Lorenzon and Rossi nodded to the photographer. “Jerry Peters,” the photographer replied, shaking hands with Rossi and Lorenzon.
“You on the Aurora PD?” Lorenzon asked.
“Freelance,” Peters said. “Too many crimes, not enough cameras. I’m all over the suburbs.” He shrugged. “You help where you’re needed.”
They turned to the detective.
“Detective Henry Karl,” the cop said, extending his hand. “Aurora Police Department.”
Rossi introduced himself and they shook hands. The senior agent then introduced Reid and Lorenzon.
“Glad to meet you,” Karl said with a wide smile. “Thanks for pitching in. This big guy is our crime scene tech, Orlando Ramirez.”
The African-American with the crime scene kit shook hands all around, then took a step back, his limp exaggerated a little.
“Football?” Lorenzon asked, nodding toward the leg.
Speaking with the barest trace of a Spanish accent, Ramirez said, “I wish. Nine mil in Cuba, when I was a boy.”
“Ouch,” Lorenzon said.
Rossi nodded toward the crime scene. “What have we got here?”
“A nightmare,” the photographer said.
The cop and CSA nodded and shook their heads, in accidental synchronization.
“We don’t usually have anything like this out our way,” Karl said. “We’re far enough from the city that not much of the slime rubs off. Hell, we would have thought it was just a robbery gone bad without that photo… plus Detective Tovar calling us to tell us this was part of a serial crime.”
“This isn’t just far from the city,” Reid said, looking all around. “This preserve is at least five miles from anywhere. Any idea how the UnSub got out? Are there tire tracks?”
“Ay, mierda,” Ramirez said. “This place has more traffic than you would think, Agent Reid. Sightseers, picnickers, nature lovers, people looking for a little privacy in God’s great green world. Are there tire tracks? What does a bear do in the woods? We’ve been here since before sunup, and most of what we’ve done is take tire impressions and pictures of tire tracks. Your suspect, though, he left another way.”
Reid cocked his head. “What other way?”
Ramirez gave a harsh single laugh. “On a damn bicycle.”
Rossi said, “I’ve seen weirder.”
“Come with us back to the scene,” Karl said. “Orlando and Jerry found some good evidence, I think.”
The six men followed the blacktop a quarter of a mile into the woods to where a gravel parking lot filled a small clearing on the right. The victim’s car sat at the far end.
The car—a newer, green Honda Accord—had Illinois plates.
Rossi asked, “Is he a local?”
Karl shook his head. “We traced the plate to a Peoria guy named Vern Latham. Salesman for a company that deals with Mastodon, local company that makes tractors and earthmovers.”
“So,” Rossi said, “here on a sales call?”
“Yeah,” Karl said. “We’re trying to retrace his steps, but it’s hard, since no one seems to have seen him since he left Mastadon yesterday afternoon.”
Rossi shook his head. “ Someonesaw him.”
Reid studied the car and its position. He leaned inside to look at the bloodstains.
“Three shots,” Karl said. “Probably a .22. I doubt he ever saw it coming.”
Reid said to Rossi, “It’s as we thought—Aileen Wuornos.”
The others had come over by now.
“Who?” Karl asked.
Rossi turned to them. “You haven’t seen this morning’s Chicago Daily World?”
Karl grunted. “I wouldn’t wipe my ass with that rag.”
Ramirez said, “They don’t sell it out this far.”
Rossi nodded. “Okay, I better bring you fellas up to speed.”
Quickly the profiler did so.
“Son of a bitch,” Peters, the photographer, said. “He’s copying famous serialkillers?”
“Yes,” Reid said. “This one is Aileen Wuornos, and it’s a frankly audacious choice for a male UnSub. Wuornos was a prostitute in Florida who shot seven men. Six were found and identified. Peter Siems’s car was found, but his body never was. This crime was supposed to match that. Except he didn’t think you’d find the body so quickly.”
“You’re sure about this?” Karl asked.
Reid said, “Call it probability.”
Rossi put a hand on Karl’s shoulder. “Trust us,” he said. “If Dr. Reid says it’s Wuornos, it’s Wuornos.”
Reid’s eyes narrowed to slits. “This may mean we have a male UnSub whose physicality lends itself to a remarkable masquerade.”
Rossi said, “Dr. Reid means the UnSub probably pulled off a drag queen routine that fooled his victim.”
Eyes wide, Karl said, “Posed as a woman, and what? Picked him up somewhere, a bar maybe?”
“As a working hypothesis, yes.”
Reid faced the Aurora detective. “Where was the body buried?”
“Over here,” Ramirez told them, and led them to an area not far into the woods.
The grave had been shallow, blood still visible in the bottom.
Reid shook his head. “He couldn’t have thought this would fool anyone.…”
Peters said, “Maybe he wasn’t trying to hide the body.”
“He shouldhave,” Reid said. “That was part of the Siems crime. He got the date wrong too—that crime was July 4, 1990. He missed by over a month. This is, generally, the Siems scene… but he’s getting sloppy.”
Peters frowned. “How many has he killed?”
“Seven, that we know of.”
“How sloppy can he be, if he’s at large after seven of these atrocities?”
Reid said nothing. Turning to Ramirez, he asked, “Any evidence from the grave?”
“Just that he used a camp shovel to dig it. The marks on the sides aren’t wide enough to’ve been caused by a full-sized shovel.”
Looking back toward the parking lot, Reid asked, “How did you determine the UnSub left by bicycle?”
“I came across something,” Peters said, and led them over to a spot past the other side of the parking lot.
Soon they stood around a bare area of grass surrounded by piles of leaves.
Peters pointed. “He had something buried here under the leaves. Could have been a bike.”
Then Ramirez and Peters led them further into the woods to another area that had been cleaned away, this one larger than the first.
Rossi, hands on hips as he looked down, asked, “What do we have here?”
Ramirez said, “The escape route.”
“Yeah?”
Ramirez pointed to thin ruts in the grass. “Tire tracks from a mountain bike.”
“Could it have been a motorbike?” Lorenzon asked. “Kind of out in the boonies for a bike, aren’t we?”
“Maybe, but it’s not motorbike tracks. The killer had a bicycle snugged here and did his thing and just pedaled away.”
Rossi was nodding. “This guy’s organized,” he said.
Karl’s eyes went from Rossi to Reid and back again. “One of you says he’s organized, the other says he’s getting sloppy. Do you guys reallyknow what the hell you’re doing?”
Rossi gave the detective a sly smile. “Hard to believe, maybe, but we do. The UnSub has been organized in how he plansthe crimes, but he’s becoming more disorganized in his actual carrying out of the crimes.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction?” Peters asked.
Rossi’s smiled broadened. “Isn’t making murder an art form a contradiction in itself?”
Hotchner was livid.
He had spoken on the phone, personally, with the editor of the Daily World, who had gone on and on about the first amendment and freedom of the press when obstruction of justice was more like it. The team leader knew he should have left this critical work to Jareau and got off the phone as soon as he realized how futile the effort.