The 7th Victim kv-1

by Alan Jacobson

  “He used weapons of opportunity. Those knives,” Dietrich Hutchings said. He waved at the screen with his thick-framed reading glasses. “They’re the vic’s, you said.”

  “I know that points to disorganization, but I’m thinking something else.” Typically, disorganized offenders did not bring weapons with them; they used common objects found in the victim’s own house. “Cause of death appears to be asphyxiation, just like the others. So the knives aren’t opportunistic weapons,” Vail explained. “The knife wounds are postmortem—making them part of his ritual, not his MO. The fact that he knows most women have a set of steak knives in their kitchen, which means he doesn’t have to risk hauling knives with him, indicates organization. Not disorganization.”

  There was quiet for a moment before Art Rooney spoke up. Rooney had a crew cut and a military politeness and formality to him. He had once called the Quantico Marine Base home. “So we’re adjusting our profile to indicate a mixture of organization and disorganization.”

  Vail hesitated. “I haven’t had much time to digest this. At this point, I’d have to say yes. If not almost completely organized.”

  “Did the vic have defensive wounds?” Rooney’s slow, Southern demeanor seemed to be out of sync with the rest of the profilers’ urgent tones.

  “None. Which again suggests this guy is planning his approach better, possibly using guile and disguise to comfort his vics before he takes them out. Definitely organized.”

  Rooney frowned and his eyes again found the screen. “But the mess, the blood. . . .”

  Vail respected Rooney’s profiling abilities and understood his point: typically, a crime scene like Melanie Hoffman’s indicated a disorganized offender, one of lower intelligence who did less planning. Their attacks tended to be blitzlike, creating more blood. Vail paged through the slides to the murals. “I think we’re looking at a series of paintings here. I’m having prints of these sent over to BSU for analysis. There might be some deep-seated message in here. I’ve also asked for them to be examined by an expert in Impressionist art, in case the offender had art training.”

  “An artiste. That’s a new one,” Frank Del Monaco said, his round, saggy face contorting into a smirk. He glanced at a few of his colleagues, who shared the ridicule. “But I can’t disagree. He certainly left . . . an impression.”

  Laughter erupted just before the conference room door opened and a long male shadow spilled into the room. Thomas Gifford walked in and observed the levity; a few of the agents were still guffawing. Gifford then looked at Vail, whose stern face indicated she was not sharing the joke.

  Vail locked eyes with Del Monaco. “I don’t want to miss anything, Frank. Thinking out of the box is supposed to be a strength here.”

  Gifford marched to Vail’s side and stood in front of the screen. The room became silent. The blood mural covered his dark suit and face with a red pall as he spoke. “Just a heads-up. I got word late yesterday that Senator Eleanor Linwood has requested—or more like told—Fairfax PD’s Chief Thurston to add her lead security detail agent to the Dead Eyes Task Force. His name is Chase Hancock. Ring a bell to anyone?”

  Frank Del Monaco spoke. “The asshole who sued the Bureau because he didn’t get one of our seats.”

  “That’s the one,” Gifford said. “Now let me warn you people. This guy is trouble. But the police chief is doing the senator a favor. Some backroom political maneuvering. She wants to look tough on crime in an election year. That democrat, Redmond, is breathing down her throat in the early polls and she thinks she can use Dead Eyes to boost her approval rating.”

  “So we get dragged into shoveling their political bullshit,” van Owen said.

  “We’re thirty miles from DC,” Gifford said. “They’ve got a list of shit shovelers there dating back two hundred years.”

  Rooney coughed a deep, raspy gurgling, then cleared his throat and asked, “Any chance we can do an end run around this? I’ve known assholes with more brains than this Hancock chump.”

  “Easiest way to be rid of him is to draw up the best goddamn profile you’ve ever done. Give the dicks a write-up that’s right on the money, something they can run with. Otherwise, stay out of Hancock’s way. That’s how we play it. Do your jobs, and let him do his. If he gets to be a problem, let me know and I’ll handle it.”

  “Let him hang himself,” Vail said.

