The Naturals

Dean looked down at his hands. “Those needs, those fantasies, those emotions,” he said, “they don’t change. A killer can switch weapons, they can start killing on a quicker schedule, they can change venues, they can start targeting a different class of victims—but their signature stays the same.”

I turned my attention back to the pictures. Three of the women had been stabbed: two in back alleys, one in her own kitchen. The woman in the kitchen had fought; from the looks of the pictures, the other two had never had a chance.

“These two,” I said, pulling out the first two stabbing pictures. “The killer surprised them. You said the UNSUB stabbed this one from behind.” I indicated the girl on the left. “After she was dead—or close enough to it that she couldn’t put up much of a fight—he turned her over. So she could see him.”

This was what Agent Locke was talking about when she used the phrase deep-seated need. The killer had attacked this girl from behind, but it was important to him—for whatever reason—that she see his face and that he see hers.

“Don’t say he,” Dean said. He shifted, and suddenly, I could feel the heat from his body. “Say you, Cassie. Or say I.”

“Fine,” I said. I stopped talking about the killer—and started talking to him. “You want them to see you. You want to stand over them. And as they lie there dying, or maybe even after they’re dead, you can’t help but touch them. You straighten their clothes. You lay their arms out to the side.” I stared at the picture of the girl he’d attacked from behind, and something else struck me about it. “You think they’re beautiful, but girls like that, women like that, they never even see you.” I paused. “So you make them see you.”

I looked at the next picture: another woman, stabbed and found dead on the pavement. Like the first, she’d been chosen for convenience. But according to the notes on the picture, she hadn’t been stabbed from behind.

“It wasn’t enough,” I said. “Turning her over after she died, it wasn’t enough. So you took the next one from the front.”

Like the first victim, this one had been laid carefully on her back, her hair fanned around her face in an unnatural halo. Without even thinking about it, I took the third picture on the top row—a gunshot victim who’d died running—and set it aside. That wasn’t the work of the same UNSUB. It was quick and clean, and there wasn’t a whiff of desire about it.

Turning my attention to the bottom row of pictures, I scanned them, trying to keep my emotions in check the way Dean did. One of these four women had been killed by the same UNSUB as the first two. The easy answer—and the wrong one—would have been the third stabbing victim, but she’d been stabbed in the kitchen, with a knife from her own drawer. She’d fought, she’d died bloody, and the killer had left her there, her skirt on sideways, her body contorted.

You need to see them, I told the killer silently, picturing his silhouette in my mind. You need them to see you. They need to be beautiful.

This third victim had been killed after the first two. The UNSUB’s MO had changed: different weapon, different location. But deep down, the killer hadn’t changed. He was still the same person with the same sick underlying needs.

Every time you kill, you need more. You need to be better. She needs to be better. Killing women on the street wasn’t enough anymore. You didn’t want a quickie in a back alley. You wanted a relationship. A woman. A home.

I zeroed in on the two women who’d been killed in their bedrooms. Both had been found lying on their beds. One had been shot. The other had been strangled.

You catch her at night. In her house. In her bedroom. She doesn’t look through you now, does she? She’s not too good for you now.

I tried to imagine the UNSUB shooting a woman, but the math on that one just did not compute.

You want her to see you. You want to touch her. You want to feel the life going out of her, little by little.

“This was the last one,” I said, pointing to the woman who’d been strangled in her own bed. “Different MO. Same signature.”

This woman had died watching him, and he’d posed her, propped her head up on a pillow, fanning her brown hair out around her death-still face.

Suddenly, I was nauseous. It wasn’t just what had been done to these women. It was that for a moment, I’d connected with the person who’d done it. I’d understood.

I felt a hand, warm and steady, on the back of my neck. Dean.

“You’re fine,” he said. “It’ll pass.”

This from the boy who’d never wanted me to go to the place I’d just gone.

“Just breathe,” he told me, dark eyes making a careful study of mine. I returned the favor, concentrating on his face—here, now, this moment, nothing else.

“You okay, Cass?” Agent Locke sounded worried in spite of herself. I could practically see her wondering if she’d pushed me too far, too fast.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Liar.” Lia strolled into the kitchen like a model on a catwalk, but for once, I was glad for the distraction.

“Okay,” I said, amending my previous statement. “I’m not fine, but I will be.” I turned around and met Lia’s eyes. “Satisfied?”

She smiled. “Delighted.”

Agent Locke cleared her throat and adopted a stern expression that reminded me of Agent Briggs. “We’re still working here, Lia.”

Lia looked at me, then at Dean, who dropped his hands to his side. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

I wasn’t sure if Lia was calling Locke out on a lie or telling the agent to back off. I also wasn’t sure whether she was doing it for me—or for Dean.

“Fine,” Agent Locke capitulated. “My brilliant lecture on the difference between organized and disorganized killers can wait until tomorrow.” Her phone vibrated. She picked it up, glanced at the screen for a few seconds, and then corrected herself. “And by ‘tomorrow,’” she said, “I mean Monday. Have a good weekend.”

“Somebody has a case,” Lia said, her eyes lighting up.

“Somebody has to jet,” Agent Locke replied. “No rest for the wicked, and as much as I’d love to take a human lie detector with me to a crime scene, Lia, that’s not what this program is. You know that.”

I’d gotten nauseous over pictures, long-dead women, and a killer who’d already been convicted. Locke was talking about an active crime scene.

A fresh body.

“You’re right,” Dean said, stepping in between Lia and Locke. “That’s not what this program is,” he told the agent, and even from behind, I could picture the look in his eyes—intense and full of warning. “Not anymore.”

YOU

You’re getting sloppy, killing so close to home, leaving the bodies spread throughout the back streets of the capital, like Hansel and Gretel dropping more and more bread crumbs the farther into the forest they go.

But from the moment you first laid eyes on her, it’s been harder to push back the desire to kill, harder to remember why you make it a point not to play in your own backyard.

Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe it’s fate.

Time to finish what you started.

Time to get their attention.

Time to come home.