by Meg Gardiner
In the center of the table sat a still image from the Benedict Canyon surveillance video. The high-gain ghost.
Emmerich came in, phone to his ear. He ended the call.
“You look glazed,” he said. “Talk.”
“It’s too much, and not enough. It’s literally all over the map and doesn’t fit together. She gestured at the photos. “The crime scene drawings and messages are so obviously symbolic, and I’m not versed enough.”
He lifted a photo. legion. Took a breath as if ready to comment, then set it down. “You aren’t alone in that. Get a consult.”
The BAU regularly reached outside the unit for expertise. In particular, it consulted with forensic psychiatrists, most often those at Walter Reed.
Emmerich scrolled through his phone contacts. “Dr. Penn is on vacation, but one of his colleagues should be available.”
“I have a contact,” Caitlin said. “A forensic psychiatrist who works with the San Francisco Police Department. She’s on faculty at UC San Francisco Medical School.”
UCSF was the top medical school in the country. Emmerich nodded approvingly.
“She profiled the Temescal bomber for ATF. Sean knows her,” Caitlin said.
“Make sure this won’t bust my budget and call her.” Emmerich rapped the table with his knuckles and headed toward Detective Solis’ desk.
An hour later, Caitlin connected a video call. On her screen, a woman appeared.
“Dr. Beckett,” Caitlin said.
“Call me Jo. How can I assist the Bureau, Special Agent Hendrix?”
17
“Ineed to interpret the iconography at the Midnight Man crime scenes,” Caitlin said. “The drawings and messages. And the UNSUB’s behavior during the most recent attack.”
“It’s brutal,” Jo Beckett said.
Beckett was in her midthirties, with alert brown eyes and a wide mouth beneath a cataract of brown curls. She wore a gold Coptic cross on a chain around her neck. Her gaze was direct, if carefully neutral. Caitlin felt, briefly, like she was being x-rayed. She guessed most people felt that way when they were face-to-face with a psychiatrist.
And she guessed that the psychiatrist knew it. But Jo Beckett, MD, was used to working with a wide spectrum of people. Prisoners. Violent psychotics. Cops. She conducted psychological autopsies for the SFPD and was a member of San Francisco County’s Mobile Crisis Response Team.
“Special Agent Rawlins said to give everything to you, and straight,” Beckett said.
Caitlin smiled. Jo’s eyes widened just enough that Caitlin realized the doctor had spotted something personal in her response.
She shrugged. Yeah. Jo’s expression remained guarded but turned lively at the edges.
The video link gave Caitlin a good view of Jo’s San Francisco office. A bookshelf of medical texts. A photo of a man in a flight suit. Maybe Latino, definitely hot, standing beside a Pave Hawk helicopter. Caitlin recognized Moffett Field. He was with the 129th Rescue Wing of the California Air National Guard. Pilot or pararescueman.
Caitlin adjusted her screen and grew serious. “The Arcadia murders.”
Jo’s gaze flicked to her computer. Caitlin had sent her a long email, police reports, and crime scene photos.
“You want an explanation for why the killer dug the bullets out of his victims’ bodies?” Jo said.
“To start. Beyond the obvious possibility that he was taking forensic countermeasures.”
“You’re asking why he shot Maya Cathcart in the face.”
“To put it bluntly.”
“How deep do you want me to go?”
“Tunnel to the core.”
Jo paused, pensive. “Then let’s talk about eyes.”
Caitlin had a pen in her hand. She meant to write notes. Something in Beckett’s tone left her hand hanging.
“Let’s start with the eyes he’s drawn on his palms and on the wall of the baby’s room. It doesn’t indicate a psychotic break,” Jo said.
“If he was in the grip of a psychosis, we probably would have apprehended him by now.”
“Precisely.”
Killers suffering from delusions or hallucinations often didn’t try to evade detection. Sometimes they didn’t even understand that they were committing homicide. A need to escape didn’t factor into their thinking. Those were in the killers the FBI formerly termed “disorganized.”
