Signature Kill (10 page)
Authors: David Levien
“I separated by one more distinguishing factor,” Mistretta said. “Eleven weren’t blondes. The rest were. You’d need to know to look for diaminotoluene in the chemical report.”
“What’s that, a chemical in—”
“Yeah, in hair dye. It means some of the victims would have appeared blond even though driver’s licenses and other records might suggest they weren’t. So two bogeys, and eleven brunettes. That brings it to twenty-four blondes.”
“Really? Shit …” Behr said, trying to formally accept what he’d previously just entertained.
“I don’t know how many cases you were pulling from, but you did a hell of a job with the knitting here.”
The compliment was diminished by the reality of it.
Twenty-four women. Sixteen years
.
“So,” Behr began, “a serial killer …”
Lisa nodded. Her rigid shell softened for a moment.
“Yeah. Well, a signature killer, more accurately, engaged in serial predation. A serial killer is two or more, by any means. But we use the term ‘signature’ because even though the MO can change from crime to crime, due to the specific and random circumstances of each act, the key element of the crime that gives the killer the satisfaction is the same even when the little details present slightly differently. There can also be an evolution with these guys—a slowly changing style. But that signature element stays the same. That’s what you intuited in these cases.” She took a sip of coffee while Behr absorbed it.
“You learn your stuff at Quantico, professor?” Behr asked.
“BSU? I’ve
taught
those pussies,” she said.
“So the element is the control,” Behr said, almost thinking out loud. “The evidence of binding …”
Mistretta nodded.
“And the way the bodies are being found, the dismemberment?” Behr asked. “Even though they’re different every time—”
“Right. The presentation changes, but not the fact that there
is
a presentation. Even though the early kills seemed like they were discovered, he didn’t fail at hiding them. What you figured out is that they were just less brashly placed.”
“He’s becoming more direct.”
“Yeah.”
“I read the FBI
Crime Classification Manual
, trying to determine whether he was an organized or disorganized personality. I keep going back and forth,” Behr said.
“Right,” she said. “He’s organized, but moving into a disorganized state,” she said.
“Didn’t know that was a possibility,” Behr said.
“It is.”
“And at first I had him as an anger-excitation killer,” Behr said. “But then I started to consider—”
“Sadistic-lust.”
“Right. But there wasn’t real evidence of sexual activity. No semen, no DNA at all in fact.”
“Well, it’s always anger. And it’s always sexual with these bastards, even if the act isn’t … standard,” she went on. “You familiar with the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised?”
“Yeah,” Behr said. The PCL-R was a twenty-question test devised by a social scientist that gauged narcissism, pathological lying, lack of remorse, absence of empathy, all the delightful qualities that predicted sociopaths and their proclivity to reoffend to such a degree of accuracy that prisons and law enforcement had been using it for the past decade and a half. “High score of forty, and anything over what—twenty-something?—indicates a psychopath,” Behr said.
“Twenty-nine,” she said. “And shit, I’d go a lot lower than that. But applying the scale is more of an art than a science. Most of the time.”
“But in this case?”
“In this case our guy”—Mistretta pointed to the files—“he’ll have
checked off every damn box. Doesn’t matter what test you use—the Minnesota Multiphasic, the MCMI-III, fucking Rorschach—he’ll be an overachiever. And honor rollers like him, it’s like they’re emotionally deaf. The part of the brain where we create compassion or sorrow—his will be a flatline. Just shut off or missing. Show this guy a picture of a dead kid and then one of a Christmas ham, there will be no difference in his physiological response, his heart rate, his breathing. It takes extreme stimulation to even register with them, and that’s what allows them to do what they do. And sexually … well, it’s a big fucking problem. For instance, this guy? He’s a picquerist. You familiar with that term?”
“Using a knife or blade as a …” Behr began.
“Yeah, as a stand-in for the penis,” she continued. “And he could be climaxing from the stabbing.”
“Which is why there’s no DNA?”
“Could be
a
reason,” she said. “But the way the bodies are being found is obscuring that. See, all this psycho shit can make crime scenes misleading, especially for an overworked police force.”
“It’s why the press hasn’t picked it up,” Behr said.
“Maybe,” she said. “The crimes are pretty spread out, time-wise.”
“And location-wise,” Behr added.
