by Lisa Regan
When she woke, he was in the shower down the hall. She met him at the breakfast table, where a stack of pancakes and a note from Brianna sat.
Breakfast for you two lovebirds. Don’t forget to turn off the coffeemaker.
Connor had put on his suit from the day before. His stained suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. He ate with gusto, hunched over his food, shoveling pancakes into his mouth. Wilson sat beside him, his head perched on Connor’s thigh. Claire tried to shoo him away, but he wasn’t having it. Every couple of minutes, Connor reached down and scratched the back of the dog’s neck.
It was like they’d always been a couple. Eating in contented silence. Maybe they didn’t need to talk about their relationship, or trying again, or what last night had meant.
Connor gulped down the rest of his coffee. Then he said her name in a tone that implied that he intended to talk about exactly that.
“Did you get anywhere with the Holloway case?” she asked quickly.
For a moment, he stared at her, as if he were trying to decide on something. Then it all came spilling out, all the details, all the things that they knew so far, which Claire had to agree was not much at all. The only things that Connor really had in terms of the Leah Holloway investigation were questions. Why had she done it? If she really had such a perfect life, what would cause her to snap and drive her children and her best friend’s children into a river? Who had called her at the soccer field? At the gas station? Was it the same person both times? What had they said? What could be so bad that it made Holloway do what she did? Why had she drunk Alan Wheeler’s vodka? What would make a woman who was dead set against any alcohol consumption suddenly down almost an entire bottle with her children in the car?
“We’re going to look at her medical records today,” Connor said. “I’ll go to her doctor’s home if I have to, drag him down to his office, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything. That’s just to rule the medical component out right away and to see if she had any type of mental illness that we don’t know about. I think things are exactly the way we saw them on the video. She got a call at the soccer field that freaked her out. She put the kids in the car and drove off. Stopped at the gas station, got a second call, drank the vodka, and ran her car off the road.”
Claire put her hands on her lap and stared down at them. She thought about Leah Holloway’s eyes. A shiver ran through her body. She knew exactly why Leah Holloway drank that vodka. “She was shoring herself up,” she told Connor. “She had to do something, and she didn’t have the courage to do it. Maybe if she didn’t have that bottle, she wouldn’t have driven into the river. But she drank that vodka to work up the nerve to kill herself and those kids.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” Claire replied. “You didn’t see her. You didn’t see her face.” She couldn’t keep the note of hysteria from rising in her voice.
Connor reached across the table and clamped a hand down over her forearm. “It’s okay. I believe you.”
“Connor,” Claire said. “Whatever was going on with Holloway—and there was something going on—whatever it was was unimaginable. Unimaginably bad.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Connor watched Jade weave her way absently through the bull pen area of the Office of Investigations, a stack of papers in her hands. She flipped through them as she walked, head down, her brow scrunched in concentration. She stopped as she passed his desk, glaring at the large Starbucks cup in Connor’s hand as though the cup had personally insulted her. She pointed to it. “What is that?”
Connor smiled and placed the offending cup on his desk. “I didn’t go to Starbucks and purposely not get you a cup. Claire stopped by. Brought me a cup of coffee.”
Jade continued to her own desk and sat down, looking once again at the pages in her hands. “Must be nice,” she mumbled.
A beefy hand clamped down on Connor’s shoulder. Stryker’s voice was a hot whisper in Connor’s ear. “Dude, the profiler is hot.”
Connor laughed and swiveled his chair to face him. “You’re into men now?”
Stryker rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a sexist pig. The profiler’s a woman. We were supposed to get a guy named Bennett, but he got stuck in Los Angeles so they sent someone else.”
“And she’s hot?” Jade asked. “Thought you only had eyes for that obnoxious reporter.”
Something dark passed over Stryker’s face. He frowned, eyes on the floor. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work out.”
“That’s what you always say,” Jade said.
Stryker shifted his weight. “No, no,” he said. “This time it really doesn’t look good.”
No one said anything. Silence stretched out until the moment became unbearably heavy. Then Stryker said, “I just came over to let you know the profiler briefing is in fifteen.”
“We’re on Holloway,” Jade said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Stryker said. “Cap wants everyone in this briefing.” He gave her a pointed look as he walked away. “I’ll see you there.”
Jade tossed her stack of papers onto her desk. They fanned out, sliding almost to the edge. “What’ve you done today?” she asked Connor. “Besides getting a coffee delivery from your girlfriend?”
“I talked to my guy in computers. He says there was nothing of note on Leah Holloway’s PC—she has a PC, by the way, not a laptop. He said it’s ancient. Anyway, he said there’s nothing on it except thousands of pictures of her kids. He also hacked her email account and the only personal emails that he could even find were from four years ago when she and her brother exchanged pleasantries over the birth of Hunter. I also got a copy of Holloway’s medical chart from her family doctor and went through it. What’d you do this morning?”
