woman who seemed to be on the verge of a promising career as an accountant. A box of new business cards from the firm of McGinty & Pollock was sitting on her kitchen counter, the toxic odor of printing press ink burning Vail’s nose.
She curled a wisp of red hair behind her right ear and knelt down to examine a bloody smear outside the bedroom doorway.
“Whoever did this is one sick fuck.” Vail said it under her breath, but Fairfax County homicide detective Paul Bledsoe, who had suddenly materialized at her side, grunted. The baritone of his voice nearly startled her.
“Aren’t they all,” Bledsoe said. He was a stocky man, only about five-eight, but plenty wide in the shoulders to make anyone think twice about screwing with him. Deep-set dark eyes and short, side-parted black hair over an olive complexion gave him the look of Italian stock. But he was a mutt, some Greek and some Spanish, a distant Irish relative thrown in for good luck.
His trained eyes took in the large amount of blood that had been sprayed and smeared, just about painted all over the walls of Melanie Hoffman’s bedroom. Melanie Hoffman, former newcomer, now dearly departed, recently of the firm McGinty & Pollock.
All Vail could do was nod. Then, as she crouched down to get a different perspective on the scene, she realized that Bledsoe was only partially correct. “Some are more fucked up than others,” she said. “It’s just a matter of degree.”
The photographer’s flash flickered off the mirrors in the adjacent bathroom and drew Vail’s attention. Without walking through the crime scene, she glanced up and saw that blood had also been smeared on the bathroom walls, at least the parts of them she could see.
Profilers didn’t usually get to visit fresh crime scenes. They did most of their work secluded in a small office, poring over police reports, photos, written or transcribed suspect interviews, victim histories culled from relatives, friends, acquaintances. VICAP forms—short for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—that were completed by the investigating homicide detectives provided background and perspective. Having as much information as possible was crucial before beginning their work . . . before beginning their journey into the depths of a sick mind.
“So you got my text.” Bledsoe was looking at her, expecting a response.
“When I saw the code for Dead Eyes, my heart just about stopped.”
Another flash from the camera grabbed Vail’s attention. They had both been standing near the doorway, seemingly in no hurry to step into the chamber of death.
“Well, shall we?” she asked. He didn’t reply, and she figured he was mesmerized, if not overwhelmed, by the brutality that lay before them. She sometimes had a hard time reading Bledsoe and, over the years, had concluded that he preferred it that way . . . erecting a wall between his inner thoughts and someone who made her living analyzing human behavior.
As Vail tiptoed around eviscerated body parts strewn across the floor, the criminalist poked his head out of the shower. “There’s more in here, Detective,” he said to Bledsoe, who had moved beside Vail.
“Peachy,” Vail said. As Bledsoe headed into Melanie Hoffman’s bathroom, she took a deep breath and cleared her mind, descending into the funk she needed to get into to begin her analysis.
Profilers didn’t try to identify
There were cops who thought profiling was bullshit, psychobabble crap that wasn’t worth the paper their reports were written on, and certainly not worth the salary the Bureau paid, plus benees, car, and clothing allowance. That talk never bothered Vail, because she knew they were wrong. She knew that, for some cops, it was a simple inferiority complex, while for others it was merely ignorance about what profilers did.
Vail continued to study Melanie Hoffman’s bedroom. Several things bothered her about this murder. She turned to Bledsoe, who was busy puking into a barf bag he carried in his pocket. She’d seen him do this before, the last time at a particularly bloody crime scene. It was a strange thing to happen to a homicide detective, but when Vail asked him about it, he shook it off the way he brushed aside an opinion he didn’t like: with the shrug of a large shoulder. Bledsoe had said it wasn’t anything he controlled, it just kind of happened. He thought it had something to do with an “autonomic response” related to the smell of blood. Vail thought it was baloney, but what did she know? Maybe it was true, or maybe it was just male ego trying to cover up an embarrassing weakness. At the time, he seemed to want Vail to ignore it, so she did.
Vail poked her head in the bathroom and forged ahead. Bledsoe straightened up, borrowed a plastic bag from the criminalist, and sealed off his sour stomach contents. He wiped his lips with a folded paper towel he pilfered from the technician’s utility case, then popped a Certs in his mouth. He maneuvered the breath mint toward his cheek, then nodded at the wall above the mirror. “What do you make of that?”
Scrawled in large red strokes were the words, “It’s in the.”
“Could mean a lot of things.”
“Such as?”
Vail shrugged. “I’ll need to think on it. I’m not sure we know enough yet to even formulate an opinion.”
“You said it could mean a lot of things. You’ve gotta have some idea about it.”
“First off, it’s not necessarily what he wrote as much as why he felt the need to write it.”
Bledsoe chewed on that a moment, then shook his head. “You guys are gonna have a field day with that one.”
“No doubt.” Vail stepped out of the bathroom. “Okay, what’ve we got?”
“No signs of forced entry,” Bledsoe said. “Vic could’ve known her attacker.”
Vail looked away, her gaze coming to rest on Melanie’s blood-soaked bed. “Could’ve met the guy yesterday evening and brought him home. Or, he could’ve used a ruse to lower her defenses. Enough to get her to open the door for him. Either way, your assumption that she knew him wouldn’t do us much good.”
Bledsoe grunted, then stepped out of the bathroom.
Profilers often found it difficult to have a relationship with someone, let alone have a family. They constantly thought about crime scene photos, wondering what they’d missed—or even what they had seen and misinterpreted. Or what they expected to see but didn’t. It was a perpetual state of unease, like when you keep thinking you’ve forgotten something but can’t figure out what it is.
But, it was Vail’s job and she did it the best she could. At present, she hoped she did it well enough to help catch Dead Eyes. After three murders spread out over five months, the killer had gone silent. For several months, there was nothing. When such a pattern developed, the police figured—or rather, hoped—the offender had either died, or was sitting in a maximum security jail cell, arrested on some unrelated charge.
When doubt intensified that the third victim was the work of Dead Eyes, it left the offender with only two murders to his credit. He suddenly didn’t appear to be as prolific, and thus the threat he posed was not as potent. With escalating police department budgets always a concern, the task force was mothballed.
For Vail, it was good timing: nine months of working in close proximity with Bledsoe was enough. Vail liked him, but anytime you were around someone so much, you tended to make that person’s problems your own. And with a failed marriage—and serial killers bouncing around inside her head—she had enough stress without Bledsoe’s issues invading her thoughts as well.
Vail knelt beside Melanie Hoffman’s bloody, mutilated corpse and sighed. “Why did this happen to you?”
Vail stood at the foot of Melanie Hoffman’s bed. After the criminalist briefed her on his findings, Vail asked Bledsoe to leave her for a few moments so she could be alone with her thoughts.
As a new agent going through training, Vail had read all the papers written by the original FBI profilers, Hazelwood, Ressler, Douglas, and Underwood. For a profiler, getting inside the offender’s head was exciting, almost sexy. The way they figured things out, the way they could put their finger on the offender’s personality traits was
