'I think you may be inaccurate about the reason he's pulling the coat up and covering their faces. By the way, that's not part of the modus operandi. MO is something a killer does to avoid being caught. The act of covering the eyes is part of his signature, something emotional that he can't help himself from doing. I see covering the face as avoidance and guilt. I agree he may be killing a father substitute. Patricide is a very heavy psychological burden for him to bear. After the killing, the unsub most likely is ashamed of his act and doesn't want to deal with a father substitute's disapproving gaze even in death, so he covers the face.'
Underwood just stood in the center of the room with a strange, bewildered look on his narrow face. 'One of us must be a complete idiot,' he finally said. 'And I'm sure it's not me.'
'You asked for comments.'
'After this briefing we'll have a chat.' Jabbing the chalk at me. Dotting the I in idiot.
Underwood had printed up his profile and now he passed it out. So far, beyond what he'd already told us, his unsub was an unattractive twenty-year-old who lived at home with a female parent, wanted to be a cop, and had a childhood history of fire starting and violence against animals. It was all textbook stuff and not worth much to this roomful of potential authors.
In the end, Underwood couldn't escape the need to follow up on the one solid lead I'd supplied-the medical insignia and the fact that Patrick Collins turned out to be a combat medic in Nam.
We were instructed to designate four two-man teams to recheck each victim against VA records. Underwood selected a big, overweight detective named Bart Hoover to run this part of the investigation. Most all of us had heard stories about the aptly named Sergeant Hoover, who had major sixth-floor suck. He was a younger brother of a Glass House commander who headed the new Crime Support Section. Bart was a well-known fuck-up who had actually once handcuffed a bank robber to his squad car steering wheel with the keys still in the ignition. The last he saw of that bust was his own taillights going around the corner. Despite bonehead mistakes, with the help of his brother, Bart had hoovered nicely up through the ranks.
Underwood closed by telling us we were having morning and evening briefings just like this one, right here in this coffee room at 0800 and 1700 hours. Attendance was mandatory unless we were in the field, and then we needed to get his permission to miss.
After the meeting broke, those with chairs pushed them back into the squad room. A few of my fellow detectives checked me out disdainfully. I had just marked myself as a troublemaker. I challenged Underwood, which could cause him to come down on everyone. Obviously I didn't understand task force group dynamics.
As I moved into the squad room, I was trying to keep from being put on one of the four background teams. I had other plans for the day. I ducked down and tried to hide while pretending to unj am my bottom desk drawer.
Underwood stopped beside my desk. 'That was interesting stuff in there. I want you to write it all down, every word so we'll have a record, then you and I will go over it,' my FBI leader said pleasantly. Then he moved away, leaving me to that task. I smelled big trouble.
Chapter 16
An hour later I finished my profile on the unsub and flagged Judd Underwood over. He veered toward me.
'All done?' he asked pleasantly.
'Yes, sir.' I handed four pages of profile material to him.
'Good. Follow me.'
He headed out the door, into the lobby. I didn't know what the hell he was up to, but I tagged obediently after him. He was waiting for me outside the bathroom door.
'Come on, I want to show you something,' he said.
I followed him into the men's room, wondering what the hell was going on. Then he dropped my four-page report into the urinal, unzipped his pants, took out his pencil dick, and started pissing on it. His yellow stream splattered loudly on the paper. When he was done he zipped up and turned to face me.
'That's what I think of your ideas,' he said, his voice pinched and shrill. 'On this task force there will be only one profile and one profiler. I'm it. Get the murder book and come into my office.'
I wanted to deck him, but seventeen years in the department has taught me that the best way to survive assholes is to wait them out. So I choked down my anger and followed Agent Underwood out of the bathroom and across the squad room, stopping to retrieve the murder book on the way.
Underwood's office was very large, but had no walls. He had instructed someone from maintenance to chalk out the perimeters on the gray linoleum floor. I was surprised to see that he swerved to avoid walking through the nonexistent south wall and entered through the chalked out opening that served as his door.
I stopped at the line on the floor and looked in at him.
Did he really expect me to walk around and not step over it? I paused for a moment to deal with this ridiculous dilemma. I was already in pretty deep with this guy, so I skirted the problem by finding my way into his office through the marked-out door.
Welcome to The Twilight Zone.
I waited while he sat behind a large, dark wood desk that he'd scrounged from somewhere. It was the only mahogany desk I'd ever seen at Parker Center and I had no idea where it had come from. He also had an expensive looking, oxblood-red executive swivel chair, and some maple filing cabinets. All that was missing was an American flag, the grip-and-grin pictures, and a wall to hang them on. His cell phone sat on a charging dock in front of him. Several folders decorated one corner of his blotter. The five Fingertip case reports were stacked front and center, the edges all compulsively aligned. Taking the invisible office and all this anal organization into account, it seemed Judd Underwood had a few psychological tics of his own. But who am I to judge? I only had two semesters of junior college psych where I didn't exactly bust the curve.
'Where did you get all that hopeless nonsense?' he sneered.
I smiled at him through dry teeth. 'Since I got this case, I've been studying up on serial crime. I've read all of John Douglas's books on serial homicide, Robert Ressler's too, Ann Burgess and Robert Keppel '
'Okay, okay, I get it. But it's one thing to read a book, it's another to actually go out and catch one of these sociopaths. Since you obviously like reading about it, I suggest you pick up my book Motor City Monster. It's on Amazon dot com. Been called the definitive work in the field. In fact, let's make that an order. You need to get some facts straight. Have it read by Monday morning.'
'Yes, sir.'
He tapped a spot on his desk. 'Put the murder book there.' I set it down while Agent Underwood settled into his executive swivel and picked up a folder. It was my two-week report. Every homicide detective routinely files a TWR with his or her supervisor. It details the workings of all active investigations. Underwood ran a freckled hand through his orange bristle, then opened the folder, licked his index finger, and slowly started to page through it, leaning forward occasionally to frown.
Once, about two years ago, I was working a fugitive warrant that took me to Yellowstone Park. It was rattlesnake season and I hate snakes. I was paired up with a park ranger who told me that when dealing with poisonous reptiles, the way to keep from getting bitten was to give them something more interesting than you to think about. It was time to put that strategy to use.
Underwood looked up from my TWR. 'I hope you and your partner are getting in some nice days at the beach, because, if not, this whole last two weeks has been a total waste of time.'
I launched into action. 'Agent Underwood, I have a plan to draw your unsub out.' Notice the clever possessive pronoun.
Disinterested gray eyes, magnified and skeptical, studied me behind those thick wire-rimmed lenses. Undisguised contempt.
'Really?' he finally said, stretching it way out so it sounded more like a wail than a word.
'Yes. I think we should throw a funeral for one of these John Does.'
Underwood steepled his fingers under his chin and scowled at me. Then he heaved a giant sigh that seemed to say that dealing with morons was just one of the ugly realities of command.
