The 7th Victim kv-1 Read online

  “He’s bright, above average intelligence. This is a guy who’s into power, so he probably drives a power car. An older German make. Porsche maybe, or Mercedes, red if it’s a Porsche and a dark color if it’s a Mercedes. It’ll be older because he can’t afford a newer one. But age doesn’t matter to him. It’s the illusion.”

  “Kind of like sleight of hand, like this hocus-pocus profiling shit,” Manette muttered.

  “Go on,” Bledsoe said.

  Vail glanced down at her notes. “He’s got some deep-seated issues, as we’ve discussed. First on the list is an abusive childhood. I’m guessing the father since that’s the case ninety percent of the time. The father’s probably left-handed—” she shot a look at Manette—“and he probably beat the offender with his hand. There’s something with his face—maybe a facial deformity, as I mentioned. Maybe even caused by the father during one of the beatings. The eyes are a bit tougher. Could be symbolic, too. Like the father put him down all the time by telling him everyone sees him as a fuck-up.”

  Vail looked down at her pad. “There might be something with the blood murals. It’s unlike anything I’ve personally seen before, and VICAP should have a printout for us soon. There’s something there, I know it. Just a gut feeling . . . but we have to keep on that angle. Either this guy had formal art training, or he works in the art field. He might even be a frustrated artist. Painter is the most obvious. But I wouldn’t rule out jobs involving manual labor, where he could tap his creative side. Sculptor, carpenter . . . hell, even poet, musician, or massage therapist.” She stopped for a moment, turned to Bledsoe. “We’re checking out habits common to all the vics, right? Maybe see if they all visited the same massage therapist.”

  “Manny and I got that,” Sinclair said. “So far, the only thing we’ve come up with is that two of ’em shopped at the same supermarket chain. Different stores, though. We’re still working on it, there’s a lot of ground to cover.” He flipped the page on his yellow pad and made a note. “We’ll add massage therapists.”

  Robby asked, “Make any sense to create a list of people in the fields you mentioned above—sculptors, painters, that type of thing?”

  “We’ll end up with a huge database if we don’t narrow it,” Bledsoe said. “Go for it, but don’t give me grief when the computer spits out five thousand names.”

  “We can cross-reference it against the other lists.”

  “Fine. Do it.”

  Sinclair asked Vail, “You said this guy had above average intelligence. How do you know that?”

  “First, he gains access to the vic’s houses with relative ease. He either knows them or has found some slick way of disarming them verbally. Typically, offenders who tend toward organization are socially adept; they’ll use slick talk to approach and calm the vic. He might role-play with them, impersonating a cop or security guard to earn their confidence. I’d expect him to be well groomed and in the uniform of the role he takes on.”

  “We should continue talking with the vics’ neighbors,” Robby said. “Maybe they’ve seen a stranger in some kind of uniform.”

  “So tell me, Kari, what set him off? What happened a year and a half ago to put this guy on the map?”

  “Could’ve been a lot of things. Most likely, there was some stressor in his life prior to Marci Evers’s murder. A job change, a relationship gone sour. Some other type of situational stress that happened right before the first murder that set him off. Whatever it was, he reached maximum capacity and popped.”

  “You said he was organized,” Sinclair said.

  Vail nodded. “He’s what we call an organized offender. There’s thought and premeditation to everything he does. There’s no evidence of a struggle and only minimal defensive wounds, if any. That indicates he did a significant amount of planning. If we look at each of the victim’s houses, we see that the front door has sufficient cover from the street. That allows him to interact with the vic without anyone seeing him, just in case a neighbor is passing by at the time. Or, could be it’s a safety net in case she denies him admittance and he has to force his way in. Either way, there’s planning involved.

  “At the other end of the spectrum are lower IQ killers. They’re usually disorganized. The killing is more impulsive, they use weapons of opportunity, or those already in the victim’s apartment, and they make a great deal of mess by mutilating the victim and smearing her blood around the crime scene.”

  “Hold it a second,” Hancock said. “Your profile indicates organization but the crime scenes show the opposite.”

  Vail sighed. She was tired and didn’t feel like justifying her opinions to Hancock. But his confusion was understandable, and she figured that if he hadn’t asked the question, someone else would have.

  “There’s a lot of blood, I know. That usually points to disorganization. But if we look at the blood not by volume but by what he does with it, the painting, the artistic nature of the images, then I think we have to consider it to be purposeful. Purpose indicates organization.”

  “What about weapons of opportunity—”

  “Every person has steak knives of some sort in their kitchen. Fact that he didn’t bring the knives to the vics tells me he’s smart. Why risk getting caught with knives that can be traced to other victims? He uses what’s there because he knows it’s likely going to be there. To me, that’s another sign of organization. But beyond that, stabbing the eyes is not how he kills these women, asphyxiation is. The knives are merely used for his postmortem behaviors.”

  “What about the evisceration? That’s mutilation, disorganization for sure, even going by your own definition.”

  Vail tapped her foot and hesitated before answering. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it, except to say that maybe this guy is a mix. Elements of organization blended with some disorganization. More often than not, that’s the case anyway.” Vail rubbed at her painful brow. “Wish I could give you more. I might be able to refine it a bit once I have time to go through it again, run it by my unit.”

