by Meg Gardiner
“We don’t profile the UNSUB as committing hero homicide,” she said. “There are no signs that the killer attempts to resuscitate his victims or mitigate their injuries. The suicidal ideation at the crime scenes indicates destructive rage. From the moment the UNSUB chooses a target, he intends to kill.”
Emmerich’s expression said, But?
“But the way Detrick revels in his hotline wins does echo the behavior of hero-killers.”
They schemed their way into positions where they could control and target the vulnerable—critically ill patients, sometimes infants. In emergencies, the killer was conveniently present and became unusually excited while taking part in rescue or resuscitation efforts. Afterward, the killer frequently talked about the emergency.
“I know it doesn’t fit—but it does,” she said. “Detrick’s excitement, his sense of victory, the way he seems to regard saving people from suicide as his success—by volunteering at the crisis hotline, he makes sure he’s right there when desperate people reach out for help.”
Morales took a final swallow of his coffee. “Isn’t that the point of the hotline? To be there?”
He’s amazing. She once again heard Brandi the receptionist, telling her to leave Captain America alone.
But Caitlin couldn’t quell the itch. “I can’t kick this feeling that Detrick is involved in volunteer work for the wrong reasons.”
“He loves the stimulation?” Emmerich said.
“Maybe he needs it.”
Psychopaths had more basic aggression than other people—sometimes from birth. She ran through it for Morales and Emmerich. Medical research suggested that genetic, neurochemical, and hormonal factors could lay the groundwork for a personality to develop in a psychopathic direction. In diagnosed psychopaths, the autonomic nervous system tested at lower-than-average sensitivity. That helped explain why psychopathic people were sensation seekers. They had a high threshold for achieving pleasure and excitement. They literally couldn’t feel happiness from watching the violet sunset, or singing along to Beyoncé, or laughing at a colleague’s joke. To experience emotional satisfaction, they needed a jolt, a shock, a sharper experience.
“When psychopaths finally feel, what they tend to experience is either manic exhilaration or blind rage,” she said.
Emmerich nodded.
“Detrick apparently reveled in stopping a caller from committing suicide. The UNSUB stages his victims’ bodies as if they killed themselves.”
Emmerich waited for her to draw the conclusion.
“Exhilaration and rage,” she said.
She thought about the hotline. She had told Darian Cobb, honestly, that the center’s counselors were not in danger. But what about the people they counseled? Were they phoning an emotional arsonist?
Did Detrick choose victims from among vulnerable women who called in crisis?
To Morales, she said, “Have you obtained all the victims’ phone records?”
“Including the Dallas victim. Detective Berg printed copies.”
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Find something,” Morales called after her. “Something solid.”
In the detectives’ room, she found the records. Laying them out on the table, she got a ruler and, line by line, began to cross-check them against the number for the Westside Crisis Hotline. Show me a connection.
Victim by victim, number by number, month by month, she went back a year, checking whether any of the six abducted women had phoned or answered calls from the hotline.
Nothing.
“Jesus.” She ran her fingers through her hair. None of the missing women had called the hotline. Not one.
She needed more information.
What had triggered the UNSUB to start killing in Gideon County? Why was his pace accelerating? If Detrick was the UNSUB, did his hotline work connect to the murders?
Detrick had been on duty a number of times preceding an abduction. Did phone calls to the hotline trigger him? Calls from women? Calls about a particular subject?
Motion beyond her computer screen led her to raise her head. “Yes?”
Rainey stood near the door, putting on her coat. “I said, chow time. You usually pop up like a prairie dog when anyone mentions food.”
The room had half emptied. Around her, tired faces leaned over files and screens or hung on phone lines, pens in hand. Roll call for night shift was going on down the hall.
On a whiteboard, a detective had written Tips called in: 452. Tips cleared: GET TO WORK.
Four hundred fifty-two suspects they were investigating. And, she was convinced, all but one of them off base.
The itch under her skin grew stronger. She checked her watch. Six forty-nine P.M. February 13.
Wednesday.
She stood, grabbed her coat, and followed Rainey to the door. “I’m starving.”
25
When they arrived at the Holiday Inn Express, the taco stand across the street was hopping. The cherry-red dregs of sunset striped the horizon. Caitlin’s stomach felt empty, but rife with beating wings. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
They got out, pulling backpacks and briefcases, file folders and books, with them. The others turned toward the lighted hotel entrance, but Caitlin pointed across the street.
“Local culture. It’s important to understand our environment. Come on.”
Emmerich demurred. “I have reports to write.”
“Gotta fuel your engine.”
He smiled, a rarity. “Fine. We need Jet A to keep running.”
They crossed the street, perking up as they heard the sizzle of the grill.
Twenty minutes later they gathered wrappers and stood up from a picnic table. Rainey sucked habanero sauce from her thumb. Emmerich downed the last of his iced tea. Caitlin felt replenished. The conversation was relaxed as they crossed the street to the hotel.
