by Jo Macgregor
He turned to give me a look that was equal parts disbelief and derision. “You’re quoting Hannibal Lecter at me?”
“Don’t make me do the tongue thing,” I said.
“I think we’re done here.”
He left without shaking my hand. Standing in the doorway, watching him stride down the path to his car, I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps he’d been afraid to touch me in case I got a reading off him. I wished I’d been able to stow myself away in his briefcase because I wanted in on the hunt for this killer.
When I’d died in Plover Pond, the same spot where Colby had been murdered all those years ago, I came back from the other side with aspects of Colby now part of me — his dislike of anything too sweet, his taste for beer and black coffee, and his passion for justice. That last part was growing in me, and there was no going back.
Before the day’s visions, I’d been curious, like a hungry Lake Herring nosing the bait on the end of one of my father’s fishing lines. Now, after what I’d seen and felt and knowing that there were a bunch more victims, possibly recent ones, I was well and truly hooked.
– 5 –
Friday, April 6
Boston, Massachusetts
Professor Kenneth Perry peered at me from across his desk in the psychology building at the university in Boston. “I don’t mind admitting I was a tad worried about your thesis for a while there, but you aced it. I was right chuffed with the final product,” he said in his strong British accent. Perry was a psychologist and my faculty supervisor. “What’s your plan now?”
“I’m going to hand over my job — lock, stock, and admin passwords — to the new departmental assistant.”
“Yes, sorry about that. We’re gutted to lose you, but the position is reserved for an actively enrolled student. And since you bloody well refuse to do a doctorate, we had to give it to someone else.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
We sat in silence for a few seconds, then Perry cocked his head at me. “So?”
“What?” I asked.
“What are you going to do? With your life?”
Why did everybody keep asking me that? It wasn’t like I had an answer, though I was sure I no longer wanted to be a psychologist or any kind of counselor. My interest in psychology, I now realized, had really been a desire to understand myself and my catastrophic reaction to Colby’s death rather than any vocation to help others with their mental and emotional issues. I had more than enough of those of my own.
“You can’t sit around doing bugger all for the rest of your life, Garnet.”
Since getting back to Boston four days ago, I’d alternated spending my time between watching the news coverage of the mass burial site in New Hampshire and searching online job sites. From the news channels, I’d learned that the remains of eight bodies had been unearthed. Names of the victims hadn’t yet been released, but police were confident they knew the identity of half of them. Of the bodies as yet unidentified, one was thought to date back much earlier than the other murders. That must’ve been the different body that had been found near the rusted metal button Singh had brought me.
From Career Builder and Zip Recruiter and a handful of other job-listing sites, I’d learned that I could potentially apply for positions as a teacher’s assistant, tutor, or HR officer, or I could try for a general administrative job in marketing, banking, or health services. None of these appealed to me in any way whatsoever.
My mother, keen to lure me back to Pitchford, had invited me to come work in her new-age store, Crystals, Candles, and Curiosities. “You could do readings for people, dear. Just think of the customers that would attract!” she’d said.
That option would be an absolute last resort for me. If I had to surrender all dignity and ambition in order to dispense dreamcatchers and divinations for my over-excitable, utterly illogical, and verbally disordered mother, I’d soon be on the scene of another murder, one I would have committed.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” I told Professor Perry. “I’m not really qualified to do anything appealing or profitable, and if it’s not for fun or money, what is it for?”
I ran a thumb over the tips of my fingernails, staring out of the window behind him. The last time I’d sat in this office, discussing my future, it had been winter. The trees outside had been bare of leaves, the sky gray with clouds, and the icy grounds empty. Now the sun shone down on clusters of students sprawled on the lawns, the bare bones of maples were studded with scarlet buds and tiny yellow flowers, and a pleasant breeze drifted in through his open window.
“Is there nothing at all that’s piqued your interest?” he asked.
I wondered what to say. I wasn’t exactly eager to lower his opinion of me. Then again, I might never see him again after today. Did it matter what he thought of me?
“I don’t know if you remember,” I said, “but back in December, I told you I was getting … images and words in my mind when I touched things that had belonged to my late boyfriend.”
“I do remember.” Perry scrutinized me carefully from behind his spectacles.
“Well …” I fiddled with the African violet on Perry’s desk, breaking off a couple of dead leaves and tossing them into a nearby trashcan. “It turns out those weren’t just symptoms of concussion or post-traumatic stress.”
“Oh?”
“It looks like I might actually have some kind of ability to get, you know, readings off of objects.”
“I see.” Behind his blank expression, Perry was probably thinking, Are you off your blooming rocker?
I poured the last inch of a glass of water onto the violet’s parched soil, being careful not to wet the leaves. Wet leaves, according to my mother, killed violets.
“You really should take better care of your plants, Prof,” I chided him, even though I was a fine one to talk. I’d never managed to keep a potted plant alive for longer than a month. Even cactuses died on me.
“You were talking about your new … ability?” Perry said.
