They started walking again and Anne continued her profile: “He raped and murdered these girls but he feels remorse,” she said, her demeanor serious again. “He cleans them up. Returns them.”
“But he kills again.”
“The need overpowers him. But it’s about the rape. Not the murder. He’s a rapist who kills, not a murderer who rapes. It’s not part of his fetish. It’s not necrophilia. He kills them to spare them from experiencing the rape.”
“What a guy,” said Archie.
They walked past a darkened paint store, past a shuttered espresso drive-thru booth, past a hipster dive bar. The window of the bar was filled with neon beer signs: PBR, RAINIER, SIERRA NEVADA. A half-assed marquee advertised a band called Missing Persons Report. Nice. Archie glanced inside as they went past and caught a flash of people, mouths open wide, laughing, the sound of drunken levity.
Anne continued: “I don’t think the murder gives him pleasure per se. He doesn’t linger with it. He doesn’t use his hands. I think we need to look at where he came from. I think he’s raped before. And if he has, it will be within the victim profile.”
Archie shook his head. “We’ve pulled every unsolved rape over the last twenty years. No good fits.”
They came to an intersection. If Archie had been alone, he would have walked against the light, but because Anne was there, he pushed the pedestrian button and waited.
“Look out of state. If you can’t find anything, it means that the rapes weren’t reported, which is useful in itself.”
Archie considered this. “He has power over women.”
“Or used to,” Anne commented.
“He loses his power; he compensates with violence.”
Anne nodded several times, her jaw working. “I’m thinking a steady evolution of sexual assaults, followed by some sort of stresser at work or home. He’s probably had violent sexual fantasies since he was a child, but he was able to quell them with porn and the early rapes. Then he decides to take it further. Plans it. Carries it off. And he gets away with it.”
“So he does it again.” Archie sighed. The light changed, finally, and they walked across to the other side of the street and started heading back south. It wasn’t much of a walk. But it felt good to move.
“Yes. And gets away with it again. So now the societal boundaries that he’s always been uncomfortable with are seriously eroding. I think that part of him, that first time, fully expected to get caught. Maybe he even wanted to get caught, to be punished for his deviant fantasies. But he wasn’t. So now he’s thinking that the law doesn’t apply to him. He’s feeling special.”
“And the bleach? Is it a purification ritual, or is he studiously destroying forensic evidence?”
He could see Anne bite her lip. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit. If he cares about them enough to kill them, why is he bathing them in corrosive chemicals? But it’s overkill as a cleansing agent. And I think our guy is meticulous enough to avoid overkill. He would know exactly how much, and not use any more.”
“He dumped a body the day before Valentine’s Day,” Archie said.
“It’s not a coincidence.”
“The murders are intimate for him,” Archie said softly. “He’s choosing them.”
“This guy’s smart,” Anne said. “He’s educated. He’s got a job. He’s transporting the bodies, so he has access to a vehicle. And probably to a boat. Based on his victim window, I’d say he works banker’s hours. White, male. He would look unremarkable. Functional. Presentable. If it is an evolution, he’s well into his thirties, possibly forties. He’s detail-oriented and manipulative. He’s taking an enormous risk snatching these girls off public streets. He’s confident, arrogant even. And he’s got a ruse. He’s got a ruse to get these girls to go with him.”
“Like Bundy’s cast?”
“Or Bianchi playing cop, or car trouble, or he says he’s a modeling scout, or says that the parents have been in an accident and offers to take the girl to the hospital.” She shook her head dismissively. “But it’s better than that. It’s brilliant. Because whatever he’s using, he got Kristy to go with him, after two girls had already been murdered.”
Archie thought of plump, brown-haired Kristy Mathers dragging her broken bike across the street, just blocks from home. Where was the bike? If he’d grabbed her, why take the bike? And if he did take the bike, then his car had to be big enough to get it in quickly. “If she went with him voluntarily, she had to know him.”
“If we accept that premise, yes, she had to know him.” They were standing in the bank parking lot. “This is me,” Anne said, putting her hand on the roof of a rented burgundy Mustang.
“I’m going to interview the teachers and staff again tomorrow,” Archie said. “Just the men who fit the profile.” His headache was getting bad. It was like having a permanent hangover.
“You going home tonight, or are you going to sleep in your chair?”