Aberration

by Lisa Regan

  All eyes were on TK. He pointed to the profile. “This is what we know. We’re looking for a Caucasian male. Based on the high level of sophistication we see in these crimes—the stalking, the lack of forced entry, the lack of physical evidence—we believe our UNSUB is over thirty-five.”

  “Between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five,” I said, moving to stand beside TK.

  TK continued, “He’ll be college educated. He is not someone who draws a great deal of attention to himself, but he is high-functioning in social situations. He has a job that requires a lot of traveling. He may be self-employed. He probably has a little bit of money socked away, but you won’t know it from his house or the car he drives. Again, this is not someone who is going to go out of his way to draw attention to himself.”

  I continued where TK left off, “He is no stranger to crime. He has a juvenile record. As an adult, his crimes are mostly white collar like identity theft or embezzlement. He has no criminal record as an adult. He may have killed before, but he has not been caught. He came from a dysfunctional home. It’s likely that he or someone close to him was abused as a child. He has a history of clinical depression. He was probably bullied as a child. As an adult, he is a bit of a control freak. He is meticulous and obsessive. His house, car and person will always be neat, clean and well kept. But he has a wild side. He is walking around with a lot of pent-up rage. He tries to keep it under control because it is messy and unpredictable.”

  “What about his relationships?” Edward Umstead, the detective from Ardmore, Pennsylvania asked.

  “Excellent question,” I said. “Although he blends well in social situations, he is a loner. He keeps to himself. He has a lot of acquaintances but no close associates, no good friends—no one he lets into his world. He doesn’t trust people.

  “Our UNSUB is someone who prides himself on his keen sense of fairness. In his mind, injustice is everywhere. Small things bother him. Things you and I would normally dismiss will stick in the UNSUB’s head and eat away at him. He sees what he is doing as curing injustices. This also gives him an unreasonably high standard of conduct to which he holds himself and others.”

  “That standard will make it difficult for him to maintain relationships with women,” TK added. “Like everyone else, women inevitably disappoint him. Also, based on his mobility and the amount of time he travels, it is unlikely that he is married, has children or is involved in any kind of committed relationship.”

  “Also, based on his mobility and his need to blend in, we believe he lives in a major city or a suburb of a major city,” I said.

  Emmet Lane, the detective from Trenton, New Jersey asked, “So you think these are revenge killings?”

  “Absolutely,” TK replied.

  I nodded. “But our killer is seeking revenge for things that maybe only he recognizes. It’s entirely possible that a victim just spoke to him the wrong way or did something that, to normal people, would not warrant harassing them or poisoning them or killing them.”

  For the first time since I had met her, Ellen Noll, the detective from Denver, Colorado who was there for the Georgette Paul murder, spoke. “Aren’t these crimes a little sophisticated for revenge killings?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “Most revenge killings are impulsive. Even the ones that are planned are not very well thought out. Usually the killer hasn’t planned past the actual killing. Obviously, our UNSUB has planned everything very meticulously. He is extremely cautious. He stalks these victims for weeks—maybe even months—before he strikes. Also, with at least three of the victims, we can confirm that they were probably beaten postmortem with a small aluminum baseball bat which the UNSUB brought to the scene and took with him when he left. Again, this level of sophistication and planning points to someone who has committed crimes before.”

  This time Remy spoke. “So basically this guy made a list of everyone who ever pissed him off and now he’s going around killing them?”

  TK scratched his head. “Something like that.”

  “We realize that the staging is unusual for revenge killings,” I said. “Not only does our UNSUB leave the words ‘for you’ at each crime scene, but he stages the killings themselves to look far more savage than they are.”

  TK went on, “Our UNSUB does not enjoy killing.”

  “Except when he loses control,” Isaac piped up.

  I nodded. “I’ll get to that. He doesn’t enjoy killing, but he wants it to look like he does, which is why with the early victims most of the trauma was inflicted postmortem. He started out asphyxiating the victims. With Martin Sorenson, he used poison. These are less violent ways to kill—almost merciful compared to stabbing or beating someone to death,” I said. “Even the fact that he takes the ‘weapon’ with him when he leaves is unusual for revenge killings. With most revenge killings the UNSUB leaves the weapon at the scene. In many ways, this UNSUB is an aberration. Even for a serial killer he is a bit of an aberration. Most serials are sexual sadists, but in these crimes there are no sexual components that we can see.”

  “These crimes are primarily about humiliating his victims,” I went on. “The killing is almost an afterthought. The real satisfaction for our killer is derived from what happens before the killing—depriving Georgette Paul, making Martin Sorenson eat garbage, emasculating Boyd Henderson, harassing Megan Wilkins for weeks before he killed her. Whatever wrongs the UNSUB thinks the victims committed against him are closely related to the methods of humiliation he chooses for them before killing them.”

  “Recently something in his life has changed. Something in his life has gone wrong,” TK said. “A recent stressor—maybe losing his job—has caused him to start coming apart. He is rapidly losing control as we see from the Wilkins and Bittler scenes.”

  “He’s making mistakes,” I said. “As you guys know, we have a partial print from Megan Wilkins’ home.”

