Several hours later, we were back in the conference room at the US Marshals' office. The conference room was many things, but comfortable wasn't among them. The walls were a drab beige color with grey industrial carpeting. Up to this point, I had always considered grey to be one of my favorite colors, but a few days in Alaska had changed that. When things weren't white, they were grey. I wasn't sure if it was to hide the cinder residue that seemed to permeate the streets or just because color hadn't happened in Alaska.
The conference table was a rectangular monstrosity of plastic and metal. There were ten office chairs done in fake black leather. There were four whiteboards on the back wall and one on each of the side walls. The final wall was covered with panes of glass that looked into the Marshals' office.
The windows had blinds that were closed. White in color and in need of a good dusting, it was obvious that they weren't down very often. Oppressive fluorescent lighting was stuck in the ceiling at regular intervals.
The whiteboards were covered in photos and handwritten notes in different colors. Gabriel, being cute, had given me a pink marker for my notes. So far, there weren't many. I got up, went to the boards, and found the picture of our newest victim. Over her head, in my messy handwriting, I put the word "sedated" with an arrow pointing at her grisly remains.
Both Agent Gentry and Agent Arons were now in the room. They had integrated themselves into our part of the investigation. I agreed with Lucas, they were both looking for a way out of Alaska and this was their ticket. I also agreed with Lucas that bringing us in to solve it wasn't going to get them the promotion to warmer climates they desired.
I stared at some of the other stuff written on the boards. Lucas, Gabriel, and Xavier had all put their stamps on them. Their handwriting streaked colorful stains across the whiteboards, providing not just information, but a colorful piece of artwork in the white and grey room. We didn't really require different colors to distinguish us. We all had unique handwriting styles.
Xavier's was like mine, something just above a scribble that took a while to get used to reading. Lucas's was more stable, cautious, his letters articulated. Gabriel's was surprising, loopy and almost feminine in nature. My eyes fell on the repetition of the word "drugged". Each had written it on the boards in a different place.
My eyes found another word, "loner", above another victim. I thought about it. Our teacher was a "loner" as well. Outside of work and family, she didn't associate with many people. I wrote it above her picture and took a step back. My eyes fell on variations of words. The synonym for "loner" was used several times. So was "severe".
"Lucas," I said, pointing at the boards.
"What?" He looked up from a file.
"All these women seem to be social misfits," I said.
"I know," he stated. "They were all very meticulous as well."
"So, I'm not pointing out a pattern we had not realized existed," I made it a statement.
"Nope, we know. We can't find any links though other than those."
"Well, our teacher seems to have been personal. You don't smash photos at one person's house and not another's if it isn't personal."
"I agree," Lucas said. "But she was a teacher for sixteen years."
"As I said earlier, that's a lot of suspects. If you go by the national average, that means at least half of her students have divorced parents. And single women in societies such as these are more likely to get remarried quickly. So, if she averages thirty students per year, that's four-hundred and eighty parents. Mark off two-hundred and forty because they are women, which leaves two-hundred and forty. Of course, then you have to add another eighty, give or take a few dozen because of divorce and remarriage. So, three-hundred men who might have known this woman just because their child was in her class. Then there are a dozen or so coworkers that are male, and I do not know how large her family is, but it seems good sized, so another dozen plus that are related by birth or marriage."
"What are you getting at?" Agent Arons asked.
"Exactly that, this one seemed personal, our killer knows her. Up to this point, all the others might have been complete strangers that he snatched at random because they fit some perverse fantasy. This one was not random, he had her planned. So the first question is: why wait this long? And the second: why now?"
"Those seem counter-productive questions," Agent Gentry said.
"Not at all," Lucas jumped in. "He's waited this long to take her as a prize, so why did he pick this moment? Was she all that was available because of the stepped up patrols? Or some other unknown factor that fell into place? Most killers start with people they know or end with people they know. So either he grabbed her now because he didn't figure he'd get to her later, since we are here or he grabbed her because something else changed."
"You make it sound like she was always a target," Gentry said.
"She was," Lucas answered. "Most of his victims are going to be opportunistic, they are in the wrong place, wrong time. A few of them though, they are going to be planned. This one was among the planned. If we can pick out the ones he always intended to kill from the random jumble of victims, it will get us closer to his identity."
"Not all serial killers grab victims they know," Arons pressed.
"That's true of most serial killers. I would say that is not true of this serial killer. This serial killer is doing both. He is grabbing victims of opportunity as well as eliminating some women that he isn't very fond of. The level of anger at this victim's house proves that. He was probably angry at the pictures of happy people at the homes of the other victims' houses, but he was pissed that there were pictures of happy people at the house of this particular woman. So he smashed the pictures, figuratively, he was obliterating her happiness. I imagine there are signs at some of the crime scenes as well. However, since we haven't found all the crime scenes..." Lucas spread his arms wide.
"Damn you are good," I told him, a small smile forming at the corners of my mouth. "You could be a profiler."
"Profiling is dodgy business," Lucas said to me. "I don't profile."
"We all profile, it is in our genetic makeup. For example, when we see a man driving a Hummer, we instantly think he is compensating for something. Probably a small penis or short-man syndrome. When we see a buxom blond in the same car, we think trophy wife to a man in his hundreds or stripper," I told him.
