The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [44]
“Go on,” Bledsoe said.
Vail glanced down at her notes. “He’s got some deep-seated issues, as we’ve discussed. First on the list is an abusive childhood. I’m guessing the father since that’s the case ninety percent of the time. The father’s probably left-handed—” she shot a look at Manette—“and he probably beat the offender with his hand. There’s something with his face—maybe a facial deformity, as I mentioned. Maybe even caused by the father during one of the beatings. The eyes are a bit tougher. Could be symbolic, too. Like the father put him down all the time by telling him everyone sees him as a fuck-up.”
Vail looked down at her pad. “There might be something with the blood murals. It’s unlike anything I’ve personally seen before, and VICAP should have a printout for us soon. There’s something there, I know it. Just a gut feeling . . . but we have to keep on that angle. Either this guy had formal art training, or he works in the art field. He might even be a frustrated artist. Painter is the most obvious. But I wouldn’t rule out jobs involving manual labor, where he could tap his creative side. Sculptor, carpenter . . . hell, even poet, musician, or massage therapist.” She stopped for a moment, turned to Bledsoe. “We’re checking out habits common to all the vics, right? Maybe see if they all visited the same massage therapist.”
“Manny and I got that,” Sinclair said. “So far, the only thing we’ve come up with is that two of ’em shopped at the same supermarket chain. Different stores, though. We’re still working on it, there’s a lot of ground to cover.” He flipped the page on his yellow pad and made a note. “We’ll add massage therapists.”
Robby asked, “Make any sense to create a list of people in the fields you mentioned above—sculptors, painters, that type of thing?”
“We’ll end up with a huge database if we don’t narrow it,” Bledsoe said. “Go for it, but don’t give me grief when the computer spits out five thousand names.”
“We can cross-reference it against the other lists.”
“Fine. Do it.”
Sinclair asked Vail, “You said this guy had above average intelligence. How do you know that?”
“First, he gains access to the vic’s houses with relative ease. He either knows them or has found some slick way of disarming them verbally. Typically, offenders who tend toward organization are socially adept; they’ll use slick talk to approach and calm the vic. He might role-play with them, impersonating a cop or security guard to earn their confidence. I’d expect him to be well groomed and in the uniform of the role he takes on.”
“We should continue talking with the vics’ neighbors,” Robby said. “Maybe they’ve seen a stranger in some kind of uniform.”
“So tell me, Kari, what set him off? What happened a year and a half ago to put this guy on the map?”
“Could’ve been a lot of things. Most likely, there was some stressor in his life prior to Marci Evers’s murder. A job change, a relationship gone sour. Some other type of situational stress that happened right before the first murder that set him off. Whatever it was, he reached maximum capacity and popped.”
“You said he was organized,” Sinclair said.
Vail nodded. “He’s what we call an organized offender. There’s thought and premeditation to everything he does. There’s no evidence of a struggle and only minimal defensive wounds, if any. That indicates he did a significant amount of planning. If we look at each of the victim’s houses, we see that the front door has sufficient cover from the street. That allows him to interact with the vic without anyone seeing him, just in case a neighbor is passing by at the time. Or, could be it’s a safety net in case she denies him admittance and he has to force his way in. Either way, there’s planning involved.
“At the other end of the spectrum are lower IQ killers. They’re usually disorganized. The killing is more impulsive, they use weapons of opportunity, or those already in the victim’s apartment, and they make a great deal of mess by mutilating the victim and smearing her blood around the crime scene.