Waking Nightmare

by Kylie Brant

  He didn’t follow her thinking. “Billings was a dump site. For Richards, transporting her was necessary to enact the crime.”

  She was looking at him now, impatience showing in her expression. “Forget Billings for the moment. He took a huge risk with Richards. Even disregarding who her grandfather was. And there was no doubt he knew about the relationship. He’s too careful, plans too meticulously for it to be otherwise. And Amanda said the location of the beach house was well known on campus. She’d had parties there frequently.”

  “That’s what she told us.”

  “Given the kind of assault he plans, he needs time and privacy. Everyone else was attacked in her own home, but a dorm room isn’t going to cut it. Why choose a victim you have to go to so much trouble for? Why risk it?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it. “You’re the profiler. I thought you were supposed to be giving me answers, not more questions.”

  She made a distracted gesture with her hand. “My preliminary profile is on your desk. I had a copy sent to Captain Brown and Commander Dixon this morning, too.”

  Neither man had mentioned it when Ryne had checked in briefly to update them on the Juarez search, but maybe they hadn’t read it yet. Ryne hadn’t been at his desk all day, so he certainly hadn’t noticed the file.

  Then another thought struck him. “When did you complete it?”

  She was looking out the window again. “It’s been a work in progress. It was largely done already.”

  “And you’re a terrible liar.”

  She sent him a cool look. “I happen to be an excellent liar.” At his silence, she finally said, “Okay, I finished it last night when I got home. I couldn’t sleep. But it only took a couple hours to finish up.”

  Sleep hadn’t been any kinder to him. He’d still been too wired from the events of the day. And the thought hit him that maybe they could have found a more pleasurable way to summon sleep had they been together.

  He shook his head to clear it of the totally inappropriate thought. He could work with women, hell, he had worked with plenty of women without being tempted to mix his professional and personal lives. So that didn’t explain his growing awareness of Abbie in a way that owed nothing to the investigation they were working on.

  Getting involved with her, even on a casual level, he decided grimly as he accelerated past a slow-moving RV, was the worst idea he’d entertained since coming to Savannah.

  “Why don’t you give me the high points?”

  “It’d make more sense in written form,” she began.

  “Which I’m not going to get to read for hours yet, so summarize it for me.”

  At first he didn’t think she’d answer. But finally she said, “I don’t claim to have a clear handle on him yet, because I’m still puzzled by his selection of victims. TV depiction aside, serial rapists typically don’t engage in specific, symbolic considerations when choosing their targets. He doesn’t seem to have a ‘type’ either, at least aside from low-risk attractive women. But it’s clear that we’re dealing with a sexual sadist. His attacks will be largely premeditated, never impulsive, and he’ll fantasize about them prior to the acts themselves.”

  He couldn’t resist ribbing her. “You keep saying ‘he.’ You’re finally convinced it’s a man?”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “As I said before, he almost certainly is, although I won’t be convinced until we get evidence proving it. But for the record, my pronoun selection is chosen for ease of conversation, not as a reflection of my opinion on that subject, all right?”

  He subsided, stifling a grin at the barely discernible edge to her tone. She was normally so composed, getting a rise out of her was an accomplishment.

  “The surprise approach is often used by men who are uncertain of their abilities to approach the victim with a con, or to overpower them. But with the care he takes to avoid detection, I don’t want to give that fact too much importance. It may be just one more method he employs to ensure he isn’t identified. Most of these offenders have above average to high intelligence.”

  She was warming up to her topic, turning, as much as the seat belt would allow, to face him. “Raiker has largely discounted the disorganized versus organized dichotomy, but I still find it an important descriptor, as long as evidentiary facts and information form the basis of the profile, rather than the descriptors themselves.”

  He made an agreeing noise, although he had a flashback to a college calc course when the professor embarked upon an “explanation” in which the class got lost completely.

