“He unraveled,” Del Monaco said. “Just like the others.”
“What others?” Robby asked. He was standing behind them, his hat and headset dangling from his left hand.
“All the serial killers. They reach a point where the killing gets to be too much even for them to handle. Even though they have no moral sense, deep down they know what they’re doing is wrong. It’s not enough to stop them, but the pressure builds to the point where they can’t deal with it. It’s an end game.”
“But suicide?” Robby asked.
“They get sloppy,” Vail said. “Their fantasies get more violent, their order disintegrates into disorder. Organization into disorganization. That’s how we caught Bundy. If we hadn’t caught him, he might’ve eventually done himself.”
“Linwood’s crime scene certainly was an indicator,” Del Monaco said, “though we didn’t see it that way. I think we still called it right. The personal connection, the overkill.”
“But the violence wasn’t just because of that,” Vail said. “He was coming undone at the same time. Maybe killing Linwood, the woman who took his daughter from him, was too much for him to handle.”
Del Monaco shook his head. “More like he had done what he needed to do, what he’d fantasized about doing, for the fifteen big ones he’d done in the slammer. He got out and bang, he saw women who reminded him of Linwood when she was younger, the way he remembered her the last time he’d seen her. Even though he may not have consciously been aware of it, he killed them because he was killing
“Then he somehow found her. Found Linwood. And he went after her.”
“What’s the COD?” Sinclair asked, walking into the room.
Del Monaco answered: “Gunshot wound to the forehead. Lots of stippling on the face. Close range, an old thirty-eight. Gun’s still in his hand. Looks like a suicide.”
“How long ago?”
“Just a guess, but I’d say a day, maybe a little less.”
“Let’s get a powder residue, just to be sure,” Sinclair said.
“Karen,” Bledsoe called, “you should see this.”
She rose and followed his voice up the stairs to the bedroom. Five left hands hung from the ceiling with thin fishing line. In the lighting, they appeared to be floating in mid-air. “Five . . . tell the lab we need to know which one’s missing.”
Bledsoe nodded. “Then there’s this.” He led her down the hall into the bathroom. Scrawled on the mirror in lipstick were the words “It’s in the blood.”
Vail sighed deeply. She looked around the old bathroom, the toilet the kind that had a wall-mounted water tank and a pull-chain flush mechanism.
“Looks like we got our man,” Bledsoe said.
Vail nodded. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
She pouted her lips. “I thought I might feel something, like I’d been here before. Because I have, I must have been. I was an infant here, till Linwood had the sense to get the hell out.” Her eyes bounced around the bathroom and into the hallway. “But I don’t feel anything.”
“You were a baby. What do you expect?”
“I don’t know, Bledsoe. I just thought I’d feel something. Then again, there aren’t that many things that move me these days.”
Just then, she noticed Robby standing in the doorway. “I’ll move you,” he said, taking her hand.
She followed him out of the bathroom and whispered up toward his ear, “You already have, Robby. You already have.”
Gifford stood at the head of the conference room, addressing the profiling unit, Vail at his side. “I think we all owe Agent Vail sincere thanks for a damn fine job in helping break the Dead Eyes case. And for standing by her convictions. I know we all doubted her at various times in the past eighteen-plus months. I’m as guilty as anyone else, and for that I apologize.” He looked over at Vail, who felt that Gifford was genuine in his apology.
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”
Applause broke out for a brief moment but stopped at Gifford’s raised hand. “Let’s all get back to work.” He leaned over and whispered into her ear. “Meet me in my office in ten minutes.”
THE MANNER IN WHICH GIFFORD had approached this morning’s recognition of her efforts, in front of the entire unit, was completely unexpected—and was thus something Vail had been unprepared for. Though it meant a great deal to her, she could not fully appreciate it because both her body and mind were in fairly rotten shape. She felt as if she had been run over by a truck and wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep for several days.
Following the episode at the Farwell ranch, Vail had been airlifted off the property by a county chopper and taken to a waiting cruiser at the Fairfax County Police Department’s Mason District Station. She then had been driven back to Robby’s house, where she took another two Tylenols and fell asleep in bed, without even changing out of her dirty clothing. She had awakened to a call at 9 A.M. from Gifford’s secretary, asking her to report to work in one hour.
Now, as she sat in Gifford’s office, the haze of the past forty-eight hours still hovered over her like a thick fog. What did he want to talk to her about? Reinstatement? Not possible with the charges still pending against her. Then what, a commendation? Not likely, for the same reasons. Commending an agent whose ass was still on the line for assault was . . . poor timing.
Gifford strode in and sat down behind his desk. He leaned back and sighed. “I know you and I have not always seen eye-to-eye, but I’m ready to move past all that. You came through big time. I know there were others on the task force, but you were a big part of the winning team. Good work, you made us proud.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“There is something I wanted to talk to you about. It’s a step toward regaining your job, assuming, of course, you’re cleared by judge and jury.” He scanned his desk, moved a file, and found the document he was looking for. “Here’s a list of three Bureau psychologists. Pick one and make an appointment.”
She took the paper. “A shrink?”
“A shrink. It’s for your own good. Anger management, for one. OPR will want to see that in order to clear you of their own investigation. Also, given all the crap you’ve just been through, and are still dealing with . . . it’s for your own good, really.”
Vail pursed her lips.
Gifford nodded, then his phone buzzed. “Go home and get some sleep. Get that knee of yours examined. I want you back full strength when the time comes.”
She smiled, arose gingerly from the chair, and then left.
Vail walked, or rather hobbled, back to her car feeling no pain. And it was not just from the Tylenol she kept popping. It was because for the first time she could remember, she had been afforded the respect she thought she had always deserved but had never received. She climbed into her car, pulling in the left knee slowly, then headed out of the commerce center’s parking lot.
She intended to heed Gifford’s advice about getting some sleep, but first she needed to make a stop. She arrived at the hospital, made her way up the elevator to Jonathan’s floor, and heard “Code Blue! Code Blue. All available personnel. . . .”
Her brain still in a stupor, her mind suddenly focused on a grouping of white lab coats at the entrance to
