The 7th Victim

disgusting, the product of a monster. I hope none of you have to come upon a crime scene like this one. But my goal is that if you do, you’ll at least know something about what you’re looking at. And how to go about helping catch the bastard.”

She hit the button on the remote and the first slide dissolved on the screen. A woman’s bedroom beamed from the computer. Her brutalized torso lay on the bed in front of a mirror, the now-familiar sight of steak knives protruding from both eye orbits. “This was the first victim. Marci Evers. Twenty-eight, brunet. Worked as a paralegal in Vienna.” She pressed another button and a second slide wiped across the screen beside the one displaying the crime scene. “Here you see the statistics and facts we know about the victim. I’m going to direct you to one thing, to illustrate a point. How many of you know what MO stands for?” This was basic “Cop 101” stuff, and she knew all their hands would be raised. But she was planning to throw them a curveball, to see who could hit it.

There were forty-some-odd new agents ready to answer. Vail looked at one of the women and nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Modus operandi,” she said.

“Or method of operation, in English. Yes. Now a tougher question. Does MO ever change?”

This time there were no hands raised. They were thinking, which was good. Vail waited a moment, then gave them the answer. “Research indicates that the MO of sex offenders changes every three to four months. Why?”

Again, no hands were raised. “Okay, let’s take a look as to why it would change.”

She pulled a laser pointer from her jacket pocket and pointed it at the screen. “Everyone see this blood on Marci Evers’s cranium?” The area had been shaved and a small skin laceration was evident at the crown of her head. “Why would there be such an injury?”

“He hit her to knock her out,” a new agent said.

Vail nodded. “Good answer. You might be right.” She turned back to the screen. “Now let’s look at Dead Eyes’s second victim.” She pressed the remote and another set of slides materialized. “Noreen Galvan O’Regan. Twenty-six, brunet, licensed nurse practitioner. Worked in Fredericksburg, lived in Maryes Heights.” She pointed at the cranium. “What do we see here?” The laser was pointed at a shaved portion of Noreen’s scalp.

“Another blow to the head,” a woman in the back row remarked.

“Indeed. But this one’s larger, wouldn’t you say? The injury is more extensive. This is Dead Eyes’s MO, ladies and gentlemen. A blow to the head. But we’re still not sure why the killer did this to his victims, and we can’t explain why Noreen’s is worse than Marci’s. Let’s look further.” She changed the slide. “What’s this—anybody?” It was a close-up of Marci’s right hand, showing two broken fingernails, cuts, and bruises on the hand and forearm.

“Defensive wounds?” asked someone in the first row.

“Exactly. Defensive wounds. Let’s back up a second and take a look at Noreen’s hands.” She hit the next slide. “No broken nails. A large bruise on the right forearm. So why are there so few defensive wounds on Noreen?”

Vail clicked a few times with the mouse and located a folder containing digital pictures. After opening one of the photos, she could tell from their faces that some of them were getting it.

“This is Melanie Hoffman, his latest victim. I was at her crime scene this morning.” She clicked the mouse again and additional views of Melanie’s crime scene appeared. Vail glanced at each one, then asked the class, “What do you see?”

“The back of her head is totally caved in,” an agent said. “And there aren’t any defensive wounds.”

“Now, can we reach a conclusion as to why the offender inflicted these blows on his victims?”

“To immobilize them.” The voice came from a corner in the back of the room. It was Thomas Gifford, the Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of Special Investigations—Vail’s boss. She had not seen him come in, but that was Gifford’s way. Stealth.

“That’s exactly right,” Vail said, playing along, unsure why Gifford was sitting in on her class. His office was in the same building as hers was, fifteen minutes down the road. “The offender used the blows to immobilize his victims. The head injuries were progressively more substantial as we go from victim one to victim three because he learned from his encounter with Marci Evers. She fought back. We saw all those defensive wounds. The next time around, he was more prepared. He took out Noreen O’Regan more efficiently, with a more damaging blow to her cranium—and he succeeded. No broken nails, just a bruise on the forearm. She didn’t put up much of a fight. And now, when he gets to his next victim, Melanie Hoffman, we don’t see any defensive wounds. He learned from his two prior encounters and refined his methods. He improved his MO.”

“So MO can change,” ASAC Gifford said.

He was trying to help her. Vail didn’t need—or want—his assistance. “That’s right. Give Agent Gifford a gold star.” The smile disappeared from his face. “MO can change, so that’s why we don’t usually rely on it to give us linkage. Linkage allows us to connect one victim to another, which gives us valuable information about the offender. So if we can’t use MO to establish linkage, we have to use another convention, called ritual. Anyone want to venture what ritual is? Anyone other than my boss,” she said, forcing a smile.

There were no takers. “Ritual,” Vail said, “is psychosexual need-based behavior. It’s behavior that’s unnecessary to the successful commission of a crime. It can be cutting the victim’s hair, removing her organs— things that have nothing do with killing the victim or preventing us from catching him. These kinds of behavior speak to an inner need the killer’s not even aware of.” She stopped, glanced at Gifford, then looked away. “So we know MO changes. What about ritual?”

No hands raised.

“Ritual behavior does not change, primarily because, unlike MO, he’s not even conscious of why he’s doing it. Now,” Vail said, raising an index finger for emphasis, “signature is another term we need to discuss. It’s the unique combination of ritual behaviors seen at two or more crime scenes. This is important because we can get a signature within MO and ritual, which is an exciting new paradigm—”

“Agent Vail.”

It was Gifford, and his face, in the gray and red hue thrown off from the projected photos, looked hard. Angry.

“Yes, Agent Gifford.” She tried to treat him like one of the class but knew that wouldn’t last long.

“Signature is signature. MO is MO. The two do not mix.”

Gifford had been a profiler for a couple of years but through some inner political maneuverings, a death, and some unexpected—and untimely—retirements, he moved up the chain of command very rapidly. His brief stint with the profiling unit made him an annoyance. He knew just enough to make skilled profilers’ lives miserable, but not enough to really know what he was doing. Most ASACs in the history of the unit were pure administrators and had no on-the-job training. Vail figured it had been done that way for a reason.

Vail did not like being corrected in front of a class of new agents. She swallowed hard, then forced a smile. “Well, I can see why you think I’m wrong. However, after an offender perfects his MO, and there’s no need to change it, we start to see the offender engaging in well-defined MO behaviors—behaviors that won’t change because he doesn’t need to change them. These behaviors become a signature within the MO.”

“Agent Vail,” Gifford said, standing and moving to the front of the small auditorium. “I think you’re done here today. Why don’t you wait for me in the library.”

She watched him approach, shocked he would treat her like this, in this setting. She must have stood there a little too long, as he leaned into her face.

“The library, Agent Vail.”

“Yes, sir.” She laid the remote on the lectern, put her head down, and walked out, avoiding the gaze of all the embarrassed agents. But she knew they were more than likely shocked; she was the one who was embarrassed.

And furious.

VAIL SAT WAITING for Gifford for twenty minutes. The library was neat and orderly, quiet and grand, with