A Carol for Kent

by Hallee Bridgeman

  He sat quietly for a while, and she wondered if he’d gotten her point, or if he thought she was actually giving him advice. She almost retracted what she said, then he spoke. “So, basically, you’re saying I need to grin and bear it?”

  “If you want the fortune cookie version, then yeah,” she agreed with a smile.

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re a wise woman, Carol Mabry.”

  She put her head back and laughed. “You need to keep that in mind for the next fifty years or so.” He still held her hand, so he stood and pulled her up, surprising her by catching her mouth for a long kiss that she felt all the way to her toes. When he ended the kiss, she had to grip his shirt to stay standing, and he smiled down at the expression on her face.

  “I wonder about something, though.” His voice sounded very low and vibrated her bones.

  “What’s that?”

  “I wonder,” Bobby said, “how wise you’ll be after I change your name.”

  Carol grinned at the idea of being Mrs. Carol Kent. “I can hardly wait to find out.”

  Thursday, May 10th

  “OH mom, I forgot to tell you! Jen called right before you got home. She said she’d call back tonight,” Lisa said.

  Carol sat on the couch next to Bobby, who had a laptop in his lap and was in a teleconference with his secretary and publicist. It was already after eight, and she just saw her early night disappear. “Okay. Go on and get ready for bed.”

  Lisa packed up her homework into her backpack and ran up the stairs. Carol watched her go, and as soon as she was out of sight, left Bobby to his meeting and left the room to call Mitch. “I’m going to get my profile tonight if you want to come over,” she told him. “Unless you want to wait until tomorrow.”

  “You’re kidding. Maybe your profile will shed some light. I’ll be right over.” He cleared his throat. “Should I bring Jack?” he asked with a laugh.

  “Good-bye, Mitch,” Carol said, then hung up the phone.

  She went back to the living room in time for Bobby to close the lid of his computer. She told him about Jen agreeing to do the profile for her.

  “What’s so important about this profile?” he asked.

  Carol shrugged. “We don’t even know what kind of person we’re looking for right now. There’s been zero physical evidence up until this last crime, and what’s there is so vague it can’t be used to lead us to someone, only to confirm him when we do catch him. I’m talking vague like a horoscope. ‘Today, you may experience a change of fortune.’ That kind of nonsense.”

  “So what can a good profile do?” he asked. He helped Carol pick up empty glasses and popcorn bowls, and carry them to the kitchen. Carol put the dishes in the dishwasher, then pulled up a chair next to him at the table.

  “Well, it will tell me the sex of the killer, though almost all serial killers are men. It will tell me his age range, personality traits, perhaps even ideas of some major events in his life.”

  “Based on what?”

  “The style and method of the murders, the rituals involved in the taking of the life, that sort of thing,” she said.

  “So you take the profile and match it to someone?”

  “There are over 200 thousand people in this city alone. Right now, in this country, there are over 100 serial killers that have never been caught and about 400 at large on any given day. Every little bit of description helps.”

  “How accurate can it be?”

  “With Jen doing it, I am comfortable saying it will be dead-on.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Personal Journal Entry

  May 10

  She’s been hunting. Offering up this one and that one and this completely unsatisfactory other one. Nothing. No one. They’re all imperfect. Too tall. Too short. Too brunette. Wrong height. Wrong hair. Wrong eyes.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! Wrong!

  She knows what she must do. I’ve known all along. Maybe, when I take HER, maybe when I kill HER, maybe I’ll leave her alone for a while. Like a little reward. Like a treat for my favorite pet. Maybe I’ll give her some peace again, at least for a short time. She’s always whining about wanting peace. She’s so weak.

  SHE is too distracting. HER very existing offends me and she knows it. Maybe I’ll pretend to become a productive member of society and act normal again for more than a week at a time after I kill HER.

  IT took her little time to put Lisa to bed. She went with almost no protest, too tired from her first day back at school after being so sick. Mitch was seated on the couch with Bobby when she walked back downstairs, and she poured everyone iced tea while they all waited for the phone to ring.

  The men made small talk about baseball while Carol paced the room, waiting. It seemed like forever, but finally the phone rang, and everyone in the room jumped, then fell silent. Carol picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “It’s Jen. I’ve got your profile,” she said. Count on Jen Thorne to skip the pleasantries.

  Carol set her glass down and reached for a pad and pencil on the table behind her. “Do you want to give it to me verbally, or fax it to me?” she asked. The two men in the room watched her, waiting.

  “I’ll do both. Okay, here goes. What you have is an incredibly complex person. Someone who is charming and uses a form of hypnosis, kind of like a snake does to its victims. Someone who is likely at least two personalities, if not more. And the other personalities may not know what’s going on all the time. There is an incredible rage inside that is prevalent in the violence of the blows on the last victim, but despite the violence, your killer isn’t necessarily physically strong, or at least not exceptionally so. The rage is something your killer contains, or if you want to look at it this way, controls. When things don’t go as planned, the tight grip on the control is lost and the rage takes over. When the rage takes over, things can’t be completed - like the lighting of the candles or the arranging of the hair. Something was wrong, the killer lost control, so the ritual couldn’t be completed.

