow my brow. “We didn’t talk about that.”
“Don’t worry! He’s sweet on you.”
“I hope so. The last thing I want is a one-night stand with a fellow agent.”
“Stop being so serious. Besides, it ain’t gonna go that way.”
“God, could I do with a dose of your confidence.”
She laughs, her loud, raucous laugh. “You certainly don’t have any reason not to be confident. Especially with men. You’re smart, tall, blond, gorgeous and thin, not to mention good-hearted. Too good-hearted.”
“Stop, you’re embarrassing me. Besides, you’re forgetting stubborn, untrusting, shy and defensive.”
“You? Stubborn?”
“Very funny.” I pause, seeing a way to introduce the other topic I desperately need to speak to Sam about—another one of my “traits,” these dreams and nightmares. Hopefully Sam can come up with a rational explanation. But I stop myself. It’ll sound too crazy.
“The bad news is I didn’t get much of a chance to look over your profile,” I say instead.
“You mean your profile.”
“Yeah, right. My profile. I had a quick read, that’s all.”
“Any thoughts?”
“There’s something missing. There’s more to him.”
“I agree. But what?”
“I’m not sure yet. We can hand it to Rivers now, or we can work on it some more tonight.”
“Well, you’re going to have to deal with Rivers because I’m officially off this case.”
I’m worried about missing my deadline, but the profile’s not right yet. “Let’s hold off for a day. I want to get this perfect.”
“Up to you, honey.”
“I’m going to take the wimp’s way out though. I’m sending him an e-mail.” I type a quick message. “Done.” I click the send button.
I was so excited about telling Sam about Josh, I’ve totally forgotten about the killer and his note. Sam was unnerved yesterday.
“Any sign of him. The killer?” I ask.
“No.” She speaks softly. “All’s quiet.”
“You are being careful?”
“Of course. I checked the apartment as soon as I got home last night. Then checked all my locks before I went to bed. I’ve also been wary about being followed.”
“Good. And the boys in blue?”
“Cops did two drive-bys that I saw and probably a few more in the middle of the night.”
“Good,” I repeat. “So how are you feeling about the note?”
She pauses. “To be honest, I’m still a little bothered by it, but I’m off the case now…kind of.”
“But does the killer know that?”
She shrugs. “I’ll be extra careful for the next week or so.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Okay, until we nail the guy.”
“That’s better.”
“I don’t think I’m a target. He’d be stupid to take an FBI agent.”
“True.”
“Anyways, you’ll be there to protect me tonight.” She smiles.
“Together, we’re indestructible.” We both laugh.
It’s eight at night and Sam is serving up bean burritos at her place. She lives in Key Towers, a sixteen-story apartment block in Alexandria, which is less than ten miles from the heart of D.C. It’s a really nice apartment complex and we’ve even talked about moving into a larger apartment in the complex together when our leases run out. Sam would be a great roommate. Her apartment is modern, with cream carpet, thin Venetian blinds and the safety of white decor in the bathroom and kitchen. She has livened the place up with splashes of color, including two bright red sofas.
Sam plonks down my plate and a bottle of beer in front of me.
“It’s like having a husband,” she says.
“I thought it was only Australian men who liked to have beer served to them.”
“A universal male thing, I’d say.”
I laugh.
Sam dishes up her own burrito and keeps talking. “I had a case once when I was working homicide…a poisoning case,” she says, slopping some guacamole and sour cream on top of the bean mix. “A woman poisoned her husband. I interviewed her and she looked me in the eye and said she just got sick of cooking his dinner and serving him beer every night.” Sam rolls her burrito, sits down and takes a swig of beer. “So one day she’s cooking their evening meal and decides, ‘Hell, I don’t want to do this tomorrow, or ever again.’ So she gets some rat poison from the shed and mixes it in with his meal.”
“Nice.”
“It gets better. She wanted to go for justifiable homicide.”
I laugh. “That would open up a floodgate.”
“The law didn’t see it as justifiable, but I bet there’d be a lot of women who would argue for it.”
“You think you’ll ever get married?” I ask.
“Me? I don’t think I’m cut out to be a wife. Besides, I’ve got other plans for my life.”
“Such as?”
“I want to be the first female director of the FBI.”
“You have got plans,” I say, not sure how serious she is.
“Well, I don’t know about director, but I do want to get somewhere with my career in the Bureau. And I want to travel. What about you? Do you think you’ll ever get hitched?”
“Maybe…one of these days.”
