by Jonah Paine
He'd begun the search with mixed emotions. Everything had seemed so clear when Jasmine Martin's corpse bore a pattern of wounds that matched the modus operandi of a sexual predator who had already been tried and convicted. When it turned out that the rapist and murderer in question was out on the street, ready to kill again, it had all seemed like it was wrapped up in a neat little package. Sam was the sort of man who liked it when things made sense. In retrospect, he realized, he was also the sort of man who made mistakes when things were a little too tidy.
Now he had a second corpse with wounds that didn't fit the pattern. Sam returned to the files, looking without much hope for a second killer who murdered one of his victims in one way, and another in a different way. The idea was contrary to everything Sam had learned in his years on the force. Everything he knew told him that killers find a method and stick to it. Most murders are one-time things. They are crimes of passion that lack premeditation or precision. But the killers who liked it, the ones who came back to killing again and again, found a method that suited them and relied on it the way an old woman relies on her Bible.
So it was without much hope that Sam looked for a killer who had two methods. Instead he had found something that was in some ways worse than nothing.
Sam was looking at the case file of Stewart Smalls. Stewart was a quiet man, a loner who lived in his mother's basement until he was 35 years old. By day he worked in the post office, sorting mail. By night, he frequented pornographic theaters, spent his money on strippers, and sometimes, when the voices in his head got the better of him, he murdered prostitutes and carved the word "slut" on their stomachs.
By the time he was apprehended, Stewart Smalls had murdered at least five women, though under questioning he claimed that he had killed twelve others who were never identified.
Stewart Smalls had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to five consecutive life terms. He had spent seven years of that sentence in a maximum-security facility, until one day when there was a riot in the yard. Prisoners escaped from their cells, guards were taken hostage, and the media descended on a chaotic scene that took several days before order was finally restored. When the guards took count of their prisoners, they found one missing: Stewart Smalls. He had simply disappeared in the confusion, and no one knew what had happened to him.
Another killer at large, another modus operandi that had recently shown up in Sam's town, another suspect at large for him to chase. The coincidences were piling up in ways that made Sam suspicious. He was of the opinion that two suspects were quite a bit worse than one. He was beginning to believe that there was something about this case that he didn't understand at all.
There were other possibilities that Sam was just beginning to toy with in his mind. The first was that the two cases were unrelated, and that he was dealing with two killers operating on their own. In many ways that was the most rational explanation, but Sam couldn't bring himself to believe it. The two dead girls were too similar, to close in age and circumstance. It would be coincidental for two killers to independently choose victims at virtually the same time who were so similar, and Sam didn't believe in coincidence.
The second possibility was that the murders were committed by two killers working together. That would explain the similarity between the victims, but the whole idea seemed ridiculous. It was like a league of villains from a superhero comic book. Sam put that idea aside with a prayer to the powers that be. He hoped to die long before killers started banding together like that.
The third possibility was that he was dealing with a student of crime. Perhaps he was looking for someone who had spent time in prison, long enough to meet two or more murderers and learn from them. Maybe he felt driven by forces that no one but him could possibly understand, driven to pick up the work of murderers who had come before him and complete their work. Sam couldn't find a flaw in the idea, but neither could he find anything in the theory that aided the investigation. A killer who modeled himself on others gave police officers like himself very little to go on. He had no motive, since his motives were inherited from others.
With a sigh, Sam closed the folder. He had learned something tonight, but if anything he felt further away from cracking the case. He hated to admit it, but he needed more information to work with. More information meant more dead girls. More information meant that he hadn't done his job well enough to save the people who were depending on him.
He would still catch this killer. Sam hadn't given up hope of that. But his fear now was that he would find him and he would stop him far too late, after far too many were dead.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The hallway of St. Ignatius High School took on its customary din as students spilled out of their classrooms and converged on their lockers. Pamela Wilson walked with her books held against her chest like a shield.
She offered a shy smile to the occasional friendly face, but otherwise Pamela was accustomed to moving silently through the chaotic crowd of student bodies.
Near her locker she found refuge in her two closest friends. Jeannie and Katie were waiting for her to join them. She walked up with a smile.
"Hey, girl!" Jeannie said.
"Hey yourself," Pamela said. "What's up?"
"We were talking about you, actually," Katie said with an impish, sideways glance at Jeannie.
"Oh yeah?" Pamela replied, looking at them suspiciously.
"Yeah. We were making a bet. Jeannie thinks that you'll die a spinster virgin at the ripe old age of 97."
"You bitch!" Pamela sputtered at Jeannie, who had broken down into giggles.
"I think she's wrong, though," Katie said. "I think that you will die heroically while saving orphans from rising floodwaters ... as a spinster virgin at the age of 43."
Jeannie laughed even louder as Pamela crossed her arms across her chest and refused to look at them. "You are both such bitches. I don't know why I can't make better friends than your two sorry asses. Why are you so mean to me?"
"We're just kidding," Jeannie said once she managed to get enough air into her lungs to speak.
"Though Joey has to be wondering," Katie added.
