by P. D. Martin
Darren reads the last part of the category. “I like this. She travels for her work. So maybe she hasn’t lived in the states she’s killed in. She’s just gone there on business.”
“It’s a strong possibility.”
“Sales would fit perfectly,” Darren says.
“It fits in with other parts of the profile as well. She’s an extrovert, well-groomed, and she can fit in anywhere.”
“You agree with the troubled childhood?” Darren moves on.
“Yes. She likes to be in total control of her victims sexually, and also physically, through restraints. This is to make up for not having control in her earlier life, during a traumatic sexual event. She’s also overtly sexual, based on descriptions of her, and that’s a trait we often see when women are sexually abused. They think of sexuality as something they have to offer, something that all men want. And often their self-esteem is so low they think it’s the only thing they have to offer. In our girl’s case, she uses sex to entrap them.”
“Her motivation is power over men?” Darren reads from the profile.
“Yes. She overpowers them sexually and physically. She has no respect for men, and in some ways she sees her murders as justice. The men had it coming…the hunter became the hunted. She likes to reverse the roles.”
He nods and then points to the next section. “The profiler described her as charming, extroverted and flirtatious, which also ties in well with the sales occupation.”
“True. Sales people usually know how to talk the talk.”
We’re momentarily silent until Darren stands up and looks over the whiteboard. “Sheleaves her victims in theopen, foreveryone tofind.”
I nod. “Which indicates she feels no shame or remorse over her actions.”
“She sounds like a real man hater.”
“She certainly has no respect for men. She uses them to sexually gratify herself, and part of that gratification includes strangling them. She sees a man handcuffed to a bed, killed by a woman he hardly knew but wanted to sleep with, as pathetic. And she likes to leave them like that—naked and still handcuffed.”
“Nice. I’m never even gonna think about having a one-night stand.” His eyes widen slightly. “Not that I would anyway…I mean one-night stands aren’t my thing.”
“Nice save,” I say sarcastically, even though I believe him.
He reddens and diverts my attention back to the case. “She mates and then kills them. Like that spider…what’s it called?”
“Black widow. Other insects do it too. Like the praying mantis.”
Silence again. We’re both exhausted.
“Forensics indicates she uses a condom, but takes it with her,” Darren says. “But at least we got fluids at three of the earlier crime scenes.”
“Yes, before she got really careful.” I pause. “She takes them back to the motel room, a little bit of foreplay and the handcuffs.”
“Which the men probably think is kinky.”
“Yep. And next thing they know they’re dead.” I stand up as well, too sore to sit in the seat any longer. “High IQ. Fits the organized offender and the relatively clean crime scenes.” Most organized offenders are one hundred and twenty plus, and serial killers are often even higher.
Darren nods.
“I’d like to review the education level. The victims cross all education levels, so it’s difficult to know if she’s hunting within her own level, below or above.”
“She has a level of sophistication though,” Darren says. “To have been doing this for so many years.”
“Go on.”
“She’s at least high-school educated.”
“Okay, so let’s say she’s middle-of-the-road, which means she’s probably at least high-school and maybe university educated.” I mark up the slight change to the profile.
“Sounds good.” Darren looks over my shoulder and takes us to criminal history. “What sort of juvenile record?”
“I think she may have got into some trouble when she was younger—shoplifting or a DUI charge.”
“The abuse?”
“Yeah. She’s pretty screwed up, obviously, but I think in her adolescence she had no control over her behavior. She’s bound to be on the system somewhere. Probably with a big brother or big sister bailing her out.” The last three elements on the profile are MO, signature and media tactics. “MO and signature, we’ve already covered.”
“Yup, pretty obvious.”
I sit down again. “The media’s a little different because of her gender. She’s not egotistical like many organized male serial killers. She doesn’t need to read about her handiwork in the paper or hear it on the news. She kills for her own pleasure and each kill satisfies her until she chooses her next victim. I don’t think we’ll be able to use the media on this one.”