“Marco could be your man,” she says with a wink.
“It’s a bit too early for that sort of talk.”
I play with my meal and take another sip of beer.
“Anything wrong, honey?” Sam says. “Worried I’m poisoning you?”
I laugh. “No. If you wanted to kill someone, I reckon you’d be a gun kind of girl.”
“Do you now?”
“Just a shot in the dark.”
“Ha, ha. And what about you?” She studies me through narrowed eyes, moving her head from side to side slowly in an exaggerated gesture. “You’d like to do hand-to-hand combat. You’d want to do it the hard way.”
“Only if I knew I was going to win.”
Sam’s eyes are on me, watching my fork circle a mound of refried beans.
“Oh, come on, Sophie.”
I quickly shovel a big forkful of food into my mouth. But it doesn’t stop her.
“I know something’s up. Is it Marco?”
I finish chewing. “No. Everything’s fine. In fact, he paid me a visit and booked our next date.”
“Really?”
“He’s going to cook for me. At his place.”
“Really?” repeats Sam. “So things are going well.”
“Yeah. I think so. Like I said, it’s early days.” I smile. “But he seems to have a lot of attractive features.”
“I’ll say.”
“I’m not just talking about that.”
“No, I know. He’s a nice guy. Even if he is a ladies’ man.”
I draw a quick intake of breath and open my eyes wider.
“I’m joking. I’m joking,” she says. “Jeez, you are sweet on him.”
“Yep.” The truth is, I’ve been pushing Josh away for so long, and now I’ve done an about-face. I’m falling for him all right, and hard. I barely want to admit it to myself, let alone Sam.
We finish our first burrito and Sam dishes us both another one. We’re halfway through when she broaches the topic again.
“If it isn’t Marco, then what’s up?” she asks, taking a mouthful.
I take a deep breath, preparing myself. Sam leans in.
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding crazy. Totally crazy.”
“Just spit it out, girl. You’re amongst friends. Well, friend.”
I still hesitate. Do I really want to do this? Once I tell Sam, there’s no going back. But I need to get someone else’s opinion, and Sam is the only candidate. I don’t think I have a choice. I take the plunge.
“I’ve been seeing things. About cases.”
“What do you mean?”
I don’t respond. How do I say this?
Sam gives me a long hard look.
I stand up, move away from the table and stare into the distance. “It sounds crazy.” I turn around and take a breath. “You know Jean, from your D.C. case file?”
“Yes.” Sam puts her fork down and turns in her seat to face me.
“Remember I recognized her and told you I must have seen the file.”
Sam nods.
“I’ve never seen that case file before. Hunter never showed it to me, but I’ve seen her. Twice in fact.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a dream. A nightmare. And in it I saw Jean, dead, positioned just like she was at the crime scene.”
Sam doesn’t respond.
“And then there’s the latest victim—Susan,” I say.
“What about her?”
“In the dream I saw her walking to her car.”
Sam’s face wrinkles in confusion. “Susan was abducted in a parking lot, just like Teresa.” She stands up.
“Yes, I know. I saw her from the killer’s perspective.”
“Okay. Okay. Let’s think about this logically.” Sam sits on the sofa and rests her chin on her hand.
“There’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“The night Susan was killed, I witnessed her murder.”
“In a dream?” Sam seems unconvinced.
“Not quite. I was dropping off to sleep when it happened. It was after you left my place, at exactly five past midnight. I saw Susan being killed.”
“What do you mean saw?”
“It’s like seeing a series of still photos or watching a poor-quality video. Images of her flashed into my mind.” A tightness comes across my chest and I fight back the tears and panic.
Sam tries to absorb it all.
“Has this ever happened before? In Australia?”
“I often have bad dreams, but I usually don’t remember them.” But as I say it I’m taken back twenty-five years, to John. It had happened before. The week John disappeared I had several nightmares, but the worst one was on the night he was taken. It was so vivid, and when I woke up John was gone. The police decided he was a runaway, but I knew what had really happened to him. He was kidnapped and murdered. I’d seen his murder with my own eyes. I’d felt his killer’s emotions. I tried to tell the police, I tried to tell Mom and Dad, but no one believed me. After a few days, I doubted myself—why would I think and say something so horrible? It was just a nightmare. But then weeks passed. Months passed. And still no word from John. By then it was too late. Just over a year after he was taken, John’s body was found in the bush, sixty miles from Shepparton, where I grew up. Maybe if I’d made them believe me, I could have stopped it.
