The 7th Victim Page 6

  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 It was groundbreaking back then, but it’s outdated.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  “Karen Vail, crack profiler for six years, says that the preeminent research on the topic is outdated.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 Outdated as you may think they are.”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.

  The milkshake machine stopped its whine, replaced by the taps and clinks of glass and metal scoops.

  Vail scooted her chair over slightly and placed a hand on Jonathan’s. “I know what it’s like. Your father is . . . insensitive.” An asshole is what she wanted to say. Deacon wasn’t always like that—though he was never the empathetic type, he was always good to her, and he was there for her when she needed him—until his career fell apart, until he became bitter and jealous. The slide into anger and resentment came soon after, a deepening abyss from which he never escaped.

  Vail eyed Jonathan and felt sorry she couldn’t have spared him the pain of a breakup, of having to leave him half-time with a bitter, downtrodden father. “But honey,” she said, “you know what he said isn’t true, right? You’re a talented, loving, bright young man. I’m very proud to have you as my son.”

  Jonathan looked up and found his mother’s soft, hazel eyes. Then his face flushed and he began sobbing. She leaned closer and took her son by the back of the neck and brought him against her shoulder and held him there, letting him cry. She flashed on the memory of her six-year-old boy who’d fallen off his bicycle . . . his friends laughing at him and Jonathan bursting into tears, more out of embarrassment than from injury. She stroked his hair now as she’d done then and waited until he calmed himself.

  The counter cler
k put the shake on top of the ice cream case and nodded at Vail. She looked down at Jonathan, who pulled away, sniffling and swiping at his nose with the back of a hand. She grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and gave it to him.

  “He gets drunk just about every night. He pushes me, grabs my shirt collar, and gets in my face.” He paused. “I don’t want to go back there, Mom. I don’t care if I never see him again.”

  Vail completely understood his feelings, but at the same time, it disheartened her to think that her son couldn’t stand to be with his father. “He’s got joint custody. It’s not up to you, or even me.”

  “You’ve got to do something, Mom. I’m not going back there.”

  “I’ll call my attorney. You may have to talk to him, probably even someone from the court, too. The judge won’t listen to me. He needs to hear it from you.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  “In the meantime, you’re going to have to stay at your father’s. When he says those things to you, just ignore him. Hum a song in your head, or just think of me, telling you how terrific you are. I know it’s hard. I lived through it myself.”

  “Yeah, but one day you decided you were leaving, and that was that.”

  “It wasn’t that simple, Jonathan.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re gone and I’m still there.”

  His words were like arrows to her heart. It wasn’t that simple . . . but Jonathan was right: he was stuck there and she had escaped. They sat silently for a moment, memories rushing through her mind like a bullet train. A tear rolled down her cheek, lost its hold, then dropped to her lap.

  Jonathan sat there, staring at the window, and did not say a thing. Vail dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, then took the shake from the counter, and placed it in front of her son. He didn’t move. Vail followed his gaze to a small droplet of water winding its way down the fogged window, leaving behind a trail of clear glass as it moved lower. She wondered if Jonathan was somehow relating to the path of the lone drop moving through a wall of murky fog. Then the image of Melanie Hoffman’s blood murals popped into her mind.

  She shook her head and forced her thoughts back to Jonathan. But as so often was the case, her work had intruded on her personal space.

  “Go ahead and drink your shake,” Vail said. She pulled out her phone. “I’ll call my attorney, see about getting you out of that house as soon as possible.” She punched the keys with a vicious anger. “Whatever it takes, Jonathan, I promise I’ll get you out of there.”

  eight

  After dropping Jonathan at Deacon’s house, Vail put in another call to her family law attorney and spent a nervous evening plotting out her strategy . . . making lists and organizing her thoughts to help the lawyer build a solid argument for revisiting the custody arrangement.

  But with the dawning of the new morning, she had to push Jonathan’s problems aside and force her attention back to her job. Robby was waiting for her to pick him up en route to an interview with Melanie Hoffman’s parents. The Hoffmans lived in an older clapboard house on acreage buried in a wooded area of Bethesda. Built eighty or ninety years ago, by Vail’s estimation, it was well maintained and sported a collection of flowerpots and wreaths arranged on the front porch.

  She and Robby stood at the door and waited for the Hoffmans to answer the knock. A detective had already delivered the news about their daughter’s death, so they were at least spared the task of having to tell parents their little girl had not only passed on, but that her death was a horrific one, one you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemies.