  “Your killer is extremely methodical, detail oriented, and plans extensively with everything but the victims. The victims are random.”

  Carol wrote as fast as she could. It was a few moments before she realized Jen had stopped speaking. “What else?” she asked.

  “The killer is in love with the woman represented by the victims. There is great love and care taken with the women before they’re killed, and after. This is an act of love.

  “The killer doesn’t want to be caught, which is odd in serial killers. Most of them are crying for help or daring law enforcement to catch them. They send manifestos to reporters or try to insert themselves into the investigation somehow. That sort of thing.

  “This one doesn’t want help. This one feels there is a purpose, a higher calling for the killings, as if maybe being ordered to do it. Like I said, more than one personality. With at least a mild case of schizophrenia at work here, though I didn’t put that in the written report in case it’s used as a defense. I think one personality is protecting the other so they all don’t get caught. If and when you catch the killer, there will be a terrible rage, perhaps even a suicide attempt over the capture, because the carefully laid plans, or if you will, mission, will have failed.”

  Jen paused, and Carol thought perhaps she was through. “Is that everything?” she asked.

  “No. Just looking through my notes, making sure I cover everything. This is definitely not an occult killing. There are no symbols or relics at any of the crime scenes other than the candles, and they’re just a stereotype. Cult killings almost prescribe them. Also, the bodies are all intact. Cults usually like to mutilate the victims. The candles are more symbolic than anything but the context lacks iconography, like a pentagram or written incantations or other symbols.

  “It means something else; something personal to the killer. The light of life snuffed out or the blood colored wax dripping out though the slayings are basically bloodless. They may hold some additional signi
ficance to the killer but it’s unlikely we will ever understand the rationale. Maybe just chalk it up to insanity.”

  She heard Jen shuffling pages. “Let’s see. Your killer is between thirty and forty years old. Closer to thirty if you want my opinion. There was a trigger. A death, maybe exposure to the representative victim, a life stressor like losing a job. Something made this killer snap.”

  “You mean…,” Carol started to say, seeking clarification on the stressor, but she was interrupted.

  “Let me finish. That brings me to my final point. I know you have eyewitnesses. I know you’re looking for a man. But, I want this to be taken very seriously, some dominant personality in this killer is a female.”

  “What?” Carol demanded, feeling her eyes widen.

  “Carol, I know from personal experience, women can be just as violent as men. I believe the primary clue to the sex of your killer is the drugging of the victims. Women are far more apt to use poisons. Men use their strength. Strangulation and smothering are also more common in female perpetrators because cutting off the air supply fits common female acts of violence. As with poisons, there’s little or no blood, no mess, no fuss. Your killer drugs the victims. Then your killer always strangles them, whether they survive the drugging or not. The strangling is performed ritually.

  “Also, each victim is representative. He is definitely killing someone, and he’s in love with that person – whether she’s alive right now or dead. I believe she’s alive. I’m almost certain there’s something personal on every body that belongs to the person he has fixated upon for all this. Either a piece of jewelry, some lipstick, some nail polish, or an article of clothing. Something like that.”

  Carol’s mind was reeling. “Do you have anything else?”

  “I think the other personality is male. Whether they’re working together or separately, you have all the drives that fit the classic male unsub pattern, especially when you consider the time in between kills. But all of the desired outcomes are highly consistent with female spree killers. Think Lizzie Borden. ”

  How would they catch this guy?

  “One other thing, Carol,” Jen said.

  She had to clear her throat twice before she could speak. “What?”

  “Have you had another murder since this one on the sixth?”

  “No.”

  “Then you need to prepare yourself for one. Tomorrow is five days, and he hasn’t deviated from his pattern since the first murder.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Friday, May 11th

  CAROL dropped Lisa off at school and turned in the direction of work. On an impulse, she dialed Maurice’s cell phone before she tried his office, and caught him just as he was about to pull into the parking garage.

  “It’s Friday, Carol, and as long as you have no court, there shouldn’t be a problem if you want to work from home today,” he said.

  “I have a quick plea hearing at nine-thirty. I’ll just leave from there.”

  “Who’s that on?”

  “The Henley assault. Her husband’s pleading guilty, so it should be an in and out type of thing.”

  “Go home after that. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “Thanks, Maurice,” she said, then hung up her phone. It rang almost immediately, but she didn’t recognize the number, so she didn’t answer it. The press still hadn’t given up on her, and though they’d thinned out at Lisa’s school, they were still in full force outside of the office.

  She was in and out of the courtroom and on her way back home in thirty minutes. Something had bothered her since the first murder scene. Something scratched and whispered at the back of her mind and she couldn’t quite place it until now.

  Her tires chirped as she pulled into her driveway. The engine had barely shut off when she barreled out of the driver’s seat and rushed into her house, tossing her purse and keys on the foyer floor by the door. After taking the stairs two at a time, she ran into her bedroom, through the room, and into her walk-in closet.

