Vail 01 - The 7th Victim (7 page)
He stored the boxes of wet clay off to the side of his studio, behind a movable wall. Every month he loaded and unloaded a half ton of clay—literally a thousand pounds—from the distributor to his Audi’s trailer and from the trailer to his studio. At first, whenever he’d go buy the stuff, the damn boxes were so heavy he’d need a student to help carry them. But after a few months of hauling the cases to and from his car and kneading the stuff with his hands, he could maneuver them around the loft pretty easily without any help.
But the best part of being a ceramicist was the feel of the cold, wet, firm clay as he squeezed it between his fingers. It kind of felt like a liver, heavy and dense. Holding someone’s liver in your hands was a tremendous feeling of power.
He closed up the plastic bag so the clay would stay fresh, rinsed off his hands, and headed into the adjacent loft to change into his dark suit. After slipping on the jacket, he stepped into the old walk-in closet to pick out a tie and something—the musty smell? the darkness? the brush of clothing against his cheek? Something set off the old memories. It was dizzying, almost disorienting. He shut the door and sat down at his nearby desk, thoughts and emotions flooding into his mind. He just wanted it to stop, but realized it may be best to embrace it, confront it. Shape it.
He lifted the screen to his laptop and woke it from sleep. The words, the feelings, the memories just flowed out of him like some kind of rushing river that kept surging no matter what stood in its path.
The hiding place smells like some musty box I once opened when I was looking for his cigarettes. It’s strong and kind of burns my nose. It’s small and dark, but it’s mine. He doesn’t know I have it, which means he can’t find me here. And if he can’t find me, he can’t hurt me. I can think here, I can breathe here (well, except for the smell) without him yelling. I sit in the darkness, alone with myself, where no one can hurt me. Where HE can’t hurt me.But I watch him. I watch everything he does through little holes in the walls. I watch him bring home the whores, I watch what he does to them before dragging them upstairs to his bedroom. Sometimes I even hear what they’re saying, but most of the time I just see. I see what he does.But I really don’t have to see. I already know. I know because he does the same things to me.
He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the childhood memories from his mind. He’d have to do more of this. It was very liberating, and very . . . stimulating. He glanced at the clock on his screen and realized he was late. He closed the laptop’s lid, grabbed the tie, and ran down the steps to his car. He was at the evil bitch’s house pretty fast, but then again he was daydreaming about what he’d written and wasn’t paying attention to the time.
He’d only been here once, a drive-by to see if the site was a suitable location for his work. An artist must survey his setting to make sure it can inspire him, bring the creative juices to boil at just the right moment. Timing was so crucial. But for this type of art, the creative part came only after the evil was purged. Only then could the brilliance be fully expressed.
He parked a block away, down a side street, and huffed it toward the house. In suit and tie, he wouldn’t attract attention walking around the neighborhood. And if anyone did question him, he’d pull out his FBI shield and they’d slink away, properly silenced.
He approached the side yard, looking for signs of a security system: magnetic trips on the window sill, wire tape, or even the obnoxious “Protected by” placard stuck in the dirt by the front door. As if a stupid alarm is really going to protect them from someone who wanted to do something evil. Evil—they don’t know what evil is!
He stood by the back door and knocked lightly. Listened for a barking dog. Nothing. Very good. He did another walk-around of the perimeter, then stopped at the front door, which was shielded from the street by a dense shrub that stretched ten feet high toward the eave. He gave one last knock and a ring of the doorbell, then decided no one was home. He slipped on latex gloves, removed a lock-pick kit from his pocket, chose the proper tools.
A couple minutes later, he was standing in the hallway, taking in the décor. Not bad, but not as elaborate as the last bitch’s place. Couple of fabric sofas with a horrid floral print, an old GE television in the corner in a melamine entertainment cabinet, and an area rug on the wood floor. House must’ve been about thirty, forty years old. Bad taste was a lot older than that.
He made his way into the master bedroom and looked around, in the dresser and night table drawers. No condoms, no thick, heavy watches, no
Sports Illustrated
magazines. No aftershave or musky cologne. Only women’s clothing in the closet. Bottom line: no boyfriend or male figure to worry about.
Sports Illustrated
magazines. No aftershave or musky cologne. Only women’s clothing in the closet. Bottom line: no boyfriend or male figure to worry about.
On the way out of the room, he pressed on the mattress. New and firm, perfect for his work. An artist required the proper media, or the result would be unacceptable. But first things first. Purge the evil.
He moved into the kitchen and checked the drawers: four steak knives. He removed one and examined it. Sufficiently sharp. It would do nicely. He replaced it and turned his attention to the refrigerator . . . always a valuable resource. It told so much about people. Not just what’s inside, but what’s outside. Mounted with magnets were a series of snapshots, all showing the bitch of the house in various poses: standing with a set of snow skis in the winter, barreling through a plume of water on jet skis in the summer, and flexing with her personal trainer at a health club.
Off the main hallway that stretched the length of the house sat another two bedrooms. No furniture in one, an old twin bed and matching oak dresser that were angling for the distressed look in the other. No personal effects. In sum, no roommate.
As he headed back toward the front door, he saw an unopened bill on the credenza. Addressed to Sandra Ann Franks. The bitch’s name. He was sure he already knew more about her than her gynecologist. Sandra Ann Franks. Well, it wouldn’t be Franks for long.
