“Um,” said Page. It was between a grunt and something more thoughtful.
Hess knew Page was already disagreeing with him, and that was fine. That was why he was here.
Page looked through the glossies of the dump sites. He wore a homely pair of black reading glasses. Hess remembered Page bragging he had 20/15 vision because that’s what Hess had.
Hess listened to the swish of the photographs and the mockingbird in the pine.
“Tim, tell me what you know about the victims. While I read through this.”
Hess told Dr. Page about beautiful, confident and occasionally lonely Janet Kane. Then about the very spoiled though very decent Lael Jillson.
“The pictures in there don’t capture how beautiful they both were,” he offered.
Dr. Page, with a curious smile: “And what have you seen that does?”
“Other pictures. Family. How they lived.”
“How was that?”
He told the doctor about Janet Kane’s bulk hair products and Lael Jillson’s enthusiasm for private hours without her husband and children around. He mentioned Kane’s interest in art and Jillson’s thoughtful diary. He didn’t say anything about the leather playthings in Janet Kane’s closet or Lael Jillson’s weakness for marijuana and gin. As he talked about the two women he’d never seen Hess felt protective of them, like he owed their memories a simple kindness that their bodies, at the end, were not offered.
“That print on the fuse may be your miracle,” said the doctor. “Because you’re right, Tim — if that’s what you were assuming, anyway — he’s been printed before. He’s got a sheet and he’s spooked and he knows what pressure feels like. You’ve run across him somewhere. Could be way upstream in juvenile court, but somewhere he’s felt the lash.”
“That’s why he’s careful.”
“You’re damned right it is. But what an ego. I mean, what an astonishing arrogance by leaving those purses.”
“Do you think they’re more for us or more for the public?”
“For you. Funny, the media calls him the Purse Snatcher, but he’s the opposite of a purse snatcher. He leaves the purse and takes everything else. It’s all he leaves. That and the blood.”
Page looked up at the sky like it might have something to say. Hess liked the way Page could draw sense out of something that seemed only evil. Hess took the pieces and made his own picture.
“It would be easy for him to take the purses,” Hess said. “But if he did, we’d have to keep the women in the missing persons’ files forever. In an investigative sense, there would be no murder.”
“He needs someone to hear the tree fall — you.”
“He’s experienced, isn’t he?”
“He’s practiced, but not necessarily experienced. From the time and distance between the dumps I’d say Jillson and Kane were his first actual homicides. Plenty of time to let the first one blow over, but not enough confidence to vary the routine very much. Nobody starts with something of this magnitude. You work up to it. If nothing else, you work up to the how of it. And like most builders he’s never really satisfied with what he makes. It’s always got to get bigger, better, more elaborate. Riskier. More complex. So, you may have two purses sitting in evidence right now, but when he goes again, he might just give you more to work with. It’s part of escalating the risk, and the risk is a major stimulant to him.”
“He’ll go again.”
“Absolutely. He’s abducted and murdered twice. And we understand that this is a sex killing, of course. So, there won’t be any more half measures for the Purse Snatcher. No more of the things that he practiced, the scenarios he created to get him to this point. He’s graduated. He’s big time. He might move halfway across the country, he might win the lottery, but he won’t stop.”
“Any chance at all that he’s keeping them alive?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Why?”
“For one, it’s totally impractical. But more importantly, he prefers them dead, Tim.”
“How do you know that?”
Dr. Page smiled, a little ashamedly, thought Hess. “Tim, he’s taking them with him. His fantasy doesn’t climax in a rape-kill scenario. It begins with one. What is interesting to this man — what is essential about him — happens after he’s killed and raped them. Note the order there — not rape and kill.”
Hess thought about this.
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-five to thirty. That’s enough time to see his vision and learn his methods. But not enough to leave twenty or thirty women dead behind him — because that’s how many you’ll have ten years from now if you don’t catch him. Actually, I’d guess he’d leave the area before he got that many. Any hits through VICAP?”
“Nothing hot. I talked to Lyle Hazlitt back in Washington early this morning. He says there’s a Michigan case open, two women kept in a cabin after they were killed. Wife and mother-in-law, though. They’re chasing the husband down in south Florida now.”
“No,” said Dr. Page.
“There’s a guy breaking into funeral homes in New Orleans, taking the corpses. They don’t know where or why.”
“No. But that’s an interesting case. That kind of protracted necrophilia is extremely rare. There’s very little even written on it.”
“Maybe he’s holding the corpses for ransom, waiting for the furor to die down before he calls their families.”
Page smiled. “You’re such a Pollyanna sometimes.”
They laughed at this.
“I’d love to interview this guy, Tim.”
“I’d like to stop him.”
Page nodded and looked through the photographs again.
“He thinks he’s repellent to women, so he blitzes them. But if he was truly physically hideous someone would remember him hanging around the malls. No, he sees himself as unworthy of engaging a live woman. Takes the whole woman. A corpse is reusable, Tim. Look for a freezer or a large cooler, possibly in a storage unit somewhere close to where he lives. It’s possible he’s cut them into refrigerator-sized parts, but I don’t think so. No evidence of flesh rent or bones sawed, no easy way to use power tools out in those woods... no. I think they’re whole. The formalin near the bleeding ground makes me think of embalming or preserving, too. I see from your notes here that you thought of that, already. The question is why would he lug embalming fluid and the requisite needles and tubes around with him if he could just do that all at his place a little later? He takes tremendous risk out there in the Ortega.”
“Efficiency. Blood out, fluid in. Done.”
“I guess. Nothing to hose off. Interesting how neat he is, isn’t it? Hang and bleed them like deer. Now, that’s a direction you can go if you want to.”
“I want to.”
“It’s too obvious to ignore. A hunter. Someone with experience dressing animals in the field. An outdoorsman. Likewise a butcher or slaughterhouse employee. Certainly someone with the rudiments of human biology and a knack for the mechanical. I mean, he’s getting into those cars without tripping the alarms — that isn’t easy. So, throw some electronics know-how into the profile. He’s also got to be pretty strong, to hoist them up like that with the rope. White male, of course. I don’t have to say that. How do you think he’s subduing them, Tim?”
“I have no idea.”
“He may strangle them right there in their cars. Dark parking lots. It could be over pretty quick if he’s strong.”
“True. But wouldn’t he want to damage them as little as possible?”