Cold Hit (11 page)

Judd Underwood raised his voice, bringing me back. "Most serial criminals are underdeveloped personalities who crave authority. Very often we find they have tried to become police officers or often impersonate police and will frequently attempt to insert themselves into the investigation. So look closely at anyone calling in with tips or questions and report them directly to me."

"I'd like to report Detective Diaz," Ruben Bola grinned. "He's an underdeveloped personality; he volunteered us for this case, and when it's a full moon, this Cuban asshole goes into Santeria mode and starts killing chickens in the backseat of our Crown Vic."

The room broke up, but Underwood wasn't smiling.

"Are these murders in some way amusing to you, Detective?"

"No, sir." Bola pulled his smile down as Underwood continued.

"Crack wise again in one of my briefings and I'll talk to your supervisor. This unit will not engage in comic nonsense. Is that absolutely clear?"

The room sobered quickly as Underwood gave us his best Murder One stare.

"So, ladies and gentlemen, if we're through making stupid jokes, I'd like to bring this into sharper focus. The murdered men are selected at random. Victims of opportunity. The beating of John Doe Number Four found at Forest Lawn Drive, along with the mutilations, in my opinion, indicates severe sadosexual rage and a disorganized killer."

I disagreed, but I didn't raise my hand or shoot my mouth off. I just wanted to get out of here.

Underwood continued. "Since females constitute less than five percent of the known serial murderers and because they are rarely known to mutilate, I'm predicting that our unsub is male."

Finally, I agreed with something this dirk was saying.

"Further, since the mean age of all serial killers is twenty-five, and because disorganized killers tend to be younger, I'm going to subtract two years. This takes the profile on the unsub's age down to twenty-three. Are we all square on that?"

Nobody said anything, but a few in the room nodded. Again, I showed my maturity and held my silence.

"Generally there is an inverse relationship between the age of a serial killer and the age of the victim," Underwood pontificated. "The reason for this is serial murder is generally a desperate act by an unsub who has lost control over his everyday life. He's stressed out, so domination and control are big motives in the crime. Young unsubs are generally more worried about controlling their victims, and often target the old and infirm, people they feel they can dominate. Because o
f t
his, I'm lowering the peril's age again, this time to twenty."

He looked at us. "This is pretty damn important stuff. Aren't you people going to take notes?" All over the room keyboards started clicking.

"Regarding the matter of modus operandi where the unsub covers the victim's faces, I have a theory on that." The typing stopped until Underwood went on. "The unsub covers the eyes because I think our killer believes he is ugly. He might even be disfigured. He's embarrassed of his appearance and doesn't want his victims to stare at him, even in death."

Another beat right out of Manhunter, and just for the record, that wasn't part of the MO. It was part of the killer's signature--a completely different category.

"So pulling it all together, my preliminary profile says we're looking for a possibly disfigured twentyyear-old white male with sadosexual rage against older males, probably father substitutes." Underwood looked around the room. "Questions or comments?" he asked, obviously not expecting any.

"Agent Underwood?" someone asked. I wondered what idiot would prolong this silly meeting by asking this asshole a useless question. Everybody turned around and looked in my direction. Naturally, the idiot was me.

Chapter
15

You're Detective Scully, one of the original primaries on this. Am I right?" Underwood said, glaring.

"Yes, sir."

He looked down at a roster sheet. "Where's your partner, Detective Farrell? How come he's not here?"

"My partner's out running down a lead. He'll be along shortly," I lied.

Underwood looked thoughtful, then agitated, then like he was about to pass gas. "Well, what is it?" he finally asked impatiently. "What's your question?"

"I've been on this case for seven weeks and I've given it a lot of thought. I'm not sure I agree that the unsub is a disorganized killer."

"You're not?" Agent Underwood sneered. "And this insight, I presume, is a result of your endless study in the field of criminal psychology." A snooty tone rose out of him like swamp gas fouling an already overheated, sweat filled environment.

"I don't think--"

"Because, Detective Scully, when an unsub kills an older person in a murderous rage, then mutilates and takes fingers off, we're looking at a sadist who is psychologically and pathologically immature, probably just a few years past puberty."

"I just don't think these are disorganized crim
e s
cenes," I persisted. "The unsub moves the bodies and dumps them at secondary sites. That indicates a high level of sophistication. The killer seems very knowledgeable about police techniques. This act of dumping is analogous to cleaning up after the murder. He's disguising evidence, even leaving the body in flowing water to eliminate trace evidence. That's pretty smart. I think that constitutes organized, post-offense behavior."

Underwood just stared. Since all the eyes in the room were on me, I lurched on. "Further, while there is certainly rage involved with these murders, in my opinion the mutilations are not rage based. He's removing the fingertips so we can't get prints and identify the victims. Since the chest mutilations are postmortem wounds, they don't necessarily indicate rage. I think he's labeling these victims with this. For that reason, I have him classified as organized and older, maybe even thirty or thirty-five. He knows what he's doing and he's been at this for a while. I don't think these homeless men are victims of opportunity as you suggested, but victims of choice. The different geographical locations all over town indicate he's searching for a victim that suits a certain profile. We need to look closely at the victimology. Something about these particular homeless men drew him to them. Maybe something as simple as the signs some were holding saying they were Vietnam vets. I think it's also possible he's a transient who has committed similar murders in other cities."

"You're aware that there are no similar murders liste
d i
n the VICAP computer," Underwood replied.

