Inmate 1577 (10 page)

“It’s not that easy,” Vail said.

“Karen, I think I’m getting close to being comfortable enough with our relationship to call you what your friends do.”

The reference seemed to confuse Friedberg, but he apparently sensed it was not a flattering remark. “Hang on a sec,” he said, pulling the cigarette from his mouth. “Let’s take it down a notch. We’ve got two very upsetting murders. Let’s keep our heads clear and work together.”

“There are going to be others,” Vail said.

“How the hell do you know that?” Burden asked.

“Yeah, I don’t think that notch was quite as low as your partner suggested. But to answer your question, this UNSUB is skilled at what he’s done. He appears to do lots of planning. He’s thoughtful, cool under pressure, and engages in high-risk behavior without the anxiety one would expect to see. He shows preplanning and a certain level of comfort that doesn’t come the first time out of the box. He’s brought his torture weapon with him, meaning he’s either done this before to others, or he’s thought a lot about what he wants to do and how he’s going to do it.

“Based on what I’ve seen at the crime scenes—the way he gained access to the vic’s house is one example—I think he’s intelligent, and if I had to guess, I’d say he’s got formal education. He’s physically agile to some extent. He’s aware of police presence—the hooded sweatshirt might be one indication, though I’m not entirely sure of that yet. We’ll see if tracking down the ice cream vendors pays off. I’m betting it won’t. From what I’ve seen so far, this guy is smarter than that. He wouldn’t expose himself that way. And there’s definite purpose in how he posed Mr. Anderson’s body. Why, what it means, we don’t know yet. But when we figure it out, I guarantee you it won’t have been random.”

Shit. I just gave them a profile...well, a bit of a profile. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. But I’m not very good at that, am I?

They sat in silence for a moment, absorbing that information. Finally, Burden spoke. “So it seems like you’ve already got a decent feel for this guy.”

“I’m in for a dime, so might as well make it a million bucks. Here’s more to consider. Leaving William Anderson in the middle of San Francisco...he’s flipping off the police, the FBI, and the victim. In the unit, we call it a ‘360 degree Fuck You.’ It’s extremely arrogant, risky, and shows a complete lack of empathy. The point is that all of these factors are indicative of psychopathy. This type of psychopathic individual would likely be more of the interpersonal type versus a white-collar psychopath.”

“Interpersonal type?” Friedberg asked.

“The lack of defensive injuries implies he was able to use his verbal skills to get close enough to the victim to take control. We call that type of psychopath interpersonal for obvious reasons. Contrast that with the bully type, which would hit the victims over the head with a club—no talking, just
bam!
and he’s in.”

“So you’re saying he’s a social guy,” Burden said.

“Not exactly. He has advanced verbal skills that allow him to appear less threatening to his victims.”

Burden looked over at the frozen image on the screen. “So we’ve got a glib serial killer who’d just as soon as ram an umbrella up your ass and tear up your internal organs as chat you up in engaging socially stimulating conversation. This just keeps getting better.”

Now you’re starting to see what we’re up against.
“Our offender has physical violence in his repertoire of behaviors—behaviors that I believe he’s used in the past, maybe even more than his verbal skills. His anger is intense and he sustains it. But here’s the thing—even though he can experience anger, it’s not like the anger you and I feel. His comes and goes—it’s very intense, then suddenly it’s gone. Jekyll and Hyde.”

“But the crime scene,” Friedberg said. “The blood, all the torture, all the physical damage to the victim—he obviously lost it. No?”

“No. A guy like this, their scenes can be at the extreme end of the injury scale, but they can be very composed on the inside. So he can appear to be in control because he doesn’t experience emotions the way we do.” She scooted her chair forward. “Not only that, but he likely ejaculated. That suggests what I just described—that he’s capable of losing his anger enough to experience sexual arousal and then go back to acting out aggressively.”

“Are you sure we’re dealing with a psychopath?” Burden asked.

“There was a study done by Safarik, O’Toole, and Meyers on simultaneous states of arousal. An offender can’t be in a state of rage and sexual arousal at the same time. So at a scene where I see a lot of physical injury to the victim, and she was sexually assaulted and semen deposited rectally or vaginally, it strongly indicates a psychopath. They’re the only ones who can go into a heightened ‘emotional’ state like anger, then lose it quickly and then get sexually aroused. That’s just not normal.

“In terms of practical application to our case, we’d likely see this as a hallmark of his in his past crimes. Interpersonal crimes of violence. And—it’s probable that he’s had contact with law enforcement before because of this anger.”

A long moment passed. The two inspectors appeared to be absorbing the information.

“Well,” Friedberg finally said, “you’ve totally ruined my day, Karen. Sounds like this is a seriously bad dude we’re after.”

“I’d have hoped you would’ve already known that from what he did to the wife.”

Burden cleared his throat. “So why do you say it doesn’t fit the typical elderly female sexual killer?”

Vail sighed deeply. She looked over at the hooded offender on the screen. “Okay, here’s the deal. There are a number of similarities here. I’ll be totally honest with you so you can make your own assessment. When we’re talking about an offender who sexually murders elderly women, the mean age of the victim is usually around 77. So we’re in the ballpark here. And the vics they choose are overwhelmingly Caucasian—about 86 percent. Our vics are Caucasian. And more than 70 percent of the typical vics have lived in their place of residence for ten years or more. The Andersons have been there nineteen. And like the Andersons, over 70 percent of the typical elderly vics did not have better home security than simple locks on their doors.”