  Remy sighed. “A partial print that we can’t match to anyone.”

  “Not to anyone in AFIS,” Isaac interjected. “But it does match a print we found in the Bittlers’ kitchen this morning.”

  There was a small collective gasp. “Yeah,” I said, echoing my earlier statement to TK, “but that doesn’t do us any good if we can’t match the prints to a suspect.”

  “But if this guy has a juvenile record, wouldn’t his prints be on file?” Remy asked.

  “Not necessarily,” I replied. “Most juvenile records are sealed and expunged.”

  “What about Michael Bittler? He’s still alive, right?” Lane asked.

  Isaac shrugged. “It doesn’t look good.”

  TK filled the room in on what he had told me earlier—that for all intents and purposes, Michael Bittler was a vegetable.

  “What about the signature?” Remy asked.

  TK and I exchanged glances. We still could not agree on the meaning of the UNSUB’s bizarre calling card. We reiterated the theories we had shared with Talia early on in the case—that it was possible the UNSUB was murdering people because of wrongs they’d committed against someone he loved who may or may not be involved in the crimes; that perhaps this person was dead and the message was intended to follow the loved one into the afterlife.

  “What if he’s leaving the words for the families—the ‘for you’ is for the families who find them?” Umstead suggested.

  TK shook his head. “It’s a great theory except that Paul and Henderson lived alone and Sorenson’s family had left him weeks before the murder.”

  “The ‘for you’ could be meant for law enforcement,” I said. “If he is so concerned with righting wrongs, curing injustice, then he may be saying to law enforcement, ‘here, look, I did what you couldn’t do—I gave this person what they deserved.’”

  “Look,” Talia said as two agents brought in boxes containing evidence from the Bittler investigation. Isaac sprung
up from his seat to help them. There were only three boxes, and the men set them near the head of the table where I stood. “Certainly the signature is significant, and all the suggestions I’ve heard are feasible. I also think the profile is good, but this time I don’t think those things are going to help us very much. We need to focus on the victims. If we can find the thing that connects them all, we can find the killer.”

  There were nods all around the room, followed by heads dipping to check notes and files. At this point in the case, no piece of information was too trivial, too small or too mundane. If the victim preferred mustard over catsup or slept on the right side of the bed instead of the left, we wanted to know. If they’d ever cheated on a test, rolled through a stop sign or forgotten to wash their hands after using the restroom, we wanted to know.

  A charley horse caused me to pace back and forth as Isaac opened the boxes the agents had just brought in. I busied myself beside him, pulling documents out.

  “So what do we have in terms of connections?” TK asked. He turned to the board and picked up a dry erase marker. He uncapped it and looked at the eager faces in the room.

  “Georgette Paul used to live in Philadelphia, and Martin Sorenson taught there,” Umstead said.

  TK drew a line from Georgette Paul’s name to Martin Sorenson’s and wrote Philadelphia over it.

  “Michael Bittler has protested at clinics in Philadelphia and in Trenton,” Umstead said.

  TK drew one line from Bittler to Paul and another from Bittler to Henderson. “He has criminal complaints against him in both cities,” Lane added.

  Isaac slid a stack of papers toward me. “This guy has criminal complaints against him in four states,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s going to help us connect him to the killer.”

  I picked up a stack of papers from one of the Bittler boxes and started thumbing through them.

  “The killer may be one of the people who had a complaint against Bittler,” I mused.

  I was looking at citations and criminal complaints that had been lodged against Michael Bittler in New Jersey and Pennsylvania over the last thirty years. There were dozens of them. I felt a tingle at the nape of my neck. My fingertips burned.

  “The Bittler investigation is complicated and there is a lot of work to be done on it yet,” TK said. “Let’s just focus on connecting the victims for now.”

  “Georgette Paul was a manager at LJ’s Books in Philadelphia twelve years ago. Boyd Henderson has been a regular customer there since they opened in 1981,” Lane said.

  A split second before I found it, I realized I had been looking for it. An involuntary gasp escaped my lips, drawing stares from around the room. TK’s marker froze poised over Georgette Paul’s name—ready to make a line from her name to Boyd Henderson’s.

  I met his eyes. I managed what I hoped was a wan but apologetic smile and hopped a little on my left foot. “Charley horse,” I said, my voice shaky. “Sorry.”

  I made a show of rubbing my left calf and excused myself, hobbling awkwardly out of the room with the pages from Bittler’s file clutched to my chest.

  I felt lightheaded. When I heard myself breathing, I realized I must be hyperventilating. I slipped into my office and pulled the door closed behind me. The pages scattered onto the floor as the tremble in my hands grew worse. I dropped to my knees and sifted madly through them, trying to locate the complaint, hoping I’d been seeing things earlier in the conference room when I’d come across it.

  I wasn’t hallucinating. It wasn’t my imagination.

  The criminal complaint was seventeen years old and it had been issued in the City of Philadelphia. The complainant was Kassidy Bishop.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WYATT

  October 19th

  Evette Gerst’s one-story, Cape Cod-style home sat on the beach of an inlet, the dunes threatening to swallow up her porch a little more each day. As he walked along the beach, Wyatt could not fathom how the house continued to stand built so close to the water. The water itself gave off a stagnant smell that reminded him of raw fish and sewage. It was, however, perfectly in keeping with the ill-named Garden State.