“Sophie?”
I wipe the tears from my cheek and turn around. “I used to get hunches, but everyone gets hunches.” I’m not ready to tell Sam about my brother. Not yet.
“Lots of police work is based on hunches,” Sam says. “But that’s not what we’re talking about?”
“Not this time.”
“Getting too involved?” She’s grasping at straws now.
“I wish it was that simple. But no matter how involved I get, how could I see these things? I thought it was my imagination until I saw Susan lying there in that flower bed.”
Sam nods, obviously bewildered by it all.
“Have you ever worked with a psychic?” I stumble over the forbidden word.
“Yes, a couple of times. They were helpful. Once, the woman actually saved a young girl who had been abducted.”
“Sam, I’ve been fighting this for days now, and it’s the only explanation.”
“Okay, so let’s assume you’re having premonitions.”
Another taboo word.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
Sam thinks before she speaks. “I don’t know much about this stuff, Soph, but I know you. I trust you.”
I smile, relieved.
“Have you had any more premonitions about the D.C. killer?” she asks.
“No, not since the other night, when Susan was murdered.”
Silence.
“I think we’d better keep these visions of yours between the two of us for the moment,” Sam says eventually. “Unless you want to tell Marco.”
“Are you crazy? That’d scare him off for sure!”
She laughs. “Possibly. What about Dr. Rosen?”
“I thought about her. But I don’t want this on my record. Especially when I don’t really know what’s going on yet.”
As the Bureau psychologist, Amanda would feel compelled to tell Rivers or Pike. She’d probably think I was crazy and pull me off active duty. Another burnout in the BAU.
“Okay, so we’ve agreed. We’ll keep it between the two of us.”
“I know it must sound weird.”
“Well, it’s certainly a little out there, but it does happen. So, you haven’t had any other visions?” She breaks the tension with a little too much emphasis on the word visions.
“No.”
I’m relieved to have a confidante, except that talking about it makes it sound even crazier than when I think about it in the confined space of my mind.
She stands up. “Come on. I’ve slaved over the stove and you’re going to let it go to waste.”
I laugh and we sit back down and finish our dinner. After we’ve cleared up she empties her briefcase onto the kitchen table and we spread out the D.C. photos.
“So Jean is the girl you saw dead?”
“Yes, but she had a strange marking on her thigh. Just below her hip and on the outside. A tattoo, I think. It looked Celtic.”
Sam picks up a photo of Jean, dead, and examines it closely. “I can’t see anything, but I’ll ask Flynn and Jones for a blowup. Her thighs are cut up pretty bad. It might be tough to see a tattoo.”
“He’s really gone overboard with the stabbing,” I say.
“Yes, but like we talked about at your place, it’s still controlled, rehearsed, rather than an overkill pattern.” Sam shuffles her profile to the top of the pile. “I’ve officially classified him as an organized offender.”
I nod. Organized offender rings true with other elements of the crime too. They tend to plan their attacks in detail, use restraints, personalize the victim, demand submission and transport the victim or body. Our guy did all these things. Perhaps the time of death was a moment of disorganized MO, but the killer was definitely in control of the abductions and murders. Unfortunately for us, organized types are also harder to catch—they tend to have high IQs.
“Any trophies?” I ask.
Serial killers usually take trophies of their kills so they can relive the murder over and over again. Just looking at the trophy gives them pleasure, in their sick way.
“Jean usually wore a bracelet, but it was never found, and Teresa used to wear a ring on her little finger.”
“It’ll all be evidence,” I say. The serial killer’s habitual trophy-taking usually forms part of the physical evidence against them. That’s partly how they got Milat’s conviction for the backpacker murders in Australia. The police found water bottles, backpacks, scarves and even a tent belonging to the victims in Milat’s attic. Pretty good evidence in a court of law. “When was Susan abducted?” I ask.
“Looks like three days before she was killed.”
“Susan for three days, Jean for five days and Teresa for eight days.”
Sam nods and picks up a photo of Jean.
“So…um…do you want to touch the photo? To hold it?”
I look at Sam quizzically, not understanding. Then it hits me—psychics like to touch things. It can trigger their visions.
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” I say awkwardly.
I take the photo and close my eyes, waiting for something, but I’m not sure what. I feel ridiculous. A smile plays around my lips.
Sam picks up on it and next thing I know she’s chanting. “Ommmmmm. Ommmmm.”
We both burst out laughing.
