by Leslie Wolfe
He took a large bite and chewed slowly. She followed suit.
“Yeah, all right, but why stop trying?”
They ate silently, while Tess struggled to answer that simple question. There was no answer, not a logical one, anyway.
“You’re right, I shouldn’t have,” she eventually stated. “I’ll finish this case, and then I’ll go back. I’m already afraid they’ll notice at work, you know, me being weird, bitchy, jumpy.”
He nodded, finishing a few fries.
“I’m just, you know, uneasy around people. Dr. Navarro said I’ve become suspicious of all people, because of… what happened. Maybe he’s right, but maybe I’m right to be suspicious too. Do you know how fast they’d kick me to the curb if they knew what was going on? Who do you think wants someone with PTSD carrying a badge and a gun? A federal agent with panic attacks?”
“Maybe you could start trusting people again,” Cat said gently. “Not all of them are bad. Some are, but not all.”
She looked at him with weary eyes. How could she even try? Where would she start?
“People are bundles of pain and fear, each wearing their own brand of misery,” he continued. “Trust me, I know. When they’re at the end of their rope, they come here, with their stories. Try to trust a few, see what happens.”
“I can’t, Cat. I’ve forgotten how.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yes, but you’re special,” she smiled sadly.
“Maybe at your work you could find some trustworthy people worth your shot.”
“They’re not exactly happy with me at work these days, and it hurts, because I love my job. But I snap at people, and I’m angry all the time. Then, this case.” She pushed her plate aside, unfinished. “Every time I catch one of these freaks, I find a little more closure. Maybe one day I’ll have enough closure to feel normal again.”
“You’ll catch this sick son of a bitch, right?” he asked, smiling widely, and tilting his head.
“Oh, yeah, Cat, I know I will. Don’t know how just yet, but I will.”
Chapter Twelve
Those Who Die
It wasn’t eight o’clock yet when Tess arrived at the squad room, carrying three cups of coffee on a carton in one hand, and a bag of fresh donuts in the other, her peace offering to the team she’d ignored all evening the day before.
“Finally,” Michowsky said, springing to his feet and grabbing his jacket. He opened a drawer and took his gun.
“Whoa, not so fast,” she said, offering him one of the coffee cups. “It’s done already. Let’s go to the ME’s instead, see what’s new.”
“What do you mean it’s done?” Michowsky asked, putting the cup down untouched.
“Next of kin. Spoke with them last night.”
“Without us?” Fradella intervened. “Why the hell did you do that for?”
“Oh, well, North Miami took longer than I thought, then traffic, so I didn’t think you’d still want to do it that late. I thought you’d already gone home. I’m sorry,” she said, “I really am.”
“Don’t do that again, all right?” Michowsky said. “We’re supposed to be a team. That’s what you said.”
“Scout’s honor,” she pledged.
“Is there any honor involved in selling cookies door to door?” Fradella quipped.
“Lots of honor, I swear.”
“Okay, let’s go downstairs,” Michowsky said, still frowning.
They shared the elevator silently, Tess feeling grateful for how easy she’d appeased them for the next-of-kin visit. It didn’t hurt if complaints stopped landing on SAC Pearson’s desk for a change.
A whoosh and the door opened, letting them feel the chilly air of the morgue. Doc Rizza was on the phone. He waved at them, inviting them to take a seat. Michowsky and Fradella did, but she continued to stand, pacing slowly along the walls.
Behind Doc Rizza’s desk, the top diploma framed was his medical degree. The doc had studied in California, at Berkeley. Interesting. Then her eyes wandered lower on that wall, where she saw he’d obtained a second PhD, in clinical psychology, this time from Florida State University. It was definitely worth bouncing some ideas back and forth with Doc Rizza. Then she noticed the blanket and pillow thrown on the sofa. He hadn’t gone back home the night before. He lied about his planned liquid dinner and just stayed up and worked.
“Your intervention paid off,” Doc Rizza said, ending his phone call. “Tox screen came in this morning at six.”
They gathered around him, and he turned on the wall-mounted TV, then went to his laptop and opened an email attachment. He scrolled through it.
“We have confirmation on the full toxicology array, both in her blood and at the many injection sites. She was drugged with several powerful, rare compounds. One was flibanserin, a drug that enhances libido in women.”
Tess winced.
“Then we see here low-dose opiates, but also stimulants and pain-threshold-lowering drugs. This one in particular, a variant of methylphenidate, is a central nervous system stimulant.”
“Doc, isn’t the pain-threshold stuff you mentioned common?” Fradella asked. “Painkillers are everywhere.”
“Pain-threshold lowering means they make you feel more pain, not less,” Doc Rizza replied. “Put that in conjunction with the thin cuts all over her body and you have chemically enhanced torture.”
“Oh, God, that’s… that’s sick.”
“And the rest isn’t?” Tess reacted, scoffing bitterly.
“Her nostrils had traces of ammonia. She fainted, and he broke vials of ammonia salts under her nose to wake her up. He did, in fact, nourish her intravenously, with 5 percent glucose solution. That’s all I have on the tox screen. Still waiting on the trace substance in her inflamed cuts. I’ll give you the list of compounds you could trace.”
