The 7th Victim

by Alan Jacobson

  He switched off the television, went to his freezer, and took out the container holding the beloved senator’s hand. He set the severed appendage on the table beside him and looked at it, observing it from multiple angles. “You were a very naughty bitch, Senator. Would anyone have voted for you if they knew the type of person you really were? Of course not. Of course not. Of course not.”

  Well, he hoped she enjoyed their time together. He sure did. It was the most satisfying event of his life. He felt free again. Free . . . free to do whatever he wanted to, because she wasn’t there to stop him.

  Almost free. Because there were a few loose ends that needed to be tied up. But there was time for that. If there was one thing he could be sure of, it was that time was on his side.

  forty-three

  Vail had spent the afternoon at the hospital, holding Jonathan’s hand, stroking his hair, talking to him. Just in case. She told him she loved him about a hundred times, or maybe it was more. It didn’t matter. He was still comatose, and although previously his eyes only opened and closed, they now moved side to side and tracked moving objects. As time passed, it was increasingly difficult for her to get excited over “incremental improvement.”

  But the doctor continued to be encouraging: “He’s taking small steps. No matter how small, they are small steps. We have to remain hopeful.”

  Vail shook her head. It sounded similar to what Gifford and Robby had said. Maybe she needed to start taking their words to heart.

  After returning to her house, she grabbed the Dead Eyes file and spread the paperwork out on the floor in her study. The profile and supporting information went in one pile, the crime scene photos in another, VICAP reports on each victim grouped with victimology analyses. Interview notes with family members, employers, and acquaintances were placed in another spot. Medical examiner, forensic, and lab reports were separated out and laid across the floor.

  Vail stood up and looked at it all, neatly organized. Like the offender.

  She sat on the futon couch beside the long wall of the eight-by-ten room and let everything flow through her mind, not stopping to analyze any particular item. The blood murals, the messages left at each scene after the disputed third victim, the severed left hand, the knives through the eyes. Disemboweled vics, easily disabled. Substantial planning involved. Intelligent offender. Organized. Her thoughts had come full circle.

  The doorbell rang. She pulled herself off the futon and meandered to the front door. Robby was standing there with a bouquet of flowers. “Good afternoon, Miss, care to make a contribution to the Police Officer’s Foundation?”

  Vail pushed opened the screen door and said, “Sure, Officer. Here’s my donation.” She reached out, grabbed his lapel, and pulled him down to her height. Planted a hard kiss on his lips. She leaned back and studied his face.

  “I’ll make sure you get a receipt. For tax purposes.”

  He bent over and lifted her off her feet, carrying her in his arms into the family room, where they kissed again. They fell onto the couch, tongues probing, hands exploring—

  Suddenly, Vail stopped. She rested her head on Robby’s chest, a hand on his shoulder.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t want anything to ruin the moment. Can we just lie here for a few minutes?”

  “Of course.”

  Seconds passed. She asked, “Do you mind if we slow it down a bit? I just need some time. I’m not sure what I want. I mean, I know what I want. It’s just that with so much going on right now, maybe it’s best to wait—”

  Robby pressed fingers to her lips. “You want to wait, we’ll wait. I think I can withstand a few more cold showers.” They smiled.

  “Thanks.”

  “We’ll grab some dinner. A movie, too, while we’re out. I think we could both use a good escape.”

  She nodded against his chest. “In a little while. For the moment, I just want to stay right where I am.”

  forty-four

  “So teach me more.” Robby grabbed his rolled burrito and held an end of it in front of his mouth. “About profiling.”

  Vail unwrapped the foil that cocooned her food. “Not exactly the sort of conversation made for dinner. But if it doesn’t bother you, I’m game.” She sighed, eyes down, searching the table between them but seeing nothing. “Typing the offender is an important consideration. With Dead Eyes, it’s a question I’ve grappled with over and over again. What type of offender is this guy?”

  “I thought he was organized.”

  “He is, yes. But there’s more to it than just organized or disorganized. Kim Rossmo—the guy who I asked to do a geographic profile, talks about classifying offenders by the way they search for their victims, and the way they go about attacking them. He classifies them as hunters, poachers, trollers, and trappers. I’m fairly sure Dead Eyes is either a hunter or poacher. A hunter uses his home as a focal point and goes out in search of a victim. A poacher also goes in search of a victim but chooses a different place as his focal point. Could be where he works or some other place he’s comfortable around—even if he has to travel to get there.”

  “Okay, so he’s an organized hunter or poacher.”

  She held up a hand. “It’s not quite that simple.”

  “Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be.”

