Chasing Evil (Circle of Evil)

by Kylie Brant

  “That I know how to cook? Don’t be. I like to eat. Makes sense to learn to prepare my favorite foods. Especially when they aren’t easy to come by around here.”

  He picked up half of the shrimp po’boy sandwich he’d made from scratch and lifted it to his lips, enjoying her visible caution as she did the same. He wouldn’t be offended if she didn’t enjoy the dinner. Not everyone liked Creole dishes as much as he did. But her look of surprise, followed quickly by pleasure after that first bite filled him with satisfaction.

  “Oh, it’s wonderful!” She took another bite. Chewed reflectively. “What’s that sauce?”

  “Homemade remoulade.” He set down the sandwich to scoop up some dirty rice and washed it down with a sip of the wine she’d brought. He wasn’t much of a wine drinker, but the dry white went pretty well with the meal. “I found a little market in the East Village that flies in fresh seafood daily. You have to get there early, but they’ll take orders, too. Didn’t get as lucky with the produce. I’ve never stepped foot in Louisiana, but I was introduced to Creole food at this little out-of-the way restaurant in Pomona. The owner was from New Orleans and I went back often enough to get to know him.” He gave her a wink. “Taught me some of his secrets.”

  He mentally damned his expansiveness when her attention switched from the meal to his words. “Pomona. When you were in southern California on that multi-agency task force? You spent over a year out there, didn’t you?”

  “Closer to two.” He avoided her eyes, concentrated on the food. It wasn’t fair to equate her questions with the ones from the agency-ordered shrink. Sophie’s interest would be real. Casual. And his future with the agency didn’t weigh on the answers he gave her.

  But fair or not, something inside him shut down at her quizzical gaze. Food he could discuss. It was the only part of the experience out there that was untainted by memory.

  “I don’t mind cooking when I have the time,” she said easily, reaching for her wine glass. “Although it seems sort of a waste for one person.”

  “I agree. It’s quicker and easier to do take out, especially during the week.” He recognized the out she’d given him. Knew his sudden reticence was the reason for it. And it occurred to him that if they had a future—big if—he was going to have to learn to talk about his time undercover. Sophie Channing wasn’t the type of woman to tolerate half-truths and evasion.

  He just wasn’t certain he was capable of giving her more.

  “Kendra Blanchette Williams.” Sophia sat in the first row of chairs in the DCI conference room four days after joining the investigation, her gaze, like the other occupants in the room on the PowerPoint Cam was running. “Divorced, two children. She’s the first victim we were able to put a name to, thanks to the tattoo on her ankle. Six months ago her vehicle was caught on video surveillance entering a parking garage in Davenport on her way to a doctor’s appointment. She was last seen four hours later when she entered the First National Bank’s main office and withdrew twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. She was never seen alive again.

  “When we added the details surrounding her disappearance to ViCAP, we were able to dramatically narrow the list of possible victims to those who disappeared under similar circumstances. The investigating detectives in each of the missing persons’ cases on this list are contacting the families of victims to ask for DNA samples to provide positive matches and IDs. We have a tentative match on dental records for one other victim so far, Cassie Wright Urban, who disappeared three months ago from Kansas City, Missouri.” The next photo flashed up on the wall, showing an African American woman in her mid-forties beaming for the camera. “I’m going to let Dr. Channing speak about the victimology analysis and offender profile she’s been working on.”

  Sophia rose unselfconsciously, and turned toward the audience that included, she now saw the very senior brass—DCI Director Unger and Department of Public Safety Commissioner Edding. After years spent on faculty at the University of Iowa and as a sought after keynote guest at national forensics conferences, she was no stranger to public speaking. “There are strong similarities between the two identified victims on that list. I’m guessing after we have positive IDs on all of them we’ll be looking at a victimology pattern of single wealthy females, late thirties to early-fifties, attractive and in good shape. They’re low-risk victims, but move about their respective communities freely, increasing their exposure. Both ID’d victims lived in gated neighborhoods, but they were taken outside their homes. The offender reduces his risk by approaching them as they go about their daily lives. He likely stalks them, following them for an extended period of time learning their routines. There doesn’t appear to be any particular physical type he’s targeting. The fact that the victims are single allows them to make bank withdrawals without a co-signer. He appears to select them primarily for their wealth.”

  “And he just happens to also be a sexual sadist in addition to a thief.” There was a quick murmur of agreement from the others in the room at Agent Tommy Frank’s remark. Sophia nodded. “We can switch to the offender profile if you like.” She turned and took copies of the report she’d developed and handed it to Franks to take one and pass the rest down the row. “This is an evolving document, but it gives us a starting point. Our offender is likely male, early-to-late-thirties. He probably suffered some sort of abuse as a child, as the majority of sexual sadists have. He’s threatened by women. He feels the need to subjugate them, sexually and physically. And he’s been at this a while.”

  “Because of the victim numbering?” This from Jenna.

