Deeper Than the Dead ok-1

by Tami Hoag

  “Yeah,” Mendez said, chuckling. “Behavioral Sciences could be the next Miami Vice.”

  Vince gave his lopsided grin and shrugged. “Move over, Don Johnson.

  “What about your murder victim?” he asked.

  “A coworker felt like maybe Lisa Warwick was having an affair, but she never confided in anyone about it,” Mendez said. “We found semen on her sheets, and a photograph that may or may not lead us to the guy who left it there.”

  “Did her neighbors have anything to say about a boyfriend?”

  “Not so far,” Hicks said. “She lived in a duplex, but her neighbor never saw or heard anything going on next door.”

  “She was discreet,” Vince said.

  “Or secretive,” Hicks offered. “The guy might be married.”

  “The guy might be a killer,” Vince said.

  He went to the long chalkboard that took up most of one wall.

  “This is how you build a profile, kids.”

  He took a piece of chalk and wrote 1. Profile Inputs. He spoke as he noted pertinent points. “A: What did you find at the crime scene? Physical evidence, a pattern of evidence, body position, weapons.”

  “We don’t have a crime scene,” Detective Hicks pointed out. “We have dump sites.”

  “Make the same notes for dump sites,” Vince said. “And the fact that you don’t have a crime scene is highly significant. We’ll come back to that.

  “B: Victimology. That you have. Age of the victims, occupation, background, habits, family structure, where were they last seen. C: Forensic Information. Cause of death, wounds—are they pre- or postmortem, sexual acts, autopsy report, lab reports. You have everything on two vics except the labs and the official report of autopsy on the Warwick woman. Right?”

  Both detectives nodded. Sheriff Dixon sat stone-faced at the head of the table, taking it all in.

  “D: Your preliminary police reports. And E: Photographs of the vics, of the crime scene and/or the dump scene.”

  “We’ve got photos,” Hicks said.

  “Let’s get them up on the wall, now, and I want a long table situated under the photos where we can organize copies of all the paperwork.”

  While Hicks went to the large cork bulletin board and began to make room for the photographs, Vince moved to an empty section of chalkboard and wrote 2. Decision Process Models. Homicide type & Style, Primary Intent, Victim Risk, Offender Risk, Escalation, Time for Crime, Location Factors.

  “You’ve already seen escalation in terms of risk to your offender,” he said. “The first victim—first two victims—were dumped in remote locations. The Lisa Warwick scene was staged and in a location right in town, where he ran a much greater risk of being seen. What purpose did that risk serve him?”

  “The bigger the risk, the bigger the rush,” Mendez said.

  “Publicity,” Hicks offered.

  “Generates greater fear in the community,” Dixon said. “It’s about power. He can do anything he wants. We can’t stop him.”

  “All of the above,” Vince said. “Have you seen any escalation in the violence of the murders?”

  “Julie Paulson and Lisa Warwick both died as a result of ligature strangulation,” Mendez said. “They had both been tortured. They were both cut up. Eyes and mouths glued shut. The second body was too badly decomposed to get an accurate picture.”

  “Prior to the Julie Paulson murder, was there any pattern of sexual assaults in the area?”

  “Nothing related,” Dixon said. “We had six reported rapes in the county in the past year. All solved.”

  “Congratulations,” Vince said. “Let’s see what we can do to get your murder clearance rate up to that standard. With regards to the sexual assaults, what about the year before last, and the year before that?”

  “The year before was about the same. Before that was before my time here.”

  “My question is, is this guy homegrown or did he drop here from somewhere else? Most serial killers start smaller than murder. Fetishism, window peeping, assault, rape. They work their way up over time. On the other hand, though,” he conceded, “some just nurse the violent fantasies over the years until they have to act on them to release the pressure.”

  “We’re looking at known offenders,” Dixon said.

  The door to the conference room opened and a uniformed deputy stepped in.

  “You’re late,” Dixon said. He turned back toward Vince. “Vince, this is my chief deputy, Frank Farman. Frank, Vince Leone.”

