Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel) (16 page)

Renee nodded, and the recognition in her eyes made it clear that Renee knew exactly who Casey was.

"Casey, Renee Goodard—my right hand." Jordan's voice cracked as he finished his sentence, and Casey tucked her hands under her arms.

"Nice to meet you, Casey," Renee said.

Casey nodded, watching as Jordan mumbled something to himself under his breath.

He gathered materials and spoke to Renee about who had called and for what. All the familiar counterparts from when Casey was in the Bureau came back to her—discussions and negotiations with district attorneys, officers, medical examiners, lab technicians, and crime scene analysts.

Casey paced a small circle in the office, feeling the constant weight of Renee's gaze on her shoulders.

Amazed at her own behavior, Casey sensed the spark of excitement renewed. Sitting still, sleeping through the days, the draw of fiction—had all begun to lose their appeal the moment Jordan had shown up at her door two days ago.

More honestly, it had probably begun even sooner than that. Whether she had sensed Leonardo's presence or merely finally surfaced from her emotional coma, Casey wanted back in. And she wanted in now. There were all sorts of records to review—autopsies, videotapes, crime scene notes, lab results.

"You ready to see the task force setup?"

Eager, Casey followed Jordan out of the office again. Though her knee was stiff from so much activity, Jordan's steady pace suddenly felt sluggish.

Rounding the corner, Casey knew they were getting close. Phones rang in the distance. The steady clicking of fingers typing underscored the hum of voices. One of the fluorescent lights overhead flicked off and on in a steady stream of flashes, giving the hallway the sensation of a governmental discotheque.

Halfway down the corridor Jordan stopped at an open doorway, and Casey peered in. Twelve desks, each equipped with an officer, phone, and computer had been set up to man the tips line. The desks were lined in three rows of four facing the front. Casey watched as the officers spoke to callers. It appeared the calls were steady for the moment. Good news, she hoped.

The FBI didn't have much experience in tips lines. Since the creation of the TV show,
America's Most Wanted,
though, they had learned the value of showing the viewing public pictures of fugitives.

At the front of the room, an additional desk, like the teacher's in a classroom, faced the other desks. A petite East Indian woman made notes on the white board that covered the front wall.

Using red, black, blue, and brown—all colors Casey thought appropriate for the dead—the woman had created a column for each of the victims. Each list included cause of death, location taken, location discovered, age, race, and evidence found at the scene.

Above each was a blown-up picture of the child. Casey moved across the room and studied the pictures, taking in a case as she always did. The last thing she wanted to hear was what anyone else thought the answer was.

Start with the facts. From those, she would draw her own conclusions. Then, if they agreed with someone else's, they would probably be on the right track. More likely, the results wouldn't match. Casey preferred it this way. It would force her to test her own logic against someone else's.

The pictures surprised her, but she knew this killer would be unusual. Two blond girls, a brunette, and a black girl, not the usual serial killer resume. Most serial offenders chose their victims in a consistent way. Disorganized killers preyed on victims in secluded areas at night or in locations without witnesses—the wrong place, wrong time methodology.

From what Casey had heard, none of these kids had been left alone in a secluded area. They had been taken from crowded places, which meant they were dealing with an organized killer. If this was Leonardo, then he was choosing his victims as an organized offender. He selected them for a specific reason—to fulfill a particular fantasy, ones who lived or attended school in a certain area, or fit a certain description. She wondered what the police knew about these kids.

"Casey, I'd like you to meet Monica Pradahn."

Casey turned to the woman she had seen at the front of the room.

Monica outstretched her hand, and Casey looked down at her own fingers. This was the reason she had avoided people. Why did she belong to a society that insisted upon the handshake? Why not bow like in Japan?

Instead of seeming awkward, though, Monica took Casey's hand in both of hers and slipped her tiny fingers into Casey's. "It's wonderful to meet you, Agent McKinley. I read the book you wrote on profiling and was quite impressed."

Blinking, Casey stared. The book she'd written had hardly been a best-seller. It had gone to a group of trainees in the Bureau's Investigative Support Unit. Almost no one else had even heard about it.

"I didn't realize you'd written a book," Jordan said.

Monica smiled. "After hearing her lecture last year, I called Quantico to see if they had more information on profiling. The public-relations person I spoke to told me Agent McKinley had a book out."

Casey shrugged. "It was a pamphlet more than a book."

Monica shook her head. "It was very powerful. I hope you know how glad we are to have you here."

Jordan nodded. "Why don't we take a look at the press conference first, and then we'll go from there."

"I'd prefer we didn't."

Monica and Jordan exchanged looks.

"It's important not to let anything or anyone plant ideas in my head before I've seen the evidence. If you want my help, I need to work this like any other profiling case."

Jordan nodded.

"I start with the crime scene reports. Then the autopsy. Did you video the scenes?"

"Stills, too."

"Good. I'll take everything you have." Casey looked around. "Do you have a room I can use to study?"

"There's a small conference room through here," Monica suggested.

