There were the usual questions. Did the police have any suspects? Did they think he was going to strike again? What could the people of St. Dennis do to protect themselves? How was this going to affect the tourist business?
“You don’t really think this killer is someone from St. Dennis, do you?” a man in one of the middle rows asked.
“Actually, we do.” Beck nodded. “Everything points to him being local. He knows the area, he-”
“A lot of people know the area.” The man stood, his arms crossed defiantly over his chest. “You’re telling us this killer-this fiend-is one of us? I want to know how you can make a statement like that. Some of us are more than a little upset that you think one of us could be a deranged killer.”
The room went very still.
“Jack, the facts are what they are,” Beck told him.
“So we have to look at everyone with suspicion? Our neighbors, our friends, our sons, our brothers? He was growing increasingly agitated.
“Until we bring him in, yes.” Beck nodded. “Within reason, of course. Jack, no offense, but the killer is probably about twenty years younger than you, and probably in a little better shape. We’re pretty sure he’s in his early to mid-thirties, and he’s strong enough to overpower these women and carry them as dead weight to the places he chooses to dispose of them. Which he’s done with apparent ease, by the way. He didn’t seem to have much trouble carrying a victim through the yards on my street to my driveway.”
“How do you know he carried her through the backyards?” someone asked.
“Because one of my neighbors is an insomniac who was sitting on his front porch all night and never saw or heard a thing. So we know nothing passed by the front of the house,” Beck explained. “Then again, there’s a good chance he could have come in by boat, tied up at the dock at the end of the street, and walked along in the shadow of the back fence until it ended. From there, he would have been walking behind the garages, so he could be fairly certain he wasn’t going to be seen at that hour of the night.”
“Well, mid-thirties and strong could apply to a hell of a lot of men around here,” another man in the crowd said. “How can you tell who’s a likely suspect and who’s not?”
Beck reiterated Annie’s profile to the crowd.
The group had grown very quiet once again. Beck looked across the room to her and said, “Agent Shields from the FBI is here with us. Agent Shields, is there anything you want to add?”
“There is.” She stepped forward, gathering her thoughts as she walked to the front of the room. Maybe there was a way to get the killer’s attention.
“I agree with Chief Beck that the man we’re looking for is from St. Dennis, as does one of the FBI’s best profilers.” Mia took the microphone from the stand and walked slowly around the room. “But I’d go one step further and say that I believe he’s in this room.”
A loud angry buzz seemed to flow from the front of the room to the back. Mia held up one hand.
“You all watch TV. You know that a serial killer is likely to be drawn to the media coverage of his crimes, right? He wants the attention. He wants to know what’s being said about him.” She strolled down the center aisle, her eyes scanning the crowd on both sides. “He wants to sit here-or stand-and feel superior to everyone in this room, especially the chief and his department. To me. To you. Right now, he’s hanging on my every word. He wants me to tell you how very smart, how very clever he is.”
She stopped in the aisle and looked around. The room had gone silent again.
“Well, he is very smart. Very clever. The profiler and I were saying just this morning that he’s not like anyone we’ve seen before. The way he kills is unique. He really has his act together. He’s highly organized and he very carefully plans every aspect of his crime from the abduction to the torture to the disposal of the bodies. I suspect he’s as organized in every aspect of his life.”
“Chief Beck didn’t say anything about the victims being tortured.” A woman several rows to Mia’s left said loudly.
“What would you call being held captive for an indefinite period of time, shackled, repeatedly raped, then when he’s finally done with you, when he’s taken everything you have, including your dignity and your will to live, he wraps you in cellophane starting at your feet, until your entire face is covered so that you fight for even your last dying breath?” Mia said more sharply than she’d intended. “If that isn’t torture, I don’t know what is.
“Something else-he’s very sophisticated; the fantasy he’s living out is highly evolved. He’s a very confident man. Maybe owns his own business. And he’s bold. It takes a very bold man to do what this man does. There’s a high degree of risk here, taking the entire operation into consideration.”
As Mia made her way back to the front of the room, she made it a point to meet and hold the gaze of every man there. She was looking for a challenge.
“If he’s so smart and he’s so sophisticated, why did he leave that girl’s body on her front porch?” someone asked. “And it doesn’t seem so smart to me to leave a dead body in the police chief’s Jeep.”
“After a while, I suspect he needed to brag a bit.” Mia smiled. “Genius needs to be recognized.”
“So he’s showing off?” a young woman in the front row asked.
“Exactly.” Mia nodded. “For all his intelligence, all his sophistication, he is, at heart, a show-off.”
She’d reached the podium and returned the microphone to its stand.
“There’s one other thing about him that we know for certain,” Mia told the silent crowd. “The man we’re looking for is a sadistic coward. He has to tie his victims down to control them. He gets the greatest sexual satisfaction from torturing his victims. That’s what he gets off on. He fantasizes about how he can dominate his victims, how he can degrade them through various sexual acts, and then he lives out his fantasies. He makes sure their death is a long, drawn-out affair. It’s slow and deliberate and he savors every second of it. By then, he’s humiliated them, he’s stripped them of everything, and he’s kept them restrained so that he has total control over them. But without those restraints-without the duct tape and the chains, and the hours he forces them to spend alone-without those weapons, he is nothing but a weak little man. He’s a coward. He can only be satisfied by tying a woman up and raping her.” She looked around the room and added coolly, “Can you think of anything more pathetic?”
She stepped back from the microphone and nodded to Beck before walking down the center aisle and out the door.
17
Mia sat in the Adirondack chair, her legs stretched out straight in front of her, her head resting against the hard wooden back. She closed her eyes and listened to the waves lapping at the shore, and felt almost as if she were being rocked to sleep. Not that she wanted to fall asleep out here, on the wide lawn behind Sinclair’s Cove, but it was a restful moment.
She’d made one stop on her way out of town before driving to the inn from the meeting in St. Dennis.
“I’d like a room,” she’d told the pleasant young man behind the desk when she arrived.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid we’re booked to the rafters.”
“Mr. Sinclair said there’d be a room for me.”
She frowned. She hated the thought of having to drive back to Connor’s house now. She was tired and feeling worn out.
“Oh.” The desk clerk reached under the counter and pulled out a small slip of paper. “Agent Shields?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Sinclair called earlier and asked that we re fresh one of the cabins for you. He said to apologize that we could not accomodate you in the main house.” He handed her a key on a long leather circle. “Last cabin on the left as you go around the back of the building. May I take your bags?”