  Vail smiled. “If it was simple, you guys wouldn’t need people like us.” She took a sip of her ice tea, then continued: “There are three victim attack methods. A raptor attacks a victim as soon as he sees her. A stalker finds his victim, then follows her for a while before attacking her. An ambusher behaves like a spider, luring her to his safe place, where he can be in total control, and then attacks. Based on the fact that Dead Eyes attacks them in their own home, and appears to be of high intelligence, I’d think he spends some amount of time casing out the house and the neighborhood before going in for the kill. That’s why he only chooses front doors that are hidden from the street.”

  Robby swallowed. “Then he’s an organized hunting or poaching stalker. How does this help us?”

  “First of all, it’s another tool in establishing linkage. Linkage is an issue for vic three—we know that—but also with Linwood. At first glance, she appears to be the work of the same offender, but in some respects not. Aside from linkage, a geographic profile uses the search and attack classifications to create a distribution of where the offender has already struck, and where he might strike next. If we overlay this analysis on top of a map, we can make certain inferences. And if he’s not a poacher, it might even give us an idea where he lives.”

  “When will this geographic profile be done?”

  “Hopefully soon.”

  Robby took another bite of his burrito, then nodded.

  THE CLOUDS HAD RETURNED. Gray skies and the threat of rain hovered like salt in sea air. After dinner, Robby and Vail went to a movie and made out like pimply-faced high school kids. Their next stop was Davina’s Creamery for dessert, before ending up at Robby’s place. They fell asleep on the couch in each other’s arms, their empty dishes of ice cream resting on the coffee table. The next morning, Robby drove her home on his way to the task force op center.

  Upon pulling up to the curb by Vail’s house, he nodded at the open front door. “Please tell me you’re expecting someone.”

  She followed his gaze. “What?” Her eyes narrowed as they found the door. She reached for her Glock and got out of the car in one motion.

  Robby drew his weapon and followed her oblique path across the lawn. Using hand signals, Vail indicated she’d go right and he should go left. She rested her back against the brick; Robby ducked below eye level and scrambled across the front of the house.

  She nodded to him, then turned the screen door’s knob and pulled it open. He held it in place with the toe of his shoe as she entered in a crouch, gun tip out in front of her. She moved through the hallway, Robby at her heels.

  She motioned him into the kitchen, while she went left, into the living r
oom. They converged in the hallway and continued on toward the bedrooms.

  Vail toed open the door to her study and peered in. She cleared the room, then took in the mess of documents scattered across the floor. Her copy of the Dead Eyes file, rifled through. At first glance, with such a blizzard of papers, it was impossible to determine what was missing.

  They finished clearing the house, then returned to Vail’s study. She sat on the futon, her face resting in her hands.

  Robby sat beside her. “Looks like you had a visitor.”

  Without looking up, she nodded. “He got my profile. All my notes.”

  “Who did?”

  Vail turned her head slightly, nodded at the wall behind them. Written in lipstick were the words they’d seen so many times before: “It’s in the.”

  forty-five

  “Holy shit.”

  Robby couldn’t help himself; the words just tumbled from his lips. “He was here, in your place. He went through your stuff—”

  “And saw the profile. He now knows everything we know about him.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “So you said.”

  “I gotta call Bledsoe,” he murmured, then rooted out his cell phone. “We gotta get crime scene here, have them comb through this place.”

  “Call Bledsoe, but we can’t have any techies here. I wasn’t supposed to have the file. We’d all be canned faster than the Jolly Green Giant.”

  “Just don’t touch anything. Let’s get out of here, wait out front.”

  She followed him out of the house, the Glock still in her right hand, dangling at her side. She was off in another dimension, thoughts swimming in her head, gurgling up to the surface before she could push them back down.

  Robby pressed END and dropped the phone back in his pocket. “He’s on his way. Should be here in fifteen, he’s at the op center.”

  “He’ll make it in ten.” Her voice was flat, her mind numb. She sat down on the cement steps of the porch and cradled her head in her hands. The hard, rough surface of the Glock dug into her face. She didn’t care.

  “I can’t believe it. He was in my goddamn house. Why me?”

  “That’s the question, Karen. Why you?”

  Vail shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Robby started walking away toward his car.

  “Where you going?”

  “I’ve got a kit in my trunk. We can at least document the scene, dust for prints.”

  “Yeah,” she said beneath her breath, “and tighten the nooses around our necks another notch.”

  Robby walked in with a medium-size toolbox. He set it on the kitchen table and removed the fingerprinting kit. “It’s been a good three years since I did this.”

  “You don’t want to know how many years it’s been for me.”

  He removed the two-ounce vial of black dust and handed Vail the stiff brush. “Be careful. These bristles cut the print if you’re not careful.”

  “Lovely.” She headed down the hall. “I assume we start with the study because we know for sure he was in there.”

