Last Words (14 page)

“Yes. There’s nothing for the past year, but back in 2001, a young woman on vacation in Dewey Beach went missing. Kim Bradley, twenty-one years old, from Penns Grove, New Jersey, a new graduate of Salisbury University, rented a beach house with a few of her sorority sisters. A group of them went to a club in Rehoboth”—Mia paused to refer to her notes—“a place called the Elephant Room. When it was time to leave, she was nowhere to be found. She stumbled into the house around six the next morning, bruised and hysterical. Said she’d met a guy in the bar, they went outside for some fresh air, he forced her into his car at knifepoint and raped her.”

Beck turned to Lisa. “Find out who the officer in charge of that investigation was and talk to him, get everything he’s got. And find out where the rental property was and who they rented from.”

His attention returned to Mia. “What else do you have?”

“Two rape-abductions in that same area, June and September of the previous year, both college girls. Pretty much the same story. Met a guy in a club, stepped outside, then bam! I’ve requested copies of the files, and will have someone from our field offices follow up and interview the victims. One is in Columbus, Ohio, the other is in Boston. Those were the only local missing persons we found, but there’s always the possibility that he lived elsewhere at some point, and may have been active there. There are thousands of missing persons reported every year. There’s no way we could narrow the field.”

“I’m assuming you also ran a check nationally for cases with similar MOs?” he asked.

Mia nodded. “There have been many rape-abduction-murder cases where the victim was held for a period of time, but none where the vics have been suffocated as these women have been. While I think there’s a really good chance that what we’re seeing is an escalation over his previous activity where he abducted and raped but did not kill—as Dr. McCall said, this guy’s no beginner—it’s impossible to sort out all of the rape-abduction cases over the past five to ten years just by looking at the data reports. The victims I mentioned earlier were all college girls, all from out of state, and all the abductions occurred in beach areas. None were held beyond the actual rape, none mentioned being restrained. I understand that the area from Dewey Beach in Delaware down through Ocean City, Maryland, is very popular with young people.” She paused, then added, “There’s no way of telling how many others there might have been over the years. Rape victims don’t always report the crime, and girls of this age under these circumstances are often reluctant to call the police.”

“Because sometimes it’s a matter of the girls picking up a guy in one of the clubs and getting more than they bargained for,” Lisa said. “They’re embarrassed to admit they made such an error in judgment.”

“Exactly. They think maybe they set themselves up for it, going off with someone they didn’t know, so they’re reluctant to complain to the police.” Mia nodded. “I will request that as many of these women as possible be tracked down and interviewed to see if we have a pattern in the MO and to see if we have physical descriptions of the subject that match up, but that’s going to take some time.”

Beck ran a hand wearily over his face and nodded to Annie to go on with her presentation.

“I’ve had an opportunity to study the files on the three women and while I can’t pretend to have all the answers, I can share some insights based on my twelve years experience doing this sort of thing.” She leaned against the far wall, her hands in the pockets of her skirt. The petite blond woman, always immaculately dressed and professional, began to weave her words into a compelling narrative. Everyone in the room hung on her every word.

“For starters, the man you’re looking for has massive control issues as far as women are concerned.”

The mayor snorted.

Annie appeared amused. “You had something you wished to say, Mayor Pratt?”

“The guy ties women up and keeps them tied up, then rapes them, and when he’s done with them, he wraps them in plastic and suffocates them. It doesn’t take an FBI profiler to figure out that he likes to be in control. And I’ll bet you’re going to say those issues stem from his relationship with his mother.”

Still smiling, Annie nodded. “Oh, there’s a good chance they do. This is a man who reflects pretty much what we see in most of our serial killers. His approach may differ, his MO may be different, but scratch the surface and you’ll find he and Ted Bundy are brothers under the skin. He really doesn’t like women very much.”

“So he’s probably single, right?” Sue asked.

“Not necessarily, no. He may be married, in a long-term relationship, or divorced. The women he’s been involved in are probably very complacent, nonaggressive, which permits him to have his way, to feel superior.”