“I know it sounds crazy, and I don’t expect you to believe it, but I’ve had two visits from an FBI agent to assist them with their investigations.” As I said it, I heard how ridiculous it sounded. Believing that I had insight into life beyond the veil and was now being courted by the FBI? No doubt Perry thought I was diagnosably delusional. I waved a hand in the air as if to erase any lingering lunacy. “Forget what I just said. The point is that I’m very interested in the case of a New England serial killer.”
I expected Perry to challenge me or maybe insist on conducting a mini-mental-state examination to check whether my cognitive functioning and reality testing were intact.
Instead, he said mildly, “Didn’t you tell me that your father had an interest in serial killers? Perhaps you’ve caught his bug?”
I nodded. By all means, let Perry think that I was just following in my father’s homicidal hobbyist footsteps. “Anyway, I figure I should learn more about serial killers in general.” I gestured to the heavily laden bookshelves that covered three walls of his office. “Can you point me in the direction of some good books on the subject?”
“I can do better than that.”
“You can help me?”
“No, not my field of expertise at all. But I can connect you to the resident expert.” He picked up the receiver of his desk telephone and dialed an extension. “Hi, Brad. I’ve got a soon-to-graduate master’s student here who’d like to know more about serial killers. Do you have a moment? Excellent! Should we come to you or— Wonderful, thank you.” He hung up and told me, “He can give you twenty minutes, and he’ll be here in five.”
The expert arrived almost immediately. He was middle-aged and had milky-white skin, small eyes, and a tonsure of dark hair running around his otherwise bald head. With his thin face and narrow nose, it gave him the look of an aesthetic saint, or perhaps a fanatical monk. I recognized him at once. He’d done a lecture on homicide in one of our psychopathology courses. I d
idn’t remember much of what he’d said about serial killers except that they sometimes went back to the decomposing corpse to have sex with it. That fact had been gruesome enough to penetrate the fog of my depression and lodge in my distracted brain.
“Brad, I’d like you to meet Garnet McGee. She’s developed a …” — there was the smallest pause as Perry searched for an appropriate phrase — “a special interest in a New England serial killer and is hoping to assist the authorities with her … insights. Garnet, this is Professor Bradley Deaver, who happens currently to be in the process of writing what will no doubt be a seminal text on American serial killers.”
Deaver’s hand, when I shook it, was cold, but his gaze was friendly enough as it flicked between my brown left eye and my blue right one. My own gaze, as it so often did recently, automatically dipped to his hands. Pale skin stippled with a few age spots, watch on the left wrist, no wedding ring — unexceptional in every way.
Deaver settled into the chair beside mine and held up the flat Tupperware container he’d brought with him. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat my lunch while you pick my brain about death and desire?”
“Well, about serial killers, yes,” I said.
“What would you like to know?”
“A general overview would be great. I mean, I know some theories about them, but like, what are the rules?”
Deaver smiled. “First rule of serial killer club — there are no rules.”
– 6 –
Professor Deaver opened his lunch container. The contents were organized into subdivisions of different foods — small blocks of chicken, shredded lettuce, chopped carrots, sliced beetroot, a buttered bread roll — and no one type of food touched another.
He leaned over the container and sniffed deeply then said, “The serial killers themselves do have rules, of course — sometimes — but they’re rules that make sense only to themselves. Take Israel Keyes, for instance, one of the most intelligent and meticulously prepared serial killers ever to operate in this country. The eleven murders attributed to him — and a great many more are suspected — comprise men, women, single victims, and pairs, including a middle-aged married couple killed right here in Vermont in 2011. His victims were young and old, different ethnicities, killed at night and in daylight and in a variety of states across the country. And he got away with it for at least fourteen years,” Deaver said, sounding almost impressed. “He shot, strangled, and asphyxiated. On some occasions, he tortured and raped his victim first, on other occasions, not. In short, he had no preferred type of victim, no discernable kill zone, no favorite killing method, no common way of dumping the bodies. No ‘wheelhouse,’ as they say.”
“The pattern was no pattern, I presume?” Perry said.
Deaver removed a plastic-wrapped disposable fork from his shirt pocket and pointed it at Perry. “Rather presumptuous this time, I’m afraid. You see, Israel Keyes did usually kill far from home and never in the same place more than once. He made sure he had no connection to any of his victims, didn’t kill during the three years he served in the military and, after his own daughter was born, never again killed children — or so he claimed. And he had a rule that ‘Canadians don’t count,’ whatever that means. My point is, he had his own personal set of rules.”
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it,” Perry said.
I thought the quote might be from Hamlet. He’d seen ghosts, too, and it had driven him crazy.
“Ha-ha, indeed!” Deaver said. “The variety and the lack, or oddity, of rules is what makes it such a stimulating subject to study. But it’s an enormous field, young lady, so you’re going to have to narrow your question down a bit for me to give you any useful answers.”
I pulled my gaze away from the container, where the ruby juice oozing out of a stack of pickled beetroot slices trickled dangerously close to a mound of cubed pineapple. “I guess one thing I’d really like to know is what you can deduce about the perpetrator from the crime scene.”
