While the agents mulled over what they’d heard, Adams asked Mary to take a stab at profiling their possible killer. A muscle in her eyelid began twitching. If she’d known he was going to expect her to actually participate, she would have organized her thoughts better. “My gut tells me we’re dealing with a woman. I think she wants attention for the reason Mark just mentioned, the fact that there are so few female serial killers. Mentioning church seems like something a woman might say.”
“The BTK killer was president of his church,” Pete Cook interjected. “Or maybe the UNSUB just wants us to mistakenly believe he’s a woman.”
“I’ve already considered that,” Mary said, swallowing hard. “As to BTK, I don’t believe Dennis Rader made any reference to his church in the correspondence he had with the authorities or the media.”
Adams shut his eyes and then opened them. “How old do you think this woman is, Stevens?”
“Late twenties to mid-thirties.”
“Why?”
Mary continued, “Because the extensive planning, which are necessary for these type of crimes, go hand in hand with maturity. A younger or older woman might not be able to pull off a series of murders, especially since the victims are allegedly men.” She paused and cleared her throat. “I also believe the UNSUB is physically fit, that she works out regularly at home or in a gym. It takes muscle to dispose of an adult male body.” Mary waited to see if anyone else spoke. When they just stared at her, she realized they were waiting for her to continue. “I think she’s meticulous, patient, and possesses great self-control. She probably lives alone in a spotless apartment.”
Adams asked, “Why spotless?”
“Because she’s used to cleaning up crime scenes. If not, she would have been apprehended. Besides, why leave evidence around if she has to vacate and move to another location at the spur of the moment?” When she saw Adams nodding, her confidence kicked in. “More than likely she rents because it gives her more mobility. There’s a chance that she’s been treated for schizophrenia or some other mental disorder, since she perceives the killer side of her personality as a separate entity. She’s attractive, and uses her looks to lure her prey, another reason I believe we’re dealing with a female.”
“Vehicle?”
“Some kind of van or SUV,” Mary said. “The problem here is I don’t believe she kills in the city where she lives, one of the reasons she’s eluded the authorities.” She thought a few moments, then added, “She wouldn’t want to drive a vehicle which had been used to transport a body. I suspect she rents a van or SUV somewhere near the kill site. If so, this might be how we can catch her.”
“Is she Caucasian, Hispanic, African-American?” Genna Weir asked, taking a sip of her coffee.
“I’m almost positive she’s white,” Mary told them, her eyes roaming around the room. They were testing her. Her throat was parched. She glanced at the water bottles on the side table, but knew they would know how nervous she was if she walked over and got one.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because the recorded voices she used on the tape sound white,” Mary explained. “There’s also the fact that minority women endure some of the worst childhood abuse imaginable, yet they seldom go on killing rampages when they become adults.”
“And white women do?” Peter Cook said, a look on his face that said he wasn’t buying it. “You know how many African-American women are in prison for murder?”
“Serial killers?” Mary raised her voice. “Whatever happened to our UNSUB occurred twenty or thirty years ago. I don’t believe a black or Hispanic woman would kill a series of men, compile a tape like this one, and mail it to the FBI.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s stupid.”
The questions seemed to be coming at her from everywhere. “What about an American Indian?”
Mary had reached the end of her rope. “What percentage of the population are female American Indians? I mean, cut me some slack. Maybe the suspect, ah, UNSUB . . .” FBI lingo amounted to acronyms on top of acronyms. Most police departments had done away with the ten-code system, deciding it was safer and easier to speak plain English. Now she had to learn federal laws versus state, as well as an entire new vocabulary. “Why don’t I just listen?”
Stifled chuckles made their way around the table. Adams said, “That’s it, guys. Everyone get back to work.” When Mary stood to leave, he said, “Not you. I’ll speak to you in my office.”
Several of the agents came up and shook Mary’s hand. Weir and McIntyre told her she’d done a good job. Adams was already out the doorway, and Mary had to hustle to catch up with him. He was probably going to tell her she had her head up her ass. When she reached his office, she sat the tape recorder with the duplicate cassette still inside on the floor beside the chair, then placed her yellow pad on her lap.
“Check VICAP,” Adams said, referring to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. “Search for unsolved homicides, primarily married men between the ages of thirty and fifty, as well as any missing persons who fall into that category. Missing adults don’t carry a lot of weight, you realize. The type of men the UNSUB claims to be killing are obviously womanizers, so the wives and girlfriends may have assumed they simply ran off with another woman and failed to report it.”
Mary said, “I realize that, sir.”
He draped his jacket over the back of his chair before sitting down. “I agree with you about the age and sex, by the way, as well as the race. Your profile was good under the circumstances. I more or less sandbagged you in there. I did it because I wanted to let the team know that you’re competent. You’ll still have to earn their respect.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Why don’t you start by trying to find out if a six-year-old child was abandoned on a highway during the winter months twenty or thirty years ago?”
