The 7th Victim

“I’m your daughter.”

Linwood rose again, turned her back to Vail, appeared to swipe at her tears. Still trying to appear composed and in control. Trying to digest this information with as much dignity as she could garner and still absorb the shock of the revelation. “What do you want from me?” she finally asked.

What do I want from her? Vail thought for a second. She had been so focused on putting together the pieces of the puzzle that she hadn’t allowed her mind enough time to analyze her feelings. She had a task, one that piqued her curiosity, one that helped ease the gnawing concern over Jonathan’s condition. But now she needed an answer. The first thought left her lips before she could consider it. “I want to know who my biological parents are. Or were.” She rubbed her eyes. “I just found out I wasn’t Emma’s child. I went to visit her yesterday. She’s got Alzheimer’s and thought I was you.”

Linwood was silent.

“You might want to go see her. Make amends—”

“Thank you, Agent Vail, for your concern.”

“At least call me Karen.”

Linwood bowed her head, rested a hand against the wall, steadying herself. Symbolic support for what she was about to say. But as the seconds passed, Linwood did not talk. Did not move.

“Tell me about my father.”

Linwood’s head lifted and she stared at the ceiling. “I think it’s best you leave now.”

Vail should have anticipated such a response. If Linwood had, in fact, worked to bury her past—and Vail now had confirmation of that—then that would be the last topic Linwood would want to discuss.

“You abandoned your child. How could you do that?”

“There’s more to it than you know, or should ever know.” The senator was quiet a long moment, then her shoulders rolled forward. As if realizing she needed to explain further, she said, “It was the best thing for both of us at the time. I had my own survival to worry about. Believe me, it was a good thing Emma was there.”

Though Vail had seen druggie teenagers with babies—women who didn’t know what responsibility was, or what it meant to be a mother—she had a hard time seeing the regal Eleanor Linwood in the same light. But Vail had not come there to understand why her mother had abandoned her. Or perhaps she had. Perhaps it was something she should ask about, if nothing else to understand. But either Linwood was a closed individual, or the thought of having abandoned her daughter was too painful to relive, even harder to discuss. For the moment, Vail would focus on finding her father. It might be easier for a man to talk about the past he had left behind.

“Senator, I need to know about my father. You have that information. I can find it out by other means, but the attention I’d draw would probably be something you’d want to avoid.”

“It was another lifetime. One I’d rather forget.”

“Am I that much of a disappointment to you?”

Linwood spun to face her. Her eyes were swollen and red. “This has nothing to do with you.” Her gaze was fixed on Vail, as if there was more she wanted to say. But she hesitated, then finally shook her head.

“I’m sorry to have brought this anguish to the surface. I would’ve thought you’d be glad to see me. But obviously you’re not. Fine, I’ll deal with that. Give me the info I want and I’ll be out of your life.”

Linwood looked away. “Even if I tell you who your father is, nothing good will come of it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “In fact, I do.”

“Maybe he’s not the same person he was forty years ago.”

“Someone like that doesn’t change.”

“Senator, your secret is safe with me. I won’t tell him who you are or where you live.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

Vail began to feel the same frustration she’d felt hundreds of times in the past, sitting in an interview room opposite a skel she knew was guilty, but who refused to give it up. There was one case where a kidnapper would not divulge the location of his victim. Vail never could elicit the information, and they never found the woman. She felt that frustration now, swelling in her throat, threatening to choke her.

Vail took a cleansing breath and slipped into interrogation mode, using techniques she taught at the Academy. “You’re worried he’ll find you, that my poking around will somehow compromise your secret. Or even make him resurface, bring him back into your life. I can understand that. But I won’t let it happen. You have my word.”

“It would destroy my political career. I’m gearing up for reelection. My opponent would take me to task in the media if he found out about my association with your father. And if it ever got out I’d changed my identity—”

“No one would be able to piece it together. I’ll make sure of that.”

Linwood swallowed hard. “Agent Vail . . . Karen. . . .” She sat back down on the edge of the sofa. “It was a long time ago. I was young and stupid and didn’t know any better. As soon as I realized the kind of person he was, I left him. It took me longer than it should’ve, but I was scared.”

Vail thought of herself, and her marriage to Deacon. She, too, should’ve seen the warning signs months sooner than she had. She looked up and realized the two of them were sitting there in silence, each absorbed in her own thoughts. “At least you were able to get away,” Vail managed. “A lot of women don’t have the fortitude to make the break.” She said it for her own validation as much as Linwood’s.

The senator was staring ahead, oblivious to Vail’s comments. “There’s nothing to be gained by making contact with him.”

“With all due respect, that’s not for you to decide.”

Linwood stood up and straightened her skirt. “I’m glad you came by, Agent Vail. It’s been nice visiting with you.” She turned the knob and held the door open. The universal sign for the end to an acrimonious meeting.

Vail remained seated. “‘It’s been nice visiting with you’? I’m your daughter, Senator, not one of your campaign donors.” Her voice was louder than she’d intended it to be—but she was tired, and angry, and her dreams of finding her mother had deteriorated into a nightmare. “Like it or not, Mother, I’m a part of you, always will be. Whether or not you want to admit it.”

“I think it’s time you left.” Linwood’s voice was firm, its volume matching Vail’s.

“Don’t you have any maternal instincts?” Vail’s hand found the outer pocket of her leather shoulder case. She pulled a photo and held it in front of Linwood’s face. “You’ve got a grandson, too—but that probably doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

Linwood looked past the picture and glared at Vail, her eyes cold and fierce. “Make sure you keep this information confidential. Or I’ll see to it you never work for any law enforcement agency again.” She turned and walked out of the room. Vail started to follow, but Hancock stepped in front of her, his arms spread like an eagle’s wings.

“I believe the senator asked you to leave.” He raised his eyebrows, expecting a sharp retort. But Vail was empty and numb. And sickened by the thought that Hancock was standing outside the door, listening to their conversation.

Vail shoved Hancock aside with a stiff forearm, then walked out of the house.

thirty-eight

He’d had the hardest time concentrating during class. All he could think about was his next bitch. And her eyes. He had bought a pair of night-vision binoculars at the local camping supply chain store and spent the last evening in surveillance of his new victim. It was a bit of a challenge, but what’s life without challenges?

First, however, he had to get rid of his last student. She wanted to finish her stinking vase. Jesus, she had to get it just right. He certainly understood the need for perfection, but he had more important things to deal with. He had to work extra hard to keep himself from doing something he’d regret later, because if she hadn’t left when she finally did, he would’ve had to take care of her. But she wasn’t the one, and killing her would’ve aroused suspicion. Others no doubt knew she had been at his class, and no one would’ve seen her leave. It was traceable back to him. So he had to keep his focus, keep thinking about his target.

Focus, challenges . . . nothing new in any of that. The rest of the evening—that was where things would be different. But he thought the thrill, the kill, and the aftermath would be well worth the uncharted waters. He’d know in a day whether or not he was right. But he suspected he would be. Because this was the one, the ultimate prize. Unlike the others, she knows what she does. And what she did.

He waited patiently for the right time, then felt the excitement. He was jittery. It was tough to get a full breath.

“It’s time! It’s time! It’s time!” He wanted to roll down the window and scream, but was able to control himself long enough to get out of the car and focus on his stealth approach to the house.

He moved through the forested cover and remained behind a row of hedges across the narrow road. Peered through his binoculars. Everything was quiet until one of the garage doors rolled up. He moved quickly through the brush, remaining low and scampering toward the house. The car backed out, then drove onto the long driveway. Front yard lights snapped on, illuminating the front of the garage with bright halogen spots. He sprinted along a row of bushes, using their cover to keep from tripping the side yard motion sensors. He clutched the cold, moist brick siding of the house and waited for the sectional wood garage door to begin closing.

As soon as it started lowering, the car drove off, its tires crunching on the rough gravel. He stepped over the sensors mounted along the floor of the garage’s threshold, then knelt down, a large black ball hidden in the corner shadows. The weak light from the small incandescent bulb barely lit the empty garage. The door thumped closed and he was alone. Just him and his stun gun.

And the bitch.

thirty-nine

After leaving Linwood’s house, Vail drove aimlessly, moving along the winding Georgetown Pike before getting back onto 495. Though it wasn’t a conscious decision, she was headed home.

When she walked into her house, her head was throbbing and her left knee was stiff from driving. She threw her keys on the table and trudged toward the bath. She felt dirty and wanted to strip down and relax in a tub of hot water with bubbles and a glass of cabernet. The perpetual stress over the past several days had reached a pinnacle, and she needed to find the release valve before the pressure cooker burst.

She started the water and heard a clunk in the bedroom. Her heart dropped. She shut the water and listened, but there was only silence. She moved toward her armoire, lifted her holster, and removed the Glock, then noticed her BlackBerry on the floor, its red light blinking. She picked it up and clicked through to the message: Bledsoe. The Dead Eyes code.

“Shit.” She reached him at home.

“Just got word,” he answered, not needing to ask who it was. The luxury of caller ID. “Thought you should know.”

“What’s the address? I’ll meet you—”

“Too risky—it’s one thing to work behind the scenes, but to show up at—”

“You only get one chance to see a fresh crime scene, Bledsoe. I need to see it, experience it. We’ll deal with the details later. And the fallout.”

“This one’s different, Karen.”

“If it’s different, it may not be Dead Eyes. That’s why I need to see it.”

“No, it’s different because of the MO, not the signature. He didn’t hit a middle-class professional. He hit a senator. State Senator Eleanor Linwood.”

Vail felt a swirl of dizziness shake her. She reached out, grabbed the edge of the armoire, and somehow hung on to the phone. Her vision was gray snow, her body spinning faster than a merry-go-round. Her headache was instantly worse, pounding at her temples like a pair of anvils.

“Karen, you there?”

“Here. I’m . . . here. I’m just, give me a minute.”

“I’ve gotta go, get over there. You want, I’ll call you from my car—”

“No, I’m coming,” she said, her head clearing. “I’m coming. I have to come.”

“Jesus Christ, Karen.” He paused a moment, then said, “Look, I don’t have time to debate this anymore. You wanna come, fine.”

“Was everyone notified?”

“Everyone, including Hancock, who’s probably at the scene anyway, and Del Monaco, who’s now on the task force. Chief’s going to be there, and probably the media—”

“I’ll worry about all that when I get there.”

“House is off Georgetown Pike—”

“I know where she lives. I’ll see you there.” Vail hung up, steadied herself again, and hit the number for Robby. “You heard?”

“Karen. Yeah, I’m out the door.”

“Pick me up on the way.”

There was a long silence. “You sure?”

“Dead sure. I’ve got something to tell you. I’ll be waiting out front.”

BARELY TEN MINUTES HAD PASSED when Robby stopped at the curb in front of her house. She got in and he pulled away in a hurry, barely waiting for her to close the door.

“So what’s so important that it’s worth committing professional suicide?” he asked.

“Eleanor Linwood is my mother. Was my mother.”

“What?” Robby’s eyes locked with hers.

“Watch the road, please,” she said evenly.

“When’d you find this out?”

“I confirmed it two or three hours ago. That photo we took from Mom’s—from Emma’s? I had it age-enhanced at the lab. It was her, it was Linwood.”

“That software isn’t always accurate—”

“I went to Linwood’s. I met with her, showed her the photo, told her what I’d found out from digging through records.”

“She ’fessed up?”

“Pretty much. Filled in some of the blanks, how she had the muscle to change identity. Refused to tell me who my father was, though. Afraid it’d ruin her career.”

“And now she’s dead.”

Vail glanced out the side window, watching the dark residences fly by beneath the occasional streetlight. “Now she’s dead.”

“Coincidence?” Robby asked.

She turned to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. Just seems funny. You find out she’s your mother and three hours later she’s a Dead Eyes vic.”

Vail sighed. “Don’t know. What would the connection be?” She flashed on the chase through Sandra Franks’s backyard, the feeling the offender was there . . . that he had been waiting there for them. For her?

“We’ve got to tell the task force,” Robby said.

“Hancock probably knows. I think he was eavesdropping.”

“Prick.” Robby drove on for a moment, then asked, “Any news on Jonathan?”

She shrugged. “Some improvement. Small steps, you know?”

“Some improvement is better than no improvement.”

Vail frowned. It was the same thing Gifford had said . . . but somehow, it sounded more genuine coming from Robby.

He accelerated and entered the interstate.

POLICE CRUISERS, their light bars swirling in a rhythmic pulse, were blocking the entrance to the senator’s street. Robby badged the patrol officer and drove around the barricade. They pulled off to the side and approached Bledsoe, who was talking to a uniform near the rim of the circular driveway.

In the harsh halogen security lighting bearing down on them, Bledsoe’s face looked weary and defeated. He nodded at Vail and Robby, then turned to Sinclair and Manette, who were approaching from his left. “Anything?”

“We got some shoe prints in the dirt over by the south end of the house,” Sinclair said, motioning with his Mag-Lite. “Looks like they come from the woods. I sent a tech out to track them, get a plaster casting.”

Manette said, “Means this guy came in on foot. Tells me he knew what he was doing, who lived here. That she’d have some kind of security.”

Sinclair shook his head. “Not who so much as what. Look at the neighborhood. The person who lived here had money.”

“Either way,” Bledsoe said, “he didn’t know about the security lights. Or he took a big chance no one would see him as he got close. Our guy’s a planner, he’d know about the lights.”

Vail looked toward the side of the house. “I was him, I’d approach along that line of bushes. Motion sensors would be blocked. Lights would never come on.”

“That’s exactly where the footprints are,” Sinclair said, “right along the bushes.”

“They have cameras?” Bledsoe asked.

Manette shook her head. “Hancock said the senator didn’t want to live like Big Brother was watching her. Didn’t think anything like this’d ever happen. Especially in this neighborhood.”

“Get anything back on that email?” Sinclair asked.

Vail’s gaze was still off in the general area of the house. “Nothing yet.”

“We really could use some help on that—”

“I know, Sin,” Vail said. “I know. I can’t make them work faster. I tried.”

Bledsoe held up a hand. “Keep it down. Let’s at least look like we all get along, okay?” He nodded toward the house. “Sin, why don’t you go check on Hancock.”

Sinclair frowned, then mumbled something under his breath as he headed off down the gravel path.

“Hancock’s pretty shaken up,” Manette said, “so I wouldn’t expect too much from him.”

Vail chuckled. “I never expect anything from him, so it’s not like this’ll be any different.”

“I meant in terms of helping us construct a time line for the senator’s movements tonight.”

“I can help with that,” Vail said. She glanced at Robby, then continued. “I came by earlier—”

“Detective!” Approaching on the run were Gifford, Del Monaco, and Police Chief Lee Thurston.

Bledsoe turned and opened a space in the huddle to accommodate the three men, who were dressed in nearly identical black wool overcoats.

“Agent Vail, what are you doing here?” Gifford asked. His eyes narrowed as his arms folded across his chest.

“I called her,” Bledsoe said. “Given the identity of our victim, I wanted my best people on it.”

Gifford looked at Vail. “Agent Vail is under orders not to partake in any Bureau business.”

“This isn’t Bureau business,” Bledsoe said. “It’s a multijurisdictional task force, which I’m heading—”

“But I gave you a direct order to remove her,” Thurston said to Bledsoe.

“With all due respect, sir, the idea is to catch this fucker. Karen Vail is a vital member of my team. The faster we catch him, the less people he’ll kill. And with the senator’s murder, the heat just got turned up. Media’s gonna be all over us.”

As if on cue, the downdraft of thumping helicopter rotor blades began whipping nearby treetops. The task force members craned their necks to the patch of illuminated sky . . . where a chopper emblazoned with the WSAW-TV logo—a bird with a magnifying glass—swung into view.

“Speak of the devil,” Robby said.

Bledsoe held out a hand, palm up, as if pleading his case. “Look, Vail’s the best. I need her help with this. Right now, I gotta catch a killer. I don’t care about politics.”

Thurston reached up and caught his fedora that had been lifted off his bald head by a gust of chilled wind. “Apparently, you don’t care about following orders, either.”

Gifford leaned in close and said something in Thurston’s ear. Thurston, a hand pressing down on his hat, bent his head forward, listening.

Bledsoe grabbed the radio from his pocket and yelled to the uniform on the other end to do whatever was necessary to get the chopper out of the area. As Bledsoe shoved the handset into his pocket, Thurston turned to him.

“Vail’s in, but we both have real problems with this. Next time you think you know better than me, you come to me first so I can knock some sense up your ass.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gifford pointed an index finger in Vail’s face. “I don’t want you showing up at any more Dead Eyes scenes.”

“Let’s hope this’ll be his last,” Vail said. Gifford threw an angry look at Bledsoe, then turned away. Vail had thoughts about telling them Linwood was her mother, but that would open a door to a room she didn’t want to enter, at least not yet. With the tightrope she had been walking lately, she knew it was best to be completely forthcoming, because in a very short time Hancock would come out of his funk and tell everyone who had ears that Vail had gotten into an argument with the senator. But if she spoke up now, they would never let her view the crime scene, as she would immediately become a suspect.

As Vail watched Gifford and Thurston walk off, Bledsoe rubbed his hands together. “Okay everyone, let’s go in and take a look around.”

Del Monaco moved beside Vail and matched her strides. “You’ve got a set of balls, showing up here.”

Vail brushed him aside with a forearm. “At least one of us does.”

Manette, bringing up the rear, started laughing. “Good one, Kari.”

Del Monaco, his fair skin reddened from the blistering cold, nevertheless displayed a blush of embarrassment. “Who the hell are you?”

“Mandisa Manette, a dick with Spotsylvania County SD. And I’ve got a set of balls, too.”

Del Monaco gave her an evil eye and moved into the house. Manette held up a hand and Vail palmed it. They shared a smile and entered the residence.

VAIL FELT A TIGHTENING in her chest as she walked down the hall. Only a few hours ago she had made her way down this very corridor, Linwood leading the way. Was it a coincidence, as Robby had noted, that a short time after their meeting Linwood became a Dead Eyes victim? Was the episode at the Franks house related? Had the killer even been there, or had she been seeing things? Or was this all the product of Linwood’s ill-advised news conference?

And in the back of her mind, the nightmares. Seeing the killer’s face—her face—in the mirror. . . . No. They’re just dreams.

Everything was so confusing. She never felt so uncertain of things on the job. Her personal life was another story . . . a book full of uncertainty, each chapter building toward a divorce, climaxing with her son lying in ICU and herself sitting in a jail cell, arrested on an assault charge. No, not confusing. Fucked up.

But until Dead Eyes came along, she always could grab the gun by the handle and drill the target. No uncertainty, no second thoughts. When had her life taken a left turn?

She stepped around Del Monaco and Sinclair and grabbed Bledsoe’s arm. She pulled him aside, into the living room. “There’s something you should know.” She then proceeded to outline the details of her discovery of her relationship to Linwood, including the conversation she’d had with her earlier in the evening.

Bledsoe brought both hands to his face and rubbed, as if he could scrub away the fatigue—and his mounting problems. He sat down heavily on the couch. “You realize this makes you a suspect.”

“That’s why I didn’t say anything to Gifford and Thurston. For sure they would’ve sent me home.”

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. “Where were you tonight after leaving here?”