The three of them moved into a small room without windows. The floor was carpeted with thin slate-blue carpet—too gray to be blue, too blue to be gray. In Bureau terms, it was effectively noncommittal.

Only a small table and three chairs occupied the room. A rectangular mirror covered a third of one wall of the room, giving people on the far side the ability to listen and see what was happening when someone was being interrogated. As she passed, she noticed the small closet-like viewing room was empty. To give them some space to work, Casey moved into the interrogation room and chose the seat farthest from the mirror.

She was used to FBI interrogation rooms with high-tech recording equipment—sophisticated cameras, which caught even the smallest change in a suspect's expression, recording devices that measured the subtle changes in voice. Tapes that would be studied later to try to determine whether a suspect was lying.

"I'll take the photos first, if you have them."

Jordan handed Casey a stack of files.

She laid the files across the table and opened the first one. What she saw reminded her instantly of Leonardo. A young black girl's face was wrapped in gauze, her puffy cheeks indicative of some sort of ritual pre-mortem surgery.

Casey flipped to the next picture and then the next. The autopsy photos showed that the skin over her jaw had been removed, the muscles connecting the mandible to the skull the apparent point of interest. Leonardo had dissected the girl before death, pinpointing a single area to explore. She felt the intense pain in her hands, the memory of his scalpel like fresh blood.

"You okay?" Jordan asked.

Casey forced herself to nod. She skimmed through all the files, slowly memorizing details as she found them. When she was done, she closed the last one and looked up at him. She couldn't look at these photos now. "I'll need more time with these files later."

Jordan nodded.

"For now, I have an idea."

He frowned. "What sort of an idea?"

"An idea that just may bring our killer out into the open."

"That's an idea I'm ready to hear," Monica said.

Jordan sank into the seat next to her. "What's this idea?"

"If we're dealing with the same killer, he's a mixed profile—organized and disorganized. His fascination with mutilation, he might call it surgery, makes him disorganized; his planning and forethought make him organized."

"So how do you propose to draw him out?" he pressed her.

"I'm getting there."

Jordan exhaled.

"He'll follow the case."

"And?"

"Jordan," Monica said, her tone stern without being sharp.

Casey sat up in her chair and faced him. "The only thing I know about his physical description is his shoe size."

Silent, Jordan shrugged.

"What if we ask for volunteers, relating to the case?"

"What sort of volunteers?" Monica asked.

"Perhaps hold a vigil for the children at a local amphitheater. Publicly ask for security volunteers. They'll be fitted for uniforms. You're looking for a white male, between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, above-average intelligence, men's size ten shoe. Our man will show up to volunteer."

Jordan's eyebrows rose as he digested the idea.

The idea wasn't a new one. She had read about it in a case in Atlanta once, and Casey knew there was a decent chance that Leonardo would recognize it as a trick. But there was also a chance they would catch him. And for that, she would take the risk.

"How do you know he'll volunteer?" Monica asked.

Casey met her gaze, remembering how a serial killer's mind usually worked—the power struggle, the need for dominance and control. It was all about the same things. "Because he's playing a game, and he wants to win," she explained. "We're his opponents, not the victims. He wants to outsmart us. In fact, I think outmaneuvering my efforts to stop him is his central goal now. He must know this is personal for me, and he thrives on the idea that he has lured back his chief opponent.

"He'd probably think—even hope—that we'd be at the vigil. And he couldn't wait to see the crowd, the mourners. The way he'd see it, we'd all be there because of him. He'd probably think of it as his first public art exhibit. It would give him an opportunity to see, firsthand, the destruction he's caused."

Casey clenched her jaw and looked away, feeling anger reverberate against her chest like a bullet in a tin can. "Frankly," she said after pausing to cool her fury, "I can't imagine he could stay away."

Chapter 14

Jordan leaned forward and watched the Lakers foul out the Warriors. "Yes!"

Angie slapped his thigh. "You're rooting for the wrong team, Jordan Paul."

He leaned over and kissed her. "Maybe here, but later tonight I won't be."

Angie raised her eyebrows. "Don't you go making any assumptions about what's going down after this."

"Me? I'm not assuming." He leaned into her ear and whispered. "I plan on earning my keep every step of the way."

Angie slapped him again, playfully.

Jordan watched as his wife looked around the new coliseum. "The coliseum still isn't doing too well, is it?"

She shook her head.

"They need a better team, get some money pumped into this place."

"The Warriors will come around."

He didn't think it was likely. At the rate they were going, the Warriors would be lucky not to finish last in the Pacific division again.

The Warriors called time-out, and a guy dressed as a lightning bolt came into the court, followed by three guys in overalls carrying boxes of pizza.

"Dad, it's Thunder." Ryan pointed to the court.

"He's giving out pizzas," Will added, standing and waving his arms.

Ryan jumped up beside him, the two boys waving their arms and jumping up and down, screaming.

Jordan sat back and whistled to draw attention. Supposedly, the loudest fans would get the pizzas.

One of the guys came toward them, and Jordan whistled and whooped louder. The guy came running up the stairs but stopped a few rows short of Will and Ryan.