  “That, and because he’s likely been evolving.” It always helped to discuss a deviant like this in objective terms, to keep her mind from lingering too much on the incredible suffering of the victims involved. She had to detach to be able to do the work. It was a skill she was constantly perfecting. “Right now the offender is equally motivated by profit and by the ability to act out sadistic sexual fantasies. I think we’ll find when he began he was motivated primarily by anger, retaliating for acts perpetuated on him as a child by an adult who had control over him. Or he may have begun striking out because of the failure of a trusted adult to protect him.”

  “So what you’re saying is that he got smarter over time.”

  She threw a quick look at Cam.

  “He evolved,” she affirmed. Since Sophia had never been one to stand behind a lectern, she began to pace. “He likely began with violent fantasies as an adolescent and enacted them on high risk victims as he grew bolder.” She turned slightly and nodded toward Urban’s photo still showing on the screen. “Pairing the profit motivation with the deep-rooted sexual deviation could have taken years to develop.” She caught the warning in Cam’s eye and paused, annoyance trickling in. Although their ill-fated time together hadn’t seemed to factor into their working relationship as she’d feared, they still had professional differences and this was one of them.

  “It’s also possible that the victim selection isn’t suggestive of an evolving signature at all, but an indicator that we’re working with a team of offenders, who have dueling motives.”

  The room erupted in a flurry of questions and comments. Sophia raised a palm, waited for silence. “It’s a possibility,” she stressed. “Although no offender DNA has been recovered on the bodies of the victims, we do have two very different styles of sexual assaults before and after death. While the victims are alive, they are savagely and repeatedly tortured in addition to, or more probably in conjunction with the rapes. But during the post-mortem sexual assaults, there are no corresponding injuries beyond some abrasions and lacerations that could have occurred during the body disposal. This may indicate one offender who is gratified by the sight and sound of his victim’s terror. Or,” she lifted a shoulder lightly. “It could mean a team. One assaulting the victims while they’re alive, and the other after. When you consider the difficulty involved in controlling the victim as she’s released to go into the bank, and then having her com
e back to the vehicle with the money, a team sounds plausible. One to drive, one to secure the victim.”

  “Statistically, how probable is it that we’re talking about a team of killers, Dr. Channing?”

  Cam’s question was no less irritating for being expected. “It’s thought that as many as twenty to thirty percent of serial killers work in teams.”

  “So we can be eighty per cent certain our guy is working alone.”

  Honesty forced her to admit, “Statistically that’s probable. But we should remain aware of the possibilities. This offender has defied statistics in other ways, by targeting victims interstate and straying outside one race in his selection of them. In some ways that makes him—or them—outside the norm for this type of offender.”

  “Next steps?”

  Sophia’s gaze went to the woman in the front row who had listened in silence up to now. Maria Gonzalez had risen through the male dominated ranks of DCI to the position of Special Agent in Charge for zone one in the Major Crime Unit a year and a half ago. Sophia had worked with her on cases in the past, but she was difficult to read. Gonzalez wasn’t given to casual conversation. Sophia couldn’t recall one fact about her personal life. She was slight, with intense dark eyes and silver threading through the black hair she kept pulled back in a no-nonsense style.

  Cam answered. “I’ve received status updates from the lists we sent out to law enforcement around the state regarding violent sexual offenders released in the last few years. There are a few on the lists we’ll be following up on. We’re also working on a location profile. Until we get approximate time of death on the victims, we can’t be sure how long the UNSUB kept them. But Dr. Channing thinks it’s likely the women were held for weeks at a time. We’ll also continue trying to match vics to those on the ViCAP list and follow up with DNA matching when samples are submitted to the missing persons databases. There are still calls coming in from sheriff offices in state wanting us to check suspicious sites in county cemeteries.”

  “You haven’t checked them all?” Gonzalez’s question was sharp.

  “We prioritized them according to proximity.” He glanced at Sophie and she stood to address the question.

  “I’ve included a geographic profile with my report. It’s likely this offender is in Iowa operating around Des Moines because he has some sort of anchor to the area. Home, job, family or another loved one. I suggested limiting the scope of the search. It’s unlikely that the offender would bury six bodies in this radius, only to bury another two hundred miles in the southeast corner of Lee County.”

  Cam took over again. “Right now there are fifteen ViCAP cases nationwide where the victims were last seen withdrawing large sums of cash. I’ve spoken to every detective of those cases. As we identify the six bodies we have so far, we might find something else linking the women. In the meantime, we’re holding off investigating reports from cemeteries further away than the anchor area until we have more information.”

  He stepped forward, picking up a stack of paper from the table in front of them and handing it to Jenna to pass out. “We’ve sent this bulletin to every state law enforcement agency in a two state radius for dissemination to their local police. It explains the nature of the crime and urges them to alert banks.”

  “There’s nothing in any of this information guaranteed to pacify a jittery public.”

  There wasn’t a change in his stance, in his tone. But Sophie was coming to know Cam well enough to sense his irritation at Gonzalez’s remark. “It isn’t intended for the public. Pacifying the public isn’t my number one concern, anyway. Catching this guy is. We’re not exactly standing still on this. As we ID each victim and get a better idea of her last hours we’ll have even more to go on. We’ve submitted Jenna’s forensic sketches of the victims to the databases and are going through those hits. This case is breaking open with the first two victim IDs. We’re following all leads.”