  Footsteps clapped along behind the front door. Wood flooring, Vail figured, heavy steps. Mr. Hoffman, no doubt.

  “Sounds like we got the man of the house,” Robby muttered to Vail.

  The door swung open and revealed a man of around fifty, about thirty extra pounds piled on his midsection. Clear blue eyes, glazed over, with a head of receding dark brown hair. Delicate features. Melanie’s father, for sure.

  “Roberto Hernandez, Vienna PD. We spoke on the phone.” Robby waited a beat, received a slight flicker in the man’s eyes as acknowledgment, then continued: “This is my partner, Karen Vail, with the FBI.”

  The man nodded. “Howard Hoffman. Wife’s in the living room.” He held the door open for them, and they entered the modest home. Wood plank floors, as Vail surmised. What she hadn’t anticipated were the paintings hanging everywhere there was wall space. Paintings similar in style to those they had seen in Melanie’s house.

  “Melanie was very talented,” Vail noted as they followed Howard into the living room.

  “My wife,” he said, motioning with a hand. “Cynthia.”

  “Ma’am,” Robby said, nodding at her. He and Vail stood there awkwardly, awaiting a response from the woman. But she simply stared ahead at the window at the far end of the room.

  “Can I get you anything?” Howard asked.

  “Just some answers,” Vail said, attempting a slight smile.

  Howard sat on the couch beside Cynthia and motioned his guests to the opposing love seat.

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Robby said. “I can’t imagine—”

  “She was a very special girl.”

  The voice came from Cynthia, but it was so soft Vail wondered whether she had actually heard something. But Robby had heard it too, because he stopped in midsentence. They both looked at the woman. She was Howard’s age, but her posture and grief made her appear older. Shoulders rolled forward, hands curled around a tissue in her lap, eyes bloodshot, and wavy chestnut hair falling loosely around the sides of a haggard face.

  Vail waited for elaboration, but Cynthia did not offer anything. Her gaze did not move.

  “Mr. Hoffman,” Robby said softly, “we know Melanie had just started working for McGinty & Pollock. Where did she work before that?”

  “A big firm in DC, I don’t remember the name. Began with a ‘P.’”

  “Price Finnerton.” From Cynthia. They looked at her, and Vail made note of the name on her pad.

  “Did she have any problems there? Did anyone give her a hard time, any conflicts with her boss?”

  “Nothing.”

  Vail and Robby waited for elaboration from Cynthia, but there was no reaction.

  “Do you know why she left? Was she unhappy there?”

  “She loved working there,” Howard said. “I told her she was worth more than they were paying her. I kept nagging her about it, and to put me off she called some company, I think they call them headhunters. Three weeks later, she got a job offer from McGinty for twenty thousand more than Price Finnerton was paying her.” He paused, his head bowing down. “Maybe if she’d stayed put this wouldn’t have happened. . . .”

  Vail inched forward on the couch. “Mr. Hoffman, we’re searching for details right now as to why this happened, but I can assure you it’s got nothing to do with what you told Melanie. The man who did this has killed other women and he’ll kill again. It has nothing to do with you or the advice you gave your daughter.” Vail had no guarantee what she was telling Howard was true, but she hated seeing the victim’s family beat themselves up with guilt over things they had said or hadn’t said, done or hadn’t done.

  Howard nodded but kept his head down. Robby offered him a tissue, and he took it, wiped at his eyes.

  “Mr. Hoffman, are you aware of anyone, family members included, who might’ve had a disagreement with Melanie?”

  “No.”

  “What about friends? Did she have many?”

  Howard tilted his head up, made eye contact. “A few close ones. They were all good people. Most were single, one was divorced, like Melanie.”

  Robby squinted. “Melanie was divorced?”

  “Annulled,” Cynthia said. She turned to face Robby. “Her marriage was annulled. There’s a difference.” Her voice was stronger, but her eyes fluttered back down to her lap.

  “This guy’s name?” Vail asked.

  “You don’t think he—”

 
Robby held up a hand. “We turn over a lot of rocks during the course of an investigation. Just to see what crawls out.”

  “Neil Kroes. We’ve got a number somewhere. Cynthia, hun, can you get it?” Without a word, Cynthia rose and walked out of the room.

  “We’ll need a list of her friends, too,” Vail said. She tore a piece of paper from her notepad and handed it to Howard with a pen. While he wrote down their names, Vail continued: “Do you know if she frequented any bars or nightclubs?”

  “That wasn’t Melanie. She didn’t drink, didn’t like the nightlife. And she didn’t use drugs, either, if that was going to be your next question.”