by Lisa Gardner
“Outliers? Please, your family can’t even be on the graph.”
Adeline shrugged; D.D. switched gears.
“Your sister jealous of you?”
“You would have to ask her.”
“But you two have a relationship?”
“I visit once a month. She’ll tell you I come because I feel guilty. And I’ll tell you she accepts my visits because she’s bored. Detective.. You seem to think this so-called Rose Killer might have a direct connection to my family, may even be inspired by them. Speaking as a psychiatrist with some experience in deviant personalities, I wouldn’t be so sure.”
D.D. gave her a skeptical look.
“If you compare enough pieces of warped wood,” Adeline continued, “some are bound to be warped the same way. Same with abnormal psyches. Many share the same obsessions, rituals and fantasies. Is it that this killer has read about Harry Day, or visited Shana? Or is it enough that he shares their primary belief?”
“Which is?”
“Blood is love. My sister took sewing shears to my arms not to hurt me but to demonstrate her affection. As for twelve-year-old Donnie Johnson, I think it’s possible Shana’s never spoken of that night for the same reason: She didn’t hate the boy. She simply loved him too much and has missed him ever since.”
D.D. arched a brow. “Your sister killed a twelve-year-old boy as a display of her affection?”
“I don’t know. But something happened that night, Detective. Something powerful enough, or maybe simply personal enough, that not even a pure psychopath such as my sister has been able to speak of it since.”
Chapter 13
Who am I? Average security company employee.
What do I look like? Nothing special. Tan pants, blue button-down shirt, baseball cap pulled low.
Primary motivation? Just doing my job.
Purpose of operation: Distract investigative efforts, confuse the issue.
Net gain: Everyone loves a villain.
The nondescript security company employee drove straight to the target.
No other vehicles in the driveway. No signs of life in the home. The security company employee parked on the street, grabbed a black computer bag from the passenger’s seat, then pressed a navy-blue baseball cap lower onto head.
The khaki pants were baggy, same with the faded blue shirt. Flea market finds, hence the lack of perfect fit. But cheap clothes were disposable clothes. And excess fabric further distorted one’s size, which would come in handy later, when nosy neighbors were inevitably called upon to provide a description.
Deep breath in and out. Hands flexing and unflexing on the steering wheel. This was it. Not a time to think but a time to do. Research had been done, plans debated, decisions made. Now the moment was at hand.
The first time, lurking outside the target’s town house. Realizing after months and weeks of consideration that this was finally it . . . Then carefully positioning the package in the center of the walkway, far enough that she’d have to leave the doorway to retrieve it. Ringing the doorbell, then ducking behind the fake ficus tree in the corner of the front porch. The target opened the front door. The target sighed, spotting the delivery fifteen feet away. The target set out to retrieve her prize. Making it so easy to slip inside, taking up position in a hall closet until late that night, when the lights were finally out . . .
Who am I? Nothing. Nobody. No one. Or maybe I am just like you. The outsider, looking in.
What is my motivation? Financial security. Personal success. Call of the wild. Or maybe, just like you, I want to be someone. To finally feel as if I belong.
Now, the nondescript security company employee exited the van and headed straight for the home’s front door.
Body angled, counting on bulky clothes to help further obscure the view, the nondescript security company employee picked the twin locks. Which, of course, triggered the home security system into its first round of wails.
Not rushing. In fact, now relaxing. Because with the alarm came further justification for the presence of a security company employee. All, in fact, was proceeding according to plan.
Striding into the house. Heading for the stairs. Locating the master bedroom.
Thirty seconds and counting now. Because while it might appear to nosy neighbors that the proper person was already on scene, a posse of security company operators were immediately placing calls to the local police as well as the responsible homeowner. Time mattered.
Now the nondescript security company employee studied the bed. Right-hand-side nightstand held a glass of water, faintly smudged with pink lipstick. Upon closer investigation, the pillow revealed several blond curls. Definitely her side of the bed. Did she sleep well? Or did she still remember that night, standing in the darkened hallway all alone, so completely vulnerable . . .
Rockabye, baby, on the treetop, the nondescript security company employee hummed. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .
Attacking a homicide detective had not been part of the plan. But she’d heard, coming out of the bedroom, leading with her gun. Returning to the crime scene had been a rookie mistake, the nondescript person understood now. Giving in to the temptation to see it again, review each detail, had everything really gone just so? Plus, from the outside, the town house had appeared dark, empty, safe.
Then, the detective, suddenly appearing in the hallway. And a choice had to be made. Fight or flight. Really, it hadn’t been so hard after all. Just as others had claimed, once you kill the first time, the rest really does come easy.
Improvisation. It had worked even better than imagined. So now, here stood a nondescript security company employee improvising again. While continuing to count the seconds: Eighteen, nineteen, twenty . . .
Time was a taskmaster. Must stay on plan.
Unzipping the computer bag, producing the first item. The bottle of champagne. Then, of course, the handcuffs, delicately lined with fur. Followed by a single red rose, placed directly upon her pillow.
Finally, the card. Purchased just this morning and the winning touch.
