The Impaler

back to her house feeling more alone than she had in a long time.

She lay awake well into the night, straddling the thrill, the satisfaction of her bravura performance along with the hollow disappointment that Edmund Lambert hadn’t returned to the theater after she saw him leave. She had a crush on him. A bad one. And her awareness of how deeply his absence affected her only made matters worse.

Had she misread his signals? Had she come on too strong with the rose? Perhaps she was overreacting— being “melodramatic” as her mother would say. After all, there had to be a simple explanation, hadn’t there?

Nonetheless, Cindy still felt the electric circuit she had closed with him humming quietly beneath her thoughts. And once again she found herself sitting in front of her computer. She didn’t bother with her Facebook page, but instead went straight for Google Earth and typed in the address she’d found in the campus directory. A couple more clicks and Cindy zoomed in the satellite imagery as close as it would go. She went back and forth between plus and minus until she was satisfied, but still the photo was grainy and un-clear—a blurry white square at the end of a long dirt road; some smaller squares surrounded by clumps of trees and patches of green farmland.

Impulsively, Cindy clicked on the Get Directions link, typed in her home address, and discovered it would take about thirty-five minutes to get there.

“A simple explanation,” she whispered. “Perhaps you needed to get home for something. A sick mother, maybe, all the way out there on your farm.”

You’re a sick mother, replied a voice in her head. A fucking stalker, if you ask me.

Cindy sighed and clicked for maximum zoom-in; sat looking at the house for a long time and wondered if maybe, just maybe, Edmund Lambert was sitting in front of his computer, zooming in on her house, too.

“The cast party,” she said. “I’ll know for sure if you come to the cast party.”

Or maybe someday you can just pay him a visit at his little farmhouse and have a party of your own.

Cindy smiled.

That sounds like something Amy Pratt would say, she replied in her mind, and climbed back into bed wondering whether or not the redheaded slut might just be on to something.

Chapter 35

Friday, April 14, 9 a.m., the FBI Resident Agency, Raleigh

An emergency teleconference ordered by Alan Gates himself.

Sam Markham was tired and sat staring at his notes with his head in his hands. The Resident Agency’s conference room was small and cramped with almost two dozen agents seated double deep around a narrow oak table. They were already looking at him suspiciously, their message loud and clear: “This better be good, Quantico boy.”

But Markham didn’t give a shit. He felt confident about the cards he was holding, but at the same time felt guilty for not telling Schaap that it was Marla Rodriguez who’d blown the case wide open for him. Nonetheless, he would keep his promise to her. He owed her that and much, much more.

“You need anything, Sam?” Schaap asked, sitting next to him.

“I’m good, I think.”

“Still feel like we’re on the Twilight Zone. You hear from Underhill again?”

“Not since we talked yesterday. He said he’ll tag along with Gates this morning.”

“He’s got to be close to retirement now, am I right?”

“I hope not,” Markham said. “He’s the best forensic psychiatrist around. Still teaches at Georgetown. Developmental science, personality disorders. A lot like Gates, in that respect. They’ll have to drag him out kicking and screaming.”

“All set,” said an agent, handing Schaap the remote control. Schaap pressed a button, and the large teleconference screen flickered on to reveal the face of Alan Gates.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “You’re the last to come online, Agent Schaap. Do you have your visual and your PowerPoint feed ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Schaap said, holding up the remote.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Gates said. “Because of the nature of this investigation, time is of the essence. As you know, this conference is a joint linkup involving the FBI Resident Agency in Raleigh, the FBI Field Office in Charlotte, and the BAU here at Quantico. This is Agent Markham’s show, so if you have any questions, please raise your hands and wait for confirmation from him.”

The feed on the screen split into two: Alan Gates and a long shot of the conference room at the Charlotte Field Office. Markham quickly surveyed the faces watching him there—suspicious, cold, yet childlike in their expectations of him.

“Joining me now,” Gates said, his feed widening, “is Dr. David Underhill, chief forensic psychiatrist for the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s support team. Doctor Underhill has been working with Special Agent Markham to develop a preliminary psychological profile of the killer known as the Impaler. It’s all yours, Sam.”

The rustling of papers, the shifting of butts, and Sam Markham began.

“Thank you, Alan,” he said, leaning forward like a senator. “We’re pretty tired over here, so I ask for your patience if I become inarticulate.”

Silence, still not much sympathy in the air, but screw it, the soft sell was over.

“You’ve already been briefed on how I discovered the killer’s connection to the constellation Leo, as well as the crescent-moon visual and the murder sites being a mirror of the physical dynamic of the drag theater. Also, you should have in front of you a copy of the altered text that will be released to the press later this morning. You’ll notice that this version contains not only the original Arabic and Hebrew but also a partial of the Greek. It is this line that our linguistics experts modified into the Romanian with the hopes of satisfying both the media and any amateur sleuths who might give us trouble. They don’t know yet about the writing on Donovan, so we needn’t worry about addressing that.”

A hand went up in the Charlotte Office—their NCAVC coordinator.

“Go ahead, Charlotte,” Markham said.

“Do you think the Romanian might compel the Impaler to come forward and correct us?”

“I don’t,” Markham said. “Our boy was never concerned about public recognition of his crimes to begin with —never corrected the media with the original gang and drug angles, nor did he seem to care if we ever found Canning. The best we can hope for is that the Romanian will keep him in the dark about the true nature of our investigation.”

“I assume then,” the NCAVC coordinator sighed wearily, “that you are at some point going to tell us exactly what that true nature is?”

Markham had disliked this guy almost immediately—his cynical tone, the deep vocal resonance, and the way his right eyebrow was constantly raised like Mr. Spock’s.

Yes, you Vulcan prick, he thought—but instead said, “Let’s first establish whom we’re up against. Dr. Underhill?”

“Taking into consideration the context and methodological detail of the Impaler’s crimes,” Underhill began, “it’s safe to say our boy is a textbook visionary killer who believes some outside force is commanding him to kill. Indeed, his highly disciplined behavioral pattern—the custom measurements of the stakes, the precision of the writing, the scrubbing of Donovan with Comet—is quite common in cases in which the subject is suffering from some kind of severe delusional disorder. Most telling, however, is how all this relates to the killer’s selection of his victims in conjunction with the messages gleaned from the drag theater. You see, our boy not only thinks that he is receiving messages but also that he needs to send them back. Sam?”

“Given my initial premise of the killer’s connection to the constellation Leo, and that most likely three of the four victims were homosexuals, I originally suspected our victim profile would be based on a common sexual orientation. The fact that the historical Vlad impaled homosexuals only seemed to bolster this theory. However, during my investigation into Randall Donovan’s background, I could find no evidence of a secret homosexual