all, with a gun that had somehow been secreted underneath her bridesmaid’s dress.
Until the ambulance arrived, the woman remained essentially unconscious, her eyelids fluttering and the occasional moan escaping from between her lips.
Her appearance had been shocking. She was gaunt, though not emaciated. Her lips were cracked and she appeared to be dehydrated. The skin under her eyes was almost black, but not from physical abuse. They were the eyes of someone who hadn’t slept in days, or maybe weeks.
Her skin was the whitest I’d ever seen, pasty, almost paper white. She reminded me of those blind albino rats you hear about sometimes, born in the dark and raised without ever seeing the light.
“Marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck,” Callie had noted with a nod of her head.
I’d checked, and she was right. They were scars, though, not just marks. The signs of someone who’d spent years in shackles.
“What happened to you?” I murmured, as the ambulance pulled up. The paramedics jumped out and rushed over, all business. “I’m going with her,” I said.
“I’ll take Bonnie home,” Elaina offered.
Bonnie protested. “I want to go to the hospital.”
“No, honey.” I guess there was something in my voice that told her not to argue; she wasn’t happy about it, but she left with Elaina and no further protest.
“We’ll meet you there,” Alan said. “Hell of a way to end a wedding.”
“I guess we’ll see you guys later?” I asked Callie and Sam. “You have a honeymoon in Bora-Bora. You’re hitched, so head out.”
“Tsk-tsk,” Callie said to me, shaking her head. “You should know me better than that.”
There was nothing after that, because the paramedics had hustled the woman into the back of the ambulance and were eager to get rolling. They’d already placed an IV by the time the doors closed behind me.
“She’s severely dehydrated,” one of them said to me, shouting to be heard over the sirens. “Heart rate is way too fast.”
He didn’t have any other wisdom to impart, and we fell silent. I studied the woman as we barreled down the highway.
I put her in her early forties, about five-five. She had a long face, not unattractive, and a slender frame to go with it. Lips neither full nor thin. There was nothing striking about her—hers could be the face of a hundred middle- aged women—but I could not shake the idea that she was somehow familiar to me.
Her fingernails were a little too long, and they were filthy. So were her toenails and her feet. I’d moved down to examine them more closely and noted that the bottoms of her feet were heavily calloused.
“Almost like she never wears shoes,” I muttered to myself.
The scars on her ankles were thicker than I had first noticed, uneven circular bands, as though they’d been cut open and healed again and again. Which they probably had.
We’re in the hospital now, and I’m watching as the doctors and nurses attend to the woman. She’s started to come awake and is fighting them. She’s screaming. Her eyes are wild.
“Put her in restraints,” the doctor orders, and the woman goes even more insane.
I rush over and put a hand on the doctor’s arm. He glances at me, annoyed at the interruption of his rhythm. I show him my FBI badge and explain to him what I think. Point out the scars on her wrists and ankles.
“Can’t you just sedate her?” I ask.
“We don’t know what’s wrong with her,” he says. “Her heartbeat is erratic; we don’t know if she’s been given any other drug. Restraints are safest.”
“If you put her in restraints, you’re going to send her over the deep end. You’ll be doing more harm than good. Trust me, please. I’ve seen this before.”
I don’t know if it’s my badge or my scars or the certainty in my voice or all three, but I seem to get through to him. He nods once.
“Four milligrams of Ativan, IM,” he barks. “No restraints.”
The team changes gears to accommodate this new order without a hiccup, and I back away to let them do their job. The woman howls as they hold her down and jam the needle into her arm. She continues to struggle for a few moments, and then she starts to relax. Gradually, they let her go. Her breathing slows and her eyes close again.
“Doctor,” I say, getting his attention again. “Sorry, one other thing. I need her checked for signs of sexual abuse. Full kit, please.”
He agrees and turns back to his patient. That’s when I notice something on the floor under her gurney. I insert myself and I bend down and pick it up. It’s a single sheet of white letter-size paper, folded into a square. I open it. Black typed letters say:
As promised, now delivered. Follow the line of inquiry. In answer to the questions you’ll have later: Yes, there are more. Yes, I will kill them if you come after me. Be satisfied with what I’ve given you.
I scan the woman’s gown and see a single side pocket. The note must have fallen from there. I refold it and put it inside my jacket. Games. So many of them like games.
I watch them work on the woman and I wonder: What is it about some of these predators that they get off on stealing a life from another person? Isn’t it enough to rape them? Why is such complete destruction necessary?
It’s a silly question, a mix of the rhetorical and wishful thinking. I know all the answers to all the questions. If not intellectually, then in the core of me.
It’s a ratio. A mathematical thing. The greater the degradation, the more intense the sexual high. It’s really no different, in its own way, than a meth-head or a heroin addict. Many rapists and serial killers talk about their first rape or murder as a pinnacle. The first high is the highest; everything after is an attempt to recreate it.
I’m involved in the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s interviews of captured serial murderers. We contact them, try to get them to fill out a questionnaire, and then get them to agree to a taped interview. Some aren’t interested, but most are. They’re malignant narcissists—how could they refuse?
One of the men I interviewed kept recordings of the screams of his victims. Nothing else. He didn’t have photographs, he didn’t video the rapes or murders, and he kept no physical trophies. His fulfillment came from the auditory reliving of his victims’ screams.
He was a small, squat man named Bill. He wore glasses—old-fashioned horn-rims—and was in his early fifties. I’d seen photographs of him before prison, and he was a family man, as some of them are. There was one photo of him with his somewhat-withdrawn wife. His arm was around her, and he was smiling at the camera. They were in their front yard and it was a sunny California day and he was wearing a chambray shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and tennis shoes. A set of suspenders held up the pants.
Three things struck me about the photograph. One was the date: The photo had been taken while Bill was holding his second-to-last victim. He’d abduct them (middle-aged women, always with dark hair and large breasts) and keep them in a soundproofed trunk inside a soundproofed storage shed on the rear of his property. Bill had bought land in Apple Valley some time ago, and he had nearly an acre.
The second was that smile. It was utterly benign. There was nothing about him (other than perhaps the downcast eyes of his wife) that said you should beware. Bill wasn’t the next door neighbor you needed to keep an eye on. He was a balding, middle-aged man, who looked like his worst fault might be some slightly off-color jokes at the wrong times, for which he’d apologize profusely.
The last was his belly. It wasn’t huge, but it was fat, and it didn’t fit the rest of him. He didn’t have a fat face, or thick arms, or heavy legs. It was the belly of a troll from the fairy stories. The belly made my stomach churn a little, because of all the facts I knew.
His last victim, Mary Booth, had survived her ordeal. It was her testimony, more than anything else, that put Bill away. There were certain things in her testimony that I couldn’t help remembering when I looked at that photograph. Her interviews had been digitally recorded, and I had listened to them the week prior to my meeting with Bill. I could hear her voice in my head as I looked at Bill’s smiling face and fat stomach.
It had been Alan who was called in to interview Mary. We hadn’t been the ones to catch Bill, but Alan was the best at interviewing either victims or criminals, and her testimony was too important.
“Mary,” he’d said, his voice gentle. “I’m going to take you through slowly. There’s no rush here, okay? Anytime you need a break, you tell me, and that’s it. We stop, and we stop for as long as you need us to.”
