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‘This guy is brazen,’ was my thought as we talked to the survivors of the first attack who hadn’t been home when he came to kill them. The majority of serial killers avoid taking male victims, simply because males are more likely to fight back. The first house had four males; two adults and two older teen males. This house had one adult male and one older teen male. I wasn’t sure if this was intentional or accidental. Until we entered the 21st century, females were born at a rate of about 52 percent and males only 48 percent. 2001 was the first year that males had been born with more frequency than females, and it was a trend that was continuing. As of 2020, male babies accounted for 54 percent of births and females for just 46 percent. There were studies being done on it, as never in recorded history had the proportion of males born every year been higher than females. I felt this might help account for the rise in mass shootings, as males were way more likely than females to commit mass murder. Unfortunately, the steady rise in serial killers pre-dated the birth phenomenon.
I walked the house, looking for anything that might have the potential to be a clue. Taking classes in investigative techniques, logical reasoning, and forensic sciences were meant to make me more of a detective. To some degree they were working, but deep down, I still mostly just thought like a serial killer. This killer’s endgame was where I kept getting hung up. I would not have been shocked if he’d just walked into Daniels’ Security and opened fire. This, though, this was psychological warfare on Nadine directly while putting all her customers at risk.
I stopped in the hallway I’d been walking down. Recently, I’d read the Bill Hodges trilogy by Stephen King. The good guys had referred to the bad guy a few times as the Suicide King. He enjoyed killing, but derived his most intense pleasure from knowing that he’d driven someone to kill themselves. And that was the point of psychological warfare, although if he thought he could drive Nadine to suicide, he didn’t know her. She felt morally responsible for these deaths, but not emotionally responsible, and her life partner was a psychopath. Even if she did start feeling emotionally responsible, his lack of empathy wouldn’t allow him to let her beat herself up too much over it. There was also the issue of Nadine usually being eyeball deep in mob stuff, and the mob did bad things to good people all the time just to make a point. The two situations were surprisingly similar, giving Nadine even more strength to battle against feeling responsible to the point where she might have a breakdown or kill herself.
I resumed my walk and turned at the end of the hallway. I saw nothing different walking down the hallway a second time than I had the first time. If not suicide or a breakdown, what other reasons were there to wage psychological warfare against someone? One’s own amusement was the only thing that came to mind. The majority of psychopaths played mind games just to amuse themselves. Malachi was a bit of a master at it. However, as far as I knew, Malachi hadn’t taken to slaughtering entire families just to keep himself entertained.
No matter how I thought about it, the answer still had to lie with Nadine. This was still a personal attack on her as well as an attack on Daniels’ Security. No matter how much I wanted to just dismiss it as being Russian mob or cartel-related, I couldn’t. It was true neither were concerned about collateral damage, but there was always a financial or territorial gain to be had from such a bloody campaign. Getting back at Nadine, who was practically untouchable, wasn’t enough motivation for the Russian Mob or the Juarez Cartel.
“Well?” Lucas asked as I joined him and Ivan in the SUV.
“Pretend for just a moment these houses are protected by Cain Security and that I run it,” I said in response.
“You’ve caught the fancy of a serial killer. He either wants your undivided attention because you are always busy trying to find the next gruesome killer or he wants to dominate and conquer you,” Lucas responded.
“Right.” I nodded. “Nadine isn’t the serial killer magnet I am, but what if for this one time, she is? What if these attacks are happening for the same reason they would happen if I were in her position? It’s the only thing that makes sense. Somehow, some way, Nadine crossed paths with this serial killer and she caught his fancy. He was building up slowly trying to get her notice and instead she circled the wagons, becoming even more unobtainable. With the object of his infatuation guarded and safe, he has to do something more drastic, something more violent, something bloodier to ensure he has her undivided attention.”
“You make it sound like he’s in love with her,” Ivan said.
“In a way, he is.” He wants Nadine, and Daniels’ Security stands between them. So he attacks both. If he can crumble Daniels’ Security, he can get to his real obsession, Nadine.”
“Uh, there’s Zeke,” Ivan pointed out.
“Not for him, for him Zeke is part of Daniels’ Security and if he brings it down, Zeke dies or Zeke leaves.” Lucas picked up my train of thought.
