Signature Kill

by David Levien

  Subject’s mother was likely overprotective and overbearing. Likely drank or abused pharmaceuticals/​narcotics. Physical abuse at her hands likely.

  Subject likely a lonely child. No siblings, or poor relationships with siblings. No or few friends or poor relationships.

  Subject likely injured or killed family pets/​neighborhood animals as a gateway to blood lust.

  School records will likely show a poorly adjusted individual, but one within bounds of normalcy at that time.

  Subject will have potentially exhibited diminished capacity to experience anxiety or fear as a child. (Note: these qualities are some of the building blocks of developing a conscience.) Likelihood of cortical under-arousal, high testosterone, extra Y-chromosomes. (Extreme physical strength a potential by-product of these conditions.)

  By young adulthood subject would recognize that hurting animals was waning in attraction/no longer satisfying. He would have moved on to fantasies of sexual control and violence with humans and then graduated to ideation phase.

  Extent of ideation could have included collection of prurient visual materials, weapons and implements of restraint, torture, i.e., “murder tools.”

  Various indeterminate factors will have led to first “act.” Act could have entailed abuse, restraint, or sexual assault of human, most likely female. First act will have rendered mere fantasy phase no longer sufficient to satisfy. First murder likely disorganized, sloppy, poorly planned, resembling a “crime of passion.” (Mode will have grown more refined over time, while being affected by likely real-world variables.)

  Aftermath of first murder. Once individual has found the key to acting out deepest fantasies, individual likely continued murdering to repeat sensation.

  Second murder often deemed the “most important/exciting” to individuals thus categorized. Transformative nature of initial murder complete, killer has fully “become.”

  Likely that subject tries unsuccessfully to re-create this “becoming” with each murder. Results in declining satisfaction, dissipating excitement. However, left with no suitable alternative stimulation, subject carries on.

  Souveniring a likely part of activities.

  Subject is likely a religious man, or considers himself one, or at least attends organized religious services.

  Behr broke off from the report and looked up with a question on his lips. “Religious man?”

  Mistretta didn’t even turn from what she was doing on the kitchen counter. “What is religion if not a struggle between sanctification and defilement? That’s what our man is engaged in. More specifically, the idea of the resurrection. It’s at the very core of Christianity. His killings ape or mock the notion of resurrection, or at least show a complex relationship with it.”

  Behr chewed that over and went back to reading:

  Subject is extremely intelligent and/or potentially ex-military or ex–law enforcement officer. (This indicated by lack of physical evidence on scenes, i.e., he likely knows protocols.)

  Alternate theory: subject is of diminished intelligence/did not finish high school. This view would entail a subject unable to hold regular jobs, relationships, devoid of trappings of “regular society,” yet possessed of feral abilities.

  There was a handwritten note in the margin that read: “Behr, I don’t think this ‘diminished intelligence’ version is our type, but included it to be thorough.” The report continued:

  Subject potentially contracted HIV or STD, perhaps while in the military, potentially from a prostitute, and is potentially “cleansing” the world of fallen women.

  Behr read on, a few more pages filled with countless potential psychological details. If he’d hoped for a clear picture of a man he’d recognize walking down the street toward him, that wasn’t the case. But he had a lot of tangible ideas to consider.

  On the last page, written in purple ink, was a note:

  Behr: biggest mistake we make in trying to figure out why these people act like they do is that we look at them through a normal prism. But they are not like “us.” They’re just not.—Mistretta

  “This is impressive,” Behr said, closing the pages and turning in his chair. “What’s with the note?”

  Mistretta had plated the food and moved to her dining room table behind him. She was drinking tequila on the rocks.

  “I wrote it when I wasn’t sure if I’d be handing that to you or sending it through the U.S. mail. Just trying to make you see something that’s hard to see. Want a proper drink or you gonna stick with beer?”

  He saw she had a rocks glass full of ice next to his place setting.

  “You think it’s a good idea to get the tequila flowing?” he asked, moving to the table, beer in one hand, pages in the other.

  “You decide.” She shrugged.

  “So we set up on the community meeting. I get pictures of all attendees, license plates on all the cars. You sit back watching behavior, checking for red flags against your profile,” he said, then sipped his beer.

  “Deal,” she said. “But Behr, our guy isn’t going to be reading this.” She patted her report. “He’s going to keep on doing what he wants, the way he wants—the way he needs to—according to whatever’s broken inside him. We may not recognize him.”

  “I get it,” he said.

  She seemed far away and miserable for a moment, and he realized the toll her job took. She spent her time mired in human horror, spent her energy becoming utterly expert in it, and once she had, she saw too clearly the worst in people walking all around her. It was unavoidable. And most of the time no good came of it at all. “It’s not easy, is it?” he asked.

  “If it was they’d call it ‘fun,’ not criminal psychology.”

  “Even if you get it all right, you don’t get to go catch ’em.”

  “That’s what I have you for,” she said, coming back from wherever she was. “Eat.”

  Behr dug into his food. “Damn, that’s good. Spicy.”

  “That’s how I roll,” she said, the smile back in her eyes.

