Killing Ways

26

The conference room slowly filled with members of the task force. Ren was standing at the door beside Gary, going through the newly arrived autopsy report.

He leaned in to her. ‘I apologize for involving you...’ said Gary. ‘It was unprofessional.’

Ren faux-gasped. ‘You?’ Admitting you’re... ‘Unprofessional?’

He smiled.

‘Good,’ said Ren. ‘And I’m sorry I lost it.’

Which is not true. I found it both therapeutic and thrilling.

Ren went to the top of the room.

‘Our latest victim is Carly Raine, thirty-nine years old. She was found raped, murdered, and mutilated in her family home two days ago. From what we know of the crime scene, the UNSUB entered the house through the unlocked back door. She was not killed where she was found — there is evidence that she was killed in the wooded area that borders her home’s property. She was raped with something — we don’t know what, it wasn’t at the scene. The UNSUB’s consistent in his inconsistencies. There are scratches on her feet from where she tried to run away from her attacker. This leads me to believe that he, at least initially, allows his victims to get away, that he enjoys the pursuit of naked women. Her clothes were found in the garden, so we can assume they were taken off there. I just can’t see how several of his petite victims managed to get away. I think he’s making them run.’ She looked around the room.

Hard to say who’s agreeing with me here.

‘There are rope burns on her wrists — the rope was not left at the scene — and there were abrasions to the face — both types of wound were found on some of the other victims. We now have six in total,’ said Ren, pointing to a whiteboard where she had pinned up their photos, alongside maps marking where they lived and where their bodies had been found. ‘Gia Larosa, Stephanie Wingerter, Hope Coulson, Carrie Longman, Donna Darisse, and Carly Raine,’ said Ren. ‘Six women, aged between eighteen and thirty-nine, all brutally raped and murdered. Six women all with friends and families, boyfriends or husbands, or ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands, colleagues, neighbors, people they’ve fallen out with, people they loved to see every day on their way to work. It is exponential. These women all had passions: favorite movies, books, TV shows. They had bars they liked to drink in, restaurants they liked to eat in, parks they ran in, stores they shopped in. Our victims have all made mistakes in their lives, they may have written shitty things in emails, on Facebook, on Twitter, they may have had shitty things written about them. But they’ve written beautiful things, loving things, kind things. They were loved. They all had reasons to live. Not one of them had a reason to die. Not one of them woke up that last morning thinking they wouldn’t make it to the end of the day. Every single one of those women deserved to make it. And every single woman in the city deserves to make it today. And tomorrow and the next day. And every day. We have to stop this.

‘The UNSUB is careful,’ said Ren. ‘He leaves no trace that can be connected to him. The bleach, the acid, leaving no weapons at the scene. This means, obviously, he’s got a vehicle in which he can transport not only a victim, but all the other tools he uses to carry out his crimes. He could even be driving a vehicle big enough to allow him to carry out some of the killings inside of it — in the instances where the body was dumped, as opposed to being killed at the scene. Or he has access to a large and private property, where he can come and go unnoticed, and carry out his crimes undisturbed.’

She stopped, looked around the room, eyeballed as many people as she could. ‘We can’t be overwhelmed. I understand that this is challenging, but I don’t want anyone to lose heart. Please stay motivated. He won’t walk free — it’s just a question of meticulously going through what we have. Always look for patterns, any thread that runs through every scene, or victim. For every one thing this guy throws at us, there is a new connection to him, a fresh opportunity to find him. He is not invincible. He will make a mistake. He doesn’t appear to be on a kamikaze mission. He wants to be alive. Right now, he’s getting away with his ultimate fantasy. Why would he ever want that to end?’

She paused.

‘My mom fell over once,’ she said. ‘Tripped and fell, just on the street. I was here, she was in New York. It was nothing alarming, she wasn’t badly injured, just a little sore. But the idea, just the idea that she had fallen, needed help, that none of us was there, that she was among strangers... that really got to me. I found the whole thing a lot more upsetting than she did. I couldn’t stop thinking, “She was just there alone, I wasn’t there to help her, none of us was.”

‘Luckily, my mom was surrounded by kind strangers. Now, can you imagine being a loved one of one of our victims? Knowing that there were no kind strangers there, just one person, a monster, someone who wanted only to hurt her, someone who was getting excited by hurting her, that the whole point was to hurt her, that she was likely screaming, crying, running for her life, questioning her life, her choices? From “Did I wear the wrong thing?” to “Why did I have to drink so much?”; “Did I smile the wrong way at someone?”; “Why didn’t I work out more so I could be fitter so I could run faster?”; “Did I lead this guy on?”; “Why did I leave my kids to go out into the garden to hang my washing?” It’s not right.

‘This is affecting people like no other investigation we’ve ever been involved in. For the women of Denver, there is less distance, psychologically: this is not a missing child, which is utterly heartbreaking, but at a remove in most people’s eyes. Like, no matter what, they don’t think they could be next. Not really. They might cry, they might be empathetic, but they don’t necessarily fear for their own safety. This time, people out there — women out there — are thinking they could be next. And they are terrified. He has crossed another boundary — their homes are now violable. He has raped and murdered while children were nearby, unattended, vulnerable.’

Ren pointed around to the whiteboard, the noticeboards, the photos, the reports, the statements, the stacks of documents.

‘Somewhere in this mountain of information lies something that could lead us to our killer. Something. Anything. I will take anything.’

Ren went home that night and added Carly Raine’s details to the Wall of Horrors, pinning them under the relevant categories.

She sat down on the sofa and studied the additions.

Bound by rope at the wrists. So was Carrie Longman. So was Stephanie Wingerter. So was... someone else.

She scanned the wall again.

Who? Why am I getting the feeling the answer is not on the wall?

She closed her eyes. Where did I hear rope burns recently?

She sat up. Oh my God — the Jane Doe in Sedalia, the neglected lady in the crash into the medical center! Rope burns. And — burns to her body. Like Stephanie Wingerter! What the fuck?

Ren Googled the Jane Doe, and the details of the crash.

Oh. My. God.

It was the night before Stephanie Wingerter was found...

Ren called Gary.

‘Gary — sorry for calling so late, but I have something — Stephanie Wingerter was found the morning after that Jane Doe turned up in Sedalia — the one who was in the pickup that crashed into Sky Ridge Medical Center. Stephanie Wingerter had burns — with lighter fluid as an accelerant — and so did the Jane Doe. Plus, they both had been bound with rope at the wrists.’

‘Bit of a stretch,’ said Gary. ‘And didn’t that lady set herself on fire?’

‘I know, but...’ It’s a gut thing. ‘Two women — tied with rope, burned flesh, within twenty miles of each other? I mean — could it be the case that Jane Doe escaped from the same man who killed the others?’

‘That he had one old lady in the middle of all those skinny blondes?’ said Gary.

‘If I could understand the mind of every killer...’

‘I need more.’

They all wanted proof; it was their job to have proof. But Gary wanted rock-solid. Everything had to be rock solid.

Goddamn it.