“I’ll have to be
frank
with you, Miss Franks. No, no, let me be
blunt
as I drive this knife through your eyes!”
“I’ll have to be
frank
with you, Miss Franks. No, no, let me be
blunt
as I drive this knife through your eyes!”
Sometimes you get so focused you forget to see the humor in the situation.
But evil was no laughing matter. This was serious business. And Sandra Ann Franks had passed the final test. Like moist clay right out of the box, she was ready to be molded and shaped. And cut into pieces.
He glanced at his stopwatch: he’d been in the house nearly four minutes . . . time to go. He clicked the door shut behind him, made sure it was locked. He didn’t want anything happening to the bitch before he returned.
six
K
aren Vail stood in the back of an Academy classroom waiting her turn to speak. For each new agent class, she taught an overview of behavioral analysis so the recruits didn’t end up like those cops who thought she could hold a piece of the victim’s clothing and describe the face of the killer.
aren Vail stood in the back of an Academy classroom waiting her turn to speak. For each new agent class, she taught an overview of behavioral analysis so the recruits didn’t end up like those cops who thought she could hold a piece of the victim’s clothing and describe the face of the killer.
“So without further ado, I’d like to have Special Agent Vail come to the podium.”
All heads swiveled in Vail’s direction, but there was no clapping. Usually, the instructor gave her such a buildup that the new agents felt compelled to stand and bow as if she were some demigod. Or at least welcome her with a warm round of applause. But this instructor was new, and he didn’t seem to go into her background as much as the others had. At least, she didn’t think he did. Her mind was on Melanie Hoffman, and she wasn’t really listening.
She made her way to the front, opened her laptop, and gazed at the inclined classroom—at the eager faces staring at her. She remembered that look, that feeling of excitement at beginning something new. She still loved her work—in an odd sort of way given what she did—and still felt challenged. But it was no longer fresh, and like the exhilaration one feels at the start of a budding romantic relationship, the magic had faded with time. The challenge, instead of only coming from the job, morphed into a struggle to keep it interesting.
“I’m Karen Vail,” she started. “I know, you were probably expecting a man. I can see it in your faces.” She liked to start by putting them on the defensive. Part of the new agent initiation protocol. Either that or she’d done too many interrogations—after a while, you started looking for the upper hand in all conversations.
“Profiling isn’t an exact science, no matter what anyone tells you. Now I can just assign you one of Douglas’s books to read, then come back in a couple of days to answer questions, but that’s not my style. I’m here to give you a perspective on the sick minds we’re tracking out there. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The violence they perpetrate on others is sick, for sure, but they’re not mentally ill—they know damn well what they’re doing. We’ll talk more about this later.”
After spending a few moments outlining the organizational chart for her unit, she sensed it was time to pick up the pace. A couple of the agents in the back row were slumped over, heads resting in their hands, no doubt thinking about lunch in the dining hall.
“Let’s go into some actual examples to give you an idea of how we look at things.” She lifted the lid of her laptop, then pressed a button on the lectern’s AV panel. The classroom lights dimmed and the rear projection screen behind her glowed with yellow and white text against a black background. “Critical Incident Response Group, Behavioral Profiling Analysis” was boldly emblazoned across the screen. She pressed the Bluetooth remote and advanced to the next PowerPoint slide. In public school, when Vail was growing up, they used real slides. They jammed, they faded if you left them under the projection light too long, and you didn’t have near the creativity of the graphics she was able to produce for her FBI presentations on PowerPoint. Now her slides zipped across the screen with fancy corner-to-corner wipes, dissolves, and all sorts of neat effects. Her students still fell asleep on her. So much for technology.
“This is the case I’m currently working on,” Vail said. “The Dead Eyes killer.” She heard a few snickers. “This isn’t a laughing matter,” she barked at them. The room got very quiet very quickly. “What you’re about to see is disgusting, the product of a monster. I hope none of you have to come upon a crime scene like this one. But my goal is that if you do, you’ll at least know something about what you’re looking at. And how to go about helping catch the bastard.”
She hit the button on the remote and the first slide dissolved on the screen. A woman’s bedroom beamed from the computer. Her brutalized torso lay on the bed in front of a mirror, the now-familiar sight of steak knives protruding from both eye orbits. “This was the first victim. Marci Evers. Twenty-eight, brunet. Worked as a paralegal in Vienna.” She pressed another button and a second slide wiped across the screen beside the one displaying the crime scene. “Here you see the statistics and facts we know about the victim. I’m going to direct you to one thing, to illustrate a point. How many of you know what MO stands for?” This was basic “Cop 101” stuff, and she knew all their hands would be raised. But she was planning to throw them a curveball, to see who could hit it.
There were forty-some-odd new agents ready to answer. Vail looked at one of the women and nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Modus operandi,” she said.
“Or method of operation, in English. Yes. Now a tougher question. Does MO ever change?”
This time there were no hands raised. They were thinking, which was good. Vail waited a moment, then gave them the answer. “Research indicates that the MO of sex offenders changes every three to four months. Why?”
Again, no hands were raised. “Okay, let’s take a look as to why it would change.”
She pulled a laser pointer from her jacket pocket and pointed it at the screen. “Everyone see this blood on Marci Evers’s cranium?” The area had been shaved and a small skin laceration was evident at the crown of her head. “Why would there be such an injury?”
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