The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [121]
“Vienna! The poke and plumb town over on the northwest side. Poke your head in and you’re plumb out of town.”
“We’re small, yes. Kind of like you.”
“Ooh. Okay. I think that’s enough horsing around. Time to get down to business.” Rudnick sat and opened the file folder.
“How’s your tooth?” Vail asked.
“Need a root canal. Tell ya, I think we should start including dentists routinely in our suspect pool. They’re sadists, every one of ’em, I swear.”
“Dead Eyes,” Robby reminded.
“Yes, okay. Okay. Dead Eyes . . . the serial offender who’s plugged into the information superhighway.”
“Information superhighway?” Vail asked. “Who uses that term anymore?”
Rudnick glanced at her over the tops of his glasses. “I do, apparently.” He opened the file and consulted a page on the left side of the flap. “So as I was saying, this guy is tech savvy, or at least knows how to access the information necessary in constructing the parameters by which he can make it appear that he’s tech savvy.” Rudnick looked from Vail to Robby and apparently sensed their impatience. “Let me explain. According to our cyber geeks, he—”
“You got something back from the lab?”
Rudnick’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t you?”
Vail frowned. “Go on.”
“Yes, well, as I was saying, the geek cops said our offender used a technique that allows the email message to dissolve into its core constituents—ones and zeroes, the digital equivalent of blood and guts—to prevent us from tracking the email back to him. There’re a few things interesting about that. First, they said the info on how to do that’s available on the superhigh—excuse me, the Internet—so it’s not clear whether he possessed this knowledge or if he just followed the instructions online. But given what other information you’ve submitted, I’d have to say it’s the latter. Kind of like a fanatic who cooks up a bomb from a recipe posted on some militia webpage.”
“I agree,” Vail said. “Our offender’s no technogeek. But he’s bright and can certainly find out how to do it.”
“Second, and perhaps this goes to the point of it all, is that this vanishing act he’s playing with us means he only wants one way communication—a monologue, if you will. Either he’s not interested in what you have to say about it, or he’s more interested in what you’ll do about it.”
Vail nodded slowly, as if she were absorbing the meaning into her skin, filtering it as she mulled it through her mind.
“And the content?” Robby asked.
“Yes, yes, the content. Flesch-Kincaid Index scores it at a sixth grade level, though I’m not sure that’s worth much to us because he’s writing in a voice consistent with a child. More significantly, I’d say his writing appears to emanate from a different part of his brain than his ‘blood murals,’ which I’ll get to in a minute. Unlike the murals, which likely come from some subconscious expression of his feelings, these writings are very consciously constructed. He’s gone to considerable effort to send them to you in an untraceable form. He doesn’t want to get caught, but he’s compelled to share these experiences with you people. His use of the first person is significant—he chose it for a reason, the reason being that they’re personal accounts of actual events in this offender’s life.”
“How can we rule out the possibility he’s merely writing fiction?”
“With his flare for creativity, that’s certainly an option. But I believe there’s more going on here than just a frustrated writer at work. I think this stuff is deeply personal to him. That’s why he’s showing it to you. It’s his outlet for whatever happened to him as a youth. And I believe these writings are very closely related to what we’re seeing play out when he’s with the bodies. He abuses them, much like he was abused as a child. He’s telling you what his childhood was like, the events that made him who he is today. Maybe it’s his way of explaining his actions so you won’t think badly of him.”
Robby squinted. “You think the killer cares what we think of him?”
“I think he definitely cares how he’s perceived. Not in the same way we care about the