The girls were all pleasant and average-looking. There was nothing exceptional about any of them, and that very blandness was suggestive. Maybe the perp didn't want anyone too extreme, too threatening. This would indicate he had a narrow range of life experiences and would be put off with unfamiliarities.
The assaults were not personal. None of the living victims knew their attacker, and apart from his direct assaults he had not engaged them in any other manner. She kept searching the display of photos, pausing to read each girl's pedigree. Nothing stood out as connected. She couldn't pin a common association, activity, or person to all twelve girls. None of their bios matched. They were from low to middle incomes, and though two-thirds of them had been accosted in a park, the other third were assaulted near high schools or in urban settings. Some were in junior high, some in high school, some in elementary, one was a runaway.
Frank sighed and stretched. She got up to change the music, absently trading the jazz for Faure's Requiem. She turned up the volume, bowing her head as she listened to the first stanza.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis thundered though the small space, and Frank thought, grant them eternal rest and let perpetual light shine on them, indeed. She lost herself in the grandeur of the introduction, and when it ended, she opened her eyes. The girls stared up at her.
Cassandra Nichols smiled doe-eyed and gap-toothed. Claudia Menendez smiled too, contrasting sharply with Frank's memory of her heartbreak and puzzlement. Even the ones he'd left alive he'd managed to kill somehow.
Alright, buddy. Let's go one on one. You and me.
Frank was finally ready to get into his head, but first things first. Frank pulled out a VICAP form and started filling in the offender information section.
"Always start where you are," she muttered out loud. Joe Girardi had told her that her first day in Homicide. Answering the questions on the FBI form, she ended up with a long list of the perp's data. Armed with that, Clay's tape, and her own limited knowledge, she played with the information and the options it suggested, starting with a physical description of their perp. He was a big man with brown hair. None of the girls could remember anything remarkable about his body or the feel of it against them, so he probably wasn't too skinny or too fat. If he didn't have a good image of himself, he probably wasn't concerned with keeping up his physical appearance. The Troupe witness had said maybe he was slightly overweight.
His hair would be unkempt. He'd only cut it when it started to draw attention, but then he wouldn't cut it too short. He'd just have the barber trim him, keep him from feeling conspicuous. Their witness had described a man in jeans and a T-shirt. In Los Angeles that was standard attire. Frank bet his clothes had small holes or stains. Again, nothing too noticeable, just ordinary enough for a man who didn't care much about his image.
Frank looked at the notes she'd made while talking with Clay. All the assaults had happened between mid-morning and early evening. All of them were on weekdays. This made Frank feel that the perp worked evenings and weekends, most likely as an unskilled laborer. That would fit with his workboots, and explain his wearing blue jeans in the summer heat. He would be unassuming enough to keep a job, would probably never make waves, but he would most likely never be promoted. She figured he did what he had to to get by but didn't have the incentive to further himself. He probably worked alone, or with minimal contact with other people.
Frank continued in this vein, rearranging facts and figures into the logical behavior pattern critical to good profiling. She used her ability to slip into the perp's head, to see what he looked at, hear what he heard, feel what he touched, taste what he licked, loathe what he loathed, love what he loved. Ultimately, Frank needed to know how it felt for him to rape, batter, and finally kill a young girl. If she knew why he was doing this, maybe she could stop him.
"Yeah," Frank answered to a knock on the door.
Kennedy opened up. "I'm gonna go get something to eat. Wanna join me?"
Frank had glanced up from her work but looked back down as she replied, "No thanks." End of conversation.
"You sure?"
"Very."
"Want me to bring you somethin' back?" Kennedy pressed.
Frank patiently sat back in her chair, giving Kennedy her full attention. Slowly and evenly, as if dealing with a simpleton, she replied, "No."
With concentrated detachment Frank noted that Kennedy's eyes were brown. They caught the cold fluorescent light and warmed it. A warning flickered in Frank's gut. And in her brain. The flicker became cognition: Maggie's eyes had looked like that.
Frank blinked like a lizard.
"Is there anything else I can do for you, Detective?"
"Well...I've got a couple questions that maybe you could help me with."
Kennedy took an uninvited seat on the couch. Frank was sorry she'd asked.
"You seem to have an angle on this guy we're lookin' for—"
"Which is all speculative," Frank warned.
"Right, but still you've thought a lot about this. So I'm going through the books, and I'm trying to figure out what's the hook for him? What's gonna make me stand out from any other chick out there?"
Frank considered the question. She started to reach up and stroke her chin but stopped, almost as if she were being interrogated. She refused to give Kennedy even that much.
"A lot of things," Frank shrugged.
Kennedy was unrelenting.
"Like what?"
She leaned forward eagerly. Frank noticed she'd lost the accent.
"Could be any number of things." Frank outlined her sketchy victimology, stressing his apparent preference for passive, vulnerable victims.
"So basically, I should be a rag doll," Kennedy concluded.
Frank nodded. "Be innocent. Be vulnerable. Make yourself as visible as possible."
"Kind of contradictory, isn't it?"
"Do you feel like you can't handle it?"
"Not at all. I just want to make sure I do it right."
Frank's stare was the narc's only reply, so she asked, "Sure you don't want lunch?"
"Positive."
At the door she turned and asked, "What's that music?"
"It's a requiem. Faure's."
"Hmm. I don't reckon I know what a requiem for A's is, but it shore is perty. I like it."
"I'm so very glad," Frank answered coldly.
He was yelling again. He'd lost his job, his pension, everything. And it was the boy's fault. What were they supposed to do now that there was no scholarship? Who was going to take care of things? The old man was crying. The boy stood with his ear pressed to the door.
His mother was crying too.
And a new, nameless fear gripped the boy.
18
Frank knocked on Tracey and Noah's door on Thanksgiving Day, wondering whose truck was in the driveway. Her blood chilled when she noticed the surf logos and parking sticker. Tracey threw the door open, overflowing her flowery one-piece and screaming. She wrapped her arms around Frank's neck, mindless of the wine and flowers she was smashing between them, then yanked Frank inside, yelling, "Goddamnit, you old hama-zama, where the hell have you been all my life?"
Frank had to laugh.
"Well? Where you been?"
She threw a couple of punches at Frank who raised her offerings, pleading, "I come in peace."