  “A lot of mights and maybes,” Manette said.

  Vail closed the file on her desk. “Hey, a profile is just a tool, like an alternative light source or a compound microscope. It’s not going to give you a suspect’s name and number. You think you can do better, have at it.”

  There was silence for a moment before Robby spoke. “I heard one of the forensics guys saying they found some dirt in Sandra Franks’s house.”

  “Loose dirt in the hallway and bedroom. One tread mark that matched your shoe,” Bledsoe said. “So that’s of no help. As for the other dirt, they’re running it through the chromatograph and spectrometer. I don’t have the results yet.”

  “We didn’t put booties on till after we chased him through the yard,” Vail said. “Ten to one that dirt comes back a dead end.”

  Bledsoe shrugged. “We’ll know soon enough. Also looking over hair and fibers. Some latent prints were found, but no hits on AFIS. Except . . . one good latent was lifted from the murals. Judging by the commonly used items in the house as a reference source for Sandra’s fingerprints, seems he used the vic’s severed left hand to paint.”

  “That’s just gross,” Manette said.

  “All this shit is gross,” Bledsoe said. “Now, as for the other prints ... Sin, what’ve you got?”

  Sinclair stood up and stretched. “I’m checking into Franks’s friends and family, just in case the prints are theirs. Some of the latents have probably been there awhile. But I doubt we’ll find anything: with all the blood at the scene, if the fucker wasn’t wearing gloves, he’d have left bloody prints all over the damn place. There weren’t any, so I think the latents are also gonna be a dead end.”

  “And that puts us back to where we were. To hocus-pocus psychosymbolism,” Manette said.

  A tiny watch alarm started beeping, and Sinclair glanced at his wrist with trepidation. “Got an appointment with one of the vic’s employer’s personnel administrators. This guy’s a real prick.�
� He pushed out of his chair and gathered up his weathered brown leather shoulder bag.

  Bledsoe stood as well. “Okay, let’s get back out there. You know your assignments. Let’s dig a little deeper, see if we can come up with something.”

  “DETECTIVE,” HANCOCK SAID, crowding Bledsoe’s space, “you got a minute?”

  The other detectives were filing out the front door. Bledsoe shrugged, took a step backward. “Yeah, what’s on your mind?”

  Hancock danced a bit, checked over his shoulder, and watched Vail leave with Robby. “I gotta talk to you.” He leaned close again, lowered his voice. “About Vail, I think it could be something.”

  Bledsoe’s eyes narrowed a bit, then he turned and led the way into the kitchen. They waited until the front door closed, then he brought his eyes up to Hancock’s. “We’re alone, what’s on your mind?”

  “I was reading the files you put together for me. Thanks, by the way, I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. Is that what you had to tell me?”

  “No, no. I found something in the crime scene manifest for vic number two.” He opened a file he had tucked beneath his arm. “Here, under fiber analysis.” He handed Bledsoe the report.

  “Yeah, so? A red hair. What’s the problem?”

  “Vail has red hair. The conclusion is that the comparison microscope study matched it to comps on Vail.” He paused, the corners of his mouth sinking, as if Bledsoe should’ve caught on by now. “Vail’s hair was found at the second vic’s crime scene. Why wasn’t anything done about it?”

  “Done?” Bledsoe asked. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at Hancock. “What would you have wanted us to do?”

  “Did you investigate her?”

  “Karen Vail? Special Agent Karen Vail? The woman who has trouble sleeping because this killer is still out on the street?”

  Hancock shifted his feet again. “You don’t know her like I know her. She’s devious, ruthless—”

  Bledsoe held up a hand. “Okay, Hancock. Thanks for the tip—”

  “You need to investigate her. She could be our killer.”

  The statement left them both quiet. Bledsoe sighed, then settled into a chair. “That’s a very serious allegation you’re making, you realize that? Based on a strand of hair found at a crime scene?”

  Hancock did not answer.

  Bledsoe continued: “When an investigator steps into a crime scene, it’s possible his or her fibers, fingerprints, DNA—hell, any trace evidence could be deposited there. That’s one of the challenges we face when our guys answer a call. That’s why we rope off and secure the area—”

  “Don’t talk down to me, Detective.”

  “I’m explaining why Karen’s hair was at the vic’s house.”

  “And you’re sure that’s the reason.”

  Bledsoe shook his head in disgust.

  “Vail was an art history major. We’ve got these blood murals all over the vics’ walls that look like the work of someone with a background in art. Still not convinced?”

  Bledsoe pushed out of his chair and stepped up to Hancock, toe to toe. “Look, Vail told me you were a prick. I’ve tried to keep an open mind, because both of you have biases against each other. If this is a cheap shot to discredit her, to get back at her for your problems with the Bureau several years ago—”

  “This has nothing to do with that.”

  Bledsoe’s head was tilted back, his gaze fixed on Hancock’s eyes. Neither of them blinked. “You want to investigate Karen Vail on your own time, go for it. Have a picnic. Just don’t poison my investigation.” Bledsoe pushed past Hancock and headed out of the kitchen.