“I went for a drive, by myself. I ended up at home around nine thirty. I was about to take a bath when you texted me.”

Bledsoe nodded, looked away, his eyes roaming the tall drapes and window. Finally, his eyes came to rest on Vail’s. “Did you kill Eleanor Linwood?”

Vail held his gaze. “No, Bledsoe, I didn’t.”

He didn’t look away, at least not for a long moment. Then, he rose from the couch. “Okay. Let’s go join the others.”

She was surprised he took her word at face value . . . or, perhaps he had enough confidence in his abilities that he could tell when someone was lying to him. Whatever the reason, she was relieved he had let the issue drop so easily.

They walked toward the senator’s bedroom. “There’s blood spatter in the foyer, near the garage,” Robby said as he joined them. “Looks like he bludgeoned her with a blunt object, maybe to the point of death, then dragged her into the bedroom.”

“That doesn’t fit,” Vail said.

Del Monaco was kneeling in the wide hall, examining the trail of blood they had all been careful to avoid. “No, it doesn’t.”

They walked into the cavernous master bedroom and immediately saw the studied gazes of Manette and Sinclair. The scene laid out before them was more horrific than they had previously seen. Eleanor Linwood’s body was mutilated in the same grotesque manner as Dead Eyes’s other victims—with two notable exceptions: both her breasts had been severed, and her face was disfigured. More than just disfigured, it had been burned or peeled away, the remaining flesh and blood vessels and nerves exposed in a mess resembling raw meat.

Bledsoe quickly turned, clutching a vomit bag to his mouth, and barfed. Whether it was the smell, or Vail’s relationship to this victim, or simply the fact that it had finally gotten to her as well, she had to cup her mouth and use her tongue to close down her throat and force down the bile that had risen.

“Oh, man,” Robby said, looking away. “That’s bad. That’s bad. Worse than the others. Shit.” He walked out of the room.

“This guy was pissed off, big time,” Del Monaco managed. “Very personal attack.”

Manette shook her head. “Yeah, that press conference was a real good idea. I want to meet the guy who signed off on that one.”

“She wanted to do it and Gifford didn’t see any harm at the time,” Del Monaco said. “I mean, he knew there was a risk it’d incite him, but he thought it could also scare him enough to slow him down, buy us some time.” He rubbed at his neck. “He never thought he’d come after her. She doesn’t fit the victimology at all.”

Bledsoe wiped his mouth and turned his body strategically to avoid having to look at Linwood. “Okay, so he was pissed off. Does that explain . . . all this?” He took a sideways glance at the body and motioned in the air with a hand.

Vail took a deep breath and forced herself to evaluate the scene. “It might. She really got in his face, challenged him big time on TV. But there could be more going on here. He might’ve known her. Or, at least, there might’ve been some connection we’re not aware of.”

Manette shook her head. “There we go again, ‘might’ve this, might’ve that.’ Ain’t nothing you sure about?”

“I’m sure this guy is escalating. For whatever reason, we’ve got a problem on our hands.”

“We’ve had a problem,” Robby said. “Now it’s a nightmare.”

Vail’s gaze settled on what remained of Linwood’s face. “I think this vic could be the key. Trauma to the face and head generally means a relationship between the offender and victim. Like Del Monaco said, this was a personal attack. And he didn’t merely disable her, like the others, he bludgeoned her before bringing her into the bedroom.”

“Detective Bledsoe.” A forensic technician walked in wearing latex gloves. “You should see this.”

Bledsoe led the entourage into the master bathroom. The technician pointed to a small drinking glass filled with blood.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“As near as I can tell,” the tech said, “it’s blood. We’ll run it and see if it’s the vic’s. Could be animal.”

Robby knelt beside the glass. “Has it been dusted and photographed yet?”

“Yeah, we’re done with it.”

Robby held his hand out and the tech passed him a pair of latex gloves. He slapped them on and carefully lifted the glass up to the light. “Looks like he drank from it.”

“Hard to say,” the tech said. “There’s a smudge where the lip print would be, and there’s a coating of blood on the inside of the glass. We still have to luminol the bathroom, but it may be he poured blood out of the glass into the sink.”

“Or he drank from it and wiped it afterwards to smudge the print.”

“Pretty smart offender if he did that,” Sinclair said.

Vail moved closer to examine the glass. “We already know the guy is smart.”

Bledsoe held a hand against his stomach. He looked a bit ashen and was heading toward the door. “Let’s move out of here, discuss this in the other room.”

As they walked back into the bedroom, Manette scrunched her face. “I’m afraid to ask, but what does it mean, if the guy drank her blood? That’s beyond gross.”

Vail sighed. “Drinking the victim’s blood, which our killer’s never done before, is stimulating, even exciting for him; it heightens his fantasy.”

Manette shook her head. “Damn.”

Everyone was quiet, alone with his or her own thoughts. Murder scenes like this one often prompted such a response. Pondering how someone could do such a thing to a human being. But they had seen plenty of murders during the course of their careers and most detectives reached a point where they became numb to stabbings and shooting deaths. But this went beyond what most of them were accustomed to dealing with. Even Vail and Del Monaco, though having seen some of this before, were nevertheless scratching their heads.

“Okay, so let’s look at what we’ve got,” Robby said. “Footprints from outside the property leading along a row of hedges that gives him cover from either the front of the house or the security lights. He gets in, how?”

“Only entry on that side of the house is through the garage,” Sinclair said.

Del Monaco rubbed at his jiggly chin. “Okay, so he waits for someone to leave out of the garage, and he slips in. Linwood hears something, or she’s standing near the garage anyway, and he bludgeons her with a blunt object. Beats her, where?”

“Possibly on the face, but definitely above the left ear,” Sinclair said, kneeling beside the bed and examining the corpse.

“Defensive wounds?”

Robby crouched by Linwood’s right side. “Abrasion right forearm, possibly a couple of fingers, too. Need an x-ray to see if there’re any fractures.”

“So this guy has totally changed his MO,” Vail added. “He’s not interested in talking to this woman. Usually, we figure he enters through the front door, sweet talks them into letting him in. Once in, he hits them and knocks them unconscious. We’ve never found blood near any of the front doors, so it’s just a disabling blow. But with this one, he hits her hard. And she’s facing him when he attacks. Tells me he’s angry at her, or at something she said or did.”

“MO’s can change, right?” Robby asked. “If the offender thinks something might work better, he refines his methods.”

Vail smiled internally. Robby had been reading the materials she had given him. “That’s right.”

“Or, it could’ve been the press conference,” Bledsoe said. “Linwood went after him pretty good, probably pissed him off big time.”

Del Monaco looked away, rested his hands on his hips. “Or, could be we’re dealing with a different offender altogether.”

“Whoa,” Vail said, holding up a hand. “How do you get that?”

“MO’s very different. Yes, it can change when an offender refines his skills to be more successful. But that’s not the case here. He was pretty damn successful before. Very few defensive wounds. He disabled them fairly efficiently. Why change what works?” He shrugged. “Besides, signature’s way different, too. Much more violent. Major damage to face and head. Severing the breasts suggests a sexual component. Was she raped?”

“Chuck,” Bledsoe called, “any signs of sexual assault?”

A technician appeared in the doorway. “Sodomized. Smooth object. Damage to the surrounding tissue. Best guess, postmortem. Don’t know yet if there’s any semen. ME will be able to tell you more.” Bledsoe gave him a nod and the tech returned to his work in the bathroom.

“Also a first,” Del Monaco said. “And now he might be drinking the vic’s blood. These are all very significant variants.”

Vail held up a hand. “Unless this vic holds special significance to him, like we said before. That still makes the most sense to me, Frank. As to the change in MO, he had a different situation here.” She turned to the others, focusing mostly on Robby, to explain: “Some offenders will case the place to see if there are any boyfriends or husbands or roommates they have to worry about. If there are, and the offender still wants this victim, he’ll take out the male first and then go after the intended target. We saw that with Danny Rolling in Gainesville. If Dead Eyes scoped the place, and I bet he did, then he’d know Linwood wouldn’t answer her own door like the other vics did.”

Quiet settled on the room for a moment. Sinclair asked, “She’s married, right? That shipping guy?”

“Yeah,” Bledsoe said. “He’s been overseas. Chief was going to notify him.”

“Maid lives in the servant’s quarters out back,” Manette said. “She’s had the flu past few days. She ordered take-out for Linwood, it was delivered around five. She went back to her place and passed out. Didn’t hear or see nothing. I gotta follow up with the delivery guy, run his sheet, see if he’s got any priors. And get proof of his whereabouts after he left.”

“Where’s Hancock?” Vail asked.

“Office in the back, it’s his base of operations,” Sinclair said. “Didn’t want to talk. Couldn’t get him to say shit.”

Manette turned to Bledsoe. “You want me to go get him, Blood?” She winked. “I think he’ll listen to me.”

Bledsoe nodded. “We need him to talk to us. Let’s do it out in the living room, let the crime scene guys finish up in here. We’ve . . . seen enough.”

“Got that right,” Sinclair said, following Bledsoe out of the room.

HANCOCK SAT DOWN heavily on the couch, his tie pulled loose to one side and his hair a frazzled mess. His eyes were glazed and his movements heavy, as if he had been drinking. Manette brought up the rear and tipped back a phantom cup, confirming that their compadre had, in fact, been dipping into the sauce.

“Well, lookee what we got here. A fuckin’ party. Well, fuck me. So glad y’all could make it.”

“We need to ask you a few questions,” Sinclair said.

“Cops already asked me some questions.” His bloodshot eyes wandered around the room.

Manette, who sat opposite Hancock on an identical sofa separated by a coffee table with espresso-swirl granite, said, “We know you’re pretty upset about the senator.”

His head whipped over to her. “Shouldn’t I be? She was good to me. And I just lost my fucking job.”

Vail frowned, stretched her neck up toward Robby’s ear. “That’s why he’s all bent out of shape. Two hundred K and benees down the drain.”

“Yeah, and look at all the protection it got her.”

Manette threw Vail an angry glance, then turned back to Hancock. “Look, you’re the security guy here. It was your job to look after the senator’s well-being. Where were you when—where were you tonight after six o’clock?”

Hancock’s eyes found Vail. “It’s all your fault. You got her all upset and she wanted to be left alone.” He turned back to Manette. “I went out for a drive.”

Vail felt everyone’s gaze shift to her face, awaiting an explanation. “I was here earlier,” she said, “around six. I’d just found out that the senator was my—my biological mother.” She glanced over at Robby, hoping to find a sympathetic face. “I came by to talk to her about it.”

Del Monaco snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”

“How’d the conversation go?” Sinclair asked.

“She was a rock. She didn’t say a whole lot—”

“They argued,” Hancock shouted. “Vail wanted to know who her father was, but the senator wouldn’t tell her. Vail was pissed off.”

Vail banded her arms across her chest. “I left around six-thirty, I think. I was upset, I went for a drive. When I got home, Bledsoe texted me.” She waited for more questions, a grilling, an interrogation. But everyone was quiet.

Bledsoe’s Motorola sung Beethoven’s Fifth. He fumbled with the handset and walked off.

“I’ll leave you all alone for a few minutes,” Vail said, “so you can talk.” She spun and followed Bledsoe out of the house.

THE FRONT DOOR CLICKED CLOSED. The silence continued, except for the shuffling movements of crime scene technicians who continued to move about, taking photos and transporting evidence from the bedroom to their vehicle. Finally, Hancock spoke. “Vail’s got no alibi.”

“But Karen Vail’s not a killer,” Robby said.

Hancock reached into his sport jacket and pulled out a brown cigarette.

“Not one of them stinkers,” Manette whined.

Sinclair touched Manette’s arm and leaned close to her ear. “Let him go. May help calm him down, sober him up.”

“But it’s some Turkish herbal shit in there. It’ll stink this place up, I won’t be able to breathe.”

Hancock’s hands were trembling slightly. Robby watched as he maneuvered the lighter in front of his lips, the flame missing the tip. Hancock put his left hand in front of the right, as if one tremor would cancel the other and get the cigarette lit. He finally succeeded.

Sinclair pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to Manette. “Here’s a filter.”

She pushed his hand away. “No thanks.” She waved her hands in the air to disperse the smoke. “What else you got on Vail?” she asked Hancock.

Hancock sucked in a long drag, blew it out his nostrils. “She beat up her husband, put him in the hospital. She’s got a violent streak.” He flicked the ashes into a baby blue and opal colored porcelain vase on the coffee table. “Here’s how it went down. Vail is depressed. She’s got problems with her ex, and her son is in a coma. She finds out her mother isn’t her mother after all, and she starts snooping around. Somehow she discovers the senator is her real mother. She comes here to confront her, to find out why she pawned her off like an old TV. Vail gets on her case, so the senator asks her to leave. Vail throws a fit, a loud one. I’m worried she may assault the senator, just like she did to her ex. So I step in and show Vail the door. She storms out, drives away, and parks. She comes back on foot and waits nearby.”

Hancock took another puff and rubbed at his right temple, the trail of smoke zigzagging as his hand moved back and forth over his skin. He blew a haze into the air and continued. “The senator’s very upset and wants to be alone. I try to help, but she tells me to leave. Vail waits till I drive away, then comes back in and whacks her. Makes it look like a Dead Eyes kill, which isn’t hard to do because she knows this shit so well she could recite it in her sleep.” He leaned back on the couch, his gaze resting somewhere on the floor.

After a moment of silence during which everyone seemed to be digesting Hancock’s theory, Del Monaco spoke up. “But it doesn’t exactly match Dead Eyes. If she was staging the scene, she’d want to follow it to the letter. So there’d be no doubt.”

Hancock blew a plume out the side of his mouth. “She can’t control herself. Rage takes over. Overkill, because of the personal connection.”

Del Monaco bobbed his head about, as if to say he couldn’t completely rule out Hancock’s assertions. Robby remembered reading about overkill in the binders Vail had given him: it was a term used to describe excessive violence found at a crime scene, usually as a result of a soured personal relationship between the assailant and his victim.

“And she’s got no alibi,” Hancock added.

Robby stepped forward, stopping a few strides from Hancock’s feet. He rested his hands on his hips and looked down at Hancock. “Neither do you. And you could’ve staged the scene just as well as Karen could’ve.”

“Yeah, but here’s the thing, Mr. Roberto Enrique Humperto Hernandez, or whatever the hell your names are.” He looked up and blew some smoke in Robby’s face. “I don’t have a motive.”

Robby swatted it away and looked at Sinclair. It was a look that begged him to intervene before Robby slugged him in the face and caved in his skull.

“Robby, honey,” Manette said, taking the hint. “Let’s chat over here for a moment.” She stepped forward and grabbed him by the crook of his elbow. She pulled him close and he reluctantly craned his neck down to her level. “We don’t know what happened yet. So he may be a suspect, but he’s our only witness, too. Let’s not piss him off before we get a chance to ask him some questions.”

Robby knew she was right, but his hand was still curled into a fist. And he was ready to use it. “Fine. Ask your questions. I’m going out for some air.”

ROBBY JOINED BLEDSOE in the middle of the circular drive. Bledsoe hung up his phone and stood there, nodding his head slowly.

Vail, coming up from behind him, acknowledged Robby. “So are they raking me over the coals?”

“Just Hancock.”

“Well,” Bledsoe said, “I think we’ve got something on Mr. GQ.”

Robby and Vail looked at him, anticipation raising their brows.

“That was the chief. Gave me something he thought we could use. Seems that Linwood was helping herself to some dessert on the side.”

“An affair?” Vail asked. “With Hancock?”

Robby turned toward the front door. “Now that I can use.”

“Hold on,” Bledsoe said. “We have to decide how to use this. We need to poke around a little bit, get our ducks in a row.”

“Asshole is trying to pin this on Karen, smug on account that she had a motive and he didn’t. Now we know he might have one. Scorned lover. She wants to call it off, he refuses.”

“Husband needs to be looked at,” Vail said. “We sure he’s overseas?”

“It’s being checked, but they reached him at his hotel in Hong Kong, so I think his alibi is pretty damn strong.”

“Unless it was a contract job,” Robby said. “Hubby wants her out of the picture, hires someone to take her out.”

Vail shook her head. “Contract jobs are impersonal. Bullet to the head and it’s over. None of this bloody mess to the face and breasts.” She turned to Bledsoe. “Maybe forensics will give us something. I say we wait on nailing Hancock to the chair until at least tomorrow. We might get something else to use on him.”

Bledsoe nodded. “I’ll ask the lab to put a rush on trace. Meantime, we wait. Okay?”

Robby curled his mouth into a frown. “Yeah. Fine.”

“Go home, get some rest. I’ll post a uniform, make sure no one goes in or out of the place when we leave. Including Hancock.”

“Especially Hancock,” Robby said.

BLEDSOE WALKED BACK IN, Vail at his side. His brow was furrowed and his hands were shoved into the pockets of his overcoat. He stopped beside Hancock, took a seat on the couch. “I know this is a tough time for you. I’m sorry you had to be the one to discover the body.”

Hancock leaned back on the couch.

“You said the senator had asked you to leave the house. What time was that?”

He squinted as if blinding sunlight was bathing his eyes. “I don’t know,” he whined. “Around seven. Maybe a few minutes after. I wasn’t looking at the clock.”

“And when did you get back?”

Hancock shrugged, looked across the room at the grandfather clock, as if he were calculating the time by working backwards. “Around eight-thirty.”

Manette consulted her notepad. “Nine-one-one was placed around eight-forty-five.”

“Then it was closer to eight-forty-five,” Hancock said, his hands turning palm up. “Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone. I’ve had a really crappy night.”

Vail glanced at the bloody trail in the hallway and thought, Eleanor Linwood could say the same thing.

forty

The doctor stood between Karen Vail’s legs, which were spread wide and resting in stirrups on the birthing table. She had been in labor for six hours, the hospital gown matted down to her slick skin with so for six hours, the hospital gown matted down to her slick skin with so much perspiration it appeared as if she had just stepped out of the shower.

Deacon stood by her side, wiping her forehead with a cold, wet cloth, occasionally feeding ice chips into her mouth.

“Ahhh!” Vail bore down, grabbed the edge of the table, and swore under her breath.

“You can do this, honey,” Deacon said by her ear. “I know it hurts. Try to breathe through it, like we practiced.”

“Ahhh!” Vail winced, then gasped and said, breathless, “Fuck the damn breathing.” She brought her right hand up to her large, contracted abdomen, then winced again.

“It won’t be long,” the doctor said calmly. “The head is crowning. In a minute I’m going to have you push. Not until then. Okay?”

All Vail could manage between clenched teeth was a groan.

Deacon wiped her forehead, leaned close to her ear. “Hang on another few minutes, just another few minutes. Our son’s almost here.”

“Okay, Karen, here he comes,” the doctor said. He pushed his rolling stool away with a flick of his foot, then reached out and placed his fingers atop the baby’s crowning head. A nurse came up alongside and pressed a button on the adjacent monitor. “Go ahead and push,” the doctor said. “We’ll have him out in a jiffy.”

Vail bore down, the strain lifting her torso off the bed. “Ahhh! It burns, it burns!”

“He’s just about through. That’s it, that’s it . . . all right!” The doctor guided the baby’s shoulder through, then straightened up, his face a wide grin. “Congratulations.” He handed the baby to the nurse, who wrapped the child in a small towel and placed him on Vail’s chest. “Do you have a name?”

