by Leslie Wolfe
Melissa printed the few photos she’d selected, and watched the images come out of the unbearably slow printer, one by one. As soon as a print came out, she grabbed it and put it inside a clasped envelope, the type used for interdepartmental correspondence. Then she removed the memory card from the computer and rushed to the locker room, to hide from everyone and think.
Once alone, sitting on a small bench between two rows of blue lockers, she examined the photos again. This time, she took in all the details. From a distance, the woman was strikingly beautiful. Her body was perfect, and her gait was proud and self-assured. Her long fingernails were glazed and shone like glass, enhancing the stylish appearance of her hands. She wore an expensive-looking diamond ring; probably she was married.
Married… maybe that’s why she was so terrified to see Derek. What if they had a fling, but Derek didn’t take no for an answer when the woman told him she was going back to her husband? That made more sense than any other scenario her weary, delusional mind had conceived lately.
Nevertheless, there was no future for them together, not after what he’d done to Charlie and to her. But how could she get a divorce from a man with violent tendencies? A lawyer would make sense as a place to start. Sophie might know someone good and not very expensive.
She gathered her things and stood, ready to leave. She secured the pictures inside her locker, and, on her way out, she stopped in front of the mirror, still haunted by the image of the beautiful stranger who was at the forefront of her husband’s mind.
Her hair was short, a sacrifice in the interest of easy maintenance, considering she worked in a hospital and had to wash it thoroughly every day. Her fingernails were trimmed short, and she didn’t wear any nail polish. Some of the disinfectants she used quickly dulled nail polish, making it a daily exercise she didn’t have time for. She preferred to spend more time with Charlie than paint her nails or style her hair. Her waist wasn’t what it used to be before she’d given birth, although she still looked healthy and fit.
She sighed and gave her entire figure a critical glance in the mirror. She wore flats with soft rubber soles, the type of shoes that don’t make noise and disturb the patients when she rushed through the endless hallways. She didn’t wear any jewelry, also for the same reasons of practicality and hygiene while working in a hospital. Overall, she looked sensible, while the stranger looked classy and sexy. She was unfashionable, while that woman was chic. In ten years, she’d start looking shabby, while that one… she’d probably end up on the cover of some glamour magazine. She’d thought she was a loved wife, when in fact she was being replaced.
She wiped the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes, and slammed the locker room door on her way out.
“Screw that bitch,” she muttered under her breath, “and screw him too. It’s time to move on.”
31
Seized
Stacy’s heart pounded against her chest, sending waves of unspeakable fear rushing through her body. She walked as quickly as she could to keep up with the cop. Her step faltered and she nearly twisted her ankle, feeling a sharp pain in her joint. Those heels were not meant for that kind of rush, but she didn’t care, worried out of her mind. What had happened to Renata? The cop wouldn’t say. He’d just told her to come with him, because it was faster that way. Were the girls all right? Were they in an accident? Where was he taking her?
“Excuse me, Officer,” she called out, but the man didn’t slow down. He unlocked an unmarked police car and opened the passenger side door for her. She hesitated before getting in, and frowned as she processed all the details of that car. It was an unmarked, rather old and beat-up Crown Victoria, the kind all cops used to have until a few years back. The radio console had a layer of dust on it, and there were no red and blue flashers mounted behind the sun visors. Who was this man? Was he even a real cop?
He stared her down with an intense gaze. “We need to go now, ma’am,” he said, still holding the door for her.
She was wasting precious time, she and her famous paranoia, instead of rushing to Renata who needed her. There was nothing to be concerned about. It was broad daylight, early afternoon, on a busy city street. The car was equipped with additional spotlights, and had a console for an onboard computer and a bunch of accessories scattered inside: a small, portable radio, a collapsible police baton, handcuffs. He seemed legit, albeit he probably wasn’t at the top of his precinct’s list for new equipment, or too high on the local blue force totem pole. Probably he was just a badge-carrying gofer, nothing more.
“Ma’am?” he insisted, continuing to stare her down implacably.
A little intimidated, she climbed into the passenger seat, and the cop quickly shut the door. He circled the car and sat behind the wheel, then started the engine and shifted into gear.
“What happened to Renata? Are the girls okay?”
The cop pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes, but didn’t say a word. She caught a movement and froze when she saw him take a loaded syringe out of his pocket and remove the cap with his teeth.
She pulled backward, her eyes locked on the hand that held the syringe, feeling the clasp of fear choking her.
“No… no,” she said in a strangled voice, unable to breathe. “Please, no!”
She flailed her right arm, reaching blindly for the door handle, trying to free herself, but it was too late. He’d grabbed her left arm in a steeled grip and pushed her against the car seat, crushing her. She couldn’t move anymore. Terrified, she watched the approaching needle, unable to fight him off. She felt a stab in her neck, then the pressure of the injected fluid as it entered her bloodstream.
“Who… are you?” she whispered, but he didn’t care to answer.