But Caitlin felt unsated. Her obsessive need to know had stirred. She wanted a glimpse into Kyle Detrick’s mind.
The lights in the hotel lobby were bright, the lanky clerk half attentive behind the front counter. He mumbled a welcome.
Rainey’s phone rang. She answered a video call. “Hey, Dre.”
She broke into a smile—the deep, enamored smile of a mother. Caitlin caught a glimpse of the screen: a boy, ten years old, sitting at a kitchen table. Behind him, his brother ran across the view.
“Dad said you could help me with my math homework.”
“Word problems?” Rainey said.
“What else?”
Rainey’s smile tightened at the edges. Caitlin guessed that word problems were Dre’s nemesis.
“You’ll get through it,” Rainey said. “Learn how to handle these problems and the rewards of straight-up math await you in seventh grade.”
“Ma. That’s two years from now.”
Caitlin smiled.
Rainey dropped onto a couch in the lounge area and put earbuds in. “We get this homework done, you and T.J. can play Mario Kart for half an hour.”
Caitlin headed for the elevators and pressed the button. Emmerich sauntered up. He had a Churchill biography tucked under his arm, but his head was bent toward his phone; answering e-mail. When the elevator came, he barely glanced at Caitlin as she entered before him.
She guessed that meant he trusted her to take point and keep the demons from leaping on him as he thumbed a reply.
The doors opened on her floor. “Good night, sir.”
Belatedly, Emmerich looked up. He caught the door with his hand just before it closed.
“Checking out the hotline was a good call,” he said. “I think your instinct’s right. But Morales is right too. We have to develop solid evidence.”
“Working on it.”
He released the elevator door. “Good night, Hendrix.”
; When the door of her room clicked shut, Caitlin paused. She asked herself: Is this really what you want to do?
The answer came: Abso-fucking-lutely.
She threw the dead bolt and the security latch on the door. She dropped her bag on the credenza. She removed her handcuffs from the back of her belt and her holster and Glock from her right hip. She pulled off her boots and changed into jeans and a hoodie. She got her phone and sat cross-legged on the bed.
She knew she was about to go out-of-bounds. She told herself, Emmerich wants me to develop solid evidence.
She sat for a minute, slowing her heart rate. She hopped up and turned off the overhead light. The dimness of the desk lamp lowered the mood. This would take extreme calm, and deep conviction, and a clear head. But she had to replicate the atmosphere.
Of that night, long ago.
She opened an app on her cell phone and put in earbuds. She told herself: Go back. Back then. Feel it. She knew she couldn’t fake it. She felt a stinging pressure behind her eyes and a thumping in her chest.
She got out the brochure that Darian Cobb had given her at the Westside Crisis Center.
She thumbed the number into her phone keypad. Before she pressed CALL, she blocked her caller ID. She hit ACTIVATE on the app. It was a voice modulator.
She pressed CALL.
One ring, and the phone was picked up. “Westside Crisis Hotline.”
It was a female voice. The second volunteer who took regular Wednesday-night shifts.
“This is Vanessa. Who’s this?”
Caitlin hung up.
She sat still, her heart drumming against her ribs. This was stupid. Juvenile. Underhanded. She counted five minutes on the clock, quieting herself. Blew a breath through pursed lips. She raised the phone again and called back.
The number rang. Once, twice.
“Westside Crisis Hotline.”
Her pulse pounded in her temples. She tapped her screen to activate the voice modulator. From her chest to her fingertips, her nerves rang. It was the electric thrill of the hunt.
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” she said.
“I’m Kyle. What’s on your mind?”
26
Detrick’s voice sounded friendly and comforting. Even through the phone, his baritone was warm and came through crisply.
“I’m here to listen,” he said.
She closed her eyes. He seemed present.
“Is it just you?” Her mouth felt dry. She wasn’t going to have to fake anxiety. “Is anybody else listening?”
“Another volunteer is here tonight. But this conversation is just between us.”
She took a minute. “I’ve felt . . . really alone for a long time. But talking is hard.”
She heard her voice altered by the modulator: skewed toward soprano. She sounded younger, late teens or early twenties.
She felt a ghostly presence: the fifteen-year-old she’d been, isolated and badly depressed, too ashamed to tell her parents she was sinking.
Go, she told herself. Dive. There was no other way to do this effectively.
“I thought—if I called this number, maybe I could talk, if it’s to one person.”
“I’m the guy. I’m glad you called.” He maintained the calm, attentive tone. “You sound upset. I’m concerned—what’s bothering you?”
She sighed. “I don’t know how to start.”
“Maybe by telling me your name. It’s easier to talk when I can picture the person I’m talking to.”
“Rose.” It was her middle name. First rule of lying: Seed it with truth.
