She's come to dread the hours of her leaving. Gail has become an image on the periphery of Frank's vision, an annoying shadow that will neither go away nor come into focus. Gail deserves more than her slightly besotted and grudging tolerance, but that's the best Frank can muster these days. She tells herself her apathy will pass, that someday she'll be able to see Gail clearly again and will remember why she fell in love with the doc. But for the moment, memory eludes her.
Frank sighs and glances at her wrist. She has an hour and twenty minutes left with her kids.
"Back to one perp," she tells them. "No problem. That's where we started this whole ride. So what have we got? One male, black. Age? I'm thinking older than your average bear. Anywhere from early thirties to mid-forties. Why, you say? Elementary, children."
For each point she makes Frank pops a finger from her fist.
"Your abduction—spontaneous as it may have been—was very well executed. It took nerve and finesse, not a combination usually found in your younger perps. The quality of the overall execution, from abduction through the assault to the dump, tells me this guy's either been thinking about this for a long time or he's done this before.
"Now, you might ask, if he's done this before, and he's a local boy like you insist, why don't we have similar cases popping up in the databases? Excellent question. To wit, I think he's also very smart. Not book smart, mind you, but savvy. Shrewd. He knows enough to strike well away from home.
"Which leads to an aside. I would expect him to be driving a high-mileage, dependable vehicle, something with a simple engine that he can make repairs on himself, because we know he's good with his hands, and he probably doesn't have a lot of money. He probably can't hold on to a job for long because of his stellar personality. He's anti-social and we can surmise he doesn't react well to stressors. Even if he has kept the same job for a while he's certainly not promotional material. But I digress."
Frank rattles the ice in her almost empty glass.
"He hits away from home. And I think he takes whatever victims happen along. Witness you two. Trevor, hate to say it, buddy, but you were just an afterthought. It was your sister he wanted. I'll bet he's got a considerable porn collection and spends a lot of time with it. Tides him over from strike to strike. Lots of helpless female/dominant male crap. He gets off on imagining himself in control of situations, because in real life he's not. Like I said, low-income, poor people skills, and because he's smart, he probably knows he's missing out, that everyone's after him and that the world owes him.
"Look at the way he raped you, Ladeenia. Like he was entitled to you. We haven't found our boy because he's cunning. He's been around enough to know how the game is played, and he's smart enough to play without getting caught. He's learned a trick or two, and that comes with age."
Frank pauses long enough to pour Scotch over the vestigial ice cubes. The Pryce kids grin at her.
"So. Older black male. Some sort of skilled laborer. He's smart, so I think he needs to be challenged. He'll do something that requires some degree of training or experience. He might even be very good at it, but again, his personality will get in the way of advancement.
"How about his home life? Where does he live? Well, if he's employed he'll have a stable residence, but he can't be too selective about his job so he might have to travel a ways to get to it and still live in an area that his income dictates. Again, the need for a stable, reliable vehicle. It's probably well maintained, because we know he's organized and good with his hands. An older model in good shape. Probably something American, easy to work on, cheap parts. Probably doesn't trust foreign cars. Sorry. Again I digress."
She glances at her watch and drains the glass. Pours another inch from the bottle and prowls silently. Based on Ladeenia's multiple rapes, the perp is sexually adequate, so he could well be living with a female. But he took the kids somewhere private, a place probably not far from either the dump or the abduction site. So, if he is living with a woman, she wasn't home between 3:00 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Nor would she be expected to return as he had plenty of time with the children and kept their bodies presumably until he could dispose of them under cover of night.
The trace evidence on Ladeenia suggested she was attacked in a kitchen or a place where food is served, maybe a dining room. If the perp expected someone home sooner or later wouldn't he have sought more privacy?
"We know he's organized," Frank says to the kids. "He apparently had you both well in control. No defense marks on you, Ladeenia. Your nail scrapes came up negative. Nice, quiet little girl. He could have taken you wherever he wanted. So why'd he rape you in such a public space, where anyone could walk in and see him? He took a huge risk abducting you but that's really his only risk. Everything else he did was planned out. You two came to him somehow, didn't you? Not that I'm blaming you or saying you did anything bad, but somehow you crossed his path and he took advantage of that. Two kids walking alone in the late afternoon on a drizzly dark day...
"Maybe his stressor was a fight with the old lady, so he's sitting in his doorway, or in his garage, home alone, just thinking and drinking. He sees you, Ladeenia, and bam! He's gonna take what's his. Shit." It dawns on her. "I've been canvassing for a couple, and now we're back to a lone perp."
Frank decides she'll go back to the more cooperative people and ask questions based on the new profile.
"Okay. Whatever. We'll do what it takes. Back to your assault, Miss Ladeenia. The salient characteristic here? It wasn't personalized. He didn't cover your face, or blindfold you. Didn't bind you or perpetrate any kind of sadism or mutilation. The assault was completely impersonal, like you were as insignificant as a blow-up doll. You filled this guy's needs and then he dumped you like garbage. No anger, no remorse, just pure, narcissistic satisfaction. He was scratching an itch."
There was no indication the perp had a relationship with Ladeenia. He wouldn't care for or pretend to care for others. He would be self-absorbed and self-obsessed. His relationships were probably unsatisfying for both partners and Frank couldn't imagine them lasting long. If he'd been married it was probably for convenience. Maybe his women stayed because he had some money, a crib. He'd definitely cheat on them and he probably had a string of sexual contacts, most of them short-term because he probably had no motivation for a relationship other than sexual satisfaction. And more his own than his partner's.
Frank stops her relentless pacing long enough to make a few notes, then addresses the pictures.
"Got a little sidetracked there. Back to his chitty. Ah, and here's the crux of the thing. Get this. Assuming he takes good care of his ride, what better place for this guy to be—where he can see you two coming down the street and initiate contact with you—than in his driveway, or in his garage working on his car? It wasn't actually raining between three and four, just blustery. So he could have been outside, sees you coming, lures you into his garage somehow and bam—you're in the house. I like that."
She nurses the liquor, eyes closed, still for a moment. Not a family man, she thinks, so not a passenger vehicle. Sports cars take money and they're temperamental. They're flashy and compact. If this guy is a serious rapist, then he's going to spend a lot of time cruising around in his vehicle. He'll need space to spread out and feel comfortable. Nor would he appreciate a sports car's high visibility. And if he is a skilled laborer, he might have his own tools and need space for hauling them.