“Jonathan Taylor,” Deacon said, stroking his baby’s soft cheek.

“Jonathan Taylor Tucker, I like it. . . .”

VAIL’S EYES OPENED, locks of hair pasted to her face, thoughts of Jonathan tickling her mind. Her alarm clock glowed 4:35. She looked around, oriented herself, then began crying. Reliving Jonathan’s birth, she agonized over the life she’d had, the good-natured man Deacon once was, the joy of bringing her son into the world. How different things were now. As tears rolled onto her pillow, Vail scolded herself for never taking the time to appreciate what she had, when she had it.

She made her way into the family room and picked up a photo of Jonathan as an infant. She touched his face, then held the frame to her chest, hugging it, as if the warmth and love could somehow move through the still photo and invigorate his spirit.

“Please wake up,” she whispered.

Vail sat in the family room, sipping hot chocolate and waiting for the sun to rise. The Today Show droned from the television. She watched the small digital clock in the corner of the screen tick away, figuring she would go to the hospital as soon as visiting hours began.

Go there and do what? What could she possibly accomplish by sitting at Jonathan’s bedside? To talk to him, in case he could hear her? For someone whose work revolved around analytic logic, the concept of talking to a comatose mind seemed designed to comfort those who needed something to cling to. But she realized she was now one of those people. She had to believe Jonathan could hear her, that he could know she was near . . . because if it was true, then there was hope. And as long as there was hope, she could get through the day.

At seven thirty, she walked into the kitchen to refill her mug. Before she could pour the hot chocolate, her doorbell rang. She squinted at the clock and wondered who it would be this time of morning. She walked to the door and saw a large, dark figure standing on her porch. Robby.

“You’re here early.”

Robby walked in and gave her the once over. “You look like you didn’t sleep last night.”

“Not true. I slept about four hours.”

Robby smirked, then reached out and touched her hair, pushed it off her face and behind her ear. A gentle brush, a tentative, nonthreatening gesture to test the waters. “You doing okay?”

She shrugged. “I’ve had better years.” She wanted him to reach out and take her in his arms, to hold her and tell her it’s all going to be all right. She needed his company, his strength, his support. They stared at each other, her mind willing him to reach out to her. Instead, he stood there, seemingly reading her face like a closed book. You usually know what I’m thinking. Why can’t you sense my thoughts now?

As if she had spoken aloud, he reached behind the small of her back and drew her close. She melted into his body, squeezed him tightly. Seconds dissolved into minutes. She didn’t want to move, to lose the feeling. It had been too long since she had felt the extreme desire for a male body, for someone she truly wanted to touch and feel and explore and become totally absorbed in.

He bent his head down and with his index finger, tilted her chin back. His full lips met hers, two pillows coming to rest against one another. He pulled back and she slowly opened her eyes. She didn’t want the moment to end. She looked at him, desire gripping at the sleeves of his sport coat.

“I can’t stay.”

“I know.” She released him and straightened her nightshirt. “Come by later?”

“If you want.”

“I want.”

He was silent a few seconds, then said, “Okay.” He brought his hand out from behind her back. He was clutching a thick envelope. “Oh, almost forgot. I brought you a present,” he said, handing her the package.

She tore it open and pulled out an overstuffed file folder. “What is this?”

“Copy of everything the task force has in its Dead Eyes file. Copies of the photos are not as good as the real pictures, but at least you’ve got something to work on.”

Vail, still standing with Robby in the entryway, quickly thumbed through the file. She smiled, again feeling part of a team. “Tell Bledsoe I said thanks.”

“Will do. We’re going to lean on Hancock this morning. Bledsoe called in some favors, got a couple of techs to work through the night. They found some interesting stuff back at Linwood’s place that might help us turn him.”

“For Linwood or Dead Eyes?”

Robby shrugged. “You tell me.”

Vail put a hand on her hip and walked down the hall. She turned and came back, looked up at Robby. “For Linwood, it’s possible. Affair gone sour. He’s pissed, takes her out. Does a Dead Eyes copycat to throw attention in a totally different direction. As for him being Dead Eyes, I’d have to give it more thought. In some ways he fits the profile, in some ways not. He’s bright and organized, right age range and ethnic background, drives the right type of power car. I don’t know about his art background, family history, or upbringing. Some of that we can get through his Bureau application.

“But one thing that stands out is that he’s injected himself into the investigation by having Linwood place him on the task force. That’s common with organized offenders. It’s a means of control, of checking in on where the investigation is. Can’t get a better finger on the pulse than being named to our team.” She nodded slowly. “Be good to see if he was even in the area and alibied at the times of the murders.”

“Sin’s on it. I’ll see about either getting his personnel file from Gifford or ask him to have a look around inside himself.”

“Good. Why don’t—” The phone’s electronic bleat sent her into the kitchen to answer it; it was Cynthia from CART with the lab’s analysis of Vail’s hard drive.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Cynthia said. “First, I’ve got a guy working on the sender’s name, G. G. Condon. But we both know that’s going to be a dead end. However, because the offender sent the message to you at work, it was stored on the Academy server. That’s the good news. From what we’ve been able to determine, the way this self-destructing email works is that it sends its message with a tracking number embedded in its source code. Unbeknownst to you, he sent another message simultaneously to our mail server, which also got downloaded into your inbox; it looked like an identical copy of message number one, so you probably ignored it. But its source code was different. The effect was like a ticking time bomb; message two contained simple instructions that identified the tracking code on message one, which triggered a self-destruct countdown as soon as you read it. At the predetermined time, message one “dissolved,” to use an inaccurate but descriptive term, into its digital components—ones and zeroes. The message literally vanished.”

“Great.”

“Actually, it is. We were able to recover the message and routing information, including the second message that erased the first.”

“Let’s cut to the chase. What’d we learn from all this digital skulking?”

“Your message originated from a cybercafé in Arlington.”

“Arlington.” She wondered if Kim Rossmo had finished the geographic profile yet. Would Arlington fall within the offender’s geographic range? “If we have the time stamp on it, we can check their security cameras to see who was in the café at that time. They do have security cameras, don’t they?”

“That would be too easy,” Cynthia said. “Either the offender got lucky or he’s smart.”

“He’s smart. Very smart.”

“Then I’m afraid the only thing you can do is stake out the place, see if he comes back.” Vail’s shoulders slumped. “We don’t even know what the guy looks like.”

“Even if you did, there’s no guarantee he’ll use the same cybercafé.”

“He won’t,” Vail said with resignation in her voice. “We need to find some other way of tracking him.”

“That’s your neck of the woods. We decrypt and unlock secrets, report the info to you. You guys get to have all the fun.”

Vail had another word for it but thanked Cynthia and hung up. After relaying the information to Robby, she said, “Why don’t you go find out what forensics came up with. Meantime, I’ll spend some time with the file.”

He placed a hand on her cheek, then turned and walked out.

forty-one

“He’s coming up the path,” Robby said. Everyone scattered, as if a pebble had been dropped in a pond. Robby pretended to have just arrived and started removing his jacket as Hancock walked through the door. He nodded casually at Hancock, then took his seat.

Bledsoe sauntered in, tossed a few papers onto Sinclair’s desk, and stopped in front of Hancock. “You doing okay?”

Hancock shrugged a shoulder. “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t called me.”

“We had some stuff to go over. Lab findings. I thought you’d want to get back in the saddle and help us out. We sure could use it.”

Del Monaco, sitting at Vail’s desk, reclined in his chair, observing Hancock’s demeanor, body language, and speech patterns. Sinclair, Manette, and Robby all tried to busy themselves with paperwork, though they each kept an eye on Hancock’s movements.

“Yeah, sure. Help any way I can.”

“Good. Get me a copy of your CV, I’ll circulate it at the station, see if anyone knows somebody who needs a security chief.”

Hancock’s eyes narrowed. “You’d do that for me?”

“Why not? You’ve been very helpful with this investigation. You’re the one who came up with the artist interpretation of the blood murals. I think that’s going to turn out to be significant. Even Karen didn’t think of that.”

Hancock frowned. Perhaps mentioning Vail’s name was a mistake. But a second later, he reached into his leather attaché and removed a stapled document. “It’s up to date,” Hancock said.

Bledsoe took the papers, then mumbled, “You’re definitely prepared.”

“Hey Blood,” Manette interrupted, “I got a theory on Linwood. Don’t know if it’s got anything to do with Dead Eyes, because it could just be a copycat, but I was thinking.”

“Spill it,” Bledsoe said. It was an invitation for everyone to join the discussion.

“Well, I figure that if the husband’s alibi holds up, the first thing we should look at is the senator’s private life. You know, was she doing a stud on the side.”

Bledsoe turned to Hancock. This was Bledsoe’s interrogation. He would ask most of the questions directed at their prime suspect. “What do you think, Hancock? You were her security chief. Did she have anything going with anyone?”

Hancock twisted his neck a bit, freeing it from his tight collar. “Senator Linwood having an affair? Absolutely not. She was happily married, far as I could tell.”

“Yeah, but hubby wasn’t around much. Maybe that presented an opportunity. Or a need.”

Hancock shook his head. “Not that I saw. She had her reputation to protect.”

He had made a good point. Why would Linwood risk it? “What if someone had something on her, some deep secret, and this was her way of keeping him quiet.”

Hancock shrugged, looked away. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. Guess it’s possible.”

Bledsoe nodded slowly. “So nothing happened between the two of you.”

“Me?” Hancock leaned back in his chair, as if he were trying to fend off the accusation by putting distance between himself and Bledsoe. “Absolutely not. My job was to guard her, not bone her.”

“Well, you failed, then, didn’t you? I mean, your job was to guard her, but she ended up dead. And you happened to leave just when she needed you the most.”

Hancock sat up straight. “What the hell is this about? What are you saying?”

“We’re just talking. It’s not about anything.” Bledsoe shrugged. “Just trying to get at what happened last night.”

“Some deranged maniac killed her, that’s what happened.”

“You said she and Vail had had an argument, and that the senator was upset afterwards. She told you she needed some space, and you just drove off and left her alone.”

Hancock relaxed a bit, pulled out a cigarette. “That’s right.”

“Well, you’re her security guard. Was that a smart thing to do? You could’ve just gone outside for a smoke. But you left, drove away.”

“I drove away. And if I hadn’t. . . .” He looked away and shook his head. “She’d probably still be alive.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. Manette winced as the cigarette ignited.

“You know,” Robby said, “the lab faxed us a report this morning.” Hancock puffed on his cigarette and seemed to ignore the comment. “The techs are pretty good. We had the best of the best combing Linwood’s place. And they found something interesting.” Still no response from Hancock.

“What’d they find?” Sinclair asked.

“Something I’ve never seen. Some Turkish cigarette tobacco in the senator’s bedroom.” Robby paused, looked at Hancock. The others turned to him as well.

Hancock lifted his head and noticed their gazes. “Look, you want to lean on someone, what about Vail? She had big time motive, means, and opportunity. Not to mention a violent history.”

Everyone was silent.

“I’d rather talk about the tobacco,” Bledsoe said. He kept his voice calm, his eyes riveted on Hancock.

“There’s nothing to talk about. I spent a lot of time around the house. I smoked here and there. Hell, you’ll probably even find clothing fibers and DNA around the place, too. I worked there, for Christ’s sake.”

“You’re right,” Robby said, looking at the report. “There were hair and fibers there, too.”

“See?”

Robby nodded. “Simple transfer.”

“Exactly.”

“Except that the tobacco fibers were found embedded in the bed sheets. Linwood’s bed sheets.” Robby tilted his head back and waited for a response.

“Like you said, simple transfer.”

“I want to accept that,” Bledsoe said, standing and starting to pace, circling Hancock. “I really do, because the thought of one of us doing the senator in such a grotesque way . . . turns my stomach.” He stopped in front of Hancock and looked down at him. “We also found dried semen on the bed sheets. Her husband had been in Asia for nearly two weeks. I bet if we run the semen, it won’t be his.”

“Fine, then run it.”

Bledsoe leaned forward, rested his hands on the armrests of Hancock’s chair. “Come on, Hancock. We know about the affair.”

“What affair?”

“Don’t insult us any more than you already have. We have a very reliable source who’ll be more than willing to testify.”

Pushing Bledsoe’s large, unyielding frame out of his way, Hancock struggled to stand. “I don’t have to sit here and take this. If you had something, you’d have cuffed me by now.” He shook his head, his lips bent into a frown. Shaming them. “You people have a viable suspect—Karen Vail—but you’re not interested. You think you hold all the cards? Wait till I let the media know Lee Thurston’s finest is dodging the investigation, overlooking the one person who’s quite possibly the Dead Eyes killer, all because they’re protecting one of their own.”

“Gather your things and get the hell out of here,” Bledsoe said. “In case you’re wondering, you’re off the task force. There’s no senator to pull strings for you. And the police chief won’t touch you with a ten foot pole.”

Hancock snatched up his attaché, threw assorted papers inside, and grabbed his coat.

Robby rose from his chair and rested his hands on his hips. “Talk to the media, and you’ll only bring more heat on yourself.”

Hancock stormed to the front door, stopped, and turned around. “You people are imbeciles.”

“At least we’ve got jobs,” Sinclair said. “You’re an unemployed imbecile.”

The door slammed and Hancock was gone.

forty-two

I usually take some cheese into my secret room for Charlie to munch on. He’s getting a little fat, probably because I feed him too much. But whenever I go there, it’s like I’ve come home and he comes over to say hi. He climbs into my lap and sniffs around. Probably looking for more food. Damn parasite, that’s all he is. Give me, give me, give me.

I’m not in the mood today. The prick’s latest whore saw me last night and made fun of me. I didn’t need that, I get enough of it from him. I’d like to make him feel the way he makes me feel for once.

Charlie climbs up on my chest and looks at me, his tiny nose wiggling and his whiskers shaking accusingly at me.

“What the hell is your problem?” I shout, then stop to think if anyone is home. I can’t let this little rodent ruin things. He looks at me with those eyes, evil eyes. “Don’t look at me that way! I hate you!”

I grab him by the neck and reach to my right, where there are some nails left over from the construction I’d done to expand the room. I pick one up and jam it right through his eye socket. He stiffens, then goes limp in my hand.

My heart is beating rapidly, and I feel high, like I’m floating. What a feeling! I’m wired, I can’t get a deep breath.

I throw Charlie’s body down on the shelf mounted on the wall and pull out my pocket knife. I wonder what he’d look like if I just make a slice right here. I pant like a dog, unable to control myself. A dog. Now that would be something. Do this to a dog—

He remembered that day quite well. Certain memories just stick in your mind like a piece of chewing gum on the bottom of a shoe. You pull and twist and stretch and the damn gum just won’t let go.

He shut down the laptop and put it aside. He had a little less than an hour before students started arriving for his advanced pottery class and he needed to decompress, turn his thoughts away from his childhood. He grabbed an unfinished sandwich from the small refrigerator and switched on the television. But of course he wouldn’t be able to escape it altogether. After all, he’d made the news. Literally made it. The Dead Eyes killer was a nightly story, if only as a feature piece on public safety. But he was always mentioned.

Yet somehow, the police had managed to keep a tight lid on the Linwood murder. Guess it would kind of freak people out if they heard that the Dead Eyes killer had gotten to a state senator. If he could get to a senator, no bitch-whore would be safe. “You hear that? None of you are safe!”

He finished the sandwich, then sat in front of the TV kneading a hunk of clay. Kneading clay relaxed him, kept his hands and arms strong.

The six o’clock news logo swirled onto the screen with a building crescendo of music and a photo array of its anchors. Such drama. Just report the goddamn news and cut the fat.

“Good evening,” the anchor said. Yes, it was indeed a good evening, thank you very much. He felt satisfied, the way you feel after eating a well-cooked meal.

“. . . the murder of Senator Eleanor Linwood has stunned members of the legislature and caused an outpouring of support across bipartisan lines. The senator’s husband, Richard Linwood, heir to the Linwood Shipping empire, was reportedly returning home from a business trip. Police are not releasing many details about the murder, except to say leads are being pursued. For more complete coverage on Senator Linwood’s long career, we go to Steve Schneiderman, standing by live. . . .”

He switched off the television, went to his freezer, and took out the container holding the beloved senator’s hand. He set the severed appendage on the table beside him and looked at it, observing it from multiple angles. “You were a very naughty bitch, Senator. Would anyone have voted for you if they knew the type of person you really were? Of course not. Of course not. Of course not.”

Well, he hoped she enjoyed their time together. He sure did. It was the most satisfying event of his life. He felt free again. Free . . . free to do whatever he wanted to, because she wasn’t there to stop him.

Almost free. Because there were a few loose ends that needed to be tied up. But there was time for that. If there was one thing he could be sure of, it was that time was on his side.

forty-three

Vail had spent the afternoon at the hospital, holding Jonathan’s hand, stroking his hair, talking to him. Just in case. She told him she loved him about a hundred times, or maybe it was more. It didn’t matter. He was still comatose, and although previously his eyes only opened and closed, they now moved side to side and tracked moving objects. As time passed, it was increasingly difficult for her to get excited over “incremental improvement.”

But the doctor continued to be encouraging: “He’s taking small steps. No matter how small, they are small steps. We have to remain hopeful.”

Vail shook her head. It sounded similar to what Gifford and Robby had said. Maybe she needed to start taking their words to heart.

After returning to her house, she grabbed the Dead Eyes file and spread the paperwork out on the floor in her study. The profile and supporting information went in one pile, the crime scene photos in another, VICAP reports on each victim grouped with victimology analyses. Interview notes with family members, employers, and acquaintances were placed in another spot. Medical examiner, forensic, and lab reports were separated out and laid across the floor.

Vail stood up and looked at it all, neatly organized. Like the offender.

She sat on the futon couch beside the long wall of the eight-by-ten room and let everything flow through her mind, not stopping to analyze any particular item. The blood murals, the messages left at each scene after the disputed third victim, the severed left hand, the knives through the eyes. Disemboweled vics, easily disabled. Substantial planning involved. Intelligent offender. Organized. Her thoughts had come full circle.

The doorbell rang. She pulled herself off the futon and meandered to the front door. Robby was standing there with a bouquet of flowers. “Good afternoon, Miss, care to make a contribution to the Police Officer’s Foundation?”

Vail pushed opened the screen door and said, “Sure, Officer. Here’s my donation.” She reached out, grabbed his lapel, and pulled him down to her height. Planted a hard kiss on his lips. She leaned back and studied his face.

“I’ll make sure you get a receipt. For tax purposes.”

He bent over and lifted her off her feet, carrying her in his arms into the family room, where they kissed again. They fell onto the couch, tongues probing, hands exploring—

Suddenly, Vail stopped. She rested her head on Robby’s chest, a hand on his shoulder.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want anything to ruin the moment. Can we just lie here for a few minutes?”

“Of course.”

Seconds passed. She asked, “Do you mind if we slow it down a bit? I just need some time. I’m not sure what I want. I mean, I know what I want. It’s just that with so much going on right now, maybe it’s best to wait—”

Robby pressed fingers to her lips. “You want to wait, we’ll wait. I think I can withstand a few more cold showers.” They smiled.

“Thanks.”