VICAP is the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a computer database. Police departments all over the country were encouraged to enter all ritual-type killings into VICAP so other departments could match up signature murders that occurred in their cities. Serial killers tended to move around, but their signatures rarely changed. The problem with VICAP was, not all police departments went to the trouble of listing their ritual crimes on that database.

"The missing fingertips, the chest symbol, would jump out on a VICAP scan," Underwood defended.

It was now dead quiet in the room. My remarks had dropped the temperature in here a few thousand degrees. I had only one more thing I wanted to say. Might as well go down swinging.

"I think you may be inaccurate about the reason he's pulling the coat up and covering their faces. By the way, that's not part of the modus operandi. MO is something a killer does to avoid being caught. The act of covering the eyes is part of his signature, something emotional that he can't help himself from doing. I see covering the face as avoidance and guilt. I agree he may be killing a father substitute. Patricide is a very heavy psychological burden for him to bear. After the killing, the unsub most likely is ashamed of his act and doesn't want to deal with a father substitute's disapproving gaze even in death, so he covers the face."

Underwood just stood in the center of the room with a strange, bewildered look on his narrow face. "One o
f u
s must be a complete idiot," he finally said. "And I'm sure it's not me."

"You asked for comments."

"After this briefing we'll have a chat." Jabbing the chalk at me. Dotting the I in idiot.

Underwood had printed up his profile and now he passed it out. So far, beyond what he'd already told us, his unsub was an unattractive twenty-year-old who lived at home with a female parent, wanted to be a cop, and had a childhood history of fire starting and violence against animals. It was all textbook stuff and not worth much to this roomful of potential authors.

In the end, Underwood couldn't escape the need to follow up on the one solid lead I'd supplied--the medical insignia and the fact that Patrick Collins turned out to be a combat medic in Nam.

We were instructed to designate four two-man teams to recheck each victim against VA records. Underwood selected a big, overweight detective named Bart Hoover to run this part of the investigation. Most all of us had heard stories about the aptly named Sergeant Hoover, who had major sixth-floor suck. He was a younger brother of a Glass House commander who headed the new Crime Support Section. Bart was a well-known fuck-up who had actually once handcuffed a bank robber to his squad car steering wheel with the keys still in the ignition. The last he saw of that bust was his own taillights going around the corner. Despite bonehead mistakes, with the help of his brother, Bart had hoovered nicely up through the ranks.

Underwood closed by telling us we were having morning and evening briefings just like this one, right here in this coffee room at 0800 and 1700 hours. Attendance was mandatory unless we were in the field, and then we needed to get his permission to miss.

After the meeting broke, those with chairs pushed them back into the squad room. A few of my fellow detectives checked me out disdainfully. I had just marked myself as a troublemaker. I challenged Underwood, which could cause him to come down on everyone. Obviously I didn't understand task force group dynamics.

As I moved into the squad room, I was trying to keep from being put on one of the four background teams. I had other plans for the day. I ducked down and tried to hide while pretending to unj am my bottom desk drawer.

Underwood stopped beside my desk. "That was interesting stuff in there. I want you to write it all down, every word so we'll have a record, then you and I will go over it," my FBI leader said pleasantly. Then he moved away, leaving me to that task. I smelled big trouble.

Chapter
16

An hour later I finished my profile on the unsub and flagged Judd Underwood over. He veered toward me.

"All done?" he asked pleasantly.

"Yes, sir." I handed four pages of profile material to him.

"Good. Follow me."

He headed out the door, into the lobby. I didn't know what the hell he was up to, but I tagged obediently after him. He was waiting for me outside the bathroom door.

"Come on, I want to show you something," he said.

I followed him into the men's room, wondering what the hell was going on. Then he dropped my four-page report into the urinal, unzipped his pants, took out his pencil dick, and started pissing on it. His yellow stream splattered loudly on the paper. When he was done he zipped up and turned to face me.

"That's what I think of your ideas," he said, his voice pinched and shrill. "On this task force there will be only one profile and one profiler. I'm it. Get the murder book and come into my office."

I wanted to deck him, but seventeen years in the department has taught me that the best way to survive assholes is to wait them out. So I choked down my anger and followed Agent Underwood out of the bathroom and across the squad room, stopping to retrieve the murder book on the way.

Underwood's office was very large, but had no walls. He had instructed someone from maintenance to chalk out the perimeters on the gray linoleum floor. I was surprised to see that he swerved to avoid walking through the nonexistent south wall and entered through the chalked out opening that served as his door.

I stopped at the line on the floor and looked in at him.

Did he really expect me to walk around and not step over it? I paused for a moment to deal with this ridiculous dilemma. I was already in pretty deep with this guy, so I skirted the problem by finding my way into his office through the marked-out door.

Welcome to The Twilight Zone.

I waited while he sat behind a large, dark wood desk that he'd scrounged from somewhere. It was the only mahogany desk I'd ever seen at Parker Center and I had no idea where it had come from. He also had an expensive looking, oxblood-red executive swivel chair, and some maple filing cabinets. All that was missing was an American flag, the grip-and-grin pictures, and a wall to hang them on. His cell phone sat on a charging dock in front of him. Several folders decorated one corner of his blotter. The five Fingertip case reports were stacked front and center, the edges all compulsively aligned. Taking the invisible office and all this anal organization into account, it seemed Judd Underwood had a few psychological tics of his own. But who am I to judge? I only had two semesters of junior college psych where I didn't exactly bust the curve.

"Where did you get all that hopeless nonsense?" he sneered.