After Rice stepped out of the way, Rachel returned to her position next to the bed and looked down at Gwyneth. They had bonded. Rachel reached a hand to Gwyneth’s face and lightly touched her cheek.
“I promise you,” she said. “We will get him.”
Gwyneth’s jaw went to work and she repeated the same message she had sent at the beginning of the conversation.
DON’T TAKE HIM ALIVE
36
We didn’t talk until we were out of the building and walking toward the parking lot. It was dark out now.
I had seen Rachel’s blue BMW when I had pulled in and parked next to it. We stopped behind our cars.
“That was intense,” Rachel said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“How was the dad out in the hallway?”
“Ugh. I never know what to say in that sort of situation.”
“I had to do that, Jack. Get him out of the room. I wanted her to speak freely because it’s important we know the details. We can assume that what happened to her happened to the other victims who we can’t talk to. Gwyneth provides the template.”
“And what is the template?”
“Well, for one thing. There was no rape. She invited him back to her apartment, ostensibly to show him the place for comparison since he was supposedly looking for a place to live. They had consensual sex — he used a condom — but not to completion. He couldn’t keep an erection. He pulled out and that’s when the nightmare began. He forced her up from the bed to stand naked in front of the bathroom mirror. He made her look at herself as he twisted her neck in a forearm lock.”
“Oh, shit.”
“He was naked too and she felt his erection come back against her back as he thought he was killing her.”
“Fucker gets off on the act of killing them.”
“All serials do. But the fact that there was no rape is important. It lends itself to why he is targeting women with the DRD4 gene. He thinks it gives him an edge in getting his victims into bed. There seems to be a psychological play in that. He doesn’t want to be a rapist. Doesn’t like what that says about him.”
“But killing women is okay, just not raping them first.”
“It’s weird but not unique. Have you heard of Sam Little?”
“Yeah, the FBI’s top serial.”
“Caught here in L.A. and good for as many as ninety murders of women across the country. He only started confessing to the murders once the investigators stopped calling him a rapist — which in his case he was. He was okay with admitting to killing women but would never admit to a single rape.”
“Weird stuff.”
“But like I said, not unique. If this is part of our profile, it could be useful to strategically put something in your story or the press releases that follow to motivate the offender.”
“You mean like have him come after me or Emily or FairWarning?”
“I was thinking more about him making contact with you. There are plenty of examples of serials reaching out to the media to sort of correct the record. But we would take safety precautions just the same.”
“Well, I would have to think about that, talk to Emily and Myron for sure.”
“Of course. We wouldn’t do anything without everybody being on board. It’s just something to think about at this stage.”
I nodded.
“What else did you learn from this?” I asked. “Anything that struck you as a profiler?”
“Well, he obviously dressed her afterward,” she said. “All the victims except for Portrero were dressed. All of them before Portrero were dressed and then dropped off in sometimes elaborate ways in an attempt to cover the murder. I would have to take a hard look at the other locations and where the women lived, but Portrero might show a change. He never removed her from her apartment.”
“Maybe with the others the sex wasn’t at their homes. They were where he was staying or in his car or something. So he had to distance them from him.”
“Maybe, Jack. We’ll make a profiler out of you yet.”
Rachel pulled out her keys and unlocked her car.
“Now what?” I asked. “Where do you go from here? Back to the bureau?”
She pulled her phone to check the time on the screen.
“I’ll call Metz — he’s the agent heading this up — and tell him I talked to her and they can hold off in the morning. He probably won’t be happy I jumped the gun but it will keep his people busy on the other stuff. After that, I think I’m going to call it a day. You?”
“Probably. I’ll check in with Emily and see if she’s still writing.”
I hesitated before getting to the question I really wanted to ask.
“You coming to my place or going home?” I asked.
“You want me to come home with you, Jack?” Rachel asked. “You seem upset with me.”
“I’m not upset. There are just a lot of things going on. I’m seeing this thing I started getting pulled by different people in different directions. So I get anxious.”
“The story, you mean.”
“Yeah, and we have that disagreement: whether to publish or wait.”
“Well, the good thing is we don’t have to decide that until tomorrow morning, right?”
“Right.”
“So I’ll see you at your place.”
“Okay. Good. You should follow me so that you can get into the garage and use my second parking spot.”
“You’re giving me your second parking spot? Are you sure you’re ready for such an important step?”
She smiled and I smiled in return.
“Hey, I’ll give you a remote and a key if you want them,” I said.
The ball back in her court, she nodded.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she said.
She moved toward the door of her car, taking her phone out of her back pocket so she could call Agent Metz. It reminded me of something.
“Hey,” I said. “I couldn’t see the composite when you showed it to Gwyneth. Let me see.”
She walked over to me, opening the photo app on the phone. She held the screen up to me. It was a black-and-white sketch of a white man with dark bushy hair and piercing dark eyes. His jaw was square and his nose was flat and wide. His ears did not extend far from the sides of his head. The top of each ear disappeared into the hairline.
I realized he looked familiar to me.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
I reached up and held Rachel’s hand so she would not take the phone away.
“What?” she said.
“I think I know this guy,” I said. “I mean, I think I’ve seen him.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. But the hair... and the set of the jaw...”
“Are you sure?”
“No. I just...”
My mind raced back over my activities in recent days. I concentrated on the hours I had spent in jail. Had I seen this man in Men’s Central? It was a night of intense fear and emotions. I had such clarity about what and who I had seen but I could not place the man in the drawing.
I let go of Rachel’s hand.
“I don’t know, I’m probably wrong,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I turned and walked to my Jeep while Rachel got in her Beemer. I started the engine and turned to look through the passenger window to give Rachel the nod to back out first. It was then that I realized where I had seen the composite man.
I killed the engine and jumped out of the Jeep. Rachel had already backed halfway out of her spot. She stopped and lowered the window.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I know where I saw him,” I said. “The guy in the composite. He was sitting in a car today at the coroner’s office.”
“You’re sure?”