“We’ll grab some dinner. A movie, too, while we’re out. I think we could both use a good escape.”

She nodded against his chest. “In a little while. For the moment, I just want to stay right where I am.”

forty-four

“So teach me more.” Robby grabbed his rolled burrito and held an end of it in front of his mouth. “About profiling.”

Vail unwrapped the foil that cocooned her food. “Not exactly the sort of conversation made for dinner. But if it doesn’t bother you, I’m game.” She sighed, eyes down, searching the table between them but seeing nothing. “Typing the offender is an important consideration. With Dead Eyes, it’s a question I’ve grappled with over and over again. What type of offender is this guy?”

“I thought he was organized.”

“He is, yes. But there’s more to it than just organized or disorganized. Kim Rossmo—the guy who I asked to do a geographic profile, talks about classifying offenders by the way they search for their victims, and the way they go about attacking them. He classifies them as hunters, poachers, trollers, and trappers. I’m fairly sure Dead Eyes is either a hunter or poacher. A hunter uses his home as a focal point and goes out in search of a victim. A poacher also goes in search of a victim but chooses a different place as his focal point. Could be where he works or some other place he’s comfortable around—even if he has to travel to get there.”

“Okay, so he’s an organized hunter or poacher.”

She held up a hand. “It’s not quite that simple.”

“Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be.”

Vail smiled. “If it was simple, you guys wouldn’t need people like us.” She took a sip of her ice tea, then continued: “There are three victim attack methods. A raptor attacks a victim as soon as he sees her. A stalker finds his victim, then follows her for a while before attacking her. An ambusher behaves like a spider, luring her to his safe place, where he can be in total control, and then attacks. Based on the fact that Dead Eyes attacks them in their own home, and appears to be of high intelligence, I’d think he spends some amount of time casing out the house and the neighborhood before going in for the kill. That’s why he only chooses front doors that are hidden from the street.”

Robby swallowed. “Then he’s an organized hunting or poaching stalker. How does this help us?”

“First of all, it’s another tool in establishing linkage. Linkage is an issue for vic three—we know that—but also with Linwood. At first glance, she appears to be the work of the same offender, but in some respects not. Aside from linkage, a geographic profile uses the search and attack classifications to create a distribution of where the offender has already struck, and where he might strike next. If we overlay this analysis on top of a map, we can make certain inferences. And if he’s not a poacher, it might even give us an idea where he lives.”

“When will this geographic profile be done?”

“Hopefully soon.”

Robby took another bite of his burrito, then nodded.

THE CLOUDS HAD RETURNED. Gray skies and the threat of rain hovered like salt in sea air. After dinner, Robby and Vail went to a movie and made out like pimply-faced high school kids. Their next stop was Davina’s Creamery for dessert, before ending up at Robby’s place. They fell asleep on the couch in each other’s arms, their empty dishes of ice cream resting on the coffee table. The next morning, Robby drove her home on his way to the task force op center.

Upon pulling up to the curb by Vail’s house, he nodded at the open front door. “Please tell me you’re expecting someone.”

She followed his gaze. “What?” Her eyes narrowed as they found the door. She reached for her Glock and got out of the car in one motion.

Robby drew his weapon and followed her oblique path across the lawn. Using hand signals, Vail indicated she’d go right and he should go left. She rested her back against the brick; Robby ducked below eye level and scrambled across the front of the house.

She nodded to him, then turned the screen door’s knob and pulled it open. He held it in place with the toe of his shoe as she entered in a crouch, gun tip out in front of her. She moved through the hallway, Robby at her heels.

She motioned him into the kitchen, while she went left, into the living room. They converged in the hallway and continued on toward the bedrooms.

Vail toed open the door to her study and peered in. She cleared the room, then took in the mess of documents scattered across the floor. Her copy of the Dead Eyes file, rifled through. At first glance, with such a blizzard of papers, it was impossible to determine what was missing.

They finished clearing the house, then returned to Vail’s study. She sat on the futon, her face resting in her hands.

Robby sat beside her. “Looks like you had a visitor.”

Without looking up, she nodded. “He got my profile. All my notes.”

“Who did?”

Vail turned her head slightly, nodded at the wall behind them. Written in lipstick were the words they’d seen so many times before: “It’s in the.”

forty-five

“Holy shit.”

Robby couldn’t help himself; the words just tumbled from his lips. “He was here, in your place. He went through your stuff—”

“And saw the profile. He now knows everything we know about him.”

“Holy shit.”

“So you said.”

“I gotta call Bledsoe,” he murmured, then rooted out his cell phone. “We gotta get crime scene here, have them comb through this place.”

“Call Bledsoe, but we can’t have any techies here. I wasn’t supposed to have the file. We’d all be canned faster than the Jolly Green Giant.”

“Just don’t touch anything. Let’s get out of here, wait out front.”

She followed him out of the house, the Glock still in her right hand, dangling at her side. She was off in another dimension, thoughts swimming in her head, gurgling up to the surface before she could push them back down.

Robby pressed END and dropped the phone back in his pocket. “He’s on his way. Should be here in fifteen, he’s at the op center.”

“He’ll make it in ten.” Her voice was flat, her mind numb. She sat down on the cement steps of the porch and cradled her head in her hands. The hard, rough surface of the Glock dug into her face. She didn’t care.

“I can’t believe it. He was in my goddamn house. Why me?”

“That’s the question, Karen. Why you?”

Vail shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Robby started walking away toward his car.

“Where you going?”

“I’ve got a kit in my trunk. We can at least document the scene, dust for prints.”

“Yeah,” she said beneath her breath, “and tighten the nooses around our necks another notch.”

Robby walked in with a medium-size toolbox. He set it on the kitchen table and removed the fingerprinting kit. “It’s been a good three years since I did this.”

“You don’t want to know how many years it’s been for me.”

He removed the two-ounce vial of black dust and handed Vail the stiff brush. “Be careful. These bristles cut the print if you’re not careful.”

“Lovely.” She headed down the hall. “I assume we start with the study because we know for sure he was in there.”

“Makes the most sense. Honestly, I doubt we’ll find anything. Guy’s been real careful up to now. Not one stray print in six crime scenes. No reason to think he’d take his gloves off for this one.”

“Maybe he doesn’t see this as a crime scene. Breaking and entering’s nothing compared to serial murder.”

Robby started at the doorway. He took the brush from Vail, twirled it between his fingers to fluff out the bristles, then dipped the tip into the vial. He deposited the dust around the frame, taking care to brush lightly. “If you’ve got a camera, I’d snap some pictures. Let’s do it right.”

Vail fished out her HP 8-megapixel point-and-shoot from the closet and began documenting the scene. Using the standard protocol for crime scene photography, she shot the study from various angles, including close-ups of the message on the wall and the layout of the papers on the floor.

“Why don’t you take the ninhydrin,” he said. “Start spraying the papers on the floor. We know he went through them. If he wasn’t wearing gloves, the most likely place we’ll find a print is on those papers.”

They worked for the next fifteen minutes when Vail heard a “Hello!” through the screen door. Bledsoe. They walked to the porch and stepped out, each holding their tools of the trade.

“What the hell are you two doing?”

“Checking for prints.”

“This may be news to you, but we’ve got trained personnel for shit like that.”

“We were trained in evidence collection,” Vail said. “It’s just been a while.”

“Yeah, a long while.” Bledsoe looked around them, through the screen door. “So fill me in.”

Vail pulled off her latex gloves with a snap. “I had the papers spread out across the floor of my study, the ones Robby brought by yesterday. The Dead Eyes file. I went out for dinner and a movie last night and . . . got back this morning, about half an hour ago.”

Bledsoe’s eyebrows lifted and he gave a sideways glance at Robby. Adding it up. Vail was sure he hadn’t known there was something between them. But now he was probably patching it all together in his head. The overnight to Westbury, the rapport they seemed to share.

“So you think Dead Eyes was in your house sometime between last night and this morning?”

“Don’t you?”

“It seems to be the obvious conclusion,” Bledsoe said. “He’s trying to scare you. Trying to get inside your head.”

“Yeah, well, it worked.”

“Okay, I think some conclusions are in order,” Bledsoe continued. “One, the offender knows where you live. Second, he obviously found out your email address. For whatever reason, he feels the need to play head games with you. That’s good. If we can bait him, we can eventually catch him.”

“And it also places Karen at risk. I don’t think there’s anything good in that.”

Bledsoe looked away. “It’s the element we deal with. We’re always at risk.”

“It also tells us that he went to considerable effort to find your home address,” Robby said.

Vail nodded. “You’re adding to the profile.”

“Nothing we don’t already know. His approach indicates planning, which means intelligence. Organization.”

“Do we know what he did while he was here?”

“He rifled through the labs, forensic reports . . . and my profile. He now knows everything we know about him. Ed Kemper all over again.”

“Kemper,” Bledsoe said, snapping his fingers. “Kemper—I’ve heard that name.”

“Serial killer who hung out with cops at their favorite watering hole. He knew all the moves the dicks were making, all the evidence they had, because they would tell him. They never suspected he was the killer.”

They stood there staring at each other. Vail could tell the impact of this was beginning to hit them.

“So it’s possible this guy will alter his MO,” Robby said, “now that he knows our analysis of him—and his crime scenes?”

“Yes. He could alter his MO. But his ritual behavior would remain the same.” Vail shrugged. “Then again, I’ve never seen something like this happen before. And Kemper was before my time.”

Bledsoe asked, “What about getting Del Monaco’s take? He said he’s been in your unit the longest. Maybe he’s had a case where the profile’s been compromised.”

“We can’t ask Del Monaco.” Vail looked down at the cracked cement. “In order to ask him, we’d have to tell him that I had all these documents here. The next question he’d ask is—”

“How you got all this stuff if you’re suspended and off the case,” Bledsoe finished.

Robby held up a hand. “Let’s back up a second. We can’t be sure the offender actually saw the profile. We haven’t inventoried all the papers to see if he’s taken anything.”

Without a word, Vail turned and headed into the study, her compatriots following behind. She pulled on another pair of latex gloves, got down on her hands and knees, and started searching. Since it wasn’t the actual file, but loose papers she had organized into piles, it was more difficult to arrive at an accurate accounting.

“Well?” Bledsoe asked. “Is it here or not?”

Vail kept pushing papers aside, moving to another section of the floor and sifting through other piles. Finally, she sat cross-legged on the floor and slumped back against the futon. “It’s gone, along with the victimology analyses, VICAP forms, and. . . .”

“And what?” Bledsoe asked.

Vail swallowed hard. “The crime scene photos.”

There was silence. Finally, Robby spoke. “Karen, we really need to report this.”

She sat up suddenly. “Are you out of your mind? You’ll destroy two careers, and mine is already on the edge of the cliff.”

Robby sat down on the floor next to her. In a soft voice, he said, “Karen, this is bad. Very bad. It’ll affect this entire investigation.”

“The only one conducting this investigation is the task force,” Bledsoe bellowed. “The three of us here makes half the group. Besides, I run the damn thing and I already know what happened. Tell anyone, Bureau or PD, and it’ll be a lynching. With Thurston’s nose in everything, he’ll suspend me, for Christ’s sake. My guess, Robby, is that you won’t stand a rat’s chance in a pool of cyanide of escaping the purge. And then the whole investigation will hit the brakes. No. I say we keep this little . . . situation between the three of us.”

Vail looked at her ethical colleague, he looked at her, and then they both looked at Bledsoe.

Everyone nodded and the contract was sealed.

forty-six

The agreement having been reached, the question begging for an answer was Vail’s connection to the offender. They stood there, hands on hips, the issue riding on the air between them.

“Whatever the answer is, I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here. He knows where you live, where to find you.”

Vail clenched her jaw. “I’m not leaving. I’m not letting him run me out of my house.” She turned and walked away. “I won’t do it.”

Bledsoe shared a look with Robby.

“She can stay at my place,” Robby said. “I’ve got an extra room.”

The corners of Vail’s mouth curled upwards, but she turned slightly so Bledsoe wouldn’t see. That was funny, Robby. She knew Bledsoe was too good a cop not to suspect there was something between them.

“Yeah, good, whatever,” Bledsoe said.

“Okay,” Robby said. “Go pack some things and I’ll—”

“No.” Vail said it firmly, as if it was the final word on the topic.

But Bledsoe was not to be denied his say. “We made a pact on this break-in. But the deal’s off if you’re going to put your life in danger without good reason. And this isn’t a good reason.”

Robby nodded. “I agree. Draw your line in the sand with this guy some other way.”

Vail let her arms fall to her sides. “Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll stay at your place. For a few days.”

“And I’ll get someone in civvies posted near Jonathan’s room. Not sure how I’ll explain it, but I’ll find a way.”

“Then we’re back to the main question,” Robby said. “Your connection to the offender.”

Vail shrugged and headed down the hall to the study. Most of the papers had been sprayed with ninhydrin and carefully stacked. “Can you get these processed?”

Bledsoe shook open a plastic bag. “I’ll have a guy at the lab do it for me. He owes me some favors for a private job I did for him. Helped him out big time in his divorce settlement. He’ll run them, no questions, no strings.” He placed the stack of papers in the bag, along with the memory card from her camera.

“Cool,” Robby said.

Vail was leaning against her desk, staring at the wall above the futon, where the offender’s message was scrawled. “It’s in the,” she mumbled.

Robby rolled his head from side to side. “He didn’t write it in blood this time.” He leaned closer. With his height, he was almost looking directly at it. “Looks like lipstick—”

“That’s it,” Vail said, moving to Robby’s side.

Bledsoe set the bag on the desk and joined them. “That’s what?”

Vail shared a look with Robby. “I can’t believe we didn’t see it before,” he said.

She shook her head, disbelief knitting her brows together. “It was right there.”

“What was?”

Vail half smiled. “It’s in the blood, every message he’s left was written in blood.” Vail crossed her arms and leaned her right shoulder against the wall. “Offender could be a disgruntled lover, someone who got HIV or hepatitis or some other viral infection from a woman. It would fit the pattern of offenders who displace their anger against a particular woman to all women in general—or against specific women who remind him of the one who infected him. The familiarity could be a scent, a touch, a look. For all we know, that woman had brown eyes, like our vics. But again, this is all just a possibility and if we look at possibilities, the field is very wide. I’m not sure that would really be helping us.”

Bledsoe paced for a moment, then pulled his cell phone. “Let’s meet at the op center in thirty minutes. I’ll get everyone over there.”

“You want me there?”

“For this, yes. I’ll take the heat.”

FRANK DEL MONACO greeted Vail as she entered the front door to the operations center. “Not a good idea for you to be here, Karen.”

“I’m a big girl, Frank. You don’t need to be my parent. I’ll deal with Gifford.”

Del Monaco unfurled the front page of the Washington Herald and held it in front of Vail’s face. The bold headline was like a kick to her gut:

IS FBI AGENT DEAD EYES KILLER?

POSSIBLE TIES TO SENATOR’S DEATH

A large photo of Vail, taken several years ago during an FBI-DEA drug bust in New York City, accompanied the article. She had always liked the picture—she was cuffing the suspect, straddling his legs, her hair tousled and a serious look on her face. The photo documented one of the biggest cases she had ever broken. It had been framed by the New York Post and now hung on a wall in her office.

“What the hell is this?” She snatched the paper from his hands and began reading. Bledsoe and Robby read over her shoulder:

Sources close to the FBI charged today that the identity of the Dead Eyes killer is known to the Bureau, but that the Bureau has been reluctant to move against the killer because she is one of their own, Special Agent Karen Vail. Vail, the profiler assigned to the Dead Eyes case for the Behavioral Analysis Unit, is currently serving a suspension for brutally assaulting her ex-husband—an attack that sent him to the hospital with fractured bones. . . .

“Son of a bitch.”

Informed sources also state that Senator Eleanor Linwood—whose death has been kept under tight seal by the Vienna Police Department—was murdered by the Dead Eyes killer. In a bizarre, though related twist, it appears that the senator was Agent Vail’s biological mother, though the senator abandoned her as an infant. . . .

Vail leaned back against the entryway wall and slid her butt to the floor. Her legs were weak and she was light-headed. Bledsoe and Robby knelt at her side.

“Karen, you okay?”

“Del Monaco,” Bledsoe said, making no attempt to temper his anger, “make yourself useful and get her some water.”

The voices were off in the distance. She was aware of Robby kneeling in front of her, holding her arm. His touch was warm, his hands moist. A glass was pressed against her lips, and she drank reflexively.

She could sense Manette off to her left. Robby was peering into her eyes. She set the glass down and asked him to help her over to a chair. He guided her to the nearest desk and remained by her side. She could feel her senses returning, her mind clearing. Everyone was staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Bledsoe said. “Hancock threatened to go to the media unless we moved on you. It’s all bullshit. Don’t worry about it.”

“We’re behind you, Kari,” Manette said. “You’ll get through this.”

Vail wet her parched lips. “Gifford. I’ve gotta talk to Gifford.”

“He’s on his way,” Del Monaco said, setting the phone handset on the desk. He was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“You told him she’s here?” Robby asked, his face contorting into a snarl. He started toward Del Monaco, but Bledsoe grabbed his thick arm. Robby shrugged it off and in two strides was in front of Del Monaco, his large hands gathered around the profiler’s suit lapels. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about my job, Hernandez. My boss called me and said he’d tried reaching her. If I don’t tell him she’s here, it’s my ass that’s going to get whooped.” He shrugged against Robby’s grip. “Now, let go of me or I’ll have a chat with your sergeant.”

Bledsoe was behind Robby, his five-eight frame barely putting him up to Robby’s shoulders. “C’mon, Hernandez. We’re all upset by this. Let’s just get a grip on things.” He reached forward and pried Robby’s hands off Del Monaco’s jacket. Del Monaco looked up at Robby and then smoothed out his wrinkled lapels.

Robby turned toward Vail, who gave him a tight nod. Bledsoe was right, and she knew Robby knew it. She took another gulp of water, wishing it was something stronger, like scotch or gin—neither of which she drank. But at least it would deaden her anxiety.

The front door to the op center swung open and in walked Sinclair. He seemed to notice the quiet, the tension on everyone’s faces. “Another vic?” His face went down to his cell, as if he’d somehow missed the code.

“No,” Bledsoe said, then motioned him aside to fill him in.

Vail rested her head in her hands, trying to absorb the impact of what was about to happen. The implications were plentiful and threatened to overwhelm her.

She felt Robby’s hand on her shoulder, just resting there, no doubt his way of telling her she had his support. She knew there was nothing he could say or do to ease the pain of being the focus of a national media lynching. How convenient to have a suspect, a name and face on which anger and outrage could be pinned. All delivered in a front page article that was soon going to be picked up by the international press.

She took a deep, uneven breath and looked up. Everyone was looking away, avoiding the situation. “We’ve got work to do,” she said, her voice hoarse and raspy. She tipped her chin at Bledsoe, who was still leaning against a wall chatting with Sinclair.

He pushed back from the wall. “Yeah. Let’s get to it.” He moved to the front of the living room. “Karen’s got a new theory on what the messages mean. They were all written in blood, so ‘It’s in the’ could mean ‘It’s in the blood.’” He paused, noticed a few raised eyebrows.

“HIV,” Manette said.