“Does he mean it as a message?” Caitlin said.
“Possibly. The Evil Eye is a world-spanning motif. My Egyptian grandfather hung a nazar in his front window to ward it off.” Jo raised a hand. “I’m not saying the UNSUB is from a Mediterranean background. Cultural cross-pollination has embedded the concept in our brains.”
“Right.”
“Archetypally, the eye represents consciousness and knowledge,” Jo said. “But it also symbolizes the vagina.”
Caitlin set down the pen. She didn’t need to write that down. She’d remember.
She said, “I sense that the killer is attempting to create his own mythology—to present himself as an otherworldly nightmare.”
“I suspect the killer thinks he’s drawing eyes as a power move, to terrify people. He may be telling himself it’s theater. A horror movie,” Jo said. “But nothing is ever free from context and meaning. The unconscious, the shadow, are relentlessly present.”
“You think this all goes back to his mother?” Caitlin said. “Something that classic?”
“Of course. But that’s an insufficient explanation. And not helpful for your needs. Which I presume are to profile the killer, narrow the suspect pool, and create a plan for apprehending and interrogating him.”
“That’s the hat trick.”
Jo held up an eight-by-ten color photo: the baby’s room at the Cathcart home in Arcadia. Eyes, eyes, eyes in profusion on the wall behind her crib.
“Drawing eyes,” Jo said, “suggests that the person feels they’re being watched.”
“In this case, aren’t the eyes a message? To the victims and the world? You’re being watched.”
“Yes. But the reason the UNSUB sends that message is because that’s his subjective experience.” She examined the photo. “People who draw eyes are often observant and vigilant. The blood …” She inhaled. “It’s of course significant. Life’s blood. Death. Menstrual blood. But the color itself. Red represents power.”
Caitlin felt a frisson. “Power and control may be what drives him.”
“I think you’re right.” Jo continued studying the photo. “Red can also indicate anger or a need to impose authority. Blood, war, and rage.”
Some things were so obvious that they didn’t need to be spelled out. Caitlin thought of Maya Cathcart, lying in the hallway outside the nursery.
“Do you know what color the eyes were drawn in on the killer’s palms?” Jo said.
“No. The room was lit only by moonlight. The children said the eyes were ‘dark.’ Black, maybe gray, but it’s impossible to know.”
“Black and gray can both indicate strength and stability,” Jo said. “Of course, Western culture associates black with darkness, evil, and death. It’s the color of shadow.”
Caitlin had thought they were getting maybe a little too deep, but the repeated mention of shadow stirred something in her. Not a thought so much as a cold feeling.
“Everything about this offender is shadow,” she said.
Jo paused and regarded Caitlin carefully through the video link.
Caitlin leaned back. “He’s a negative. Slippery. I’m not too cut-and-dried to say it spooks me. And I pay attention to that feeling.”
“Paying attention to that kind of intuition can keep you alive.”
Jo’s expression suggested that she knew this from firsthand experience.
The psychiatrist mirrored Caitlin and leaned back.
She picked up a coffee mug. A diamond ring gleamed on her left hand. Caitlin’s eyes were again drawn to the framed photo of the man in the pararescue uniform.
“Congratulations,” Caitlin said.
Jo’s smile was instant and genuine. “You feds are quick on the uptake.”
Caitlin smiled warmly in return.
“One final point on the symbolism of the drawings,” Jo said. “In English, there’s the homophone. Eye equals I.”
“He’s the one who’s watching.”
“Part of him is.” Jo set down the mug. “Eyes obsess and frighten one group psychologically—paranoids.”
Caitlin sat up straight.
“What terrifies a paranoid isn’t that another person sees him. It’s that for one moment, contact with another human eye forces him to see himself.”
Caitlin gripped the pen.
