It was obviously a test, clearly something that, as someone who worked within the BAU, he would already know about. Paige answered anyway, because she suspected that if she didn’t impress this man, she was going to find herself sent back to the academy.
“The term ‘copycat crime’ was first coined in 1916, following a series of murders that appeared to imitate the earlier murders of Jack the Ripper,” she said. “We know that several killers appear to have taken inspiration from TV series, while others have repeated the MOs of previous criminals, as with Eddie Seda copying the approach of the Zodiac Killer two decades after the first set of murders.”
“So you can recite from a book,” Sauer said. “Can you tell me what motivates these people, though?”
“Sir,” Christopher said, obviously trying to defend her. “Paige is my choice for this. That should be-”
“What motivates them, Ms. King?” He obviously wasn’t going to let it go.
Paige looked him in the eye, determined not to back down now. She was pretty sure that was a part of this man’s test too, trying to see if she had the steel to do her part out in the field.
“It will vary from killer to killer,” she said. “Assuming that all copycats, or all killers, are the same is a good way to miss the differences that might actually help to find them. But broadly, copycats can be motivated by a desire for fame, by admiration, or by the belief that copying a ‘successful’ model will make it more likely that they’ll get away with their crimes.”
“Go on,” Sauer said.
“Fame is the most common motivator, with copycats focusing on the most publicly sensationalized cases,” Paige said. “They hope that if they copy the methods of an infamous killer, it will make them just as notorious. There are also those who admire particular killers or become obsessed by them. For them, the repetition of someone else’s method’s is as much a part of their compulsion as the need to kill.”
Sauer cocked his head to one side. “And the third category?”
“Those follow the example of previous crimes because they think it will let them stay free,” Paige said. “Or because they have a desire to kill and copying someone else provides them with a roadmap of how to do it.”
Now, Christopher did step in.
“Is that good enough for you, sir? Has she proven that she knows enough to be here?”
It was obvious that Christopher knew it was a test too.
What if Agent Sauer said no? Was it possible that Christopher’s boss might just send her home, so soon after Paige had started work on this case? Would she have to return to the academy, try to catch up with whatever she’d missed, and just hope that she would get another shot when she finally completed her training? Paige found that she really didn’t want to do that, not now that she was involved in this, not now that she’d seen the faces of the victims. She wanted to get justice for them.
Agent Sauer nodded. “Acceptable. All right, Marriott, it’s your choice. If you really want this trainee to be your profiler on this, I’m not going to stop you. But that also means that you’re the one who has to answer to the press for bringing her in if you don’t succeed in catching this killer.”
“Of course, sir,” Christopher said. He didn’t sound as if he had any doubts. Paige was glad one of them didn’t.
Agent Sauer nodded curtly to Paige.
“Welcome to the team. I hope you’re as good as Agent Marriott thinks you are.”
He walked out of the office, not giving either of them a chance to say more.
Paige breathed a sigh of relief as he did so that she wasn’t just being thrown off the team. She didn’t know what to think of Agent Sauer. His initial hostility to her presence raised a note of dislike for him in her, but she could understand that it was just because he wanted the best people on the job.
That brought its own pressure, because it meant that Paige had to be the best person.
“Sorry about that,” Christopher said. “I should have warned you that my superiors weren’t exactly up to speed on all of this.”
Paige would have appreciated a heads-up, certainly. “Are you sure that you want me on this?”
“That’s one part of all of this that I’m certain of,” Christopher said. “If anyone can help me find answers, it’s you.”
Paige hoped that she could live up to that kind of expectation, and not just because she didn’t want to disappoint Christopher. They had to catch this killer.
As a start, she began to look through the files on Lars Ingram’s murders, taking in the details of the cases one by one.
The most obvious link between all of the cases was clear from the start: all of the victims were young women who worked in the caring professions, all killed at night, all lured to a particular spot and stabbed the same number of times. That element seemed almost ritualistic, yet there was no sense of ritual to the rest of the crimes, only the precision of someone trying not to be caught by using a consistent method.
There didn’t seem to be any other links that Paige could see. None of the victims knew one another according to the files. They didn’t look alike, didn’t have anything in common apart from their jobs and the way in which they’d been killed.
“It’s a fairly tight geographical grouping around D.C.,” Paige observed. Some of the killings spilled over into surrounding states, but not far. It seemed that Ingram had been able to find a steady supply of victims close at hand without having to look further afield.