than they were. She had pictured people more interested in statistical probabilities like so many accountants over actuary tables. Boutine had tried to tell her otherwise, and it appeared he was right. They were highly intelligent, very experienced, instinctive players, this team of four that included Boutine. They would go to work now to create a profile of the most probable sort of man to do the horrendous deeds they'd only just heard about from Dr. Jessica Coran and Boutine.
Otto's team enjoyed a reputation of being the best in the PPT business. Jessica had always believed this was due to the leadership, to Otto. But the meeting had been a revelation to her as well as Otto's people, for she found them far from cautious, far from halting about making great leaps, and a great deal more curious than she'd imagined they would be. And she had gotten through to them. They had seen her worth. Hopefully, so had Chief Leamy.
The psychological profiling team appeared to have been won over by the slides J.T. had made of the wound, and her explanations to the team. She gave a smile, a nod and a twinkle in her eye to J.T. for having saved her from a tough fight. Without the slides, she doubted anyone would have believed her about the killer's modus operandi. It had given the hounds a scent and fascinated them with the cruel new twist on murder that the killer had developed.
Teresa O'Rourke, in particular, was fascinated. She held back, asking questions of Jessica. “What're your plans? What steps will you now take?”
Boutine was busy with Leamy, but he cast a wary glance in her direction. She wasn't sure how much she should share with O'Rourke beyond what was said to the group. She certainly didn't want to talk about exhumations to anyone other than Boutine. “That'll be up to Otto. Most assuredly, we'll be working day and night in the laboratory.”
“ The semen samples tell us anything about this guy?”
“ DNA results have confirmed he's white. That's-” she hesitated, studying O'Rourke's gaze “-not about to help us much.”
“ Bears out the statistical average.” O'Rourke's voice suddenly took on a raspy, piratical tone when she added, “Look, we're both women on a man's mountain here, Jessica. You mind if I call you Jessica?”
“ Not at all, Teresa.”
“ Good. Look, I understand you actually isolated some trace elements of blood that's most likely that of the killer's.”
“ He must've nicked himself, but yes. We… I found trace elements of blood other than the victim's in Wekosha.”
O'Rourke smiled. “I was told you had an eagle's eye and a deft touch.”
“ Oh, really?” She wondered who O'Rourke had been talking to. J.T.? This was cleared up with her next words.
“ Thorpe tells me you got enough to run tests on.”
“ That's right. Just enough, however.”
“ I suggest you look for any blood deficiencies, any illnesses which might show up in the bastard's blood.”
“ We are working on that already.”
“ Of course. It's just that, well, you may not know that this class of killer, a bloodtaker, is usually working out of some demented need which, strangely enough, has first manifested itself in some form of physical torment-a lack of red blood corpuscles, an illness, some deformity maybe. And if we could focus in on that aspect, who knows, maybe we'd at least be able to narrow the search, halve the haystack, all that.”
Jessica had read about effects of bodily deformities and illness on the minds of murderers. She understood where O'Rourke was coming from, but she wondered why the inspector hadn't brought it up at the meeting, why the 'lobbying' for Jessica's attention?
Leamy gave O'Rourke a perfunctory hello, taking Jessica a side. “I believe, Dr. Coran, your remarks were extremely useful. I know Otto thinks so.”
“ Thank you, Chief.”
His eyes lingered over her just long enough to make her uncomfortable when Otto stepped between them, saying, “I told you she was remarkable, and that we need her for an early profile creation of this Wekosha vampire.”
Leamy acted as if Otto was not in the room, his eyes returning to Jessica's as he asked, “You agree without reservation with Boutine? That these deaths are absolutely the work of one man with some kind of blood thirst?”
Jessica wanted to be firmer, but her words didn't sound very firm. “I… I'm leaning in that direction, yes sir.”
“ Leaning, huh? How do you account for the long delay between the killings Boutine here is trying his damndest to tie together? I mean most serial nuts of this sort may let a week or two go between slayings, but we're talking about months of elapsed time here.”
Jessica didn't hesitate this time. “There may've been no delay.”
“ Pardon?”
“ There's quite possibly many more undiscovered bodies.”
Boutine nodded in agreement. “If this guy's been working his way up to his present modus operandi, there's no telling how many bodies he's left in shallow graves all over the heartland.”
“ What is our next step, Otto?” asked Leamy.
“ Exhumations,” she blurted out.
“ Exhumations?” he asked, looking around at Otto.
Otto shrugged. “Jess, what've you got in mind?”
She shared her suspicions with the two men. “If we find the identical scar in the throats of the earlier victims, then we can be sure that we are dealing with the same man.”
“ Makes a lot of sense,” said Otto.
“ The reason for the slides,” she added. “Suffice it to say, the killer is very knowledgeable and shrewd. No ordinary butcher. His efforts to appear brutal were to mask his skill with a scalpel and a specialized instrument of some kind.”
“ The tube you spoke of,” Leamy said.
“ A spigot, through which he drained her blood, in a very controlled fashion.”
“ Yes, well… a medical man, a doctor?”
“ Why not?” asked Boutine. “Or a medic.”
“ Or a nurse,” she finished.
“ Any number of people with specialized knowledge of anatomy. A medical student, a mortician.”
“ Anyone who knows incisions,” added Leamy.
“ It was an incision of a very specialized kind, like… like a tracheotomy, except that instead of the windpipe, the killer punctured her jugular with a tubular instrument. Now, I've studied the autopsies on the earlier victims and not a word about this came out, because, I believe, the larger, superficial wound to the throat masked the truth, and in all previous cases a local man did the autopsying… and we all know how that goes.”
The others had to agree. The other cases hadn't been handled well. On each, the FBI had been called in long after the crime scenes had been disturbed and the pathology reports filed.
“ There is one thing they all have in common,” said Boutine. “It's what got me going originally. And that's the geography.” They all understood the geography of death. Most killers, even serial killers, worked within the confines of a strict geographical location, a certain area in a city, a certain town. This pattern was only broken when the killer moved away, and then it was repeated elsewhere, as in the Ted Bundy case. “This guy, if it is one guy, really gets around.” Boutine went to a map of the United States on the wall and he pointed out the various states where young women and one young boy had been found bound and hanging from their heels, their blood drained. He pointed to Wisconsin, Iowa, southern Illinois and Missouri. “A midwestern kind of guy, huh?” asked Leamy.
“ We've alerted every law enforcement agency in the country to be on the lookout for anything smacking of a Tort “You seem to have gotten off the mark on this rather slowly. Otto,” said Leamy. “Why?”
“ My people have been on it from the beginning, but we've been looking in the wrong place, in the wrong way. Now, with Dr. Coran-”