Robby remained beside Vail. The warmth of his body, of his presence, made her feel more confident. She couldn’t recall the last time she had relied on anyone else for self-assurance.

“That’s the first thing to look at,” Robby said. “HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis C.”

“Let’s dole out some assignments and get on it,” Bledsoe said. “Manny, get us a list of all area blood banks, and a roster of the organizations and medical facilities they supply. We’ll have to go through each of their databases and cross-reference them with the FBI’s national database to see if we get any hits. We’re looking for males who’ve received donated blood that was tainted.”

“That’s like fishing with a little pole in a big lake,” Manette said. “And I can tell you as a woman, that ain’t no fun, if you get my drift.” A seductive smile spread her lips and she winked at a blushing Bledsoe. “How about we start with the vics? Were any of them infected with HIV or hepatitis?”

“Sexual innuendoes aside, Manette’s right,” Vail said. “I say we look for a connection to the blood through the vics.”

Bledsoe considered this a moment, then nodded. “That would help narrow our suspect pool, wouldn’t it?” He shook his head, as if embarrassed he hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll look into it.”

“He could be finding the women through the blood bank,” Manette said. “Maybe our guy works there and the vics donated regularly. I’d get a list of their female donors. See if any of our vics donated within the past couple of years.”

Vail mulled this over, then realized those parameters would be too limiting. “What about other blood sources? He could’ve been in a hospital and gotten a bad pint. If that’s the case, and for some reason he thinks a woman was responsible, bingo—that’s all it would take to get him going.”

“Then we should also check out the labs. Hospital and private,” Robby said. “Employees, suppliers, subcontractors. Anyone with a record or history of mental illness.”

“Do we want to go regional?” Del Monaco asked. “Or even national?”

“First start locally,” Vail said. “If we look at all the possible labs in the country, we’ll be doing paperwork for the next year while our killer continues to do his thing. I say if the local angle comes up empty, then we expand to regional. Then national.”

Del Monaco’s right foot was dancing, tapping the floor with anger. “I disagree. Regional first. Split it up, we should get it done in a few days.”

“Serial killers start close to home because it’s familiar territory to them,” Vail said.

Del Monaco’s ample face shaded red. “I don’t need you to tell me that, Karen—”

“Start locally,” Bledsoe said firmly. “Focus our efforts within a fifty mile radius. We need to, we can always look further.”

“The geographic profile would help narrow it down,” Vail said. Let Bledsoe pressure Del Monaco.

Bledsoe cocked his head to one side, his eyes coming to rest on Del Monaco, who was pretending to read some papers. He must have felt Bledsoe’s glare, because he spoke without lifting his head. “Kim Rossmo’s associate was preparing it. I’ll look into it.”

“Good,” Bledsoe said. “Much better when we all cooperate with each other, isn’t it? We’re on the same side, working toward a common goal: to catch this fucker. Let’s not forget that.” He waited a beat, then told them to get started on their new assignments.

GIFFORD ARRIVED AT THE OP CENTER thirty-five minutes later, moments after everyone had left. Vail had just finished running another copy of the case file when the door swung open and Gifford walked in. His black raincoat was open, his hands shoved deep into the pockets. He had a direct line of sight of Vail, who stood with her hands on the lid of the copier. The case file was splayed open. She turned and headed toward him, hoping he would not see what she had been duplicating. It would require an explanation, and what she needed were answers, not more questions.

“Sir,” she said, meeting him ten feet from the copier. “Frank said you wanted to see me.”

“I texted you. Never got a response.”

She pulled the BlackBerry from her belt and inspected the display. “Never came through.”

He stood there, looking down at her. “Uh huh.” He turned and looked around the converted living room/dining room and nodded approvingly. “Nice setup.”

“Bledsoe’s a pro. He runs a tight ship.”

“Evidently not tight enough.” Boom. Direct hit.

Vail stood there awkwardly, wondering if she should sit or keep standing. She had never felt intimidated by Gifford before, but now was different. He came here to talk with her, the revelation about Linwood fresh in his mind. The Herald’s allegations, for which he had to answer, no doubt at the forefront of his thoughts. For the moment, she would let him call the shots.

He took a seat at the closest desk, which was Sinclair’s. He lifted the basketball, which stood on a small stand, and rolled it around with his fingertips. “Signed by Jordan?”

Vail nodded. “Bubba Sinclair’s. He keeps it here for good luck.”

“Hmph.”

Just that, an indirect swipe at the task force, as if to say “a lot of good it’s done you.” But he kept his comment to himself, which was fine with her. She didn’t need any overt sarcasm to piss her off. In her current state, she didn’t know how she would react, and the last thing she needed was to fly off the handle at her boss.

Still holding the ball, rolling it with his fingertips, his eyes watching it spin, he leaned back in the chair and said simply, “So, was it true, that Linwood was your mother?”

“Yes.” Short answer, to the point. Less trouble that way.

“Hmph.” He stopped rolling the ball and peered over the top at Vail. “Was it true, that you had an argument with her the night she was murdered?”

“Yes.”

Gifford nodded. “And you didn’t see fit to mention this when we were standing in front of her house?”

“No, sir.”

“Why the hell not?” His voice was loud, his brow bunched.

Vail cleared her throat. “Because if I told you about it, you would never have let me view the crime scene. And, because it’s irrelevant. I didn’t kill her.”

He leaned forward in the chair, the springs squeaking with the shift in his weight. “Agent Vail, that has to rank with one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done in your career.”

“Yes, sir. I told Bledsoe and Hernandez—”

“Oh, do they outrank me now? I’m your boss, Vail, and you seem to have a knack for forgetting that lately.”

“Sir, I only meant to help.”

He rolled the ball some more. “Help. Well, I sure need that now, don’t I? Director Knox is on my case. The goddamn director called me this morning and set a meeting for this afternoon. You know what that means? It means my ass is in the sling. My job is on the line.”

“I didn’t mean to involve you. It’s Hancock—”

“Hancock! Yes, it is Hancock who’s the problem, isn’t it? The same guy I told you to back off of, to leave alone and let hang himself.”

“Sir, he went to the media to deflect attention off himself. The task force leaned on him, he’d had an affair—”

“I know all about the affair. When Thurston mentioned it in the car after we left you, I was the one who pushed him to call Bledsoe and tell him.” Gifford put the basketball back down on the stand, stood up, and faced the wall. “We issued an official denial to the story, of course.” He buried his hands in his pockets again. “I don’t know where this is going to lead, but I can tell you one thing: it’s not going to be fun. For any of us.” He turned to face her. “I got seventeen calls from the media this morning. After the Herald broke the story, everyone in the country picked it up. A buddy of mine at New Scotland Yard even heard about it. What’s bigger than the FBI covering up the fact that one of its profilers is a serial killer?”

“With all due respect, sir, you’re not the only injured party here.” She suddenly felt empowered, fed up by the fact that the entire focus was on him. “I’m the one they’re saying brutally murdered seven innocent women. How do you think that makes me feel?”

Gifford did not say anything. He looked away, kicked at an exposed power cord that ran along the carpet to the computer on Bledsoe’s desk. “There’s only one way to solve this problem.” He looked up at her.

“Find the killer,” she said.

Gifford walked past her and grabbed the doorknob. “Find the killer.”

Vail watched him walk out and stood there wondering if that was his unofficial way of telling her to pull out all the stops . . . or merely a self-affirmation that they needed to find the person responsible for making his life a living hell.

As she stood there, she realized it did not matter. Dead Eyes had targeted her, broken into her house, and violated her space. Now he was helping dismantle her career. She needed to find this guy soon, before he killed her—from within.

Now it was personal.

forty-seven

The weather turned for the worse in the space of an hour, with dark storm clouds and high winds moving in as temperatures plummeted. After having spent the past three hours with Jonathan, Vail sat in her study, fingerprint powder still splashed across the door frame. Though she did not plan on staying at her house long, her presence there was enough to satisfy her need to show the killer she would not be driven from her home. Nevertheless, her Glock sat on her lap, ready for action.

The phone had not stopped ringing. News stations and reporters from all over the country, all wanting her take on the accusations made by the unnamed source. She wanted to tell them everything, tell them they were chasing lies, pursuing bad news, being led astray by a manipulator whose only intent was to deflect attention off himself.

But she would not dare say any of that. Her life was in a precarious place right now, and the best course to follow was to keep her mouth shut. In situations like hers, no one got into trouble by saying nothing.

The phone rang again and the machine snapped on. She had turned the volume up so she could listen from the study, screening the calls in case it was one she needed to take. But it was another reporter, this one from southern California. She sighed and turned back to the Dead Eyes file. This copy she would carry with her wherever she went. But she knew it was a ridiculous precaution: too little, too late. The damage had already been done.

As she sat there, she began thinking the connection between her and the UNSUB had to go back to her relationship with Eleanor Linwood, Dead Eyes’ seventh victim. Her biological mother was the focal point of the killer’s rage, it seemed. That much had been evident by the violence imparted to Linwood’s face and body. Assuming Hancock was not involved. And as much as she wanted to believe he was the one responsible, something told her deep down that he was incapable of such fury. She had pushed him quite hard, challenged him and his abilities many times over. And not once had it caused him to come after her. Overtly or covertly. There was the threat, recently, at the op center, but she wrote that off as merely a tangle of testosterone and ego. Not nearly the same motivator as a love affair gone sour with all the emotions—anger, betrayal, rejection—that accompanied it.

But he had blamed Vail for destroying his career. Again, not as strong as breaking off an affair . . . yet it did seem to have caused him significant embarrassment. And it did have over six years to fester. . . .

She rubbed at her eyes, then consulted her watch. Time to get back to Robby’s. As she gathered the papers together, her phone rang again. This time it was a fax signal. On cue, her OfficeJet woke up and began receiving the transmission. She looked at the display and recognized the station identifier as one belonging to the profiling unit.

Finally, the cover page emerged: there was a handwritten note from Del Monaco indicating the geographic profile was to follow. Her heart seemed to thump faster as the pages rolled out. She struggled to read the text as the paper exited the printer.

Realizing it would be a long document, she walked out of the room to grab a Scharffen Berger mocha bar. Dark chocolate settled her nerves or at least seemed to mollify her agitated state whenever something was bothering her. These days, I should keep a box of these things in my car.

She heard the fax beep, signaling the end of transmission, and ran into the study. She pulled the stack of pages from the OfficeJet and called Bledsoe. “I’ve got the geographic profile,” she said. “Can we get everyone together in a couple of hours to discuss it?”

He said he would, and like a kid who’s just returned from trick or treating with a full bag of candy, she dove into the report.

forty-eight

The task force op center was blanketed in snow. It had been falling for the past two hours, the white powder sticking to the asphalt and making driving a challenge. Rather, the challenge was driving without skidding into a tree or another car.

Vail grabbed her leather satchel, then got out of the car, shooing the falling snowflakes from her face. She stepped onto the snow-packed cement, but slipped on a slick of ice and caught herself before going down. A sharp, electric shock shot through her left knee. Just what I need. She took the next several steps to the front door slowly, then gingerly wiped her shoes on the bristle mat—each slight movement intensifying the pain—and entered the house.

Del Monaco was already there, standing beside Bledsoe, pointing to a page of the report. His copy was in full color, which made the 3D diagrams and maps easier to evaluate. Vail’s fax was a third-generation copy, the colors translated into dark and darker gray tones. She limped in and walked over to Bledsoe.

“What happened?”

“Slipped on the ice.” She pointed to the report. “Helpful, huh?”

Bledsoe shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Just got it.” He looked past her at everyone in the living room and seemed to take roll. His eyes settled back on Vail. “How about you take us through it?”

“Wait a minute,” Del Monaco said. “I thought I’d do that—”

“I know, but I’d rather Karen do it. No offense.”

Del Monaco frowned and walked away, his shoulder giving Vail a slight nudge as he passed. Bledsoe winked at her, then took his seat.

Vail asked to borrow the color copy from Del Monaco, who picked up the report and held it above his head. You want it, come get it, he was saying.

Vail took the power struggle in stride and moved across the room as gracefully as possible with a bum knee. She took the papers from Del Monaco and decided to remain there to discuss the report. She stood in front of him, her back to his face. He emitted a noise that sounded like a growl, then scooted his rolling chair a few feet to the side, away from his desk.

“I asked Kim Rossmo at Texas State to put together a profile for us,” Vail started. “I’ve worked with Rossmo on a number of cases and have been super impressed with the work he’s done. This one was prepared by William Broussard, his associate.” She flipped to the front page of the report.

“I’m not familiar with geographic profiling,” Sinclair said.

Manette reclined in her seat. “Probably more might haves and might have nots,” she said.

“I think you’ll find this a bit more palatable, Mandisa,” Vail said. “It’s a computer algorithm that focuses on an offender’s projected spatial behavior using the locations of, and the spatial relationships between, that serial offender’s crime sites. A geographic profile works real well with a behavioral assessment, because how an offender chooses the areas he preys in is influenced by who he is and what motivates him.”

“So this is an objective measurement?” Bledsoe asked.

“Yes and no. It’s got both quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative part uses objective measurements to analyze what Rossmo calls ‘point patterns’ created from the locations of the victim target sites. The qualitative part comes from an interpretation of the offender’s ‘mental map.’”

“I wanna hear more about the computer stuff,” Manette said. “I got enough theories. Gimme something concrete.”

“Rossmo developed something called criminal geographic targeting that takes the locations of the offender’s crime scenes and produces a three-dimensional probability distribution of where the offender’s home or workplace would be. The greater the height of the point indicates a greater probability that this is where the offender would live or work. This 3D distribution, which he calls a ‘Jeopardy Surface,’ is then superimposed over a map of the region, giving us a ‘geoprofile’ of the offender. Rossmo says the geoprofile is a fingerprint of the offender’s cognitive map.”

“This shit actually work?” Sinclair asked.

“Indeed, this shit does work,” Vail said.

Del Monaco, still fuming over having been rebuffed by Bledsoe, craned his neck to be seen around Vail’s body. “I’ve worked with this guy. I can personally vouch for him.”

Vail turned slightly and gave Del Monaco a sharp look, wanting to tell him that neither she nor Rossmo needed his endorsement. “What this does,” Vail said, “is help us focus the investigation. And when we finally come up with some suspects, we can prioritize who to pursue first, based on where they live and work.”

“We can also then put patrols on alert in the more statistically probable areas of offender activity,” Robby said.

“I like it,” Bledsoe said.

“That concrete enough for you?” Vail asked Manette.

She bobbed her head, chewing on her lip. “I like it, too. But I’ll wait to give you my opinion till after we catch this bastard.”

“So what’s it show?” Bledsoe asked.

Vail looked to Del Monaco. “You have copies?”

He opened a brown manila routing envelope and pulled out a stack of stapled packets. They were passed around the room.

“Turn to page eight,” Vail said, finding the spot herself. The splash of colors hit her like a sunset on a cloudy day. A huge difference from the black-and-blacker fax.

“Looks like we’ve got some areas to focus on,” Robby said.

Sinclair’s face was buried in the document. “That’s an understatement. Looks like, what, three or four hundred square miles? That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

“Yeah, but the areas are prioritized. Look at the key, it’s called out by color and by height of the three-dimensional drawing.” There was quiet again as everyone studied the map.

Manette leaned back in her chair. “Still a lot of ground to cover. There’s no guarantee he’ll stick to one particular area just because we think he will. And if we take patrols away from one area because we’re banking on him hitting another—”

“Helluva gamble,” Sinclair said. He winked at Vail. “And I know about gambling.”

Bledsoe straightened up. “Yeah, well, everything we do involves a certain amount of risk. Sometimes it’s just guesswork. This at least gives us some statistical analysis and a focus. And last I heard, we’re out of sure bets. I’ll get the info over to the involved PDs, let them decide how to use it.”

A cell phone started ringing and Robby and Sinclair checked their pockets. It was Sinclair’s.

“Give the PDs my number,” Del Monaco said to Bledsoe. “They may not know what they’re looking at or what significance to give it.”

Bledsoe nodded. “We’ll make the calls together.”

Sinclair flipped his phone shut and tossed it on his desk. “Bit of news. On Hancock. I say we plug the asshole’s info into that geoprofile, see if his house falls in the highly probable areas. We already know his workplace did. That was a buddy of mine. Hancock’s not alibied for any of the Dead Eyes kills. He was in town and off duty for each of them.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose. “I say we lean on him again. At least for Linwood, maybe all of them.”

“I’ve got someone on him,” Bledsoe said. “Discreet tail, recording his movements. So far he’s been pretty mobile, putting in applications at all sorts of security firms, even a few law offices. Nothing suspicious.”

“Not with us watching him,” Vail said. “He may be an asshole, but given his law enforcement experience, he’d be extremely sensitive to a surveillance team.”

Bledsoe grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen wall. “I think we got enough for a warrant. Hernandez, it’s your jurisdiction.” He tossed the handset across the room to Robby. “I’ll get with the lab at my station, get a forensics team out to his house. We’ll want to go over that place with a vacuum cleaner. Literally.”

Sinclair laughed. “Guess that’s one way of seeing if he’s clean.”

forty-nine

He looked at the newspaper article they’d written on the bitch Linwood. State senator, big deal. Didn’t they know she was as corrupt as most politicians? All they care about is themselves. How can I raise more money? How can I get reelected?

All politicians have their dark secrets. Affairs, trysts, backroom deals. Buried tax dodges. And other secrets, the kind this bitch Linwood kept. The kind of secrets worth killing for.

He wondered how long it would be till they found it. If they were good, it shouldn’t be much longer. If they were as incompetent as it seemed they were—look how long it was taking them to catch him—they might never find it. It then hit him. Maybe he should’ve made it more obvious.

But what’s life without challenges? If he made it so easy, served it up on a plate for them, what would that say about him? He’s better than them, he’d proved it. There was nothing they could do to find him, as he had suspected all along. But he only had a couple more things to accomplish, and then he’d be done. What if he finished and they never figured out who was responsible? How much fun would that be?

Who would know? No one. How disappointing.

He didn’t have to stop. He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to, so maybe he wouldn’t. The thrill of the kill was so exhilarating, so ... filling. When the feeling struck, it had to be satisfied. Which got him to thinking: maybe he wasn’t as in control of things as he’d like to have thought. Maybe it’s not that he’d want to continue killing, but that he would need to continue.

The thought suddenly excited him. He opened the freezer door and pulled out his growing collection of hands. Each one a memory, each one special in its own right.

He set them out on the table, in a circle around some papers he’d recently obtained. Pretty funny reading through this stuff . . . a profile prepared by Supervisory Special Agent Karen Vail. Very impressive. They had a supervisory agent on his case, not just a special agent. They were all special, weren’t they? They seemed to think so.

Oh, here’s a good one: “‘He’s bright, above average intelligence. He may have a background in art, either in practice or in school. He might even be a frustrated artist. . . . ’” A frustrated artist? “Bitch! I’m not frustrated, I AM an artist! Come look at my studio, see my work. Talk to my students. How dare you doubt my talents!”

He found his spot in the document and continued reading. “‘He’s got some deep-seated issues . . . an abusive childhood’. . . Jesus, is it that obvious? Yes! An abusive childhood. Are you incredibly stupid, or just incredibly unenlightened? I told you that in my writings. I couldn’t have said it any plainer. Did it take an FBI profiler to figure that one out?”

