The 7th Victim kv-1 Page 5

  “I’m Karen Vail,” she started. “I know, you were probably expecting a man. I can see it in your faces.” She liked to start by putting them on the defensive. Part of the new agent initiation protocol. Either that or she’d done too many interrogations—after a while, you started looking for the upper hand in all conversations.

  “Profiling isn’t an exact science, no matter what anyone tells you. Now I can just assign you one of Douglas’s books to read, then come back in a couple of days to answer questions, but that’s not my style. I’m here to give you a perspective on the sick minds we’re tracking out there. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The violence they perpetrate on others is sick, for sure, but they’re not mentally ill—they know damn well what they’re doing. We’ll talk more about this later.”

  After spending a few moments outlining the organizational chart for her unit, she sensed it was time to pick up the pace. A couple of the agents in the back row were slumped over, heads resting in their hands, no doubt thinking about lunch in the dining hall.

  “Let’s go into some actual examples to give you an idea of how we look at things.” She lifted the lid of her laptop, then pressed a button on the lectern’s AV panel. The classroom lights dimmed and the rear projection screen behind her glowed with yellow and white text against a black background. “Critical Incident Response Group, Behavioral Profiling Analysis” was boldly emblazoned across the screen. She pressed the Bluetooth remote and advanced to the next PowerPoint slide. In public school, when Vail was growing up, they used real slides. They jammed, they faded if you left them under the projection light too long, and you didn’t have near the creativity of the graphics she was able to produce for her FBI presentations on PowerPoint. Now her slides zipped across the screen with fancy corner-to-corner wipes, dissolves, and all sorts of neat effects. Her students still fell asleep on her. So much for technology.

  “This is the case I’m currently working on,” Vail said. “The Dead Eyes killer.” She heard a few snickers. “This isn’t a laughing matter,” she barked at them. The room got very quiet very quickly. “What you’re about to see is disgusting, the product of a monster. I hope none of you have to come upon a crime scene like this one. But my goal is that if you do, you’ll at least know something about what you’re looking at. And how to go about helping catch the bastard.”

  She hit the button on the remote and the first slide dissolved on the screen. A woman’s bedroom beamed from the computer. Her brutalized torso lay on the bed in front of a mirror, the now-familiar sight of steak knives protruding from both eye orbits. “This was the first victim. Marci Evers. Twenty-eight, brunet. Worked as a paralegal in Vienna.” She pressed another button and a second slide wiped across the screen beside the one displaying the crime scene. “Here you see the statistics and facts we know about the victim. I’m going to direct you to one thing, to illustrate a point. How many of you know what MO stands for?” This was basic “Cop 101” stuff, and she knew all their hands would be raised. But she was planning to throw them a curveball, to see who could hit it.

  There were forty-some-odd new agents ready to answer. Vail looked at one of the women and nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “Modus operandi,” she said.

  “Or method of operation, in English. Yes. Now a tougher question. Does MO ever change?”

  This time there were no hands raised. They were thinking, which was good. Vail waited a moment, then gave them the answer. “Research indicates that the MO of sex offenders changes every three to four months. Why?”

  Again, no hands were raised. “Okay, let’s take a look as to why it would change.”

  She pulled a laser pointer from her jacket pocket and pointed it at the screen. “Everyone see this blood on Marci Evers’s cranium?” The area had been shaved and a small skin laceration was evident at the crown of her head. “Why would there be such an injury?”

  “He hit her to knock her out,” a new agent said.

  Vail nodded. “Good answer. You might be right.” She turned back to the screen. “Now let’s look at Dead Eyes’s second victim.” She pressed the remote and another set of slides materialized. “Noreen Galvan O’Regan. Twenty-six, brunet, licensed nurse practitioner. Worked in Fredericksburg, lived in Maryes Heights.” She pointed at the cranium. “What do we see here?” The laser was pointed at a shaved portion of Noreen’s scalp.

  “Another blow to the head,” a woman in the back row remarked.

  “Indeed. But this one’s larger, wouldn’t you say? The injury is more extensive. This is Dead Eyes’s MO, ladies and gentlemen. A blow to the head. But we’re still not sure why the killer did this to his victims, and we can’t explain why Noreen’s is worse than Marci’s. Let’s look further.” She changed the slide. “What’s this—anybody?” It was a close-up of Marci’s right hand, showing two broken fingernails, cuts, and bruises on the hand and forearm.

  “Defensive wounds?” asked someone in the first row.

  “Exactly. Defensive wounds. Let’s back up a second and take a look at Noreen’s hands.” She hit the next slide. “No broken nails. A large bruise on the right forearm. So why are there so few defensive wounds on Noreen?”

  Vail clicked a few times with the mouse and located a folder containing digital pictures. After opening one of the photos, she could tell from their faces that some of them were getting it.

  “This is Melanie Hoffman, his latest victim. I was at her crime scene this morning.” She clicked the mouse again and additional views of Melanie’s crime scene appeared. Vail glanced at each one, then asked the class, “What do you see?”

  “The back of her head is totally caved in,” an agent said. “And there aren’t any defensive wounds.”

  “Now, can we reach a conclusion as to why the offender inflicted these blows on his victims?”

