She handed him a copy of the report she'd made of the pertinent rape and murder cases.
'Wow.'
'No shit.'
'So you think he never went underground, just switched to murder.'
'Yeah.'
'But if it's the same perp, how do you explain this sudden switch from rape to sticks up the ass? Isn't that kinda drastic? I mean we didn't see anything like that with the assaults.'
Frank shook her head excitedly, water falling off in fat drops. Her color was high and she was animated, not her regular laconic self.
'Easy. Let's start at the beginning. Look at the ages of these girls. Let's say he's never committed a rape before December, or at least not one he's planned out and thought about. He's out there trolling and wants someone easy. So he picks a little girl. The first one, Aguilar, was only ten. How hard can it be to handle a ten-year old? We know he's a big man. It would be easy to overpower her.
And a little girl's not threatening, you know? She's not street smart, she's not tough, she's an easy mark.
'So Aguilar goes down easy, and he does another little girl in January. That'd be Menendez. She's thirteen, right?'
Noah nodded at the paper in his hand.
'Okay, so she's easy too, and he's getting the hang of this thing. It's simple. He's feeling confident, feeling good. In March he does an eleven-year old. Then in April he graduates to a fourteen-year old, Troupe. That goes down easy too. He's a master now. For the rest of these rapes he stays consistent with fourteen to sixteen-year olds.'
'But this Nichols girl is only twelve.'
'You're right. But look where she lives...,' Frank pointed to an area near a cluster of red pins, '...and where she's found.'
She tapped a green pin just above the red ones, saying, 'Two blocks from Baldwin Hills Elementary.'
Frank pawed through an assortment of notes.
'Look at how he's alternating here,' she said, indicating the red pins. 'Girls one, two, and four are done at or around Culver City Park. Girls three, five, and six, at or around Kenneth Hahn. With six under his belt he must be feeling pretty confident, and he's smart, too. He must know he can't keep doing this in the same spots and not get caught. So on number seven he goes out of his territory and over to Crenshaw. Number eight is still about as equidistant as seven, but it's west, over at CC High. Do you see?'
Frank swirled her finger above the clustered pins.
'This is his home base. This is where he feels most comfortable. If he's never raped before, and we have no indication he has, he's not going to do it in an unfamiliar place. I'll lay even money he spends a lot of time at these parks, and that they're close to where he lives. This is his
'By the time he does Nichols, he has a long and successful string of rapes behind him. He's got to be feeling pretty good, pretty confident. So let's say he accidentally sees Nichols, he's got a perfect opportunity to take her, and he does. See, he's never
Still tapping the cluster of pins, Frank stated adamantly, 'I'm willing to bet my left tit that we'll find him somewhere in this area. He does Nichols because, again, she's an easy mark. A little girl. Easy to handle. It's his first abduction. He's excited. He can spend time with this one. We don't know exactly how much time, but from when she left school until seven that night. And where does he dump her? Behind a sandwich joint, a barber shop, and a trophy store, all closed by five. Someone from that area would know that the parking lot behind all those shops would be deserted by seven o'clock—around the time he dumped her.'
Frank paused, but started again almost immediately as Noah began to speak.
'He might not even have meant to kill her. He could've gotten carried away, which is what I think happened.'
She handed Noah the pictures of Cassandra Nichols.
'If you look carefully you can see the marks from her bra. Look at the lines there,' she pointed. 'I think he got a little panicky, didn't know what to do, messed her up a little to throw us off his track, make it look like a hundred other rapes, and dumped her. When I was looking at this picture I almost dismissed this as an unrelated case, because of the clothes, and the fact that she's black. But the marks from the bra tell us he never had her clothes off; she was dressed the whole time. We know he likes that.'
'Yeah, but what about her being black? I mean that's pretty inconsistent with his pattern.'
Noah was asking good questions. Frank had been up all night asking them too.
'Right again. But one, I don't think he was really trolling for Nichols. I think he happened upon her somehow, saw his opportunity, and took it. That would explain why he panicked. And two, I went through my notes from that residency I did at Quantico. A serial perp will usually have an ideal victim that fits his fantasies, but it's not unheard of to sacrifice ideal for opportunity. That could explain Nichols.'
Still staring at her pictures, Noah said, 'She's just a baby.'
Frank didn't tell him she'd felt the same thing, continuing instead with her case.
'Nichols is young. He's back to practicing on little girls, but she goes down so smoothly, and he's confident from all his rapes, so his next girl is closer to his ideal.'
Frank gave Noah the Jane Doe pictures.
'According to the coroner's report she's between sixteen and eighteen. But look at her—she's small. He's not IDing these girls.
He doesn't know how old she is, and she could easily be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Another thing. She was a runaway. Autopsy showed alcohol and crack in her system, grass, no food in her stomach, looked like it had been days since she'd eaten. She'd be another easy mark.
'Now, I'll bet with her he was totally prepared. He'd tasted blood with Nichols and he liked it, so he was prepared to waste this girl. When he was done with her. Remember, this is the first time he's had these girls for as long as he wants them. I think he killed Nichols accidentally, maybe while he was raping her. He used a belt on Nichols instead of a towel, which would be consistent with a lack of planning. Maybe he put more force on it than he realized, then poof, she's dead and he's kinda freaked.
'But with the Doe he's more careful. No belt marks. He's gone back to using a towel. He's playing with her. He's in his element. She has all her clothes on. He likes that. He's punching this girl around like a boxing bag. You can see in the coroner's pictures where a button and a seam on her jeans left marks on her flesh.'
Frank's eyes were shining, her voice excited as she added, 'This is one interesting boy, No. He's slamming these girls, but he's not getting off on degrading them, he's not making them sex slaves. He doesn't like anything except anal sex. He's not getting off on torturing them per se, though if some mother were doing this to me it'd go down in my book as torture. It's more like he's angry.
'Look at the way he's battering them,' she said, jabbing a finger into one of the autopsy photos. 'And only anal sex. He's not looking at these girls when he rapes them. He's barely touching them, but he's exerting his dominance in no uncertain terms. I'll bet that somebody's done this to him. He wants to hurt these girls like he's been hurt and he's running on pure rage while he's doing it. It's common for serialists to escalate the intensity of their attacks, like junkies needing progressively stronger hits to get high. With each assault this guy's fantasies get stronger and stronger. At this point, a rape without murder would probably be very unsatisfying for him.'
'Which means he's going to get worse.'
Frank nodded. Her enthusiasm suddenly vanished, and she looked like what she was—a cop who'd been up for forty-eight hours, working on the hardest case of her career. She sounded weary when she spoke. 'We're going to reinterview all the girls, the parents, the responding officers, Culver City homicide. It's going to be a pain in the ass, but at least we've got a track on this guy. I want to get composites done, plaster his mug all over town, go to the parks and see if anyone recognizes the composite.'
'Does the captain know about this yet?'
'Nope. He's in Sacramento. He'll be back tomorrow.' Noah chuckled. 'I wanna be there when you tell him.'