  When Wyatt was in eighth grade, Evette Gerst was in her forties. Now she was sixty three. She had stopped teaching at Sunderlin’s middle school three years earlier and retired to Cape May, New Jersey. Several months before, Wyatt had tracked her down and spent some time watching her, trying to learn as much about her life as he could. Her husband continued to work in Sunderlin, driving six hours to spend the weekends with his wife. Their son lived between the two in Philadelphia. He too only visited on the weekends.

  Wyatt had only to catch the woman on a week day to ensure total access and absolute privacy. The next closest residence to Evette Gerst was a half-mile down the road. First thing Monday morning, he drove to Cape May. He was still shaken from the scene at the Bittlers’ home. He had lost time again, although this time it was mere minutes instead of hours. One second he was looking into Deborah Bittler’s flat brown eyes, and the next he was standing over her battered body, a piece of one of the kitchen chairs in his hand. He’d done his best to wipe down the kitchen and gotten the hell out of there.

  He hadn’t been able to sleep in spite of the two OxyContins he’d taken when he got home. At five a.m. he left for Cape May. It was near noon when he arrived. He parked his car two blocks away and walked to Evette Gerst’s house. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and fishing vest. He carried a fishing pole which he had purchased solely for disguising himself on this particular trip, and his tackle box held nothing but his Smith & Wesson. Inside his vest, against his heart, was the photo of Kassidy Bishop.

  Gerst sat in a rocking chair on her front porch which, luckily for Wyatt, faced the deserted beach. Her hair had turned white. She kept it cut short, almost like a buzz cut. Unlike most women her age, it was not lacquered over in hairspray after having been rolled in curlers and teased. She had never been particularly feminine, and even in her forties when Wyatt had known her, he could not understand what her husband found attractive about her.

  Gerst saw Wyatt walking across the beach and waggled a long, arthritic finger. “You can’t fish here,” she said.

  He turned toward her as if he hadn’t known she was there. He smiled and waved. Walked closer. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you say something?”

  Her stony expression showed a faint flicker of annoyance. “I said you can’t fish here.”

  Wyatt looked toward the south end of the beach and shook his head. “Actually I’m not looking to fish. I’m done for the day. Didn’t catch anything all morning. I was looking for my son and nephew. They were with me and we got separated. Maybe you saw them on the beach?”

  Her brow wrinkled. She looked down the beach in the direction Wyatt had just looked, as if she might see the two imaginary figures. “No,” she said. “I haven’t seen anyone. Been here all morning.”

  Wyatt scratched his head beneath his cap and looked worried. “You sure? They’re 14 and 15. About this tall—” he motioned to his shoulder. “They’re both skinny. Brown hair. My son was wearing jeans—those black flies bite something awful.”

  Gerst nodded, and in that moment, Wyatt knew he had her. It was the mention of the flies that authenticated his story. He’d been making it up as he went along, waiting for the second where she went from skeptical to compliant. “I honestly haven’t seen them or anyone on this beach all morning,” she repeated.

  Wyatt looked around again as if the two fictional boys might suddenly come walking along. He made a show of crinkling his face, scratching his head again. Then he sighed. “My car is about a mile that way,” he motioned to the north side of the beach. “I gave the boys my cell phone. Could I use your phone to call them? Maybe they can meet me at the car. I’d really appreciate it.”

  The hint of a smile played on
the corner of Gerst’s mouth. She stood slowly, her joints popping. “Come on in,” she said as she went into the house. Wyatt followed her. She didn’t bother to look back, so she didn’t notice him close and lock her front door. He followed her through the living room and dining room into her kitchen, surveying the house for anything unusual or any signs that someone else was either there or en route. There was nothing.

  Nothing but this lonely old woman, her shoulders beginning to round, betraying the first hint of a dowager’s hump. As they entered the kitchen she said, “Where are you from?”

  She was focused on the phone, so she didn’t notice him check the lock on her back door. Wyatt set his tackle box on her kitchen table. “Sunderlin,” he said. “Pennsylvania.”

  He saw a little rise in her shoulders, a straightening of her spine. “Really?” she said. “That’s where I’m from.”

  She turned and handed him the phone. He took it. “Small world,” he said. He opened the tackle box. He placed Gerst’s phone inside and picked up his gun.

  He pointed it at her. She looked more puzzled than surprised or even scared. She stared at him as if waiting for instructions so he said, “Sit down.”

  He pulled out a chair and she sat in it, never taking her eyes off him. She studied him without the slightest hint of fear. Her scrutiny made his hands sweat. He wanted to put the gun down and wipe his hands on his pants, but he didn’t. Finally she said, “You’re one of my students.”

  “I was one of your students,” he corrected.

  He was surprised, but he wondered if she truly recognized him. If she did, she was not letting on. Then she said, “I don’t remember you. It may take a minute.”

  Surely it would come back to her. His face had been plastered all over the local and national news for many months when he was in high school. She would remember that.