Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [24]
“But you're on his hit list.”
“On it, but I'm not next in line. I'm not local, so it won't be easy for him to find information about me, especially since I don't plan to become too chatty with anyone outside our investigation.”
“What about inside?” Mallory asked. “We've had at least the suspicion that the perp could be a cop. Has that been ruled out?”
“Unfortunately, no. Our feeling is that we're not dealing with a cop, but there are some elements of the M.O. that make it at least possible.”
“For instance?” Rafe was frowning slightly. “We haven't seen the updated profile,” he reminded her.
“I have copies here for both of you,” Isabel replied. “Not a lot has changed from the first profile as far as the description of our unknown subject is concerned. We have revised his probable age range upward a bit, given the time frame of at least ten years as an active killer. So, he's a white male, thirty to forty-five years old, above-average intelligence. He has a steady job and possibly a family or significant other, and he copes well with day-to-day life. In other words, this is not a man who's obviously stressed or appears in any way at odds with himself.
“Blondes are only his latest targets; in the earlier murders, he killed first redheads in Florida ten years ago, and then, five years ago, brunettes in Alabama. Which, by the way, is another reason he wouldn't have noticed me then even if he'd seen me; he's always very focused on his targets and potential targets, and I had the wrong hair color for him both times before.”
“What about the elements that could indicate he's a cop?” Rafe asked.
“The central question of this investigation—and the two before this one—is how he's been able to persuade these women to calmly and quietly accompany him to lonely spots. These are highly intelligent, very savvy women, in several cases trained in self-defense. None of them was stupid. So how did he get them to go with him?”
“Authority figure,” Rafe said. “Has to be.”
“That's what we're thinking. So we can't rule out cops. We also can't rule out someone who appears to be a member of the clergy, or any other trustworthy authority figure. Someone in politics, someone well known within the community. Whoever he is, these women trusted him, at least for the five or ten minutes it took him to get them alone and vulnerable. He looks safe to them. He looks unthreatening.”
Mallory said, “You said earlier that he'd killed a dozen women before coming to Hastings. Exactly twelve?”
“Six women in six weeks, both times.”
“So it is just women,” Mallory said. “Bottom line, he hates women.”
“Hates, loves, wants, needs—it's probably a tangle. He hates them for what they are, either because they represent what he wants and can't have or because he feels somehow emasculated by them. Killing them gives him power over them, gives him control. He needs that, needs to feel he's stronger than they are, that he can master them.”
“A manly man,” Hollis said, her mockery both obvious and hollow.
Isabel nodded. “Or, at least, so he wants to believe. And wants us to believe.”
Alan Moore had always thought that calling the central work area of the Chronicle offices “the newsroom” must have been someone's idea of irony. Because nothing newsworthy ever happened in Hastings.
Or hadn't, until the first murder.
Not that there hadn't been killings in Hastings before, of course; when a town had been in existence for nearly two hundred years, there were bound to be killings every now and then. People had died out of greed, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of rage.
But until the murder of Jamie Brower, no one had been killed by pure evil.
Alan hadn't hesitated to point that out in his coverage of the murders and their investigation. And not even Rafe had accused him—publicly or privately—of sensationalizing