His face went pasty. “You… you’re a man?”
“And to think I called you a fool, when you’re clearly such a perceptive observer.”
He flicked the safety off the .22 automatic. Not a big gun, but big enough.
“Please… pleasedon’t kill me! Please, I…”
The first shot hit Tom in the face and he sagged back against the door. He groaned once and two more quick shots silenced him.
“Now you’re wet for me, Tom.”
“The UnSub," Hotchner told the assembly, “is highly organized—he plans ahead and, so far at least, he seems ready for pretty much any situation he encounters.”
Working quickly now, he got out the passenger side, came around to the driver’s side, opened the door and watched as Tom flopped out of the car into a heap on the ground.
From the purse, the killer got a handkerchief, then got back into the vehicle to wipe down everythinghe had touched. The wig, purse, and gun, he took with him. Outside, he plucked a Mini Maglite from the purse, clicked it on, and sent the beam, narrow and pointed low, out ahead as he made his way to a pile of leaves at the far end of the parking lot. After shoving the leaves aside, he pulled out a backpack he’d buried in the underbrush.
Next, he picked the corpse up under its arms and dragged the thing into the woods, where he tossed it into a shallow grave. Using the camp shovel with which he’d dug it, he filled the hole in quickly.
Changing out of his “Aileen” apparel, and into his regular clothes, took barely any time even in the near-pitch darkness of the forest. All the while he dressed, he strained to hear any sound. He knew he was in the middle of nowhere, but the possibilitythat someone had heard one of the shots, or seen the flash as they drove by, had to be considered.
“The photographs serve a couple of purposes,” Hotchner told the attentive group. “First, they function as a souvenir, giving him a way to relive the crime later. The UnSub can re-create the excitement for himself with the pictures. Secondly, they are his instrument to communicate with us… and to tauntus.”
After packing his female clothes in the backpack, he got out his camera. As he set up the first shot, he wondered if he should send it straight to the FBI. The idea amused him.
They knew about him now, these so-called “profilers.” Taunting the police was easy, almost too easy, but the feds—these particularfeds—made a new challenge.
Perhaps it was time to say, “Hello, and welcome to myworld.”
He snapped the photo, flash strobing the night; then another, then changed angles and took a few more. Then, in a burst of inspiration, he realized that a bigger, more spectacular introduction was needed for the profilers.
And he knew just what to do.
When he had finished shooting his photos, he squatted outside the passenger side of the car. Looking through the windows on each side, he could see the moon hanging just above the trees, the mark’s blood black on the driver’s side window in the moon glow.
He took a couple more photos. He loved the black blood. It took every ounce of strength he possessed not to touch it.
But a real artist knew not to touch a masterpiece when it was still damp.
A voice from the audience called out: “What he’s telling us now?”
Prentiss detected a note of sarcasm in the question, but Hotchner answered it straight.
“That he’s in control. That he’s smarter than us. That he can strike any time he wants… and there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”
Rising, he strode to the backpack and put away the camera, then swung the pack onto his shoulders.
He had known he would not want to walk back to town, and a hitchhiker would be noticed. Deeper in the woods, not near any trail, he had taken a secondhand bicycle he bought this morning and chained it to the trunk of a tree, before covering it with leaves and dirt. Even in the blackness, the arithmetic was simple: just count his steps from the concrete block that held the trash bin across the parking lot to the spot one-hundred-fifty steps into the woods where the bike lay waiting.
Ten minutes later, he was on the road, pedaling toward town, nothing more than a silhouette in the night, “Aileen” as dead as Tom.
Rossi stepped forward. “What is he saying? He’s saying ‘Go screw yourselves.’ ”
This got a few laughs in the big hall.
Rossi continued: “But, just for the record? He’s not limiting that sentiment to the five of us on this stage. He’s saying it to every man and woman here. This UnSub thinks he’s smarter than all of you and all of us, put together. And, so far, folks… he’s been right.”
No one laughed at that. The auditorium fell silent and Rossi stepped back, nodding to Hotchner to continue.
He did. “There are some other things we’re pretty sure about, too,” the team leader said. “He’s white. Serial killers hardly ever cross racial lines. He’s between thirty-five and fifty.”
All across the audience, pens were scribbling furiously in notebooks; here and there, mini-cassette recorders were held up.
“These are not the crimes of a young offender,” Hotchner was saying. “These murders are too sophisticated, too organized, the fantasy too well formed, to have been committed by someone who hasn’t had years to develop it. He also has patience. Some of these crimes took a long time to set up… and evidence suggests he’s even stalked some of the victims.”
Morgan said, “That’s a patient man. He’s going to have a job that allows him freedom to come and go as he pleases, as well.”
“He’s single?” one cop called out.
“Not necessarily,” Prentiss said. “It’s just as likely we’ll find that he’s married. He might even have kids too.”
Morgan nodded. “He’s not acting out the sexual aspects of the crimes on his list, and that is a major, significant omission. No sexual evidence has turned up in these crimes. So there’s no reason to think that he’s married or not. Remember Dennis Rader, the BTK killer in Wichita, Kansas? Married and with two kids.”
Reid added, “Andrei Chikatilo, the Russian serial killer, was also married and had two children.”
Taking back the reins, Hotchner said, “Also like Rader, who had a job with a security company for fifteen years, our UnSub will be a police buff or work in security or he could have applied for the police and been turned down. He could, presumably, even be a current officer.”
No mention of Detective Denson would be made today, however; Hotchner had made that clear to his team.
Rossi said, “But he is very likely to find a way to inject himself into this investigation. Further, he’s got his own car. These crimes have taken place around the city, and they’re too far away from each other for him to walk or take public transportation.”
Hotchner picked back up: “His car will be either a police-type vehicle, like a Ford Crown Victoria, or something larger, perhaps. That fifty-five-gallon drum got to Chinatown somehow. The vehicle will be nondescript and probably a dark color, navy blue, gray, maybe black. He’s moved in and out among people both at Bangs Lake and Chinatown, yet no one seems to have noticed him.”
An audience member asked, “You really think it could be a cop?”
Rossi stepped forward again. “We’re not saying it’s a cop any more than we’re saying it’s the night watchman at Navy Pier. This is a typeof person. We put all the pieces together, and we narrow down the list of suspects from everybody in the United States, to everyone in the Midwest, to men in Illinois, to white men in the greater Chicago area, to cop buffs with too much time on their hands.”
Morgan said, “Eventually, we’ll get down to one guy and the sooner, the better. We can do this, but we need your help.” He pointed at random faces in the audience and tapped his finger, bing bing bing bing. “You’re our eyes in the streets, guys. Allof you. Which is why we’re trying to help you know what to look for.”