  “So given that preface, I’d label this offender as organized, simply by virtue of the extent of preparation he does prior to the act. He takes a great deal of trouble to make sure he can’t be identified, which may be because he has no intention of killing the victim or to avoid being ID’d by a by stander. He’s been doing this a long time, at least leading up to it, and he won’t stop until he’s caught.”

  “And you know that because . . .”

  “He can’t,” she said simply. “We’re talking about someone who must intentionally inflict suffering to enhance his own arousal. And once he’s experienced that high, that power, nothing else will ever satisfy him.”

  “So the porn won’t hold him any longer.”

  She gave him an approving look. “Only in the short term, in between attacks. The reports have indicated that none of the victims were missing any personal items. No photo IDs, no lingerie.”

  “Because this type of offender doesn’t take trophies?” Ryne guessed.

  “Oh, he does. But he’s most likely to photograph or film the victim, either during the assault itself, or afterwards, posed in demeaning ways that will be gratifying for him later when he wants to relive the attack. None of the victims mentioned it, but once injected, they wouldn’t necessarily notice.”

  A grim sense of revulsion filled him. “I hear rapists don’t do well in prison. Maybe that is better than a death penalty.”

  “Sexual sadists, more than other rapists, are highly ritualistic. He’s acted these fantasies out long before these of fenses. Maybe with a willing partner, perhaps with a paid one.”

  He glanced at the clock on the dash, wondering if Cantrell and McElroy had discovered anything while questioning prostitutes. “So he’s escalating.”

  She nodded. “And he’s bold, but careful. That’s why I’m puzzled about his selection of Amanda Richards. He could have chosen any number of other women, heck, any number of other girls on that campus, with far less risk.”

  Something in him stilled. “You’re saying she was chosen because of her relationship to the mayor.”

  “We have to figure his selection of the victims is done as carefully as is his preparation for the attacks themselves. There’s no way he didn’t know of the relationship. So why her? It definitely was the most complex attempt made to date, with the greatest risk involved.”

  “We spent a great deal of time and effort investigating just that angle,” he admitted. “Even considered the fact that the first rape was designed to make the second look like the act of a serial offender, when Amanda was the intended victim all along.”

  Abbie’s tone was sharp. “That wasn’t in the report.”

  “No kidding. Was it some sort of payback for someone the mayor pissed off? Believe me, those possibilities are endless. Or could it have been a ploy to distract him from the reelection campaign he’s engaged in, which, from all accounts, is brutal.”

  “So you looked at his rival.”

  Ryne nodded. “Inside and out. And the fact that he’s running against none other than the city’s most senior alderman . . . well, you see the need for discretion.” His voice was sour. “Can you imagine the press if the media got wind of the fact the mayor was using the SCMPD to investigate his political rival?”

  “Politics reek at any time, but especially when they taint an investigation.”

  “Exactly. Luckily we were able to convince the
mayor after doing a bit of checking that Alderman Lewis had little to gain by arranging the rape, since the act casts the mayor in a more sympathetic light.”

  “God,” Abbie muttered.

  He wholeheartedly shared the disgust evident in her reply. “And the same thing was true of anyone who had a beef with the mayor. His granddaughter’s assault might be arranged, but to perpetuate three other rapes? The odds of that being the case decreased with every assault. And this unknown drug compound being used made it even less likely.”

  “I agree. I’m not saying Amanda Richards doesn’t meet whatever twisted criteria this guy is using to make his selections. But he deliberately included her.”

  She stopped suddenly, and he looked over at her. “What?”

  “I was just wondering what the media coverage has been like surrounding the attacks. There weren’t copies of any articles in the case files.”

  He grimaced, slowing the car as they approached the bridge to Tybee Island. Traffic was thicker here. “Violent crime in Savannah is worse than the national average in nearly every category. So far this year we’ve had thirty-five rapes reported. So the perp’s first assault didn’t even merit a blurb on the evening news and was buried on page ten of the newspapers. But with the second victim being the mayor’s granddaughter . . . well, you can imagine the frenzy.