Pamela rolled her eyes. "Why are we even talking about this? He's not my boyfriend!"
"Well that explains why you keep blowing him off," Katie said.
"I'm not blowing him off."
"Oh, excuse me. You're not blowing him off. You just turn him down again and again."
"And again!" Jeannie chimed in, laughing.
"Screw you both. I like him. I just don't know if I like-like him."
Her two friends' eyes grew wider at the sight of something behind her, and Pamela thought to herself: speak of the devil and he will appear.
"Hey, Pamela," a gruff voice said behind her. She turned to see an athletic teenage boy with brown hair poking out from under a baseball cap worn backwards.
"Hi Joey," she replied.
"Ladies," he said dramatically to her friends, who replied with amused snorts.
"We were just talking about you," Pamela said.
"Oh yeah?" Joey looked interested, and also suddenly hopeful. "What were you saying?"
"I was saying that you're a friend," Pamela said quickly before one of her irresponsible friends could jump in with something embarrassing.
"I like you too, Pamela," Joey said with a smile. He cleared his voice, and then said with a slight quaver: "Which is why I was wondering if you wanted to go to the game with me on Friday? Well, I'll be playing, but if you want to watch that would be cool, and then afterward some of us are gonna go to Mike's house. His parents are in Hawaii. It could be pretty cool."
Pamela felt a twist of nervousness in her gut. Joey kept asking her out, and he was awfully sweet, but she just couldn't make up her mind about him. Sometimes she thought he was really good boyfriend material and there was no reason why she shouldn't go out with him. Other times, though, the whole thing just felt wrong somehow. She had been stuck in the middle, between yes and no, so lo
ng that she felt bad for him, but she honestly didn't know anything else to say.
"I'm sorry, I can't," she said in an apologetic tone. "I have to babysit this Friday."
"Oh," Joey said, the light going out of his face. "That's cool. Maybe some other time?"
"Sure," Pamela said unconvincingly.
Joey gave her half a smile and turned on his heel. "Spinster virgin," Pamela could hear, whispered behind her by one of her so-called friends, who in reality were total bitches who deserved a good beating.
Down the hallway, Joey rejoined his friends in their huddle by the drinking fountain.
"So, did you get shot down again?" asked a tall kid named Devin who played tight end on the football team. Joey was the quarterback.
"She's busy," he said.
His friends let out a series of snorts and guffaws. "She's such a cock tease," one of them said.
"She's not a cock tease, Tyrone," Joey protested. "She's babysitting that night."
"Yeah," Tyrone agreed. "And when she's not babysitting she's helping her parents, or feeding the poor, or whatever the fuck she comes up with whenever you ask her out. You ask me, she's probably fucking another guy."
"She's not like that," Joey protested.
"Yeah? How would you know? She doesn't give you the time of day. I heard she was fucking her math teacher."
Joey rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."
The others picked it up, feeding off each others' energy. "Yeah, I heard that, too! She fucked him to turn a C into a B. He would have given her an A, but she wouldn't take it up the ass!"
They all laughed at that, all except Joey who knew there was no point in arguing with them. He'd done his part to defend her name, but now he had to make sure he didn't lose any standing among his friends.
"Yeah, well, she's saving that ass for me," he said with a smirk.
"Bullshit!" Devin hooted. "You are so full of shit! You've never been within ten miles of that ass!"
"Yeah, well, that may be so" Joey said with a confident smile. "But if she don't give it up to me soon, maybe I'll just take it."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sam eased his weight down into the cushions of the leather couch and tried not to feel nervous.
Doctors offices had always made him uncomfortable, and his mind drew no distinctions between types of doctors. Whether they were medical doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, or even massage therapists, they all made parts of his body clench in anticipation of pain and ice-cold instruments inserted in places that Sam would rather they not go.
"Thank you for seeing me, doctor," he said to the middle-aged man who was looking at him with an expression that combined curiosity with something that looked like amusement. "You come highly recommended."
"Please, call me Warren," the doctor replied in a phrase Sam imagined he repeated to each of the patients who came through his doors. Warren Sundquist was, Sam had learned, a big name within a small field. Sam had heard from no fewer than three enthralled colleagues that Dr. Sundquist had "written the book" on sexual sadists. He couldn't decide whether he should be surprised that a man who worked with patients who were capable of such violence was himself quiet, mild, and so carefully controlled in his words and gestures.
"I'm hoping you can help me with a case. It's not going the way I anticipated."
The doctor gave him a slow smile. "That must be upsetting," he murmured.
"Excuse me?"
"You're a police officer. I'm sorry, you're a detective. Your professional skills are no doubt of the highest order, and your intuition has been honed through years of experience. Your anticipation, Detective, is what puts criminals behind bars. If your intuition is leading you astray, would that not be upsetting?"
Sam shrugged. He was feeling like a bug under glass. "I don't know that I'd go that far. I'm not upset so much as I'm uncertain."
The doctor folded his hands in his laps and crossed his legs. He inclined his head. "Please elaborate."