  “Makes the most sense. Honestly, I doubt we’ll find anything. Guy’s been real careful up to now. Not one stray print in six crime scenes. No reason to think he’d take his gloves off for this one.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t see this as a crime scene. Breaking and entering’s nothing compared to serial murder.”

  Robby started at the doorway. He took the brush from Vail, twirled it between his fingers to fluff out the bristles, then dipped the tip into the vial. He deposited the dust around the frame, taking care to brush lightly. “If you’ve got a camera, I’d snap some pictures. Let’s do it right.”

  Vail fished out her HP 8-megapixel point-and-shoot from the closet and began documenting the scene. Using the standard protocol for crime scene photography, she shot the study from various angles, including close-ups of the message on the wall and the layout of the papers on the floor.

  “Why don’t you take the ninhydrin,” he said. “Start spraying the papers on the floor. We know he went through them. If he wasn’t wearing gloves, the most likely place we’ll find a print is on those papers.”

  They worked for the next fifteen minutes when Vail heard a “Hello!” through the screen door. Bledsoe. They walked to the porch and stepped out, each holding their tools of the trade.

  “What the hell are you two doing?”

  “Checking for prints.”

  “This may be news to you, but we’ve got trained personnel for shit like that.”

  “We were trained in evidence collection,” Vail said. “It’s just been a while.”

  “Yeah, a long while.” Bledsoe looked around them, through the screen door. “So fill me in.”

  Vail pulled off her latex gloves with a snap. “I had the papers spread out across the floor of my study, the ones Robby brought by yesterday. The Dead Eyes file. I went out for dinner and a movie last night and . . . got back this morning, about half an hour ago.”

  Bledsoe’s eyebrows lifted and he gave a sideways glance at Robby. Adding it up. Vail was sure he hadn’t known there was something between them. But now he was probably patching it all together in his head. The overnight to Westbury, the rapport they seemed to share.

  “So you think Dead Eyes was in your house sometime between last night and this morning?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “It seems to be the obvious conclusion,” Bledsoe said. “He’s trying to scare you. Trying to get inside your head.”

  “Yeah, well, it worked.”

  “Okay, I think some conclusions are in order,” Bledsoe continued. “One, the offender knows where you live. Second, he obviously found out your email address. For whatever reason, he feels the need to play head games with you. That’s good. If we can bait him, we can eventually catch him.”

  “And it also places Karen at risk. I don’t think there’s anything good in that.”

  Bledsoe looked away. “It’s the element we deal with. We’re always at risk.”

  “It also tells us that he went to considerable effort to find your home address,” Robby said.

  Vail nodded. “You’re adding to the profile.”

  “Nothing we don’t already know. His approach indicates planning, which means intelligence. Organization.”

  “Do we know what he did while he was here?”

  “He rifled through the labs, forensic reports . . . and my profile. He now knows everything we know about him. Ed Kemper all over again.”

  “Kemper,” Bledsoe said, snapping his fingers. “Kemper—I’ve heard that name.”

  “Serial killer who hung out with cops at their favorite watering hole. He knew all the moves the dicks were making, all the evidence they had, because they would tell him. They never suspected he was the killer.”

  They stood there staring at each other. Vail could tell the impact of this was beginning to hit them.

  “So it’s possible this guy will alter his MO,” Robby said, “now that he knows our analysis of him—and his crime scenes?”

  “Yes. He could alter his MO. But his ritual behavior would remain the same.” Vail shrugged. “Then again, I’ve never seen something like this happen before. And Kemper was before my time.”

  Bledsoe asked, “What about getting Del Monaco’s take? He said he’s been in your unit the longest. Maybe he’s had a case where the profile’s been compromised.”

  “We can’t ask Del Monaco.” Vail looked down at the cracked cement. “In order to ask him, we’d have to tell him that I had all these documents here. The next question he’d ask is—”

  “How you got all this stuff if you’re suspended and off the case,” Bledsoe finished.

  Robby held up a hand. “Let’s back up a second. We can’t be sure the offender actually saw the profile. We haven’t inventoried all the papers to see if he’s taken anything.”

  Without a word, Vail turned and headed into the study, her compatriots following behind. She pulled on another
pair of latex gloves, got down on her hands and knees, and started searching. Since it wasn’t the actual file, but loose papers she had organized into piles, it was more difficult to arrive at an accurate accounting.

  “Well?” Bledsoe asked. “Is it here or not?”

  Vail kept pushing papers aside, moving to another section of the floor and sifting through other piles. Finally, she sat cross-legged on the floor and slumped back against the futon. “It’s gone, along with the victimology analyses, VICAP forms, and. . . .”