'I can confirm that as well.' James nods. 'One of the women in my group was obese. Another had a bad case of acne. Appearance is not a crucial part of his criteria.'
'But gender is,' I muse. 'Okay. How about locations? How spread out has he been?'
'I'm getting a map printed out so that we can see it graphically,'
Callie says. 'He's been a traveler, but with few exceptions so far, he's stayed within the western United States, primarily California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.'
'Interesting. So Virginia was well outside his common stomping grounds.'
Callie nods. 'None of the other victims have been linked that far east.'
A thought occurs to me. 'No other transgendered victims?'
'No,' James says.
'So Lisa Reid was another anomaly. She's the only transgender victim and the only one found so far outside his normal killing zone. Which means that's exactly why she was chosen.'
'He's decided to come out into the open,' Alan agrees. 'He figured she'd help him make the biggest splash. Killing a child, same thing.'
'Why now?' I wonder. No one answers. 'What other commonalities?'
'He stops the clip before the actual murder of every victim,' James says. 'As discussed before, he's showing us that his overall message is more important to him than the deaths themselves. The murders were committed for a purpose, not titillation.'
'He cared for them, or wants us to think he did,' I say. 'In one way he strips them naked--the whole secrets thing. But then he pulls the curtain over their last moments. He respects that privacy, preserves their dignity.'
'He never gets angry,' James notes. 'He's firm, but calm with every victim. He's not above threatening them to gain compliance, but it's detached. A means to an end, not a fantasy.'
'I take it the secrets theme has been consistent?'
' 'Fraid so,' Callie says, 'and not just in fact but in form.'
I frown. 'Sorry?'
'She means there haven't been any 'I stole twenty bucks from Mom's wallet' kind of secrets,' Alan provides. 'It's all dark or twisted or sad or all three.' He consults notepad Ned. 'Lot of it has a sexual component, of course. There's some accidental murders that were then hidden, but there are a few premeditated killings in there as well. One woman had been beaten by her husband for years, so she took it out on her baby. With lit cigarettes.' He looks back up at me wearing a humorless smile. 'A ghastly fucking gallery.'
My stomach twists once and I feel that voice again, not vocalizing yet, but stirring. Thinking about making itself known. I push it away and force myself to focus on the list of names and what they can tell me.
'He videoed every crime, obviously,' James says, 'but the changes in video and sound quality show us that he's been at this for some time. He probably started out on super eight or a similar medium and graduated up to better technology as the years rolled on. He'll be fairly proficient technically, nothing earth-shaking, but more knowledgeable than the average computer user. He'd have to be to digitize old mediums and to create the various video clips, edit them, and so on.'
'It gives him credibility,' Callie observes, her tone grudging. 'He's been documenting his actions from the start, waiting for the day he'd bring his 'case' to the world.'
'How could he be sure?' Alan muses.
I look at him and frown. 'What do you mean?'
'Well, when he started this, the Internet didn't exist, at least not for public consumption. He always planned to show his face and it's pretty clear that he planned to use the videos to do it. Go back a few decades and we'd have gotten a stack of VHS tapes.'
'So?'
'Well, that would have been direct. Him to us. But this?' He gestures at the computer. 'He put these clips up on a public website. How could he be sure he'd get our attention?'
'He chose carefully,' James answers. 'The website he posted those clips on is the most viewed viral video site on earth. I imagine if we hadn't taken notice on our own, he would have followed up with an e-mail or a letter.'
Alan nods, seeing it. 'Maybe even a phone call.'
'Any way to track the clips themselves?' I ask.
James shakes his head. 'No. CDs, DVDs, even printer pages can be traced to some degree, but a digital clip doesn't have a watermark or buried signature by default.'
'What about the upload? He had to contact the Web somewhere to get these clips onto user-tube.'
'I already have computer crimes checking on that, honey-love,'
Callie replies. 'They're rolling on the warrant as we speak.'
'Probably a dead end,' Alan observes.
'Probably,' I agree, 'but . . .'
'Yeah,' he says. 'Sometimes the bad guys are stupid.'
'Sometimes. Anything else?'
'Yes,' James says. 'Again--where is he getting his information?'
The biggest part of the mystery. Lisa Reid left her story in a diary, fine, but the others?
'Maybe he's a priest,' Alan muses.
'A traveling priest?' I say. 'I don't think so. Again, too high profile. Even if he was just posing as one, Father Yates didn't mention anything about visiting clergy. Rosemary didn't recognize her attacker.' I shake my head. 'Not a priest.'
'It's the question to answer, though,' Alan says.
'What about my earlier suggestion?' I ask. 'Support groups?
With these kinds of secrets, we'd see plenty of substance abuse problems.'
'Like Rosemary and Andrea,' Alan agrees. 'And look at how quick Andrea was to spill her guts.'
'It doesn't have to be a single pool he's drawing from,' Callie points out. 'He could find the kind of person he's looking for in any number of places. Churches involved in heavy community outreach, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, choose your poison. He'd infiltrate as a fellow addict or alcoholic or whatever, gain the confidence of his peers, and lend a sympathetic ear.'
'Good point,' I say. 'We need to look for that as a point of commonality in the victims.'
'Let's list out what we do know about him,' James says. I nod. 'Sure. I'll start: He's high functioning and probably attractive. He'll be confident around women. They're not a threat to his selfimage. They don't make him angry, at least not overtly.'
'He might be a virgin,' James murmurs.
I raise my eyebrows. 'How did you arrive at that?'
'Think about it. He's rational. His attitude with the victims is always calm. Any threat of violence against them is as a means to an end, not self-excitement. Of the victims whose bodies we've been allowed to find, there's no evidence of sexual violation or unnecessary violence. His fantasies are cerebral. They revolve around religion and truth and thus, by extension, purity.' He shrugs. 'The act of sex isn't just absent, it's nonexistent.'
'Madonna and the whore,' Callie muses.
'Come again?' I ask her.
'Oh you know, that old saw. Men want to marry Madonnas, but they want to have sex with whores. A wife who likes sex is not a wife, blah de blah.'
'Right--but where's the connection here?'
'He doesn't have sex with these women. Why? Because he reveres them.'
There's a shutter click inside my head, like the rapid fire of a highend camera. It is the feel of something shivering into place from out of nowhere.
'Yes,' I say, staring off. 'That feels right. But how can he revere them with the kinds of secrets they're carrying around? How?'
I walk over to the dry-erase board and stare at it hard, trying to force the thing that eludes me to show its face. My team is silent, waiting. They've seen this before.
'Well?' Alan finally asks.
I exhale in frustration. 'I can't get my hands around it yet.'
