Still Life With Crows

jacket of his suit. He placed another little flag at the spot and then continued on.

They walked for perhaps two hundred yards, Pendergast sweeping as they went, marking every point and every bullet they found. It amazed Corrie how much junk there was under the ground. Then they returned to their point of origin and headed in another cardinal direction. Pendergast swept on. There was yet another squawk. He knelt, scraped, this time uncovering a 1970s-era pop-top.

“Aren’t you going to flag that historic artifact?” Corrie asked.

“We shall leave it for a future archeologist.”

More squawks; more pop-tops, arrow points, a few lead bullets, a rusted knife. Corrie noticed that Pendergast was frowning, as if disturbed by what he was finding. She almost asked the question, and then stopped. Why was she feeling so curious, anyway? This was just as weird as everything else Pendergast had done to date.

“Okay,” said Corrie, “I’m stumped. What does all this have to do with the killings? Unless, of course, you think the killer is the ghost of the Forty-Fiver who cursed the ground for eternity, or whatever.”

“An excellent question,” Pendergast replied. “I can’t say at this point if the killings and the massacre are connected. But Sheila Swegg was killed digging in these mounds, and Gasparilla spent a lot of time hunting up at these mounds. And then there’s all the gossip in town, to which you allude, that the killer is the ghost of Harry Beaumont come back for revenge. You may recall that they cut off his boots and scalped his feet.”

“Youdon’t believe that, do you?”

“That the killer is the ghost of Beaumont?” Pendergast smiled. “No. But I must admit, the presence of antique arrows and other Indian artifacts does suggest a connection, if only in the mind of the killer.”

“So what’s your theory?”

“It is a capital mistake to develop a premature hypothesis in the absence of hard data. I am trying my bestnot to develop a theory. All I wish to do now is collect data.” He continued sweeping and marking. They were now on their third leg, which took them directly over one of the mounds. There was a cluster of points at its rocky base. At several scattered places Pendergast nodded to some fresh holes in the dirt, which someone had made a feeble attempt to hide with brush. “Sheila Swegg’s recent diggings.”

They continued on.

“So you don’t haveany ideas about who the killer might be?” Corrie pressed.

Pendergast did not answer for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was very low. “It is what the killer isnot that I find most intriguing.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We’re dealing with a serial killer, that much is clear. It is also clear he will keep killing until he is stopped. What I find intriguing is that he breaks the pattern. He is unlike any known serial killer.”

“How do you know?” Corrie asked.

“At the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, there’s a group known as the Behavioral Science Unit, which has made a specialty of profiling the criminal mind. For the past twenty years, they’ve been compiling cases of serial killers from all over the world and quantifying them in a large computer database.”

Pendergast moved ahead as he spoke, sweeping back and forth as they advanced down the far side of the mound and into the trees beyond. He glanced over at her. “Are you sure you want a lecture in forensic behavioral science?”

“It’s a lot more interesting than trigonometry.”

“Serial killing, like other types of human behavior, falls into definite patterns. The FBI has classified serial killers into two types: ‘organized’ and ‘disorganized.’ Organized offenders are intelligent, socially and sexually competent. They carefully plan their killings; the victim is a stranger, selected with care; mood is controlled before, during, and after the crime. The crime scene, too, is neatly controlled. The corpse of the victim is usually taken away and hidden. This type is often difficult to catch.

“The disorganized killer, on the other hand, kills spontaneously. He is often inadequate socially and sexually, does menial labor, and has a low IQ. The crime scene is sloppy, even random. The body is left at the crime scene; no attempt is made to conceal it. Frequently, the killer lives nearby and knows the victim. The attack is frequently what is known as a ‘blitz’ attack, violent and sudden, with little advance planning.”

They continued moving on.

“It sounds like our killer is the ‘organized’ type,” said Corrie.

“In fact, he is not.” Pendergast paused and looked at her. “This is strong stuff, Miss Swanson.”

“I can take it.”

He gazed at her a moment, and then said, almost as if to himself, “I believe you can.”

There was a whine from the machine, and Pendergast knelt and scraped, uncovering a small, rusted toy car. She saw him smile fleetingly.

“Ah, a Morris Minor. I had a Corgi collection when I was a child.”

“Where is it now?”

A shadow passed across Pendergast’s face and Corrie did not pursue the question.

“Superficially, our killer does seem to fit the organized type. But there are some major deviations. First, there is a sexual component to virtuallyall organized serial killings. Even if it is not overt, it is there. Some killers prey on prostitutes, some on homosexuals, some on couples in parked cars. Some killers perform sexual mutilations. Some killers rape first and then kill. Some killers just kiss the corpse and leave flowers, as if they had finished a date.”

Corrie shuddered.

“These killings, on the other hand, have no sexual component whatsoever.”