  He had a feeling he knew where the night was going to end up.

  47

  It is much later when he pulls out of Sunbeam’s detached garage and back into the rest of the world. He’s collected all of his ropes, cords, tape, rags, and gags. He’s cleaned everything he’s touched and has even taken the water glass with him. He’s taken care of all loose ends. Sunbeam has been in and out of death’s grasp. She was fairly limp as he carried her out and put her in his trunk, and he isn’t sure what will be left of her by the time he gets her back to his work space, so he has to drive quickly.

  He is halfway home, not far from where he works, actually, when he comes to the stop sign at an intersection near Copper Road. It may be a high-traffic spot during the day, but there aren’t any cars around and he is a long way from making a full stop as he taps the brakes and rolls through. A moment later his rear window is bathed in flashing red and blue. All goes cold inside him as he pulls over and waits for the policeman to approach. He is a big guy with a brush cut and steel blue eyes.

  “Let me see your stuff, please. License and registration,” the cop says, and appraises the car as if he is in the market for one, running his flashlight around the interior. The beam lingers on the canvas shoulder bag, which rests in the foot well on the passenger side.

  He hands over his papers and waits while the cop reviews them. The cop’s nameplate reads “Sgt. Morris.” A glance in the rearview mirror reveals that Sgt. Morris has a partner who is hunched over the onboard computer, undoubtedly running his license plate. Fortunately he has no violations.

  “Where are you headed so late?” the cop asks.

  “Just trying to get home. I work nearby.”

  “Do you know why I stopped you?”

  “No, sir, I do not,” he says. If Sunbeam stirs in the trunk, if she thumps or bangs around or utters so much as a muffled cry, it will all be over.

  “You failed to come to a complete stop at the intersect
ion.”

  “I guess I did give the stop sign a bit of the old college roll, Officer,” he says lightly.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No, Officer.”

  “A few beers? Anything?”

  “Not a sip.”

  “Why are you sweating?” the cop asks.

  “Am I? I have the heater up kind of high,” he says.

  It has all come down to this. He wonders if Sunbeam can hear any of the exchange through the walls of the trunk, if she is unable to scream around the gag, or if she is drifting in and out of consciousness, too addled to know that her only chance is right now.

  Sgt. Morris uses the beam of his light to check the hologram on the license a last time. He looks back toward his cruiser. His partner gives a hand signal, perhaps an “all clear.”

  “All right, sir … you drive safe and have a good night,” Sgt. Morris says, handing back the driver’s license, registration, and insurance card. Sgt. Morris returns to his cruiser, gets in, and pulls away.

  He waits another few seconds, reveling in the sensation of winning, again, while he situates his papers in the glove box, before he puts his car in gear and drives home to get down to it.

  48

  Behr couldn’t seem to stop ending up in Mistretta’s bed. She lay next to him, her black hair spread half across the pillow, half across his shoulder.

  “You out?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I was thinking about the checklist,” he said.

  “The PCL-R.”

  “Yeah, and other tests like it.”

  “What about it?”

  “Where do normal people score?”

  “Zero.”

  “Zero?”

  “Zero to five,” she said.

  “To five. I see. Because in your note when you said ‘they’re not like us’ you put ‘us’ in quotes.”

  “I meant a theoretical ‘us,’ like everyone, but not really us, as in you and me.”

  “So, you’ve taken it?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve taken it.”

  There was a long pause in the darkness.

  “And where did you—” he asked.

  “Higher than that,” she said quickly.

  “Double digits?”

  “Behr,” she said, “there’re certain things you just don’t ask a girl.”

  “So where do you think I’d—”

  “You would too,” she said, and he suddenly didn’t want to get any more specific either.

  He felt her shaking in the dark and realized she was silently laughing. “Yep, just a couple of psychos in this bed …”

  49

  He backs the rear of the car inside the darkened garage, the light on the automatic door disabled, and pulls Sunbeam’s tarp-covered form out of the trunk before pulling the car out and closing the garage door behind him again. As quiet settles, he has a moment’s thought of the little girl back at the house and remembers one time, in the beginning when he was just a boy. He’d caught a neighborhood cat and was using a wire loop to take it to death’s door and back, over and over again. The cat’s screams had brought some older kids to the copse of trees where he’d been experimenting. One of them had been a bossy type of girl. It wasn’t the first time he’d done some experimenting: the first cat he’d killed was with a large firecracker shoved up its rectum. Then there were the birds he’d caught, after that chick, baiting them with grain and dropping a box over them, and then injecting them with bleach and sitting back to watch them shake and die.

  I was just playing with it, he’d said, removing the wire loop from the cat’s neck, hiding it, and then letting the cat go. But that bossy girl had just stood and stared at him. Just like that girl back at the house had.

  Word about the incident got out, thanks to her, and he was called in to the middle school guidance counselor’s office.

  The counselor, a wrinkled woman with large rings on her nubby fingers, smelled of coffee and kept saying things like: Don’t you feel bad for the cat? What about the cat’s feelings?

