The 7th Victim

“They have ways of finding these things out, you know that. That’s if your ex doesn’t make the call himself.”

Vail sighed. The last thing she needed was the newsies invading her privacy. “Sir, about vic three. I can explain why the scene’s different, why the Dead Eyes behaviors are absent.”

Gifford rubbed at his eyes, then swiveled his chair to face the large window and his second-story view. “We’ve been through this so many times—”

“I didn’t have proof before. Now I do.”

“Fine. Tell it to Del Monaco, he’ll present it to the unit.”

“Why Del Monaco?”

“He’s been assigned the file until further notice.”

Vail looked away. It was like a slap to the face, but in the instant it took her to process the comment, she realized it was a likely development. Someone had to take it over. “I’d like to be the one to present it. It’s my theory, it’s already . . . a volatile topic. I think I should be there to stand behind it, to give it the attention it deserves.”

Gifford leaned back in his chair a bit and rocked, as if mulling over her request. “I really think it’s in your best interest to distance yourself from the Dead Eyes case—”

“You mean from the Bureau.” She felt her blood pressure going up, the line of mercury rising in the narrow glass tube.

He spun his chair around to face her. “I mean from both. Look,” he said, lowering his voice, “you’ve got enough trouble without Linwood and the police chief on your back, too.”

“Linwood and the police chief?”

“There’s only so much I can do to protect you.”

“With all due respect, I don’t need your protection.”

“Yes, you do.” He looked away. “I’ve already gotten calls. Pressure from all levels. I’m standing behind you, Karen, because I think you’re a damn good profiler. One of the best I’ve got. Now I’m asking you, don’t blow your career over this. Focus your energies on beating this rap. Then we’ll worry about Dead Eyes. If he’s still at large, you’ll get the case back.”

“I guess I should thank you, for helping out. I appreciate it.” She sat down in the chair. “But please let me address the unit. Just this once.”

Gifford held her gaze for a long moment, then buzzed an extension. “Frank, can you come in here for a minute?” He hit the button again. “Run your theory by the two of us. If it passes our smell test, you can talk to everyone else.”

Vail nodded and waited the thirty seconds it took Del Monaco to return to the ASAC’s office. He walked in carrying a file folder and sat down in the chair beside Vail.

Gifford nodded at Vail. “Talk.”

“I have some proof to back my theory with victim three—”

Del Monaco rolled his eyes. “Not this again—”

“Listen to what she has to say, Frank. Then we’ll assess.”

Del Monaco crossed his legs, then reluctantly tilted his head toward Vail. His body language said “Don’t bother me with this shit.” But verbally, he was a bit more polite. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Vail resented having to justify herself to Del Monaco before being permitted to go in front of the unit. But since these were the ground rules Gifford set forth, she had no choice but to take her best shot. “There’s a crime scene unit manifest for a UPS package discovered at Angelina Sarducci’s front door. I called UPS and tracked it. It was delivered at 6:30 P.M. ME said time of death was between 6 and 7 P.M.”

“So you think the delivery guy rang the vic’s doorbell and scared off the offender,” Gifford said.

“Which is why he didn’t engage in most of the postmortem behaviors we’ve seen with the other vics.”

“But this is nothing new,” Del Monaco said. “A year ago you said the same thing, that someone had interrupted him.”

“Yeah, but now I’ve got proof.” Vail sat back and waited for a response. Both men were staring ahead, musing on her remarks.

After a moment of reflection, Del Monaco spoke. “Karen, I know this linkage thing is important to you. And in the end you may be right. But here’s the thing: our job is to look at the behaviors left by an offender at a crime scene and make inferences based on what we see. What you’re doing is looking at an absence of behaviors and trying to create a relationship. If we later find out this is a Dead Eyes case, we can then say your UPS package theory was right on the money.”

“It’s possible you’re right,” Gifford added, “but we can’t deal in possibilities or we’d be all over the damn map.”

Vail was probing the inside of her teeth with her tongue, doing her best to keep her mouth shut. Now was not the time for a confrontation. Besides, she didn’t really know what she would say. They had a point.

Del Monaco opened the file he was holding. “How about we take theory, opinion, and emotion out of the equation. Look at the numbers. For all the Dead Eyes vics, both the Safarik HIS scale and the ISS show a point nine-five correlation. Victim three doesn’t even make the cut—”

“Of course the severity of injury to vic three is less. You can’t use those numbers—”

“Hold it a second,” Gifford said. “What numbers are these?”

Del Monaco seemed annoyed his boss had interrupted. “The Safarik Homicide Injury Scale measures the degree of injury suffered by the victim. It’s a new variable for analyzing offender behavior. ISS stands for Injury Severity Score—”

“ISS is used by CDC for categorizing triage results from automobile accidents,” Vail said.

Del Monaco nodded animatedly. “And I’ve seen it used for homicide victims, too.”

Vail looked away.

“Bottom line,” Gifford said, “is no matter how you look at it, you can’t say it’s a Dead Eyes vic because behavior is absent. Your theory accounts for the lack of additional behavioral evidence, but it doesn’t necessarily point to Dead Eyes.”

Vail kept her head down. She had anticipated resistance, but cursed herself for not thinking things through more thoroughly. Del Monaco and Gifford were right: though her theory might be correct, they can’t abandon their conventions because of something that’s not there. She sighed frustration.

“I did get something you’ll find interesting, though,” Del Monaco said, handing her a printout from the file. “VICAP results. They were handed to me on the way over here. Haven’t even looked at them yet.”

Vail took the report and scanned it. “I knew the number of hits would be small, but this is amazing.” She took another few seconds to look over the data, flipped a couple of pages, then looked at Del Monaco. “I did a search of murders, attempted murders, and unidentified human remains, to see how many offenders had written something in blood at the scene. Of the twenty-three thousand VICAP cases, we got a hit on only twenty-one cases.”

Del Monaco sat up straight. “Jesus. Twenty-one out of twenty-three thousand. That’s small.”

Vail thumbed back and forth. “Smaller than that, actually.” She spent a moment with the data, then continued: “If we eliminate two cases where blood was smeared, and only include the cases that contained writing, we’re down to nineteen cases. Those cases involved twenty-six victims. If we extrapolate out the male vics, which were gay, we’re left with nine female victims.”

“Out of twenty-three thousand cases.”

She flipped a page. “Looking at it from the perspective of the blood murals,” Vail continued, “if we eliminate the crime scenes that contained offender writing, we’re looking at only two cases. Two.”

They were silent for a moment. “Okay,” Gifford finally said, “what does this mean?’

Del Monaco said, “On the surface, that it’s extremely rare to find blood-based writing or painting at a scene.”

“Yeah, but what does it tell us about the offender?”

Vail considered this before speaking. “Well, only one of the VICAP cases is still unsolved, and that’s in Vegas. Way out of this guy’s geographic range. Besides, other than the writing, the ritual behavior is very different.” She handed him back the report. “Not only does this tell us that none of these other cases are related to Dead Eyes, I