“That’s what I thought.”
“Also,” Vernon said, “the mouth is a dead giveaway.”
“The mouth?”
“See the way the mouth is closed with those two victims? It’s been sewn shut. But with the first victim, it wasn’t, and it’s open.”
“Right,” Zoe said. “I figured the killer was making a statement. Like he was shutting them up, or—”
“You don’t understand,” Vernon said. “You’re supposed to sew the mouth shut. Otherwise it remains open, and it doesn’t look good. You can see the first body’s face. She doesn’t look peaceful. She looks surprised—or horrified.”
Zoe looked at the photos, seeing it for the first time. He was right. The sewn mouths made the latest victims look serene.
“I see. So you think he figured it out later on?”
“Oh, I’m certain. You can see how he did those two. He clearly learned how to do it right. I mean, I’ve seen better. But for an amateur, this is very good work.”
“How would he learn to do it? Would he have to get someone to teach him?”
“I think you can find stuff online, if you try. Of course, if you learn that way, you make mistakes. Like the mouth on this victim.” He gestured at a picture of Monique Silva, the second victim. It was a close-up of her face. “See the side of her mouth? This blackening here?” he pointed at a discolored spot. “That’s decay. He didn’t disinfect the mouth. The nose, mouth, and eyes have to be disinfected before anything else.”
“The third body doesn’t have decay,” Zoe said, examining the image of Krista. The sunlit face of the dead woman seemed unblemished, though the skin was a bit gray.
“Could be that he’s learning,” Vernon said, looking at it. “She’s definitely embalmed better, though he used less dye than the first victim, which gives the body the gray appearance.”
“Why would he use less dye?” Zoe asked.
“No idea. Maybe he’s experimenting? Trying to achieve a better solution? Or maybe he just ran out?”
A better solution? Zoe considered the bodies. The first one had been found lying on the grass, straight as a plank; the second one, standing on a bridge, her hands on the rail. The third had been found sitting on the beach, face buried in her hands, her knees bent—just like a living person would do.
“An embalmed body,” she said. “How flexible is it?”
“It isn’t, at least not the ones embalmed in the standard method,” Vernon said. “They’re completely rigid.”
“What if you change the concentration of the . . . whatever it is you put in it?”
“The formaldehyde?” Vernon asked, his tone amused. “Then the body could be more flexible. But it would decay faster.”
“How much faster?”
“In weeks or months, instead of years. Could even take days. Depends on the concentration.”
“Could he be fiddling with the concentrations? To get the bodies more flexible?”
“Sure, but what for?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Zoe said, half to herself. “I’m not sure at all.”
CHAPTER 18
Dr. Bernstein didn’t show up that day and didn’t answer his phone. Martinez temporarily gave Bernstein’s spot in the special task force room to Zoe. The desk was a flimsy old thing that kept wobbling, even with the endless pieces of paper Zoe stuck under its legs. Despite the constant wobbling and the fact that the desk’s surface was scratched and spotted, there was something reassuring in knowing she had somewhere to sit, at least for now. She sat at the desk and stared at the page of her notebook in front of her. She used pen and paper to jot down her initial thoughts when profiling. So far she had written down, The killer is a man; the murder is premeditated, with indications that he is a lust serial killer. She frowned, frustrated. Maybe a bubble diagram was in order. She drew a bubble and wrote Fantasy inside.
The fantasy was always the foundation stone of lust serial killers. Lust serial killers typically daydreamed and fantasized about sexual assault. This fantasy became more intricate and violent as time progressed. As the fantasy became more detailed, the man was more likely to act upon it, trying to fulfill it.
She drew a line from the bubble, creating another bubble, and then wrote in it, Power or Anger?
Old-school profilers often stated that lust serial murderers were split into two typologies. Power killer fantasies revolved around the sexual assault, and the murder was a byproduct of the assault. Anger killers were motivated by hatred and sadism.
She stared at the two typologies. Neither really applied. The murder was obviously a very integral part of the fantasy, which seemed to indicate anger typology, but the motivation clearly had to do with power. She crossed both of them off, obliterating both words with multiple angry strokes. This was much more complex.
She drew a different line from the central bubble and tried to think of something different. Then she added a couple more lines. It looked like a sun. She drew a cloud and two birds.
She was supposed to be profiling a killer, and instead, she was doodling inane scribbles.
She stood up and looked around. Behind her, Agent Gray sat at his own desk, reading the autopsy report for Krista Barker.
“Agent Gray,” she said, her voice as formal as she could make it. “Would you mind sitting down with me for a bit? I need to talk about the killer.”
He whirled his chair around and frowned at her. Finally, he said, “Okay. I’ll ask Martinez if he wants to join us.”
She already regretted approaching Tatum instead of Martinez. She didn’t need the agent to listen to her theories and then detail all the ways she could be wrong. It wouldn’t do any good. But it was too late to change her mind.
Martinez said he had half an hour before he had a meeting with his captain. The three of them walked to the task force’s meeting room and sat down. Someone had filled one of the several whiteboards in the room with the crime scene pictures of Krista Barker’s body, and a timeline was drawn underneath. She hoped they wouldn’t find themselves running out of whiteboards. A red circle on the map now marked Ohio Street Beach, and there was a red X in the Brighton Park neighborhood where Krista Barker had worked the street the last night she had been seen. The marks on the map made it very clear that the killer wasn’t focusing on a certain area of Chicago.
“I think we can start narrowing the suspect pool down,” she said, looking at Martinez. The lieutenant and Agent Gray sat next to each other on one side of the table. She sat on the other side.
Martinez nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“We know the subject is a male. I talked to an embalmer this morning, and he verified what I already assumed. The killer is not someone who works in a funeral home, or if he is, he’s started very recently.”
She bit her lip. Now for the tricky part. Every detail she added to the profile would narrow down the suspect pool, but if she added the wrong detail, the police might completely overlook the killer, searching for someone who fit the profile better.
“The killer is very intelligent,” she said. “He seems to have learned the embalming process very quickly, but he almost certainly did so by himself, by learning from his own mistakes. The first victim shows a lot of amateur mistakes, the second victim a bit less, and the third was embalmed well enough to meet the approval of the embalmer I talked to this morning. That indicates he has high technical skills. He also has unusual self-discipline.”
“Why self-discipline?” Martinez asked.
“Learning such a complex skill alone and persevering requires a level of self-discipline most people don’t have.”
Martinez was leaning forward, jotting in his notebook. Tatum sat back, his face a mask of boredom, arms folded.