Otto's FBI profiling team had paid microscopic attention to the autopsy reports, to maps and photographs of the various crime scenes. They had paid particular heed to how the victim was treated. A killer who takes the trouble to cover the body afterward speaks one thing, a killer who hides the body is saying something different, and a killer who displays the body like a trophy, quite another.
Byrnes said, “Our guy feels no remorse about his victims.”
“ But he does feel something,” countered O'Rourke. “He sees them as furthering his goal; and in this sense, he cares about them.”
“ But not enough to cut them down, cover them over,” said Schultz.
“ All he's interested in is the blood. The body may's well be an empty can, a receptacle from which he has taken what they willingly gave him.”
“ Whoa,” Jessica stepped in. “They didn't die willingly.”
“ Through no fault of their own, no. But in the killer's mind, they asked for what they got. They wanted to share in his grand design, the design to give him power over them and others.”
“ That's a stretch,” said Byrnes.
“ Well, what we know about victims-victimology-tells us that the victim unwittingly pushes the button. Something about her appearance, either dress or physical,” said Schultz.
“ Any rate, I agree with Teresa, this guy does not feel bad about what he's done, but good, very good. Which means he's likely going to strike again.”
“ I've put out an alert to every law enforcement agency in the nation on this one,” said Otto.
Byrnes had a master's degree in educational psychology from the University of Michigan, but O'Rourke had profiled some 450 murderers, and her degree was in psychology. “If he had moved the body,” she said, “even to a couch, he'd have shown some shred of human emotion. He didn't. Not in any of these instances. Now, Dr. Coran has shown that it is without a doubt the same man, I say we go with profile three.”
Otto told Jessica that the team had created three profiles and that they were in the midst of narrowing it to one. “He didn't give a damn about the victims' bodies being exposed to the elements. He had no idea how soon, if ever, they'd be discovered.”
“ Another personality trait,” said O'Rourke. “He really does not care one way or the other whether the bodies are found or not. He has a lot of rage in him, and a lot of contempt for anyone in authority.”
“ Didn't suckle his mother's breast enough?” asked Byrnes.
“ Something like that,” O'Rourke said, refusing to show any emotional response to Byrnes.
“ So you don't think he stuck around for the funerals?” asked Otto.
“ No way,” said O'Rourke.
Schultz agreed. “He'd only have contempt for such customs.”
“ He'd have no desire to see them decently buried,” said Teresa O'Rourke. “It would be like burying one of the canisters he used to carry off the girl's blood in. She was an object to him, an object to be emptied.”
“ It's the post-offensive behavior of the killer that interests me,” said Schultz, lifting profile number three. “And this fits with profile three. What he did to her after she was dead, and now with this paintbrush business, Christ, it fits. The guy is a stalker.”
“ He brings along his own weapons,” added O'Rourke.
There was no longer any argument about much of this, Jessica thought, because the autopsy information had proven so much.
“ So the guy was organized and cunning,” agreed Otto. “He came from a neighboring town and probably drove a van.”
“ Nothing impulsive or passionate about our vampire,” said Byrnes. “But the facial attack, that usually means the victim knew her killer. The killer, in order to perform his terrible deeds on her, puts out her eyes so that even she can't see what he is doing.”
“ Maybe they had crossed paths before. We need to check on that possibility. Prelims have shown that both Janel McDonell and the Copeland girl worked in hospitals, and the way this thing is shaping up, a hospital seems a likely setting for a first meeting. Say this guy knows a lot about trach tubes and tourniquets,” continued Schultz, whose degree was in sociology, “maybe our guy's a paramedic.”
“ Why stop at paramedic?” asked Byrnes. “Why not a doctor?”
O'Rourke quoted known dogma about murder. “The more brutal the attack-and we are talking Tort 9 here-the closer the relationship between victim and killer.”
“ Maybe she did bring it on herself,” said Byrnes, “in a manner of speaking.”
“ If she did, she had no idea she was doing it,” countered Schultz. “The victim might be guilty and innocent at the same time.”
“ Maybe she teased his sick mind at some point and he never forgot it.”
“ The killer showed mastery of the situation,” said Otto, slowing the back-and-forth intentionally, wishing to get back to profile number three. “He killed slowly and methodically, which means he's a more sadistic personality.”
“ Which places him in the probable range of late twenties or thirties,” said O'Rourke. “And what did he do right after the murder? Did he lounge there? Enjoy himself with the body? Necrophilia? Not so, according to Dr. Coran, who has said that the sperm did not belong to our man but was placed into the orifices-sperm brought with him in a vial. His ritual, the time gone into the act of cutting her tendons, tying her and dangling her and finally draining her… the other, post-offense measures were meant to fool you and me and people like Dr. Zach.”
There was some muffled laughter at this.
Schultz picked up the thread from here, clearing his throat first, his hand going habitually to his throat, as if protecting his own jugular as he spoke. “Many killers take something of the victim's away with them-a bracelet, a ring, a watch, a mirror or compact-as a kind of artifact of the crime; to use later to excite themselves, to relive the experience, recreate the memory. This guy took blood!”
O'Rourke added to this. “Certain kinds of killers also keep diaries, scrapbooks, other memorabilia of their deeds. With this guy, it's likely to be a freezer filled with blood in tidy packs or jars.”
“ Tidy,” said Jessica.
“ What?” asked Otto.
“ Oh, nothing… just that I had gotten the exact same impression of the killer when we were there, in Wekosha, that he was a fastidious man. You people are remarkable,” she said to them.
“ Trust me,” said O'Rourke, “we rely a great deal more on statistical probability than on our deep psychological insights.”
“ Ah-ahhh, Teresa,” said Byrnes with a shake of his index finger, “we're not to give away trade secrets.”
“ Plain common sense; experience gained from sweating out hundreds of cases,” said Schultz. “With the Copeland case, for instance, since the victim was white, it's a good, educated guess that her killer, too, is white. But then you connected Janel McDonell to the killer, and she was black. Most black women are killed by blacks, and whites by whites,” said Byrnes.
“ This is especially true in the vast majority of mutilation murders,” said Otto.
“ We settled on white, because Trent was white. Two out of three,” said Schultz.
“ And the age?” Jessica asked.
O'Rourke replied. “The kind of methodical, organized killer he is points to someone who's been around a while. He's probably fantasized about these crimes for twenty years, since puberty.”
“ The killer's conduct with regard to the victim both before and after death,” added Bymes a bit smugly, “was quite measured, quite controlled, and this would be highly unusual in an impulsive teenager or someone in his early twenties.”
“ He lives alone, or if with someone else it will be an elderly parent who is dependent upon him.”
“ How can you possibly know that?” asked Jessica, who had remained silent, completely fascinated by the work of the profiling team.
O'Rourke half turned in her chair and crossed her shapely legs before saying, “It's virtually certain he can't carry on a lasting relationship with a woman, and if he has sustained one, it will be to a wife who is totally dominated by him, a virtual house slave. But more likely, he's a momma's boy, and is either taking care of his mother or living in her house left him when she died. This is, of course, in all probabil-ity.”