“You saw the crime scene,” Friedberg said. “No alarms and no forced entry.”

“Right. And we see that in about 60 percent of the cases, where the offenders enter through unlocked doors or windows—”

“So that fits.”

Vail bobbed her head. “Yes—but maybe not. For the moment, let’s stick with the similarities. The injuries inflicted on the victims appear to be consistent with what we would expect to see. The typical injury severity in an elderly sexual homicide is much greater than what’d be necessary to cause death.”

“Overkill,” Burden said.

Vail nodded. “We’re getting away from the term ‘overkill’ and starting to call it an ‘excessive injury pattern’ because it’s more accurate. But yes. The vics often suffer multiple severe injuries. Strangulation is the most common, somewhere around 65 percent of the time. Blunt force trauma is second, in the high thirties. But broadly speaking, that’s really where the similarities end.”

“These guys who do this to old women...” Friedberg said. “I remember Safarik talking about a specific motive, but I can’t remember what he said it was.”

“Safarik found that, on the surface, it’s all about power, or anger, or both. In a deeper sense, though, it’s really about punishing, dominating, and controlling his victim. This offender’s assaults are rarely about sexual gratification. Physical force is the predominant form of violence they use—often involving their hands, fists, or knives.” Vail leaned back in her chair. “But the most interesting thing—and I think this makes a hell of a lot of sense—is that these offenders, who tend to be younger men—see the elderly female as representing an authority figure. Or they may even be the actual woman who was the source of the anger he’s feeling. And that’s obviously why he wants to exert power over her. With these sexual homicides, sexuality is the method he uses to get his revenge or to transmit his hostility.”

Friedberg placed both elbows on the desk. “You said the UNSUB we’re looking for doesn’t look like the typical offender who rapes and murders elderly women. But everything you’ve said so far sure looks like the kind of guy we’re looking for.”

“Like I said, there are similarities. But they’re mostly similarities relative to victimology. If we look at offender characteristics and the behaviors left at the scene, it’s a different story. The offenders who sexually abuse and then murder elderly women are criminally unsophisticated. It’s a spontaneous act, with little or no planning. They leave behind a fair amount of evidence and the scene is sloppy and random.

“He doesn’t make efforts to hide or protect his identity. And he uses a blitz attack to gain control and disable his target. While our UNSUB’s attack was brutally violent, it wasn’t blitz-like. Like I said before, it was controlled anger. And it doesn’t look like he had any trouble controlling Maureen—or William. We’d also see property taken, money or valuables. Far as we know, nothing was missing. There’s more about these offenders I can tell you, but unless we’re convinced this is the type of guy we’re looking for, it’s senseless—”

“Like what?” Burden asked. “Share it all so we can make an informed decision.”

Vail frowned. “Fine. These offenders tend to be alcohol or drug users. They have lower intelligence and are what we used to classify as disorganized. They’re often unemployed and have a poor work history. Not surprisingly, that goes with a diverse arrest record, for a variety of unrelated crimes. And they also tend to be antisocial and/or socially incompetent—which doesn’t appear to be the case with our UNSUB because, unless the Andersons were easy marks, it looks like our offender was able to talk his way into the townhouse with no signs of difficulty.”

“You’re holding back on us,” Burden said. “You said there was an exception to all this.”

Indeed I did.
Vail sighed. “I didn’t want to confuse things because—”

“Confuse things, or confuse us?”

Keep calm. Count to ten. Hell with that—who’s got time to count to ten?
“Safarik did have a case like Maureen Anderson. Robert Mark Edwards tortured an elderly woman to death. Rammed things up her vagina and ruptured her uterus and internal organs, then pulled her fingernails off with pliers and did the same to one of her nipples. Edwards was a sexual sadist who was also a smart guy. But he’s an outlier.”

Burden spread his hands apart. “So our UNSUB could be an outlier, too.”

“Sometimes you have to go with your gut. You’ve been a cop a long time, you know that. And I know Mark Safarik and I’ve discussed all his cases with him. And if Mark were here, he’d tell you that guys like Edwards are exceptionally rare, that our UNSUB is a different animal than the animals in his research.”

“Well, he’s not here to tell me that. I’ve gotta take your word for it. Regardless, you shouldn’t have held that back.”

“Burden, listen to me. You know how many serial offenders there’ve been? I can’t brief you on every case that could be similar to this one. Part of my value to you and Robert is to cut through all the fat and narrow things down. Just like if you had a list of fifty suspects, my profile would pare it down to a handful who are most likely to be our UNSUB. That outlier case is so rare, it wasn’t worth mentioning. And there are other things, too, which support that.”

There was a silent moment as Burden and Vail stared at each other.

Friedberg cleared his throat. “Back at their place, you wanted a list of all residents within a six-block radius.”

“Because these offenders typically live in the neighborhood and walk to their victim’s house. They’ve lived in the area for years, and they may’ve even seen the victim a number of times in the past. A guy I know does geographic profiling—which is basically the study of where offenders feel comfortable operating from a geographic point of view. The research suggests some offenders create ‘mental maps’ of an area when they identify one or more victims who interest them.”

“Mental maps?”

“An offender catalogs victim information in a mental ‘card file’ that allows him to find that victim again in the future. Mental mapping.”