“Except Zeke really does love my sister, not her company.”
“You and I know that,” Lucas said. “But in our killer’s mind the idea that Zeke really loves Nadine is impossible, so he ignores it as a possibility.”
“He’s a stalker, then,” Ivan said.
“To some degree. We use love as the word because there isn’t a word for it, but it isn’t going to be love as you know it. In this case, it’s obsession and possession. Think abusive boyfriend or husband love, not hand-holding, going to the movies, sending chocolates and flowers kind of love.”
“For someone without many emotions, you describe them well,” Ivan said.
“Only the dysfunctional ones,” I said.
“My money’s on Malachi,” Ivan said.
“Malachi’s already possessed your sister in the biblical sense, and he is well aware that Zeke loves your sister and not her company. It will be someone psychologically similar to Malachi who has never dated, or at least never had sex with, Nadine and who is only mildly high functioning. He’s going to display low impulse control and problems managing his rage. He’s not going to be in any of those files. He won’t have threatened her. He might have sent her bad poetry or nude pics or porn, but not threats,” I said.
“My sister has never mentioned getting nude pics of anyone,” Ivan said.
“Whether she’s mentioned it or not, she’s gotten them. She’s a public figure. I have no clue why people think they should send nudes to public figures, but they do. I get a handful a month. Thankfully, someone opens all handwritten correspondence sent to me, so I don’t normally see them myself. They get catalogued in a database at the SCTU.”
“We all get them; men and women,” Lucas added. “I get a couple a month and even though it’s known that I’m gay, women still send me nudes saying they can change me.”
“I don’t have that problem,” Ivan said.
“You’re a detective in a police station; you are rather anonymous. I’m willing to share the nudes I get with you, though, if you are feeling really left out.” Lucas smiled at him.
“I’m good,” Ivan responded. “Then why did he try to kill her with anthrax and blowfish poison?” he asked after we’d ridden in silence for a short time.
“Did he really, though? That is the real question. She runs a security company. There were procedures in place to scan all the incoming mail; surely he knew that and expected it to be caught before it reached her desk. In the case of the tetrodotoxin, he was wrong, and it could have ended very badly. But after that, things were tightened up and the anthrax never had a chance of reaching her. I would almost bet a donut he expected the tetrodotoxin to end up in Zeke’s hands. Wasn’t it in a ‘Missing You’ card?”
“It was a card, but I don’t know what kind,” Ivan said.
“I will ask her,” I said. “Of course, given your sister, the first attempt might have been accidental, and he decided to run with it afterward and kept trying.”
“Why?” Ivan asked.
“Why did Mark David Chapman murder John Lennon?”
“Fame,” Lucas said.
“Kill Nadine and get famous.” I nodded.
“But Nadine isn’t famous like John Lennon. She isn’t even famous like you,” Ivan said.
“Forty years ago, I would have agreed,” I said. “But the world has changed a great deal in that time. Nadine stands up to bullies; abusers and mobsters, and recently she’s started to stand against the cartels. Certain types of people notice that stuff and they are usually the kind of people that don’t leave dead bodies.”
“I still can’t imagine anyone trying to kill my sister simply to get famous,” Ivan told me, turning in the seat a little to glance at me.
“Do you know why two serial killers showed up at the door of my brother-in-law’s house?” I countered.
“No, that information was never released.”
“That’s the thing, there was no information to release. The killers didn’t know why they’d done it either. They had just read the names in the papers and decided to go check it out,” I told him. “Two different serial killers felt compelled to go kill people I’m not close to just because. They couldn’t even claim they’d done it to hurt me, because they knew it wouldn’t. Their entire reason was ‘because’. Nadine is a strong female unwilling to back down from a fight and she makes the papers once in a while. She’s rich, pretty, and bad to the bone, why does someone need a good reason to do this to her? Why can’t the answer be ’just because’?”
“I can’t track someone who is killing ‘just because’,” Ivan said.
“That’s because those are the types of killers we track,” Lucas said. “We can drive ourselves nuts looking for a motive, but we may never find one that we would consider a good reason to kill a bunch of families.”
“Man, I hate serial killers!” Ivan said.
“We all do.” I agreed.