“Paranoid people project their self-hatred and aggression onto others. When you hold the gaze of a paranoid, that hatred and aggression are reflected back at their true source. There’s a moment of self-realization,” Jo said. “You want to know why the killer gouged out Maya Cathcart’s eyes? It was his way of grabbing the mirror away from the victim.”
“Jesus.”
They were quiet for a moment. Caitlin ran a hand through her hair. She felt uneasy. Excited.
“Paranoids may fix their eyes relentlessly on you,” Jo said. “In every social interaction, these people are watching for criticism. Expecting it. Observing every aspect of the environment for threats. It’s known as the ‘paranoid stare.’”
“Do you think he has paranoid personality disorder?”
“I don’t have enough evidence to determine that,” Jo said. “Staring, vigilance, even hypervigilance don’t on their own indicate paranoia. Watchfulness isn’t necessarily pathological. It can be an adaptive survival response. In police officers, for example.”
“I knew you were going to get to that.”
“And corrections officers, prosecuting attorneys, and mental health care providers.”
“Really.”
Jo tipped her screen down so Caitlin could see her outfit. Besides a black crew-neck sweater, she wore khaki combats and Doc Martens.
“On rounds in the secure ward, I see schizophrenic gang members. They may think I’m the queen of the lizard people, and they’re resourceful at fashioning drinking straws into shivs. I dress to run.”
Caitlin was starting to like this shrink.
“How would paranoia manifest in social situations?” she said.
“In a pervasive mistrust of others and a profoundly cynical view of the world. These people tend to be cold, aloof, and distant. Argumentative. Few if any close friends. Guarded and secretive. Sarcastic. Hostile.”
“And they stare.”
“Sometimes.” Jo held up a hand as if to slow Caitlin down. “You know the phrase ‘shifty eyes.’ It’s a characteristic pattern of eye movement in people with paranoid personality organization.”
“That’s useful. Very.” Caitlin thought. “Shifty eyes. Is that neurological? Brain chemistry?”
Jo shook her head. “Often it indicates a combination of fear and shame.”
“I doubt this killer experiences much of either.”
“Not all serial killers are stone-cold psychopaths. Everybody is unique. And this guy sounds singular.”
“Exceptionally.”
“There can be significant crossover between paranoia and psychopathy.” Jo was silent for a few seconds. “Both paranoid people and psychopaths are concerned with issues of power, and they tend to act out. But paranoid individuals can love. Maybe ambivalently—but they’re capable of deep attachment,” Jo said. “Though if this killer is psychopathic, he may attach only to children and animals.”
Caitlin propped her elbows on the table. “Paranoids deal with their negative qualities by disavowing and projecting them. Correct? The rejected qualities then feel like external threats.”
“Yes. A number of serial killers have murdered their victims out of the conviction that the victims were trying to murder them. It’s destructive projection run wild,” Jo said. “And because they see the sources of their suffering as coming from outside, disturbed paranoids are often more dangerous to others than to themselves. They’re much less suicidal than equally disturbed depressives.” She paused a beat. “But they sometimes kill themselves to preempt someone else from destroying them. Even when the looming ‘destruction’ is purely imaginary.”
“Good Christ.”
A dozen thoughts ran through Caitlin’s mind. How would paranoia affect an attempt to arrest the Midnight Man? If he was on the run or, worse, cornered, would paranoia influence his endgame? Did it mean that, unlike other serial killers, he would have an endgame, even if it wasn’t consciously planned out?
“Paranoid people often have angry, threatening qualities, but they also suffer from fear and shame,” Jo said. “Bringing me back to ‘shifty eyes.’ It’s a downward-left eye movement. And it’s a compromise. A horizontal-left glance indicates pure fear. A straight-down look signifies undiluted shame.”
“All paranoids?” Caitlin said.
“Even the most grandiose paranoid lives with the terror that others are out to harm him.” Jo sobered. “It explains the Midnight Man’s behavior at the Cathcart home.” She paused again, choosing her words. “The fear paranoid people feel is annihilation anxiety. The terror of being destroyed. It’s horrendous dread.”