He skipped to the next paragraph. “‘Fixation on eyes could be symbolic . . . perhaps the father put him down by telling him everyone sees him as a failure . . . ’” Now that’s perceptive. He hadn’t thought of it that way. Very interesting. And he had to admit, pretty damn accurate. She nailed that one. Gotta give credit where it’s due. He was fair in that respect.

She can’t explain the evisceration. Think anger, Supervisory Special Agent Vail. Think the utmost in humiliation, in power. Of what it represents.

He turned the page and read some more. Digesting all this would take a while. But judging by what little they had on him, he had the time.

fifty

Chase Hancock’s home was a well-groomed one-story, renovated in recent years with built-in teak furniture, flat-panel television with surround sound system and frilly window coverings that screamed women’s touch. But Hancock was not married and never had been. One might assume he had hired a decorator.

One might have also assumed he had done quite well for himself since leaving the FBI. “So why did he have such a hard time with Karen?” Robby asked.

“Male ego,” Bledsoe answered. “She got something he wanted. Those types of wounds take a long time to heal.”

Bledsoe stood in the living room and ran a hand along one of the leather sofas. “Pricey stuff. Feels like a lambskin coat my father wore.” He directed one of the forensic technicians into the house. “We’re looking for anything and everything pertaining to a murder. Hair and clothing fibers to match against what we’ve got on our vics. Blood. Blunt objects used as weapons. You know the drill.”

“We’re going to vacuum first,” the head tech said. “As we clear each room, you’ll be allowed in.”

Robby thanked the tech, then headed out of the house to wait. “He’s had time to clean up,” he said to Bledsoe. “You think we’ll find anything? Hancock knows the drill, he’s been on our end of things.”

Bledsoe shrugged. “I’ve never seen the perfect murder, Hernandez. Even if he’s Mr. Clean, there’s bound to be something he left behind.” They stepped outside into the blustery winter air, where Chase Hancock stood ten feet away, buttocks leaning against his Acura, arms folded against his chest.

Robby turned to Bledsoe. “Whatever that something is, I just hope we find it.”

fifty-one

Vail checked her voice mail from her cell phone on the way to visit Jonathan. Thirty messages were logged when her machine started refusing additional calls. As she started to go through them, she realized they were all requests from media outlets across the country, including a couple from overseas. She thought about deleting the messages, then realized she had better review them in case any were regarding Emma or Jonathan—or herself: OPR, Gifford, and Jackson Parker were all possibilities.

She inserted her Bluetooth headset and listened as she drove, fast-forwarding to the next message as soon as she ascertained the source of the caller. She finally deleted all of them when she had reached the end. Nothing important.

She arrived at the hospital and made her way up to ICU. As soon as she headed down the hall, she was accosted by a man in his thirties wearing a pair of khakis and an oxford dress shirt cuffed at the sleeves. A microcassette recorder, held tightly in one hand, hovered near Vail’s face as he asked her a question: “Agent Vail, how do you feel about being targeted as the Dead Eyes killer?”

She knocked the recorder out of her face and continued walking, but did not say anything.

“I personally don’t believe you’re the killer,” he continued, “but how does it make you feel to have your picture pasted all over the front page?”

Vail stopped and turned to face him. He was younger than she had originally thought when she had looked at him peripherally. “How long have you been on the beat, kid? You’re the only one of the press corps bright enough to find a way up to this floor, and you come up with lame questions like those? Even if I felt like talking, which I don’t, you didn’t earn an answer from me.”

The reporter was stunned into silence. His arm, holding the recorder, dropped to his side in defeat. Vail turned away and continued walking.

“How about giving me another chance?” he shouted down the hall. “We could meet for lunch—on me. . . .”

Vail noted a man in his midtwenties dressed in scrubs hovering down the hall near Jonathan’s room. Her instincts told her it was Bledsoe’s undercover man, and when she made eye contact, he dipped his chin at her. Obviously, he had been well briefed and knew who she was on sight . . . or he’d heard enough of the exchange with the reporter to make the connection.

She stopped at the nurse’s station and asked her to page Dr. Altman. The woman gave Vail a cautious look, then backed away slightly and reached for the phone. She didn’t take her eyes off Vail as she dialed.

“Unbelievable,” Vail muttered, then walked away and pushed through the door to Jonathan’s room. She stood by her son’s side, waiting for Dr. Altman. She had the feeling neurologists dreaded cases like these, where there was little for them to do but make their rounds—that is, go through the motions—look over the patient’s vitals and talk with the concerned parents . . . having nothing of value to tell them. Certainly there were those victorious moments when the child regained consciousness. Perhaps those were the ones that kept the doctors sane, that allowed them to deal with the ones who didn’t recover. A few successes and happy endings made the intolerable failures more palatable. Sometimes. At least in theory.

Vail pressed her lips to Jonathan’s forehead, then took his hand. A tear trailed down her face and dropped onto his cheek. She gently wiped it away, then stood there watching him breathe. She talked to him and let him know she was there. Beyond that, she felt as helpless as she imagined Dr. Altman felt. The doctor poked his head in the door and smiled when he saw Vail. He stepped in, shook her hand, and picked up Jonathan’s chart to scan the nurse’s notes.

“I suppose you want to know how your son is doing,” he said absentmindedly.

“I’m not here selling Girl Scout cookies.”

Altman looked at her, his face conveying the realization he had asked a stupid question. “No, of course not,” he said, setting the metal chart on the table beside the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Vail said.

Altman shrugged. “No need to apologize. I’ve seen the papers, I know the stress you must be under. But I do have some good news. Watch.” He leaned close to Jonathan and clapped his hands in front of the boy’s eyes. Jonathan blinked. Altman looked at Vail for confirmation, as if he had just revealed something wondrous. “Did you see?”

“See what? He blinked.”

“Exactly. He wasn’t doing that before. He’s recovering mental function. His brain is regaining consciousness, so to speak.”

Vail’s eyebrows elevated, then she blew some air through pursed lips. “This really is a case of small steps.”

“That’s the nature of the condition. A small step translates into a huge advancement. I’m very encouraged by his progress.”

“This is what you live for, isn’t it? I mean, I guess it’s a lot like an investigation, tracking a killer. Small pieces of evidence at each crime scene add up over time to help us get a full picture. The small steps make a difference.”

Altman smiled. “They sure do. The day-to-day improvement may be painstakingly slow for some, but I look at it like doing a jigsaw puzzle: I’ll search for the next piece, and the one after that, and the one after that. Piece by piece, until I finally complete the puzzle. Because to answer your question, ‘what I live for’ is the completed puzzle.”

Vail nodded, buoyed by the new perspective.

The law enforcement analogy was one she could grasp. As long as the evidence kept coming, as long as the clues were adding up, she would break the case. If the same principles applied to Jonathan, she could deal with the slow but steady progress.

She thanked the doctor, who nodded and then left the room.

Little by little, she thought. Vail kissed her son’s cheek and whispered in his ear. “Come on, Jonathan. Just like when you were a baby learning how to walk. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time. You’ll pull through this. You’re gonna make it. You hear me, sweetheart?” She waited for a blink, a twitch of his mouth . . . but got nothing.

Wiping away the tears, she walked out of his room and left the hospital, moving past a few members of the press who had camped out near the exit, “no commenting” as she pushed by them.

What she needed now was slow, steady progress on Dead Eyes. As if in response to her thoughts, her cell phone rang: someone at BSU, the Behavioral Science Unit, had information for her.

fifty-two

Wayne Rudnick of BSU was cagey about what he had discovered regarding the Dead Eyes case but told her he couldn’t wait around for her to drive to the Academy. He had an exploding toothache and was heading out to an emergency dental appointment. He suggested they meet tomorrow morning instead.

Vail went back to Robby’s place and found him with an apron on, mixing a pot of tomato sauce. Boiling water sat on the stove beside it, awaiting the introduction of a handful of stiff spaghetti noodles. As he dropped in the pasta, the water calmed like antacid on a queasy stomach.

“Smells good,” she said as she approached the kitchen. Robby’s house, inherited from his mother several years ago when she passed away, showed its age. Nails, tape, and other items permanently embedded in the plaster walls’ surfaces had been covered over by repeated coats of paint. The old casement windows were drafty and needed to be replaced. New carpet had been installed, and it looked as if Robby had made an attempt at home decorating. But it still lacked warmth.

Vail stepped up to the pot and sniffed. “Smells better than it looks. Is that Ragu or Prego?”

“Hey,” Robby said, wooden spoon in hand. “Are you insulting me?”

She looked into the pot again. “Just stating my observations. But if I’m wrong—”

“It’s Prego.”

“I see. Guess I’ll have to help out a bit. Do some of the cooking.”

“You’re definitely insulting me.”

Vail moved into the living room and sat down heavily on the couch. “Jonathan’s showing some more improvement.”

Robby lowered the flames beneath the pots, then settled onto the sofa beside her. “That’s great,” he said, taking her hand in his own. “What’d the doctor say?”

“He’s encouraged, feels it’s all going the way he’d expected. Small steps.” She kicked her shoes off and brought her feet up onto the couch, rested her head in Robby’s lap. “Raising a kid is tough. It’s easy to see how things go wrong, you know?”

“How do you mean?”

“On the drive over, I was thinking about Deacon, and how bad an influence he’s been on Jonathan the past year or so. It’s the kind of stuff that leads to the development of the twisted personalities the offenders develop.”

“Oh, come on. A child of yours becoming a killer?”

“Sounds silly, huh? But I worry about it sometimes. If it wasn’t for Deacon, it’d be the furthest thing from my mind. But he’s such a bad influence. When you’re in a relationship for so many years, and you know he’s going through tough times and you’re trying to help him through it. . . .” She shook her head. “I overlooked a lot of things. It took me months to step back and see there was nothing I could do, that he was beyond help. I realize that now. But what if he did things I never knew about, when Jonathan was younger. . . .” Her body tensed. “It’s not unusual with killers, in their youth, to withdraw into themselves. They’d never talk about things that happened to them when they were young. It hurts me just to think about the possibility.” She let the words hang in the air, then continued: “I keep playing things back in my mind, memories, things I saw in Jonathan’s behavior. Searching my memory for the warning signs.”

“What kind of warning signs?”

“Behaviors that show a lack of regard and caring for others.” She sat up and pulled her legs beneath her, winced in pain from her knee, then straightened it out. “When the early profilers interviewed convicted serial killers in prison, they found that the killer’s internal world was filled with thoughts of dominance over others. Cruelty to other kids, to animals. They set fires, stole things, destroyed property. I had a problem with Jonathan at one point where he was getting into fights at school. Third grade. He was bullying other kids. I tried talking to him, and he seemed to stop. But it bothered me he didn’t have any close friends. I worked with him on developing his social skills, and I thought I’d gotten through. But he started having problems again when Deacon and I started having problems.”

“That could be considered normal.”

“That’s what I kept telling myself. But that type of behavior, unless checked, can lead to other things. Things I’d never find out about. If he killed a cat or a dog, or a squirrel, I’d never know. During the interviews, the killers almost always described times when they’d killed an animal. It allowed them to express their rage and use it as an outlet because there were no consequences. No one knew they’d done it. That only isolated them more from family members or other kids their age. They eventually realized they were different, and that just made them retreat further into themselves. They never learned empathy, or how to control their impulses. They thought they were entitled to act the way they did because no one was there to tell them otherwise.”

“You know what I think?”

Vail looked at him, inviting him to continue.

“I think you’ve been in the minds of serial killers so much, twenty-four/seven, three-sixty-five, that you begin to look for things that aren’t there. You live the life, deep in the trenches, and it consumes you. I think you need some time off.” He paused a moment, then said, “Maybe permanently.”

She looked at him, in a fleeting second realizing he was right, but not wanting to acknowledge it. She rose from the couch, banded her arms across her chest, and began to pace in her nyloned feet. “Quitting is not my style. But you’re right, I’ll take some time. Once we catch Dead Eyes, I’ll take a month assuming I can work it out with the timing of my trial. I’ll need the time to get my mom’s stuff settled and the house sold.”

“I think it’ll do you some good. Get away for a while. I’ll come visit you on weekends.”

She bit the inside of her lip. “And if I don’t win this case? If Deacon succeeds? I’m out of the Bureau. I’ll never carry a badge again.”

Robby stood and stopped her from pacing. “He won’t. But if by some strange twist of fate he is successful, then I’ll be there with you, by your side. We’ll get through it together.”

Vail forced a smile. “I could do consulting, right? Write a few books.”

“Yeah, like that guy, one of your BSU pioneers, Thomas Underwood.”

“I could fly all over the world, developing profiles, helping out the locals, visiting exotic places.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

She stood there for a moment, pondering such a future. “I want my job back, Robby. At the Bureau. Staring at grisly photos and dealing with male chauvinists.”

Robby looked at her a long moment, then nodded. “Then that’s the goal.”

She nodded back.

“Let’s go eat,” he said as he took her hand. “Take it from me, Prego is best served hot.”

fifty-three

Vail and Robby parked in the Academy’s main lot and entered through Jefferson Hall. They signed in at the security station and navigated the maze of glass hallways, Vail playing tour guide and pointing out notable areas and rooms. They made their way through the armory and indoor shooting range, caught the elevator, and took it down into the Behavioral Science Unit’s basement offices.

BSU’s Investigative Support Unit gained attention because of a handful of agents whose profiling work in the seventies and eighties proved invaluable in cracking several high-profile serial offender cases. It was made famous by its appearance in the movie The Silence of the Lambs, followed by mentions in numerous novels.

When the BSU was divided (though not conquered), the Investigative Support Unit was renamed and carted down the road. The profilers gained windows and a more cheerful working environment. The BSU criminologists who remained in the subbasement gained ... more office space.

Vail led Robby through the cream-colored cinderblock corridor to Wayne Rudnick’s office, an eight-by-ten room lit with four incandescent fixtures standing on surfaces of varied heights. The attempt to brighten a dull, depressing environment had fallen somewhat short, Vail thought, but it was an improvement nonetheless.

“Kind of creepy down here,” Robby said.

“You get used to it. It’s a kick to visit, because of all the history and legends who’ve worked here.”

Rudnick, a sixteen-year veteran, had spent every moment of his tenure in the now-famous subbasement. On his door was a sign scrawled in black magic marker that read:

Welcome to BSU—

sixty feet underground

ten times deeper than dead people

Vail knocked on Rudnick’s partially open door and waited but did not get a response. She gave it a slight nudge and it swung open with a squeal.

Rudnick was sitting behind his desk tossing a gel-filled stress-relief ball in the air. He had been doing it for years, claiming it helped him clear his mind. He had once organized a unit-wide challenge to see who could come closest to the ceiling without hitting it. Rudnick had won, but someone had monkeyed with his office chair, and much to the delight of everyone who was in on the prank, Rudnick complained the arc and force of his toss were impaired by the change in the “feel” of his chair. He remained pissed for days when he discovered the conspiracy had been organized by his special agent-in-charge.

“Well, if it’s not the Redhead Express.” Rudnick jumped out of his chair, arms up and extended for a hug.

She obliged him and then introduced Robby.

Rudnick brushed back his wild Albert Einstein hair, then shook Robby’s hand. “You’re here on a case, aren’t you?” He turned back to his desk, lifting various papers and files, as if looking for something.

“Dead Eyes,” Robby said. “Karen sent the case over to you for input.” He looked to Vail for confirmation. “How long ago was that?”

“Dead Eyes, Dead Eyes. That rings a bell.” Rudnick continued searching his desk, the movement of papers becoming a bit more frantic.

Vail crossed her arms over her chest and, with a slight smirk, shook her head.

“Is there a problem?” Robby asked.

“He’s pulling your leg,” Vail said. “He knows where the file is.”

Rudnick suddenly reached out and poked a folder from atop a pile. “Here it is.”

“See? He does this all the time. He thinks it’s funny.”

“I love playing with new agents’ heads.”

Robby took a step forward, his thick thighs stopped by the edge of the desk. He looked down at the diminutive Rudnick. “I’m not a new agent.”

Rudnick looked up at Robby, over the tops of his thick-rimmed eyeglasses. “But you’re someone of authority, I can see that.”

“Investigator with Vienna PD.”

“Vienna! The poke and plumb town over on the northwest side. Poke your head in and you’re plumb out of town.”

“We’re small, yes. Kind of like you.”

“Ooh. Okay. I think that’s enough horsing around. Time to get down to business.” Rudnick sat and opened the file folder.

“How’s your tooth?” Vail asked.

“Need a root canal. Tell ya, I think we should start including dentists routinely in our suspect pool. They’re sadists, every one of ’em, I swear.”

“Dead Eyes,” Robby reminded.

“Yes, okay. Okay. Dead Eyes . . . the serial offender who’s plugged into the information superhighway.”

“Information superhighway?” Vail asked. “Who uses that term anymore?”

Rudnick glanced at her over the tops of his glasses. “I do, apparently.” He opened the file and consulted a page on the left side of the flap. “So as I was saying, this guy is tech savvy, or at least knows how to access the information necessary in constructing the parameters by which he can make it appear that he’s tech savvy.” Rudnick looked from Vail to Robby and apparently sensed their impatience. “Let me explain. According to our cyber geeks, he—”

“You got something back from the lab?”

Rudnick’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t you?”

Vail frowned. “Go on.”

“Yes, well, as I was saying, the geek cops said our offender used a technique that allows the email message to dissolve into its core constituents—ones and zeroes, the digital equivalent of blood and guts—to prevent us from tracking the email back to him. There’re a few things interesting about that. First, they said the info on how to do that’s available on the superhigh—excuse me, the Internet—so it’s not clear whether he possessed this knowledge or if he just followed the instructions online. But given what other information you’ve submitted, I’d have to say it’s the latter. Kind of like a fanatic who cooks up a bomb from a recipe posted on some militia webpage.”

“I agree,” Vail said. “Our offender’s no technogeek. But he’s bright and can certainly find out how to do it.”

“Second, and perhaps this goes to the point of it all, is that this vanishing act he’s playing with us means he only wants one way communication—a monologue, if you will. Either he’s not interested in what you have to say about it, or he’s more interested in what you’ll do about it.”

Vail nodded slowly, as if she were absorbing the meaning into her skin, filtering it as she mulled it through her mind.

“And the content?” Robby asked.

“Yes, yes, the content. Flesch-Kincaid Index scores it at a sixth grade level, though I’m not sure that’s worth much to us because he’s writing in a voice consistent with a child. More significantly, I’d say his writing appears to emanate from a different part of his brain than his ‘blood murals,’ which I’ll get to in a minute. Unlike the murals, which likely come from some subconscious expression of his feelings, these writings are very consciously constructed. He’s gone to considerable effort to send them to you in an untraceable form. He doesn’t want to get caught, but he’s compelled to share these experiences with you people. His use of the first person is significant—he chose it for a reason, the reason being that they’re personal accounts of actual events in this offender’s life.”

“How can we rule out the possibility he’s merely writing fiction?”

“With his flare for creativity, that’s certainly an option. But I believe there’s more going on here than just a frustrated writer at work. I think this stuff is deeply personal to him. That’s why he’s showing it to you. It’s his outlet for whatever happened to him as a youth. And I believe these writings are very closely related to what we’re seeing play out when he’s with the bodies. He abuses them, much like he was abused as a child. He’s telling you what his childhood was like, the events that made him who he is today. Maybe it’s his way of explaining his actions so you won’t think badly of him.”

