He lifted the screen to his laptop and woke it from sleep. The words, the feelings, the memories just flowed out of him like some kind of rushing river that kept surging no matter what stood in its path.
The hiding place smells like some musty box I once opened when I was looking for his cigarettes. It’s strong and kind of burns my nose. It’s small and dark, but it’s mine. He doesn’t know I have it, which means he can’t find me here. And if he can’t find me, he can’t hurt me. I can think here, I can breathe here (well, except for the smell) without him yelling. I sit in the darkness, alone with myself, where no one can hurt me. Where HE can’t hurt me.
But I watch him. I watch everything he does through little holes in the walls. I watch him bring home the whores, I watch what he does to them before dragging them upstairs to his bedroom. Sometimes I even hear what they’re saying, but most of the time I just see. I see what he does.
But I really don’t have to see. I already know. I know because he does the same things to me.
He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the childhood memories from his mind. He’d have to do more of this. It was very liberating, and very . . . stimulating. He glanced at the clock on his screen and realized he was late. He closed the laptop’s lid, grabbed the tie, and ran down the steps to his car. He was at the evil bitch’s house pretty fast, but then again he was daydreaming about what he’d written and wasn’t paying attention to the time.
He’d only been here once, a drive-by to see if the site was a suitable location for his work. An artist must survey his setting to make sure it can inspire him, bring the creative juices to boil at just the right moment. Timing was so crucial. But for this type of art, the creative part came only after the evil was purged. Only then could the brilliance be fully expressed.
He parked a block away, down a side street, and huffed it toward the house. In suit and tie, he wouldn’t attract attention walking around the neighborhood. And if anyone did question him, he’d pull out his FBI shield and they’d slink away, properly silenced.
He approached the side yard, looking for signs of a security system: magnetic trips on the window sill, wire tape, or even the obnoxious “Protected by” placard stuck in the dirt by the front door. As if a stupid alarm is really going to protect them from someone who wanted to do something evil. Evil—they don’t know what evil is!
He stood by the back door and knocked lightly. Listened for a barking dog. Nothing. Very good. He did another walk-around of the perimeter, then stopped at the front door, which was shielded from the street by a dense shrub that stretched ten feet high toward the eave. He gave one last knock and a ring of the doorbell, then decided no one was home. He slipped on latex gloves, removed a lock-pick kit from his pocket, chose the proper tools.
A couple minutes later, he was standing in the hallway, taking in the decor. Not bad, but not as elaborate as the last bitch’s place. Couple of fabric sofas with a horrid floral print, an old GE television in the corner in a melamine entertainment cabinet, and an area rug on the wood floor. House must’ve been about thirty, forty years old. Bad taste was a lot older than that.
He made his way into the master bedroom and looked around, in the dresser and night table drawers. No condoms, no thick, heavy watches, no
On the way out of the room, he pressed on the mattress. New and firm, perfect for his work. An artist required the proper media, or the result would be unacceptable. But first things first. Purge the evil.
He moved into the kitchen and checked the drawers: four steak knives. He removed one and examined it. Sufficiently sharp. It would do nicely. He replaced it and turned his attention to the refrigerator . . . always a valuable resource. It told so much about people. Not just what’s inside, but what’s outside. Mounted with magnets were a series of snapshots, all showing the bitch of the house in various poses: standing with a set of snow skis in the winter, barreling through a plume of water on jet skis in the summer, and flexing with her personal trainer at a health club.
Off the main hallway that stretched the length of the house sat another two bedrooms. No furniture in one, an old twin bed and matching oak dresser that were angling for the distressed look in the other. No personal effects. In sum, no roommate.
As he headed back toward the front door, he saw an unopened bill on the credenza. Addressed to Sandra Ann Franks. The bitch’s name. He was sure he already knew more about her than her gynecologist. Sandra Ann Franks. Well, it wouldn’t be Franks for long.
Sometimes you get so focused you forget to see the humor in the situation.
But evil was no laughing matter. This was serious business. And Sandra Ann Franks had passed the final test. Like moist clay right out of the box, she was ready to be molded and shaped. And cut into pieces.
He glanced at his stopwatch: he’d been in the house nearly four minutes . . . time to go. He clicked the door shut behind him, made sure it was locked. He didn’t want anything happening to the bitch before he returned.
Karen Vail stood in the back of an Academy classroom waiting her turn to speak. For each new agent class, she taught an overview of behavioral analysis so the recruits didn’t end up like those cops who thought she could hold a piece of the victim’s clothing and describe the face of the killer.
“So without further ado, I’d like to have Special Agent Vail come to the podium.”
All heads swiveled in Vail’s direction, but there was no clapping. Usually, the instructor gave her such a buildup that the new agents felt compelled to stand and bow as if she were some demigod. Or at least welcome her with a warm round of applause. But this instructor was new, and he didn’t seem to go into her background as much as the others had. At least, she didn’t think he did. Her mind was on Melanie Hoffman, and she wasn’t really listening.
She made her way to the front, opened her laptop, and gazed at the inclined classroom—at the eager faces staring at her. She remembered that look, that feeling of excitement at beginning something new. She still loved her work—in an odd sort of way given what she did—and still felt challenged. But it was no longer fresh, and like the exhilaration one feels at the start of a budding romantic relationship, the magic had faded with time. The challenge, instead of only coming from the job, morphed into a struggle to keep it interesting.
“I’m Karen Vail,” she started. “I know, you were probably expecting a man. I can see it in your faces.” She liked to start by putting them on the defensive. Part of the new agent initiation protocol. Either that or she’d done too many interrogations—after a while, you started looking for the upper hand in all conversations.
“Profiling isn’t an exact science, no matter what anyone tells you. Now I can just assign you one of Douglas’s books to read, then come back in a couple of days to answer questions, but that’s not my style. I’m here to give you a perspective on the sick minds we’re tracking out there. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The violence they perpetrate on others is sick, for sure, but they’re not mentally ill—they know damn well what they’re doing. We’ll talk more about this later.”
After spending a few moments outlining the organizational chart for her unit, she sensed it was time to pick up the pace. A couple of the agents in the back row were slumped over, heads resting in their hands, no doubt thinking about lunch in the dining hall.
“Let’s go into some actual examples to give you an idea of how we look at things.” She lifted the lid of her laptop, then pressed a button on the lectern’s AV panel. The classroom lights dimmed and the rear projection screen behind her glowed with yellow and white text against a black background. “Critical Incident Response Group, Behavioral Profiling Analysis” was boldly emblazoned across the screen. She pressed the Bluetooth remote and advanced to the next PowerPoint slide. In public school, when Vail was growing up, they used real slides. They jammed, they faded if you left them under the projection light too long, and you didn’t have near the creativity of the graphics she was able to produce for her FBI presentations on PowerPoint. Now her slides zipped across the screen with fancy corner-to-corner wipes, dissolves, and all sorts of neat effects. Her students still fell asleep on her. So much for technology.
“This is the case I’m currently working on,” Vail said. “The Dead Eyes killer.” She heard a few snickers. “This isn’t a laughing matter,” she barked at them. The room got very quiet very quickly. “What you’re about to see is
