“We’re looking at known offenders,” Dixon said.
The door to the conference room opened and a uniformed deputy stepped in.
“You’re late,” Dixon said. He turned back toward Vince. “Vince, this is my chief deputy, Frank Farman. Frank, Vince Leone.”
Vince had specifically asked the sheriff to keep things casual. The less people said those three magic letters,
“Vince is an expert on serial killers,” Dixon explained.
The deputy gave him a hard look and said flatly, “You’re a Feeb.”
Vince smiled like an alligator. “Have a seat, Deputy.”
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
There was one in every crowd.
“I’ve got feelers out in other parts of the country,” Vince said, “looking for any murders with a similar MO and signature. But I’ll tell you right now, based on what I’ve heard and seen so far, this guy is no amateur. He’s acting on fantasies he’s held for a long, long time, and he’s been acting on them long enough to have his routine down pat.”
“You talk about this dirtbag like he’s some kind of genius,” Farman said. “Looks to me like he’s just one sick son of a bitch.”
“Then why haven’t you caught him?” Vince challenged. “I’m assuming you’re a top cop, or you wouldn’t be in this room right now. If your perp is just some crazy guy, foaming at the mouth, running around attacking women at random, why haven’t you caught him?”
Farman had no answer for that.
“I’ll tell you why,” Vince said. “Because he’s not just some sick son of a bitch. Not in the way you mean.”
He turned back to the board and wrote
He tapped the chalk at B. “A disorganized offender sees a potential victim and commits a crime of opportunity. The crime scene will be sloppy. He’ll leave the body there. This guy isn’t very smart. He’s socially immature. He’s impulsive.”
“Sounds like you, Tony,” Hicks joked.
“Very funny.”
“He isn’t interested beyond the immediate act,” Vince went on. “He isn’t looking for publicity. He’s not the kind of creep you’re looking for here. And too bad, ’cause he’s not that hard to outsmart. If this was your animal, you’d catch him today and we could all go fishing.”
“So,” Farman said, “are you going to look into your crystal ball and tell us who the killer is?”
“I’m going to tell you
A single sharp pain pierced his brain like a lance. He hid the automatic wince by turning quickly back toward the chalkboard.
“The organized offender,” he said, placing his hand on the chalk tray to counter the vertigo. He held his breath for a second, let it out, raised his hand—willing it not to shake—and started to write again. “The organized offender is intelligent, socially competent, holds down a job. He’s likely to be in a relationship. He could have a family, even. No one in his life would look at him and think he might have a second life as a predator.”
“Bundy,” Mendez said.
He took a slow, deep breath and turned back around slowly to face his audience.
“Bundy. Edmund Kemper up in Santa Cruz. John Wayne Gacy in the Chicago area. Robert Hansen from Alaska is a perfect example of an organized killer.”
“Never heard of him,” Farman said.
“The guy was a baker by trade,” Vince began. “He was a family man, a pillar of the community. He was also a sexual sadist. We think he killed around twenty-one women. His victims of choice were prostitutes. He would engage them for their services, then fly them in his own plane to his hunting cabin, rape them, torture them, then turn them loose in the wilderness, hunt them down like animals, and kill them.
“The Anchorage cops had an escaped victim at one point. The girl had a handcuff dangling from her wrist when she runs into a cop and tells him what happened. She tells how this guy had tied her up in his basement and tortured her, how she got away from him at the airport before he could get her into his plane.
“She identifies Hansen’s home as the place where she was raped and tortured. The cops take her to the airport and she identifies his plane. But when the cops go to question Hansen and tell him what the girl said, he’s outraged. He produces two business associates who say they had dinner with him the night he supposedly had the girl in the basement. It’s his word against the girl’s, and he’s so freakin’ normal, the cops believe him.
“Hansen wasn’t charged. He wasn’t even arrested. That happened in 1982. It was another year before they finally took him down.”
He had the undivided attention of all of them now.
“The organized killer plans his crimes. He chooses his victims. He’s more apt to draw out the attack, to restrain the victim, to torture the victim. He’s got the whole situation under control. That’s what it’s about for him: control. And when he’s done, he’ll transport the victim away from the death scene, then go home and wait to read about it in the papers, see the reports on the news.
“What you’re dealing with here, gentlemen, truly is a big-game hunter,” Vince said. “He’s a killing machine, and he’s very, very good at it. Experience tells me he’s a white male. Serial killers tend to hunt within their own ethnic group.”
“That narrows it right down,” Farman said sarcastically.
“He’s in his midthirties,” Vince went on. “That’s when these guys hit their prime. And he believes he’s hitting his prime now. He’s moving into the big time with this latest victim. He’s put her on display so we can all look and see what a badass he is. This victim was his challenge. He’s thrown down the gauntlet. He doesn’t believe you’re smart enough to catch him, and so far he’s right.”
He gripped the chalk tray with his left hand to ward off another wave of dizziness.
Mendez was watching him like a hawk.
“And I’ll take some IV coffee now, if you’ve got it,” Vince said. “This jet lag is a bitch.”
25
“Dennis, for the tenth time, sit down in your seat,” Anne said with more of an edge in her voice than she usually allowed herself.
Her strategy with fifth graders was to maintain self-control at all times. Never let them see you sweat. Today even antiperspirant failed her.
She had been glad to see Dennis Farman in class—for Dennis’s sake, and to save herself from having another conversation with his father. She had tried to talk to him about finding the body in the park, but he had no interest in telling her anything. Nor had he had any interest in paying attention to anything she had said all morning.
He sat on his knees, bending over his desktop, intent on drawing in the notebook he shielded with one arm. He was supposed to be reading chapter 12 in his American history book, like the rest of the class was supposed to be doing. But there were plenty of eyes cutting in Dennis’s direction—especially those of his fellow corpse finders.
Wendy kept shooting him dirty looks. Tommy watched him from the corner of his eye, pretending not to, not wanting to draw attention. Cody, pale and nervous, kept his nose buried in his book, but hadn’t turned a page in fifteen minutes. Dennis sat directly behind him, and would occasionally reach forward and tap Cody on the head with his pen, like a cat toying with a frightened mouse.
Anne got up from her desk and walked purposefully down the aisle. All eyes in the room were now on her.
