He wet the bed until about the age of twelve and probably was torturing cats and puppies before he graduated to college coeds and night-shift clerks. He’s spoiled, wants what he wants when he wants it, and he’s a thrill seeker. He aspires to fame and glamour and attention. He’s probably interested in cops and criminology as well. In fact, if you get any leads or communication about these two murders, I’d take a good look at where the tips are coming from.”
Maria Chavez piped up, her voice strained: “How do you guys know this?”
Powell smiled. “Years of interviews, hundreds of hours of conversations, piles of statistics, and great big computers.
But keep in mind, this is a profile. Statistically, this is what he should be like, but there may be some variations.”
“Amazing,” Gary Gilley mumbled.
“We’re just getting started,” Powell said. “He makes good money. If he drinks Scotch-and we think he does-then he drinks the best Scotch whisky. And he drinks when he kills, but never enough to lose control. He’s highly mobile. Either his job allows him to travel a lot or for whatever reason he doesn’t have to worry about money. Maybe he’s rich; maybe he married well. He plans his crimes well, but handles unexpected circumstances-like finding an extra victim-with some style. He drives a nice car, but probably doesn’t drive it when he’s on a kill. Maybe a rental, or he’s got a kill car stashed away somewhere. He almost certainly has assembled a ‘murder kit,’ and you should search very hard for it if you find him. If he’s ever caught, he’ll feign innocence so effectively you’ll be tempted to believe him. When he’s finally nailed, he’ll express remorse, but always remember: He’s not sorry for what he did; he’s only sorry he got caught.”
Woessner’s hand shot up again. “Speaking of catching him, what are the chances that he’s still around so we can nail his sorry ass?”
“Virtually nil,” Powell admitted. “He’s already on the move, long gone. But what’s left behind is his detritus. He didn’t kill those two girls, then take a cab to the airport. As organized and planned as these murders were, they were also damn bloody and messy. He’s never left fingerprints, so somewhere in the vicinity of that strip mall are a pair of bloody latex gloves. Probably coveralls and other articles of clothing as well, not to mention a weapon of some kind and perhaps a discarded small bag full of duct tape and rope and perhaps a pair of handcuffs. Find it. Find his garbage.
And use it to track his sorry ass down.”
Powell stopped, closed his notebook. “And on a personal note, I happen to ascribe to that branch of psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, theology, whatever, which factors in the component of human evil. The murders committed by this person transcend our ability to understand them or in any way rationalize them. This man is not an animal; animals don’t rape, torture, sodomize, and kill. He doesn’t kill for food or survival. He kills because he’s a predator. Remember that, above all else. He kills for one reason and one reason alone.”
Powell paused once again, this time plainly and openly for dramatic affect.
“He likes it.”
CHAPTER 5
Monday afternoon, Manhattan
Taylor Robinson’s office at Delaney amp; Associates was on the northwest corner of the second floor of the renovated East Fifty-third Street brownstone that Joan Delaney’s second husband had left her. Joan’s third husband had tried to get a piece of the brownstone in their divorce, but Joan’s attorney-who later became her fourth husband-managed to chase him off. After the fourth died two years later, Joan’s claim on the house was forever uncontested due to her resolve to never marry again.
The four-story brownstone, located on the north side of East Fifty-third between Second and Third Avenues, was a short two-block walk from Sutton Place, where Taylor often sat on a bench and ate a sack lunch on warm days. She would stare out over the East River, the Queensboro Bridge towering over her left shoulder, and for a few short moments leave Joan Delaney’s shrill voice behind her. The screeching of modems and fax tones, the smell of toner and burnt coffee, the background din and chatter of a busy office became just a memory blocked from her mind, at least for a while.
As Taylor sat in her tiny, high-ceilinged office on a Monday that had already seen more than its usual share of crises, she longed for a warm spring day and the benches of Sutton Place that overlooked the blue-gray ribbon glimmering in the sun that was the East River. Unfortunately for her, this was still February. A bitter wind poured down the av-enues, its momentum only slightly broken by the concrete and plate-glass forest of Manhattan. The temperature wasn’t expected to reach twenty degrees today, and the wind chill/
agony factor was well below zero.
Taylor was frazzled and already weary before her normal one o’clock lunchtime. She felt as if she had been locked in a room full of hungry, yapping Chihuahuas, not one of which could actually bring her down and finish her off, but all of whom together could wear her down and frustrate her nearly to the point of screaming.
Her state of mind and morale weren’t helped by having a houseguest all weekend. It wasn’t that Michael Schiftmann was such a bother. In fact, he was the most low-maintenance houseguest she’d had in months. But there had been the party she’d thrown for him Saturday night, and on Sunday afternoon she’d accompanied him down to the Village for his signing at a small mystery bookstore. After the book signing, she had taken Michael, the bookstore owner and his wife, and a couple of other hangers-on out for a dinner that lasted until nearly ten. By the time she got home, decompressed, and got Michael all squared away in the guest room, it had been past midnight before she collapsed into bed herself.
Sundays were almost always sacred to Taylor; a day when she often didn’t even bother to get out of her bathrobe until dinnertime. It was a day of lounging around reading the Sunday Times, catching an old movie on cable, drinking hot herb tea in the middle of the afternoon, and perhaps even taking a nap. Sundays restored Taylor Robinson, centered her, gave her that calm place deep inside herself in which to rest and recharge. She knew that by the end of the week, the loss of a Sunday was going to leave her ready to shut down completely. In essence, she’d already worked eight days without a day off, with at least four more to go.
Even tonight was shot, as Michael’s publicist had set up a signing at the Barnes amp; Noble superstore on the Upper West Side. It never occurred to Taylor not to accompany her star author to the signing; that sort of thing simply wasn’t done in Taylor Robinson’s way of conducting business.
Taylor heard a knock on the doorjamb of her office. She turned as Neil Macher, the head of contracts for the agency, stuck his head in. A lock of thinning, greasy black hair hung down over his forehead as he stared over the top of his smudged glasses.
“Bad time?”
Taylor looked around her tiny twelve-by-fifteen office, its floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and its one visitor’s chair piled high with manuscripts.
“Sorry I can’t offer you a seat,” she said, shrugging helplessly.