“This is Miami, Doc,” Michowsky said. “You can get anything from anywhere.”
“Some of this stuff’s pretty rare. It could be contraband, of course. You never know.”
“The killer knew his way around these drugs. This isn’t something you just pick up from a TV show or the Internet,” Fradella said.
“Precisely,” Doc Rizza replied. “This man has some form of medical training. Moving on.”
He tapped on some keys, and the TV displayed a close-up of Sonya’s mouth.
“The bite mark. I’ve analyzed the scar tissue, and it could be older, say anywhere between seven and fifteen days. It’s hard to be precise with bite marks, but it definitely predates the abduction; it’s most likely unrelated. The bite was strong enough to pierce her skin in two places, but didn’t leave much of a scar.”
“Could this have been accidental somehow?” Tess asked.
“I can’t think of a scenario in which it could, other than maybe she bit her own lip for some reason, but then something made her bite too hard. Possibly a shock of sorts… like running over a pothole while driving. It’s possible, not probable though. Same goes for erotic biting. It could happen, but not likely.”
“Two weeks, you said?” Michowsky asked.
“About there, yeah. Then… I found minute traces of perfume on her body. Sent it to the trace lab. You might want to work your magic and rush that.”
“Uh-huh,” Tess acknowledged.
“Next, DNA. No, don’t get excited, there is none. I’ve swabbed everything that could be swabbed and haven’t found a single trace. He used condoms and was very careful what to touch. Most likely he used gloves too. One more thing.”
“Shoot,” Tess replied.
“There are signs of sexual asphyxia. She has been strangled almost to her death a few times, before she was killed.”
They stared quietly at Sonya’s livid face, shown on the wall screen.
“That’s it, that’s all I got,” Doc Rizza concluded.
“Doc, let’s walk through this,” Tess said. “We’re dealing with an experienced cutter, probably a medical professional, one who knows a w
hole lot about drugs, who’s bold enough to dispose of a body in full rigor yards away from unsuspecting bystanders, and who’s got a place remote enough to feel comfortable torturing someone who must have screamed like hell for five days. Am I missing something?”
“N—no, you nailed it.”
“If you had to guess, what kind of man are we dealing with?”
“I don’t like to guess, you know. I can posit he’s relatively young, late 20s or early 30s, affluent, bold. He needs an elaborate form of gratification. He’s a clinical psychopath, and I’m willing to bet his MRI shows structural abnormalities in his amygdala.”
“Anything else we could use?” Tess asked.
“I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”
“All right, Doc, thanks,” Michowsky said and turned to leave.
She stayed behind, looking at Sonya’s face on the monitor, quietly reflecting on how little separates those who live from those who die.
Chapter Thirteen
Early Victimology
The ride in the elevator was just as quiet as the earlier one, only for different reasons. This time, they were each immersed in their thoughts and a little grimmer than before. Tess made no exception. Libido enhancer? Pain-threshold-lowering drugs? The killer was a psychopath, no doubt, but even for a psychopath, what kind of brain would concoct such an elevated recipe for torture? Before the doors chimed open on the second floor, she had her answer. This narcissistic, sadistic psychopath didn’t get off on the sex. He got off on the pain, on the power. That’s why he’d been careful not to damage Sonya’s face. To him, the victim had to present the image of a pristine creature engulfed in pain and completely under his power. There was no religious ritual involved, like they’d originally thought. There was a ritual all right, but it had nothing to do with religion. It had everything to do with asserting power, his absolute power. Sonya was posed in a praying position all right, not to God, but to him. That was the killer’s fantasy.
“Let’s get busy, guys,” Tess said, walking briskly toward Gary’s desk, and grabbing her laptop bag on the way. “It’s time we found his other victims.”
“We searched all evening yesterday, while waiting for you to come back. There’s nothing, no one fits this MO,” Michowsky replied.
“Where and how exactly did you look?” Tess asked.
“We did database searches for all victims under 30, Caucasian, who were posed in some manner. We found a couple, one on the Gulf Coast near Tampa, and one close to here, in Miami,” Fradella replied. “But we discarded both those victims. They weren’t related.”
“Why?”
“The Tampa one was badly beaten, face bashed in, doesn’t fit this guy at all. The other one was shot, but otherwise intact, no beatings, no rape. Again, not a match.”
“How far did you search?”
“Statewide is all we have access to,” Michowsky replied, frowning.
“Then it’s time to up the ante,” Tess said, powering up her laptop. “First, I’ll put a live alert. We’ll be notified the minute another young woman goes missing in the southeast.”
“You’ll get tens of pings before the day is over,” Michowsky said. “Not sure how useful this will be.”
“Until we narrow it down, let it ping us,” Tess replied. “We don’t know what kind of cooling-off period this killer has. He might be out there right now, abducting his next victim.”
Michowsky nodded, but looked unconvinced. Fradella came to stand behind her.
“Can I see what you’re doing?”
“Yeah,” she replied, a little morose.