“Okay.” Silence engulfs us again.
I’m filled with thoughts of the killer, impressions that have nothing to do with psychology, nothing to do with profiling. Imagination or psychic abilities? I see our girl, woman, as having long, slightly wavy black hair, a slim yet curvaceous figure—and the profile tells me she’d play on that—and fine facial features with full lips. I envisage her as a woman who exudes sex without trying too hard and yet also has a sophistication about her—perhaps an Angelina Jolie meets Andy McDowell. Fact or fantasy?
Another thing I can feel is her anger. Her predatory nature bubbles through me and I don’t like it one little bit.
Darren stands behind my chair and shakes the backrest slightly. “Come on, we really do need to get some sleep.”
His hands brush against my shoulders and I’m instantly back in the real world, my world.
AmericanPsycho has entered the room.
NeverCaught: Finally! So, how was Cindy?
AmericanPsycho: Mighty fine.
NeverCaught: Did you get to experience that flexibility of hers?
AmericanPsycho: Yes. I got her drunk on the chopper ride and she jumped me as soon as we got in the house. Had her legs up around her head.
NeverCaught: Really? You lucky ****. So you got to do her more than once?
AmericanPsycho: Yup. Once before she knew our little secret and a few times after. Best of both worlds.
NeverCaught: You lucky **ing ******. I love it when I’m ***ing them and they realize. I like watching the ***es’ faces change from desire to fear.
AmericanPsycho: Here’s a pic of Cindy.
NeverCaught: This rocks.
DialM: So the body’s been dumped?
AmericanPsycho: Yes. And with the second body, the press will declare the birth of a new serial killer.
NeverCaught: **ing excellent.
12
A man’s hand reaches down into a shaft and he pulls a girl up, a blonde. She moves closer to him and together they walk toward a chopper. His arm is around her and she wiggles her hips as she walks. In the chopper they drink champagne. Her giggling becomes louder, more frequent.
They touch down at a large house and the girl runs forward. She’s running on gravel, and on the way to the front door she passes an ornate fountain. Inside the house she flings her arms around him and pushes her lips against his. A lustful kiss, which ends only after they spin around several times and wind up against the wall. She rips his shirt off and runs her fingers along his muscled chest. She kisses his nipples. He hikes up her skirt and she undoes his button-fly jeans. She wiggles herself on top of him and he pushes her further up against the wall.
Several minutes later they unlink. He grabs her hand and leads her upstairs to a bedroom. She jumps straight on the four-poster and immediately sees the handcuffs. She lies down, rolls onto her stomach and puts on the first handcuff. He kneels on the bed to secure the other one. She pulls her leg into her chest and then extends it so her shin is touching her handcuffed arm, in a display of her flexibility.
He runs his hands down her leg and to her crotch but soon brings her leg back down to the bed, where he cuffs it. He clamps the fi
nal handcuff over her ankle and then stands up and moves away.
He tears her clothes off and moves himself on top of her. But this time there’s only fear in her eyes.
She is dead, a heart drawn on her chest.
I wake up, disorientated. A man hovers in the darkness beside my bed. I scream and reach for my gun, my hands closing around my weapon. I swing it toward the shape.
“Sophie, it’s me!”
My eyes focus and I realize Darren is standing beside my bed. That’s right, I’m in Darren’s spare bedroom.
I lower my gun. “What happened?”
“You were screaming. I knocked, but…sorry, I didn’t know what else to do so I came in, hoping I could wake you.”
My pounding heart isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. I put my gun back on the bedside table and swing my legs out of the bed so I’m sitting on the edge.
“Another dream?” Darren asks tentatively.
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
“Another body. A woman, but not the brunette. She had the love heart on her chest.” I pause. “There was more, but I can’t remember it.” I guess I’ve repressed it already. One thing’s for sure, death is not pretty.
“Another woman?”