“Right,” she said. “Some of the bodies weren’t found for a long, long time afterward. Some were found right away. It obscures the pattern. Some haven’t been found at all, I’d guess.”
“You think there are more,” Behr said.
“Well, I don’t know, of course. But we have to assume.”
“Right …” Behr said, and then silence fell at the possibility, the probability. After a while they went on talking about various other aspects of the killings, but Behr had temporarily run out of questions until he processed what she’d told him.
Finally, she pushed herself up off the beanbag and went to the corner of her desk where a pile of books rested. “These are for you to borrow.” Behr got up and took a look at the spines and saw words and phrases like
slay, kill, understanding murder, landscape of evil
, and
killer’s mind
.
“Some light reading,” he said.
“Right.” She smiled.
“If I showed you suspects, could you help me determine if they looked good for this?” Behr asked.
“I’ve been known to. I could try,” she said. “Do you have suspects?”
“No,” Behr said.
“You got police access to a suspect pool?”
“We’ll see,” Behr said, taking out his phone and sending a text to Breslau:
“I need to meet.”
“I wish you luck, buddy, because these guys don’t stop until they’re locked up or dead. And it’s not the threat of being locked up that ever slows ’em down either. In fact, these dreamboats do real well in prison. They’re front-page celebrities inside and they spend their sentence reliving every moment of every single crime. They relish the memories,
luxuriate
in them. Replaying it all is almost as much fun for them as the doing.”
Behr absorbed this, picked up the books, and turned to her. “Going back to his signature. It’s not just the dismemberment, it’s this … reassembly. He needs them to come apart so he can put them back together, his way, according to his vision.”
“Yeah, I’d say it’s the source of his feelings of power,” she said, nodding.
“So I’ll follow up with you on this.”
“You fucking better!” she said, and hit him with a smile that he felt in his knees.
Finally, the throbbing is too much to bear. He’s been lying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling in the dark. There will be a full sleepless night of it ahead of him if he doesn’t do something about it. In a controlled rush of motion he swings his feet and gets out of bed. He puts on a sweatshirt over his pajamas, and slippers. That’s when Margaret rolls over.
“What’s wrong, dear?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Where are you going?”
“Think I might’ve left my soldering iron plugged in out in the workshop,” he lies. “Gonna go check.”
“You and your projects.”
His wife rolls back over and goes to sleep. He looks at her sleeping form.
What does she know?
She’s not a bright woman.
Or is she, but keeping it to herself?
He moves off through the darkened house and makes his way downstairs. He is in a hurry now, as he exits out the kitchen door, steps briefly through the cold night air, and lets himself into the garage. He closes the door behind him and stands there in the dark, sensing her, his mind traveling back to the moment a day before …
He’d clicked on the light on his workbench, then slapped Cinnamon lightly on the cheek. She’d been crying and had passed out, but she roused, looking up at him through wet eyes. The tears had caused her makeup to run into black smudges on the tops of her cheeks. He
was naked, and her eyes took in his body. He interpreted what he saw in them, and it was horror.
“I’ll take the tape off if you don’t make any noise, Danielle,” he offered. Danielle Crawley. That was Cinnamon’s name. Her driver’s license said so. He savored this basic piece of information.
After a moment she nodded. He took a few steps toward the radio on the back corner of the utility table and turned it on. It was tuned to a classic rock station, and “Magic Carpet Ride” played loudly. He’d used egg-crate foam, insulation, and other baffling materials when he’d fitted out the garage, so it wasn’t really necessary, but he didn’t mind the music when he worked and he’d been through it enough times to know how likely it was that she’d scream when he removed the tape.
Danielle Crawley didn’t though. She just looked at him, breathing panicky breaths through lips that were reddened from the adhesive. He kneeled near her, the concrete floor cold, hard, and rough against his skin.
“How are we doing, Danielle?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“I said, ‘How are we doing?’ ” he repeated.
“Please let me go,” she said.
“Ahh,” he said in response. He put his hand on her flank, and felt her shudder and inch away as much as she could despite the binding. His eyes roved over her body, pallid, white, and unmarked except for a cluster of moles at her abdomen, and a tiny faded shamrock tattoo on her right calf.
“The ropes are hurting my wrists and ankles,” she said.
“No one is exempt from pain and suffering. Nothing is,” he explained.