Mary was ecstatic. He not only approved her profile, he appeared to be assigning the case to her. Of course, there were no witnesses, corpses, crime scenes, forensic evidence, or even a specific part of the country where the crime might have occurred. “I’m not sure that part of her story is true,” she said, tapping her pen against her teeth. “She could have fabricated the abandoned child thing to send us on a wild goose chase.”
“We can’t do anything until we officially know a crime has been committed and that a federal law has been broken. You understand that, don’t you?”
“But the killer sent this to us,” Mary protested, “not a local PD or another law enforcement body. This person invited us to work the case. How can we not work it?”
“We don’t know other agencies didn’t receive the same tape,” Adams pointed out. “Besides, criminals don’t determine jurisdiction. Check with all local and national law enforcements agencies. If it was sent to the Atlanta PD, the crimes probably occurred in Atlanta.”
“But sir,” Mary said, her voice sparking with intensity, “it has to involve breaking federal statutes. If these men were all killed in one area, we would have heard about it. Our killer is kidnapping her victims and transporting them across state lines.”
Adams moved ahead. “Send the tape to the lab. Let them try to track down the sources of the recorded voices and do voice prints. One of them might be the UNSUB’s.”
“Oh,” she said, “who will I report to?”
“Yourself,” Adams said, smiling. A moment later he fell serious again. “This is your first bone to chew on, Stevens. You may be chewing on it the rest of your career. Don’t come to me unless you’re certain you have a solid lead. If you need advice, go to McIntyre or Weir.”
Mary stood, experiencing something she hadn’t felt in a long time—the adrenaline rush that came when she tracked a killer.
ELEVEN
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA
Even executioners occasionally got bored.
Courting a friendship with a judge was exhilarating. Anne remembered so
mething she’d read one time. If a person had all the money in the world, what would they buy? The answer was if they had all the money in the world, they would already own it. After getting away with murder, there wasn’t much she could do to top it.
Then a fool appeared.
If she kept her mouth shut and listened, Anne had discovered, a drunk would tell her his life story. Fifteen minutes after he’d asked Anne to go to a motel with him, Bryce Donnelly told her he was married to a Ventura county judge. The possibilities this presented her with were limitless.
Anne slapped open the doors to the courtroom, taking a seat in the second-to-last row. She had slipped in for a few minutes yesterday. When she wasn’t dressed as a sex object, it was easy to move under the radar. She hated push-up bras, and wearing high heels was agony.
Anne had met Bryce five weeks ago at the Indigo Lounge, an upscale bar and grill just outside the back gate of the Thousand Oaks Country Club. In most instances, it took time and considerable finesse to get a man to talk about his wife. Bryce had humiliated and exposed his wife to a stranger and never given it a second thought. How did he know she wasn’t a reporter, an attorney, or even a criminal seeking revenge?
Lily’s husband claimed he worshipped her, then admitted that he’d started cheating on her a few months after they were married. He said Lily was emotionally distant, that she ignored him, that making love to her wasn’t much better than masturbating. He said he had to have other women, that if he didn’t he’d go crazy.
Anne would show him crazy.
Lily had blown her away from the very first moment she had laid eyes on her. She had never dreamed she could get this close to her. Why had she hooked up with a piece of shit like Bryce in the first place? Even if he hadn’t bragged about his conquests, it was obvious he was a player. How could such a smart woman be so stupid?
Her pulse quickened as she waited for the courtroom to come to life. Lily was an incredible woman, and not just in intellect and accomplishments. Her curly red hair was obviously natural. Her skin was parchment-white and her nose and checks were sprinkled with freckles. Anne wasn’t attracted to Lily in a physical sense. If she had to classify herself, she would say she was asexual. She felt as if that portion of her body had never existed.
Anne had no desire to have sex with a man, even a good one, if such existed. She hated the way their bodies stank, the hair on their chest and genitals, and the way they looked and acted when they became physically aroused.
“Is this the Abernathy trial?” a scratchy voice echoed in the empty courtroom.
Anne startled, seeing an older man wearing red suspenders hovering close to her face. “No,” she said, glancing down at the schedule in her lap. “Try Division Fourteen.”
She had dropped her voice several decibels, not that it mattered. She had listened to thousands of voices and arrived at the conclusion that there wasn’t a big difference between a woman’s voice and a man’s. Some men had high-pitched voices, and then there were women whose voices were so deep, they sounded more masculine than most men. Voice prints were something else.
“It’s too cold in here,” the man said disappearing out the back of the empty courtroom.
