“This may sound crazy, Doctor, but could he be killing these women for some perfectly logical reason? Something we can’t understand because we lack the information?”
“Crimes of this type are always eminently logical to the man who commits them, Cole. Keep one thing in mind. In serial murder, selection is everything. How does the killer choose his victims? What fantasy do they fulfill? If you can parse that out, you have your man. Or at least his profile.”
“He uses EROS to select them.”
“That’s merely method. What are his criteria? The printouts you gave me are interesting, but they’re basically seductions. They reveal no critical similarities among victims. Neither do studies of the victims’ bodies or daily lives.”
“They all had pineal glands.”
“Yes. But of what sexual importance is the pineal?”
“I don’t know. Does it have to be sexual?”
“Ultimately, yes. All murders of this type are sexually motivated. It’s just that the sexual component may be deeply repressed. The taking of the pineal conjures images of cults or mad scientists, but in the end, all this will resolve into some variant of old-fashioned lust. Mr. Strobekker is what we called in the bad old days a lust killer, Cole. A sex killer.”
“That’s why you asked so much about my sex life.”
He nods distractedly, his head swaying slightly from side to side as he drives. When he speaks again, his voice carries startling certitude. “I’m the only man alive who can stop him, Cole.” He glances over as if to reassure me. “No, I haven’t lost my head. All my life I’ve been training for this moment. You should see some of the profiles the junior men in the Unit have turned in. Not even close. Strobekker has them all chasing their tails. Why? Because he’s a new species, Cole. They don’t have little crib sheets that fit him.”
“And you do?”
“I don’t
I keep my eyes averted, surprised by the emotion he has invested in this case. “Unless Hostage Rescue gets him in-” I glance at my watch-“sixty minutes, you mean.”
“Of course,” he says, looking at me. “I’ve been speaking in terms of a single person, but the evidence points to a team-offender situation. That’s what underlies the police interest in you and Turner. And that’s what makes Dallas such an interesting development. Think about it. Who is inside that apartment?”
“I just don’t see what you want from me.”
“You will. I’ve been studying the printouts you gave me, and I’m convinced I can trap Strobekker.”
“How?”
“By creating a fictional woman, then becoming that woman on EROS. To be frank, I’m almost done with her.”
I am trying to digest Lenz’s words, but the implications are too complex to take in at once.
“She fits the new victim profile almost exactly,” he adds.
“New profile? You mean you’re making her like Karin Wheat instead of the younger victims?”
“Yes. It’s rare for a killer to establish so clear a pattern and then break it. If Wheat were merely a crime of opportunity, I’d discard her from the group. But she wasn’t. Wheat represents a new paradigm.”
“And my function?”
“Smoothing my entry into the EROS community.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into, Doctor. God only knows what databases this guy can access to check out people who approach him on-line.”
Lenz chuckles. “Don’t worry about that. Daniel’s men are very good at paperwork. My personal Eliza Doolittle is in the process of coming to official life as we speak. Social Security number, DMV, voter registration, credit cards, credit history, a house, and a car. In a matter of hours she’ll be as real as your wife.”
“What’s this fictitious woman’s name?”
“Anne Bridges. But that’s irrelevant. It’s the alias that matters, correct?”
He’s right. “What’s the alias?”
“Something primal,” Lenz says, obviously pleased with himself. “Archetypal. Biblical.”
“What the hell is it?”
“You’re interested now? Don’t worry, you’ll know soon enough.
I could care less about the alias, but I do want to know who is in that Dallas apartment. After all, it was I who first detected Strobekker’s deadly passage through the digital universe. “But you don’t know anything about how EROS really works,” I point out. “There are all kinds of esoteric abbreviations, informal practices, things that are understood only by the members.”
Lenz smiles. “You just argued yourself into the job.”
“You really think you can fool people-not just people, but
“That’s what makes it worthwhile. How much insight do I truly have into the female mind? This will be the acid test.”
He blinks his headlights twice and roars past a semitruck. “We’re over halfway to Quantico, Cole. Let’s hear your secret. If I decide it’s unrelated to the case, you get me started on EROS, then you go home with no more police problems.”
I turn and look out the passenger window. Halfway to Quantico. Halfway to the Hostage Rescue Team knocking down Brahma’s door in Dallas. Lenz wants answers to his little questions, snapshots of my soul before I’m allowed into the inner circle of the investigation. What am I proudest of? Most ashamed of? The answer to the first question is private but not really secret, and it will get me to Quantico. The other answer can wait until that door goes down in Dallas. It can wait forever.
“I played music professionally for eight years,” I say evenly.
Lenz settles back in his seat. “Were you successful?”
“Depends on your definition. I made a living. But as far as reaching my dreams, no. I’m a good songwriter and guitar player, but only a fair singer. Some people thought I was better than I did, but I always felt I needed someone else up front as lead vocalist.”
“And this dependence led to conflict? Resentment?”
“Yeah. I’ll skip five years of wasted time. The last band I was in had major-label interest. But by the time we’d gotten that far, the group was ready to self-destruct. I was writing the best material, and the singer-a good friend of mine-couldn’t stand my getting that part of the glory. Forget that he got all the spotlight time. He wanted it to be him singing his stuff or nothing.”
“So?”
“So it was nothing. He’s still out there singing his stuff. The clubs are bigger, but he’s on the same treadmill. When that group split, I decided I’d never again put myself into a situation where my destiny was controlled to any degree by another person.”
“Now I understand the commodities trading,” Lenz says. “No messy humans to deal with.”
“You got it.”
“And you got rich.”
“You’re damn right.”
“You sound angry.”
“Good assessment.”
Lenz drives silently for a half mile, and I’m glad for the delay. Finally, he says, “And?”
“Before all that, I went to college like most of my friends. Majored in finance, the whole thing. But I’d wanted to play music since I was a kid. I used to ride up to Leland and Clarksdale and play blues with the old black cats-Son Thomas, Sam Chatmon, those guys. When I got out of college, I went home and told my parents that before I got a