  The SAC gave a tight smile. “I have complete faith in your investigative talents, Agent Prescott. But the bodies were found here. The media frenzy is here. And we need something to calm the public, and to assuage the reporters immediately, not weeks from now.”

  Suddenly wary, Sophie clasped her hands. There was tension in the room, its source unidentifiable to her. This wasn’t her world, and she was unfamiliar with the agendas and politics that governed it. But it didn’t take a doctorate in psychology to realize that every group functioned within a set of unique parameters. And she was the only one in the room to not understand which one had been breached.

  “I’ll leave the politics to you,” Cam said shortly. “Along with the jurisdictional complications.” With at least one of the victims being from out of state, there would be questions regarding which law enforcement entity had priority.

  As if by unspoken decree, chairs scraped, and people began to rise. Sophia watched as Gonzalez approached Cam for a private word. Moments later they walked out together, Cam with a carefully neutral expression on his face.

  “What just happened?” she murmured to Jenna as the woman drew near her.

  Jenna grimaced. “Grass meets brass. Typical.”

  Sophia must have looked as bewildered as she felt because the other agent explained. “Grass—” she thumped herself on the chest, “meaning those of us with feet on the ground running the case often are brought up short by the demands of the brass—our superiors.” She shrugged. “Obviously the agency is feeling some pressure from the public over this investigation. It was to be expected. Juicy case like this? I stay away from newspapers out of self-defense, but it’s hard to ignore the headlines. Anyway, it’s not our problem. That’s why Gonzalez gets paid the big bucks, right?”

  Pensive, Sophia turned to follow Jenna out of the room. She might be the outsider here, but her time on faculty at the U of I had taught her all she needed to know about inter-department politics. She couldn’t help but wonder about the conversation going on between Cam and his superior.

  “It’s not your call.”

  Gonzalez’s level tones didn’t fool Cam. She was holding her temper in check. After years of working closely with her prior to her promotion, he knew the signs. But he didn’t back off. This was too important.

  “Too much information released to the press is always a bigger problem than not enough. The media can screw up a case more often than help it. You know that. At least you used to.”

  The woman came half out of her chair, slapping her hand violently on the top of her desk. “You don’t have to lecture me, Prescott. I’ve spent considerable more years in the field than you have. But despite what you think about my current position, it comes with certain responsibilities. And handling the media is a headache that isn’t going to go away. A case this big has every newspaper in the state calling for updates. PR needs to feed the jackals regularly so they don’t start feeding on us. They need a new morsel to chew on and digest every couple days.”

  “We release ID on two of the victims as soon as their families have been notified.” Cam reached for calm. The media was the bottom rung of his worries. Lower. He resented even the need for this conversation. “That should satiate their feeding frenzy for a while.”

  “What about the Price brothers?”

  He fixed Gonzalez with a look. “What about them?”

  The woman never flinched. He’d appreciated her tenacity when they’d worked cases together. Found the quality a helluva lot less endearing now that she was his superior.

  “You didn’t mention them in the briefing today. Are they considered people of interest in this case or not?”

  “If they were, I would have included that, wouldn’t I? Jesus, Maria.” Suddenly spent, Cam rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve got law enforcement in the county keeping an eye on one brother, and the other is still locked up for the parole violation. Are they capable of running something like this? Possibly. But without anything solid to connect either of them to the case, we’re effectively log-jammed there.” Once again he
gave silent thanks that Maxwell was handling the surveillance of Gary Price’s place. The weapon had come back bearing only Jerry Price’s prints. A search warrant for the farm was out of the question.

  “At this point there are four or five violent offenders in the state we’re looking at. But I wouldn’t label any of them persons of interest. That’s all we need, having some enterprising reporter follow up on such a comment by nosing around and tipping the offender off before we get to them.”

  A glance at her face showed she was unimpressed. “I’m well aware of your disdain for dealing with the media.”

  “As I recall, you used to share it.”

  Maria gave him a tight smile and leaned back in her chair. Her hair was grayer than it had been when they’d partnered together. There were a few more lines on her face. He wondered if they came from the job or from worry about her son. She’d raised the boy on her own and he’d been in and out of trouble for as long as Cam could recall. With a jolt he realized the ‘boy’ had to be in his early twenties now. It always surprised him anew that time had passed while he’d worked the task force. As if those events had transpired in a freeze frame, and when he’d finished, time should pick up again from when he’d left.

  As if reading his thoughts Maria said, “While you were gone, I worked that child prostitution case operating in the Quad Cities. Remember hearing about it?”

  By necessity, Cam’s undercover identity had been cloaked in isolation. There had been no contact with family. Friends. Co-workers. He’d reported to one person, a FBI handler, who’d also relayed messages between Cam and his mother. At least that had been the original promise, and one he’d trusted. It hadn’t been until much later than Cam would learn just how badly the fed had violated that agreement.

  The memory soured his mood further. “I recall,” he said shortly. “I had plenty of time to catch up on my reading while I was on administrative leave.” First there had been the de-briefing. Then the medical leave for the superficial gunshot wound. It had taken far longer than it should have to be deemed fit to return to duty. And that experience still rankled.