Stepping back. A final assessment of the scene.
Purpose of operation: Intimidate, scare, antagonize. Because then again, maybe I don’t want to be you. I want to be better than you.
Net gain: Adrenaline rush.
Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three . . .
The nightstand phone started to ring. No doubt the security company, checking to see if it was the homeowner who’d accidentally triggered the alarm, and could now silence the system by magically uttering the secret password.
Nondescript security company employee turned, walked steadily down the stairs, out of the house and back to the waiting van. A quick show of speaking rapidly into a cell phone, conscientious employee on the job. Face down, gaze averted, back to the nosy neighbors, who were now starting to look actively out their windows.
The home alarm continued to shriek.
As the nondescript security company employee climbed back into the vehicle. And drove away.
Leaving behind the tokens of affection for Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren. Including a very thoughtful card, which read:
Get well soon.
Chapter 14
ALEX PACED.
D.D.’s squad was assembled in their family room. Crime scene techs had arrived, inspecting their front door, dusting for prints, bagging the various tokens of the killer’s affection. Uniformed officers had canvassed the area. Other detectives had interviewed the neighbors, establishing that a nondescript person in a nondescript white van bearing the name of a major home security firm had appeared in their driveway in response to their home alarm. Or maybe it had been there right before the activation of the alarm? But one way or another, Alex and D.D.’s home security system had activated, and an employee from their security company had been right there to handle it. Male, femal
e, young, old, black or white, no one was sure. But a company employee. Definitely a company employee had been immediately on scene. Good thing, too, right?
Alex paced.
He’d been the one to find the note. Came home from work, pulled in the drive with Jack strapped into his car seat. He’d opened his car door and registered the screech of the alarm right about the same moment his cell phone had buzzed with their real security firm calling to check in with them.
Not having seen anything amiss from the outside, Alex entered their home. They’d had false alarms before. These things happened. And given the undisturbed front door, intact windows, quiet downstairs . . .
He’d just relaxed, he’d told D.D. tersely. Jack in his left arm, security company on the phone tucked against his right ear as he’d popped upstairs for one last, quick inspection . . .
The security company had contacted the Boston PD, while Alex had headed straight back out of the house with three-year-old Jack in his arms and driven him to his parents.
They would keep him for the night.
While the crime scene technicians processed Alex and D.D.’s home.
And Alex paced.
His hands were clasped behind him. He wore his academy clothes, khaki pants, a navy-blue shirt embroidered with the Massachusetts State Police logo on his chest. The hard line of his shoulders spoke of tension. Otherwise his set face remained expressionless, nearly impossible to read. If D.D. was an expert on externalizing her rage, then Alex was a master of internalizing his, maintaining a tightly reined control.
For the first time, it occurred to her how rough the past six weeks must have been for him. She was the one who gnashed her teeth and growled about feeling powerless. Yet, how much say had Alex had in the matter? One morning, his wife went to work. And she hadn’t been able to dress herself, watch their child or do anything useful since.
He’d had to watch her suffer. He’d had to assist her with tasks that often increased her pain. And he’d had to shoulder the full load of parenting as well as household chores for the foreseeable future.
Yet he’d never once complained or snapped at her to get over herself.
He was there for her. Even now, he wasn’t demanding to know what she’d gotten herself into, or how dare she bring the dangers of her job into their home. He was thinking. Analyzing. Strategizing.
Alex wasn’t feeling sorry for himself, or for her. He was plotting how to get the son of a bitch who’d violated their home.
“So,” Phil said at last. He was sitting on the sofa, notepad propped on his knees, gray blazer rumpled, dark-red tie askew. Of all of them, he appeared to be taking the break-in the hardest. With D.D. out, this had been his case. And not only had a second victim been murdered, but now the killer appeared to be getting closer to them, without them getting any closer to him.
“So,” D.D. repeated. She’d moved a kitchen chair into the family room, where she sat with her left arm tucked against her ribs, an ice pack on the back of her left shoulder. After the impromptu physical therapy session with Dr. Adeline Glen, it seemed the least she could do. Plus, she was trying to prove to herself, if not to her pain specialist, that she wasn’t a complete control freak. She could try other pain management techniques. Yes, she could.
“Neighbors don’t have much to offer,” Phil continued. “Basically, a person, very average-looking, entered your home.”
Across from Phil, Neil shrugged. “Nothing we didn’t already know. Killer has entered and exited two other crime scenes without arousing attention. Blending in is obviously something the perpetrator does well.”
“But maybe we learned more about technique,” Phil said. “The suspect was disguised to appear as a home security company employee. We can go back to the other two crime scenes, see if they had systems, if there were any calls that came in that night. Or ask about other common service companies. Maybe a van marked ‘pest control’ or ‘plumbing.’ You know, the kind of thing that really didn’t stand out for the neighbors at the time, but if we return with more specific questions now . . .”
“Who is this guy?” asked Alex abruptly. He stopped pacing, stood in the middle of their modest, beige-carpeted family room and stared at them.