“Rose,” Detrick said. “That’s lovely.”
Spoken soothingly, in his rich baritone, it sounded lovely indeed.
This guy was good.
“I can tell it was difficult for you to pick up the phone,” he said. “Take your time.”
She closed her eyes. “I feel like I can’t move. Like I can’t breathe. Like a wall of thorns is wrapping around me.” She tried to inhale. “It’s crushing me. I . . .”
She stopped. She was no actor. The only undercover work she’d done was back in Alameda Narcotics. But making a street buy as part of an op to locate a meth lab was different from convincing this man she desperately needed his emotional support.
She slid off the bed and sat on the floor, facing the window and the night beyond. She pulled her knees up to her chest.
“I’m suffocating,” she said. “And I can’t see any way out.”
“I’m here, Rose,” Detrick said. “Have you talked to anyone about how you feel?”
“I can’t.”
Remembering: Mom in the next room, two A.M., sophomore year in high school, the night thick around her, the banshees crawling through her head, practically stopping her breath.
“My mom, I can’t—they don’t—I can’t talk to her.”
“You sound like you’re having a really hard time,” he said. “Okay. Rose, I’m here.”
His reiteration seemed like a real lifeline.
She reached deeper. “I’m scared.”
His voice took on a stronger tone of authority. “Are you safe right now? This minute?”
This was the script for crisis hotline volunteers. Step one: Assess whether the caller is in acute crisis, a danger to herself or others.
“Nobody’s trying to break down the door, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “Yeah, I guess I’m safe.”
“Okay, that’s good. But it sounds like you’re really down,” Detrick said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
She sat there and let her old terrors well up, and all the pain that she had tried to shed.
“People say the blues pass, but that’s not true,” she said. “Not even close. I know because people said that to my dad. Said the sun would come out, everything was going to be fine, he just needed to focus on the positive and cheer up.”
The scars on her forearms, beneath her tattoos, gleamed white under the desk lamp.
“Then he tried to take his own life,” she said.
“That must have knocked your world out of balance.”
“He was what I was hanging on to. Then he was gone from the house and our family. Mom tried to keep the truth from me, and to be everything for me. But I needed him. I felt so empty—so . . .”
She fought to say the word she meant.
“Forsaken,” she said. “And the night terrors still came, and he wasn’t around to protect me from them.”
“It sounds tough. And that you’ve been battling depression for a long time.”
She pulled her sleeves down over her forearms. “Years.”
“You don’t sound that old, Rose.”
“I’m twenty.”
That was an intuitive calculation on her part. She wanted him to think she was within the age range of the UNSUB’s targets.
He said, “Am I correct in understanding that you feel really sad, afraid, and depressed?”
“You win the carnival prize.”
“Have you ever felt this bad before?”
“In high school. After my dad attempted suicide. People looked at me differently. We lived in a small town and everybody knew about it.”
“That must have been an additional source of pain for you,” he said.
“I felt like a pariah. I could sense people’s stares, even behind my back. Talking under their breath as I walked past in the cafeteria. ‘That’s her. Poor girl.’ A few asked me if he was going to do it again. If we had to remove his guns from the house. The worst were the people who told me he was going to hell.”
She nearly spat the word hell. “He was in agony. Now I know he was suffering. I know how bad it was getting, until something finally broke his back emotionally. But hearing that—and it wasn’t just my school classmates, it was
their parents, it was people I’d see in the supermarket or the library—‘Suicide is a sin. Your father needs to repent and accept Jesus in his heart . . .’”
Detrick held off a beat. “Texas.”
She clamped her lips shut. Remember that you’re supposed to be a local.
“They were well-intentioned. Mostly,” she said.
Detrick’s voice lightened. “God save us from people who think they know what’s best for us.”
“Amen.”
After letting the moment crystallize, he said, “You’re talking a lot about your dad. Is he still in your life?”
“No.”
He was dead. She didn’t share that. Mack’s memory, as fraught as his life and their relationship had been, needed to be protected.
“My parents divorced,” she said. “I don’t have any contact with him.”
“But you’re holding on to what happened to him. Is there a reason for that?” Detrick asked. “You sound angry at him, but like you also miss him.”
Clever bastard. “That about sums it up.”
“Really?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“It sounds like something kicked off this latest round of depression, but you haven’t told me about it. You seem angry and in pain. What’s going on?”
“It’s a wave. It comes in regularly, like the tide,” she said.
He let a silence extend. “Do you feel like your father visited his sins on you?”
Okay, that was off.
“I don’t mean literal sins,” Detrick said. “I mean, do you feel especially like your father’s daughter somehow? Compared to being your mama’s little girl?”
A weird feeling sank through her—like a needle had been driven into the base of her neck, at the spine, and was being threaded around her lungs and heart.
“I’m afraid I am him,” she said.