He added a few more details but kept his synopsis brief.
Then it was my turn.
“The ninth tale reminded me of a gothic horror story.” I decided to just be blunt. “When Sir Guillaume de Roussillon’s wife sleeps with another man, he kills him, cuts out the man’s heart, and then gives it to the cook to prepare for dinner.”
“Please tell me they don’t actually eat it,” Cheyenne said softly.
I pulled out the copy of The Decameron I’d gotten from the library. “It might be best if I just read this section of the story.”
The lady, who was nowise squeamish, tasted thereof and finding it good, ate it all; which when the knight saw, he said to her, “Wife, how deem you of this dish?”
“In good sooth, my lord,” answered she, “it liketh me, exceedingly.”
Whereupon, “So God be mine aid,” quoth Roussillon; “I do indeed believe it you, nor do I marvel if that please you, dead, which, alive, pleased you more than aught else.”
A deep silence.
“I’m not surprised this pleases you dead,” Jake said, “which pleased you more than anything else, alive. That’s cold. That’s just brutal. How does the story end?”
“The woman kills herself by jumping out a window.”
“Love and tears,” Jake mumbled. “Fits to a tee.”
“What are you thinking?” Kurt asked.
“It’s John’s obsession,” Jake said, extemporaneously profiling the killer. “All of these stories are about the tragic consequences of love; all cruel, fatal tales of love and loss. That’s what the phrase refers to: must needs we tell of others’ tears? Through his crimes, John is reenacting the lovers’ tears.”
No one said anything. Whether it was true or not, it made sense.
Kurt looked at me. “What about the last story?”
“This might be the only one that’s not filled with tears,” I said. “In fact, when I was reading it, I was thinking that Boccaccio might have added it just to lighten the mood and maybe transition into the next day’s tales. In any case, no one dies in the last story; however, a man is drugged and sealed in a large crate.”
“Buried alive?” Cheyenne asked.
“No, but the way it’s written, you start to think that’s what will happen. But in the end, there’s no tragedy.”
“Just lessons,” Jake mused. “About love and death.”
“That’s right.” As I agreed with him, I wondered whether our killer would be content with that ending. I doubted it. “This gives us plenty of specifics to move on,” I said. “The greyhounds, the poisonous toads, the priest.”
Things were popping.
So many crimes. So many puzzle pieces.
“Kurt,” I said, “let’s get a warrant to look over the library’s records and see who’s been checking out Boccaccio’s books. Also, let’s identify which colleges offer courses on Boccaccio or this Decameron book. Start with DU and CU, and move out from there. Our guy might have studied all this on his own, but we can at least compare class rosters with the suspect list.”
“We’ll go countrywide if we need to,” he said.
“And we still need to find out who owns the mine where we found Heather’s body. It might give us a lead to finding John.”
“Jameson’s on it,” he said with a head shake. “But there are hundreds of abandoned mines up there, and most of Clear Creek County’s records still aren’t computerized. It’s a mess. He’s up in Idaho Springs now, going through the county’s plat books one at a time.”
We were quiet.
“Jameson knows what he’s doing,” he added. “If there’s anything there, he’ll find it.”
Jake rapped the table decisively with his knuckle and stood. “I’ll work on the UNSUB’s psychological profile.”
Cheyenne rose also. “All the stories so far have to do with married couples or love affairs, and the victims have all been couples. Here’s what I’m thinking: our guy is choosing the victims somehow, but there’s no obvious connection between each of the different couples, right?”
“Not that we know of so far,” I said.
“And Jake, what did you say? Fatal tales of love and loss?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, who deals the most with a couple’s love and loss? Knows about their loneliness, their grief, their love interests and affairs?”
“Yes, good,” I said. “A therapist. Or a marriage counselor.”
“Exactly,” she said. “A counselor’s client list would be confidential; in some cases even family members and spouses wouldn’t know the person was seeing him, and it would make it very difficult for us to link the victims.”
It seemed like a good angle to me. “Check it out. It might be too obvious of a connection for this guy, but maybe he’s not as smart as I think he is.” I gathered my things.
“What about you?” Jake asked.
“The geoprofile.” I headed for the hallway. “I’m going to figure out where John lives.”
22 minutes later
4:41 p.m.
Giovanni stared at the dark, tinted windows of Thomas Bennett’s gray ’09 Infiniti FX50 parked on the second level of the 18th Street parking garage. Because of the tinting, he couldn’t see into the car’s interior-either the front or the backseats.
Perfect.
This way he wouldn’t have to wait underneath the vehicle, he could wait inside it.
Even with the Infiniti’s advanced security system, it took Giovanni less than thirty seconds to pick the lock.
And less than three minutes to disable the vehicle’s GPS tracking and satellite mapping capabilities.
He situated himself in the backseat, closed the door, and then took a moment to tilt the rearview mirror so that he’d be able to see Bennett’s face when he climbed into the car.
He laid the two needles he would be using on the seat beside him.
It was a short walk from the Wells Fargo building where Thomas Bennett worked to the parking garage, so Giovanni didn’t think he would have to wait long at all for Mr. Bennett to arrive.
42
4:46 p.m.
I was sitting at my desk in my office on the eighteenth floor of the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building, working on the geoprofile.
And getting more and more frustrated.
Kurt’s team had done a good job of compiling victimology in-formation: the victims’ street addresses, places of employment and recreation, as well as known abduction sites, and the location where each of the bodies had been found. They’d also analyzed credit card usage and, based on the frequency of the victims’ purchases, identified the locations of the gas stations, grocery stores, night clubs, and pharmacies the people preferred to patronize.
Still, the first time I ran the data through my FALCON, the Federal Aerospace Locator and Covert Operation Network, the results were inconclusive. As advanced as FALCON’s algorithms and geospatial mapping programs were, I was only able to narrow down the hot zone to about 22 percent of Denver County. Not exactly pinpoint accuracy.
I was evaluating the possible ways that Denver’s array of one-way roads might be skewing the killer’s perception of the distances between the crime sites when my cell rang. I glanced at the caller ID as I answered.
Assistant Director Margaret Wellington.
Great.
I picked up.
“Margaret, I don’t have a lot of time right now-”
“It’s a sign of respect to address someone by her title.”
My fingers tightened around the phone. “I’m a little busy right now, Assistant Executive Director Margaret Wellington.” I could picture her sitting behind her desk at FBI headquarters: power suit, thin lips, piercing eyes, mousy hair.
“I’m expecting a full report summarizing yesterday’s shooting at the courthouse to be on my desk by eight o’clock Monday morning.”