“And if she protests?” someone asked. “Or becomes more assertive?”

“Then he’ll react to that. Sever the relationship, have an affair, something that restores the balance to his world, where he is king and women are there to please him.”

“Not in my house.” The mayor’s comment elicited light laughter.

Annie smiled, then continued. “Now, let’s take a closer look at our man. He’s very organized. He has his victim picked out in advance, he’s probably stalked her and studied her so he knows where, when, and how to get to her. He takes with him what he needs to get the job done, which in his case is some rope—we know he keeps his victims restrained when he’s not with them….”

She glanced around the room. Every eye was on her.

“How do we know? Even without the medical examiner’s description of the marks on the wrists and ankles of the two victims she’s examined, it would stand to reason. In Colleen Preston’s case, for example, she’d been missing for several weeks, but the body, when found, hadn’t started to decompose, so we know she hadn’t been dead long enough for the tissue to begin to break down. I believe your ME determined she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours. The marks on her wrists were both old and fresh, meaning she’d been in those restraints for long enough for the earliest ones to heal over. So if he’s had her for weeks, he’s had to leave her alone for hours at a time, and he’s not going to let her roam freely. He would have known ahead of time exactly what he was going to do. Everything would have been planned very carefully, as dictated by his fantasy. And you all know that most of these killings have their genesis in fantasy, right?”

All of the law-enforcement officers nodded their heads.

“So you know, then, that the primary source of pleasure for the killer is his ability to control his victim.”

“Doesn’t he enjoy the sex?” the mayor asked.

“Yes, he does, because the sexual attack is his best way to control,” Annie said, “because a large part of the control is in degrading his victim. Making her feel totally powerless, totally under his control, totally humiliated. That’s what he gets off on. He has to make his victims feel utterly helpless. That is his primary motivation.”

“Why?” Susan asked.

“Because at some point in his early development, someone important to him made him feel powerless, and that feeling of powerlessness, of helplessness, made him angry and frustrated. So for kids who never learned to channel those feelings into something constructive—sports, for example, or academics—they very often try to comfort themselves by making others hurt, too.”

“So we’re back to Mom again,” the mayor said.

“I’m afraid so,” Annie acknowledged.

“I never really understood that,” Lisa admitted. “I mean, I’ve read it all, I even took courses in college, but I don’t understand how hurting someone else can make you feel better.”

“That’s because you are emotionally healthy,” Annie told her. “Believe me, I’ve given a talk like this to a group of convicted multiple murderers and to a man, they all sat there nodding their heads, agreeing with every word I said. They immediately understood how being able to dominate another human being—having the power of life and death over someone else—can make a man feel superior. How that power overcomes their real feelings of inadequacy. Suddenly, they are invincible.”

“And it’s the mother’s fault, these feelings of inadequacy.” Christina Pratt crossed her arms over her chest defensively.

“Who has the most control over the developing child? Not always, but most frequently, the mother,” Annie replied.

“So if Mom controls the child, locks them in the closet and abuses them or something like that—”

“Yes, Mayor, those things happen. Unfortunately, they do. I’ve heard heartbreaking stories of abuse from these men. No mercy had been shown to them, therefore no mercy will be shown to their victims.

“But it doesn’t have to be anything as overt or dramatic as extreme physical or mental abuse. Very often the abuse is much more subtle. Divorce of the parents at a young age, parents who are unable to show affection or who are demanding, perfectionists, or parents who separate themselves from the child—I’ve seen all of these conditions in the backgrounds of offenders I’ve studied. Alienation from one or both parents has been seen to be a factor in some cases.”

“But it isn’t always the parents….” Hal said.

“Of course not. There can be other adults—uncles, cousins, grandparents, even older siblings, or neighbors, friends of the family. Sometimes the abuse is at the hands of other children. Bullying is abusive. Maybe the child is overweight or has a physical disability, something that makes him different. If the abuse is harsh enough, the child may escape through revenge fantasies. He might learn very early just how powerful fantasies can be.”