"That is bias, not profiling," Lucas corrected.
"Fine, when we see a man driving a Hummer who has all gold teeth, we label him a drug dealer," I grinned.
"You got me there," Lucas said. "However, I try very hard not to profile."
"Or have a sense of humor about it," I turned back to the whiteboards. Lucas had history with profiling and profilers, he hated the profession and considered them about as useful as psychics. Instead, he looked at situations and ran the information through his psychology background to generate emotional information.
We had all had our run-ins with bad guys and evil people. Lucas' happened in the military. One of his comrades in arms had gone on a killing spree. The profiler involved had pretty much described Lucas to the letter. Lucas had been in the middle of a court martial when the killer struck again, effectively exonerating him. He hadn't liked FBI profilers since then and had gotten his psychology degree primarily to thumb his nose at them. The real killer had been nothing like Lucas in looks or personality. However, because the victims had been carried for nearly half a mile, the profiler had decided it had to be someone of extreme physical girth. In reality, the killer had been less than six feet tall and weighed as much as I did, making him very small. But true psychopaths are stronger than your average person; I knew one that was stronger than the average bear.
"Ace?" Gabriel asked.
"Sorry, I just had a thought. We were talking earlier about the physical requirements of someone hanging a woman and skinning them. While I know we found the winch marks, we also know that his last victim was unconscious to some degree when they left the house. So, maybe we are looking at it wrong. We were thinking it had to be someone of well-defined build and muscles. But a psychopath is not limited by the normal constraints of a person, so would it really take someone of physical strength to do this? I am guessing the guy could be my size and manage," I answered.
"Do you think he is that far gone?" Gentry asked.
"Uh, he skins his victims while they are alive, that requires a certain amount of detachment. So, yeah, I think he's stepped off the 'personality disorder' train and jumped onto the 'fully functional psychopath train,'" I told her.
"He has always been functional," Lucas answered.
"True, but I do not see anti-social personality disorder induced psychopathy creating that much detachment. That seems more like a borderline type of detachment," I answered. I had learned much from Lucas about the world of psychology in the last six months. Most of it was self-relevant, but you couldn't explain me without using others as contrast.
"I have trained you well," Lucas smiled. "I agree that it has all the hallmarks of being someone with borderline personality disorder. His level of detachment is astounding."
I uncapped the pink marker and in all capital letters I wrote "PSYCHOPATH - BPD" at the top of the nearest whiteboard. We all stared at it for a while, silently thinking our own thoughts about the declaration. It was one thing to have the thought in the back of your mind, it was another to see the word expressed in front of you. We had dealt with true psychopaths before; they always proved to be the most challenging.
A pall fell over the room after we had digested the word. The grim reality was simple; he would kill over and over again. Each time would bring him pleasure. Each time would leave us just as clueless. This was not a man to make mistakes often. The few he had made hadn't gotten us any closer to finding him.
Of course, we had an incredible success rate. It was in our genes to catch him. He couldn't be smarter than all of us. He couldn't be stronger than all of us. Somewhere, there would be a slip and we would put the puzzle together. His reign of terror would end. It was the getting there that bothered us. How many more bodies would he have to his credit when we got there?
"Aislinn?" It was unusual for anyone on the team to call me by my full first name. Since Xavier had nicknamed me "Ace" when I first started, it had stuck. Even Nyleena used it more and more. To hear it slip through their lips now, brought them my full attention.
"What?"
"You seem distant, even for you," Xavier said.
"I was just thinking dark thoughts," I admitted to him. "He's made it personal, possibly for the first time, probably not. And we do not have a way to decipher the personal ones."
"Why wouldn't he just stick to smashing photos?" Arons asked.
"Because I would not. He did not want this woman happy. We cannot guarantee that it's the same with all of them. If it was, then it would not be personal," I said.
"Somewhere in that twisted sentence, I see where you're going," Lucas said. "You think he hates all the personal ones for different reasons."
"Exactly," I said. "Why didn't he want this one to be happy?"
"I don't know," Lucas admitted.
"I didn't figure you did, I do not imagine any of us can guess the reason, unless the woman somehow slighted his own happiness. However, if denying happiness was his goal in this instance, what about the others? What did he want to obliterate in the lives of the others?"
"That seems like a lot of motives," Gabriel said.
"I don't think it is the motive," Lucas said. "I think killing for the sake of killing is the motive, I think the other is just extra stuff."
"A bonus," I quickly chirped.
"That's one way to put it," Lucas said. "If the other is just a bonus, then he targets those women for that reason. He kills them because he is going to kill someone, might as well be them."
"Because of the lack of evidence in each case, we are having trouble connecting them," Xavier said.
"This guy is a nightmare," Gabriel kicked his chair back and folded his arms behind his head. He stared at the whiteboards. "We can't even take an educated guess which killings would help us figure him out."
"An educated guess rules out the first one, it was probably important to his partner, not him," Lucas answered.
"But figuring out the partner could help identify him," Gabriel said.
"Probably, but three kills isn't enough to go on. We know he wasn't as skilled, liked his victims younger and probably did the first one alone," Lucas answered.
"I hate dead ends," I sighed.
"We all do, Ace," Xavier responded.