  “Exactly.” Gifford dipped his chin in her direction, handing the discussion back to Vail, and then took a seat in the back of the room.

  Vail hit the next slide, a wide-angle view of the exterior of the house. “Bledsoe is checking into Melanie Hoffman’s past and present accounting firms. It’s possible whoever did her might have met her through the workplace. Co-workers, clients, support staff, everyone’s being looked at. There’s also an ex-husband. Marriage was annulled three years ago.”

  She hit the remote a few more times, showing the photos of what was once a beautiful young woman. Again and again slides flicked across the screen, the latest one being a close-up of Melanie’s head and trunk.

  “This is his fourth victim.” Vail said it as if they should feel shame for not having helped catch the offender before he’d taken another young life.

  “You mean third. This is his third vic,” Del Monaco said. “That last one wasn’t the same guy.”

  “You know my thoughts on that.” And indeed he did. Everyone knew her opinion, because a year ago, when Dead Eyes had last struck, she made her opinion well-known.

  “What does Bledsoe think?”

  Vail glared at Del Monaco. “He’s operating under the same assumption.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What’s your problem, Frank?”

  “All we have with that other vic is a very loose connection to Dead Eyes. Vic was killed and disemboweled. That’s it. No wrapping of the intestines around the thigh, no stabbing of the eyes, no severing of the hand, almost no other signature evidence. We’ve seen scenes like that a hundred times before. Nothing links the vic, or the offender, to Dead Eyes.”

  Vail scanned the faces in the room. No one seemed to be disagreeing with Del Monaco. If anything, their expressions seemed to put the onus on her to prove his opinion wrong. But her brain was foggy from the rotten night’s sleep and she didn’t feel like getting into it with him. She tried to focus. Before her brain had the sense to back off, her mouth was moving. “True, the eyes weren’t stabbed. So what?”

  “So what?” Del Monaco looked around the room, as if to garner support for his consternation. Since most gazes remained on Vail, he turned his attention back to her. “So, Karen, the signature is all wrong. Just about all the behaviors are missing. You’ve got some parallel aspects between the killings but there’s no linkage.”

  “We’ve been through all this before,” another profiler said.

  “Copycat,” Hutchings said. “That’s all it was, if you could even call it that.”

  Vail was shaking her head in disagreement. “You’re all missing the point. True, there are things the offender didn’t do with this victim, but I believe it’s the same guy. I mean, just look at the crime scene.”

  “We looked, a year ago,” Rooney said. His voice was even more scratchy now. “There’s no convincing linkage there.”

  “Art, there were only a few defensive wounds, and there was a lot of blood.” She stopped, then realized she should review the photos from the scene, in case the offender had left the same murals. If she recalled, there was no blood at all on the walls. If that was correct, it would do nothing to support her linkage theory.

  “Were there any Impressionist blood murals?” Del Monaco asked.

  “I’ll have to check—”

  “And what about food? Did he eat his usual peanut butter and cream cheese ketchup sandwich at the scene, postmortem?”

  “No.”

  “And the incapacitating blow?” Del Monaco was flipping pages as he spoke.

  “Disabling skull wound. Same as vics one and two—
”

  “You can’t say that, Karen.” This from Rooney, whose eyes were fixed on a particular document. “You can’t say it was the same. Vics one and two were hit from behind, the other one from the side.”

  “So she suddenly realized what was happening and turned her head at the last second.”

  “When you turn your head to duck, you throw your hands up. It would’ve broken a few fingers. Hell, even a nail or two.” Rooney held up the file. “There were no such defensive wounds.”

  There was quiet. Vail felt as if she’d been cross-examined and the defense attorney had just made a case-breaking point. But even as she tried to concentrate on a reply, she felt Gifford’s stare boring into her, disrupting her concentration.

  She knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t the same way she knew what Robby Hernandez was thinking. She knew what to expect because she’d already gone toe to toe with Gifford about linkage of this victim to the Dead Eyes killer.

