11
Back in Tucson the next morning, we pull into the police department, ready to review the files Evans sent to Stone. Waiting on Darren’s desk is a large pile of printouts. He whistles, a long slow whistle, measuring the stack against his torso—two piles, each easily reaching his belly button.
“She’s been busy,” I say.
“Stone or the killer?”
“Well, I was talking about the killer,” I reply, “but it applies to Stone too.”
Stone’s on the phone…again. She gives us a quick wink.
Darren hands me one of the piles. “I’ll go halves with you. Let’s set up in the project room down the hall.” He looks in the direction of the ladies bathroom. I take one pile and make my way down the corridor, with Darren hot on my heels. I manage to prop the heavy files up between my body and the wall and open the door with the hand that’s underneath the stack.
“I thought you said you’ve been working out,” Darren teases, pushing the door open. “I gave you the smaller pile, you know.”
“Yeah, right.”
He switches the light on and releases his pile of files with a thud on the table. “So we’re definitely looking for a woman. Hard to believe.”
“Yes. It’s—”
“Kind of exciting?”
I unload my files next to Darren’s. “Well, yeah. I’ve never gone after a female killer. You?”
“Nope. This is a first.”
We both sit down and take a file from the top of the stack. I wonder if a photo of the brunette from my dream is sitting in a file on someone’s desk. What I dreamt could have happened years ago, yesterday, or maybe it’s about to happen. Or maybe it was just a nightmare, a figment of my subconscious. No, as much as I hate to admit it, she is, or was, real. Somehow I just know.
Before I’ve even flipped open the first folder, Darren stands up. “I’ll just go get us some notepads.” He disappears and I study the stack of files. It could take us days to go through them properly. The vacation is well and truly over. This case is too important to work on it part-time anymore.
Darren returns with a small arsenal of stationery: two large note-pads, two four-color pens, highlighters, Post-it Notes, two pencils and even a ruler.
Stone follows him. “You gotta give the man some cred. He knows his supplies.”
Darren lets the stationery spill onto the desk.
Stone closes the door and takes a seat. “Where are we at?”
“Files.” Darren nods toward the two piles. “What about you, find anything in Malcolm’s client list?”
“Not yet. I’m waiting on a few return calls.” She holds up her cell phone.
Darren takes about ten files from the top of his batch and tosses them onto the table in front of Stone. “In that case, have fun.”
She flips open the first one. “Cool.” She only reads for a few seconds before she reaches into her inside pocket and takes out some sheets of typed paper. “And this is the profile Agent Evans from VICAP e-mailed through.”
The Bureau has been tracking this woman for a while and one of the profilers from my unit had already drafted a profile for the VICAP consultants and the relevant cops, but it was before my time.
“I’m going to start with the case files, then the profile.” I hand it to Darren who starts reading it immediately. I prefer to establish my own picture of the killer first, then see what another profiler has come up with. It can be dangerous to start making psychological assumptions before you’ve got all the information, all the facts. If you start doing that, you can get sidetracked, forcing your mind down a certain path. Then you can become too attached to one theory, one image of the killer.
I look back at my first file, the first kill, Cameron Michaels. I always like to spend time on a killer’s first victim. I look at the photos of a naked man handcuffed to a bed. Soon, I’m buried in her world, the killer’s world.
By 5:00 p.m. we’ve completed an initial pass of the files, horrified that this woman has been at large for so long, taking so many lives.
“How has she gotten away with it all these years?” Stone asks incredulously.
Darren leans back in his chair. “Beats me. She’s certainly racked up the numbers.”
“And you definitely think this is the same woman?” Stone looks at me.
“The black rose detail wasn’t released to the press or families. She’s made changes, some unusual changes, but the manual strangulation with small hands, handcuffs, it’s a match.”
“But the heart shape isn’t,” Stone says.
Darren plays devil’s advocate too. “And we’ve still got a woman carrying all two-hundred and fifteen pounds of Malcolm to the campus dump site.”
“The love heart is new. Unusual,” I concede. “And as for dumping the body, like Stone said, it wasn’t far from the road to the dump site. Difficult, yes. Impossible, no.”
We move on.
“My stack had some of the older ones.” Darren pats the top file. “We’ve got DNA in three of the cases from the nineties, but no sample to match it against.”
“The DNA evidence will be good for a conviction when we track her down,” I say.
“Now that’s confidence.” Stone points at me.
