Body Count (4 page)

“Deal. I'll see you out there.”

The gym's busy, with about twenty guys and only two other women there. One of the women is Dr. Amanda Rosen, the departmental psychologist. She, Sam and I often work out together, and occasionally Amanda joins us if we catch a movie or a bite to eat after the gym. I'm sure she'd socialize with us more if it weren't for the fact that she has to do our six-monthly psych evaluations. I don't think she wants to get too friendly.

I recognize the other woman from forensics, but I haven't worked with her yet and don't even know her name. I make a mental note to get Marty to introduce me.

Amanda sees me and smiles. I smile back then begin stretching. I jump on the treadmill. The rhythmic motion and sound of my feet hitting the tread sweep over me, and I let the day's thoughts wash away.

I used to go for the wrong sort of girl. I'd pick the dumb ones because I thought they'd be easier. Which they are, of course. But I've refined my art and skills and moved up in the world over the years. Now I like the smart ones. The harder ones. Sometimes I even consider going for the fancy ones…the women who live in the lap of luxury with their designer clothes, six-figure incomes and think they're untouchable. But that's the nice thing about my calling—no one is untouchable. I can have anyone I want. And sometimes I enjoy just that, picking the hardest prey and watching the cops chasing their tails. Idiots! That's partly why I moved here. For the challenge. I'm right under
their
noses. I wonder what they'll make of me?

I'm sick of being the nameless, faceless person who never gets any recognition. If only they knew how smart I was, what I'm truly capable of…maybe then they'd see me.

I've picked the next special girl. To her I'm just one of the millions living in this city. But soon she'll know me. Soon, they'll all know me.

I
pull the cork out of a bottle of Australian shiraz from my small collection and Sam opens the pizza box. We've gone for marinara on a thin crust with extra cheese. She pulls a piece upward, stretching the mozzarella until the piece finally detaches from the rest of the pizza.

She takes a hearty bite and says through her mouthful, “Damn, your pizza shop's good.”

“Thank God we got our workout in,” I say, taking a bite and pouring wine at the same time.

I place Sam's glass in front of her and hold mine up. “Cheers.”

“What are we toasting to?” she asks, picking up her glass.

“Who knows…good health?”

“As good a toast as any.”

We clink glasses and both take a sip.

“Good wine, girl.”

“It's an Australian shiraz. What do you expect?”

“Not biased, are we?”

“Well, maybe a bit.

We finish our first slice of pizza in silence, concentrating on filling the holes in our stomachs. We both take another piece.

“So, Sam…”

She looks up at me, midbite.

“Marco's had lots of women?”

“Finally!”

“What?”

“You've been feigning lack of interest for months and finally you've realized you're into him…and boy is he into you.”

“I don't know about that…”

“'Course you do.”

I smile. Maybe I do. I've never told Sam about the night Marco and I nearly kissed. “So, the question?”

“Not that I know the man's every move, but I've worked with him for the past year and he's dated a few women. That I know of.”

“Yeah, and for every one you know of there's probably another one or two you don't.”

“Possibly. He's a good-looking man.”

I smile, picturing Marco. Even the standard FBI dark suit can't hide his physique, which, I must say, is pretty close to my idea of perfect. Marco is six feet tall, with broad shoulders and well-defined muscles. His upper body is complemented by a muscular torso and long, strong legs. His ass looks pretty good too. His hair is dark
brown and short, the standard Bureau cut, and his facial features are broad, with a well-pronounced jawline. It gives him the classic, masculine chiseled look. You can see his Italian heritage in his coloring, especially his slightly tanned skin and rich, intense brown eyes. His one imperfection, a scar that runs across one eyebrow, only adds to his sex appeal. He's good-looking all right. I don't usually go for them that good-looking.

“Have you ever?” I say.

“Me? Marco? No. He's a good guy, but not my type.” Sam takes her third slice of pizza. “Dig in, girl, before I eat it all.” She takes a mouthful and follows it with a large sip of wine. “Marco's too serious for me. But he's right for you.”

“I didn't know matchmaking was one of your talents.” I hold my wineglass to my lips and give her a cheeky smile before taking a sip.

“I'll have you know, I've introduced two married couples to one another.”

“Really?” I'm genuinely impressed.

“Sure. And my money's on you and Marco.”

I laugh. “Are you taking bets?”