  “To immobilize them.” The voice came from a corner in the back of the room. It was Thomas Gifford, the Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of Special Investigations—Vail’s boss. She had not seen him come in, but that was Gifford’s way. Stealth.

  “That’s exactly right,” Vail said, playing along, unsure why Gifford was sitting in on her class. His office was in the same building as hers was, fifteen minutes down the road. “The offender used the blows to immobilize his victims. The head injuries were progressively more substantial as we go from victim one to victim three because he learned from his encounter with Marci Evers. She fought back. We saw all those defensive wounds. The next time around, he was more prepared. He took out Noreen O’Regan more efficiently, with a more damaging blow to her cranium—and he succeeded. No broken nails, just a bruise on the forearm. She didn’t put up much of a fight. And now, when he gets to his next victim, Melanie Hoffman, we don’t see any defensive wounds. He learned from his two prior encounters and refined his methods. He improved his MO.”

  “So MO can change,” ASAC Gifford said.

  He was trying to help her. Vail didn’t need—or want—his assistance. “That’s right. Give Agent Gifford a gold star.” The smile disappeared from his face. “MO can change, so that’s why we don’t usually rely on it to give us linkage. Linkage allows us to connect one victim to another, which gives us valuable information about the offender. So if we can’t use MO to establish linkage, we have to use another convention, called ritual. Anyone want to venture what ritual is? Anyone other than my boss,” she said, forcing a smile.

  There were no takers. “Ritual,” Vail said, “is psychosexual need-based behavior. It’s behavior that’s unnecessary to the successful commission of a crime. It can be cutting the victim’s hair, removing her organs—things that have nothing do with killing the victim or preventing us from catching him. These kinds of behavior speak to an inner need the killer’s not even aware of.” She stopped, glanced at Gifford, then looked away. “So we know MO changes. What about ritual?”

  No hands raised.

  “Ritual behavior does not change, primarily because, unlike MO, he’s not even consc
ious of why he’s doing it. Now,” Vail said, raising an index finger for emphasis, “signature is another term we need to discuss. It’s the unique combination of ritual behaviors seen at two or more crime scenes. This is important because we can get a signature within MO and ritual, which is an exciting new paradigm—”

  “Agent Vail.”

  It was Gifford, and his face, in the gray and red hue thrown off from the projected photos, looked hard. Angry.

  “Yes, Agent Gifford.” She tried to treat him like one of the class but knew that wouldn’t last long.

  “Signature is signature. MO is MO. The two do not mix.”

  Gifford had been a profiler for a couple of years but through some inner political maneuverings, a death, and some unexpected—and untimely—retirements, he moved up the chain of command very rapidly. His brief stint with the profiling unit made him an annoyance. He knew just enough to make skilled profilers’ lives miserable, but not enough to really know what he was doing. Most ASACs in the history of the unit were pure administrators and had no on-the-job training. Vail figured it had been done that way for a reason.

  Vail did not like being corrected in front of a class of new agents. She swallowed hard, then forced a smile. “Well, I can see why you think I’m wrong. However, after an offender perfects his MO, and there’s no need to change it, we start to see the offender engaging in well-defined MO behaviors—behaviors that won’t change because he doesn’t need to change them. These behaviors become a signature within the MO.”

  “Agent Vail,” Gifford said, standing and moving to the front of the small auditorium. “I think you’re done here today. Why don’t you wait for me in the library.”

  She watched him approach, shocked he would treat her like this, in this setting. She must have stood there a little too long, as he leaned into her face.

  “The library, Agent Vail.”

  “Yes, sir.” She laid the remote on the lectern, put her head down, and walked out, avoiding the gaze of all the embarrassed agents. But she knew they were more than likely shocked; she was the one who was embarrassed.

  And furious.

  VAIL SAT WAITING for Gifford for twenty minutes. The library was neat and orderly, quiet and grand, with floor-to-ceiling brown brick walls and wood panel insets, black granite countertops and a three-story central atrium. Against a wall stood a silent grandfather clock that, Vail noticed, was running fifteen minutes slow.

  Gifford walked in with a scowl on his large face and sat down hard at the table to her right. He pulled out his PDA and began making notes with the stylus, completely ignoring Vail’s presence. But she knew what was going on. With her background in psychology, it was quite clear. He was maneuvering for control, establishing who was in charge. He was telling her that he would talk to her when he was ready—and that she would have to come to him.

  Vail decided to play a little control game of her own. She opened a book she had brought with her to class, which happened to be the bible of investigators worldwide—a reference text on violent crimes written by the founding FBI profilers. She had been through the Crime Classification Manual several times in the past and wasn’t really reading it now. However, showing Gifford that she was not put off by his behavior neutralized the power he was trying to assert over her.

  Vail thumbed through the pages. Gifford pecked away with his stylus. She wondered how long he was planning to keep up the charade. She knew he was reaching when he began poking at the tiny on-screen keyboard, one letter at a time. There was just so much patience someone could have with that.

  “Turn to page two sixty-one.”

  Vail looked up, unsure if he was talking to her. “Sir?”

  “Page two sixty-one. Bottom of the page, I believe.”

