“Do we know if anyone else is missing?” Mayor Pratt asked. “I mean, if this guy is from St. Dennis-and I’m still not buying that he is-would he just have started doing this out of the blue? Wouldn’t there have been other women missing before these three?”
“I think those are good questions for our profiler.” Beck turned to Annie. “Want to take it from here?”
“As your chief has noted, my name is Anne Marie McCall. I’m a psychologist, I’m a supervisory special agent, and I work primarily with agents assigned to a specific unit within the Bureau.” Annie stood. “For starters, I don’t believe these are your offender’s first kills. The manner is way too sophisticated for an amateur. He’s definitely not new at this game. He’s played before. We just need to find out where, and when, and I believe Agent Shields has something on that. Mia?”
“Yes. There’s nothing for the past year, but back in 2001, a young woman on vacation in Dewey Beach went missing. Kim Bradley, twenty-one years old, from Penns Grove, New Jersey, a new graduate of Salisbury University, rented a beach house with a few of her sorority sisters. A group of them went to a club in Rehoboth”-Mia paused to refer to her notes-“a place called the Elephant Room. When it was time to leave, she was nowhere to be found. She stumbled into the house around six the next morning, bruised and hysterical. Said she’d met a guy in the bar, they went outside for some fresh air, he forced her into his car at knifepoint and raped her.”
Beck turned to Lisa. “Find out who the officer in charge of that investigation was and talk to him, get everything he’s got. And find out where the rental property was and who they rented from.”
His attention returned to Mia. “What else do you have?”
“Two rape-abductions in that same area, June and September of the previous year, both college girls. Pretty much the same story. Met a guy in a club, stepped outside, then bam! I’ve requested copies of the files, and will have someone from our field offices follow up and interview the victims. One is in Columbus, Ohio, the other is in Boston. Those were the only local missing persons we found, but there’s always the possibility that he lived elsewhere at some point, and may have been active there. There are thousands of missing persons reported every year. There’s no way we could narrow the field.”
“I’m assuming you also ran a check nationally for cases with similar MOs?” he asked.
Mia nodded. “There have been many rape-abduction-murder cases where the victim was held for a period of time, but none where the vics have been suffocated as these women have been. While I think there’s a really good chance that what we’re seeing is an escalation over his previous activity where he abducted and raped but did not kill-as Dr. McCall said, this guy’s no beginner-it’s impossible to sort out all of the rape-abduction cases over the past five to ten years just by looking at the data reports. The victims I mentioned earlier were all college girls, all from out of state, and all the abductions occurred in beach areas. None were held beyond the actual rape, none mentioned being restrained. I understand that the area from Dewey Beach in Delaware down through Ocean City, Maryland, is very popular with young people.” She paused, then added, “There’s no way of telling how many others there might have been over the years. Rape victims don’t always report the crime, and girls of this age under these circumstances are often reluctant to call the police.”
“Because sometimes it’s a matter of the girls picking up a guy in one of the clubs and getting more than they bargained for,” Lisa said. “They’re embarrassed to admit they made such an error in judgment.”
“Exactly. They think maybe they set themselves up for it, going off with someone they didn’t know, so they’re reluctant to complain to the police.” Mia nodded. “I will request that as many of these women as possible be tracked down and interviewed to see if we have a pattern in the MO and to see if we have physical descriptions of the subject that match up, but that’s going to take some time.”
Beck ran a hand wearily over his face and nodded to Annie to go on with her presentation.
“I’ve had an opportunity to study the files on the three women and while I can’t pretend to have all the answers, I can share some insights based on my twelve years experience doing this sort of thing.” She leaned against the far wall, her hands in the pockets of her skirt. The petite blond woman, always immaculately dressed and professional, began to weave her words into a compelling narrative. Everyone in the room hung on her every word.
“For starters, the man you’re looking for has massive control issues as far as women are concerned.”
The mayor snorted.
Annie appeared amused. “You had something you wished to say, Mayor Pratt?”
“The guy ties women up and keeps them tied up, then rapes them, and when he’s done with them, he wraps them in plastic and suffocates them. It doesn’t take an FBI profiler to figure out that he likes to be in control. And I’ll bet you’re going to say those issues stem from his relationship with his mother.”
Still smiling, Annie nodded. “Oh, there’s a good chance they do. This is a man who reflects pretty much what we see in most of our serial killers. His approach may differ, his MO may be different, but scratch the surface and you’ll find he and Ted Bundy are brothers under the skin. He really doesn’t like women very much.”
“So he’s probably single, right?” Sue asked.
“Not necessarily, no. He may be married, in a long-term relationship, or divorced. The women he’s been involved in are probably very complacent, nonaggressive, which permits him to have his way, to feel superior.”
“And if she protests?” someone asked. “Or becomes more assertive?”
“Then he’ll react to that. Sever the relationship, have an affair, something that restores the balance to his world, where he is king and women are there to please him.”
“Not in my house.” The mayor’s comment elicited light laughter.
Annie smiled, then continued. “Now, let’s take a closer look at our man. He’s very organized. He has his victim picked out in advance, he’s probably stalked her and studied her so he knows where, when, and how to get to her. He takes with him what he needs to get the job done, which in his case is some rope-we know he keeps his victims restrained when he’s not with them…”
She glanced around the room. Every eye was on her.
“How do we know? Even without the medical examiner’s description of the marks on the wrists and ankles of the two victims she’s examined, it would stand to reason. In Colleen Preston’s case, for example, she’d been missing for several weeks, but the body, when found, hadn’t started to decompose, so we know she hadn’t been dead long enough for the tissue to begin to break down. I believe your ME determined she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours. The marks on her wrists were both old and fresh, meaning she’d been in those restraints for long enough for the earliest ones to heal over. So if he’s had her for weeks, he’s had to leave her alone for hours at a time, and he’s not going to let her roam freely. He would have known ahead of time exactly what he was going to do. Everything would have been planned very carefully, as dictated by his fantasy. And you all know that most of these killings have their genesis in fantasy, right?”
All of the law-enforcement officers nodded their heads.