She bristled but said nothing. “The records were normal, by the way,” Connor added. “No major medical problems. A little over a year ago she complained about a lack of concentration and some memory loss, but she had an MRI of her brain and it was normal. Her cholesterol was a bit high. That’s about it. No mention of any history of anxiety or depression. No referrals for mental health treatment. No mention of problems with addiction of any kind. She didn’t even smoke.”
Jade shuffled some papers around on her desk until she found her notepad. She tucked it into her jacket pocket and stood. “I ordered her OB-GYN chart.”
“Well, we can cancel that now, right? We know she didn’t have any underlying medical condition.”
One corner of Jade’s mouth lifted in a smile that indicated that Connor was some kind of idiot. “Premenstrual dysphoric disorder,” she explained. “Look it up.”
Connor leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “How about you just tell me what it is.”
“It’s like PMS on LSD. It’s a real thing. Lots of women Holloway’s age get it. From ovulation to the day you first start bleeding, your premenstrual symptoms are worse than normal. It can give you pretty bad mood swings. I’m not saying it could make a woman homicidal or suicidal, but it might make a woman homicidal or suicidal.”
“Is that why you’re not in a relationship?”
He narrowly avoided a punch to his arm. Jade shook her head. “If you weren’t so cute, I’d shoot you in the kneecap.”
“So you do have this disorder.”
She glowered at him. “The only thing I have is an asshole for a partner.”
“Oh, come on, Jade. You like me.”
Again, she shook her head. “I like it better when you don’t talk. Just stand around and look pretty, and I won’t shoot you.”
“So you think Holloway had premenstrual dysphoric disorder?” Connor said.
“No, but I think we should check.”
Connor stood and they started in the direction of the conference rooms. He said, “The coroner is moving her autopsy up at the request of the mayor. The only thing people are hotter about than Holloway is the Soccer Mom Strangler.”
“Speaking of which, do we really need to
go to the stupid briefing?”
Jade took a few more steps before she realized he’d stopped. She turned, hands on her hips. “What?”
“What’s your problem, Jade? It’s what—maybe an hour out of our day? Holloway can wait. She’s already killed all the people she’s going to kill. This guy—he could be out there murdering someone right now.”
She made a noise of exasperation. “Calm down, Mr. Superhero. I’m just saying it’s not even our case.”
“It’s all hands on deck, Jade. If we wrap up Holloway today, we’re getting put back on the Strangler tomorrow.”
She raised a skeptical brow. “Holloway won’t get wrapped up today. Tox screens take at least six weeks.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why don’t you go and you can tell me what this profiler person says?” she said, the words profiler person laced with disdain, as though Stryker had invited a snake charmer to come and speak about the case. So that was it.
Connor smiled and got closer to her. “It’s because she’s hot, isn’t it?”
Jade swatted his shoulder. “Oh please. I don’t give a rat’s ass if she’s hot. I don’t care if she gives the briefing in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit. It’s a waste of time.”
“What’s that?”
“Profiling. Let me guess what your bad guy is like: He’s bad. He likes to rape and murder moms. What more do you need to know? There’s your profile. I just saved us all an assload of time.”
Connor laughed. He put both hands on her shoulders and steered her into the packed briefing room. “I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The profiler was attractive, Connor had to agree. She was slender with delicate features and long, flowing dark hair. But her electric-blue eyes and well-defined legs, shown off by her light-gray skirt suit, no doubt went a long way toward the relative hush that had fallen over the room. There was none of the talking or rustling that had gone on in Stryker’s briefing the day before. Connor hoped the straight male officers in the room would actually hear what she had to say.
“Good morning,” she began, her voice clear and confident. No smiling. All business. “My name is Special Agent Kassidy Bishop. I’m with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. I was asked to lend support to the investigation.” She went on to talk briefly about the BAU and what they did. Connor had already known that they would only assist on a case if they were invited to do so. Their primary role was to review all the evidence and then come up with a profile, a description of the sort of person the local police should be looking for.
“This is especially useful in narrowing a pool of suspects,” Bishop said. “Now, I understand you do not have any suspects in this case at this time, but that’s okay. The profile I am going to give you today will still be useful in your investigation, although I caution you not to try to fit any potential suspects to this profile. Remember that any aspect of this profile could be wrong. We are usually pretty accurate, but don’t get too caught up in getting everything to match up with the profile. Let the evidence be your guide.”
She turned to the dry-erase board and began writing, talking as she went.
“You’re looking for a Caucasian male. Serial killers rarely murder outside of their race, and the majority of true serial killers are Caucasian males. This UNSUB—Unknown Subject—is what we call a disorganized offender. These are crimes of opportunity. No planning went into them, at least not the first one. The three murders after that only show that he has chosen a hunting ground for his victims. He hasn’t refined his approach. He isn’t expanding on some elaborate fantasy. He is still acting spontaneously. He doesn’t bring anything with him to the crime scenes. He doesn’t stalk these women beforehand for any length of time. The first time he sees them is when he decides he is going to rape and kill them. He has a type. If he finds his type and thinks that he can get away with it, he’s going to do it.
