“Someone totally removed from the case, Kim.”
“There's a guy in the Philly police department named Vladoc, Dr. Vladoc.”
“I'll send a request that he analyze the poems for meaning and hidden meaning. See if he comes up with anything more substantially helpful than did the squirrel.”
“Good move.”
They saw that Wahlbore stood again on the steps of the little house that was headquarters for the linguistics department; he waved them off as they drove from the campus back into the real world.
When they returned to PPD headquarters, Jessica learned that there was indeed a task-force meeting scheduled for later in the day. She and Kim showed up for it after lunch along with everyone involved in the case. Sturtevante directed the meeting, telling everyone that those closest to the investigation feared the killer would strike again. “Within the week,” she emphasized. “The killer's quiet attacks on people via poisoning typically happen over weekends. So we expect to see another victim, likely in the proximity of the others, in the low-rent student district surrounding Second Street.” Jessica had learned that Second was a two-mile-long strip of renovated shops that ranged from specialty boutiques to funky furniture stores, all upscale and hip; the neighborhood had become a showplace for the outrageous and bizarre along with a safe haven for gays and lesbians. While the area could not be called posh, it certainly was the in place for the chronologically young and the inveterately youthful, catering to their interests along with those of the artistic crowd. While the rents still weren't high, all the renovations going on made it a safe bet that they soon would be. Coffeehouses with browsing libraries, renovated neighborhood bars and nightclubs abounded in the area.
Sturtevante told the task force that this geographical area, which Parry now blocked out with red marker on an enlarged map, had been home base for all the victims. Their faces were familiar to many of the shopkeepers in this relatively small community just off Philadelphia's downtown business district. All the victims had been consumers and renters here. The circumstances reminded Jessica of the case she and Kim had solved in New Orleans, where the killer had targeted transvestites living in and around the French Quarter.
Sturtevante finished with, “Somewhere in this same area, the killer prowls, possibly lives.”
Next, James Parry took the floor, and he described in meticulous and tedious detail the similarities in each crime scene-information they had already gone over again and again, and it left Jessica feeling drained. Something was still missing, something important, perhaps the linchpin that held all the killings together, but what was it?
Jessica was asked to comment after Jim Parry. She described the condition of each body in relation to both the crime scene and the corpses that had preceded. “We obviously have a serial killer on our hands, ladies and gentlemen, but we believe now that he thinks of himself as a benign being, helping these poor souls to exit this life in as gentle a fashion as possible. At least, that's how it appears to be shaping up. As for the handwriting, allow me to read what our resident expert on graphology in Quantico has to say.” Here Jessica read Eriq Santiva's faxed report.
The room had fallen silent and it remained so. Jessica did not share anything she and Kim had learned from Professor Wahlbore, not wishing at this point to cloud the issue with angel talk and what she felt to be a great deal of supposition. Eriq's interpretation of the handwriting was supposition enough for one meeting.
Besides, she wanted to hold in reserve the information that Wahlbore had shared with Kim and her. She certainly didn't want it getting out of house and into the press. She'd decided also to keep the information pertaining to the killer's tears, and any subsequent DNA obtained from the tears, between her and anyone else she considered to be on a need-to-know basis in the case. It was the kind of evidence that broke suspects in interrogation, and it was the kind of evidence that locked men away for life. But if it became widely known, it could prove useless, a burden instead of a boon, as every nutcase in the city and state would come in claiming the tearstains belonged to him. No investigation proceeded without attracting its array of sad souls who would step forward to claim responsibility for crimes they did not commit. To publicize such information as the tearstains only fed into this fact, and only through withholding such information from the general public might it become useful as a tool in nailing a real suspect- once one had been found.
“So, let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen,” Sturtevante began when Jessica sat down. “We strongly suspect our killer prowls Second Street for his victims, and we also suspect he may live within the area or extremely close to it. Keep these facts in mind while on your stakeouts of the various locations assigned.”
Parry added, “We believe the killer frequents the same nightclubs as his prey, blending in so well as to go unnoticed.”
'To blend in on Second Street you'd have to stand out pretty far,” said one of the detectives, causing the others to laugh.
A woman detective named Brubaker added, “You could walk down Second in your birthday suit, painted green, and no one would think you stuck out.”
“Unless you were Brubaker!” shouted a third, bringing on greater laughter.
The female detective threw a wadded-up piece of paper at the other detective. One look at her breasts and Jessica understood what was meant. Brubaker stood out like Dolly Parton.
“Most creative people are not prone to violence of this magnitude,” Jessica told the group now. “Hiis killer, if he turns out to be the author of the poems left behind, will be a strange bird, indeed. There's some feeling that the poems may not be original.”
“If the SOB is plagiarizing the lines, we'll soon know it, since we have sent copies to all our university sources in both America and England,” added Parry.
“If he is stealing the lines, he will indeed fit the profile of the failed artist unable to create anything lasting of his own. Such a person often, out of some internal pressure and anxiety, projects his hatred outward.”
“Is this just a theory?” asked one of the women on the task force.
Jessica replied, “My personal take, yes. The failed artist, the man who sets himself up to be a success in some artistic endeavor but fails miserably, a man who has little or no talent and feels unfairly maligned by the system that rejects him, is not an altogether unfamiliar bird.” Is that true, Sturtevante?” asked one of the detectives.
“One likely scenario here.”
Jessica added, “A tracking of much of violent behavior, from Hitler and Charles Manson to the boys who killed eleven fellow students and destroyed the innocence of thousands at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, all demonstrate this fact. Hitler was a failure at all he touched before rising to political prominence by means of the hatred and promises he preached.”
Parry added, “Charles Manson had been spurned by America's recording industry.”
“And Eric Harris-who from all accounts thought of warfare as his kind of art-had been turned down by the U.S. military.”
Sturtevante brought on more laughs when she joked, “Perhaps our killer is a poet who's found one too many rejection letters in his mailbox.”
“Laugh if you will, but it makes far more sense than looking for a successful poet,” countered Jessica. “Unless I'm missing something.”
Jessica was bombarded with arguments over her analysis of the situation, particularly from Leanne Sturtevante. Parry ended the heated discussion with, “I think Dr. Coran has a point, but it's stretching a point to say that we have anything conclusive on this… theory.”
“You could say that, yes,” Jessica agreed, “but this is a brainstorming session, and as such, the theory, like any other, deserves fair attention.”
“It's Friday, people,” Sturtevante announced. “Everyone has been assigned a location along Second Street. We will canvass the locations, on foot, on the street, and in shops and coffeehouses, and we'll arrest anyone displaying unusual behavior.”
“On Second Street? You don't have enough cells!” called out a man who sat against the far wall. Then anyone who looks like a threat,” she countered. The meeting broke up on this note of qualification, everyone anxiously awaiting the events of the weekend, and the killer's plans for spending it.
THIRTEEN