  Gifford was referring to the section on MO and signature. She closed the text and turned to face him. He was looking at her, his expression telling her he thought he had made his point. “Sir, this was written over twenty-five years ago. It was groundbreaking back then, but it’s outdated. Or at least incomplete.”

  “Karen Vail, crack profiler for six years, says that the preeminent research on the topic is outdated. Well let me tell you something, Agent Vail. Human behavior doesn’t change—”

  “But the way we look at it and classify it does.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight. If you want to write a research paper filled with your personal theories, go ahead. Get it published if you can. Hell, when you retire you can follow in the paths of John Douglas and Thomas Underwood and write several goddamn books on the topic. But until your theory is generally accepted procedure, you stick with what is. I want you out there expounding these principles. Outdated as you may think they are.”

  “Sir—”

  “I think I’ve made myself clear. Now, whether you’re teaching new agents or out in the field giving lectures to the law enforcement community, the message has to be consistent. And right now, that means quoting chapter and verse from that manual you hold in your hands.”

  “Sir, in the beginning all of this was theory. The principles you speak about arose from a group of agents’ understanding of criminology and their personal beliefs.”

  “Wrong. Their principles arose from thousands of hours of interviews with prisoners and years of painstaking research into the minds of these killers. Their principles have helped lead to the arrest and conviction of hundreds of violent offenders over the years.”

  “I’m well aware of that. And I have tremendous respect for them and their work—”

  “But you think you’ve come up with something they didn’t think of.”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Fine. Keep it to yourself. When you’ve done exhaustive research and can prove your theories, I’ll be willing to listen to what you have to say. Until then, you’re mute on the subject.”

  He rose from his chair and headed out of the library, leaving Vail at the adjacent table, chewing on her lip.

  seven

  Following her acrimonious meeting with Gifford, Vail headed down I-95 to Jonathan’s middle school. The sky was still overcast and the air was heavy with the smell of precipitation. As she approached the school grounds, she saw Jonathan walking along the sidewalk with an auburn-haired girl who had a shapelier figure than Vail remembered having had herself at fourteen.

  Vail pulled over to the curb and rolled down the window. “Hey handsome,” she said to her son, “want a ride?”

  Jonathan smiled and some color filled his cheeks. Obviously, this girl meant something to him. “Mom, this is Becca.”

  Vail nodded. “Nice to meet you.” She knew Jonathan wanted to talk, and she’d promised to meet with him around 4:30, but was now a good time, when he was with his latest heartthrob? “Becca, can I give you a ride home?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I only live across the street.” Becca turned to Jonathan and took his hand, then whispered something in his ear. Vail turned away, attempting to respect her son’s privacy . . . even though she really wished Jonathan was wearing a wire.

  Jonathan got in the car and fastened his seat belt as Vail pulled away.

  “She’s cute.”

  “I guess.”

  Vail glanced over at Jonathan. “So how was school?”

  “Fine.”

  The one- and two-word answers drove Vail crazy much of the time, but she knew it was all part of being a teenager.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, I took time off work. If there’s something bothering you, I think we should talk. Don’t you?”

  Jonathan was still staring out the window as they passed a Baskin-Robbins. “How about some ice cream?” he asked.

  “It’s winter. Are you serious?”

  “Serious.”

  The smell of French vanilla hit her as she walked through the door. “See? It’s empty because no one eats ice cream in the winter when it’s twenty-five degrees outside.”

  “I do.” He walked
up to the counter and ordered a chocolate shake, then joined his mother at a small table across the room. It was warm inside, practically humid, and the storefront windows were fogged almost the entire way up to the ceiling. Vail pulled off her gloves and undid her scarf. Jonathan sat there, hunkered down with his coat zipped to his chin.

  “When you call me and tell me you need to talk, it’s usually for one of two things. Money is the second. Your father is the first.”

  Her son nodded but did not say anything.

  “You know I’m an FBI agent, not a dentist, right? I’m not good at pulling teeth.” She smiled, but his face remained a mask. “Okay, so this is serious. Your father, right? You’re angry with him.”

  “Well, duh. How’d you guess?”

  Vail resisted the urge to admonish him for his fresh mouth. “So what’d he do that made you so angry?”

  Jonathan’s jaw tightened, and he looked away.

  Vail decided it was best to wait him out. She could tell he wanted to talk; it was a matter of him gathering the courage to open up.

  The whir of the milkshake machine filled the small store. A moment later, when Jonathan turned back to her, his nostrils were flaring. “He never listens to me. He never talks to me unless he wants me to do something for him. Then he yells at me if I don’t do things just the way he wants them done. Calls me a retard. A stupid retard, that he’s—” Jonathan stopped and looked away again.

  Vail detected a slight quiver in his lower lip. There was a glassy look to his eyes, too. “That he’s what, Jonathan?”

  “That he’s embarrassed to have an idiot for a son.”

  Vail felt the anger well up inside her. It was the same bullshit Deacon had pulled with her, in the last year of their marriage. The verbal abuse. The need to feel powerful by berating others. “That must’ve hurt.”

  Jonathan’s gaze was down in his lap somewhere, as if trying to hide his emotions.