The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson
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nodded.
Maybe she wasn’t such a bitch after all, Alvarez thought, though she couldn’t quite believe it. She unzipped her vest, as the room was warming up. The furnace was working overtime, wheezing as it blew hot air into the room packed with too many bodies. Through the bank of windows lay a view of the white-packed parking lot, a long plowed road and, less than a quarter of a mile away, the county jail, a two-storied cinder block building with a flat roof. Snow gathered near the foot of the jail’s high fence and clung to the swirled razor wire, almost picturesque.
“Okay,” Chandler said, walking back to the panels on the wall. “So no one has any idea what these notes mean?” Chandler pointed to the blowups of the papers left at each of the scenes.
“Not yet,” Grayson drawled. The sheriff had been taking in the meeting, not saying much from his seat at a corner of the table. His attitude was almost why-don’t you-tell-us, Miss Know-It-All, but if he thought it, he kept it to himself.
“It seems odd that the position of the star is different in each case. He’s so precise with these notes; the letters are all the same size, blocked out perfectly. So, the fact that the star isn’t in exactly the same spot each time is for a reason. He’s trying to tell us something.”
“More likely taunting us,” Pescoli said.
“Yeah, that, too. He seems intelligent and careful. These aren’t rash, random killings. He’s planned this, down to the smallest detail. He’s organized. Thinks he’s smarter than we are and it’s unlikely that he would miss a detail like the car documents.” Chandler walked to the panels and pointed to the enlarged notes. “Look at the placement of the stars. They’re where they are for a reason, yet they vary from one note to the other. I think that’s significant.”
Alvarez nodded. She’d always thought so. “Then he’s trying to leave us a message with the letters. The women aren’t random.”
“I think they’re targeted,” Chandler said.
Pescoli said, “But not raped.”
Chandler’s gaze swung to the taller detective. “Another anomaly. A lot of organized serial killers get off on holding their victims, getting close to them, torturing them and sexually molesting them.” She rubbed her chin. “We’ve discounted the possibility of a female killer, right? Big shoe prints, strength necessary to get into the wrecked cars and haul the victims away.”
“If it’s a woman, she’s big. Strong.” Pescoli added her two cents. “Our female victims are all on the petite side, anywhere from a hundred and five to a hundred and twenty-five pounds. But most serials are men.”
“A female killer feels wrong to me,” Chandler admitted. “Off.”
“To me, too,” Pescoli agreed and no one argued. Outside the closed door Alvarez heard a phone ringing and footsteps as someone walked past the room.
Chandler went on, “We think he either kidnaps or leaves the women to die around the twentieth of the month. We’ve got three known victims and one potential, so let’s check star alignment on those dates, September through December, and then if we find anything noteworthy, let’s project to January.”
“We haven’t found the December victim yet,” Pescoli pointed out, “and you’re already thinking about January?”
“That’s right.” Craig Halden’s usually affable expression was missing. His face was grim. “Our guy, he’s not stopping.” Halden shoved his chair back and walked around the table to the oversized topographical map that covered a large section of one wall. It was marked with the scenes where the wrecked vehicles and victims had been found. “Have we talked to everyone who lives or has a summer cabin in this area?” he asked, one of his hands arcing over the mountainous terrain on the map.
“Started,” Grayson said. “We’ve got a list from the assessor’s office. Lots of summer cabins. The area covers miles of rugged country.”
Chandler said, “Vastly unpopulated.”
Grayson nodded slowly. “We’ll keep on it.”
Between the pushpins, lines had been drawn in the hopes that some intersecting point would reveal the area where the killer lived, but the areas where the lines crossed were usually uninhabited.
But that was the way with organized serial killers, Alvarez knew from her research. These psychos went to great lengths to hide themselves and elude detection. They thought about their crimes long and hard, picked out their quarry, planned each move, got off on toying with their victims before they killed them. And all the while they enjoyed outwitting the police.
Sick bastards.
Halden walked back to his chair as his partner asked, “Have we had any ideas about the notes?”
That was a sore point with Alvarez, who had spent countless hours at night trying to figure out what the killer was trying to tell them. “We don’t have much,” she admitted.
“Let’s put a cryptographer on it.”
“Already have,” Sheriff Grayson said. “One of the best in the country. So far nothing. Said he’d never seen anything quite like it.”
Craig Halden settled into his chair. “We’re getting the same info. Nothing in the database matches up to this guy. He seems to be our own special loony.”
“Ain’t we lucky?” Pescoli muttered and slid Alvarez a glance.
Chandler finally took her seat and flipped through several pages of her notes. “Okay, about the people who discovered the crime scenes. According to your records, the car registered to Jillian Rivers was discovered by a woman who communes with the dead.”
“Well,” Grayson said, “we’re not sure she actually makes contact. All we know is, she thinks she talks to spirits, but the jury’s definitely out on her ability to…what do they call it, ‘cross over’?”
“Something like that,” Pescoli said.
“And Wendy Ito was found by a man who claims to be a victim of an alien abduction,” Chandler said, looking pointedly at Grayson. “Isn’t that odd?”
“Not around here,” Pescoli said, and Grayson sent her a sharp look.
“They aren’t exactly the most stable witnesses.”
“Does it matter?” Pescoli asked. “It’s not as if they were giving statements about the killer. All they did was lead us to one victim and one car. Yeah, they’re both missing a screw or two, but they did help us out.”
Grayson added, “Both Ivor and Grace were out in below-freezing weather, walking around. At least it was clear when Ivor made his discovery. Now, Grace, she was out with her dog in the middle of a damned blizzard. I don’t think it’s strange that they aren’t rowing with all their oars in the water. Who else would be out in this weather?”
Touché, Sheriff, Alvarez thought, twirling her pen between her fingers. It bothered her that Chandler came in with “attitude,” as if they were all country bumpkins and she was the big-city specialist. Alvarez altered her first impression. There was a good chance that Field Agent Stephanie Chandler was a little like the agents portrayed in movies after all.
Grayson was staring straight at both agents. “Theresa Charleton was found by hikers, Nina Salvadore by cross-country skiers. Charleton’s car was seen by a trucker who happened to park his rig on a bridge and saw a glint of something up the creek bed, Salvadore’s by teenagers out partying. None of them connect to each other; none of them knew the victims. None of them with priors—well, except for one of the kids who found the Ford Focus. He was driving on a suspended license.”
“Good to know that all of the reports weren’t from people guaranteed certifiable.” Chandler offered Grayson a smile that wasn’t the least bit warm. Yep, she was a bitch. “I’d like to look through your files on these cases.”