“So what we have learned is useless.”
“No, far from it. If he has moved, it’s been relatively recent. Between the last of the muggings and the first of the murders. There must be civic records that would reveal who lives there and if anybody’s gone in the last couple of months. I could be wrong, he could still be living there. But if I was the investigating officer here, I’d make it my first priority to look at residents inside the red block who have moved out.”
“You think he moved to make it harder for us to find him?” Berrocal asked.
“No, I don’t think he was planning that far ahead. And he may not have left his home from choice. He may have been forced out because the building was being developed for some tourist-related business. He’ll have seen this as a terrible provocation. If that’s what happened, it could have been the factor that tipped him over the edge into murder. He’s been nursing his hatred for a while now, judging by the length of time these earlier offences cover. Perhaps this tourist development has been on the cards for a long time and he’d been fighting it. Then finally, he lost. And he decided to take revenge on the people he thought were to blame.” Fiona leaned back in her seat. “I know it might sound far-fetched, but as psychopathic motives for murder go, it’s as coherent as any. And it makes sense of these events in a way that conventional theories of sexual homicide don’t.”
“The way you explain it is certainly logical,” Berrocal acknowledged. “Can you print these maps out for us? I’d like to get started on this line of inquiry as soon as possible.”
Fiona nodded. “No problem. I’m also in the process of writing a full report for you that incorporates all my reasoning. I’ll include a basic behavioural profile of the perpetrator.”
Berrocal frowned. “I thought you didn’t approve of behavioural analysis?”
“Taken on its own, I think it has limited value. But when you incorporate it with crime linkage and geographical profiling, it can be helpful.”
Berrocal looked dubious. “So, when will your report be ready?”
“I should finish it today.”
“Good. Then I can distribute it among the investigation team. First thing tomorrow, I’d like you to attend a briefing with them to answer any questions and deal with any objections?”
Fiona nodded. “I’d be happy to.”
Berrocal got to his feet. “And then I presume you will want to return to England?”
Fiona smiled. “You presume correctly. There’s nothing more I can usefully do for you right now, so I may as well go home.”
He nodded. “I’ll let you get on with your report,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said absently, her mind already on the next task. The sooner she finished this, the sooner she could start to think seriously about going home.
He never knew how long it would last. That was why he had to savor every moment of it, like a kid opening Christmas presents, unsure which garishly wrapped parcel held the gift that really mattered. The trick was to arrange it so that everything built to a climax. But sometimes it didn’t, and he hated that loss of absolute control, hated the rage that boiled through him when those sluts let him down, when they failed to hold out long enough for him to extract each single possible drop of pleasure from their pain. Death should be the final moment in the crescendo, not a sad diminuendo leaving the spirit dissatisfied.
That was why he worked with such dedication towards perfection. Experience had taught him that every stage released its own particular flavor, from the first moment he chose her to the final moment when he abandoned her. The secret was to plan. The taste of anticipation was almost as good as the spectrum of sensuality supplied by the execution of his perfect scheme. So too was the satisfaction of watching the small minds pitted against him as they struggled through their skirmishes with his handiwork into ultimate failure.
At first, his opponents had been as insignificant as the crickets that chirped the night away outside this safest of safe houses. Dumb sheriffs officers who’d never investigated anything more complicated than a fucked-up raid on the local Seven Eleven had no chance of coming anywhere near him. He knew the chances of them even managing to complete a VICAP report and file it with the FBI were remote. All that paperwork, interfering with the consumption of Dairy Queen hamburgers and brew skis no chance.
So puny a challenge couldn’t last forever. He’d known that. He’d bargained on that. He’d set himself up right from the start to beat the finest, so there was no real satisfaction in running rings round the morons who’d gone into small-town law enforcement because they didn’t have the stones to make something of their lives. They thought they knew their turf so well, but that hadn’t stopped him moving into their territory and stealing a woman from under their noses. His greatest triumph this far had come with number five. La Quinta was the daughter of the local sheriff in a small Nebraska town.
As usual, he’d removed her from her own home. Saturday night, and her parents had gone out to a benefit dinner for the local Republican candidate for the Senate race. The girl had opened the front door without a second thought as soon as she saw the Highway Patrol uniform. It had been laughably easy to knock her to the floor with a single blow to the face. Hog-tied, she’d spent the night in the trunk while he drove the interstate, fueled by adrenaline and nicotine.
By mid-morning, he’d been home. Surrounded by dense woodland, away from the possibility of prying eyes, he’d carried her indoors and gotten down to making her his slave. Shackled to a bench in his workroom, La Quinta had learned that pain takes many shapes and forms. The delayed sting of the razor cut. The blossoming of a burn from a smart to a roar of pain that spread inwards as the smell of barbecued flesh drifted outwards. The searing agony of flesh forced to accommodate more than it has room for. The sickening pain of a broken bone never allowed time to knit. The dull distress of a blow strategically aimed at the organs nestling beneath the skin. It took her days to die.
He’d enjoyed every waking moment.
Then he’d taken her back home. Not all the way home, of course. That would have been reckless. He drove her as far as the first bend over the county line on a quiet back road, then left her body sprawled across the blacktop for the next passing driver to crush beneath his unsuspecting wheels.
La Quinta had made them sit up and pay attention at last. He’d read enough to know what would have happened next. An urgent request to the Feebies, then a computerized search of the country to find matches. As soon as they realized he meant business, the machine would have kicked in. True to his prediction, the suits had arrived. And then, finally, she had flown in to face a flurry of cameras at the airport.
Now at last, the game was on.
Jay Schumann was in town. Dr. Jay Schumann, the forensic psychologist who had turned her back on a lucrative private practice to become the FBI’s celebrity mind hunter Jay Schumann, who had single-handedly restored the tarnished image of psychological profiling with a string of spectacular successes. Jay Schumann with those intense dark eyes that contrasted so sharply with her bright blonde hair, a photo opportunity who gave the suits a human face. Jay Schumann, whose glamor had persuaded her bosses that they should use her skills on the media as well as on the criminals.
In the twenty years since she’d so heedlessly and needlessly humiliated him on the night of the senior prom, they’d both traveled a long way from the small New England town. But he had never forgotten nor forgiven the whiplash of her scorn that had branded him and distorted his life forever.