“So your UNSUB is in the area, sees the opportunity to carry out his crime, and goes for it. It is impulsive and poorly thought out. He takes huge risks committing these crimes in broad daylight in areas where anyone might see him, and he leaves evidence behind. He started to wipe the vehicles down for prints, yet he leaves his DNA at the scene. Given this lack of sophistication, I believe you are looking for a young man between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, more likely on the lower end of that range. I would say that he has some high school education. Given the impulsivity, he probably uses drugs or alcohol or both, and was likely under the influence of one or both at the time of some, if not all, of these murders.”
Beside Connor, Jade whispered, “Holy shit, this is boring.”
Without looking at her, Connor nudged her with an elbow. “Shhh.”
“Now, there is the matter of his ability to easily approach these women. They were all outdoors, all within shouting distance of other people. There is no evidence that he brought a weapon to the scenes. It is certainly possible that he has a knife or a gun, but doubtful. A man with a knife or a gun would stand out in these areas. I do not believe that he is armed when he approaches his victims. So how does he walk up to these women and engage them without setting off their internal alarms?”
“He knocks them over the head and forces them into their vehicles?” O’Handley offered.
“It is certainly a possibility that he simply overpowers them, but there’s no evidence of blunt force trauma to any of their heads,” Agent Bishop countered. “Two things: he looks like he belongs there. He is known to many of them or he is of an age where his presence would not be unusual, which is another reason why I think he is young. A young man—even a teenager or college-aged male—at a youth soccer match is not going to raise alarm bells. Two of the crimes occurred in the Pocket area, one of which was the first murder. He either lives or works in that area. Serial killers usually start out in what we consider their comfort zone. The first murder is especially likely to take place near their home. Although he is young with average intelligence, he is likely either charming or attractive, or both. Average intelligence does not preclude charm. He will know what to say to these women to get them to let their guards down. The use of drugs or alcohol will lower his inhibitions and make him bolder.
“Let’s also consider the victims. They’re all mothers. What do all mothers want?”
“Sleep,” one of the female officers shouted from the back, drawing laughter from around the room.
“Time,” another woman put in. “And a clean house.”
Agent Bishop smiled. “Yes. Sleep, time, a clean house. All of these things require help from someone else. Moms need someone to watch their kids so they can sleep. They want a few quiet hours away from their duties, for which they need help. They want their partner to pick up the slack and clean the house. Help. Assistance. Your UNSUB knows this. He sees a harried mother sneaking a smoke or trying to get a stroller out of her vehicle, he will be there, as sweet and solicitous as can be. If he is attractive to boot, they will be more likely to let their guards down. They won’t see him as a threat. In fact, I believe he is likely extremely attractive. His attractiveness and charm will make it more likely that women will let their guards down. This case has been pretty well publicized for the last several weeks. These mothers should be well aware that a killer is targeting soccer moms. Still, they will not see this UNSUB as a threat because of the way he looks and the way he acts. But his charming demeanor won’t last long. Once he is close enough to strike, it will be a blitz attack. Quick and dirty.”
The sound of Jade’s foot tapping against the tile floor drew Connor’s attention. He caught her gaze. “Do you mind?” he asked as quietly as he could. She rolled her eyes but stopped tapping.
Agent Bishop continued. “He has an intense hatred of women. As I mentioned before, he has a type. He is looking for women of a certain body shape. Women who are mothers. The victims are surrogates, or standins, for a mother figure. They represent someone to him. He has
a great deal of rage toward mother figures. As a child, he may have been adopted or more likely abandoned. The first thing a mother would do is plead for her life based on the lives of her children. She’ll say something like, ‘Please, I have children,’ which will only enrage him more. This is about punishing them. His intense rage is evident in the crime scene photos. These assaults are savage, yet they are intimate in the sense that he is killing them with his hands. There is no weapon between him and the victim. He even bites them, which is something a toddler does in a fit of anger. Small children don’t yet understand that biting as an expression of anger is not acceptable. Most children outgrow it or are taught that it is not acceptable behavior. Again, we see a regression to a childlike state. The child taking out his anger on his mother.
“The UNSUB has absolutely no remorse for what he has done. Clinically, he probably has some sort of antisocial personality disorder. He doesn’t care about these women or their children. They are not human to him. He will have difficulty maintaining relationships, so he will likely be single, although a breakup with a girlfriend or lover may have been the precipitating event in all of this. It is possible that the end of a romantic relationship re-created the abandonment he felt as a child and triggered these homicidal episodes. He did it the first time. It felt good. He got away with it. He will keep going until he is caught.”