How had he come to know this?
He thought back to when he was young. All he’d wanted then was to know God, to touch His existence. The desire had pulsed inside him. But he’d sit in the church between Grandfather and Mother and nothing would happen. He’d listen and speak and kneel and sing, but he knew he was being ignored, for he was alone. He knew that He existed, because everyone else around him seemed to be able to touch Him or at least believe. As a boy he would try it in his room too,
kneeling and praying, but He who had caused everything to be wasn’t there either.
So he’d gone out on his own and tried to master life, in the woods behind his house. He had set snares and caught things. Squirrels, chipmunks, birds, stray cats. But he had failed miserably in his labors, and only succeeded in bringing death. Whitening bones, and skins tacked to pieces of bark and drying under rock salt, were all that remained. He was being mocked for his efforts. A jealousy rose inside him over His power and it consumed him. Day by day he learned the eternal truth: that everything had a miserable end.
The final form of the lesson was a robin chick that had fallen from its nest. Seized of an idea, he’d bolted to the shed and retrieved a yellow can of Ronsonol. The little bird burned in a glowing ball of blue. He’d hardly call them flames. The tiny creature’s beak triangled open, calling out with barely any sound, not so much in pain but indignation. That won him over. He had a momentary pang and wondered about extinguishing the fire, seeing if the chick survived, or at least ending its pain with his heel or a rock. But instead he stood there and watched for another two or three minutes, transfixed, while the fire advanced and the bird’s downy feathers and delicate skin, then bones and organs broke down, until the thing was just a loose gelatinous ball. Eventually he’d kicked it off the trail under some low brush and never went back to look at it again and came away knowing he
did
have a power, the power to govern that end, to administer it and to feel the clarity that came along with it.
That’s when the song on the radio had changed to a British band from the eighties, and it brought him back from his reverie. He looked at Cinnamon again.
“Tell me about this,” he said, touching the tattoo of the shamrock.
“Just something stupid I did when I was in school,” she said. He thought about that for a while, as she looked at him. It seemed they were both considering all of the moments and events in her life that had brought her here.
“You must mean everything to someone,” he said, with appreciation.
“No,” she said, some pleading in her voice.
“To your family. Someone …”
“Not really.” The calm they could show was admirable.
“Well, you mean everything to me. Now.”
“Thank you.”
He took off his glasses and set them aside.
“You’re nervous. Are you wet?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
He reached out and pulled the panties away and felt between her legs as her body shook and recoiled.
“Ah, you are.”
“Let me go, motherfucker,” she said, low. There was strength in her voice, but it was thwarted and futile.
His gaze came to rest on her nakedness. He took in the light hair at her crotch that just touched the place of opening, of confusion and mystery, that tabernacle of life. When he was no longer a boy, he knew he was capable of bringing life, together with a woman. But to what end? It wouldn’t get him any closer to God. He felt the love and hate surge inside him.
“What are those?” she asked, looking up at the hooks, connected to an iron bar, suspended from the ceiling.
“It’s called a gambrel. You don’t need to worry about that,” he assured her.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her ability to control herself diminishing. “Why did you take me?”
“It’s not something to cry about, it’s just something that happened,” he said.
He picked up a wooden-handled steel awl and ran it down her sternum to the soft skin of her belly and began pressing.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
“I know.”
Then he put his mouth on hers. She didn’t resist, but merely submitted. It wasn’t remotely satisfactory.
“That kiss wasn’t sincere.”
“Please,” she said.
He put his mouth back on hers, cutting off her words, but this time he bit down and yanked his face away without letting go. He spit out
pulpy chunks of her flesh. She was screaming now, but the sound was wet and indistinct, on account of her lips being gone …
He can’t wait anymore and flicks on the lights and sees it there, resting on a plate on the corner of his workbench: Cinnamon’s head. Her eyes, lids hanging open, eyeballs beginning to go soft, mouth fleshy, the remainders of her torn lips pursed, and that streaked blond hair still shining, though it is starting to fall out.
He feels the urgency in his pajama pants anew and loosens the drawstring, letting them slide down to his thighs, and then he moves toward her head in order to relieve it.
Later, he slips back into bed. Margaret is sleeping heavily and doesn’t move. He stares up into the darkness and knows he’ll be looking for a new project in no time.