Robby squinted. “You think the killer cares what we think of him?”

“I think he definitely cares how he’s perceived. Not in the same way we care about the way other people see us, you understand.” Rudnick shook his head, started to say something, then stopped.

“What is it?” Vail asked.

“There’s something more going on here.” He switched to reading glasses and looked down at the file. “I just haven’t been able to put my finger on it.”

After a long moment of watching Rudnick stare at the page and shake his head in frustration, Vail asked, “What about the blood murals?”

Rudnick’s face brightened. “Ah, okay, that’s a bit easier to explain. Let’s talk for a moment in generalities. There was a question about Impressionism.” He got a nod from Vail and continued. “Well, Impressionism is an artistic movement that was born in France and lasted from the 1860s to about 1886. It consisted of a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches and techniques—”

“I was an art history major, Wayne. I know all about its origins.”

“For your very intimidating colleague, then, since odds are good that both of you weren’t art history majors.”

“That’s correct,” Robby said.

Rudnick winked at Vail, glanced down at his notes, then continued. “Impressionism was considered an extreme departure from the previous major art movement of the Renaissance. These painters rejected the concept of perspective, idealized figures, and chiaroscuro—the use of dark and light in a stylistic manner—”

Vail held up a hand. “I wonder if Dead Eyes is using Impressionism as a symbol, consciously or unconsciously. His rejection of something in society, his way of making a statement.”

Rudnick nodded. “That’s certainly a possibility. I’d thought of that, but haven’t had time to run it through the old gears,” he said, pointing to his brain. He turned back to Robby. “The Impressionist painter’s focus was on capturing the effect of light on the colors of a landscape. Up close, their paintings look like splashes of color. They don’t look like much of a picture until you view them from a bit of a distance.” He looked at Vail. “I’m only getting this stuff secondhand, so if you have anything to offer, cut in.”

“Nothing to offer. But I think you—and your expert—are missing the point. I said the offender’s blood murals reminded me of an Impressionism era painting. Mostly because of the strokes, the way the blood was laid out. It wasn’t merely blood spattered on a wall, like a disorganized offender would leave it. It was . . . applied in a very specific pattern. Like a painting, as if the offender looked at these murals as an art form in and of itself.”

Rudnick was nodding animatedly. “Yes, yes, that’s my point. But again, you’re jumping the gun. You on speed today, Karen, or what? Too much coffee?”

“You take forever to get to the point sometimes, Wayne.”

“Fine. Here’s the point: I checked with an expert on offender and inmate artwork. She analyzes their doodlings as well as the more elaborate sketches, including pictures drawn pre-arrest and during incarceration. It took her a while to come up with something. She took it to an art historian, who saw what you were talking about, the possible influence of Impressionist painters, but since it was ‘painted’ with fingertips and not a brush, she couldn’t analyze brush strokes, which seems to be a key indicator when trying to evaluate artistic trends. There was a suggestion of Impressionist influence, but she wasn’t willing to commit to anything more than that. It didn’t really follow the conventions of Impressionism, particularly the technique of light and color. There’s no light source and no color because there are no pigments. It’s just blood. She said it’s like trying to paint an entire rainbow with only blue or red on your palette.

“So it fell back on the desk of the offender artwork expert, whose best guess was that there was a method to the brush strokes. Very organized and planned, with an inherent order. There was a repetition in the strokes, but she was unsure it meant anything other than to make it distinguishable and unique. She couldn’t discern any hidden meaning to the murals but was sure it was the work of the same ‘artist.’” He flipped a page of the report and concluded: “She did say the suggestion of Impressionistic influence was likely not coincidental or accidental.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that it’s likely our offender does have a background in art history, or is an artist of some sort.”

Robby looked at Vail. “You’d already figured that out.”

“Oh, don’t tell her that,” Rudnick said. “It’ll just go to her head.”

Vail rose from her seat. “Confirmation is always nice to have,” she said. “The way things have been going, it’s good to have someone like Wayne at my back.”

“I’d much rather be at your front.” He winked. “Oh, excuse me. I’m not supposed to make those kinds of remarks. Workplace etiquette. Sexual harassment laws and such.”

“Did your expert say anything about what the murals said about the offender?”

“The fact that he paints in blood is sick.”

“Yes, Wayne. Something useful.”

Rudnick’s face hardened, as if he suddenly realized the gravity of her question. “We both feel the blood is deeply arousing to him. It follows closely with the intense relationship he has with the body. He spends an incredibly long time with the victim. First he eviscerates them, then he grooms them to match some skewed image he has of women, making them ugly, almost repulsive. Then he takes their blood and paints on the wall. In a very deliberate fashion. There is definitely artistic talent there, but it’s abstract. No one I showed the photos to could ascertain anything useful from the patterns and shapes. And despite this repetitive ‘internal order,’ overall they’re different from crime scene to crime scene. So whatever he’s painting isn’t a consistent image, which makes me think it’s not borne of a fantasy. The act of painting on the wall may be, but what he’s painting . . . no one seems to know.” Rudnick grabbed his gel ball and began squeezing it. “In sum, your guy is consistent with what we’d expect to see in this type of offender: the themes of dominance, revenge, violence, power, control, mutilation . . . they’re all there.”

Vail took a second to absorb this, then nodded. “Thanks for the help, Wayne. Stay sane.”

His face brightened again into a mischievous smirk. “Hard to do around here. I sometimes think they’ve buried us down here for a reason, like it’s some secret insane asylum. Like we’re the inmates, but in telling us we work for the FBI, they’ve calmed our murderous instincts.”

“Uh huh. Take care, Wayne. And thanks again.” Vail led the way out, Robby fast on her heels. As soon as the door clicked shut, he asked, “Stay sane? That implies he’s sane to begin with.”

Vail tilted her head and nodded. “Guess you’re right. Down here, such assumptions might be a bit of a stretch.”

WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS spread open on the main floor, Vail handed Robby her keys and told him to wait for her in the car; she forgot to ask Rudnick something on a prior case of hers and had to run back down. She appeared in the doorway to Rudnick’s office a couple minutes later, and there was the bushy haired analyst, reclining in his chair tossing the ball at the ceiling.

Vail cleared her throat and the ball skittered off his fingertips onto the floor.

He looked over. “Am I having one of those déjà vu events or are you back for something?”

“I’m back,” Vail said.

“You like it when I speak French? The people are a bit uppity, but the language does kind of roll off the tongue.”

Vail stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.

Rudnick sat up in his chair. “Uh oh. This is serious. Either you’re going to work me over or you want some privacy.”

“I want some advice,” Vail said.

“Okay. I haven’t practiced psychiatry in a gazillion years, but—”

“I’m serious, Wayne.”

“Right. Serious. Okay, what do you need?”

Vail looked down, then up at the walls—everywhere but at Rudnick’s face.

Finally, he said, “You know, your body language suggests you’re uncomfortable with what you’re about to ask me.”

Vail nodded, then finally met his eyes. “I’m having dreams. Strange dreams.” She recapped the gist of the nightmares but saved the best for last. “So the killer’s straddling the woman’s body, he drives the knife into her eyes, then looks up into the mirror.”

Rudnick nodded thoughtfully, clearly engaged and sitting on every word. “And you saw yourself.”

Vail felt herself step backward. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Because, my dear, you stare at mutilated bodies day in and day out. You live and breathe serial murder. It has to affect you deeply, even when you turn your brain off and go to sleep.”

“But I’ve never had these kinds of dreams before.”

“Yeah, well, don’t bog me down with details.”

She sighed. “I thought you’d be able to help me.”

“Look, Karen, are you worried that you may be the killer?”

Vail forced a laugh. “Of course not.” She chuckled again. “Yes. I mean, I don’t know. I can’t be, right?”

“No, you can’t be. You spend all day around people who analyze behavior. Don’t you think one of them would be looking at you if it were even possible?”

“A former agent on the task force thinks I’m Dead Eyes.”

“Former agent, you say? Must be a reason why he’s a former agent, Karen. Point is, you’re entrenched in a very challenging case, probably the most challenging one you’ve ever had because you’re intimately involved in it. Most of the time, you don’t even get to visit fresh crime scenes, let alone investigate them personally. That guy in your unit—Mark Safarik—what’s that saying he had?”

“Mark called it being ‘Knee deep in the blood and guts.’”

“Yeah, that’s it. You’re in this one up to your hips. It’s on your mind and you can’t shut it down. You feel enormous pressure to solve it. And when you can’t, you’re taunting yourself in your dreams. ‘Can’t you see it? Study the art! Figure it out!’ You’re telling yourself to find the answers. Think about it a minute, objectively. I know that’s hard because you’re so close. But think about it.”

Vail stood there, her mind flooding with thoughts when suddenly one fought to the surface; it tumbled out of her mouth as if it were a pilot ejected from a cockpit. “I can’t see the killer because I’m blind, just like the victims.”

“There you go,” Rudnick said. “Very good.” He squinted and shook his head slowly, the picture of pity. “You’ve been taught to empathize with the victims and think like the killers, Karen. What an impossible thing to do! No wonder you’re conflicted. Your subconscious is on overload.”

Vail bit her lip.

Rudnick stepped around his desk and placed a hand on her shoulder. “This is all perfectly normal, Karen. I bet if you ask some of your colleagues in your unit, you’ll find that many of them have had similar dreams about this stuff.”

Vail looked up, feeling a bit brighter. “Thanks, Wayne. Makes sense.”

Rudnick smiled. “Of course.” He bent over and retrieved his ball. He sat down behind his desk, leaned back, and took aim at the ceiling. “Now beat it so I can get back to work.”

fifty-four

After joining Robby in the Academy parking lot, she drove him back to his car. She had planned to go to the hospital to visit Jonathan, then meet Robby for dinner. Despite what Jackson Parker had said about him being her only friend, she knew she had Robby. She felt that no matter how things turned out, he would be there for her. And her for him.

As Robby was getting into the car, his phone sounded—followed seconds later by a similar trill from Vail’s BlackBerry. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

They arrived at the task force op center ten minutes later, ahead of Manette, Del Monaco, and Sinclair. Bledsoe was pacing, holding what appeared to be several eight-by-ten glossy photos in his hand. As soon as Bledsoe saw Vail come through the door, his face lit up.

“I feel like a kid who’s just found out a really cool secret, but he’s got no one to tell.”

“What’s the secret?” Robby asked.

“Look.” He shoved the photos in Robby’s face.

“Where’d you find this?”

“You’re gonna love this,” Bledsoe said, looking at Vail. “If we figure out what it means, it could break the case.”

“Where was it?”

“In Linwood, shoved up her rear.”

“In her rectum?” Robby asked.

“ME found it during the autopsy. Showed up on x-ray.”

Robby handed each of the photos to Vail as he went through the stack. “What does it mean?”

Vail did not answer. She was studying the close-up photos, which depicted a heart-shaped gold locket.

“Karen? What’s wrong?”

“Looks familiar. . . .” She finally looked up. “Can’t place it.” Where have I seen something like this before?

“But what does it mean?”

The front door flung open and in walked Manette, Del Monaco, and Sinclair.

“. . . and I’m telling you, Sears Tower has the most stories,” Sinclair said.

“But in terms of actual building height,” Del Monaco said, “that one in Taiwan is tallest.”

“Hey, look at this,” Bledsoe said.

Manette, Del Monaco, and Sinclair joined the huddle.

Vail handed them the stack of photos. “ME found this locket during Linwood’s autopsy.” She turned back to Bledsoe. “We already know Linwood meant something special to this guy. Somehow this is related. When an offender shoves an object up a victim’s rectum, it’s a very personal act. First thought is that there’s a sexual component. It’s symbolic. Meant to send a message.”

“Another message,” Sinclair groaned. “We haven’t figured out the first one yet.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand,” Manette said. “Our UNSUB designs puzzles for The New York Times. He wears red underwear and likes pistachio ice cream because the nuts symbolize his mental state. What do you think, Kari, honey, maybe? Possibly?”

Vail ignored her. “Even though it’s ritual behavior he hasn’t engaged in before, it doesn’t change my profile. But it does support everything we’ve assumed about him up to this point. If anything, it solidifies our belief that Linwood’s a key. Oh—and a couple other things. The experts at BSU said the email this guy sent is likely a personal account of his childhood.”

“Pretty fucked up childhood,” Manette said. “Then again, isn’t that the thing with these killers, Kari? They were abused by a parent, or they were pissed on by some bully, someone didn’t like the color of their hair—”

“BSU also felt,” Vail said, gaze firmly rooted to Manette’s mischievous eyes, “that the offender definitely has artistic talent and that he’s probably had some art training along the way. Could be significant. The murals show repetitive patterns, even though they’re all different from one another.”

“So how does all this help us?” Bledsoe asked.

“Well, for one, the more emails we get from him, the better understanding we’ll have of what’s making him kill. The more info we can gather on his thought process, the greater the chances we’ll have of anticipating his next move, or even possibly catching him.”

“Anything on the emails themselves? Are they traceable?”

“The geeks are working on it, but so far all we’ve got is that he’s used some sort of special software that not only prevents it from being printed, but it causes the email to self-destruct after a certain period of time. In this case, approximately two minutes after you begin reading it.”

“So he’s a technology whiz,” Bledsoe said.

“Not necessarily. It’s all readily available info that anyone who’s good with a computer can figure out without too much difficulty.”

“Then what do we know about this software?” Sinclair asked. “Who makes it?”

“It’s not software that you buy in the store. This is Internet stuff, created by people who claim that anonymous email is an extension of Free Speech, used to protect human rights, workers reporting abuses, political dissidents complaining about their government, people writing on controversial topics, that sort of thing. Most of it is web-based. There’re a shitload of providers.”

Manette shook her head. “So we’re not gonna catch this dick-head by tracking down the source of his messages.”

“Doesn’t look like it. Especially since he’s using a public cybercafé, logging on, sending his message, and logging off quickly. But our people are still working on it. Next time he sends us a message, we’ll be better prepared to track it. If it’s possible, they’ll find a way.”

“And the murals?” Bledsoe asked. “You said there was some significance to them.”

“I’ve been thinking that this guy may suffer from OCD.”

“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?” Sinclair asked. “How do you get to point Q from point A?”

“The repetitive nature,” Vail said. “And the amount of time he spends with the body. It’s excessive, taken to the extreme. The need for perfection. To him, the victim is an art medium, the crime scene his canvas.”

“And this locket?” Robby asked. “Where does that fit in?”

Bledsoe said, “I’ve got copies of the locket photos being circulated to area jewelers, in case any of them recognizes either the piece itself or the style of design. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone has seen something like it before.”

“What about Linwood’s husband?”

“We faxed him a photo. Claims he’s never seen it before. I’ve got a uniform taking a color photo over there to be absolutely sure.”

“Freaking weird if you asked me,” Sinclair said.

Manette brought both hands to her hips. “Like any of this is normal?”

Sinclair shrugged, conceding the point.

Bledsoe collected the photos and handed them to Manette. “Pin these up on the wall, will you?” To Sinclair, he said, “What’ve we got on the blood angle?”

“We’re building a database. Guy in my office is running what we’ve got. Some hits on infected male Caucasians in the target age range. We narrowed the list by eliminating one who was dead, another who’s a double amputee from diabetes, and one who was confined to a hospice with advanced AIDS. The remaining seven we’re checking out. No obvious ties to any of our vics, but we’ve got a lotta ground to cover. Still got a little more than half the labs and hospitals to hear back from.”

“I’ve got a list of painters,” Robby said. “And carpenters, potters, sculptors, glass blowers, graphic artists, and interior designers. Last count we were up to forty-one hundred names.”

“I told you,” Bledsoe said.

“May not be so bad. Next step is to cross-reference them all. Once we start mixing in all the parameters, the numbers should drop off and leave us with something manageable.”

“When can we have everything collated?” Bledsoe asked.

Robby looked up at the cottage cheese ceiling, his mind crunching numbers and estimating tasks. “I’d say three, four days. If everyone gets me their lists by tomorrow.”

A groan erupted. Bledsoe raised his hands. “Hey, the longer we take to develop suspects, the longer this guy’s free to roam. And the more women are at risk. I don’t like body counts. As it is, I’m frustrated as hell we haven’t been able to run in any mopes for questioning.”

The phone rang and Bledsoe moved to answer it. He nodded at Vail, then tossed her the handset. It was the office manager at the last assisted care facility on her list that could take her mother. She had only seen photos of the place on their website, as she had not had time to tour the facility. But the woman was now assuring her that Silver Meadows was among the finest in the state, and that Vail “absolutely had to come see it for herself.” Vail told her she would, then hung up.

She didn’t bother telling the woman the only other facility on her list was not a viable option, that Silver Meadows was her last hope. She stood in the kitchen and thought of her mother, when it finally hit her: with her mother’s mental acuity fading, her childhood house due to be sold, and her biological mother dead, the last links to her past were wilting away, drying up, and crumbling like a spent rose.

Vail made her way out of the kitchen and into the main room of the op center, where everyone had left except for Robby, who was sitting on the edge of a desk, waiting for her.

He stood and walked toward her. “Everything okay?”

She nodded, but she knew her face was betraying her. “Guess as I approach middle age, I’m having a hard time coming to grips with the issues that crop up.”

“Your mother?”

“Kind of a role reversal. In some ways, she’s like a child now—and I’m the parent. That visit the other day was like cold water in the face. It really shook loose some old memories, got me thinking.” She rubbed at her forehead. “Going through all her stuff is going to be tough. Who knows what I’ll find. Like that photo album.”

Robby leaned a shoulder against the wall. “After my mom died, I had to take care of her affairs. I found some things buried in that old apartment that gave me a different perspective of who she was. Explained a lot of things, turned around everything I knew about her. It bugged me, a lot. Friend of mine suggested I go for counseling. So I did—just a few times, but it helped me out. One of the things the doc told me is that change is part of the natural order.” Robby went silent a moment, then shook his mind back to attention. “Eventually, everything comes to an end.”

Vail looked at the wall of crime scene photos: Marci Evers, Noreen O’Regan, Angelina Sarducci, Melanie Hoffman, Sandra Franks, Denise Cranston, Eleanor Linwood.

“Some things,” she said, “end sooner than they’re supposed to.”

fifty-five

He was hungry again and fighting the urge to do something. He couldn’t hold himself back much longer, which meant he needed to start planning his next target. He already knew who it had to be, but it would be a tough one. Much tougher than the others. Tougher for reasons only he knew.

But as the old man had said time and again, “You gotta be fuckin’ tough.” There wasn’t much worth taking from the man, but that was one thing he never forgot. Because when dealing with that bastard, you had to be tough just to survive. But his definition of “tough” differed from his father’s. The old man meant for others to take what he had to give, to endure the pain. Taken another way, it meant having the strength emotionally to defeat him. To eventually find a way out, an escape.

And as time passed, that way out became clear—at least, it was a method by which he could deal with it all. As he sat in his studio, the kiln cooking his class’s ceramic work, he sat down at the keyboard and thought of the time when the light finally came on, when he realized who he was and how he could deal with his situation.

