Heartsick (15 page)

“I think we’re dealing with a budding sociopath,” Anne said. She was wearing a long chocolate-colored leather trench coat and leopard-print boots. Anne always could put together an outfit.

“You like them?” Anne asked, noticing him looking at her feet. She stopped and lifted her long knit skirt a few inches to show off the boots. “I got them in the ‘large and in charge’ department. They’re extra wide. For my enormous calves.”

Archie cleared his throat. “You said he was a budding sociopath?”

“You don’t want to talk about my calves?” Anne asked.

Archie smiled. “I’m just trying to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

Anne let the skirt drop and grinned at Archie. “I do believe that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in two days.”

They started walking again and Anne continued her profile: “He raped and murdered these girls but he feels remorse,” she said, her demeanor serious again. “He cleans them up. Returns them.”

“But he kills again.”

“The need overpowers him. But it’s about the rape. Not the murder. He’s a rapist who kills, not a murderer who rapes. It’s not part of his fetish. It’s not necrophilia. He kills them to spare them from experiencing the rape.”

“What a guy,” said Archie.

They walked past a darkened paint store, past a shuttered espresso drive-thru booth, past a hipster dive bar. The window of the bar was filled with neon beer signs:
PBR
,
RAINIER
,
SIERRA NEVADA
. A half-assed marquee advertised a band called Missing Persons Report. Nice. Archie glanced inside as they went past and caught a flash of people, mouths open wide, laughing, the sound of drunken levity.

Anne continued: “I don’t think the murder gives him pleasure per se. He doesn’t linger with it. He doesn’t use his hands. I think we need to look at where he came from. I think he’s raped before. And if he has, it will be within the victim profile.”

Archie shook his head. “We’ve pulled every unsolved rape over the last twenty years. No good fits.”

They came to an intersection. If Archie had been alone, he would have walked against the light, but because Anne was there, he pushed the pedestrian button and waited.

“Look out of state. If you can’t find anything, it means that the rapes weren’t reported, which is useful in itself.”

Archie considered this. “He has power over women.”

“Or used to,” Anne commented.

“He loses his power; he compensates with violence.”

Anne nodded several times, her jaw working. “I’m thinking a steady evolution of sexual assaults, followed by some sort of stresser at work or home. He’s probably had violent sexual fantasies since he was a child, but he was able to quell them with porn and the early rapes. Then he decides to take it further. Plans it. Carries it off. And he gets away with it.”

“So he does it again.” Archie sighed. The light changed, finally, and they walked across to the other side of the street and started heading back south. It wasn’t much of a walk. But it felt good to move.

“Yes. And gets away with it again. So now the societal boundaries that he’s always been uncomfortable with are seriously eroding. I think that part of him, that first time, fully expected to get caught. Maybe he even wanted to get caught, to be punished for his deviant fantasies. But he wasn’t. So now he’s thinking that the law doesn’t apply to him. He’s feeling special.”

“And the bleach? Is it a purification ritual, or is he studiously destroying forensic evidence?”

He could see Anne bite her lip. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit. If he cares about them enough to kill them, why is he bathing them in corrosive chemicals? But it’s overkill as a cleansing agent. And I think our guy is meticulous enough to avoid overkill. He would know exactly how much, and not use any more.”

“He dumped a body the day before Valentine’s Day,” Archie said.

“It’s not a coincidence.”

“The murders are intimate for him,” Archie said softly. “He’s choosing them.”

“This guy’s smart,” Anne said. “He’s educated. He’s got a job. He’s transporting the bodies, so he has access to a vehicle. And probably to a boat. Based on his victim window, I’d say he works banker’s hours. White, male. He would look unremarkable. Functional. Presentable. If it is an evolution, he’s well into his thirties, possibly forties. He’s detail-oriented and manipulative. He’s taking an enormous risk snatching these girls off public streets. He’s confident, arrogant even. And he’s got a ruse. He’s got a ruse to get these girls to go with him.”

“Like Bundy’s cast?”

“Or Bianchi playing cop, or car trouble, or he says he’s a modeling scout, or says that the parents have been in an accident and offers to take the girl to the hospital.” She shook her head dismissively. “But it’s better than that. It’s brilliant. Because whatever he’s using, he got Kristy to go with him, after two girls had already been murdered.”

Archie thought of plump, brown-haired Kristy Mathers dragging her broken bike across the street, just blocks from home.
Where was the bike?
If he’d grabbed her, why take the bike? And if he did take the bike, then his car had to be big enough to get it in quickly. “If she went with him voluntarily, she had to know him.”

“If we accept that premise, yes, she had to know him.” They were standing in the bank parking lot. “This is me,” Anne said, putting her hand on the roof of a rented burgundy Mustang.

“I’m going to interview the teachers and staff again tomorrow,” Archie said. “Just the men who fit the profile.” His headache was getting bad. It was like having a permanent hangover.