  Clothes. So many clothes and shoes. Her weakness, ever since she was a little girl. She loved pretty clothes, and she loved working a job where she could wear dressy, fashionable apparel.

  A tall, thin dresser held her jewelry. Hundreds of necklaces, all different colors, shapes, sizes, materials; bracelets, rings, earrings – the drawers were full of them, organized by color and material. There, among the pink jewelry, should have been her clip-on pink fake-pearl earrings. Big pearly pink balls the size of small gumballs that matched the necklace; the store didn’t have post earrings, so she bought the clip-on variety.

  They weren’t there. They weren’t there because they’d been on the ears of Darla Cody, the 25 year-old CPA found dead in her apartment on the 17th of April. A vile taste flooded her mouth, and her hands and feet went cold.

  She ran downstairs and, with shaking hands, pulled her laptop out of her briefcase. She raced back upstairs, powering up the laptop on the way, letting it boot up as she hurried back to her closet.

  After three failed attempts with fingers that wouldn’t connect with her brain, she finally logged in to her work site. She pulled up the file on Barbara Daniels, 22 year-old waitress, found drugged and strangled in the park on May 22nd. She’d been wearing black and yellow and had on a yellow bracelet that Carol noticed but didn’t realize –

  She ripped open the drawer with the yellow jewelry and dug through it, looking, searching, frantically hoping she would find the yellow beaded bracelet on the elastic string she’d bought to go with her black and yellow suit.

  Not there.

  No, no, no, she thought to herself. It’s not possible.

  She accessed Heidi Conried’s file, the 23-year-old registered nurse who was blonde the last time her roommate saw her. Carol couldn’t remember any jewelry on her. She pored through the pictures then the inventory. There it was; a pearl ring. Somehow she missed seeing that at the crime scene.

  Knowing what she wouldn’t find when she looked in the drawer containing her rings, she opened it anyway. She searched through all of them finding no pearl set in sterling silver ring.

  By now, her vision had started to gray and her breaths came quick and shallow. Calm down, she said to herself. Passing out won’t fix anything.

  Michelle Lewis, 27-year-old transplant nurse, wearing gold hoop earrings. Strangely calm, Carol opened the drawer with hoop earrings and searched for the gold ovals she picked up last autumn when she was at her best friend Aria’s wedding in Portland, Oregon.

  They weren’t there. Not that she expected them to be. She thought of Jen’s profile.

  I’m almost certain there’s something personal on every body that belongs to the person he has fixated upon for all this. Either a piece of jewelry, some lipstick, some nail polish, or an article of clothing. Something like that.

  Who could be doing this? How? How did someone come into her house and steal her jewelry? Why didn’t Carol recognize the jewelry as her own this entire time?

  She thought of the drug store surveillance camera photo, the one that showed their unidentified suspect buying red hair dye. There on the floor of her highly organized closet, she dug through the files on her computer until she pulled up that photo.

  Dark hair, goatee, black framed glasses – nothing about him even looked familiar to Carol. No spark of recognition. No reason to believe this person had killed four women in her place. HER place.

  Dear God.

  She covered her face with her hands. “What now, God?” She whispered. “What do I do now?

  BOBBY stacked the last book on the shelf and stood back to admire his handiwork as he ripped the tape off the bottom of the box and unfolded it so that it lay flat. He set it on top of the six other boxes he’d emptied that afternoon. Floor to ceiling bookshelves in the formal living room had been the perfect thing for him. He had more books than he had time to read, but he loved them and usually spent travel time with a book in his hand.

  As he gathered the empty
boxes and packing material, he heard his doorbell. Unsure who would be bothering him on a Friday morning, he left the boxes behind and went to answer the door. The last thing he expected to see was a very pale, very shaky fiancée.

  “Carol?” Concerned, he opened the door wider and beckoned her inside. “What’s wrong? Did you catch the bug that Lisa had?”

  “What?” For a moment, the eyes that looked at him were dazed, but then she shook her head as if to clear it. “Oh no. Can we talk?”

  “Darlin’, the very best part of my day is the time I get to talk with you.” He led the way into the kitchen. Carol pulled a bar stool out and sat at the island in the center of the room. Bobby pulled coffee cups out of the cupboard. While he prepared cups of coffee, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She stared at the counter, immobile. Occasionally, her breath would hitch, but otherwise she could have been made of stone.

  Bobby handed her a cup, then leaned on the counter facing her. After he took a sip and noticed that she hadn’t even reached for her cup, he set his coffee aside and took both of her hands in his. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Can…,” she started to speak, but her voice barely squeaked out, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Can Lisa stay with you for a while?”

  Bobby didn’t know this Carol Mabry. He had never seen her this distraught. He realized that he didn’t know her well enough to truly read her, yet. Even so, he knew something was very, very wrong. “Lisa’s welcome here any time. That isn’t even a question. What’s going on, Carol?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, sliding her hands out from under his and picking up the coffee cup. She didn’t take a drink, though. She just held it between her hands as if to warm her palms. “I just thought you might want the time to get to know her better. And work is really busy for me right now.”