He released the grip on her arm and set the car in motion. It was too late for her to try to escape. Dizzy, she tried to steady herself against the backrest while the car sped away, and struggled to stay awake as long as possible, memorizing the streets he took. Her blurry vision didn’t help much with that, and soon the world darkened and became one endless fall into nothingness.
32
Preliminary Profile
Tess dried her face with a small towel, then brushed her hair. They were such routine gestures, but the ability to do them again, the simple pleasure of taking care of herself unassisted was something she’d missed during the past few days. Life was returning to normal, unnervingly slow, but it was getting there.
She was getting ready for the conference call with SSA Bill McKenzie, and she felt restless, anxious at the thought of speaking with him. He was one of the best profilers at Quantico, and could see right through her, as he’d previously demonstrated on several occasions. She appreciated his friendship, but feared him somewhat, because he’d become involved in her career in an unusual way.
He knew her deepest, darkest secrets, and that made her feel vulnerable and exposed. As a supervisory special agent, Bill held the power to make the recommendation to park her behind a desk forever; that was the standard procedure for agents suffering from PTSD. Instead, he’d made an agreement with her. She was to undergo therapy, and he’d continue to discreetly monitor her progress. He’d done more than that; he’d offered her a position on the Behavioral Science Unit, to work with him at Quantico. She shied away from that opportunity, feeling she needed a few more months of therapy before she could work on a daily basis with the worst people that humankind has to offer. Some of the cases she worked on, like the current one, still triggered her traumatic memories and gave her nightmares. Bill was patient, and nothing short of supportive and understanding, but she was still anxious at the thought of speaking with him.
She wanted to make him proud of her, to make sure he didn’t regret bending the rules to keep her in the field. She’d held her end of the deal, and had to admit the therapy was working, although incredibly slow. It’s strange and just plain wrong how quickly a human can be damaged, in a matter of only fractions of a second, and how difficult it is to heal
the body and the mind of the injured. “Difficult, but not impossible,” her off-the-books therapist would have said, and that had to be good enough for her. There was no other option.
She checked the time and went back to her room, where she stubbornly rejected Melissa’s help and climbed into bed on her own, wincing, clenching her jaws, but unwilling to compromise. She propped herself against the pillows, and pulled the bedside table closer, ready to dial the conference number. Michowsky and Fradella were calling in from the precinct, and Doc Rizza from the morgue. As for Bill, he’d said he was in Montana somewhere, hunting down a serial arsonist.
She dialed the conference number and when the line connected, she heard the others already talking, clamoring excitedly and interrupting one another.
“Hello,” she said, and the clamor came to a stop. “What’s going on?”
“We have a new abduction,” Michowsky replied. “Stacy Rodriguez, twenty-nine years old, a database developer.”
Tess felt a wave of anger rise in her chest. They were never going to get ahead of these bastards, not like that. The perps moved too fast, and they were too unpredictable. “When was she taken?”
“Just a few hours ago. She didn’t come back to work from lunch, and her wife got worried.”
“Wait… her wife?” Tess said. “That throws a wrench in the profile.”
“Stacy was gay,” Michowsky confirmed.
Silence took over the conference line, and Tess felt her blood boil.
“Don’t you dare, Gary,” she said, speaking in a low voice between grinding teeth. “Stacy’s still alive, and we’ll find her. She’s not a foregone conclusion, you hear me?”
Another split second of silence, then Michowsky replied dryly, “Yeah, I hear you.”
“How come we learn about it so soon?”
“They weren’t going to log the case as a missing person so early, but the wife mentioned the glimpse of death.”
“What are you talking about?” Bill asked.
She’d managed to ignore him instead of thanking him for the flowers he’d sent. She shook her head, disappointed with herself.
“It’s good to hear you, Bill,” she said, fidgeting and twisting the conference phone’s power cord between her fingers. “This killer shows himself to the victims, holding a piece of rope coiled around his fists, as if he’s getting ready to strangle them. We believe it’s a warning of sorts. When did Stacy see it?”
“Um, she saw it three times,” Fradella intervened. “First time in her office parking lot, then at the mall, and finally last night, in front of her apartment building.”
“And she didn’t report it?” Bill asked.
“She only saw the hands holding the rope, nothing else,” Fradella explained.
“Bill, would you like to take over?” Tess offered.
“No, you lead this one, and I’ll just chime in as needed.”
“All right, let’s start with victimology,” she said, and before she could continue, Stacy’s photo appeared on the screen. “All victims that we know of so far are mid to late twenties, Caucasian or Hispanic, with long, brown hair. They’re all beautiful, married, young mothers. A common theme we’ve uncovered is depression, in two cases confirmed to be related to the birth of their children. In a couple of cases we have statements from friends saying that the victims were potentially considering having an affair.”
Tess paused for a while, waiting to see if anyone had any questions, then continued, “What makes this case stand out is the fact that we’re dealing with two perpetrators, or what we call a killing team. Two sets of DNA were found on the victims, consistently indicating one profile as the strangler, and the other as the rapist. This is where we need your help, Bill. Typically, serial killing teams are man/woman teams, in a dominant/submissive relationship. I believe this duo is not dominant/submissive; it’s almost symbiotic.”