  Vince had specifically asked the sheriff to keep things casual. The less people said those three magic letters, FBI, the better.

  “Vince is an expert on serial killers,” Dixon explained.

  The deputy gave him a hard look and said flatly, “You’re a Feeb.”

  Vince smiled like an alligator. “Have a seat, Deputy.”

  “I’ll stand, thanks.”

  There was one in every crowd.

  “I’ve got feelers out in other parts of the country,” Vince said, “looking for any murders with a similar MO and signature. But I’ll tell you right now, based on what I’ve heard and seen so far, this guy is no amateur. He’s acting on fantasies he’s held for a long, long time, and he’s been acting on them long enough to have his routine down pat.”

  “You talk about this dirtbag like he’s some kind of genius,” Farman said. “Looks to me like he’s just one sick son of a bitch.”

  “Then why haven’t you caught him?” Vince challenged. “I’m assuming you’re a top cop, or you wouldn’t be in this room right now. If your perp is just some crazy guy, foaming at the mouth, running around attacking women at random, why haven’t you caught him?”

  Farman had no answer for that.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Vince said. “Because he’s not just some sick son of a bitch. Not in the way you mean.”

  He turned back to the board and wrote 3. Crime Assessment. A: Crime Classification. B: Organized/Disorganized. (And under that heading) a: Victim Selection. b: Control of Victim. c: Sequence of Crime. C: Staging. D: Motivation. E: Crime Scene Dynamics.

  He tapped the chalk at B. “A disorganized offender sees a potential victim and commits a crime of opportunity. The crime scene will be sloppy. He’ll leave the body there. This guy isn’t very smart. He’s socially immature. He’s impulsive.”

  “Sounds like you, Tony,” Hicks joked.

  “Very funny.”

  “He isn’t interested beyond the immediate act,” Vince went on. “He isn’t looking for publicity. He’s not the kind of creep you’re looking for here. And too bad, ’cause he’s not that hard to outsmart. If this was your animal, you’d catch him today and we could all go fishing.”

  “So,” Farman said, “are you going to look into your crystal ball and tell us who the killer is?”

  “I’m going to tell you what he is,” Vince said. “If I were psychic, I’d be in Vegas with a wad of cash. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here looking at your ugly mugs. Sure, I’d miss all the glamour and adoration . . .”

  A single sharp pain pierced his brain like a lance. He hid the automatic wince by turning quickly back toward the chalkboard.

  “The organized offender,” he said, placing his hand on the chalk tray to counter the vertigo. He held his breath for a second, let it out, raised his hand—willing it not to shake—and started to write again. “The organized offender is intelligent, socially competent, holds down a job. He’s likely to be in a relationship. He could have a family, even. No one in his life would look at him and think he might have a second life as a predator.”

  “Bundy,” Mendez said.

  He took a slow, deep breath and turned back around slowly to face his audience.

  “Bundy. Edmund Kemper up in Santa Cruz. John Wayne Gacy in the Chicago area. Robert Hansen from Alaska is a perfect example of an organized killer.”

  “Never heard of him,” Farman said.

  “The guy was a baker by trade,” Vince began. “He was
a family man, a pillar of the community. He was also a sexual sadist. We think he killed around twenty-one women. His victims of choice were prostitutes. He would engage them for their services, then fly them in his own plane to his hunting cabin, rape them, torture them, then turn them loose in the wilderness, hunt them down like animals, and kill them.

  “The Anchorage cops had an escaped victim at one point. The girl had a handcuff dangling from her wrist when she runs into a cop and tells him what happened. She tells how this guy had tied her up in his basement and tortured her, how she got away from him at the airport before he could get her into his plane.

  “She identifies Hansen’s home as the place where she was raped and tortured. The cops take her to the airport and she identifies his plane. But when the cops go to question Hansen and tell him what the girl said, he’s outraged. He produces two business associates who say they had dinner with him the night he supposedly had the girl in the basement. It’s his word against the girl’s, and he’s so freakin’ normal, the cops believe him.

