“Sí. Not that either of them can do anything, but we’ll keep them updated.”
Sterling takes the news calmly, telling me to keep her informed through the morning, and she’ll take care of the first couple of coffee runs. Sterling is an angel. I come back out in jeans and a windbreaker, with a different T-shirt on underneath, because I just cannot make myself put on a suit after midnight. I have better clothes at the office if we don’t get to come back, and besides, I’m desk bound anyway. If I can’t use that excuse to bend the dress code, what’s the point?
The Jeffers house is all the way on the west side of town, what should be a thirty-minute drive with cooperating traffic lights. The lights are not cooperating, but neither is Eddison: we get there in eighteen minutes. After signing in with the uniform at the door, we head inside and nearly run into Agent Simpkins.
Dru Simpkins is a well-respected agent in her midforties, with a mane of coarse, dark blonde hair that never looks quite tame. She guest lectures at the academy about the impact of psychology on children’s writing, specifically looking at how to pick up cues and subtext in diaries or writing assignments, and leads that portion of the CAC-specific training. The BAU wanted her pretty badly for one of their profiling teams, but she’s resolutely remained in Crimes Against Children. She was the one to correctly identify that I wrote the NAT’s survival guide. Apparently I have “a voice.”
“Other three cases, it’s always been the father who got the worst of it, right?”
She also doesn’t believe in small talk.
“Yes,” I reply. “Father was subdued with gunshots, mother was killed, father was finished off. Not the case here?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Come take a look.”
We grab booties in the hallway and slip them on over our sneakers before following her down the hall to the master bedroom. The medical examiner gives us a two-fingered wave as she keeps the thermometer steady in Mr. Jeffers’s liver. He has several stab wounds across his torso, but not nearly to the extent of the other male victims.
Mrs. Jeffers, however, Jesucristo. Her face is destroyed, and the carnage continues downward. Her groin is a solid cluster of wounds, and the other stab wounds littering her stomach stretch up into slices at and around her breasts. Her husband’s death was pretty straightforward, but this woman suffered. And, judging from the negative space on her side of the bed, her son was forced to stand there and watch.
“You said Mason wasn’t speaking?” I ask.
Detective Mignone, standing by the father’s side of the bed, looks up and nods. “Neighbor says she doesn’t think he’s spoken in years.”
“So it’s not trauma based.”
“Or it’s not based on this trauma,” Simpkins notes. She pulls one of the framed pictures off the wall and holds it out to me, then realizes I don’t have gloves and keeps it steady so I can see it. There’s blood spattered on the glass. Not a lot, not at this distance, but some. It’s not enough to obscure the way the family is posed in the portrait, Mrs. Jeffers’s hand wrapped around her son’s arm as he tries to pull away toward his father.
“Sexual abuse by the female parent,” Eddison murmurs over my shoulder. “That’s uncommon.”
“Why do you assume the abuse was sexual?” asks Simpkins, who clearly already knows the answer but is asking it anyway.
That would be the teacher part of her personality.
“The way the wounds are clustered,” Eddison answers automatically, because we are both used to Vic, after all. “Groin, breasts, mouth. That’s very specific grouping.”
“Social Services?” I ask.
“We have a call in. Their social worker on call is already at Prince William on a different case, so she was going to put a call out for backup.”
“Seems like Mason might do better with a male social worker.”
“She’s going to do her best to get one in. They’re understaffed, at the moment.”
All the public services in this county are.
“The teddy bear? Was it the same?”
Simpkins carefully replaces the frame on the wall. “White, gold wings and halo.”
“And the note was pinned on the bear?”
“Handwritten or typed?” adds Eddison.
“Typed,” Simpkins answers. “We had a look at the computers, but the killer brought the note with them. The Jefferses don’t even have a printer.”
“So the killer knew in advance that Mason probably couldn’t be coached to say anything. She came prepared.”
“Why are you saying she?”
Eddison and I trade a look, and Mignone drifts closer to join the conversation. “The description the children gave,” Eddison says finally. “They all called her a lady.”
“But we don’t actually know that it is. Saying ‘she’ could blind us to avenues. I’m not implying the children lied or even that they were mistaken, but just because someone in a costume seems to present as female . . .”
“It doesn’t mean they are,” Mignone finishes. “Could be a tactic to throw suspicion the wrong way.”
“Precisely.”
It’s perfectly reasonable and actually better practice to not block off avenues of investigation, but my gut says we’re looking for a woman. A man might dress as a female, given the appropriate impulses, but the phrasing would be different. This killer says the children are going to be safe now; a man would say he was rescuing them, or making them safe. Men are more likely to announce actions, women states of being.
And judging from the way Simpkins is watching us, she’s already come to the same conclusion, she’s just putting us through the paces. Exhibit A as to why I always learn a hell of a lot from Simpkins, but I don’t actually like working with her.
“Holmes is at the hospital with the boy,” Mignone says. “She wasn’t in the room during the examination, but he had a panic attack when the doctor needed to check beneath his underwear. They actually had to sedate him.”
“Did they finish the examination?” Eddison asks with a frown.
But Mignone shakes his head. “He didn’t seem obviously injured, and they want to try to build a measure of trust with him. They did some scans to assess for internal damage, to make sure they could wait, but otherwise they want him to be awake and allowing them.”
Eddison’s shoulders relax.
“Do you mind if I go to Mason’s room?” I ask. “I won’t touch anything, I promise.”
For an answer, Simpkins offers us pairs of gloves.
Okay, so maybe I will touch things.
Eddison trails after me, along with Mignone.
Mason’s room belongs in a magazine. Being officially on the case, the detective can be our crime scene chaperone, as it were, able to swear, if a problem comes up later, that no evidence was planted, taken, or altered. The walls are painted in halves, the top a dusky blue, the bottom a deeper, royal blue, separated by a white-paper border covered with colorful figures in a number of different professions. I can see cowboys represented, astronauts and doctors, different branches of the military among others. His bed is plastic and low to the ground, shaped like a cartoon rocket, and except for the indentations where he lay and one corner folded back from when he got up, the blue sheets and comforter are perfectly made. Everything in the room is picture-perfect, designed for appearance rather than function.
Nothing in here actually says little boy.
Eddison opens the drawers of the dresser, his gloved hands easing between layers of perfectly folded and color-coordinated clothing. The closet is as pristine as the room, clear storage bins on the top shelf eliminating any chance of Mason using them to hide anything.
Children like the idea of secrets; they don’t actually like keeping them, usually. Children want to tell people things.