“I can if you want. We could run a pool in the unit. Take bets on when your first kiss will be.”

“That'd be terrific,” I say and roll my eyes.

“Just say the word.” She takes another mouthful. “Look, as far as I know, they were just dates. It doesn't mean he sleeps around or is only after one thing.”

“They're all after that.”

“Well, yes. But some of them realize that a good woman isn't about conquest.”

It's true. At least I have to hope so.

“But we work together,” I continue. “I don't know if it's such a good idea.”

“It's not ideal. But if the spark is there, it's there.”

Sam's right.

“And you wouldn't be breaking any rules, or anything,” she adds.

“No?”

“The official line is that it's okay for agents to date one another.”

“That's good to know.”

“But you would get flack from other agents. In fact, the Bureau's even coined a term just for FBI couples.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. If you and Marco get together, you'll both be called double agents.” She pauses. “You'd make a good double.” She laughs.

“Gee, thanks.”

I take the last piece of pizza.

Sam gets rid of the box. “Shit, it's nine o'clock. We better get started.”

She spreads the contents of the D.C. file over my dining-room table while I move the plates and bottle onto the counter. I refill our wineglasses and hand Sam hers. As soon as I see the photos I freeze.

“What's up?” she says.

“I…I've seen this girl before.” I hurriedly put down my wineglass and pick up the photo of the first D.C. murder victim. It's the girl whose face I saw in my dream. But I don't mention this to Sam. Instead, I rationalize to her, and to myself. “I must have seen this file before.”

“From Hunter?”

“I guess so.” I need time alone to think about this. Images of a case I'm not even working on?

Sam studies my face. “Are you all right, Soph?”

“I'm fine. I was just surprised to see the girl. Like I said, I must have seen the file before, that's all.”

But I haven't seen the damn file.

Sam is less than convinced, but I turn away and move toward the window. A cold shiver runs down my spine as I go to close the curtains. For an instant I think I see someone standing across the road looking up at my window. But when I look again, no one's there. I close the curtains and return to Sam.

“So, let's look at this case,” I say, forcing the unease I feel to the back of my mind.

We both stand over the table to get a better view of the photos. I take in all the details. The wounds, the body placement, everything, already starting to form an opinion. There have only been two victims so far. I pick up all the photos of the girl I recognize and look for the marking on her thigh. But it's not there. She has knife wounds surrounding the area, but no tattoo. I sink into a chair. I don't know whether it's a good or bad thing that the tatt's not there.

“What's wrong, honey?” Sam puts her hand on my shoulder, worried.

“Mmm? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about another case,” I lie.

Sam looks at me oddly.

I push the confusion away, focusing on the case. “You've got my undivided attention. Are Flynn and Jones on the case?”

“Yeah, they took it over as soon as the Henley case closed.”

“They're good cops. Good guys.”

Sam starts taking me through the case. She's reading from her own notepad, and the original files lie on one end of the table. It's the usual assortment—the coroner's report, police reports covering the crime scene and detailed information about the victims. Profiling is a four-step process—analyzing the profiling inputs, reviewing decision models, an assessment of the crime and then drafting the profile itself.

We start with five major profiling inputs—the crime scene, the victimology, forensic information, the preliminary police report and the all-important photos.

At the crime scene we study the physical evidence, including weapons, body positioning, and any other patterns that may be visible. Next we look at the victimology to get an insight into the victim. By getting to know the victim, we can understand the perpetrator. We consider a victim's age, occupation, background, habits, when she was last seen and so on. The forensic information includes time and cause of death, wounds, sexual acts (pre-and postmortem), the autopsy report and lab reports on blood splatter, fibers and so on. These four things combine with the prelim police report—which gives us information about who reported the crime, anything the cops on the scene noticed, and also covers background on the neighborhood—to give us a better understanding of the crime.

Next we look at a variety of decision-process models, including homicide type and style, primary intent (for
example, was the primary intent robbery or murder?), victim risk (high, moderate or low, for example, prostitutes are in the high-risk category because they're accessible and vulnerable by the nature of their work), offender risk (did the offender take risks during the crime?), time required for the crime, and information about the location. We also look for signs of escalation—does it look like our criminal will become more violent, repeat the offense or intensify his activities from, say, kidnapping to murder?

