Then he leaned both of his hands against the table. “So let’s cut to the bone-this psycho has got to be stopped. We have at least seven deaths on our hands, and this thing is turning into a freakin’ PR nightmare. The DPD is gonna put every available resource we have behind finding this guy.”
He picked up one of the photocopies of Jake’s profile. Waved it at us. “And Special Agent Vanderveld is the man who’s gonna help us do it.” Then he gave him the floor. “Jake.”
Evidently, Captain Terrell had a shade more confidence in Jake’s investigative abilities than I did. I flipped open my copy of the profile, began my obligatory perusal.
Jake stood. “Thank you, Captain.” He pointed to the printed profiles. “I won’t read what you have in front of you, but I would like to highlight a few points.” He tapped a button on his laptop, and an FBI logo appeared on the screen.
“We’re dealing with someone who was able to find a man on the FBI’s most wanted list, then subdue and kill him even though that man was a trained assassin.” He clicked his laptop again, and an image of Sebastian Taylor’s face appeared.
I looked around.
No one else seemed to notice that what Jake had just said, although it sounded insightful, was entirely self-evident. Just a restatement of information we already knew.
“The UNSUB is a male Caucasian, thirty to thirty-five years of age. The crime scenes show a mixture of organized and disorganized behavior.”
Saying that behavior is a combination of organized and disorganized might be an accurate description, but it’s completely useless in zeroing in on a suspect. I could see this was going to be a very long briefing.
“He’s not your typical sexually motivated homicidal killer. He is divorced at least once and might have lived with his mother after college.”
With every one of Jake’s statements I could feel my temperature rise higher. This was precisely what I didn’t like about profiling-conjecture based on guesswork rather than facts. Considering solely the evidence that’d been left at the crime scenes so far, how could anyone possibly tell that the offender lived with his mother after college? It was ridiculous.
Jake went on, “I recommend direct confrontation with the suspect during interrogation. Ask him questions such as, ‘How many other people have you killed?’ ‘Where did you stash Chris Arlington’s body?’ ‘Where did you get the idea to reenact the crimes from The Decameron?’”
“Excuse me,” Cheyenne said.
“Yes?”
“Wouldn’t it be more prudent at this point to focus our energies on getting someone into custody than designing an interrogation strategy?”
Oh yes. A woman after my own heart.
Jake smiled, but I could tell it wasn’t really a smile. “We need to be prepared for whatever comes our way, Detective. The more we understand this killer, the better our chances of catching him and getting him to confess. My goal is to be as thorough as possible.”
By the look on Cheyenne’s face I suspected she was about to lay into him, but I intervened. “Jake,” I said. “Cheyenne and I just spoke with the professor who teaches about The Decameron at DU. He seemed to think Boccaccio sees himself in the role of a knight bringing lovers together with loss, grief, or death. You may cover this in your written profile, but what do you make of the Boccaccio connection?”
“Yes, I do cover it,” he said. “In depth. But I’ll summarize for you.”
Gee, thanks, I thought.
“Thanks,” I said.
“The UNSUB’s fascination with The Decameron reveals that he is smart and well-read. High IQ. He’s studied medieval literature. Probably a college graduate, maybe even did some postgrad coursework. Within Boccaccio’s stories he finds the inspiration and impetus to let his violent tendencies have free rein in his life.”
“So,” Cheyenne said thoughtfully. “You’re saying the killer is smart and has violent tendencies?”
Her sarcasm seemed to be lost on Jake. “Yes,” he said.
Smart and violent.
These insights were remarkable. Maybe I ought to be writing this stuff down.
“He doesn’t change his signature,” Jake said, “because he can’t. He kills because he gets something out of the murder. And that grows from the specific nature of each crime. It’s more related to the why than the how. Methods get refined. Murderers learn from their mistakes. But they don’t change the why. It’s almost always for power, domination, and control. In this case, the power over fate, over life and death. To catch this guy we need to focus not on where the crimes occur but on why.”
He was staring at me as he said the words, and I could sense that he was picking a fight, but I kept my mouth shut.
“So, here’s what we look at: couples. Lovers. Victim selection. Why is he choosing these couples? What do they have in common? Where do their lives intersect with his?”
He’d just told us a few seconds earlier that the where didn’t matter, and now he was suggesting we focus on where the victims’ lives intersected with the killer’s, which is what I’d suggested more than twenty-four hours ago.
At least now we were getting somewhere.
“The UNSUB’s preoccupation with love and death reveals a great deal of inner pain and turmoil,” Jake said. “He experienced profound grief in his formative years. Probably the loss of a caregiver. So, we should be looking for a highly educated man who experienced tragedy or betrayal as a child. He’s familiar with this region, probably grew up or studied here; and perhaps has access to confidential case files or restricted areas of the Federal Digital Database that allowed him to track down Taylor’s residence through the tire impressions that matched his Lexus.”
Hmm… access to the Federal Digital Database? Maybe even FALCON? Now, there’s an interesting thought But before I could consider it any further or Jake could expand on his statement, the door to the conference room swung open with a decisive bang.
It was Kurt. “Someone posted an article online about the crimes,” he said. “She knows about The Decameron. She’s calling our guy ‘The Day Four Killer.’”
77
“Pull it up,” I told Jake, whose computer was still connected to the wall monitor.
He tapped at his keyboard, opened his Internet browser, and typed in the phrase “Day Four Killer.”
The article “Medieval Manuscript Inspires Brutal Slayings” popped up. Jake clicked the webpage, and we all read in silence.
Overall, the article was little more than conjecture, hypothesis, and armchair profiling, but it did contain a few details that we hadn’t released to the media-some of the wording from the 911 calls, the fact that Chris Arlington’s heart had been found in the mine along with Heather’s body, and information about the attempt on Kelsey Nash’s life. The author also mentioned the pot of basil but incorrectly noted that it contained the head of Sebastian Taylor rather than Travis Nash.
Though it wasn’t illegal to write about the crimes, it was illegal to publicly share privileged information about an ongoing investigation, as this author had done. I asked Kurt if he knew anything about the author.
He shook his head. “It was written by someone named Deniece Johnson, but as far as we can tell, that’s just a pseudonym.”
With the head in the pot of basil reference, the obvious choice for the author was Amy Lynn Greer.
But still, the article’s too specific for her to have “We have a leak,” Captain Terrell said. And this time, I found myself agreeing with the fan of profilers.
For a moment everyone in the room seemed to be studying each other, looking for a guilty gesture, a suspicious action. At last, Jake surprised me and said, “I think we should postpone the briefing and look into this. Maybe we can reconvene later this afternoon.”