“Joe Average,” Neil spoke up. “Or maybe Jane Average. Statistics would argue for Joe, given that most killers are male. But again, the lack of sexual assault, not to mention any kind of useful eyewitness account, means we can’t rule out Jane. So maybe, just Average Person. We are looking for an everyday average person.”
“No,” Alex responded immediately. “Our suspect’s a killer. That already makes him or her a member of an extremely small percentage of the human population. And a double murderer who’s not a sexual sadist predator falls into an even smaller percentage of an already small percentage. So again, who is this asshole? Because right now, we’re not understanding this killer. And yet, he, she or it is getting to us just fine.”
D.D. thought she knew what her husband meant. “I paid a visit to a funeral home today,” she spoke up. “Thinking along the same lines, that we’re investigating a predator who commits incredibly macabre murders, except he doesn’t seem that interested in the actual killing part. It’s the postmortem mutilation that appears to drive him. Which made me think of someone who might feel more comfortable with dead people than living people, which made me think of people who work at funeral homes.”
“The Norman Bates syndrome,” Neil murmured from the love seat.
“Yeah. Except, when I interviewed the embalmer, he emphasized that successful funeral home directors excel at empathy. Not exactly how I’d describe our killer.”
Neil sighed, sat up. “Much like you, I’ve spent the day contemplating necrophilia.”
“This from the guy who spends all his time in the morgue,” D.D. muttered.
Neil scowled, clearly not in the mood. “Here’s the thing. On the one hand, our killer seems most comfortable with his victims postmortem. On the other hand . . . he or she or whatever is still not that into them. No sexual assault. Meaning by definition he’s not a necrophiliac—which just for the record, once again does not exclude our perpetrator being female. I ran across five or six case histories of female necrophiliacs just to ensure my research was icky enough.”
“Industry has a number of female embalmers, too,” D.D. added. “Just saying.”
“Meaning back to Alex’s point,” Neil continued. “We have two dead bodies and still no idea what’s driving these crimes. If these aren’t murders of pain, passion or punishment, what are they?”
“I think I might know the answer to that one,” D.D. said. “Given the lack of pain and punishment, I think it’s fair to say our killer isn’t driven by bloodlust. I think, in fact, our killer is not that into killing at all. Instead, he, she, it, may be driven by compulsion. Say a deep-seated desire to add to a very unique, very personal private collection.”
“What kind of collection?” Phil asked.
“Strips of human skin.”
The room fell quiet. Then Neil made a face. “Ed Gein, anyone?” he muttered.
Now everyone grimaced; Ed Gein was a notorious serial killer who’d once made a lampshade from human skin.
“Earlier today,” D.D. said, “when I pictured our unsub in my head, I kept seeing a lone guy, small of stature, limited social skills. If you think about his MO, ambushing his victims while they’re still asleep, drugging them quickly, killing them expeditiously . . . Feels to me like our killer’s primary goal isn’t venting displaced rage or satisfying twisted sexual cravings but to carefully and judiciously harvest strips of flesh. Which, theoretically speaking, means we’re looking for a socially awkward homicidal maniac with a fetish for collecting human skin. Sound good?”
Everyone nodded.
D.D. continued: “Except here’s the problem: Two problems, actually. One, my shoulder. Meet Melvin,”
she introduced her injured left arm to her squad. “And two, the scene upstairs. Returning to problem number one and assuming for a moment our perpetrator is a male, since when does an antisocial skin collector have the balls to personally revisit his first crime scene? Crawling under the police tape, an act that would certainly call attention to himself, if not lead automatically to his arrest. Let alone, confront the female lead investigator of the case, and in some way I can’t yet remember but someday will, shove said investigator down the stairs? Those are some pretty bold moves for a killer who only attacks sleeping women.”
Alex pursed his lips. Slowly, Phil and Neil nodded.
“Same goes with the little scene staged upstairs. Suddenly, Mr. Antisocial is breaking into a cop’s house? In broad daylight? Staging his wardrobe and vehicle to appear as if with a security company, waltzing right through the front door, then leaving his personal calling cards next to my bed? I mean, the level of social engineering, let alone pure gamesmanship . . .” D.D. scowled, twitched her icing shoulder uncomfortably in the hard-backed chair. “Seems to me the same predator who’s interested in this level of direct confrontation and just plain nah, nah, na, nah, nah, na is not the same guy who’d be content to ambush women in their sleep. So I’m wondering, especially given the lack of sexual assault and detailed physical description, maybe our killer is a woman, a female collector obsessed with human skin.” She couldn’t help herself; she thought immediately of Shana Day.
“For a woman, attacking other women would be more of an equal playing field,” Phil spoke up. “So not a socially awkward, low-self-esteem predator, but a female prepared to do whatever she has to do to pursue her compulsion. For someone like that, targeting the lead investigator, engaging in gamesmanship, wouldn’t even be so much of a stretch—especially if she perceives you as threatening to come between her and what she wants most, which is additions to her collection.”
“Except the card upstairs read, Get well soon,” Alex muttered. “If D.D.’s presence is a threat to our killer, why encourage her speedy recovery?”