“Why?”
“It means they’re fallible. And it means we’re closing the gap. The tortoise and the hare? Remember?”
“But why leave the bodies like that? They must have assumed someone would find them.”
Decker looked at him. “According to what your people found out, the Wyatts were retired. They had no family other than their daughter, and no friends. They kept to themselves.”
“So folks might not have missed them,” said Bogart. “At least for a while.”
“We should check to see if they used a pool service company. The pool was probably only winterized a couple months ago. If they came up to do it, they might have seen the Wyatts.”
“Good idea.”
Decker said, “The Wyatts had money. This place is over ten thousand square feet. And there’s a Range Rover, Audi A8, and Mercedes S500 in the garage.”
“Money can’t buy you happiness,” remarked Jamison.
Bogart looked back down at the papers. “What do you have there?”
Jamison said, “Letters from Belinda to her parents when she was at the institute. Your team found them in that shoebox stuffed under some junk in a closet upstairs.”
“What do they say?”
Decker said, “To sum it up, they’re letters from a frightened young woman imploring her parents to come see her. To come take her home.”
“Marshall said they never visited her.”
“So her letters went unanswered.”
“Marshall said they were part of the ignorant folks and really didn’t care about her. I wonder why they kept the letters?”
“Because of this,” said Decker.
He and Jamison laid the reverse side of all the letters out on the table side by side. Each page had a single capital letter written on the back. When read together and combined into words they spelled out something.
“‘I WILL KILL THEM ALL,’” read Bogart. “So she will kill them all. Meaning her attackers?”
“Or people who dissed her,” said Decker, glancing up at Jamison. “Or people associated with the one who dissed her.”
“And you still don’t know why Wyatt would think you did that to her?”
“No. But my wife and Special Agent Lafferty were both violated. Not raped, but sexually mutilated.”
“But Belinda was raped. And Mrs. Wyatt wasn’t mutilated.”
“She wouldn’t be. This didn’t start with her. And she’s not connected to me.”
“Comes back to you again. Always you.”
Jamison looked at Bogart. “Decker said you used to be an analyst at Quantico?”
“That’s right.”
“I have a friend at ViCAP.”
“She has lots of friends,” commented Decker dryly.
Bogart said, “Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. I was assigned there for two years.”
Jamison said, “Then you must have seen things like this before.”
Bogart nodded. “I’ve pretty much seen it all.”
“Okay, so walk us through it. What would the mutilation symbolize?”
Bogart clasped his hands in front of him. “Actually, mutilation of the female genitalia can have a lot of reasons behind it. It’s like a cornucopia of psychoses. Freud would have had a field day with it. I’ve seen a number of cases, all serial killers, where it was employed.”
“Then give us some examples of reasons,” said Decker.
Bogart leaned in, and while his voice grew softer, it also grew firmer. “It can be symbolic of a hatred of women and what they represent—being mothers, giving birth. The female genitalia are the gates to the birth canal, to be a little crude about it. I’ve seen killers do that to women because their mothers abandoned them. Or let them be abused by others. Mothers are supposed to protect their children, always be there for them. When a mother doesn’t do that it can lead to some really messed-up minds. The mutilation is a way of closing those gates, shutting off the birth canal permanently—not that murder didn’t already do that. But in their minds they’re actually doing something positive.”
Decker said, “Meaning another child can’t be born to that woman? And won’t be abandoned or abused?”
“Exactly.”
Jamison interjected, “Well, Belinda’s parents abandoned her to her fate at the institute. They never visited her there. They ignored her pleas to come and get her. And could she have seen the rape and beating she endured as her mother’s not protecting her?”
“Possibly,” replied Bogart. “In fact, probably. Particularly if she wasn’t supportive afterwards.”
Decker said, “But then why was the message directed at me? Why target my family, people I know? Where do I fit in all this? I don’t remember even speaking to her.”
“We’re talking about a sick mind, Decker. There’s no way we can understand or make sense out of what went on in her head. This actually didn’t start with you. This started with her being raped and nearly killed. And then her parents abandoning her afterward. And it started even before that, with her condition, and people’s reaction to it. Her life was never going to be normal.”
“And then there’s Leopold,” said Jamison. “Let’s not forget about him!”
“And then there’s Leopold,” repeated Bogart. “Decker, you’re still convinced he’s Belinda’s partner in all this? I mean, you haven’t seen him since he left that bar. I know you told me about the waitress—supposedly Belinda—and her borrowing the barman’s car, but you have no hard evidence that she actually picked up Leopold in it. She could have just used it to run an errand.”
Decker shook his head. “She left the bar for good after she brought the car back. And the temp agency hadn’t sent her. She was there to ferret Leopold away. He was the one who picked the bar. So I have no doubt that he’s involved. He confessed to a crime he couldn’t have committed. And he knew that he couldn’t have committed. He played the role of a mentally unbalanced person well, but sitting in that bar he had moments of lucidity, not random, but intentional. He overplayed his hand. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
“But why confess in the first place?”
“It was their opening salvo. After murdering my family. The confession got my attention. They knew I’d find out about it, investigate it. They lured me in. They wanted me to participate in their game.”
“Some game,” Bogart said disgustedly. “But they waited a long time in between killing your family and attacking the school.”
“It all took time to plan out. They had to find the details of the passageway, among other things.”
Jamison said, “But who’s the leader of the pack? Wyatt or Leopold? Plus, how did they meet? Where does he come from? How did they hatch this whole thing?”
“All good questions,” noted Decker. “For which we unfortunately have no answers.”
Bogart said, “We’ve had no hit on the criminal databases. The guy has no record that we can find.”
Decker jerked his head. “Criminal databases?”
“Yeah, that’s where we typically look for criminals. We ran Leopold’s prints through IAFIS, it’s the largest criminal database in the world. I should know because the FBI runs it.”
“But Belinda Wyatt wasn’t a criminal. She was a victim. Maybe Sebastian Leopold was too. Maybe that’s how they hooked up.”
Jamison gazed at Bogart. “So maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong databases.”
Chapter
54
THEY FLEW BACK to Burlington and Decker was driven to the Residence Inn. Decker looked at Bogart and then flicked his gaze to Jamison.
The FBI agent understood. He said, “Ms. Jamison, we request the pleasure of your company at our safe house.”
She snapped, “What? No, I’ll be—”
“Perfectly happy to accept or else I’ll put you in a jail cell if I have to,” interjected Bogart.