gazes remained on Vail, he turned his attention back to her. “So,
“We’ve been through all this before,” another profiler said.
“Copycat,” Hutchings said. “That’s all it was, if you could even call it that.”
Vail was shaking her head in disagreement. “You’re all missing the point. True, there are things the offender didn’t do with this victim, but I believe it’s the same guy. I mean, just look at the crime scene.”
“We looked, a year ago,” Rooney said. His voice was even more scratchy now. “There’s no convincing linkage there.”
“Art, there were only a few defensive wounds, and there was a lot of blood.” She stopped, then realized she should review the photos from the scene, in case the offender had left the same murals. If she recalled, there was no blood at all on the walls. If that was correct, it would do nothing to support her linkage theory.
“Were there any Impressionist blood murals?” Del Monaco asked.
“I’ll have to check—”
“And what about food? Did he eat his usual peanut butter and cream cheese ketchup sandwich at the scene, postmortem?”
“No.”
“And the incapacitating blow?” Del Monaco was flipping pages as he spoke.
“Disabling skull wound. Same as vics one and two—”
“You can’t say that, Karen.” This from Rooney, whose eyes were fixed on a particular document. “You can’t say it was the same. Vics one and two were hit from behind, the other one from the side.”
“So she suddenly realized what was happening and turned her head at the last second.”
“When you turn your head to duck, you throw your hands up. It would’ve broken a few fingers. Hell, even a nail or two.” Rooney held up the file. “There were no such defensive wounds.”
There was quiet. Vail felt as if she’d been cross-examined and the defense attorney had just made a case- breaking point. But even as she tried to concentrate on a reply, she felt Gifford’s stare boring into her, disrupting her concentration.
She knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t the same way she knew what Robby Hernandez was thinking. She knew what to expect because she’d already gone toe to toe with Gifford about linkage of this victim to the Dead Eyes killer.
With his arms folded across his wide chest, it was as if Gifford wanted Vail to put her foot in her mouth. And unfortunately, she was about to accommodate him.
“Look at the facts, Karen,” Del Monaco said. It was as if he had suddenly realized Gifford was still in the room, and was now playing to him. “Just about none of the behaviors were present in the third scene that were present in the first two. Think about it logically. It’s a different guy.”
Telling her to think about it logically was like saying she was being irrational. At least, that’s the way she saw it. But she didn’t want to blow it all out of proportion and claim he’d said that because she was a woman. It pissed her off regardless. “I believe the offender was interrupted before he had a chance to finish what he’d started. That’s why the crime scene looked different.” Admitting the crime scene looked different threw water on her fire, killed her entire argument. Such major variations in crime scenes often meant a different killer was involved. This wasn’t lost on Gifford.
“The crime scene did look different, didn’t it, Agent Vail?”
Gifford was leaning back, an attorney asking a hostile witness a damaging question to which he knew the answer.
Vail wondered how much of this was fallout from their prior altercation in the library. “Because the offender was interrupted,” she said. “Otherwise, we’d be seeing the same ritualistic behavior we’ve seen in his other crime scenes.”
“That’s assuming it’s the same offender.”
She clenched her jaw. They were breaking all the rules of what the session was about. It was supposed to be a free-thinking exchange of ideas, not an attack.
“Pretty damn clear,” Del Monaco said. “We have no reason to think it’s the same guy.”
Several other agents nodded their heads, and like grains of sand sliding through her fingers, she felt control slipping away.
“We had this debate a year or so ago, right?” Gifford asked. “Until we have convincing evidence to think otherwise, we need to put this to rest. It’s time to move on.”
Vail set the remote down and flipped her file folder shut. “That’s all I have.” She glanced over her shoulder at the image of a blood mural spilling over the screen’s edge, the indelible picture of Melanie Hoffman’s defaced torso embedded in her mind. She faced her colleagues, who were reclining in their seats, looking at her. “Thanks for all your input.”
She gathered her belongings and headed out the door.
He had another burst of inspiration and found himself running to the keyboard. He sat pecking away at the keys, the words flying onto the document as if being spray painted onto the screen.
“Where the hell are you, you little runt? Come here and play with me!”
I cover my ears and close my eyes, even though it’s dark in here. So dark, I’m sometimes scared. But I’m safe. I can do anything I want in here, and he can’t stop me. I can stay here for hours and hours. He never wonders where I am unless he wants me. As long as I don’t answer him, he thinks I’m outside, hiding somewhere on the ranch. He knows he’d never find me until I’m ready to come home. All that land is good for hiding, too. I can sleep out with the stars, I can see them all at night, it’s so dark, so very dark.
But my place here is warm and secret. I’ve brought stuff in here with me, made it my home. Besides, I can watch him from here. I know where he is. As long as he doesn’t find me—
“Son of a bitch, where the fuck are you?”
I hear the back door open and slam shut. Looking for me. He wants me again.
I hate his smell, his dirty nails, his crooked teeth, and beer breath. I hate his yellow pee-stained underwear.
I hate him.
No more of this. No more pain.
No more—
He jumped up from his chair and stood in front of his desk, the laptop screen glowing, the cursor blinking, his face damp with cold sweat. So powerful. So vivid the memories, yet so far away, so very long ago. He had to find a vehicle for these thoughts, these memories. He thought on that for a moment but nothing useful came to him, not yet, at least. He wiped his face with a sleeve, then walked over to his workbench, where he folded a soft diaper into a precise square, then huffed a cloud of fog onto the brass badge and buffed it hard. Three times. Rub, rub, rub. The smudges wiped away, leaving behind the emblem of authority. Power.
He reinserted the badge into his credentials wallet and slipped the leather case into his suit coat pocket. He reviewed the surveillance pictures he’d taken of Sandra Franks, the woman who’d caught his attention a few days ago. Yes, she was an evil one all right. As he flipped through the photos, his jaw tightened.
“This evening’s prize is a thirty-year-old dental hygienist originally from Tallahassee, Florida,” he announced with game-show-host vigor. “She skis in the winter, swims in the summer, and lifts weights year-round. A fine physical specimen. Dennis, tell her what she’s won.”
He chuckled and began swinging his legs beneath his chair. Three times forward, followed by a clicking of his heels. Click click click. Three times; that’s just the way it had to be.
He put the photos down, then slipped the pipe into the handmade holster on his belt.
