Everyone was nodding, a good sign. Boutine signaled her with his eyes to continue.
“ Was the victim conscious? For how long? What was done during that period of time to inflict pain, suffering? I can tell you this much…” She slowed, pausing, gathering speed. “The killer took most of her blood away with him.”
“ What?” asked Byrnes.
“ In jars or packs or Tupperware, I don't know… but he carried most of it off with him. Indications and information tell us that the cabin where the murder occurred was not occupied long enough by the killer to allow him sufficient time to consume the blood before he left, and having not found it on the premises, I've assumed-”
“ But to carry it away?”
“ For what, future use?”
“ All I know is that it'd be difficult to consume two-and-a-half liters of blood in one sitting. Given the victim's body weight, the killer would've likely taken her blood in two sittings, hours apart… possibly three sittings. He didn't stay long enough in the area to do that, so he had to have packed it and carried it off with him.”
“ This Bud's for you,” said O'Rourke dryly.
There was muted, nervous laughter in response. “But there's more,” she said, “and worse information for you to swallow.”
She indicated to J.T. that she was ready for the slide presentation. When the first slide came up, no one aside from Jessica Coran and John Thorpe knew what they were looking at. The super-magnified photo of the throat section she had taken from Candy Copeland looked like an enormous spongy landscape on some barren planet, pockmarked and dune-covered. The photo was three-dimensional and in color, state-of-the-art.
“ What're we looking at, Dr. Coran?” Boutine asked for the others.
“ A close-up of the dead girl's jugular at the exact center.” She moved closer and using a pointer she located the geographic center of the jugular. “You will see here the perfectly formed circle like a Cheerio. This is not a normal aberration, but a wound, a wound that takes a great deal more precision to make than any slash to the throat such as the one you saw in the photos of the victim.”
“ But what does it mean?” asked O'Rourke, nearly off her seat with curiosity.
“ The killer used some sort of control mechanism-a device for gauging the flow of the victim's blood from her body.”
There was a long silence in the room before Byrnes said, “What kind of device?”
“ I don't know.”
“ Christ, you don't suppose it's a… a fang incision, a bite?” asked Ken Schultz.
O'Rourke said, “Don't be ridiculous.” Everyone else remained silent.
“ You must have some idea, a guess?” persisted Byrnes.
“ A valve, a tube… something to tap into the… well, her blood supply…” She hesitated.
“ Before the bastard got around to lapping up the remainder,” finished Boutine. “This guy's bad news… real bad news, people.” Chief William Leamy cleared his throat in the darkened room and asked, “Dr. Coran, do you know of any device used in medicine to drain away blood?”
“ Certain catheters working on a syphoning principle are used to draw off unwanted liquids from the lungs, but no. This is like putting a T-section in the blood vessel and rerouting the blood flow. No such device I know of in medicine works this way.”
“ How long did she suffer?”
“ Between twenty and thirty minutes. Lower extremities would have gone numb first, while the muscles in the head, eyes, and mouth would've continued to function, as blood was getting to these areas. Death would have ensued before all the blood was drained, but it would have been a slow death, and a death in which the victim would feel her life virtually running out of her. As to the crime scene itself, sir, a true crazy quilt of clues which were intentionally scattered-in more ways than one.”
Will Leamy spoke for them all when he said, “We can all agree on the heinousness of the crime. We've got to locate and put this madman away, before he strikes again.”
Everyone in the room knew that this was no simple task. Even if they could determine a suspect, so far they had nothing but DNA evidence from the semen to connect him to the scene. Furthermore, it had been determined that the semen possessed a virtual plethora of common elements, and so far nothing even remotely striking about it. Further analysis would be done, but Jessica was skeptical that J.T. would find anything additional, much less useful. It was like having the fingerprint but no suspect to match it with.
Jessica was pleasantly surprised by the warm looks and the nods and a few handshakes the others offered when the lights came up and Boutine called an end to the meeting. The method of proceeding from this point was to give the evidence presented time to saturate, for the PPT people to form some opinions about the kind of killer they were dealing with. Jessica had expected that the think-tank psycho-profiling team would be cooler toward her than they were. She had pictured people more interested in statistical probabilities like so many accountants over actuary tables. Boutine had tried to tell her otherwise, and it appeared he was right. They were highly intelligent, very experienced, instinctive players, this team of four that included Boutine. They would go to work now to create a profile of the most probable sort of man to do the horrendous deeds they'd only just heard about from Dr. Jessica Coran and Boutine.
Otto's team enjoyed a reputation of being the best in the PPT business. Jessica had always believed this was due to the leadership, to Otto. But the meeting had been a revelation to her as well as Otto's people, for she found them far from cautious, far from halting about making great leaps, and a great deal more curious than she'd imagined they would be. And she had gotten through to them. They had seen her worth. Hopefully, so had Chief Leamy.
The psychological profiling team appeared to have been won over by the slides J.T. had made of the wound, and her explanations to the team. She gave a smile, a nod and a twinkle in her eye to J.T. for having saved her from a tough fight. Without the slides, she doubted anyone would have believed her about the killer's modus operandi. It had given the hounds a scent and fascinated them with the cruel new twist on murder that the killer had developed.
Teresa O'Rourke, in particular, was fascinated. She held back, asking questions of Jessica. “What're your plans? What steps will you now take?”
Boutine was busy with Leamy, but he cast a wary glance in her direction. She wasn't sure how much she should share with O'Rourke beyond what was said to the group. She certainly didn't want to talk about exhumations to anyone other than Boutine. “That'll be up to Otto. Most assuredly, we'll be working day and night in the laboratory.”
“ The semen samples tell us anything about this guy?”
“ DNA results have confirmed he's white. That's-” she hesitated, studying O'Rourke's gaze “-not about to help us much.”
“ Bears out the statistical average.” O'Rourke's voice suddenly took on a raspy, piratical tone when she added, “Look, we're both women on a man's mountain here, Jessica. You mind if I call you Jessica?”
“ Not at all, Teresa.”
“ Good. Look, I understand you actually isolated some trace elements of blood that's most likely that of the killer's.”
“ He must've nicked himself, but yes. We… I found trace elements of blood other than the victim's in Wekosha.”
O'Rourke smiled. “I was told you had an eagle's eye and a deft touch.”
“ Oh, really?” She wondered who O'Rourke had been talking to. J.T.? This was cleared up with her next words.
“ Thorpe tells me you got enough to run tests on.”