Like any thirteen year old, I’ve got my limitations in dealing with adults. They’re bigger and stronger. But I’m getting bigger, too, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let him continue to take advantage of me without some kind of consequence. So I’ve been putting up a fight.

But that hasn’t stopped him. Now he knocks me out from behind and ties me down. I know because when I wake up I’ve got a bump on my head and rope burns on my wrists and ankles.

But he still hasn’t found my secret room. I can get there from outside the house now, through the crawl space. Caught me a ’coon who was trying to move in on my place because it was warm. Reminded me of Charlie, but his eyes were bigger, and I didn’t like the way he looked at me.

He’s not a problem anymore. I took care of him, and that was that. My secret room is the only reason I stay here. It’s my place, I call the shots. And I don’t want anyone in here, not even animals.

Sometimes the simplest of goings-on makes you realize how things really are, and what needs to be done. Once you see how straightforward it all is, how the solution was right in front of you all the time, you get mad and promise yourself you won’t make the same mistake twice. You learn from what you’ve done, get smarter.

As he flipped through his photos, the ones he stole from Super Agent Vail, he realized that he’d missed out on an incredible opportunity. What a perfect way to relive the kill. He could buy a camera, take photos of the bodies like the cops do. He could store them on his laptop and view them anytime he wanted. Even better—a camcorder—one of those small ones—could be set up on a tripod to record everything. Then he could watch it. Play it in slow motion. His pulse quickened just thinking about it.

And he could walk into any store and buy one. A normal Joe buying a camcorder like any American who wants to tape his kids, grand-kids, nephews, bitches.

Out to tape his bitches. Dead and alive.

Ultimately dead.

fifty-six

The tour of Silver Meadows Assisted Care was longer than Vail would have preferred. She had much on her mind, and the last thing she wanted was a sales pitch that had more shine than shoe polish. Especially since she had no other alternative. At least she could move in her mother without reservation about the quality of care she would receive. Only the monthly cost would cause her concern. But, as her mother had once told her, “It’s only money.”

She thanked the woman, whose smile seemed to sport more teeth than a shark, and was heading back to her car when her phone rumbled. These days, the vibration set her heart racing: odds were it meant either important news about Jonathan or the discovery of another Dead Eyes victim.

The text message belonged to Bledsoe. She was to meet him at the task force op center in fifteen minutes to discuss “a major break” in the case. Vail pulled up to the curb one minute sooner than expected, and Bledsoe met her in the street. As Robby arrived behind her, Manette, Sinclair, and Del Monaco walked out of the house and the group convened on the front lawn.

“I guess Dead Eyes is bored with sending emails. Didn’t get enough of a rise out of us,” Bledsoe said. “A letter was received this morning by Richard Ray Singletary at Rockridge Correctional. Ring a bell?”

“Singletary, yeah. Serial killer, North Carolina,” Del Monaco said. “The Mohawk Slasher. Took out seven college freshmen before he was caught. It was one of Thomas Underwood’s first profiling cases. Underwood met with Singletary a number of times. Part of BSU’s program to interview serial offenders to develop an understanding of why they did what they did.”

Vail said, “A lot of the stuff they learned from those interviews formed the basis for our current understanding and approach. The work was so fresh and new—and accurate—that it became legendary. So much so that some people at the BAU are afraid to embrace change and new ideas because Underwood and his colleagues’ research findings are as good as written in stone.”

Del Monaco frowned at her comment, and she stared him down. The others picked up on the silent interplay and kept quiet. Finally, Robby spoke. “They have the letter in custody?”

“They do now. Singletary wouldn’t give it up. Said it was his ticket. His ticket to what, I’m not sure.”

“Bargaining chip,” Manette said. “He don’t have much. Letter’s a way of getting privileges.”

“Privileges for what?” Bledsoe asked. “He’s scheduled to be put down in five days.”

“Put down, like lethal injection?”

“Like, that’s all she wrote. The big sleep. End of the line.”

Del Monaco shrugged. “Then something to add spice to his last few days.”

Robby asked, “So what’s the plan, boss? How do you want to handle it?”

Bledsoe rubbed a thick hand across his chin. “Vail and Del Monaco will go with me to meet the guy. Letter’s en route by courier to the FBI lab right now. As soon as they’d found out what he had, they sealed it in an evidence bag. I don’t know if we’ll get anything useful out of it, because a bunch of people already handled it. But we’ll talk with Singletary, see what he has to say.”

Vail’s eyebrows rose. “One question I have is, why him? Why did Dead Eyes send the letter to Singletary?”

“I know we’re all stretched beyond our limits,” Bledsoe said, “but we need someone to compile a roster of all violent offenders who’ve served with Singletary since his incarceration.”

Manette raised a hand. “I got it.”

“Good. Manny, it’s yours. Get it to me as soon as possible. Okay, then. That’s our plan.”

“Do we have clearance to meet with Singletary?” Sinclair asked.

“Give me a few minutes,” Bledsoe said. “I’ll make some calls.”

THE FLIGHT INTO Henderson-Oxford Airport was bumpy and turned Vail’s stomach. It wasn’t that she disliked the act of flying, it was the concept that bothered her. How a plane the size of a large dinosaur could slice through the air and rise, then descend slowly and land safely, was a wonderment she could never fully understand. She felt more comfortable wading through the minds of deranged killers than with the physics of aerodynamics.

As they entered the lounge area after deplaning, a CNN special report flashed across the television screen. “Convicted murderer Richard Ray Singletary claims he has received a letter from the Dead Eyes serial killer, who is reportedly responsible for Virginia State Senator Eleanor Linwood’s death as well as the deaths of six other young women. . . .”

“So Singletary’s leaked the story,” Del Monaco said. “For what, another fifteen minutes of fame? He’ll be getting that when he’s executed.”

“Yeah, but this is good press. Executions tend to be . . . somewhat negative,” Vail said with a hint of sarcasm.

Del Monaco, Bledsoe, and Vail met an off-duty correctional officer, who transported them to the prison. They arrived at three o’clock, the way to the meeting being paved by the prisoner himself, who declined legal representation. They checked their guns and were transported to the maximum security building by bus.

Half an hour later, they were in the eight-by-ten interview room, where a small metal table sat bolted to the floor. There were two seats—one for the prisoner and one for his visitors. Vail took the chair; she wanted the center stage to ask the questions, while Del Monaco stood in the background, arms folded across his chest, content to melt into the wall and analyze Singletary’s facial and body language. Bledsoe was behind a large one-way mirror in an adjacent room.

Singletary was led in by two uniformed guards. The prisoner, a slight man with close-cropped pepper hair and pleasing facial features, was shackled at the ankles and wrists. His face was a pale white, the mark of someone who had spent time in solitary confinement—or who had been restricted to his cell for bad behavior. Yet despite the dehumanizing restraints, Singletary’s shoulders and hips moved with a noticeable swagger. The agents watched as the guards unshackled Singletary’s hands and refastened the handcuffs to a steel bar mounted at the center of the fixed metal table.

“All yours, ma’am,” the guard said to Vail. “We’ll be watching. You get into trouble, just holler.”

Vail thanked the men but wondered why, if she encountered trouble with the prisoner, she would need to holler if they were observing. She pushed the thought from her mind and focused on the man in front of her. “Mr. Singletary, I’m Special Agent Karen Vail, this is Agent Frank Del Monaco.” Singletary had already been told who he would be meeting with, but it was a good way to break the ice.

Del Monaco nodded with disinterest, playing his presence low key, as if he did not want to be there. He and Vail had discussed their strategy in detail on the plane.

“We were told you received a letter yesterday. From someone who claims to be the Dead Eyes killer.”

“That’s right.” Singletary’s voice was smooth, his smile bright and white.

“The letter’s at our lab right now, being analyzed.”

“Waste of taxpayer dollars. I can tell you it’s authentic.”

“How’s that?” Vail pulled a copy of the letter from her pocket and unfolded it. “What makes you so sure it’s from Dead Eyes?”

“See the sentence ‘Evil rides the ocean and the sky turns all the rivers gold’? He made that up a long time ago. It became kind of a saying for us.”

“You know the Dead Eyes killer?”

“I just said that, didn’t I? Man, I thought you people were smart.”

Vail felt like reaching across the table and slapping the guy but kept her face neutral. “Who is he?”

Singletary burst out laughing. A smoker’s cough quickly overwhelmed him, and Vail had to turn away to avoid the explosion of germs from the man’s uncovered mouth. “You expect me to just give you the guy’s name?”

“I thought you might, yes.”

“Then you’re stupider than I thought you were. But you are a fine lookin’ thing,” he said, then stuck his tongue out and waved it like a lizard’s. “I got two demands. One is, I only talk to Thomas Underwood. Second, I want my death sentence commuted, to life in prison.”

Now it was Vail’s turn to laugh. She did so boisterously, purposely to annoy the man who thought he held all the cards. It was his nature to try to gain the upper hand, to seek control and power. She was not going to give it to him. “Thomas Underwood isn’t with the Bureau anymore. I doubt he’d want to waste any more of his time talking to you.”

“Then you’d be wrong, Agent Vail. Because Thomas has already said he’d meet with me. He said it on MSNBC, just about a half hour ago.”

Vail resisted the urge to glance at the one-way mirror, behind which Bledsoe was seated. “Why Underwood?”

“The guy understands me. It’s a familiar face. This is important information. I deal with him.”

“You want something, you deal with me,” Vail said.

“Ooh. Tough woman. That turns me on, Special Agent Vail. Did you know that? Because if you didn’t, I can tell you Thomas Underwood does.”

Vail ground her teeth. She wanted to grab the guy’s jumpsuit lapels and shake him. Hard. But she counted backwards from five to calm her anger. “I’ll make a call, see if I can get Underwood here. As to getting your sentence commuted, I wouldn’t count on it. I can get you some T.V., a steak dinner every night—”

“Yeah, that’s good. MTV. I want my MTV. Add that to the list.”

“Mr. Singletary, I’ll make the calls, convey your demands. I just wouldn’t hold out much hope.”

“I don’t have much hope, sweetheart. I’m on death row. You hold out hope, you get disappointed.”

She nodded, then pushed away from the table.

“Just remember,” Singletary said. “You give me what I want, I’ll give you the name of the Dead Eyes killer.”

Vail stood there for a long moment, reading the man’s eyes. Tempted to agree to the deal even though she didn’t have the authority. Given all the death, the young lives taken and yet to be taken, the offer seemed too good to refuse.

But in her experience, making deals with the devil usually backfired.

fifty-seven

Vail let the door click closed behind her. Bledsoe met her and Del Monaco in the hallway, the detective’s normally olive-complected face red and strained.

“I spoke with Gifford,” Vail said. “He’s calling Underwood’s office. We’ll know soon whether or not he’ll come. Bureau will pay his airfare and hotel, any expenses.”

Del Monaco grunted. “We all know this deal turns on his sentence.”

“And that ain’t gonna happen,” Bledsoe said. “Imagine the heat the DA will take if he caves and recommends leniency to the governor.”

Vail shook her head. “Think about the heat he’ll take if Dead Eyes murders another woman and it gets out he could’ve prevented it.” She leaned her back against the wall, let her head touch the cold, painted cinderblock. “I think we need to make the deal. Contingent on arrest and conviction of Dead Eyes.”

Del Monaco stepped forward. “The guy’s set to die in five days, Karen. Delaying his execution even an hour sends a message. Once you’ve delayed it, it’s like you’ve made the decision to wait till the jury comes back with a verdict. You can’t suddenly decide you’re going to change your mind two or three months into it. You’re either in or out.”

“You don’t think we should do it,” Bledsoe said.

“Hey, I don’t get paid the big bucks to make those decisions. What I think doesn’t mean diddly.”

“I think Underwood’s our best shot,” Bledsoe said.

Del Monaco shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “There’s a bigger issue. How do we know this letter is even legit? And how do we know that Singletary really knows who Dead Eyes is? He could be jerking us around. Playing us, trying to buy himself some extra time.”

Vail pulled out her cell phone and began to dial. “Maybe the lab has some answers for us.”

She walked down the hall, pacing, waiting for the technician to take her call. But she knew the time spent hoping they had discovered something of value was wasted when the tech told her they hadn’t finished running the tests. They could tell her the type of paper it had been written on, the type of ink used to print it, and that there were no usable fingerprints other than a partial from Singletary.

“This guy dies in five days,” Vail said. “Any way we’ll have something soon—anything—that’ll tell us if this letter is from our killer?”

“Problem is that we’ve got no other writing samples to compare it to, nothing where we can match syntax, or even something as basic as handwriting.” The technician sighed. “But we’ll do our best. If there’s something to find, we’ll have it for you tomorrow.”

Vail walked back toward Del Monaco and Bledsoe and said, “Nothing yet.”

Del Monaco was folding his phone. “Underwood is on his way. He’ll be here inside of two hours. I say we get out of here, paint the town or something.”

“Our knight in shining armor is on the way to save the day,” Vail said with a hint of sarcasm. “Smacks of Hollywood. I can’t wait.”

THEY TOOK THEIR SEATS at a beat-up picnic table twenty yards from Bob’s Country Store, where they’d purchased hamburgers, chilidogs, and beer. The debate over drinking while on duty died with their appetite after finding that the only greasy spoon within fifteen minutes of the prison was, in fact, a very greasy spoon.

And, as they soon learned, being in the Bible Belt meant their alcohol had to be consumed off-premises, in the chill air.

“Well,” Bledsoe said, inspecting the flat head on his beer, “it seems that somewhere along the way, Underwood made an impression on Singletary.”

Del Monaco tipped his plastic cup toward the light and frowned at the color of his drink. “Singletary’s got a relationship with Underwood. He trusts him. Happened with John Wayne Gacy, and Dahmer, too.”

Bledsoe took a pull on the beer and made a face. “I hope Underwood works his magic. I get the feeling he’s more into writing books than writing profiles these days.”

“Bureau pension only goes so far,” Del Monaco said. “Nothing wrong with free enterprise.”

“Yeah, well, looks to me like he’s trying to ride the coattails of John Douglas’s success.”

Vail cleared her throat and leaned forward. “Frank,” she said tentatively, “you ever have nightmares? Of work?”

Del Monaco swallowed a mouthful of beer as he thought about the question. “You mean like working with you is a nightmare sometimes?”

“I’m serious.”

Del Monaco set down his cup and regarded his colleague. “You having Dead Eyes nightmares?”

Vail’s gaze found the million-year-old pocked-wood table. “You didn’t answer my question.”

He shrugged. “Had a nightmare after my first murder scene way back when. But nothing since then. My brain kind of acclimated to it. Go to work, deal with this shit, come home, leave it all at the office.”

She pulled her coat tight against a sudden gust of wind. “That’s good you can do that,” she said without further explanation.

“I’ve had some nightmares,” Bledsoe said. “Been awhile, but I remember the last one real well. I was in a shootout and my gun jammed. Radio didn’t work. And I couldn’t talk. It was like my throat closed up. Woke up drenched in sweat.” He shook his head. “Seemed so damn real. It’s been years but I remember it like yesterday.”

Vail wished she had never brought it up, because the next question was likely to be from Del Monaco, again asking if she’s had dreams regarding Dead Eyes.

But he surprised her when he elbowed her and said, “Let’s look at that letter again. If anyone’s qualified to analyze it, it’s us.”

Vail pulled it from her pocket and unfolded it. She read aloud. “I’ve done more than I ever thought I’d be able to do. But when you put your mind to something, you can do anything.” She looked at Del Monaco, who shrugged.

“Beats the shit out of me,” he said. “Nothing specific to that.”

Vail continued: “I find myself overwhelmed by the power of it all. Of being able to do anything I want to. No one to tell me I can’t.”

Del Monaco spread his hands in acknowledgment. “Signs of power. Of control. So far, there’s nothing to say it’s a hoax. But, there’re no details only the killer would know, either.”

“It does match up with the emails he sent,” Vail said. “The hunger-based need for power and control.”

“But it’s nonspecific,” Del Monaco said. “Those are common serial offender themes.”

Vail looked back at the paper: “I can’t stop myself. I’m sure you know the feeling, the urges, the need for more. They may think they can stop me, but they can’t. I know what they know. They’ll never find me.”

Vail exchanged a knowing glance with Bledsoe. All the proof she needed was right there—a reference to the stolen profile. It wasn’t hard evidence, but it was enough to convince her emotionally, if not legally or logically. She cleared her throat, then said, “Well, I think those last few sentences are the most significant, because it tells us a lot about him. It confirms a lot of our profile. And it tells us he’s gaining confidence, which is common with offenders as time passes. They begin to feel impervious to capture. They get sloppy and they begin to self-destruct internally. They may even get more violent.”

“I thought Linwood’s murder was more violent because of the personal connection,” Bledsoe said.

“It was.” At least, I think it was. “But this is something else. Many, if not most, serial killers begin to get more aggressive, more violent as the victims mount. It’s almost too much, it becomes overwhelming to them. Even those who thrive on control begin to lose structure in their lives, even if they don’t realize it’s happening. When it gets out of hand, they surpass their ability to handle the overload. They make mistakes, lose their composure. That’ll work to our advantage. Only problem is, we don’t know if he’ll reach critical mass at victim eight or victim twenty-eight.”

Del Monaco set down his cup and wiggled a bit on the bench seat. “An offender’s early murders typically demonstrate his need to engage in the thrill of the hunt. He lives for exerting control over his victim. But as he loses himself in his perception that he’s invincible, the emphasis of his attacks shifts to a kind of hunger, a simple need to kill.” He looked at the letter and shook his head. “There’s something that bothers me, though.” He picked up the paper and stared at it.

After waiting for Del Monaco to continue, Vail asked, “Frank?”

“‘I know what they know,’” he said. “What does he mean by that? Who is ‘they’?”

“He’s talking about us,” Bledsoe said.

Vail shut her eyes, bracing for the hammer to come down hard on her skull.

“He thinks he knows what we have on him,” Bledsoe continued.

She opened her eyes, realizing Bledsoe was not going to reveal their secret. They brought their beer to their lips and continued ruminating over the meaning of the letter. A few moments later, Bledsoe warded off a chill, then checked his watch. “We’ve gotta go. Underwood should be en route and it’ll take awhile to stow our handguns and get through security again.”

“Show time,” Vail said.

THOMAS UNDERWOOD was a fit fifty-nine years old, with a full head of ink-black hair and the boyish looks that had made him a knockout in his early Bureau days. He had the expert crime solver look Hollywood sought, and Vail was amazed he had never been offered his own television show. But his presence was electric, she had to admit, and she felt a few butterflies fluttering, though she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the cheap beer gurgling around her stomach.

Underwood smiled when he saw Del Monaco. “Frank, how you doing? Enjoying life, it looks like,” he said, patting Del Monaco’s round abdomen. Del Monaco huffed a false laugh.

Underwood made introductions to Bledsoe, then turned to face Vail. “Thomas Underwood,” he said, extending a hand and flashing a white smile.

“Karen Vail.”

Underwood’s grin widened. “Oh, you don’t need an introduction.”

Vail felt a flush settle across her face. She was impressed he knew who she was. Had he been following her career?

He must have read the increase in her body temperature, because he immediately clarified: “Your face was plastered across the front page of just about every major newspaper in the country.”