The third step is crime assessment. During this stage we reconstruct the crime to determine how things happened and how people behaved, focusing on the interaction between the victim and perp. We classify the type of crime and look at any staging elements that may be present, like a staged robbery, and we also look at possible motivations and the crime-scene dynamics, such as cause of death, location of wounds and crime-scene location.

From here we generate the criminal profile itself. In reality, though, the first three steps are often blended together rather than looked at in isolation.

“Okay, so this was the first one.” Sam picks up a photo of my girl. In this photo she's alive and well, smiling for the camera. “Jean Davis. She was killed five months ago. Twenty-eight years old, worked as a producer's assistant at WX40TV. A real career gal, by all accounts. Very friendly and outgoing.”

I pore over the other photos of Jean. The crime-scene ones. Her body is in the back seat of a car—where I can't tell, although the area looks quite remote. She lies
slightly turned, with her knees resting to one side and both arms raised to about forty-five degrees on either side of her body. Her head is turned, eyes open. Just like she was in my dream. The body positioning reminds me of a back exercise, except her head faces the same way as her knees instead of vice versa. Her body is messy, with multiple knife wounds. Most wounds are quite long, indicating the killer pulled the knife across her body rather than stabbing inward. Unusual. There are several large cuts across her abdomen and breasts, ranging between four and ten inches in length. Most of the cuts had formed scabs before her death, except one smaller cut just above her belly button and two deeper cuts on her left breast. Her throat also contains several older, shallower cuts. Similar cuts are on her upper arms and upper legs, with a heavy concentration on her thighs, in line with her crotch. There are five or six cuts that are obviously newer, quite fresh at the time of death. There must have been a lot of blood during the time he had her.

“He likes blood,” I say, verbalizing my last thought.

“Blood, penetration, or both.”

I nod—knives often represent the sexual act for killers. Although more through deep, stabbing cuts than this style of knife wound.

“Coroner reported fifty cuts in all.” Sam points out the gashes covering Jean's body.

“But it wasn't a blitz attack.”

“No. It was controlled, metered. And over a long period of time.”

That's one item on the profile decided. Criminals can be broken into two broad groups, organized offenders or
disorganized offenders. Organized offenders plan their crimes, often meticulously, whereas disorganized offenders act in the heat of the moment. The cuts show control and planning, two traits of an organized criminal.

“Did she die of these wounds?” I ask, standing up.

“Yeah, eventually. Our guy bled her to death, but real slow. Many of the cuts were superficial, but these two here—” she points to one of the cuts on her thigh and one on her breast “—were deeper and near arteries. Coroner says that without the intervention she would have died in about ten hours.”

“Intervention?” I lean over the table to get a closer look at the photo.

“You'll love this one, honey. The guy bandaged her up tight around the wounds. He wanted to keep her around. Coroner estimates she was kept alive for an extra ten hours with pressure bandages.”

I tighten my grip on the top of the dining-room chair I'm leaning on. “Bastard.” I loosen my grip. This could turn out to be to our advantage. “Medical training.”

“Sure is a possibility. Strong one, I'd say,” Sam agrees.

“How long did he have her?”

“Last sighting was five days before time of death.”

“He have her all that time?”

“We think so. A neighbor was the last to see her. She took the trash out at 10:00 p.m. on June 23, but never showed for work the next day. Her best friend at the station dropped by her apartment that night and called the police when there was no answer. So our guy either grabbed her the night of the twenty-third or the next morning, four or five days before death.”

“So he likes to play.”

“Don't they all?”

“Pretty much,” I say with disgust. “He's a high-risk offender, given the amount of time he spends with them. Presumably he's got somewhere private he takes them.”

“Yeah. He ties them at the hands and feet. We're thinking spread-eagle,” she says, searching for another photo. She picks out two close-ups, one of Jean's left leg and one of her left arm. Sam points to the ligature marks on Jean's wrist and ankle. “Probably to a table, bed or some other flat object. The ligature marks indicate a separate binding for each limb and the marks are deep.”

I examine the indentations in Jean's skin. “He tied her up tight.”

“Real tight.” Sam throws the two photos back on the table and grabs one crime-scene photo of Jean's body and one of the autopsy photos. She holds up the crime-scene photo first. “She didn't die in this position.” She brings the autopsy photo up next to it, for comparison. “Lividity indicates she died flat on her back and on a flat surface.”

I nod. The autopsy photograph Sam has chosen is one of Jean lying on her stomach. The photo clearly shows Jean's back and upper legs.