I smile. “Hope is probably a better word. I’m stubborn. I like to get my man…or woman.”
“Don’t we all.” Darren stands up to stretch. “But some perps get away.”
I hide my reaction by moving my clenched fists under the table. There’s one that got away that I don’t like to think about, the man who kidnapped and murdered my brother when I was eight. The guy was never caught. “But maybe one of these days something new will surface, something to catch them out,” I manage to say.
Darren thinks I’m talking about this case, the VICAP files, but I’m thinking more about my brother’s killer, and my never-ending hope that something new will surface in his case. Then I’d be on the first plane home.
Every year since I became a cop and got access to his case file I go over it. But nothing new ever strikes me. Maybe I can use my psychic abilities to crack the case. Until now, it’s never occurred to me to try.
“Let’s get these babies in order,” Darren says, bringing me back to the case at hand.
All in all we’ve got twenty murders that VICAP attributes to the one killer, this femme fatale. Malcolm makes twenty-one.
Once we rearrange the files into chronological order, the killer’s base usually becomes obvious. But in this case, the pattern seems to be random. We’ve got murders in California, Texas, Nevada and Colorado, but the locations chop and change between the four states with no obvious pattern. “She moves around a bit,” I say.
Stone leans forward. “Maybe she moves for work.” She flicks through the spines of the files with a short fingernail. “Twenty-one murders over the past fifteen years. I wonder if she’s planning on retiring any time soon.”
“She’s been around for a while, but hardly retirement age,” I say.
Stone’s hand rests on the top file. “How old do you think we’re talking here?”
I take a breath and do the math in my head. “Let’s say she started in her late teens or early twenties, like most serial killers do—that would place her in her mid-thirties.”
“She sure doesn’t have a problem attracting good-looking young men.”
Stone’s right. It’s one thing the victims all have in common. They tend to be attractive, well-built and in their late teens or early twenties.
Darren shrugs. “Men are suckers for sex.”
Stone crosses her arms. “Men. Your dicks sure do get you into trouble.” She takes a file off the pile and flicks through it randomly. “So, where to next?”
Darren takes the file from her. “You’re going home, Stone.”
She glances at her watch. “It’s only six.”
Darren glares at her.
“I do my best work after six.”
“What time were you here till last night?”
“Late,” Stone admits.
“So, vamoose.” Darren waves the file in a shooing motion.
Stone stands up, somewhat reluctantly. “All right already. I’m going.” She loiters in the same spot. “What about you guys? You should call it a night, too.”
Darren smiles. “Goodnight, Stone.”
She stays still for a few seconds before heading off.
Darren puts the file back on the table. “She’s a good kid.”
“She’s hardly a kid, Darren. What is she, twenty-six?”
“Something like that.” Darren walks over to the project room’s whiteboard and flips it around so he’s got a fresh board. He starts scribbling notes, talking as he writes.
“So, 1992 to now.” He puts an arrow on the end of 1992 to indicate continuing action. “Twenty-one…so she’s averaging, like one and a quarter every year.” He writes Victim type on the whiteboard. He looks at me, but starts the process off himself. “In their late teens and early twenties. Across races.”
“Yes, I noticed that. Our girl’s politically correct.”
Darren closes his eyes, trying to recall the case details. “Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic.”
“And don’t forget the Swede who was out here on holiday.”
“How could I forget that poor bastard? Not much of a vacation.”
“No.” According to the file, he’d come out for a one-month trip in July 1998 and was found dead two days before he was due to fly back to Stockholm. Sometimes this job really makes me believe in fate.
Darren adds the different ethnic backgrounds to the list. “All the victims were last sighted in bars, but in most cases no one can remember seeing them with a specific woman.” Darren writes Bars on the board.
“Now that’s the strange part. Surely she must have picked them up in those bars. Spent time with them before they moved on to a private location.”
“You’d think so. For the ones when the vic was sighted with a woman on the night of his death, the descriptions of that woman vary significantly.”
I flip through the files, scanning some of the descriptions. “People can change their appearance. If she wears wigs, for example.”
“But the height varies too.”
“Heels,” I say. “The height only varies by a few inches. That could easily be the difference between flats and high heels. Then on top of that, factor in different people’s estimates. A person’s actually five-eight, but I guess five-seven and you guess five-nine.”
