The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [33]
Vail’s eyes found Robby’s in a sideways glance.
“He’s hidden something,” Hancock continued. “The hand, he’s telling us where the hand is. The left hand. He’s telling us it’s in the house. It’s in the drawer, it’s in the refrigerator, in the bedroom—”
“It’s in your head,” Vail said. “You can’t assume it means anything.”
Hancock turned away. “You’re wrong. He’s telling us something.”
“He could also be a whacko.” Vail shifted her gaze to Robby. “At this point, all we can say is that either the offender is a nut job—in which case his message means nothing—or that he’s quite sane and it carries great meaning to him. The fact that he used the victim’s blood tells us it was likely done postmortem. She was either badly injured or dead. And if she’s dead, which is likely, then he’s taking a huge risk to spend more time there. Longer he’s there, more chance he gets caught. For what? If we go with the odds, he’s not a whacko. So the message means a great deal to him. But it’s not intended for him. It’s meant for the victim, or for whoever discovers the body.”
Vail paced a few steps back and forth, reasoning it through. “If it’s a message for us, we have to ask: What’s he trying to tell us? Is it something that’s true? Or something that’s false? Is it literal . . . do we have to start looking for something—the hand, like Hancock is suggesting? Or is he taunting, playing with us?”
Vail stopped, regarded Robby for a moment. “Do you see why you can’t jump to conclusions about any of this?” She looked at Hancock, who was staring at the wall, attempting to appear as if he hadn’t heard what she had said.
But suddenly, he turned toward her. “And sometimes you can overthink something, Detective Hernandez. That’s what your friend is doing here. She knows so much, she’s trying to impress you, confuse you with issues and questions and all sorts of bullshit that’s got nothing to do with anything.”
Vail’s arms were clenched across her chest. “The only bullshit in the room, Robby, is what Hancock’s dishing up. But you know what? This message could be bullshit, too. There was a case where the offender wrote ‘Death to the pigs’ in blood. It was so Hollywood, it was weird. It scored pretty high on the bullshit radar for me. Turned out he took the phrase from a Life magazine article, and he wrote it at the scene to throw us off. You know how long people spent mulling over ‘Death to the pigs’? Was it meant for cops, or did he just hate pork?”
Robby laughed.
Vail placed a hand on his forearm. “Listen to me, Robby. Right now we can’t make any assumptions about it. You want to help Hancock look for the missing hand, go for it. Maybe you’ll find it—or you’ll find something else. I don’t know. But to me, the most significant thing to consider from that message is that the offender took the time to write it in the first place. It meant a lot to him, and it’s my job to find out why.”
“He didn’t finish the sentence,” said Sinclair, who had just walked in the door. “You’re talking about the message, right? What I want to know is, why didn’t the fucker finish the sentence?”
“Good question,” Vail said.
“Maybe he wants us to finish it for him,” Robby said.
Hancock threw up his hands. “Which is what I’ve been trying to do. It’s in the kitchen, it’s in the drawer, it’s in the closet. . . .” He walked out of the bedroom, still muttering.
“He okay?” Sinclair asked.
“He’s never been okay.”
Robby asked, “So what do we do next with this message?”
“We can run it through VICAP. Bureau keeps a database of crime stats just for this reason. It’ll give us a rundown of other cases where offenders have written messages in blood—in any bodily fluid, for that matter. It’ll tell us what we know about those cases and those offenders. Maybe we can make some connections or establish some patterns or parallels. Offenders don’t leave messages very often,