  “Hansen wasn’t charged. He wasn’t even arrested. That happened in 1982. It was another year before they finally took him down.”

  He had the undivided attention of all of them now.

  “The organized killer plans his crimes. He chooses his victims. He’s more apt to draw out the attack, to restrain the victim, to torture the victim. He’s got the whole situation under control. That’s what it’s about for him: control. And when he’s done, he’ll transport the victim away from the death scene, then go home and wait to read about it in the papers, see the reports on the news.

  “What you’re dealing with here, gentlemen, truly is a big-game hunter,” Vince said. “He’s a killing machine, and he’s very, very good at it. Experience tells me he’s a white male. Serial killers tend to hunt within their own ethnic group.”

  “That narrows it right down,” Farman said sarcastically.

  “He’s in his midthirties,” Vince went on. “That’s when these guys hit their prime. And he believes he’s hitting his prime now. He’s moving into the big time with this latest victim. He’s put her on display so we can all look and see what a badass he is. This victim was his challenge. He’s thrown down the gauntlet. He doesn’t believe you’re smart enough to catch him, and so far he’s right.”

  He gripped the chalk tray with his left hand to ward off another wave of dizziness.

  Mendez was watching him like a hawk.

  “And I’ll take some IV coffee now, if you’ve got it,” Vince said. “This jet lag is a bitch.”

  25

  “Dennis, for the tenth time, sit down in your seat,” Anne said with more of an edge in her voice than she usually allowed herself.

  Her strategy with fifth graders was to maintain self-control at all times. Never let them see you sweat. Today even antiperspirant failed her.

  She had been glad to see Dennis Farman in class—for Dennis’s sake, and to save herself from having another conversation with his father. She had tried to talk to him about finding the body in the park, but he had no interest in telling her anything. Nor had he had any interest in paying attention to anything she had said all morning.

  He sat on his knees, bending over his desktop, intent on drawing in the notebook he shielded with one arm. He was supposed to be reading chapter 12 in his American history book, like the rest of the class was supposed to be doing. But there were plenty of eyes cutting in Dennis’s direction—especially those of his fellow corpse finders.

  Wendy kept shooting him dirty looks. Tommy watched him from the corner of his eye, pretending not to, not wanting to draw attention. Cody, pale and nervous, kept his nose buried in his book, but hadn’t turned a page in fifteen minutes. Dennis sat directly behind him, and would occasionally reach forward and tap Cody on the head with his pen, like a cat toying with a frightened mouse.

  Anne got up from her desk and walked purposefully down the aisle. All eyes in the room were now on her. Anticipation rose. She stopped at Dennis Farman’s desk.

  “Dennis.”

  He didn’t look up. Instead, he ripped a fart that started an avalanche of nervous laughter. The unfortunate girl sentenced to sit behind him leaned back in her chair, her face contorting. The stench was horrific.

  “Gross! I’m gonna be sick!”

  “Go sit in the next row,” Anne said to her. To the rest of the class she said, “You had all better be reading. There’s going to be a quiz this afternoon.”

  Groans of dismay ran through the room.

  Anne squatted down beside Dennis Farman’s desk and looked at his face. He continued to crouch over his notebook, pretending not to notice her. His eyes narrowed and his mouth puckered into a tight knot of concentration. He looked angry. He flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and started scribbling again, gripping his pen so hard his knuckles were white.

  “Dennis,” she said very quietly. “Is there some reason you can’t sit down properly today?”

  He didn’t answer her, but his cheeks flushed red and tears suddenly welled in his eyes. He dug the tip of his pen into the paper so hard it tore.

  Anne’s mind went to the night before, to the Farman household, and Frank Farman’s promise that he would deal with Dennis.

  She glanced at the clock and stood up. “All right, everyone. Quietly go line up in the hall for lunch.”

  Dennis went to bolt from his seat. Anne put her hand on his shoulder. “Not you.”