“Then how come every kid who gets teased or bullied in the school yard doesn’t end up a serial killer?” Lisa asked. “I was an overweight kid and was teased mercilessly, but I’ve never wanted to kill anyone because of it.”

“Really? Are you sure?” Annie turned to face Lisa from across the room. “Think back. You never wanted to hurt any of the kids who teased you?”

Lisa looked thoughtful for a long moment, then smiled. “Well, maybe a little…but I never thought about killing anyone.”

“Everyone gets pissed off at someone or other at some time in their life. You think of a thousand ways to retaliate. We all do it. The difference between those of us who grew up to be serial killers and those who did not is that most of us learned other ways to deal with our anger and frustrations. Most of us had a safety net in place, or learned how to construct one for ourselves, and we managed our feelings and moved on. But some kids never get past it; they never learn to move on. And some of those kids fantasize about what they would do to get even, and get fixated on revenge. For those kids, acting out those fantasies becomes their way of alleviating pain. They do unto others what has been done unto them.”

The room was very quite for a moment, then Hal said, “So the abuse can be mental as well as physical.”

“Absolutely. One of the major forms of rejection cited by serial killers who have been interviewed wasn’t sexual abuse, it was an unstable home.”

“Back to Mama again,” the mayor said dryly.

“Many times parents have no idea that their actions are having a negative effect on their children. I’ve seen cases where the mother was very dominant and the father was outwardly very complacent, but inwardly, he was very resentful of the control the wife exercised over him. In cases like that, Dad may play the buddy role with the son. ‘Hey, it’s you and me, son.’ And the son grows up to resent his mother’s control the same way his dad did, resents the disdain with which his mother treats his father, because the son identifies more with the father. Mom rejects Dad, Mom is rejecting the son. Do the parents view this situation as abusive? Of course not. But often in situations like this, the boy will fantasize about showing his mother that he’s every bit as powerful as she is.”

“There are a lot of powerful women in the workplace,” the mayor reminded her. “Just look around the table…Lisa, Sue…hell, even me. Are we running the risk of turning our sons into serial killers?”

“Look, it’s always a matter of choice, and it always comes back to fantasy.” Annie told her. “It’s one thing to have those fantasies—many children do. But it’s something else entirely to act them out. The serial offenders we’ve studied all came from backgrounds where they felt powerless to control their situation—whatever that situation might have been—and never developed the coping skills necessary to overcome it. So it follows that there’s a really good chance that our current offender came from a similar background. He’s abducting these girls so that he can control them, and by doing so, he’s become powerful, superior. That’s the bottom line on this guy.”

“So we’re looking for someone local who came from a background where he was neglected or rejected by his parents or teased by his friends,” Sue Martin said.

“That could be anyone.” Christina Pratt frowned. “Christ almighty, my own son went through a period where he was pissed off all the time at everyone because he had a minor speech defect and sometimes at school the kids made fun of him. Does that mean he could be the killer?”

“What it means is that when you identify the killer, you will find there was some sort of difficulty in his background.”

“I thought a profiler was supposed to be able to tell us who to look for.” The mayor closed her notebook with obvious annoyance. “So far, you’ve just talked about generalities. Oh, he could be this, he could be that. I haven’t heard anything yet that could help us figure out who he is.”

“Profiling isn’t an exact science, it’s merely a tool, Mayor Pratt. I can study the victim and the crime scene—and in these cases, we don’t even have crime scenes, we don’t know where these women were abducted and we don’t know where they were kept or killed. I can tell you what type of personality is most likely to commit this type of murder. But I cannot conjure a name out of the air.” Annie did her best to hide her growing impatience with the mayor. If she’d understood Mia correctly, Christina Pratt had been the one who’d wanted a profiler assigned to the case. Why was she being so argumentative now that she had what she’d wanted? “That’s like asking me to pull a rabbit out of my hat.