After barely maintaining his balance, he crouched and waited, to see if anyone was within the sealed-off room who had an opinion to express about his intrusion—for instance, bullets flying through the closed door…
Nothing.
Morgan opened the loft door. To his right, his hand found a switch and flipped it. The room remained dark, but Reid called from downstairs: “That red light just came on!”
Morgan turned it off and found another switch next to it. When he flipped that, two ceiling fluorescents flickered to life.
The long, wide room ran the entire length and width of the garage. The space was surprisingly cool for this hot, humid August day— air-conditioning, Morgan realized. Pretty pricey extra for a spare room above a garage, photo lab or not.
A long table along the back wall was home to a large laser printer, a flat-panel monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard. A two-foot computer tower squatted beneath the table.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves consumed the west wall. Shorter shelves on the north wall, below a window, held leather-bound, numbered journals. On two long, end-to-end tables midroom, where the chemicals and baths and pictures hanging to dry should have been, no sign of any photography darkroom equipment was to be seen. Instead, the tables were covered with maps, photos, and a few books.
Coming in, Reid said, “I figured as much. All digital.”
Morgan jerked a thumb toward the computer tower. “You think you could get into that?”
Shaking his head, Reid said, “I wouldn’t even try. Too much chance of losing evidence. We’ll get the local computer forensics crew in.”
At the tables, Morgan looked down at maps with had spots circled on them— each one a crime scene.
And the photos, grisly photos, were shots from every crime scene, as well.
“They could just be from the job,” Reid said, with a reasonable lilt in his voice. “His job is, after all, to go to crime scenes and take photos. He could explain all this stuff away as circumstantial.”
Morgan pointed to one of the books, Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: Profiling Why They Killby Max Ryan.
“Circumstantial,” Reid said.
Then Morgan saw it.
From under the book where it had peeked out at him, Morgan pulled out a photo—Addie Andrews and Benny Mendoza… before the shooting.
The couple walked along obviously unaware their picture was being taken, coming down the sidewalk from Addie’s house, probably shot from the park across the way.
Morgan held it up for Reid to see.
“ That,” Reid said, “will be harder for him to explain.”
“Go get Hotch and tell him we’re going to need a search warrant before we go any further… but there’s not much doubt we’ve found our man.”
“Well, his lair, anyway,” Reid said, then, holding up a photo of a two-story brick townhouse with a flat roof. “This is interesting. And worrisome.”
“Why?” Morgan asked. “What’s that?”
“That is 2319 East One-Hundredth Street—where Richard Speck murdered eight nurses. The crime that’s going to be copied next, if we’re right. And where Rossi and those two Chicago detectives were headed, when we saw them last.”
Chapter Eleven
August 7 Chicago, Illinois
Generally, Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi was fairly laid-back; right now he was on edge.
Hotchner had phoned twice, over the last two hours—once with the name of their suspect, crime scene photographer Daniel Dryden, and again to alert him that Dryden was still unaccounted for and might well be headed Rossi’s way, if the picture Reid had found in the garage loft was any indication.
Rossi and the two detectives, Lorenzon and Tovar, sat in a black SUV, air conditioner doing overtime. The two cops were in front, the FBI agent in back.
Across the street, in the late afternoon heat, two African-American women sat on the front stoop of 2319, the first-floor windows and the inside front door open. A small window air conditioner chugged in a second-floor window. The women, both in shorts and tank tops, were watching three young children playing in a minuscule front yard, two boys and a girl, none older than five, taking turns chasing a plastic ball, kicking it, catching it, then kicking it again, each squealing with delight, oblivious to the humid heat.
Rossi explained the Dryden situation to the two detectives.
“Daniel fuckin’ Dryden?” Lorenzon said with a head shake. “Him I would’ve never guessed. How would a zero like Dryden have the balls for something like this?”
Rossi said, “That opinion’s part of what motivates him.”
Lorenzon looked puzzled. “My opinion?”
“Not yours in particular, but that sort of mind-set. Dryden had some early success, and now he thinks he’s a loser—and that’s the feeling people get being around him. He’s smart. No question, we’ve seen that. Yet in his day-to-day life, he doesn’t have any self-confidence. He feels he doesn’t have control. These killings, this is how he gets back some control.”
Lorenzon was frowning. “Control of what?”
“The victim, for starters. You remember what we said about manipulation, control, and domination?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“This is where that comes into play. Dryden manipulates, controls, and dominates his prey. For once, he’s not on the receiving end of such things.”
“How can he compare being snubbed to killing people?”
“We’re not talking about reality, Tate—we’re talking about the killer’s perception.”
Lorenzon nodded, but was still frowning in thought.
“Take a hypothetical,” Rossi said. “Suppose you’re driving in Chicago traffic, and get cut off.”
“I don’t have to suppose very hard.”
“Then it happens again! Are you pissed?”
“Depends on how close the guy came, but, yeah, maybe a little.”
Nodding, Rossi said, “Pretty normal response. Our killer would go straight to anger after the first time… and furious enough to kill after the second.”
Tovar said, “That’s screwy.”
“Careful,” Rossi said with a little smile. “You’re getting into highly technical profiling terms now. Meanwhile, back in Chicago traffic, it would never occur to the killer that two separate people simply didn’t see him or weren’t paying attention. For him, this is all part of a conspiracy on the part of society to stifle him, to not recognize his talent, his brilliance. As far as he’s concerned, cops like us are out to get him, not for his crimes, rather as part of a society that’s alwaysbeen out to get him.”
Tovar said, “But this guy’s been a functioning member of society for years.…”
“Sure,” Rossi said. “Being a cold-blooded killer doesn’t rule that out.”
The two detectives gave him a look.
Rossi shrugged. “Sue me. It’s true.”
Across the street, the kids kept playing.
“You know,” Rossi said, with a nod toward the children, “we need to get them out of here—no point in handing him victims.”
Tovar said, “I thought he was after nurses.”
“He’s devolved to a ‘close enough’ state—maybe not nurses, maybe just wiping out everybody at that address.”
Traffic on One-Hundredth Street was steady but everybody knew this was a residential neighborhood and held their speed down accordingly. The profiler and the two detectives climbed down from the SUV, then strolled across the street.
They were halfway when an eastbound gray Ford Crown Victoria, an older model, slowed as it approached. They were almost across when the car picked up speed.
As the car shot by, even though its windows were tinted, Rossi recognized the driver at once. Or was he just projecting his anxieties?