“True.” Darren writes Disguises on the board with a dash and Wigs next to it. Next he writes up Heels. “So her normal MO is basically that she picks them up, takes them to a motel, handcuffs them, has sex with them and strangles them during the act.”
I nod.
Darren writes MO on the very right-hand side of the board, and catches up with our conversation, scribbling down the details.
I look at the whiteboard. “The real question is, why was he dumped at a college instead of found in some motel room? That discrepancy concerns me.”
“It is a major departure from her MO.” Darren taps the marker against the whiteboard.
I stand up and stretch. “Actually, it’s stranger than that. The motel room and the way she leaves them, still naked and handcuffed, that’s more than MO, that’s signature stuff. Not to mention the rose. She has to see them like that, lifeless, handcuffed to the bed. To her it represents ultimate power over them and their sexuality. Perhaps male sexuality in general.” I pause. “Our guy doesn’t fit. He was in the open, and naked, but why not in a motel room?”
We’re both silent, unable to come up with an explanation.
“And don’t forget the love heart,” Darren says. “Another anomaly.”
Again, a depressing silence.
Darren glances at the wall clock. “Maybe we should call it a day, too.”
It’s not exactly late, but I am wrecked. “I don’t feel like we’ve got very far.”
Darren sits down again and leans back, hands behind his head. “What about the profile, then? You want to talk about that?”
“Sure.” I search for the folded pages on the table among the chaos and eventually find them. I read through the pages but find my mind wandering—a sign of my tiredness.
Sex: | Female |
Age: | Chronological: 30-35 Emotional age: 25-30 |
Race: | Difficult to determine. Shows preference for African-American victims so perhaps African-American? |
Type of offender: | Organized—well-planned murders, MO and signature remain consistent over time and crime scenes. Highly intelligent. Low risk—murder seems to occur under pretence or during a one-night stand. |
Occupation/employment: | Killer is hunting across all socioeconomic groups, making it difficult to pin down her own status, but the fact that she easily attracts white-collar guys indicates she’s probably white collar herself. Travels with her work. Sales a strong possibility. |
Marital status: | Single but very sexually active. If she travels with her job it’s possible she’s married and the men she has sex with are affairs, one-night stands on the road. |
Dependants: | No—under-developed sense of responsibility make it unlikely she’s a mother. |
Childhood: | Probably the youngest child—acting on sex and power drives rather than having a developed sense of responsibility. Indicates an older sibling looked out for her. But that older sibling was absent in later life—rift or maybe even death. Very smart, so probably good at school. Sexually active from an early age and saw sex as power. This is her motivation—power over men. May have been sexually abused and wants to turn that around—her victims also represent her childhood at-tacker. Victims also give her attention—something she craves. This may be due to emotional abuse growing up or a sense of a sibling being the favored child, particularly in her father’s eyes. |
Personality: | Charming, extroverted, flirtatious. |
Disabilities: | None. |
Interaction with victims: | Victims are victims of opportunity. No stalking prior to night of murder, but some stalking on the night of at-tack. MO indicates she chooses vulnerable victims at bars—those who are on the lookout for sex and/or who are intoxicated. |
Remorse: | No—victims left out in the open, still handcuffed on the motel-room bed. She doesn’t respect the men she chooses and possibly has no respect for any man. She wants others to see the men in their final stages of degradation. They paid for their sexual desires with their lives. |
Home life: | Lives alone if single, or possibly with partner. Lives in small house. |
Car: | Sports car? Enjoys a “racy” life and this could be part of her image. She also doesn’t need a more practical vehicle for transporting bodies, because she leaves them in the motel room. |
Intelligence: | High IQ. |
Education level: | Not clear. She may be able to pick up educated men through her looks and the promise of sex rather than them seeing her as an equal. Victims cross all education levels—from not finishing high school to college-educated. |
Outward appearance: | Well-presented and groomed. Overtly sexual in her clothes and appearance. |
Criminal background: | Long history of murder. No adult criminal record but probably a juvenile record. |
Modus operandi (MO): | Watches the victim at a bar. Uses disguises while she’s targeting a victim. Picks up the victim either inside the bar or outside—less witnesses. Takes the victim back to a motel room with promise of sex. Checks in under a false name. |
Signature: | Handcuffs. Strangulation during sex. Leaving body in the open, handcuffed and still naked. Black rose draped across bed. |
Post-offensive behavior: | Posing elements of the signature—rose. Leaves the motel as soon as he’s been killed. She likes to see the victims in their shame, but doesn’t need to stay in the room with them. |
Media tactics: | Don’t think this killer will follow the media. She’s not overtly egotistical and doesn’t need to relive the kill through the media’s reports. Will only show minimal interest in coverage of her crimes. |
“Well, what do you think?” Darren’s now standing and twisting from side to side.
