Verraday smiled. “Point taken. But the fact remains that the women consistently chose the photo of the high-status male over the low-status male as potential partner material.”
“Yes,” Maclean shot back, “because it was a photo. The women were only allowed to make their decision based on visual appearances. Let me guess. The person who created the study was a man?”
Verraday nodded.
“Want to know how I knew?” Maclean asked.
“I’d very much like to hear it.”
“Because a woman would never create a study of sexual attractiveness based only on visual appearance. Visuals are totally a guy thing. If a woman had made that study, the choices would have been between a man who comes home and asks you what the best and worst parts of your day were, versus some self-absorbed asshole in Armani who flops down on the sofa in front of the game and forgets that you even exist.”
“And this guy who asks you about your day—ideally, would he be wearing the UPS summer uniform with the short-shorts?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
“I’m getting the feeling this is an argument that I can’t win,” said Verraday.
“Well, that’s very perceptive of you, Professor.”
He could tell from Maclean’s faint smile that she wasn’t genuinely angry, but neither would she ever back down without a fight.
“You’re right about men being more visual,” said Verraday, “I hadn’t considered that. I’ll have to rethink that study.”
Maclean smiled. “Thank you.”
“All I was trying to say about our killer,” continued Verraday, “is that he plays on his victims’ needs. Even if he doesn’t know their backstories, he can sense their wants, their insecurities. And he would play to those needs. And the more it worked for him, the more excited he would become. He would have gotten more and more aroused as he duped his victims into putting themselves in a vulnerable situation where he could then totally dominate them. That sense of fooling them would have continued even as he began to flail them with the belt. The early stages wouldn’t have alarmed the victims. They likely even moaned with pleasure, or pretended to, when he was hitting them relatively lightly. That would have aroused him even more, knowing they had no idea what was coming next. Then when it got to be too rough, they would have begun to protest. That’s the part that would really get him off. That they’d tell him to stop, but he could ignore them. He would have savored beating them and humiliating them, showing his power over them.”
He saw a muscle in Maclean’s jaw contract with anger.
“This guy’s thing is all about power, domination, and control. The beatings were severe, but they were just preamble. He could have beaten the women to death if he’d wanted to, but that’s not what gets him off. Strangulation is what turns his crank. The reports suggest that he started by choking them with his hands, then switched to the garrote. That’s when his victims would have finally known what his true intention was. They would have realized they weren’t getting out of there alive. They would have begged him to stop. He would have taken special pleasure from their desperation as they realized they’d fallen into his trap. That’s the moment that excited him most of all: when he wound that cable around their necks and started tightening it. If deception was his foreplay, this was his climax.”
Verraday could see the knuckles of Maclean’s right hand turning white as she unconsciously balled it into a fist. He saw that her face had turned white too, not from fear but from fury. It was more unconscious semiotics of the human mind. At the most extreme stage of anger, the blood flows away from the body’s extremities and into its core, as preparation for physical combat. Verraday knew from Maclean’s unconscious display that if the killer had suddenly materialized in the café at this moment, she would have gone after him with her bare hands. He knew what he was about to tell her wouldn’t do anything to soothe that instinct.
“If strangulation is the climax, then the disposal—the act of getting away with the crime itself—is the cigarette in bed afterwards. It gives him a feeling of superiority to get attention in the headlines, that the authorities are apparently powerless to stop him. He feels like he’s tricked everyone. He feels smart as hell.”
“I want to get this son of a bitch,” said Maclean. “I want to nail his ass to the wall and put him away forever.”
“So do I,” said Verraday. “So do I. But this guy’s cunning. He’s highly organized and, typical for those profiles, his abductions, crimes, and disposals are played out in multiple locations as part of his system.”
“So what is his system?”