  “You’ll see,” Hancock called after him. “You’ll see that I’m right.”

  nineteen

  Robby walked Vail to her car and stood there a bit longer than necessary after she’d said good-bye and closed the door.

  She opened the window and looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the sky’s dreary glare. “Something wrong?”

  “I, well . . . no.” He looked down at the ground, then gazed at the houses on the street.

  “Robby?”

  “How would you like to grab some lunch. Or dinner. I’ve got some more questions. Profiling questions.”

  Vail sat there staring at him, wondering if he was, in fact, asking her out. This wasn’t the best timing, after what had happened with Deacon—

  “You agreed to tutor me, remember?”

  But maybe it was exactly what she needed. Take her mind off all the negatives, bring some happiness into her life. Everyone needs balance; it was a lesson she’d learned many years ago. She spoke before allowing herself to think the situation to death. “Lunch or dinner, huh?”

  “Or coffee. Whatever.”

  “You know, a sharp profiler might conclude she’s being asked out on a date.”

  His gaze drifted off to the surrounding houses again. “But a plain old small-town detective might just think it’s two colleagues getting together to talk about a case. Theories and methods.”

  “Theories and methods. . . .” A smile crept across her lips. “Okay. I like theories and methods. Reminds me of my favorite course at the Academy. Dinner tonight, six o’clock?”

  “Great.”

  “Something casual. Meet me at the office, we’ll go from there.”

  “Sure, great.”

  “Oh, and Art Rooney, another profiler, may want to join us. That okay?”

  Robby’s face drooped a bit, though he seemed to try to keep it propped up. He shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “Yeah.”

  Vail smiled, squinted against the sun that had poked through the clouds. “You know what, forget Rooney; he’s probably got other plans. Can’t discuss theories and methods with more than just a couple of people anyway, right?”

  Robby winked. “Exactly. Pick you up at six.”

  ROBBY POURED A GLASS of chardonnay for each of them and set the bottle back on the table. “So you never told me how a nice detective like you got stuck in a gross profession like profiling.”

  “It was one of the safest jobs in the Bureau. I had a scare about seven years ago when I was caught in the cross fire during a botched bank robbery.” Her mind flashed back to Alvin in the bank a few days ago. Different scenario, but the setting was all too familiar. “It was just the way things went down. We were following a tip, moving on these guys fast, and I got there first. While I was waiting for backup, the perps came out of the bank. Another couple agents arrived on scene and didn’t know what hit them. The scumbags took out one agent and put the other down with a shot to the chest. I was pinned down but eventually got out of it.”

  Robby’s eyes were narrow with interest. “How?”

  She took a gulp of wine. “I thought we were going to discuss theories and methods.”

  Robby’s eyebrows rose. “We are. Karen Vail’s theories on getting out of a tough spot with only her brains and bare hands—”

  “Try a Glock and a spare magazine. And they had MAC-10s. Sprayed the shit out of my car. Windows were blowing out all over the place. We were hunkered down returning fire.” She shook her head. “It was war, right there on the street in the middle of suburbia. . . .”

  Robby edged forward on his seat. “And? What happened?”

  She took another drink of chardonnay, then looked up and found Robby’s eyes. “What?”

  “How’d you get out of it?”

  “I got down low, under the car, and shot the perp in the ankle. He went down, the other agent survived, all the scumbags died, and everything turned out okay.” She let the words linger in the air for a moment, staring at her nearly empty wine glass.

  “So, the safest job in the Bureau,” Robby prompted.

  “After that lovely episode, I realized it wasn’t something I should be doing while trying to raise a child. Jonathan was seven at the time. The thought of him growing up without a mother made me think long and hard about what I was doing with my life.” She laughed a hollo
w chuckle. “I make it sound as if it was a rational, one-night decision. It wasn’t. It took me weeks to decide what I was going to do. I even thought of leaving the Bureau.”

  “Instead you ended up in the profiling unit?”

  “While OPR investigated, my ASAC felt it was best to give me a break from my usual surroundings. He loaned me out to nearby police departments to help them solve a few dormant cases. The trails were so cold you could get frostbite just by handling the case folders.”

  Robby leaned back in his chair. “Ouch. You think he did that on purpose, to kill your career?”

  “Nah, he was a good guy. Besides, if that was what he had in mind, I screwed up his plans big time. I solved almost every one of the cases. Word traveled fast. Got a rep around the Bureau.”

  “I can see why.”

  “My ASAC sent a memo to the Division Two unit chief at BSU, and next thing I knew I was the profiling unit’s Eastern District liaison. A month later, I was competing with Chase Hancock for the one vacant spot in the unit. Rest is history.”

  Robby’s head was tilted and his gaze was fixed on Vail’s face.

  She finished off her glass of wine and waited for a response. “You okay?” she finally asked.

  “Fine,” he said, breaking his daze and sitting up straight.

  “Theories and methods,” she said with a smile.

  “Right. And here’s my theory: you’re a special person, Karen Vail, and I’d like to get to know you better.”

  “Told you this smelled of a date.”

  “Guess a small-town detective can’t put one over on a sharp FBI agent.”