Having a man stand in such close proximity behind her, where she couldn’t see what he was doing, triggered her anxieties, but she decided to force herself to accept his presence. She needed to act normally, and, most of all, be logical. Todd Fradella was a cop, and a nice man too. They were huddled in the middle of a squad room swarming with other cops. No one was going to attack her there, so she decided to make the effort and stifle the voices of panic rising inside when he approached her to look over her shoulder. She focused on the search and noticed she could breathe a little easier. Damn hypervigilance.
“Feds use something called DIVS, or Data Integration and Visualization System. It pulls information from all databases hooked into it, essentially the majority of law enforcement databases everywhere. It provides us with a single search interface. Let’s put in some parameters,” she added. “Let’s go back, um, two years.”
“Would that be enough?” Fradella asked.
“Probably not, but we don’t have many filters that we’re certain about, so we’ll be flooded with results. Once we figure out how to narrow down our victimology, then we can go back further in time.”
“Huh,” Michowsky said, “you’re really that certain this guy’s a serial killer?”
“What, after all you’ve seen downstairs, you still aren’t?” Tess asked. “What more do you need to see?”
“I’m just thinking we would have heard of it. If we had a serial killer in our backyard we would’ve known about it.”
“What if he’s not from here? What if Miami isn’t his usual stomping ground?” Fradella asked.
“Precisely,” Tess answered. “You have to think globally, or, in this case, nationally. He could have started elsewhere. He could have changed his MO over time, and not been visible to you until now. Let’s find out what the data tells us. So, two years’ time frame, then… let’s say murder victim, case still open, female, Caucasian, adult under 30.”
“Why adult?” Fradella asked. “How do you know?”
“Pedophiles are a different animal. They don’t get aroused by raping and torturing an adult. Only a child, of tender age most of the time.”
“God…” Fradella reacted, his face conveying the utmost disgust.
She hit enter, and the system returned 127 victims.
“Oh, wow,” Fradella reacted. “That’s a lot of unsolved murder cases.”
“We’ll apply exclusion filters next and bring it down a little.” She leaned back against her chair, thinking. “Most serial killers have a set physiognomy. Their victims are stand-ins for the real target of their rage, typically a woman who rejected them, hurt their ego, or did something they perceived as damaging. Let’s build in Sonya’s physical characteristics to this search.”
DIVS crunched the data with the new parameters and returned 32 possible matches.
“They can’t be all his, can they?” Fradella asked.
“Most likely they’re not.”
She added “found on beach” as a filter, and the database returned zero results. What were they missing? The beach was an important factor; it had to be. The excessive risk he took when he posed Sonya’s body on the beach, the boldness of his actions led her to the certainty that the beach, as his body dump location of choice was critical somehow. Maybe even beyond physiognomy.
Displaced rapists went to extremes to abduct, torture, and rape victims who looked almost identical to the object of their rage. Their victims had to have the same hair and eye color, the same height and weight, even an almost identical hairstyle. An investigator, looking at victims’ photos, could immediately pinpoint the commonalities. But not all serial killers were displaced rapists. The medical examiner’s findings pointed toward a sadistic killer, which spoke more to the anger-excitation model rather than anger-retaliatory. The excitation killer’s victims could transcend physical traits, even cross racial lines. But even the anger-excitation killers had scenarios, fantasies that fueled their rage and their arousal, and such a scenario could very well include dumping the body on the beach. Maybe the beach was part of his signature, and Sonya’s blue eyes and ash-blonde hair were irrelevant, just coincidental. Maybe that beach meant something… that particular location, or maybe ocean beaches in general. Maybe sand… or water? Maybe his stressor, that traumatic trigger event that leads to escalating, homicidal behaviors in certain psychopaths, had happened on a beach.
“Hello,” she said, more to herself.
The database returned two other victims. They were both found on the beach, facing sunrise, at dawn, posed. One near Atlanta, the other one near Summerville, in South Carolina. They were kept for at least three days, tortured, and raped.
“We’ve got a pattern, guys. Now we know. Let’s get the case files, and put the ME reports in Doc Rizza’s hands. He’ll help us further develop this killer’s signature. Let’s move!”
They stood, ready to leave, but Tess suddenly sat back down, and retrieved the parameters screen in the database search function.
“What?” Michowsky asked.
“Databases are precise when it comes to people’s age of adulthood. People aren’t. People make mistakes sometimes,” she clarified.
She deleted the parameter “adult,” and replaced with “over fifteen years of age.” She hit enter again, and a third victim popped up, a young Asian girl, found on an eastern-facing Lake Michigan beach. She was seventeen years old at the time of her death.
“Now we can talk victimology,” she said, sounding confident, but frowned, a little preoccupied.
Had she found all of them? What if the beach thing was new, just a recent step in this murderer’s evolution? What had he done with the victims’ bodies before he’d become bold enough to pose them in plain sight, only yards away from bystanders? How many others were out there, yet to be found?
Chapter Fourteen
Case Files
Page after page of case-file material was spewing from the color printer, and Fradella put them together with one hand, holding what was left of his pizza slice with the other. Tess swallowed her last mouthful of pizza, half-chewed, then sprung to her feet.