“You of all people should appreciate this, Vail.” Hancock looked at her. “These walls are filled with psycho stuff. Rorschachs all over the place.”
“Your mind’s as twisted as the offender’s.”
“Hang on,” Manette said, holding up a hand. She gestured to Hancock. “Tell us what you’re thinking.”
“The painters who used dots to paint their pictures,” he said. “That’s what this looks like.”
Vail studied the blood patterns on the wall. “Pointillism or Impressionism?” she finally asked. “Pointillism involved dot painting. If I had to fit this into a category, I’d say this looks more like Impressionism to me.”
Bledsoe eyed her curiously.
“Art history/psych double major,” she explained.
Hancock tilted his chin ever so slightly toward the ceiling, as if looking down at Vail through reading glasses. “So, Miss Art History Major, still think my mind’s twisted?”
“I do,” Vail said, “but it’s got nothing to do with this case.”
“Let’s get some shots,” Bledsoe said to the forensic technician. “Wide angles, close-ups of all the walls.” He turned to Vail and said, under his breath, “Just in case. I think the guy’s onto something.”
Vail frowned, but she knew Bledsoe—and Hancock—were right. The blood murals were worth reviewing. In rejecting Hancock’s observation due to her prior history with him, she had broken the cardinal rule on which she had just counseled Robby: go in with an open mind and don’t bring any personal biases to the scene. She would discuss it with Robby later, if he didn’t bring it up himself.
Sinclair was standing at the edge of the bedroom with his forearms folded across his chest. “Anybody find the left hand?”
Everyone glanced around. Blank faces stared at each other. Bledsoe turned to the head forensic technician. “Chuck, you guys locate the severed hand?”
Chuck scanned the clipboarded list of identified and photographed items. “No left hand.”
Vail thought she knew why the hand was missing, but for the moment decided to keep her theory to herself until she could be more certain. “Let us know if there are any other . . . anatomical parts missing,” she said to Chuck.
“Why’d he bother to cut her hair?” Robby asked.
Vail nodded at the victim’s right hand. “Goes with the fingernails. For some reason, he’s trying to make her ugly. Butcher the hair, cut the nails down so short they bleed. It holds some meaning to him. Nothing can be overlooked.”
VAIL REMAINED ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES, then left the forensic crew and task force to finish their work and headed to her office to gather materials for a class she was teaching at the Academy. While on the interstate, she pulled out her PDA and dictated her impressions on the Melanie Hoffman crime scene. She arrived earlier than expected, so she decided to grab a coffee at Gargoyle’s, the cafe across the road from the BAU, or Behavioral Analysis Unit, housed in the Aquia Commerce Center.
The downtime would allow her to collect her thoughts and transition between the crime scene and her office. She needed to become a person again, even if for only half an hour, before plunging back into the underworld of serial killers. Over the years, she’d found she needed that time, or risk losing herself in the dark abyss of the offenders’ twisted minds. If she entered that world, it would be harder to separate herself from the killer, harder to maintain her touch with reality.
If Thomas Gifford, her boss, ever found out she needed this “downtime,” he’d probably transfer her to a resident agency in a quiet town in the middle of nowhere. Because a profiler sees so much violent death—the worst offenses humanity has to offer—the Bureau has to be careful who it exposes to these atrocities on a daily basis. Gifford, the man who owned the desk where the profiling buck stopped, maintained a hawk-like vigilance over the people in his command. If there was a hint someone in the unit was not handling it well, he was gone. No questions asked and no chances for reinstatement. A suicide in the profiling unit would be a slight . . . kink in the old FBI shield of public opinion. Profilers had been known to tip the glass a bit too much, and suffer from heart disease and other stress-induced maladies, but none had committed suicide. Yet.
The commerce center was a grouping of modern two-story brick buildings in Aquia, Virginia, fifteen minutes south of the FBI Academy. The BAU, colloquially the “Profiling Unit,” having undergone myriad name changes and reorganizations over the years, underwent its most sweeping transformation of all when it moved out of the Academy’s subbasement. The brain trust realized that sitting sixty feet underground in an old bunker while analyzing grotesque photos of mutilated women was too much to ask the human mind to endure.
Divorcing itself from a shared existence with the BSU, or Behavioral Science Unit, its research and academic arm, the BAU moved down the road into the Aquia Commerce Center buildings. The new buildings’ large windows provided the antitoxin to death’s depressing cloak of subbasement bleakness: sunlight.
When Vail returned to her nine-by-nine office to retrieve her voice mail, she found a FedEx box on her desk with five pink “While you were out” messages sitting on her chair. She grabbed up the notes and sat down heavily. Her office had a cluttered feel to it, but though there were books and files and reports stacked atop every level surface, nothing was out of place. Two incandescent lights were clamped to opposite ends of her desk, reminder notes clipped to the rippled lampshades. Lining the metal bookshelves were black FBI binders with computer- printed titles peeking through the windowed spines: SEXUAL HOMICIDE, STALKING, BLOODSTAIN PATTERN INTERPRETATION, and SEXUAL SADISM. A handwritten sign taped to the shelf served as a warning: Do not “borrow”
Vail pressed a button on her phone and found three voice mails waiting for her. One was from the Office of Professional Responsibility about the shooting this morning at the bank. The second message was from her attorney, informing her the divorce was almost final. She closed her eyes and sighed relief.
Her euphoria lasted only until she heard the third message, which was from Jonathan, her fourteen year old, who was staying with his father this week. The message said he needed to talk. A teenager needing to talk is like a volcano erupting: it doesn’t happen often, and when it does, one never knows which way the lava is going to flow. Vail figured the topic of conversation was going to be his father, and she had spent the better part of the past eighteen months trying to get away from that man. Like it or not, her son was doing his best to unintentionally draw them back together.
She picked up the phone. At least it would buy her another five minutes of sanity before leaving for class. She’d had enough blood and guts today. She was in no hurry to wade through more.
He moved amongst his various creations, vases and large containers, fired hard and slick. All standing on pedestals of varying heights, lit by overhead spots that showcased them as the works of art that they were. The potter’s wheels and bisque kilns were in the rear of his studio, in another room and out of sight, visible only to his students. An artiste never left his tools of creation in plain view for the unindoctrinated to see. Only the finished products, the masterpieces, were worthy of display.
He stored the boxes of wet clay off to the side of his studio, behind a movable wall. Every month he loaded and unloaded a half ton of clay—literally a thousand pounds—from the distributor to his Audi’s trailer and from the trailer to his studio. At first, whenever he’d go buy the stuff, the damn boxes were so heavy he’d need a student to help carry them. But after a few months of hauling the cases to and from his car and kneading the stuff with his hands, he could maneuver them around the loft pretty easily without any help.
But the best part of being a ceramicist was the feel of the cold, wet, firm clay as he squeezed it between his fingers. It kind of felt like a liver, heavy and dense. Holding someone’s liver in your hands was a tremendous feeling of power.
He closed up the plastic bag so the clay would stay fresh, rinsed off his hands, and headed into the adjacent loft to change into his dark suit. After slipping on the jacket, he stepped into the old walk-in closet to pick out a tie and something—the musty smell? the darkness? the brush of clothing against his cheek? Something set off the old memories. It was dizzying, almost disorienting. He shut the door and sat down at his nearby desk, thoughts and emotions flooding into his mind. He just wanted it to stop, but realized it may be best to embrace it, confront it. Shape it.