“Sore back?” I ask.
“A little.”
I know how he feels. My shoulders and lower back are both tender—not surprising given the amount of time I’ve spent on airplanes in the past few days.
“The profile’s good. But we may need to make amendments for Malcolm and why she’s changed her MO and signature.” I start a yawn andstand uptostretch. Afterabout aminute I force myself back into the seat. “Let’s go through this now.” There are a few areas I’d like to revise, the first is race. I lean over and point to it on the profile. “The original profiler suggested maybe African-American, but I’m not so sure given the cross-section of her victims.” In general, male serial killers hunt within their own race: if the victims are all black women, you’re looking for a black man; if the victims are Caucasian, the perp usually is, too. But we don’t have many stats on female killers. The victims fall across different races but there are more African-American men than any others. But does that mean she’s black? Lots of white women are attracted to African-American men.
Darren’s with me. “It is unusual. I guess not all the serial-killer rules apply, given she’s a woman?” He turns the last part into an open-ended question.
“We’re not in totally uncharted territory, but we don’t have detailed road maps either.”
The analogy seems to make sense to Darren. “So we can’t assume she’s black.”
“Definitely not.” I pause. “And some of the standard victim rules don’t apply either. These guys—” I point to the files“—are all high risk.”
Darren raises an eyebrow. “But—”
I put my hand up. “I know, high-risk victims are traditionally women who are easier to target. Prostitutes, or younger girls who just aren’t streetwise. But the fact that the guys she targets want sex and are under the influence…that makes them high-risk when a predator like our girl is around.”
Darren slowly nods. “Okay, I can see where you’re going with this. We’ve got to think backward because she’s a woman.”
“Right. The factors that make a woman a high-risk victim are different than what makes a man a high-risk victim.” I let out a small breath. “But the crimes themselves are low-risk. She’s got her motel setup, she uses disguises, in most bars she’d have lots of men to choose from, and once she gets them back to the motel room, she handcuffs them. Her risk of exposure is low, as long as her disguises are good.”
“Which they appear to be, given our different descriptions.”
I move back to the profile and the next area is type of offender. Based on the way a crime is committed, we usually classify perps as either disorganized or organized offenders. In our case the crimes are well planned, the murders are controlled to an extent, restraints are used and the killer’s obviously smart. All add up to an organized offender. I don’t go through this with Darren—he’s worked a few serials and he’s seen profiles before. He knows the drill.
I put my finger on the next part of the profile—employment. “This part’s a little blurry.”
Darren reads it through. “She’s hunting across different socioeconomic groups.” He pauses. “A builder, a barman, a sales exec, a doctor, a computer geek, an escort…”
He rattles off only six of the twenty-one victims in terms of occupation, but it demonstrates the issue. Like the race, it’s difficult to cross-match her against her victim type. Male serial killers tend to target specific types of women.
Darren reads the last part of the category. “I like this. She travels for her work. So maybe she hasn’t lived in the states she’s killed in. She’s just gone there on business.”
“It’s a strong possibility.”
“Sales would fit perfectly,” Darren says.
“It fits in with other parts of the profile as well. She’s an extrovert, well-groomed, and she can fit in anywhere.”
“You agree with the troubled childhood?” Darren moves on.
“Yes. She likes to be in total control of her victims sexually, and also physically, through restraints. This is to make up for not having control in her earlier life, during a traumatic sexual event. She’s also overtly sexual, based on descriptions of her, and that’s a trait we often see when women are sexually abused. They think of sexuality as something they have to offer, something that all men want. And often their self-esteem is so low they think it’s the only thing they have to offer. In our girl’s case, she uses sex to entrap them.”
“Her motivation is power over men?” Darren reads from the profile.
“Yes. She overpowers them sexually and physically. She has no respect for men, and in some ways she sees her murders as justice. The men had it coming…the hunter became the hunted. She likes to reverse the roles.”
He nods and then points to the next section. “The profiler described her as charming, extroverted and flirtatious, which also ties in well with the sales occupation.”
