Twisted (14 page)

“I need a shower. Give me ten minutes.”

“Five,” she said firmly. “I’ll wait in the car.”

Four hours later, Mark Wolfe looked every inch the federal agent as he stood in front of a room full of skeptical small-town cops and presented his profile. He didn’t shed the jacket, or loosen the tie, or even lay off the Quantico-speak as he went through his points, and damned if Allison didn’t admire him for it.

She knew how it felt to be the odd man out in this particular arena, and she didn’t envy the task Mark had in front of him. Even with Jonah on board and Reynolds reluctantly cooperating, he had a long way to go to persuade the newly formed task force to accept his case theory. After an hour of discussion, the cops around the table still seemed unconvinced that a serial killer who’d eluded investigators for more than a decade had traveled all the way from California to terrorize their community. The whole thing seemed unreal, like something out of a movie, and Allison could see from the body language around her that they didn’t fully believe it.

Surely Mark, skilled profiler that he was, could see it, too. And yet he continued to stand up there and make his case in that confident voice Allison had come to respect.

“What do you mean by ‘low-risk victim’?” asked a
detective at the other end of the table. A fellow member of the Crimes Against Persons squad, Sean Byrne had spent the entire meeting with his chair tipped back and his arms folded over his chest.

“Low-risk victim, high-risk crime,” Mark said. “In other words, each of these women had a low-risk lifestyle. They’re not prostitutes or drug addicts—people who routinely put themselves in vulnerable situations. We’re talking about students, moms, corporate executives—women who are not only connected to their communities, but who habitually take measures to protect themselves. Dara Langford had self-defense training. Sheryl Fanning kept a tube of Mace on her key chain and made a point never to jog after dark. The fact that these women were targeted anyway makes the crimes high-risk for the perpetrator.”

“So, why were they targeted?” Sean asked. “You still haven’t told us why he picked them all.”

“
If
he picked them all,” Reynolds said. “All due respect, I still don’t see as we can say these murders are all connected. Maybe it’s a copycat. Someone coming here all the way from California? I think it’s a stretch.”

“People move around,” Mark countered. “Ted Bundy crisscrossed the country committing murders in at least five states, even escaping from jail twice before ending up in Florida.”

Mark surveyed the faces around the room, meeting Allison’s gaze only briefly. She’d been careful not to say much this morning because she didn’t want to stir up trouble with her boss, who clearly had put this task force together for appearance’s sake.

Mark shuffled through a stack of files and drew out a
photograph. “Okay, don’t take my word for it. You tell me what you see.”

He passed the eight-by-ten to Reynolds, then selected another picture from another file. And another. And another. Soon photographs from four separate case files were making their way around the table.

“Each case, someone abducts a woman from a nature trail or park, beats and sexually assaults her, slits her throat, chops her hair off, and then dumps her body in the woods.”

“What does the hair mean?” Ric Santos asked.

Allison glanced across the table at her friend’s fiancé. He wasn’t much of a talker, and she didn’t know how he felt about the investigation yet.

“The hair is very telling,” Mark said. “Combined with the brutal sexual assault, it reveals what his crime is really about. It’s his way of showing his contempt for women. Degrading them. We’re talking about someone with a lot of pent-up hatred, a need to humiliate his victims and feel power over them. As I said, it most likely goes back to some childhood trauma, a very volatile relationship with an abusive mother.”

Reynolds snorted. “So now you’re making excuses for him?”

“No,” Mark said. “I’m tracing the roots of a behavior.”

“Guy’s sick,” Sean said scornfully, and tossed one of the photographs away. It was a picture of Stephanie Snow, whose murder was particularly disturbing to everyone in the room because it had happened on their home turf.

“Careful how you use that word,” Mark warned. “Especially in front of the media. This UNSUB shows
clear signs of being a psychopath, but that doesn’t mean he’s not mentally competent, that he can’t tell right from wrong. He can. He does. And he chooses to do it anyway. Some attorney down the road may try to use an insanity defense for him. We shouldn’t lend credibility to that by talking about how he’s ‘sick in the head’ or ‘mentally ill’ or whatever.”