“This is ridiculous!” I snort in between laughs. I take a mouthful of beer and then almost send it across the room as another peal of laughter escapes from me. I put the photo down.
My near miss with the beer sets Sam off and she collapses onto the chair, laughing hard.
But the moment of release disappears quickly. I look into the eyes of Jean once again and a searing pain races through my eyes. I fall forward. Sam rushes to me and for a moment I see the shadowy figure of a man play across my field of vision. It’s the killer. But before I can make out any of his features the vision fades.
“God, honey, are you okay?”
“I think I saw him.”
“The killer?” She supports the underneath of my arm.
“Yes.” The pain in my head and eyes eases slightly.
“Could you make him out?”
“No. It was dark. Like it was nighttime or he was in a darkened room. I could only see a shadow. A lurking presence. But I know it was him.”
“You’re as white as a sheet. Do you feel all right?”
“I’ve got a headache. A bad one.”
“I’ll get you some Tylenol. Hold on.” Sam sits me down on her couch.
She returns a few moments later, pills and glass of water in hand. I gobble the pills. The pit of my stomach is filled with hatred, dread and fear. The hatred is his, the killer’s, but the dread and fear are mine. I can’t shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen. I think again of John and the nightmares I had all those years ago.
“Psychics often get very physical reactions when they see things,” Sam says.
I hope my physical and emotional symptoms are just part of the insight and that they’ll fade soon.
“Could you see where he was?”
“No. I was looking at the photo of Jean when it happened, so perhaps it was when he grabbed her.”
“In her apartment?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Could you tell if it was inside or outside?”
“No. I couldn’t make out anything except for his shape.”
“Well, that’s something. What was his shape like?”
“You think it was in proportion? To me?”
“Let’s assume so.”
“Okay.” I run with the idea. Height and weight are something at least. I stand up. “I’d say he was about three inches taller than me.” I hold my flat palm above my head. “I’m five-ten, so that makes him about six-one.”
“Okay. Was he skinny? Fat?” Sam scribbles on her notepad.
“He had a muscular build. Not fat, but broad.” I pause. “That’s it.”
Sam nods. “It’s something.”
“You reckon?”
“Well, if Flynn and Jones start interviewing a short, fat guy, we can steer them away.”
I laugh. “You should try stand-up.”
“I don’t like big audiences,” Sam says, but I can’t imagine it’s true.
“Do the cops have any suspects?”
“Not yet. They won’t even have anyone to run the profile against.”
“What about the note? Anything on that?”
“Nothing interesting yet. Marty’s got the guys in Questioned Documents on it, but the perp used a standard blue Bic ballpoint, the type you can pick up just about anywhere.”
“Paper?” I ask. But if the guy knew to use a run-of-the-mill pen, he probably did the same with the paper.
“Spirax notebook paper. And who knows how many of them have been sold in the U.S. in the past year.”
“Great. No prints, I take it?”
“Nothing. The note’s going to a handwriting expert for analysis tomorrow and they’ve got a forensic linguist looking at it too.”
“Maybe that’ll give us something.”
“They’re usually pretty good at pinpointing where the writer was raised, based on the dialect. And the handwriting expert will be able to tell us if he was trying to disguise his writing,” Sam says.
“Where he grew up could help narrow things down.”
“Especially if we cross-reference that with the VICAP info when it comes through.”
“Surely we’ll have to get some hits. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t look over the profile last night.”
“Don’t worry. You had other things on your mind.”
The thought of Josh eases my headache a little more. “Back to business?”
“You don’t look up to it, girl. I doubt you’d even be much good with Marco tonight.”
“Very funny. My headache’s going. Let’s sit for a couple of minutes and see how I feel.”
“Okay, but you’re still very pale.”
I rest my head on the top of the couch. I close my eyes for what feels like a minute, but when I open them Sam is nowhere in sight.
“Sam?” I get up from the couch and look at my watch. It’s 9:30 p.m., which means I’ve been asleep for nearly an hour.
“Ah, you’re awake,” Sam says, walking into the living room. She carries a half-full glass of water. “I was just watching TV in my room.”
“Sorry, I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“Don’t worry. How’s the head?”
“Yeah, it seems to be better. Do you want to get back to it?”
“Do you? I don’t want you feeling sick again, honey.”
“This is all so weird. I don’t know what to do.”
“Why don’t we go through the profile, and you can leave the photos for another time. Besides, maybe Flynn and Jones will have enough with the profile.”