“I believe you mean induce rather than deduce,” Deaver said. “And when you say, ‘crime scene,’ do you mean the place where the victim was abducted, the spot where the murder was executed, or the site where the body was left?”
“Oh, right.” I didn’t know whether the cops or FBI knew where the victims had been snatched from or where they’d been killed. “The place where he dumped the body.”
He removed the fork from its wrapper, winding the clear plastic around the first joint of his index finger. “The body or the bodies?”
“Bodies,” I said, aware of Perry’s gaze on me.
“You’re looking at a specific case, then? I’d need to get more details before I could generate any useful hypotheses.” He looked at me with an eager, hopeful expression.
“Sorry, I don’t know any specifics.”
Not for the first time, I wished I knew more details about the Button Man’s murders. Just about the only thing I did know was that the killer had left a button with at least some of his victims’ bodies, and I wasn’t going to tell Deaver that.
He made a low frustrated sound. “I suppose, speaking in general terms, you can usually tell from the dump site whether the killer is of the organized or disorganized type.”
“Organized?” I said, imagining a killer with a planner and a to-do list.
“It’s an old classification system but still, I believe, a useful one.” He peered down into his lunchbox and used his fork to edge the pineapple away from the beetroot juice. “The kills of the disorganized type are usually impulsive. Typically, the perpetrator is suddenly overcome by rage, or the voices in his head get too loud. Or perhaps the victim just walks blindly into his hunting ground like a juicy insect drifting into a spider’s web. He’s not prepared, so he just uses what he has on hand to commit the murder and then usually” — Deaver held up an admonitory finger — “usually, but not always, he then either leaves the body right there where he did the deed or else somewhere nearby. The disorganized ones aren’t careful.”
“What would the scene of a disorganized killer look like, then?” I asked.
“There might be some real craziness — bizarre or surreal elements that make sense to him but to nobody else. It might look messy or hurried,” he replied.
“Right.” That didn’t much sound like the Button Man to me.
Deaver stabbed the fork into a piece of chicken, examined the meat closely for a second and then ate it, chewing so slowly that I had to fight the urge to tap my foot in impatience. “Now, the organized killer, on the other hand, tends to operate with premeditation and often exquisite planning.” Deaver’s eyes glinted; clearly, he approved of systematic preparation. “He takes immense care when getting rid of the body. He might, for example, leave identifying pieces of it, like the hands or the head, in different spots from the rest of the body so as to slow down identification of the victim, or he might bury the body properly in some deserted spot in the hope that it will never be discovered. He’s cautious. He’ll use a condom in a rape and wash down the body afterward, even cleaning under the fingernails to minimize the evidence he leaves behind. Overall, the scene will feel less … chaotic.”
A bee flew in through the open window and landed on Professor Perry’s hand. He gently blew it off and said, “If I translate those two categories into psychological diagnoses or psychopathologies, then it sounds like disorganized killers would tend to be psychotic — schizophrenic, delusional, or paranoid. But organized killers sound more psychopathic, like they’d probably be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.”
Deaver, who’d moved on to the little heap of chopped carrots, beamed at Perry as if he was a star student. “Right on the button!”
Startled at the word, I blinked and stared at Deaver.
Still smiling, he nodded at me. “Oh, yes. Unlike most disorganized serial killers, the organized ones tend to be sane, in the legal sense, anyway. They know the difference between reality and fantasy, but they are still ve
ry disturbed individuals indeed.”
I let go of my surprise at Deaver’s use of the button phrase and focused instead on the essence of what he was saying. From how he’d explained it, the Button Man sounded “organized.” He’d planned at least enough to take a button, and sometimes a needle and thread, along on his hunting trips. But for all I knew, the dump sites could have been very chaotic indeed. Damn Singh for not sharing more information with me, for not letting me visit the latest site with all the bodies.
“Of course,” Deaver continued, impaling the last carrot on the tines of his fork, “there are scores of ways to classify both the killers and the killings, and the types overlap. What’s more, a killer may evince aspects of more than one type at various times in his career.”
His career?
“I’ve found that the more you try to narrow down the categories, the more exceptions you have. Nothing truly fits neatly, even though ‘experts’ in the field of profiling want you to believe that it’s a science rather than a combination of intuitive hunches and educated guesswork based on past experience.”
While I pondered what to ask next, Deaver ate two more pieces of chicken and dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin also taken from his pocket. I wondered what else might be stashed in there. Packets of salt and pepper, some ketchup, dessert? The bee, meanwhile, flew circles around Perry’s head until he shooed it out the window with a piece of paper.
“Would you be able to tell from the dump site what the killer’s motive was?” I asked.
Deaver considered this for a moment. “Not necessarily, although the body itself can give you clues. For example, killers who want to exercise their sadism are more likely to bind and torture their victims, while the hedonistic killer motivated by lust is more likely to rape or to pose the body in sexualized poses.”
An image of that thumb penetrating that mouth, thrusting in and out, flashed across my mind’s eye.
“And if the killer took, or indeed left, something distinctive, that could provide insight into their motive,” Deaver continued.