Allison leaned forward on her elbows and cleared her throat. “When we interviewed Jordan Wheatley, she said her attacker referred to his wife several times. You do or don’t think he’s married?”

Mark nodded. “Married is unlikely, I’d say. All indications are that he has a disdain for conventional society, along with its institutions.”

“Where’d you get that?” Jonah asked.

“It goes back to the Internet posts I mentioned from when he started this, and the latest one that coincided with Stephanie’s death. He indicates a deep dislike for societal institutions, and I would bet that extends to marriage. But it
is
possible he’s in a relationship with a woman, maybe even lives with her.”

“He hates women, but he lives with one?” Sean asked.

“I didn’t say he was nice to her. Most likely he’s abusive and controlling. I worked a serial case once where the perpetrator had a girlfriend for ten years, but he treated her like an animal. Wouldn’t allow her to bathe or leave the house. Made her sleep on the floor beside his bed.”

Allison gritted her teeth. Where did these assholes come from?

“Cutting off the victim’s hair is a key element of the attack,” Mark continued. “It’s important to him emotionally. You could say it’s his signature.”

“How’s that different from MO?” Sean asked.

“Signature stays the same. Modus operandi can change over time, evolving as the killer gets more skilled. For example, switching vehicles or finding new ways to approach a victim.”

“Why was Jordan left in the park where she was jogging, and the others were taken to a secondary dump site?” Jonah asked.

“You’re right, that’s unique,” Mark said. “I think he probably intended to take her somewhere, but she put up such a struggle, he couldn’t control her. So he got in a hurry and changed his plan. He dumped her out in the same parking lot where he first approached her, and she was discovered a few minutes later by some hikers, which is why she survived.”

Quiet settled over the room at the reminder of Jordan Wheatley. No one wanted to think about the aftermath of her attack. In some ways, it was easier to think of the victim dying rather than surviving because she wasn’t still suffering now, today, as everyone sat around a conference table with their coffee cups, reviewing what had been done to her and conjecturing about her attacker’s emotional problems. Having met Jordan face-to-face, Allison now understood the anger that seemed to seep from her pores.

How could this man still be out there after what he’d done? What had anyone been doing about her case for the past year?

“Another point,” Mark said. “He probably follows his crimes in the media. He’s interested in knowing what we know and feeling superior because he’s evaded police for so long. He’s probably got news clippings somewhere,
pictures of his victims. Maybe he follows the story online.

“We also know he takes souvenirs. Several of the victims were missing jewelry. Dara was wearing a gold bracelet when she disappeared that was never found. And Stephanie”—he shuffled through a file and produced a photograph—“was wearing this opal-and-diamond pendant on a chain around her neck.”

Mark held up the photo that showed Stephanie in her graduation cap and gown. She had soft green eyes, a beautiful smile, and a cascade of glossy dark hair that flowed over her shoulders.

“What about the hair?” Jonah asked. “That a souvenir, too?”

“He leaves it at the crime scene. It’s the act of cutting it off that satisfies some need he has. Although we wouldn’t know if all he takes is a few strands.”

“That poetry he puts out with his Internet messages,” Ric said. “Who’d you say that was again?”

“Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Yeah, what does all that mean, exactly? The poems?”

“I don’t know,” Mark said frankly. “Could be it has some psychological importance to him. Could be—and this is my personal opinion—it’s all just a gimmick. Means nothing. He uses obscure references because it makes him feel smart. Don’t forget, we’re talking about someone with a very inflated ego who likes attention. Maybe he thought the poetry would get him a cool nickname in the media like the Zodiac Killer or the BTK Killer. We’ve tried not to emphasize the poetry to keep that from happening.”

“But do the poems tell us anything?” Ric asked.

“In one case, it helped them recover a body.”

All eyes swung toward Allison. She’d spent the ride up to Austin perusing Mark’s case files and questioning him about the details that were new to her.

“Jillian Webb,” she said. “Someone posted a few snippets of poetry on the Web site of the local paper covering her disappearance. The poem was about a lake with ‘waters lone and dead.’ Detectives heard about it and started searching a reservoir near the park where she disappeared. Cadaver dogs found her body that same day.”