  “We never released the information about the two rapes being linked, and the media had details of politics and beauty pageants to fill their stories with. It wasn’t until the third rape in as many months that some enterprising reporter started asking questions and news of the task force leaked out. I heard Dixon has been up to his ass in media since the latest assault.” The man was welcome to the job. As long as the commander kept them away from the task force, Ryne would be happy.

  “So maybe that explains his selection of Richards. It might be his way of saying, ‘Watch this. Do I have your attention now, Savannah?’ Because he couldn’t hope to have brought more focus to his acts than to attack that particular girl.” She turned her face to the window as they crossed the water.

  God, he hoped she was wrong. Alerting the public to a threat was one thing, but whipping up a frenzy in the press created obstacles and headaches for investigations.

  “It wouldn’t be unusual for this type of offender to hang around a scene, watch the police work.”

  He nodded. “Can’t say any of the scenes drew a large crowd, but we videotaped them. Never saw the same person in more than one tape.”

  “This UNSUB is motivated by attention. He’ll get off at what he perceives as his power over the police, too. He may try to insert himself into the case in some way. I know you’ve double-checked each of the individuals who found the victims. But it can also be someone who calls in a tip. Wanders into a precinct house for a trivial matter. Frequents a place where cops hang out after hours, hoping to hear some gossip.”

  He nodded, mulling over her words. “We always check out the identity of people calling in leads, but it could be tougher to check the other areas you mentioned.” He made a mental note to have McElroy keep his eye out after hours. He knew the detective often joined other officers after shift at Sherm’s, a nearby bar.

  “Is that it?” At Abbie’s raised brows, he added, “For your profile?”

  “A profile is an evolving document. It develops as more evidence comes to light, much as the investigation develops as leads appear. I do suspect he had a poor relationship with his parents growing up. He may have been institutionalized at some point during his adolescence and he may have been sexually abused.”

  “Cry me a river,” Ryne muttered. This was just the sort of psychobabble that solved nothing. And if he was supposed to actually feel sorry for the scumbag, she was wasting her breath. He said as much to Abbie as they began to traverse the Tybee Island streets lined with historic old homes.

  “We don’t have to sympathize with him to understand him,” she said mildly. He had a feeling her mind was only half on him as they drew closer to the site of Richards’s assault. “And understanding him is the first step toward an arrest.”

  “We may be close to an arrest already,” he reminded her. They’d caught some breaks with Juarez, but there was a lot of work to be done to tie him with any certainty to the rapes. Even if the rock in the tread of the shoes found in Juarez’s apartment matched the fill near Barbara Billings’s, it was likely sold by the truckloads for legions of yards and gardens in the vicinity and beyond. But the positive match on the woman’s blood found in his vehicle would be damning. Claiming the vehicle must have been stolen wasn’t going to hold any weight with the grand jury, if it came to that. Not if they could nail down means and motive.

  “Let’s talk MO,” he said abruptly. “Is the drug part of this guy’s MO or his signature?”

  “It might serve as both,” Abbie responded, “given its properties and effects on the victims. It debilitates them to some extent, which helps him enact the crime. But if it’s deliberately designed to enhance sensation, that makes it an important part of his ritual as well. His primary intent is to inflict enormous suffering on his victims for his own sexual satisfaction. Intensifying the pain from the torture would help accomplish that.”

  He slowed, then swung the car into the long drive of Mayor Richards’s sprawling beach home. A two-car garage sat underneath the structure, and he pulled to a stop in front of one closed door. He wondered what kind of sick bastard would think of a drug to increase the agony of his victims. Like torture wasn’t enough.

  He tried to apply everything she’d just said to Juarez. He had Holmes going through the man’s background, and he was anxious to hear what he found. Juarez’s sheet had included only misdemeanors before he’d been sent up on a drug charge, but that only meant he hadn’t been caught at anything worse. And he wouldn’t be the first criminal to evolve while in prison.