“I know, it doesn’t make sense.” I stand up and start pacing. “Okay, so Malcolm was killed by this woman who’s been screwing men and killing them for fifteen years. But is the brunette related? And this new woman…she had the love heart.”
Darren remains silent, realizing I need to vent.
“Why has our female killer suddenly changed her MO and introduced this new signature, the love heart?” I collapse back onto the bed. “Why can’t I figure this out?”
“Sophie, it’s confusing. Confusing as hell.” Darren sits down next to me. “I mean, if the rose tattoo wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have linked Malcolm’s death to the other ones at all.”
“The other question mark. Why go from leaving the black rose out on display to hiding it as a small tattoo on the victim? It’s like she was hoping we wouldn’t notice it.”
“Maybe that was the plan exactly.”
I run with Darren’s train of thought. “She’s worried about getting caught so she stages it to look like a different killer. Yet her compulsive nature means she has to leave the rose somewhere at the crime scene.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
I let it sink in. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
Darren nods. “Unless someone knew about the rose and is setting our girl up.” From the other room Darren’s cell phone rings. We both instinctively glance at our watches—it’s 3:00 a.m. A phone call at 3:00 a.m. can only mean one thing: a dead body. We look at each other briefly in silent acknowledgement of this fact before Darren bolts into his bedroom to pick up the phone.
I pull my jeans on, whip off my pajama top and slip into a sweater. There’s no doubt in my mind we’re going out to a crime scene.
Darren comes back into my room, in jeans and pulling on a sweater. He only appears moderately surprised to find me fully dressed.
“Well?”
“A blonde. U of A again.”
It’s all too familiar. The body of a young woman lies naked, wedged into a dark corner. This time the vic has been left next to a Dumpster on the University of Arizona campus. Temporary floodlights illuminate the crime scene as police, forensic investigators and a representative from the ME’s office comb the area.
“Is it her?” Darren whispers as soon as we’re close enough to see the woman’s face.
I don’t speak, I simply nod.
“Hi, Carter.” It’s not the ME at the scene this time, it’s his assistant.
“Morning, Johnson.”
I keep my eyes on the woman. She’s about five-seven, perfectly toned with long, long legs. Her blonde hair is shortish, to her earlobes, and has a gentle wave. Her eyes are open and glassy—there’s no mistaking she’s dead.
“What have we got?” Darren asks, getting down to business.
“Looks like manual strangulation as the cause of death.” Johnson points to some bruising on her neck, which is quite obvious. This girl is not only Caucasian, but very, very fair, making it much easier to see the strangulation marks than it was on Malcolm. “I’d say she’s been dead for less than twenty-four hours. And then of course there’s that.” He gestures to the marking that partially covers the woman’s breasts. The love heart.
“Anything on the inside of her wrists?” I ask.
Johnson looks at me. “You’re the FBI agent?”
“Yes, that’s right. Agent Anderson.” I put my hand out, suddenly reminded of the formalities. I saw Johnson when Malcolm was discovered but we weren’t introduced.
He shakes my hand. “Johnson. No tattoo of a rose, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“And it’s not anywhere else on her body?”
“Not that I can see. Not yet, at least.”
I notice Stone making her way through the perimeter. She looks like I feel—wrecked. Her auburn hair is sticking out at odd angles and beneath her jacket I notice her shirt is half tucked in.
“Bed hair, Stone?” Darren gives her a boyish grin.
She rakes her fingers through her hair, then gives Darren a lighthearted glare. She looks down at the body. “Another one.”
“Might not be related,” I say.
Stone points to the love heart. “Not related?”
“No tattoo. No rose. Female victim.” Now I’m playing devil’s advocate, going against both my instincts and visions, which are telling me that the deaths are connected, somehow.
Stone gives us a thoughtful nod. “Maybe Malcolm wasn’t killed by the motel woman.”