“Sounds good. I don’t know if these visions are going to be productive anyway. So far all they’ve given me is tiny pieces of a much larger jigsaw.”
“I’d still keep them between you and me until you know exactly what you’re dealing with.”
“I don’t think I’ll add it to my résumé quite yet!”
“Sophie Anderson, Profiler and Psychic. I can see your business cards now.”
“Yeah, real good look.” I smile. “Okay, let’s go through this profile.”
Sam puts the printout on the table and we stand over it, ready to go through each element together.
Sam starts. “We’ve covered the age before. Caucasian.”
I nod. Killers tend to hunt within their own racial group. All three of our vics are Caucasian, so it’s a safe bet.
“And we’ve also talked about him being an organized offender. So the next item is occupation. Like we said the other night, a medical or scientific background, perhaps even nursing, is likely. All the nonfatal wounds were very carefully placed without being too deep. For instance, with this wound here—” she points to Jean’s upper arm “—we’ve got a vertical cut that missed her arteries by only a fraction of an inch. Any more to the left and that would have been a fatal wound. And this one here—” she points to a cut on Teresa’s hip “—another fraction of an inch deeper and he would have hit an artery and she would have bled out.”
“Sounds pretty precise,” I say.
“Exactly. If our guy hasn’t studied anatomy formally, he’s taken it upon himself to study it outside of his usual occupation.”
“Med student?”
“Potentially,” Sam says. “Might be something for Flynn and Jones to look into.”
I read from the next section of the profile. “Single, but sexually active.” It makes sense. “I think our guy has had girlfriends in the past, but the fact that he thinks of his victims as girlfriends indicates he’s single at the moment.”
Sam takes a swig of beer. “We can’t rule out the possibility that he’s picking these women up at bars or nightclubs then nabbing them later, after the first meeting, perhaps even after sexual contact.”
“He may have even been in Jean’s apartment. Invited up for a glass of wine.”
“But then someone would have seen him, surely.”
“Were the victims at the bars alone? Did their friends see them dancing with some guy before they disappeared?” I ask.
“Flynn and Jones haven’t turned up anything like that. No common males in their lives. Jean was a party girl, though.”
“Jean was his first in D.C. Maybe when he was stalking her she noticed him. Thought he was an interested guy. A suitor.”
“The boyfriend said she liked to play the field,” Sam says.
I run my hands across the photos. The victims. “The killer must have a face. Someone must have seen him.”
“Let’s say he’s a cop, he could get into a girl’s apartment that way, and probably get them in a car, spinning some story about a relative or friend in need. Jean may have been different. But perhaps she never met the guy before either. The glass could have been hers from the night before.”
“Yep, the evidence is vague for Jean. I like the cop angle. Maybe he’s met them before, maybe not. But he either is a cop or poses as one. That gets him the trust he needs to abduct them in the first place.”
We move to the next section of the profile.
“No kids,” Sam says.
“Agreed. Goes back to the girlfriend angle. So, his childhood.”
Sam continues. “He’s confident, overly confident, which is often a trait of an only child. He also keeps to himself, and that correlates with a single child or perhaps a child with much older siblings.”
“The menopause pregnancy?” I’ve heard of it happening. The woman thinks she’s starting menopause but then finds out she’s pregnant.
“Exactly. He may have felt unwanted, or in the shadow of much older, successful siblings. So he’s trying to prove himself. Show them what he’s capable of.” Sam moves on. “Given his knowledge of anatomy I’d say he’s smart, and this would have showed through in his grades at school.”
“Whether he got into med school or not, he studies hard.” I read the next point out aloud. “Kept to himself at school, just a few good friends.”
“I think at least in his youth he was socially awkward. That’s why he keeps the girls for so long, because he thinks he doesn’t make a good first impression.”
“Confident in killing, but not confident with women,” I say.
Sam nods hesitantly. “What do you think?”
I pause. “I like it. In some ways contradictory, but not really. Lots of intelligent guys are overconfident about their intellect and underconfident with women.”
“It ties in with the next two points here too.” She indicates the childhood section. “Awkward with women during his teens and the victims he goes for now reflect his taste in women.”
“What’s your line on the father?”
Sam takes a sip of water from her glass. “Two things. The way he controls the women, it’s about power, almost a discipline. Perhaps he grew up as the man in the house and took on a disciplinarian role and he likes to inflict that on others. Also, he treats these women as his girlfriends, yet he cuts them up. Like he’s punishing them. That could be about the discipline or it could be he saw that sort of relationship growing up.”