  He winced and jerked away from her touch as if she had burned him.

  Wide eyes glanced back at them as the rest of the class filed out the door. The speculation would now run rampant as to the fate of their resident troublemaker.

  “Last one out closes the door, please,” she said.

  The tension in the silence after the door closed was like a balloon filling and filling and filling with air until it was about to burst. Anne pulled the chair away from Cody Roache’s desk and sat down.

  “Did you get in trouble for skipping school yesterday?”

  Dennis looked away from her, his face flushing darker.

  “You know, it doesn’t help you to keep all those feelings bottled up, Dennis. If you’re angry, say you’re angry. We can deal with that together. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

  He screwed himself around in his seat until he had all but his back to her. Anne said nothing for a moment, not sure what tack to take. She had a terrible feeling about what might have happened. She had stood up to Frank Farman. He might have even taken it as an embarrassment. And he might have taken that out on Dennis.

  Her father had never raised a hand to either her mother or herself, but Anne knew well all other forms of punishment that could be dished out by an angry man with a fragile ego. How many times had her father reduced her mother to a quivering, sobbing mass of inadequacy with his vicious words? And how many times had he tried to do the same thing to her?

  Because Anne had detached herself from him emotionally at an early age, his tirades never had the same effect on her as they had on her mother, who loved him. But Anne knew well the anger and resentment that had built inside her like a brick wall. She had figured out ways to deal with it, to release the pressure when she had to. Dennis had not.

  “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

  The boy’s body was rigid with anger. He began to shake under the pressure of trying to contain it, and then suddenly he couldn’t. He turned on her, his eyes wild.

  “I HATE YOU!” he shouted. “I HATE YOU! YOU’RE A FUCKING BITCH!!”

  She hadn’t been prepared for the virulence of his explosion. She sat back in her chair, her heart pounding like a trip hammer as he raged at her.

  He banged both fists on his desk over and over. “I hate you! I hate you! I wish you were dead!”

  Now what, Miss Child Psychologist Wannabe?

  She had opened the door and let loose a demon. What was she supposed to do? Physically take hold of him? Let the rage pour out of him until
it was spent? Make him deny his feelings and shove them back into the box with the now-broken hinges?

  While Anne was busy not knowing what to do, Dennis fell forward onto his desk and began sobbing so hard he choked on it.

  Do something, stupid.

  “I’m sorry, Dennis,” she said, her voice trembling a bit. “I’m sorry if I got you into trouble. I didn’t mean to. I came to your house because I was worried about you.”

  She had no idea if she was saying the right thing. But then she had no idea if he was even hearing her, he was crying so hard. Despite his outburst against her, Anne’s heart ached for him. He was a monstrous, aggravating pain in the ass on a daily basis, but she knew he hadn’t gotten that way on his own. And under all the problems, he was just a scared little boy who didn’t know how to handle his feelings. He was probably as frightened as he was angry.

  Anne leaned toward him and reached out a hand to stroke his head. “I’m sorry, Dennis. You can be as angry as you want with me. We’ll work it out. I’m here to help you, if I can.”

  And just how would she do that? If she could get him to tell her what had happened, then what? If his father had given him the beating she suspected was the reason he wouldn’t sit down, then what? She would report Frank Farman to the authorities and open an industrial-size can of worms for Dennis and his family.

  “You’re safe here, Dennis,” she said softly. “I want you to know that. You can come to me and tell me anything you need to, anything at all. I won’t get mad at you. I won’t punish you. I’ll just listen, and then we’ll figure out what to do about it.”

  His sobs quieted slowly to hiccups and sniffles. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his already dirty sweatshirt. He was embarrassed now. At eleven—a year older than the rest of her charges—he was already edging into that awkward space between childhood and adolescence, further complicating his emotions.

  “It’s okay,” Anne said. “This is between you and me. Nobody else. If anybody asks what went on in here while the rest of the class was out, tell them I yelled at you and gave you extra homework. Does that sound like a plan?”