She’s got a good point and it’s exactly what Darren was alluding to before we got the call. It’s possible our killer somehow knew about the rose and wanted to throw us a curveball.
Darren bends down next to Johnson. “Who’s our first responder?”
“O’Grady.” Johnson motions to one of the cops who’s at the perimeter.
Darren, Stone and I move toward O’Grady. It only takes us a few minutes to learn that the body was found by a student from the Yavapai Residence Hall around the corner. He couldn’t sleep because his French roomie had thrown a slab of ten-day-old blue cheese in the bin, stinking up the whole room. Our plain-food-loving guy had stormed out, trash in hand, just before 3:00 a. m., only to discover he had more things to worry about than the stench of smelly cheese.
13
By the time we got back from the crime scene it was the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. and we both decided to try to get a bit more sleep.
Thankfully, the second time I wake up is way nicer than the first. Instead of a horrible nightmare about a dead girl, I wake to a bird chirping outside my window. I roll over and look at the bedside clock—11:00 a.m. I stretch first before gradually easing myself out of bed. I’ve only jogged two mornings over the past week and I’m both disgusted with myself and proud that I’ve been able to resist my obsessive exercise regime. But today, it’s definitely time. Jogging helps to clear my mind and release tension—two things in demand at the moment.
I throw on my running gear and tiptoe into the kitchen, conscious of waking Darren. I pour myself a glass of water and notice a small piece of paper with Darren’s handwriting on it pinned to the fridge by a magnet. Didn’t want to wake you. I’ve gone into work. Give me a call when you’re up. There’s a spare key on the table.
I fish my phone out of the back pocket of my tracksuit pants and dial Darren’s number. After much debate I manage to convince him that I’m coming in—again—despite the fact that I’m on holiday. He seems relieved, or perhaps just less guilty, when I tell him I’ll be a couple of hours because I’m going for a jog first.
I put my MP3 player on full and I’m soon pounding the pavement. At first my legs feel heavy, perhaps because I’ve broken my routine and haven’t been running, or
perhaps because of the disrupted sleep. It’s not until the fifteen-minute mark that my body seems to slide into its normal rhythm.
By the time I make it to the Tucson police station it’s 1:30 p.m. When I reach Darren’s desk he’s on the phone, a worried expression on his face. After less than a minute he hangs up and looks at me. “She’s definitely related to Malcolm. Johnson found dirt deep under her fingernails and they got a rush on the soil. It matches what we found on Malcolm—from the Mojave region.”
I shake my head. “What the hell’s going on out there?”
“Damn good question.”
“ID?”
“Yes.”
“Wow, they have rushed it.”
“You know what it’s like with serials. They jump the line. We need to get something on this perp before the press goes berserk.”
I nod. “So, the ID?”
“She’s got a criminal record like Malcolm, so we got a fingerprint match. Cindy Star. A dancer from Vegas.” Darren punches Cindy’s name into the system. “Yup, here it is. Busted for shoplifting when she was seventeen, four years ago. It was her third offence. She got off with a warning the first two times.”
I look over Darren’s shoulder at Cindy Star’s Nevada driver’s license on-screen. The bad photo can’t hide her attractiveness.
I stare absently at the computer screen, trying to bring Malcolm and Cindy together. “Okay. So, we’ve got two people with criminal pasts in the desert.”
“Doing what?”
“Maybe they were abducted and taken there.”
Darren nods. Then a second later stands up. “Oh my God.” He turns to me. “What if we’re looking at a male-female team? They pick up Cindy and Malcolm, take them somewhere in the Mojave Desert, kill them, and then get rid of the bodies.”
“That’s brilliant.” I let the concept sink in. “It would explain why our female killer’s MO is different to her previous crimes. Why she didn’t do Malcolm in a motel room.” The profile pegged her as either single or in a long-term relationship with other men and murder on the side. We may need to revise it. “It could also explain the love heart on the bodies. It symbolizes the killers’ love for each other.”
