CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ella drew up a table on the whiteboard back at the precinct. Four columns. She headed them Appearance, Characteristics, Victims, and Other. She began noting everything they’d learned so far. Paige sat at the desk, hunched over her laptop. Ella had asked her to discern what she could about the strange attack at Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences.
Apparently, Pennsylvania State Police had been the investigating authorities on the case due to the severity and the status of the victim, and she was currently waiting on some information from Chief Reed about it. He had a good relationship with them, or so he said, so he’d offered to contact them personally.
“Not much about this case at all,” Paige said. “Just the basics have been reported. Nothing more than we already know.”
“Alright. We’ll wait for the chief to come back. What do we know about our unsub?” Ella said.
“He’s male, aged between 18 and 25, and probably white.”
“Yup. What else? Talk me through his modus operandi.”
“Umm,” Paige stuttered. “He gains his victims’ trust then blitz-attacks them.”
Ella prepared to write then stopped herself. “No. We don’t know that he gains his victims’ trust. That only happened with the last victim because she was an escort. If anything, it suggests he’s socially inept.”
Paige looked like she’d missed the memo. “Why? I’m not following.”
Ella realized she’d been withholding information from her partner, something she always berated Mia for. “Sorry. I forgot to tell you that Kate’s boyfriend showed me a text message from Kate. It said that the guy she’d just met, our killer, appeared nervous. If he was nervous around a professional sex worker, chances are he doesn’t have much confidence in general. He was only able to interact with her because it was part of her job. Chances are he blitzed the other victims but gained only Kate’s trust.”
Paige nodded. Ella felt like a schoolteacher who hadn’t had her first caffeine injection yet.
“Also, when you put the M.O. together, always start at the beginning. The very beginning. Where does he find these victims? Are the victims important, or are they disposable?”
“I’m going to say they’re important.”
“Why?”
Paige flipped through her notes. She clenched her teeth together. “I can’t remember.”
Ella leaned her head back against the wall, relishing the grounding sensation she received from the impact. She reminded herself Paige was new and that learning these things took time. Paige was raised on terrorism, not behavioral science.
“These victims are crucial to his fantasy. We can determine this by the fact he invaded top-floor apartments to reach them. If he just wanted a woman, any old woman, he wouldn’t go to the lengths he did. Serial killers only hide in attics if they need to. They only hire expensive call girls if that girl is the object of their desires. Otherwise they just abduct random women or take home cheap escorts off the street.” Ella filled in the details on the whiteboard.
“Okay, so that’s pre-murder M.O,” said Paige. “He then strangled his first two victims, probably because it made him feel closer to them? Strangulation is a very intimate act.”
“Could be, but probably not. Judging by the fact he only strangled them until the point that they died, it was probably just a convenient method of killing them. If he really craved intimacy, there’d be an element of overkill, like deep bruises around the neck. There wasn’t.”
Paige typed furiously on her laptop. “Wow. I never would have seen it like that.”
“That’s what I’m here for. If I sound like I’m irritated, I’m not. I’m just spewing out my thoughts without editing them. If I go too fast, feel free to stop me.”
“No, this is great,” Paige said. “Post-murder M.O. then. He severs the leg. We don’t know why, but that’s since become his signature, right?”
The girl was trying but she seemed to hit the wall every time. “No, that’s his ritual. The signature is the component of the crime that’s necessary for the victim’s death. In this case, his signature is strangulation, but this evolved with his third murder. His ritual, the dissection, has remained consistent.”
Paige scratched the top of her nose between her eyes. “But if his signature has changed, then it’s not a signature anymore? I thought it was called a signature because it was the same every single time?”
Good question, Ella thought. She believed the same when she first started studying at the FBI. “No, signatures and rituals evolve over time. The belief they stay the same is just some crap made up by movies and TV shows. Very few serial killers have had a completely consistent signature and ritual throughout their killing sprees. Bundy, Kemper, Dahmer, Rader, Gacy – all of them evolved their methods over time.”
“Gotcha. So the leg removal. What does it mean?”
This was the question that had plagued Ella since she first saw the crime scene photos. “Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t know what it means and I don’t think we’ll even know until we catch this guy. It could be anything. A leg fetish, an act of retribution. It’s impossible to know.”
Ella’s focus turned to the figure in the doorway. Chief Reed was standing there.
“Agents, I spoke to the State Police.”