  With his arms folded across his wide chest, it was as if Gifford wanted Vail to put her foot in her mouth. And unfortunately, she was about to accommodate him.

  “Look at the facts, Karen,” Del Monaco said. It was as if he had suddenly realized Gifford was still in the room, and was now playing to him. “Just about none of the behaviors were present in the third scene that were present in the first two. Think about it logically. It’s a different guy.”

  Telling her to think about it logically was like saying she was being irrational. At least, that’s the way she saw it. But she didn’t want to blow it all out of proportion and claim he’d said that because she was a woman. It pissed her off regardless. “I believe the offender was interrupted before he had a chance to finish what he’d started. That’s why the crime scene looked different.” Admitting the crime scene looked different threw water on her fire, killed her entire argument. Such major variations in crime scenes often meant a different killer was involved. This wasn’t lost on Gifford.

  “The crime scene did look different, didn’t it, Agent Vail?”

  Gifford was leaning back, an attorney asking a hostile witness a damaging question to which he knew the answer.

  Vail wondered how much of this was fallout from their prior altercation in the library. “Because the offender was interrupted,” she said. “Otherwise, we’d be seeing the same ritualistic behavior we’ve seen in his other crime scenes.”

  “That’s assuming it’s the same offender.”

  She clenched her jaw. They were breaking all the rules of what the session was about. It was supposed to be a free-thinking exchange of ideas, not an attack.

  “Pretty damn clear,” Del Monaco said. “We have no reason to think it’s the same guy.”

  Several other agents nodded their heads, and like grains of sand sliding through her fingers, she felt control slipping away.

  “We had this debate a year or so ago, right?” Gifford asked. “Until we have convincing evidence to think otherwise, we need to put this to rest. It’s time to move on.”

  Vail set the remote down and flipped her file folder shut. “That’s all I have.” She glanced over her shoulder at the image of a blood mural spilling over the screen’s edge, the indelible picture of Melanie Hoffman’s defaced torso embedded in her mind. She faced her colleagues, who were reclining in their seats, looking at her. “Thanks for all your input.”

  She gathered her belongings and headed out the door.

  ten

  He had another burst of inspiration and found himself running to the keyboard. He sat pecking away at the keys, the words flying onto the document as if being spray painted onto the screen.

  “Where the hell are you, you little runt? Come here and play with me!”

  I cover my ears and close my eyes, even though it’s dark in here. So dark, I’m sometimes scared. But I’m safe. I can do anything I want in here, and he can’t stop me. I can stay here for hours and hours. He never wonders where I am unless he wants me. As long as I don’t answer him, he thinks I’m outside, hiding somewhere on the ranch. He knows he’d never find me until I’m ready to come home. All that land is good for hiding, too. I can sleep out with the stars, I can see them all at night, it’s so dark, so very dark.

  But my place here is warm and secret. I’ve brought stuff in here with me, made it my home. Besides, I can watch him from here. I know where he is. As long as he doesn’t find me—

  “Son of a bitch, where the fuck are you?”

  I hear the back door open and slam shut. Looking for me. He wants me again.

  I hate his smell, his dirty nails, his crooked teeth, and beer breath. I hate his yellow pee-stained underwear.

  I hate him.

  No more of this. No more pain.

  No more—

  He jumped up from his chair and stood in front of his desk, the laptop screen glowing, the cursor blinking, his face damp with cold sweat. So powerful. So vivid the memories, yet so far away, so very long ago. He had to find a vehicle for these thoughts, these memories. He thought on that for a moment but nothing useful came to him, not yet, at least. He wiped his face with a sleeve, then walked over to his workbench, where he folded a soft diaper into a precise square, then huffed a cloud of fog onto the brass badge and buffed it hard. Three times. Rub, rub, rub. The smudges wiped away, leaving behind the emblem of authority. Power.

  He reinserted the badge into his credentials wallet and slipped the leather case into his suit coat pocket. He reviewed the surveillance pictures he’d taken of Sandra Franks, the woman who’d caught his attention a few days ago. Yes, she was an evil one all right. As he flipped through the photos, his jaw tightened. Definitely evil.