“You going home tonight, or are you going to sleep in your chair?”

Archie glanced at his watch and was startled to see that it was 11:00
P
.
M
. “I just need another couple hours to finish up,” he said.

She clicked the car door unlocked and threw her purse in on the passenger seat and then turned back to Archie. “If you ever want to talk,” she said with a helpless shrug, “I am a psychiatrist.”

“Who specializes in the criminally insane.” He smiled wanly. “I’m going to try not to read into that.”

He noticed then, under the harsh security lights of the parking lot, how much she had aged over the last few years. There were lines around her eyes, and a few fine strings of gray in her hair. She still looked better than he did.

“Did she fit it at all?” she said.

Archie knew whom she meant. “She manipulated the profile, Anne. You know that.”

Anne smiled darkly. “I was convinced the killer was a man. That he was working alone. I didn’t even consider the possibility of a female. Yet you suspected her. Despite the bad profile. The way she infiltrated her way into the investigation, it’s textbook psychopathic behavior. I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

“She fed me exactly enough that I would need to go to her, and not enough that I would be careful. It was a trap. I went there because she played me. Not because of my investigative prowess.”

“She knew you wanted to solve that case more than anything. Psychopaths are excellent at reading people.”

You have no idea,
thought Archie.

“In any case,” Anne said, sighing, “I’m at the Heathman. If you change your mind. About talking.”

“Anne?”

She spun back. “Yes?”

“Thanks for the offer.”

She stood there for another moment in her leopard-print boots, as if she wanted to say something more. Something like “Sorry your life went to shit,” or “I know what you’re thinking about doing,” or “Let me know if you want a referral to a nice quiet institution.” Or maybe she was just thinking about getting back to the hotel so she could call her children. It didn’t really matter. Archie waited for her to drive off and then he went back into his office, snapped the tape recorder back on, closed his eyes, and listened to Fred Doud talk about Kristy Mathers’s terrible corpse.

CHAPTER

19

A
rchie woke from
a groggy, unsatisfying sleep, to find Henry standing over him. The office light was on. Archie was still sitting in his desk chair.

“You spent the night,” Henry said.

Archie blinked, disoriented. “What time is it?”

“Five.” Henry set a paper cup of coffee from the break room on Archie’s desk.

Archie’s ribs were sore. His head throbbed; even his teeth hurt. He rolled his neck to one side until he heard it pop. Henry was dressed in black pants and a crisp black T-shirt. He smelled like aftershave. Archie picked up the coffee and took a sip. It was strong, and he winced reflexively as it went down. “You’re here early,” Archie said.

“I got a call from Martin,” Henry said, sitting in the chair across from Archie’s desk. “He’s been vetting the custodians. They work for a company called Amcorp that contracts with the district. The school board laid off all their janitors last year during the budget crisis. Then brought in Amcorp because it was cheaper. They’re supposed to have criminal-background checks on file.”

“But?”

“They’ve got them for some, motor vehicle checks for some,” Henry said. “They’re all over the place. Shoddy. Martin’s been running names. One came back bad. Public exposure.”

“What school does he work at?” Archie asked.

Henry raised an eyebrow. “Jefferson in the mornings, Cleveland in the afternoons. He’s also worked at Lincoln.”

It was a lot of access. But there were a lot of people with a lot of access. “Anyone talk to him yet?” Archie asked.

“Claire. After the first girl turned up dead. He said he was working. A few of the kids reported seeing him around after school. The contractor said he was clean.”

Archie had read the reports. The team had interviewed 973 people since the first girl had disappeared. Claire had interviewed 314 of them herself. Maybe she had cleared the custodian too quickly. “But he was at Cleveland when Lee disappeared?”

“Right,” Henry said.

Archie placed his hands on his desk and stood. “What are we still doing here?”

“Car’s out front.” Henry looked down at Archie’s wrinkled shirt. “You need to go home and change?”

Archie shook his head. “No time.” He grabbed his coffee and his jacket and let Henry walk out of the office first, so he could slip three pills in his mouth. He didn’t like to take the Vicodin on an empty stomach, but he didn’t see any breakfast in his immediate future.

Martin, Josh, and Claire were already at their desks in the squad room. There were tips to track down, patrols to coordinate, alibis to check and double-check. School would be starting in a few hours, and their killer was still out there. A clock hung on the wall, left over from the bank. A slogan printed on its face read
TIME TO BANK WITH FRIENDS
. Next to it someone had posted a sign scrawled on a piece of copy paper.
REMEMBER: TIME IS OUR ENEMY
.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Archie asked Henry as they exited the bank and walked into the parking lot. Dawn was just breaking and the air was cold and gray.

“Went by your place,” Henry said. “Where else would you be?” He got in the driver’s side of the car and Archie walked around and got in the passenger side. Henry hadn’t started the car yet. He was just sitting there.