Ruthless Game (A Captivating Suspense Novel)
Page 37
"Okay, let's see."
She looked at the paper. "But not too fast. This left-hand shit is a royal pain in the ass."
"Nicely put."
"I was putting it politely. Do you want to hear the bad version?"
"That's not necessary." He crossed his hands in his lap and nodded. "Okay, let's see. He's killed two kids so far."
"Male or female?"
"Two girls."
"Race?"
"One was white, one was black."
Casey wrote as quickly as she could move the pen. "Doesn't sound like the same guy."
Billy looked down at her notepad. "Why not?"
"Not usual to have different races, especially not in child killings." She rolled her hand. "Keep going."
"Well, maybe the papers are wrong."
"How old were they?"
"The kids?"
She glared.
"Oh, let me think. About the same age, I guess. Ten or eleven."
"And the abduction?"
Billy nodded, remembering something. "Both from shopping areas."
"Malls, grocery stores, what?" she asked, feeling herself fall into the rhythm of a witness interrogation. She watched his body language, read his crossed leg, and remembered how a person's body language often told more than his words.
Billy glanced at the ceiling. "The first girl was in the Galleria Shopping Center on Sutter, I think. The second was taken from near Union Square."
"Where were the kids from?"
He furrowed his brow. "One was a tourist, I think—visiting from someplace like Michigan or Wisconsin—somewhere in the middle. I'm pretty sure the other grew up in the East Bay."
Casey continued writing. "How were they killed?"
Billy scrunched his nose. "Bled to death."
"Same M.O."
"What's an M.O.?"
"Don't you watch TV?"
Billy's eyes widened. "Not with violence."
"M.O. is modus operandi—how they kill. It tells you a lot about the killer's purpose. For instance, shooting someone is less common in sex crimes because it's not intimate. Drowning is very personal, especially if you have to hold them under versus throwing them off a boat with bricks tied to their feet. That's more execution-style. Regular drowning tends to be the result of personalized rage. Bleeding to death could be from stabbing wounds or gunshot wounds. It's not very specific."
Billy leaned forward, looking both enthralled and revolted. "Personalized?"
Casey nodded, smiling inside. People's response to her work had always run the spectrum from awe to fear and disgust. "Personalized means the killer's anger was directed at someone in particular, and he took his anger out on that person. Most killers attempt to depersonalize their victims by mutilating them. Allows them to avoid seeing them as people and treat them as objects instead."
"Oh, this guy did that, too."
She looked up from her notes. "Did what?"
He waved his hand. "Depersonalized them."
"Really? How?"
He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "Some really strange stuff."
"Tell me."
"I don't remember the details. The kids were found wearing party hats."
Casey wrote down the words "party hats."
"That's not depersonalizing them. The party hats are more of a signature, something the killer does to stimulate his own satisfaction that isn't necessary for the crime. Both kids had party hats?"
He nodded. "So what do you think?"
"There's not enough to go on."
"Have you ever had a case like this before?"
She thought about Leonardo and his penchant for cutting people up. His victims had bled to death as well. She shook her head, pushing the thought away. "It doesn't work that way. This type of killer doesn't work by normal motives and reason. We can't base one case on a previous one that looked or felt similar."
"How do you do it, then?"
"You start with what this killer did. I'd get the specifics on the crime scene, the victim, police reports, and the medical examiner's report, and work through them in that order. Once I'd pieced it together, I could start developing a profile."
"Can you take a guess?"
She frowned. "Not really. I'm sure I'm missing too much information, but it doesn't seem to fit. His whole thing with the hats. That's clearly organized." Just like Leonardo had been. She suppressed the thought like nausea.
"What do you mean 'organized'?"
"An organized killer plans his captures and killings very carefully. Probably brings his own tools for the kidnapping, stages the bodies," she continued, looking at the few notes she had scribbled.
"And?"
She looked up to see Billy staring at her, wide-eyed. She shrugged and shook off the strange sensation that something wasn't right. "It's weird is all. It doesn't make sense for an organized killer to risk taking a child in a crowded place. Normally those sort of abductions are committed by someone who knows the child."
"You think he could know both children?"
She shrugged, downplaying the fact that Billy had just told her one was a tourist. If that bit of information was correct, it seemed virtually impossible that he could have known both children. "I'm sure the police are looking into it."
She looked back down at her notepad, frustrated at how little information she had. She wondered what the detective on the case was doing, how he or she was attacking the evidence. Suddenly, a tiny part of her ached to be back in the game.
Studying her notes again, she puzzled. Something wasn't adding up. The sensation reminded her of the Cincinnati case. The killer's methodology had been so mixed. It had taken them nearly three weeks to confirm all four killings had been the same killer. A chill jetted across her shoulders, leaving a tiny wake of shivers. She shook them off and pushed the paper away.
Dropping the pen, she began to stretch her already cramped fingers. It was a waste of time. She wasn't an FBI agent anymore. She would never be an agent again.
"Glad it's not my case," she said, sensing it was something less than the truth.
Savage Art
by
Danielle Girard
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Savage Art
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As one of four children, Danielle Girard grew up in a house where the person with the best story got heard, and it’s probably no surprise that fast-paced suspense stories have always been her favorite. Girard’s books have won the Barry Award and been selected for the RT Reviewers Choice Award. Two of her novels have been optioned for movies. Visit her website at www.daniellegirard.com.
Table of Contents
Cover
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Excerpt from COLD SILENCE by Danielle Girard
Excerpt from CHASING DARKNESS by Daniel
le Girard
Excerpt from SAVAGE ART by Danielle Girard
Meet the Author