  “This evening’s prize is a thirty-year-old dental hygienist originally from Tallahassee, Florida,” he announced with game-show-host vigor. “She skis in the winter, swims in the summer, and lifts weights year-round. A fine physical specimen. Dennis, tell her what she’s won.”

  He chuckled and began swinging his legs beneath his chair. Three times forward, followed by a clicking of his heels. Click click click. Three times; that’s just the way it had to be.

  He put the photos down, then slipped the pipe into the handmade holster on his belt.

  “It’s time! We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. The wizard of Oz! Ozzie, Ozzie and Harriet. Harriet, the original bitch. Bitch, bitch, that’s all she does. Bitch, bitch, I’ll get that bitch!”

  He shrugged into his suit coat, smoothed down the lapels, then appraised his tie in the mirror. He straightened it, then tightened it. Patted down the faux mustache, checked it from all angles. Next was a wool overcoat, topped off with a black Stetson hat.

  He stopped by the hall mirror and regarded his reflection. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled the FBI credentials case. He flipped it open as he’d done a hundred times before and tilted his chin back. “FBI, ma’am. Please open the door. I need your help.” I need your soul. I need your . . . Eyes.

  eleven

  The pulsed tones of her BlackBerry made Vail jump as she rounded the corner a few blocks from her house. She fished through her pocket and rooted out the device, which displayed a missed call from Robby. Alternating her gaze between the dark, rain-slick roadway and the touch pad, she phoned him back.

  As it rang, the intermittent rain returned and began pelting her windshield with a fury. She fumbled for the wiper control as Robby answered.

  “Got a call from Bledsoe,” he said. “Neighbor found a body, 609 Herrington. He said it sounds like our guy. He’s en route, at least fifteen out, asked me to call you.”

  “I’m only about half a mile away.”

  “I’m not too far myself. Meet you over there.”

  The house was a modest one-story brick colonial, the lawn and planters in need of a gardener. A candy apple red Hyundai Sonata was parked in the driveway, a police cruiser behind it, kissing its bumper.

  Vail pulled up to the curb, her headlights catching the tear-smeared face of a woman in her fif
ties standing beneath the porch overhang. Her eyes were puffy, her legs dancing from the cold. A uniformed officer stood beside her.

  Vail displayed her credentials as she approached the house.

  “Sandy!” the woman whined. “Sandy, she’s in there, she’s . . . oh, God. She’s—”

  “Did you clear the house?” Vail asked the young cop.

  “No, when I saw the victim, I left everything as it was and got the hell out. I didn’t want to compromise—”

  “Wait right here,” Vail told the woman. “Stay with the officer.”

  Vail drew her Glock, holding it in a white knuckle grip as she pushed open the front door. Complete darkness. A sudden crack of thunder in the near distance sent another few cc’s of adrenaline cascading into her bloodstream.

  A metallic smell stung her nose as she walked into the tile entryway. Blood. Death. Slowly into the hall, her pupils large black holes. Heart thumping, sweat popping out across the back of her shoulders.

  Off in the distance, above the din of pouring rain striking pavement . . . footsteps.

  Rapid, like her heart. The chambering of a round. A semiautomatic . . . a large one. She pressed her back against the wall and waited in the darkness. The footfalls stopped suddenly, and she could feel the presence of a body as it moved down the carpeted hallway toward her. Breathing.

  She slid into a crouch and squinted so the whites of her eyes did not reflect a light source and give away her position. A large body turned the corner a few feet away. It was Robby.

  She let air escape from her lips and her shoulders slumped in relaxation. “Scared the shit out of me.”

  “Vic?”

  “Haven’t found her yet.”

  They walked in tandem toward what appeared to be the bedroom. But before they reached the door, Vail saw something in the darkness smeared across the walls. Blood. Murals.

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  Vail pushed her right shoe against the bedroom door and swung it open. They stood in the doorway and stared at the young woman splayed out across her bed, filleted in the abdomen, and skewered through the eyes.