“Unfortunately, that was the last time he gave us anything useful,” Mark said. “The other verses we’ve come across have been more obscure.”

Allison studied the faces around the room. She saw skepticism. Because Mark was a fed? An outsider? Because they thought profiling was a bunch of psychobabble? Every last one of these men was action-oriented.

“So, if your theory holds,” Reynolds said, “you’re telling us we should brace ourselves for another murder on November nineteenth.”

Something sparked in Mark’s eyes. “That’s exactly the wrong way to look at it. I’m here—we’re all here—to prevent that from happening.”

“Agreed,” Allison said. “So what do we
do
?”

“If it were a serial bank robber, we’d harden the targets,” Jonah said, and people nodded in agreement. “We’d put up extra security everywhere and then leave one vulnerable target, let him walk into a trap.”

“Not a bad idea,” Mark said. “And it’s a technique we’ve used before. But in this case it doesn’t work because these aren’t crimes of opportunity. He doesn’t go to a park and wait for a vulnerable woman to come along.
He selects
these
women. And if we knew how or why, we’d have a better idea where to find him.”

“Okay, what else?” Allison said. “I plan to deliver the rape kits to Delphi this afternoon, see if we can get a rush on them. What about the paint?”

“What paint?” Reynolds wanted to know.

“In our interview with Jordan, Detective Doyle asked about smells.” Mark acknowledged Allison with a nod. “Jordan recalled a strong chemical smell in the van, possibly paint. That’s a new lead.”

“I’m on it,” Jonah said. “I’ll check out paint outfits in the tri-county area. Maybe we can find someone with a criminal background.”

“I’ll help,” Ric said. “That’s a lot of people. We should check deck and fence companies, too. Those wood stains they use smell like paint.”

“I’ll keep pushing on the Internet angle,” Mark said. “And the victim profiles need work. Allison, you’ve got the Jordan Wheatley file, so you can help with that.”

Everyone’s gaze settled on Sean, who hadn’t volunteered for anything.

“I’ll work on the vehicle angle,” he said. “Wayne County says the green minivan was a dead end, but maybe they missed something.”

And with Sean’s offer to help, the tables were officially turned. Allison wasn’t sure how it had happened, but every cop in the room was at least pretending to be on board.

“Okay, that’s it, people.” Reynolds re-asserted his authority over his squad as chairs scraped back and notebooks flipped shut. “We got work to do. And remember,
no one talks to the press besides me or the chief. That’s an order.”

“One more thing,” Mark said. “You’ve got ten thousand women enrolled at the university here. Someone needs to coordinate with campus security and make sure these students know what to watch out for.”

“I’ll do it,” Allison said.

“You think he’s been on campus?” Reynolds looked alarmed.

“I don’t know,” Mark said. “But it’s a target-rich environment and I’m sure he’s taken notice.”

Mark walked out of the police station and stood on the steps to get some air. He hated meetings. He preferred to walk a crime scene or interview a witness or search an apartment. Sitting around a conference table always felt like a waste of time, especially when he knew he was right.

He glanced up at the dull gray sky and remembered a similar day nearly a decade ago. It had been cold and cloudy then, too, as he’d stood beside a creek bed watching a young woman be zipped into a body bag. Even with a task force working round the clock, they’d still been too late. Mark didn’t intend to be too late again.

He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his messages, but instead of seeing the words he saw faces. Dara Langford. Sheryl Fanning. Stephanie Snow. That coldness started to creep in again. He felt it sometimes when the cases began to bleed together and he’d spent too many hours sifting through crime-scene photos and occupying the minds of soulless people.

In college, Mark had read a quote by Nietzsche that
he’d never forgotten:
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

When he’d first read the words, Mark had glommed onto the idea of fighting, of lashing back at his father and all those things he’d been powerless to take on when he was a kid. All his life he’d wanted to be a fighter instead of a weakling, and so he’d joined the FBI. But the longer Mark did this job, the more it seemed that he wasn’t fighting monsters so much as he was fighting that abyss.