“True. Sales people usually know how to talk the talk.”
We’re momentarily silent until Darren stands up and looks over the whiteboard. “Sheleaves her victims in theopen, foreveryone tofind.”
I nod. “Which indicates she feels no shame or remorse over her actions.”
“She sounds like a real man hater.”
“She certainly has no respect for men. She uses them to sexually gratify herself, and part of that gratification includes strangling them. She sees a man handcuffed to a bed, killed by a woman he hardly knew but wanted to sleep with, as pathetic. And she likes to leave them like that—naked and still handcuffed.”
“Nice. I’m never even gonna think about having a one-night stand.” His eyes widen slightly. “Not that I would anyway…I mean one-night stands aren’t my thing.”
“Nice save,” I say sarcastically, even though I believe him.
He reddens and diverts my attention back to the case. “She mates and then kills them. Like that spider…what’s it called?”
“Black widow. Other insects do it too. Like the praying mantis.”
Silence again. We’re both exhausted.
“Forensics indicates she uses a condom, but takes it with her,” Darren says. “But at least we got fluids at three of the earlier crime scenes.”
“Yes, before she got really careful.” I pause. “She takes them back to the motel room, a little bit of foreplay and the handcuffs.”
“Which the men probably think is kinky.”
“Yep. And next thing they know they’re dead.” I stand up as well, too sore to sit in the seat any longer. “High IQ. Fits the organized offender and the relatively clean crime scenes.” Most organized offenders are one hundred and twenty plus, and serial killers are often even higher.
Darren nods.
“I’d like to review the education level. The victims cross all education levels, so it’s difficult to know if she’s hunting within her own level, below or above.”
“She has a level of sophistication though,” Darren says. “To have been doing this for so many years.”
“Go on.”
“She’s at least high-school educated.”
“Okay, so let’s say she’s middle-of-the-road, which means she’s probably at least high-school and maybe university educated.” I mark up the slight change to the profile.
“Sounds good.” Darren looks over my shoulder and takes us to criminal history. “What sort of juvenile record?”
“I think she may have got into some trouble when she was younger—shoplifting or a DUI charge.”
“The abuse?”
“Yeah. She’s pretty screwed up, obviously, but I think in her adolescence she had no control over her behavior. She’s bound to be on the system somewhere. Probably with a big brother or big sister bailing her out.” The last three elements on the profile are MO, signature and media tactics. “MO and signature, we’ve already covered.”
“Yup, pretty obvious.”
I sit down again. “The media’s a little different because of her gender. She’s not egotistical like many organized male serial killers. She doesn’t need to read about her handiwork in the paper or hear it on the news. She kills for her own pleasure and each kill satisfies her until she chooses her next victim. I don’t think we’ll be able to use the media on this one.”
“Okay.” Silence engulfs us again.
I’m filled with thoughts of the killer, impressions that have nothing to do with psychology, nothing to do with profiling. Imagination or psychic abilities? I see our girl, woman, as having long, slightly wavy black hair, a slim yet curvaceous figure—and the profile tells me she’d play on that—and fine facial features with full lips. I envisage her as a woman who exudes sex without trying too hard and yet also has a sophistication about her—perhaps an Angelina Jolie meets Andy McDowell. Fact or fantasy?
Another thing I can feel is her anger. Her predatory nature bubbles through me and I don’t like it one little bit.
Darren stands behind my chair and shakes the backrest slightly. “Come on, we really do need to get some sleep.”
His hands brush against my shoulders and I’m instantly back in the real world, my world.
AmericanPsycho has entered the room.
NeverCaught: Finally! So, how was Cindy?
AmericanPsycho: Mighty fine.
NeverCaught: Did you get to experience that flexibility of hers?
AmericanPsycho: Yes. I got her drunk on the chopper ride and she jumped me as soon as we got in the house. Had her legs up around her head.
NeverCaught: Really? You lucky ****. So you got to do her more than once?
AmericanPsycho: Yup. Once before she knew our little secret and a few times after. Best of both worlds.
NeverCaught: You lucky **ing ******. I love it when I’m ***ing them and they realize. I like watching the ***es’ faces change from desire to fear.
AmericanPsycho: Here’s a pic of Cindy.
NeverCaught: This rocks.
DialM: So the body’s been dumped?
AmericanPsycho: Yes. And with the second body, the press will declare the birth of a new serial killer.
NeverCaught: **ing excellent.