“Why do you believe that?” Bill asked.
“Both men are in positions of power. Rape is about power, and strangulation is the most personal form of power-assertive killing there is, especially when performed this way, with the killer’s hands tightening the rope around the victim’s neck, looking her in the eye, while she’s also being raped. These two killers share equally or almost equally in the assertion of power over the victim.”
“It’s rare, but possible. Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole have killed a lot of people together,” Bill said, “in excess of six hundred. They were a team of equals, so to speak, in which neither was the dominant party, and both men killed. In this case though, only one man kills. That, inherently, gives this man, the killer, a position of implicit authority over the other man, the rapist.”
“So, the questions are, why doesn’t the killer rape, and why doesn’t the rapist kill?” Tess asked.
“The way I see it, the two unsubs have complementing fantasies; they need each other to fulfill whatever fantasy is playing in their minds as they perform their criminal acts. They could be two matching puzzle pieces that have found each other. It’s also possible that the rapist hasn’t evolved to killing yet, and will do that at some point in the future, at which moment this team would disintegrate. Their balance is fragile and will not withstand devolution.”
“They’re not devolving. They’ve been very precise in their timing so far,” Fradella said.
“I can think of two early signs of devolution,” Tess said. “There was significantly more strength, more anger in Sarah’s strangulation, and the glimpse appeared three times for Stacy. Until now, the norm was two.”
“Precisely, these are signs of devolution. The anger levels are increasing for the killer unsub, which tells us his fantasies are starting to become less satisfactory.”
“There are signs of repeated sexual asphyxia on both victims,” Doc Rizza said, “only partially healed. That means they were strangled a few times before, using bare hands, if I had to guess. Definitely not the murder weapon twine. All skin abrasions due to rope friction were perimortem.”
“That’s the devolution indicator for the rapist unsub. He wants to start killing too, but he’s not ready yet,” Bill said.
“The killer unsub is anger retaliatory,” Tess added, “one who doesn’t rape, which is rare for a lust serial killer. I believe he’s searching for a highly specific surrogate, and that represents a woman who has wronged him, at least in his perception. He is hateful, and his anger is increasing. But why does he show the victims the glimpse of death? Bill, what do you think?”
“You said earlier the glimpse was a warning,” Bill replied, thoughtful, speaking at a slower rate.
She could picture him with his chin propped in his hand and his eyes closed, thinking, putting pieces together in his mind and seeing how they fit.
“I agree it’s a warning,” Bill continued, “but by the time he shows them the glimpse of death, the victims are already chosen.”
“So, from that point forward, the victims don’t control the outcome at all, that’s what you’re saying?” Michowsky asked.
“Considering the victimology findings and the ring signature, we believe that maybe he’s giving them a warning to care more about their families, or maybe not to cheat,” Tess added.
“I believe that every woman who sees the glimpse will be taken, regardless of what they do or don’t do from that point onward,” Bill confirmed.
“This is a very specific victim profile,” Tess said. “How is he able to find them? There can’t be that many young, beautiful, married brunettes with small children, depressed, and looking to cheat. This has us puzzled; our victimology matrix has too many lines.”
“I’m assuming you ran deep background checks, and there’s no common ground you can pinpoint yet?”
“Deep backgrounds are still running, and now we have one more name,” Tess replied. “So far, nothing we could find. We also haven’t found more than one earlier victim, dating about a year ago, but there had to have been more. These unsubs aren’t beginners at their game
. They’re moving victims on a conveyor belt. The victims overlap; there’s a period of time where two victims are held together, and we’re not sure why.”
There was silence on the line, except from the sounds of shuffled paper. Probably Bill was reviewing the case notes.
“Would you like to venture a guess?” Bill invited her.
“I have a theory,” Tess added hesitantly. “See there, in the autopsy reports, where it says the victims were perfectly groomed, and that included having all their body hair waxed?”
Bill shuffled some papers again, then replied, “Yes, go ahead.”
“I don’t see these unsubs waxing the victims, and believe me, you have to have help for that level of waxing precision.”
“It fits,” Bill replied. “They force the experienced, subdued victim to groom the other.”
“I’m guessing this could be part of the killer’s fantasy, seeing women together like that,” Tess said. “Getting ready to… go out, maybe?”
“To cheat,” Bill replied. “The cheating woman in the killer unsub’s life was grooming herself or with a girlfriend before she went astray. She was his mother or wife, but I’m betting on mother.”
“May I ask why?” Fradella said.
“Because victimology shows he targets young mothers, and I don’t think this unsub has children,” Bill replied. “It’s not a certainty, but I’m inclined to believe the woman who wounded this unsub was his cheating mother. That plays well with the dominating parent and abandonment issues that normally feed the anger-retaliatory killer’s resentment.”
“Ah,” Tess gasped, “I see it now. That’s why the killer unsub needs someone else to perform the sexual acts. He’s reenacting. Bill, you’re a genius.”
“We repeat to remember; it’s that simple. You would have gotten there on your own,” Bill said. “You just needed a little more time.”