Sam considered, wondering how much it was safe to disclose to this man. Sam was not a man who surrendered information easily. He wasn't secretive by nature, but he never liked tipping his hand until he was sure how the game would play out. In this game, though, he was almost out of options. He decided to trust the expert.
"We have two murders. We're not certain that they're connected, but I'm pretty sure."
"And what makes you so certain?"
"I'm not sure. It just feels like they're part of something bigger."
Doctor Sundquist smiled. "Your intuition tells you so. Of course. Please continue."
"We had a suspect. The first body to be recovered bore wounds and mutilation that matched the pattern of what a convicted murderer had inflicted on his victims. When I looked into the case, it turned out that man had recently been paroled."
"It sounds like an open and shut case."
Sam grimaced. "It was, but then we recovered the second body. This time the victim had been mutilated in a very different way. Again, the mutilations matched those inflicted on other women, by a man who is now back on the streets."
The doctor offered him a half smile. "That's an interesting coincidence. So now you have two killers."
Sam shook his head. "It's the same guy."
"How can you be so sure?"
Sam paused, gathering his thoughts. In his deepest heart he knew that he wasn't sure, not completely. It could be that he had two victims of two murderers in two completely unrelated cases. Still, there was something about it that bugged him, and forced him toward a conclusion.
"First, I don't like coincidences."
Sundquist nodded. "Neither do I. Coincidences are what you find in bad movies. In life, every act is singular and uniquely meaningful. What else?"
"The victims were too similar. They were the same gender, roughly the same age, and they even kind of looked alike. They were the sort of victim who would appeal to the same sort of killer."
Sundquist gave him the half-smile that Sam was beginning to realize was the psychiatrist's signature expression. "And what does that tell you?"
"That there are certain possibilities. First, that we have two convicted murderers, returning to the game at the same time in the same town. "
"Which would be very coincidental."
"Which would be very coincidental, and so very unlikely. Second, that these same two murderers are working together for some reason."
The doctor gave a snort. "Unlikely. The sexual sadist almost never works with an accomplice. The same terrible forces that drive him to kill also force him apart from others. Have you ever asked yourself why the neighbors of an axe murderer always tell the reporters how quiet and shy he was? If a serial murderer was the sort of person to share his innermost thoughts with others, he would have been locked up long before he got around to killing anyone."
Sam nodded. "The third possibility is that there is one killer, who killed his first victim in one way and his second victim in a very different way."
Sundquist quirked his head to the side, considering the question. "Possible. It is certainly true that a killer's method evolves over time. He tries new methods, new places, new devices, looking for what feels right. Until he finds his own true method you will see him shifting through imperfect intermediate states. Do the markings on the second victim seem to you like a modification of the first?"
Sam shook his head. "Completely different," he said.
"Then that, too, is unlikely," the doctor concluded. "That would be like an artist executing two works, one in watercolors and the other in crayon. It is far more likely that you are looking at the work of two artists."
"Fourth," Sam interjected, "there is one killer who's learned from other killers. He's a copycat and has adopted their methods as his own."
The doctor weighed the possibility. "That would not be unknown, but you should still expect convergence in future victims. A killer's method is a very personal thing. Your murderer will be searching for a signature technique."<
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A final possibility occurred to Sam, one he hadn't considered before. "Fifth, the killer might be a student of killing, one who knows that people like me hunt him by looking for patterns. But he likes what he does, and he doesn't want to get caught, so what he does is get a book on serial killers and he copies one killer's method with one victim, and another killer's method with another victim."
Sundquist considered him for a long, silent moment. "In that case, Detective, you might have your ultimate adversary. Because you hope to find him through a pattern that, if you're right, does not exist."
"It's possible, though?"
He shrugged. "It's possible. Mind you, this hypothetical killer would have his own reasons for killing—he's not doing it just for the joy of confounding the police, there's something much deeper driving him. But it's possible that, if he's exceptionally self-aware, he might do as you suggest and hide the true pattern guiding his efforts beneath the false pattern of those other killers' methods."
"So it's possible."
"It's possible, but is it helpful? How does it aid your investigation to know that, even after two murders, you still know next to nothing about the person who is responsible?"
Sam got up to go. "The lack of pattern is a pattern, Doctor. This bastard is covering his tracks very carefully, and if I know how he's doing it, I can use that to catch him."
Sundquist looked up at him placidly. "Is there anything else I can do for you, Detective?"
Sam paused, then asked the question that had been bugging him all day, since he first formed the plan to visit this man's office. "You specialize in sexual sadists, right?"
"I do."
"Does it do any good?"
The doctor cocked his head. "What do you mean?"
"They're sadists. They're animals who prey on women. Is there a cure for something like that?"
"Speaking of a 'cure' is a little simplistic..."
"Well, call it whatever you like," Sam snarled. "The fact is that an insanity plea is sometimes the only way these guys avoid the death penalty. If you've got a rabid dog and you have a cure for rabies, I say go for it: cure the dog. But if there is no cure, you put it down—you don't put it in an institution and talk to it about its feelings."