Good riddance, Anne thought, not wanting him to block her view of Lily. The old geezer had been right when he said it was too cold. Things probably heated up when the court was in session, but at the moment she felt as if she were in a freezer. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out a ragged brown sweater. Dressing like a street person was another trick she used to keep from being scrutinized. People tended to look right through you if they thought you were going to hit them up for money.
Anne’s flight took off in two hours, but she’d been disappointed when Lily hadn’t shown up at the gym that morning, and had impulsively stopped in at the courthouse on her way to the airport. With the big cases Lily was juggling, it was understandable that she might have to skip a few workouts.
Testimony in the Stucky murder was scheduled to resume at nine and it was only a few minutes past eight. The schedule she had picked up at the information desk listed a hearing on another matter at eight-thirty, a discovery motion on a pending robbery. The two male attorneys walked past Anne on their way to the counsel table, chatting between themselves. The court reporter also appeared, along with the clerk, who sat within arm’s reach of the judge.
Anne had a system for keeping her identity straight. She used the first half of the alphabet for her female names, and the last when she wanted to pass herself off as a man. To make certain she didn’t get confused, she wrote the name of the moment on her mirror in lipstick every night before she went to bed, then wiped it off the next morning. Memory was all about repetition.
Not only was she freezing, her stomach was grumbling. She lived in a constant state of starvation. If she didn’t diet, she would turn into a cow. She had ballooned up once and swore it would never happen again. People treated you differently when you were overweight. You became a third-class citizen. More importantly, married men didn’t risk fortune and family for a fling with a fat girl. Women didn’t want to hear it, but it was true. It didn’t matter if they were overweight. A guy could have a spare tire as big as a beer keg, and still end up marrying the prom queen. Even in this area, men had an unfair advantage.
Anne had been watching Lily for the past month. She began by following her to familiarize herself with her routines and haunts. The judge was both lithesome and shapely, one of those lean, tall women whose skeletal structure concealed the size of her breasts. Lily was ditzy, though. A lot of bright people acted as if they couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag. She had watched Lily trip, walk into walls, and wander around as if she were a five-year-old separated from her mother. She seemed to live so deep inside her mind that she didn’t pay attention to her surroundings. Not paying attention to your surroundings was dangerous. She would have to caution her about that one day. Not now, of course, but later.
As for herself, she was hyper-vigilant. She drank a minimum of ten cups of coffee per day, and used stimulants to suppress her appetite. Most nights she slept no more than three to four hours. She didn’t really need the coffee and diet pills to stay awake. Since childhood, she had suffered from chronic insomnia. Going several nights without sleep didn’t bother her. The longer she stayed awake, the better she felt. Lack of sleep dimmed her emotions, and kept the beast inside of her from surfacing.
Once Lily took her place on the bench, Anne slouched down low in her seat, her legs stretched out under the chair in front of her. She wondered what it would be like to have such an important position, where people stood in awe of you and couldn’t so much as speak unless they had your approval. Unlike Lily, she’d never had the chance to make anything of herself, at least nothing in the professional realm. Well, she thought, that wasn’t entirely correct. Killing was a profession. How many women could lure a man to his death, carve him up like a turkey, and dispose of the remains where no one could find them?
Some of the stuff Anne used in alter egos came from her clients, while other things she picked up on the Internet. She was convinced the authorities would never apprehend her. That is, unless she let them. She had made a step in that direction, but it wasn’t a sincere effort to turn herself in and seek redemption. She was fucked for all eternity, so all she really hoped to gain by contacting the FBI was to up the stakes and make the game more challenging.
She was a fairly proficient programmer. Computers were great because they couldn’t hurt you unless you dropped one on your foot. She’d never dreamed she could make this kind of money. It was scary, thinking she was only a few steps away from being legit. She reported her income and paid her taxes. God, she thought, only in America.
Her work was clearly on point with her interests, yet on the other hand, it enraged her and gave her access to a cornucopia of victims. She never realized how many men cheated on their wives and girlfriends, and most of them were a long way from being lowlifes, at least not b
y contemporary socioeconomic standards. They were CEOs, college professors, preachers. rabbis, dentists, surgeons, attorneys, even men with political aspirations such as the recently deceased Stan Waverly. Regardless of the fact that no one was aware they were adulterers, their actions defined them. In her eyes, they were scum.
Anne moved through life like a ghost, drifting from one city to the other, constantly changing her appearance, her occupation, her Social Security Number, and other identifying documents. She’d taken the driving test now in fourteen states, always passing on the first try. Why were people shocked over the events of September 11 when it was so easy to hide in plain sight in the United States? When she had traveled to Europe and Asia several years back, the hotels would collect her passport and keep it until she checked out. Foreigners here were allowed far too much freedom.
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