“The husband who beats his wife and then tells her how much he loves her.”
Sam nods. “Personality,” she says, moving on. “He must be well spoken and well groomed to fit into the places he went when stalking his victims, especially Teresa. She was a high flyer and he knew her routines. He was able to fit in, in her surroundings.”
“He’s one of the charming ones,” I say.
“The men women think are too good to be true.”
“And they are.”
“What about Marco, is he too good to be true?” Sam’s ready to take on my cynicism.
“Josh? At the moment he’s pretty good, but we’re in our ‘good behavior’ period.”
“They’re always so accommodating when they’ve only just got into your pants.”
I laugh.
“So, back to our guy,” Sam says. “No disabilities. He stalks his victims, and we’ve covered the relationship he has with his victims. Next is remorse, an emotion our guy doesn’t feel.”
A lot of serial killers don’t feel remorse and that’s a major indicator of a psychopath. But the way the bodies were found also shows us his lack of remorse. Generally, a killer who feels guilty about his crime will cover the body with something and close the eyes so the victim’s not staring at him. Psychologically, open eyes correspond with judgment to a guilty mind, so he closes her eyes. Our guy left all three girls in open areas with nothing covering their bodies. Their nakedness was on display and their eyes open. He wasn’t worried about them judging him because he felt no remorse, no guilt over their deaths.
“Agreed,” I say.
“Home life.”
“I think he’s got a roomie,” I say. “He’s shy, but not a complete loner. Not anymore at least. And he probably functions normally in social settings. His behavior also indicates he’s a thrill killer. Having a roommate on the scene would heighten the thrill for him because it’s more dangerous.”
“But he’s keeping these girls somewhere personal, like his home. Surely he couldn’t get away with that if he had a roommate.” Sam plays devil’s advocate. “Any feelings on this one?”
“You mean hunches or psychic feelings?”
“Anything will do.”
I shrug. “Maybe our guy rents out a basement? It’s got a bit more privacy.”
“Sounds risky.”
“All part of the challenge. He comes to D.C. Rapes and murders under our noses and under a roommate’s nose.”
Sam nods. “It would certainly raise the stakes.”
“Or if he takes them somewhere else, it might be somewhere that feels homey to him. Like an abandoned building in a suburb where he grew up.”
She moves on to the next area. “Van. Obviously he’s got a van or a similar-type vehicle if he’s transporting these girls from parking lots or their apartments to his place or some other location.”
“Yep, that’s a sure bet.”
“Intelligence and education level are largely based on the fact that he’s an organized offender and leaves no clues on the bodies for us.”
“They’re a given.” I read off the profile. “And the outward appearance we covered in personality. The guy’s blending in, so he looks pretty good.”
Sam sits down. “What do you think about his criminal history?”
“I think he’s been murdering for a while. Although it’s possible he’s just been rehearsing it. Playing it over in his mind. Maybe even seeing crime scenes in his day job, and now replicating the cleanest ones.”
“Yeah, I bet we could commit a pretty good crime,” Sam says, giving a half-laugh.
“We could throw the cops and profilers off, no worries.”
“The perfect crime.”
“But we’re forgetting DNA, and DNA doesn’t lie,” I add.
“We ain’t got any DNA on this guy yet.”
“He knows his stuff, all right.”
Sam stands up and looks at the last few items on the profile. “MO and signature we know. And the media stuff…pretty standard.” She pauses. “So, have you got anything you’d like to add to the profile? The missing something?”
I lean back in my chair. “I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Me neither,” Sam says.
“I’m sure that tattoo I saw on Jean’s leg is important. Important to us and important to the killer.”
“But we don’t know how.”
“No. Besides, we couldn’t put it in the profile. It’s based on my visions.”
We’re silent for about five minutes.
“Crap,” I say.
Sam stands up and walks to the window. Her eyes follow something on the road. “Patrol car.”
“I’m glad they’re keeping an eye on you.”
“Sensible, I guess.” She shivers. “I think we have to leave the profile as is. We don’t have time to go any further.”
“No, not with Rivers breathing down our necks.”
“Your neck, honey. Your neck.”
“Gee, thanks for reminding me.”
I’m frustrated we haven’t gotten any further, but I don’t think there’s anything more to get…not yet. “We can add to it on the sly later. Tuldoon can take the credit.”
“He won’t mind that a bit.”
“Maybe it’s the last victim who holds the secret. Hopefully Susan will tell us something that Jean and Teresa couldn’t.”