  Well, she didn’t get it, that guidance counselor, not at all. Where would he have even started to explain with someone like her? Especially at his young age, when he was so far from true understanding himself. So he’d said yes, he certainly did feel bad, and he would never do anything like that again. And he’d been allowed to walk out of the guidance counselor’s office and to get on with the rest of his life. That bossy girl had stayed away from him, and she’d switched schools not long after the incident and he hadn’t thought of her for a long time—until earlier that night when he’d been ready to leave Sunbeam’s but had to finish up. He’d opened that bathroom door and had come faceto-face with the niece … He never did like bossy little girls …

  Sunbeam is still alive, but only in the technical sense and certainly not in any functional one. Her breathing is shallow, her pulse weak and thready. The part of her brain that controls her involuntary motor functions has been damaged from lack of oxygen. Once he saw a report on television about college-aged binge drinkers who anesthetized themselves into comas with alcohol, and their symptoms were similar to hers.

  He walks around her naked body, roped spread-eagle on the floor, and gets ready. She is beyond terror, beyond conscious comprehension, but soon on a deep, cellular level she’ll experience full awareness. It would have been nice to talk to her for longer, to watch her fight her situation with more vigor and fire. Even though those are superficial pleasures, and her condition doesn’t really matter to him so long as she is alive for this part.

  He moves to his workbench and selects some tools, but then pauses. Suddenly he is back at the jumping-off point, at the beginning of his army service, home on family medical leave to tend to Mother, who was suffering, after a series of mini-strokes, and it was time for it to come to a close. Even that shining hair she’d been so proud of had become lank as straw. If she could have talked, she would’ve asked him to end it. He was sure. But investigators could take an impression of the inside of the lips, and the depressions of her teeth on the soft flesh there would reveal she had been smothered with a pillow, and that just wouldn’t do. It was hardly that complicated or difficult though. He merely pinched her nose shut and covered her mouth and waited. She barely thrashed. The end was a mere spasm, as she looked up at him, her eyes wide with shock, fear, and understanding of what she’d birthed and created.

  Later, he’d sat naked and cross-legged, like a giant pale baby, in front of the mirror in her room, Mother’s corpse reflected behind him, and he’d wept and laughed until he grew hard and then he’d masturbated feverishly. When he’d returned to post after the burial, and no questions were asked, it was with a sense of utter lightness and freedom.

  But this memory puts a different idea in his mind. He crosses over to Sunbeam, kneels down, and puts his mouth over hers, pinching her nose, and he breathes for her. He smiles at the irony, at how differently he had handled Mother, and because at some point he will be doing the opposite and taking Sunbeam’s breath from her, but not yet …

  Because it works, like splashing water in the face of someone who has fainted. He sees her blink and look around at where she is. She’s not completely lucid, but Sunbeam is back.

  50

  Every damn one of them looked guilty, each a monster hiding in plain sight. Every one of them capable of horrific acts …

  Behr had just stepped back inside from the parking lot, where he’d used his phone to snap pictures of license plates and now surveyed the group that had assembled.

  Then again, every person alive was. And these were just people—concerned, scared people, dressed in their bland blue and beige and tan clothing, sitting in the stale air of the church basement that smelled of coffee, hoping for some information that might protect them and those they loved, none of them likely responsible for any crime beyond speeding or cheating on their taxes.

  The competing thoughts were pointless, and Behr tried to shake them and tu
rn his attention to the front of the room and the Indy police officer addressing the group.

  “There are only so many of us, and there are many, many more of you, which is why we look to you for some help in moments like this,” Sergeant John Odoms said to the group, nearly finished with his remarks. The burly, bald-headed fifteen-year veteran was shift mates with Officer Hawkins, the young patrolman who’d discovered the remains in Northwestway Park. Hawkins had been asked to appear initially, but he’d been on administrative leave since the incident and wasn’t up to talking about it publicly yet.

  “We’re here to protect, but that starts with you as individuals and as a community being aware and looking out for suspicious behavior, men or groups of men lurking in public parks, around bars, around certain types of hotels …” Odoms went on.

  The event had been previewed in the Star—both the print version and online. Behr had e-mailed Susan, letting her know he planned on asking their friend Neil Ratay, the reporter, to place it.

  “Do what you want,” had come her terse reply. “You will anyway.” And so he had. Behr sent along a fairly banal wide shot Quinn had taken of the Donovan-Grant crime scene, which the paper had run, one that featured the police investigating but avoided the gore of the remains. Behr had also put up a temporary website that offered information and a chance to look at more pictures, but one had to register with name and address and obtain a password in order to do so, and the Star ran the link. That way if the perpetrator couldn’t be drawn out in person but couldn’t help taking a look, there would be some cyber trace of him, even if he used a fake address.

  As for his friend, Behr hadn’t let on to Ratay the true motivation behind the meeting, and whether the reporter had guessed it or not, all he had said was “I’m sure the paper will be happy to get behind a concerned citizen such as yourself.” Ratay had also given Behr the name of the volunteer in the church office who oversaw the space, which was also where Ratay attended his AA meetings.