“A break of almost fifteen years,” Kerstin Holm mused aloud. “Is it really the same person and not a-what’s it called?”
“A copycat,” said Hjelm, using the English word.
Hultin shook his head. “The FBI has ruled that out. There are details of the MO that have never been made public and that only a few authorities at the bureau know of. Either he’s hidden his victims well for fifteen years, or else he quit and maybe settled down, before his craving for blood got the best of him once again. That’s the FBI’s scenario, anyway. That was why the bulletin went out for a white middle-aged man. Probability says that he was just under twenty-five when he began, so he’s just under forty-five now.”
“And ‘white’ is also based on probability, I assume?” said the chalk-white Söderstedt.
“Almost all serial killers are white men,” said Kerstin Holm. “A much-debated phenomenon. Maybe it’s some sort of hereditary compensation for the many hundreds of years of world domination that they are about to lose.”
“Haphazard fascism” came flying out of Hjelm.
The A-Unit considered this expression for a few long seconds. Even Hultin looked contemplative.
“What kinds of victims were they, in fact?” Chavez asked at last.
Hultin’s resumed page turning caused Hjelm to ponder the advantages of the Internet and encrypted e-mail, something that wasn’t too common yet. That was Jorge and Kerstin’s domain. They were also the ones who looked most irritated when information was slow in coming.
“Let’s see,” said Hultin after a long pause.
Chavez groaned quietly, which brought him a look that could mean yet another stain on his work record.
“There’s a lot of diversity in the victims,” their wise leader said at last. “Twenty-four people of diverse backgrounds. Five foreign citizens, including Hassel. Primarily white middle-aged men, to be sure, which an alert officer who’s familiar with feminism could easily interpret as implied self-contempt.”
“If it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t middle-aged at all when he began murdering,” Kerstin Holm countered promptly.
The icy chill in Hultin’s long look could have been fatal. “Quite a few of them remain unidentified,” he finally continued. “Even though the list of missing persons in the United States is a book as thick as the Bible, the number still seems disproportionately large-ten out of twenty-four.”
“Is that something that’s changed?” Söderstedt asked alertly.
Yet another look from Hultin. Then he paged frenetically and got a hit. “All six victims in the second round have been identified. That means that ten of eighteen in the first round remain unidentified. A majority. Maybe some sort of conclusion can be drawn from that. However, I’m not ready to do that right now.”
“Could it be the case that the MO itself has made identification difficult?” asked Hjelm.
Clearly their minds were sharp. Many of them had been waiting a long time for this very moment. To a person, they ignored the degree of cynicism inherent in this wait.
“No,” Hultin answered. “The atrocities don’t include torn-out teeth or chopped-off fingertips.”
“What do they include, then?” Nyberg asked.
“Wait.” Chavez was staring down into his overflowing notebook. “We weren’t quite finished. Who were the identified victims? Does he concentrate on some particular social class?”
Hultin once again swung his mental machete through the jungle of paper. While he searched, he said, “Many of your questions will be answered by the complete FBI report, which Special Agent Larner is going to fax over this afternoon, but okay, we might as well anticipate the events…”
Then he found what he was looking for.
“The eight people identified in the first wave were relatively highly educated. He seems to have a weakness for academics. The six in the second wave were more varied. Maybe he’s gone and become a democrat.”
“Get to sex sometime,” said Kerstin Holm abruptly.
A moment of bewildered silence ensued among the male audience. Then Hultin understood: “A single woman in the first group, out of eighteen. Two out of six in the second.”
“There are a few differences after all,” Holm summarized.
“Like I said,” said Hultin, “perhaps he’s become a democrat when it comes to sex, too. Let’s wait and see what Larner has to say about it. He’s followed the case from the very start. In the seventies, based on the MO, they narrowed it down to a group of, if not suspects, then at least potential perpetrators. It turned out to have certain similarities to a method of torture from, believe it or not, the Vietnam War. A specific and extremely unofficial American task force used it to get the Vietcong to talk without screaming. An utterly silent method of torture, tailor made for the jungle. Since the existence of the task force was officially denied and brushed off as just another Vietnam myth, it was extremely difficult for Larner to get names. He hinted that he was stepping on quite a few tender and highly placed toes, and likely he was making a fool of himself and destroying his chances for promotion to boot. But slowly and surely, he tracked down the task force, which went by the disagreeable code name ‘Commando Cool,’ and ferreted out the names of those involved. Above all, one person who could almost have been called a suspect crystallized: the group leader, a Wayne Jennings, from none other than Kentucky. There was never any proof, but Larner followed Jennings wherever he went. Then something unanticipated happened. Jennings got tired of the surveillance and tried to evade the FBI-and he got into a head-on car collision. Larner was there himself and saw him burn up.”
“Did the murders continue after that?” Chavez asked.
“Yes, unfortunately. There were two more in quick succession, and then they stopped. Larner was blamed for having hounded an innocent man to death. There was a trial. He survived it, sure, but he fell in the hierarchy. And it didn’t get any better for him when, after fifteen years of walking into a headwind, he realized that the killer had started up again. For just over a year now, Ray Larner has been back where he started with the elusive Kentucky Killer. I don’t envy him.”
“You should,” said Söderstedt. “He isn’t Larner’s responsibility anymore-he’s yours. He’s the one who’s free, not you.” Söderstedt paused, then continued maliciously: “You’re taking over from scratch after twenty years of intensive FBI investigations that had resources equivalent to the Swedish GDP.”
Hultin observed him neutrally.
“So what was so special about Commando Cool’s modus operandi?” Gunnar Nyberg tried. “How did that literary critic die?”
Hultin turned to him with an expression that could have been interpreted as suppressed relief. “The point is that it’s two different things,” he said. “The serial killer makes use of what we can call a personal application of Commando Cool’s method. The method is based on a single special instrument: specially designed micromechanical pincers that, when closed, closely resemble a terrifying cannula. A big syringe. It’s driven into the throat from the side. With the help of small control wires, tiny claws unfurl inside the trachea and grip the vocal cords in a manner that makes it impossible for any sound to escape the lips of the victim. He or she is rendered completely silent. Even in a tight spot in the jungle with Vietcong soldiers in the bushes all over, you can see to a bit of refreshing torture.