Caitlin listened, processing.
“As for shame, paranoid people can deny and project their feelings so powerfully that any sense of shame becomes unreachable to them. Instead, they spend all their energy on thwarting people they believe want to shame and humiliate them.”
“But when the mirror forces them to see the truth …”
“Finding himself at the end of a gun barrel forced the UNSUB to experience the ultimate shame—being powerless and humiliated and in total fear of annihilation. Confronting that fear and shame was unbearable.”
“So he acted out by shooting Maya Cathcart. Taking her eyes. Destroying the mirror.”
“Yes,” Jo said.
Caitlin thought for a dark minute. “Is he preemptively annihilating all his victims?”
“As children, paranoids often feel overpowered and humiliated by a domineering parent. They come to expect mistreatment. As adults, instead of enduring that anxiety, they’ll lash out.”
“I’ll hit you before you hit me,” Caitlin said.
“Absolutely.” Jo took a thoughtful moment. “I should make special mention of malignant paranoia. These people are sadistic. Intimidating, callous, and vengeful.”
“Sounds like our guy.”
“Paranoids try to enhance their self-esteem by exerting power against authorities and people they think are important. Feeling triumphant gives them a sense of both safety and righteousness,” Jo said.
“Safety. I’m convinced that’s an issue for the Midnight Man. He wants people to feel unsafe.”
“That’s part of malignant paranoia. These people are capriciously tyrannical,” Jo said. “They need to challenge and defeat the persecutory parent.”
Caitlin leaned back. “You’re working up to something.”
“The entire script of these murders.” Jo had become increasingly grave. “Every move the killer makes, and every person he interacts with when he invades a home and commits these crimes, plays a symbolic role. There’s the mother. She represents child-rearing, nurturance, homemaking. The father—he signifies law and order, and authority.”
“And the children …”
“The children and himself,” Jo said. “The son. That’s a psychological role too. Young, irresponsible. He’s committing some of society’s most taboo acts. Matricide and patricide. But he’s not killing his own parents. He’s repeatedly
carrying out the psychodrama with surrogates.”
In safe neighborhoods.
“And I think there’s symbolism in the theater with the children,” Jo said. “They represent his undifferentiated self.”
Caitlin tried to get her head around it. “Does this mean that because he’s paranoid, he’s unlikely to harm the kids? Because he’s less likely to commit suicide?”
“No,” Jo said. “It means that when he finally sees himself reflected in the eyes of a child, he may preemptively annihilate them too.”
The tinsel on the flat-screen television shivered as people walked around the war room. It set Caitlin’s nerves crawling.
“One other thing.” Jo scrolled through the information Caitlin had sent. “There’s a detail in the Cathcart crime scene report. The killer sliced out and removed a square of hallway carpet.” She paused. “The victim confronted him with the shotgun. It likely terrified him.”
Fear. Caitlin saw it now. “He wet himself.”
“He literally had the piss scared out of him. He took the evidence to hide his humiliation.”
“So he has a weakness.”
Jo’s voice lowered, and her face grew somber. “That’s not a weakness. It’s a trigger. If anybody fights back, his fear enrages him. He’ll escalate his violence.”
18
As the clock headed toward midnight, the Sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the McDonald’s in East San Gabriel. The roads had quieted—temporarily. The witching hour was approaching. The deputy figured he had a brief window of time to caffeinate and get wide-eyed and ready for late-night lunacy.
The four-lane avenue was unexceptional, lined with car dealerships, chain restaurants, and strip malls where Christmas lights hung inside store windows. The McDonald’s offered him a warm, clown-colored embrace. He cruised a circuit in the parking lot, checking the rear of the building. A couple of cars were parked by the back fence, unoccupied, probably belonging to employees. Dumpster, telephone poles, darkness beyond the fence, a residential street, hedges, trees. Everything placid. He coasted to the front of the lot and parked facing the street.
