"Two," she said. And Claudine moved away on shapely legs.
Lockwood surveyed the fishing fleet. His brow furrowed while Karen looked at him. The residue of the conversation in the car was still on them, and they were both unsure about it, trying to put it behind them.
"John," she finally said, a bit too brightly, "I know if we get The Rat, we go a long way toward making things better. So let's get started." She pulled a yellow legal pad out of her purse.
He looked down at it, nodded without speaking, then reached over and turned the pad so he could read it. He glanced at the columns of behavioral traits she had listed, and then turned the pad back.
"A real psychotic?"
"Far from it," she said. "A psychotic is someone who's lost touch with reality. Psychotics are easy to catch. They don't usually have a plan. The Rat has a strong reality. He knows what he's doing. He's organized, methodical, and very smart."
"So what is he?" Lockwood asked.
"He's a psychopath," she replied. "Psychopaths are much more dangerous."
"I stand corrected," he sighed, "but you know what I meant."
"Right. Sorry. In my field of study I tend to be a little anal." She smiled. "I've been trying to predict his behavior," she continued, "because all of this is useless unless we can figure him out and get a step or two ahead of him."
"Right."
She paused as Claudine brought back the beers and waited while they glanced at the menu. Both of them ordered stone crab and key lime pie.
After Claudine had gone, Karen went on. "I think his post-offense behavior is very significant. I've been focusing on that. He does his mutilations after death. That probably means he's not a sexual sadist. He's not killing for sexual gratification. Even though he masturbates at the scene of the crime, it isn't, in my opinion, the main reason for the killings. I've been trying to categorize these murders. I think they belong under the general classification of personal cause homicides."
Lockwood's career in law enforcement had concentrated on drug and gun smuggling and money laundries. Psych murders were a category he had never focused on.
"They are acts resulting from interpersonal aggression," Karen explained. "The victim in a personal cause killing might not know the killer, and the homicide is not generally motivated by material gain or sex. Emotional conflict usually drives the act."
"Oh," Lockwood said, not much closer to understanding.
"To further tighten the classification, he shows some signs common to two sub-categories: One is Erotomania, which is fantasy killing stemming from the UnSub's fusion of identities. The other category is Extremist Homicides, which are characterized by an overwhelming political or religious belief. I also think he may be a Collector. He's collecting body parts…"
Lockwood winced. "Neat hobby, but why?"
"There's no way we're gonna figure that out until we catch him. The reasoning with these UnSubs is always very twisted. There was a guy in California who was killing women and eating their reproductive organs, because he believed that his skin was dying and that the reproductive organs would reproduce new flesh and keep him alive. Doesn't make sense, but the guy in California killed ten women as a result."
Lockwood lost his appetite for a moment, then nodded. "Go on," he said.
"So his post-mortem behavior is methodical. He surgically removes parts, he burns his brand on their left breast. By the way, that may indicate that he's right-handed, if he faces them, stands over them when he does it. Then he cleans up his crime scene and leaves. He cools off for a while, a week or two. During this period, he could contact people, become slightly more normal. If he's a multiple, as I suspect, he might even return to his core personality, Leonard Land. This phase is probably short-lived, and then his cycle begins again.
She flipped two pages back on the pad and glanced at what she had written. "I think the choice of the name Rat' is significant. I've done a profile on that animal's real and perceived characteristics-"
"Come on, Karen. You're profiling rodents?"
"John, everything this guy does in connection with these crimes is significant. If he'd called himself The Shepherd I'd be looking at sheep. There's something in that name… a reason he chose it. Hang with me, it comes out with a conclusion."
"Go."
"Under factual information, the word rat comes from the Latin rodere, meaning to gnaw. There are two kinds of rats that make up the majority of the American rat population, brown ones and black ones. In general, black rats live aboveground, brown rats live in walls and dark spaces and underground. I'm going to concentrate on the brown rat because he seems to fit better… He lives and feeds frequently on garbage… I think it's more than mildly significant that our boy works in an abandoned garbage barge. Rats are known to be extremely wary and cautious creatures that quickly detect approaching danger. They usually feed at night and are classified as nocturnal." She looked up at Lockwood. "So far, our Rat is a night killer. Rats tend to live in small concise areas, usually not more than one hundred fifty feet in diameter, but if food is scarce, they can travel long distances to forage. I'm not sure how appropriate that characteristic is and I don't want to beat this analogy to death, but from what we know, our Rat seems to move around when he kills. Maybe that's because he can't find the 'food' he needs near home."
"Okay, or maybe his selection process isn't based on geography, maybe it's based on something else."
"Exactly… According to scientists, rats are generally considered to be the most dangerous animals to people on the face of the planet." "Come on, really?"
She nodded. "In terms of sheer body count, it's true. They attack infants, often killing them. They frequently cause apartment fires by chewing through wires. And then, of course, there's disease, plague, rabies, you name it." She looked up. "Okay, that concludes the factual data.
"Now we go to folklore… what people believe about rats. We have assigned them a very low place on the personality scale. They are considered to be mean, vicious, and disloyal. Rats are also thought to be sneaky. I think these are traits that Leonard believes he has. They're ugly and dirty. I think our Rat hates the way he looks. Rats are shrewd. He might think of himself as cunning and shrewd. I'll tell you this… He's no dummy. That trick with the heat and air-conditioning in Atlanta was very inventive and difficult to achieve… close to brilliant. Without Malavida, we never would've come upon it."
"Okay, so he's smart, cunning, ugly, vicious, disloyal, and nocturnal.. what else?"
"Rats are ferocious. When cornered, rats will attack viciously with little regard for their safety… and this is a point I'm most interested in. I think our going to his place could represent, in his mind, an attack on him. It caused him to blow up his own house, move his barge. I think he may feel cornered."
"You saying he's going to attack us?"
"I think we have to consider the possibility."
"How's he gonna attack us? He doesn't even know where we are." "I don't know. It's just something to be alert to."
Lockwood looked out at the boats tied up at the dock. He listened to the rigging rattling against the aluminum masts. His mind skipped across what she had said and a thought hit him. He turned and looked at her, realization in his eyes.
"If he's been watching the news, he knows where Malavida is," Lockwood said.
"You're right, he does. But Malavida's under guard. Hard to attack when there're cops outside his door."
They sat in silence for a minute, and then the stone crabs came. They cracked them open, pulled out the meat, and ate, both of them deep in thought.
"Look, let's say I wanted to get to Malavida," Lockwood ventured. "This guy hacked into one computer very efficiently. How hard would it be to hack into the computer network at Jackson Memorial Hospital?"