Toni untucks her legs from the chair, pushes to her feet, and then walks to Joe’s desk with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. She looks over his shoulder and asks, “Do you need any help?”
“No, but thanks for offering. Hey, why don’t you work on the Mitchell case? We’d all love to see that one put to rest.”
“Okay.” She nods and returns to her desk. Once there, she swivels in her chair and watches Joe. Her eyes are narrowed, and her eyebrows pulled down in intense concentration. After a few moments, she twists her mouth and bites the inside of her bottom lip. Then with a slight shrug, she turns back around to focus on the Mitchell case.
Joe leans forward, his arms braced on his thighs. He stares at the computer screen when the information that Cynthia shared—death—comes back confirmed. A coldness runs across the back of his neck.
Rose Gonzales was part of the housekeeping staff at a hotel in New York, New York. Her body was found in the bathtub of room 313. It was rolled in a shower curtain that had been removed from the rod. Her throat had been slit with precision and accuracy. The room had been registered to an Edgar Wycoff. There were no fingerprints. Everything had been wiped clean.
The description of the vehicle Wycoff used to check in at the hotel was a rental car they found abandoned ten miles away. The security cameras at both the rental car agency and the hotel had been disabled in advance, so the murderer wasn’t caught on camera.
The autopsy determined that Rose had been raped before and after her death.
In her comments, the medical examiner, Dr. Felicia Simmons, annotated, “There are three basic types of rape—anger, power, and sadistic.
“Rose Gonzalez was kept alive on purpose. Her larynx and laryngeal nerves were slit, while avoiding her trachea. And though she could still breathe, Ms. Gonzalez couldn’t make a sound during the frontal rape. A power rape. Afterward, both of the carotid arteries in her neck were severed. Once dead, she was raped again. This time, anally. A sadistic rape.
“We know a few things for sure. The killer didn’t wear a condom. We were able to collect semen from the victim. Unfortunately, after running the data through CODIS, we came up empty-handed—no DNA match. Why he’d leave semen but wipe his prints clean is beyond me. But whoever it is, knows his anatomy.”
The cold serrated edge of police work cuts jags across Joe’s heart. Sickened, he shakes his head and repeats the search process in the database with Yolanda. He discovers the same brutal pattern.
Yolanda Davis had been part of the housekeeping staff at a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. Her body was found in the bathtub of room 224. It was rolled in a shower curtain that had been removed from the rod. Her throat had been slit in the same manner as Rose. Twice. And she’d been raped the same way. Twice. The first time, supine—face up—while still alive. The second time—prone—face down, postmortem. The room had been registered to a Philip Gray. There were no fingerprints. Everything had been wiped clean.
The description of the vehicle Gray used to check in at the hotel was a rental car they found abandoned ten miles away. The security cameras at both the rental car agency and the hotel had been disabled in advance, so the murderer wasn’t caught on camera.
The term “serial killer” turns over and over in Joe’s mind. A third murder will earn the killer the monstrous title.
Typing each name from the rectangular badges in the suitcase into the database, Joe finds murdered housekeeping staff from differing hotels across the country. He methodically runs through each case, the highlights of which are on his computer screen. Teagan Lewis in Chicago, Illinois. Mai Lee in Los Angeles, California. Teresa Mendez in Boston, Massachusetts. Linh Wong in Dallas, Texas. Amala Banik in Portland, Oregon. Silvia Miller in Kansas City, Kansas. Veronica Alvarez in Denver, Colorado. And Devi Chandra in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Joe slumps back in his chair, reeling from the information that’s fastened like a tick in his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a breath. As he exhales upward through his lips, he thinks, This is the work of a serial killer.
He thinks back to one of the department’s mandatory classes taught by a forensic psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Hamilton. Pulling a file from his desk drawer, he reads his notes. She’d explained the difference between narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy, saying, “A narcissist is someone who lacks empathy, is grandiose, entitled, seeks validation, and is arrogant. They have trouble regulating their self-esteem. When a narcissist does a bad thing, they feel a fair amount of guilt and shame. More shame than guilt, because they’re concerned about how other people will view them. Shame is a public emotion. They don’t like being viewed negatively in the public eye. As a result, they’re held hostage by the opinion of others.”
Joe sets his notes on his lap, closes his eyes, and thinks about something his dad told him years ago when they’d been discussing pride. “Son,” he said, “people often value their reputations more than their integrity.” Joe nods his head in silent agreement.
Picking up the paperwork, he continues reading. Dr. Hamilton went on to say, “Psychopathy is a different animal. Psychopaths are all of the things a narcissist is, except there’s no guilt and no shame. They don’t feel remorse when do they something terrible. They make great serial killers, assassins, and people who are hired to go in and gut a business. They don’t care who gets hurt.”
Not wanting to rely solely on his notes, Joe opens his drawer again and digs through paperwork to find the handout from Dr. Hamilton’s class. He flips through the stapled pages until he gets to the part that he’s looking