  Ryne had spent more time than he’d like to calculate hunting down sick fucks like the one preying on women in Savannah. He no longer used alcohol to dull the effects of too much ugliness, and not enough success stories. The life was a part of him, of who he was, and he didn’t consider the whys or hows of it.

  As he watched Abbie get out of the car to head up to the house, he wondered, not for the first time, what had compelled the woman to devote her life, her career, to tracking down scumbags like the Savannah rapist.

  He got out of the car, following her up to the house. That question, and others about her, were beginning to haunt him, during times that would be better spent thinking about the case. Or at least about a much more important question.

  Like why he even cared.

  Abbie made Ryne show her the exact route into the house he’d figured the rapist had taken. From the file, she knew Amanda hadn’t had a garage door opener, only the key she’d had made. Unfortunately, once the UNSUB had her and the key she kept on her key ring, he’d had a way inside the house. The girl had admitted in her interview that she’d written the security code on the key itself with permanent marker.

  The home had a huge veranda running around three sides of it, with a breathtaking view of the ocean. Ryne unlocked the side door and she stepped into the house after him.

  “I assume the security was changed after the attack took place,” she said, looking around the home. Although the outside of the home hearkened back to an earlier century, the kitchen had been completely modernized. It opened onto a family room with vaulted ceilings and a glassed-in wall facing the Atlantic.

  “Locks and codes were changed. The company providing patrol security was fired, although the officer did his job, near as I could tell.” Ryne led her down a hallway. “He was the one who called it in when he noticed a window open in the bedroom. Company gave him the go-ahead to check it out.”

  “And that’s how Amanda was discovered,” Abbie murmured. “I saw from the report that you thoroughly checked out the officer.”

  “We looked at him, but his alibi held up, for that night and for the first r
ape.”

  When Ryne stopped in the doorway of a bedroom, Abbie stepped around him and took a moment just to sense. Raiker was constantly preaching that it wasn’t enough to go through photos of a crime scene. You had to experience it. Had to see and hear what the victim had seen and heard. And once the scene had been thoroughly processed, you had to touch what the victim had touched. Only then could you be transported back to the events of the assault. To the mind of the offender, who had arranged the events to suit his own needs.

  And wasn’t she used to that? The sly whisper slid across her mind as Abbie stepped into the room, and stared blindly at the furnishings. Know the victim, know the offender. That’s what Raiker would say. And in this case—in most of the cases she worked—knowing the offender meant putting him away. But it wasn’t always that easy. It wasn’t always that clear.

  “This room has been completely redone.” Abbie started at Ryne’s voice behind her. “Even the floor looks new.” The glossy hardwood below their feet gleamed in the light afforded through the blinds. “Furniture is different. So’s the paint. The scene was pretty brutal. Blood spatters everywhere.”

  There was no evidence of the brutality that had taken place here weeks earlier. No lingering sense of evil. The room was fresh, impersonal. It could have been a room in a chain motel. “Is this where Amanda usually stayed when she came?”

  “No, that room is next door.” She followed him to the next room and looked inside, at the ruffled spread and matching curtains. There were no personal items sitting about.

  The room across the hall was unmistakably the master bedroom. She walked in ahead of Ryne, noting the bank of windows facing the water, the attached bath and walk-in closets. If the offender had wanted to make this a personal strike at the mayor, wouldn’t he have chosen this room? Wouldn’t it have been one more twist of the knife to not only attack the precious granddaughter, but to do it in the mayor’s house, in his room, his bed?

  She continued to the next room, mulling those questions over. It was smaller, also with a view. And maybe she was crediting the offender with more preparation than he’d actually taken. Perhaps he’d picked the room he had because it was the first one off the family room. He would have entered the house alone, rather than take a chance being seen carrying a limp Amanda into the house. Then he’d unlocked the garage, driven in. He could have gotten inside and had the vehicle safely out of sight in under two minutes. A small risk, but if he’d familiarized himself with the security company’s patrol route, a reasonable one to take.