Mercy (28 page)

“Hello.”

“This is Sander Grant.”

“I’d almost given you up.”

“Sorry,” he said, sounding a little tired. “We’ve been covered up with stuff. So how’s it going down there? Have you gotten anything new that’ll help us out?”

“Maybe. We learned today that Dorothy Samenov was bisexual, but predominately lesbian. She was very secretive about it. Vickie Kittrie, the girl who found her, was her lover. Samenov had been married, but divorced for about six years. But she still dated a number of men until about a year ago when she went strickly lesbian.”

“What about Moser?”

“Not as far as we can determine at this point, but we’re still looking into it. The only thing that connects them so far is the S&M paraphernalia and the fact that Moser’s husband was employed at a company that bought computer programs from Samenov.”

“Okay,” Grant said. “Let me tell you what I see here, and then we’ll come back and pick up on this. You read the articles?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I want to emphasize that for right now I’m going to be talking in generalities, but maybe there’ll be something here you can build on, give you some direction.” Without waiting for a comment, he went right into his assessment.

“At first glance, both victims in these two cases seem to be in the low-risk category: Moser, an upper-middle-class housewife and mother, active in community services and attentive to her familial responsibilities; and Samenov, an upper-middle-class professional woman who doesn’t hit the singles bars and dates with moderate frequency. Both lived in low-crime areas; both were killed in low-crime areas. Now, the bisexual angle seems to throw a kink in our effort to classify them as low-risk victims, but I’m not sure it does. Statistically, bisexual women are a low-risk group—certainly in comparison to their male counterparts—and especially if they don’t frequent the lesbian bar scenes. Okay, that’s at first glance. However, when we add to this assessment the presence of sadomasochist paraphernalia found in the residences of both victims, the picture changes.

Their possession of that paraphernalia automatically puts them into a higher-risk bracket. This is necessary even though we don’t understand how this paraphernalia might have been used, that is, autoerotically, or for the purpose of enhancing innocuous fantasies during sexual play with a partner, or for actual pain-inflicting activities. If either woman used them for the former two reasons, then we can probably put her back in the low-risk category. But if the latter is the case, she’s higher risk because to some degree she’s leading a double life and her ‘other’ life moves in a high-risk environment.”

There was a slight pause, and Palma thought she heard Grant drink something.

“Normally,” he continued, “we identify a serial murderer as someone who’s involved in three or more separate homicides with a cooling-off period in between. The cooling-off period can be days, weeks, or months. Even though you have only two homicides here, I think we can justifiably anticipate a serial killer because of the distinct behavior. It’s highly unlikely that these cases would be unrelated. And they demonstrate the kinds of behavior that we’ve come to understand are the characteristics of a sexual serial killer. This man doesn’t kill because he’s involved in a criminal enterprise; he doesn’t kill for selfish or cause-specific reasons such as a family dispute, or self-defense, to steal drugs or whatever. He kills for sexual reasons, reasons that have meaning only for him.

“The offender risk in both these cases was moderate to low. Moser, in a private hotel room with no danger of interruption for hours; Samenov, in a private home with no other family members and no immediate danger of interruption.

“Both victims were killed approximately between eight o’clock and ten o’clock in the evening. The murderer had plenty of time to act out whatever fantasy he found necessary for satisfaction, and yet he was not at the scene long enough to run any great risk of discovery—under the circumstances.”

Grant paused for another drink. “This’s hot tea,” he suddenly explained, “not scotch. Maybe I’ll do scotch later,” he kind of laughed. “Are you with me? I’m barreling right on through it, so pull me up if you want.”

“No, everything’s fine. I’m taking notes.” Grant’s unexpected aside about the tea and scotch, and his solicitious question about rushing her, took her by surprise. His demeanor up until then had been polite but businesslike, which had already influenced her mental image of him. Now that image softened. It was good to hear that tone of concern in a male voice again; it had been a while. She wanted to reciprocate the kindness, but she was too slow, too long out of the habit, and he was filling the silence before she could speak.

“Okay. Now, as for crime scene scenarios I’m largely baffled,” Grant continued. “And the major sticking point is not knowing whether Moser was also a closet bisexual. All we know so far is that she was heterosexual. If we knew for sure, either way, we could begin building on that as a reflection of something about the killer’s personality. But as it stands, we don’t know whether it was a fluke—from the offender’s point of view—that Samenov happened to be bisexual, or whether this offender is specifically targeting bisexual women. It would make a tremendous difference in constructing his personality if we knew. So, rather than offer you something misleading on this score, I’m going to bypass reconstructing the crime scene scenario. I just don’t believe I know enough to do it.

“However, I do see enough here to know you’re dealing with an ‘organized’ murderer rather than a ‘disorganized’ murderer, though you have to keep in mind that even though our profiling techniques have identified and categorized sexual killers into these two general classes, in reality the crime scenes are often a mixture of the two characteristics. Still, these killings demonstrate a predominantly ‘organized’ murderer at work.

“Let’s go down the checklist of the crime scenes of organized murderers.”

Palma scrambled through her articles to find the section on the distinguishing characteristics of organized and disorganized murderers. There were behavioral characteristics and crime scene characteristics, and she wanted to have them for reference while Grant was reviewing them.

“The killings are planned.” Grant began ticking them off. “Moser acted according to a prearrangement, checking into the hotel under an assumed name. In both cases the offender brought his own ligatures, and his own cutting instrument, and his own makeup. He knew what he was going to be doing and what he’d need to do it.

“There was no weapon or any physical evidence left by the killer at the crime scenes. Nothing overlooked in haste, none of the ligatures or cutting instruments inadvertently mislaid.

“The killer personalized his victims: both women were near the same age and blond. Both were made up in a specific way. Have you compared the photographs of the two women?”

“Yes, I did,” Palma said.

“What’d you see?”

“The same shade of eye makeup on each, the same hairstyle. The rouge was the same.”

“Exactly the same,” Grant said. “The way he used the makeup was exactly the same. Same style arch to the eyebrows, the same dip to the center of the upper lip when he used the lipstick…he even did that on Samenov, though her lips didn’t actually follow that configuration. It was almost as if he had painted a face on her. It seems that these women in their natural state—before he touches them—have to conform to a particular ‘type.’ But beyond that, after he has completely overpowered them, he ‘perfects’ a preconceived mental image of what he wants them to look like by using makeup.

“The killer controls the situation. Both women allowed themselves to be tied by their wrists and ankles. They were beaten after being immobilized, not before. The crime scene reflects overall control by the killer, including the use of ligatures. The folded clothes, the meticulous cleanup. Incidentally, often when a detective sees this sort of ‘maintenance’ at a crime they think…ex-con. He’s cleaning up after himself, covering his tracks. But in sexual homicides you have to consider that much of this may be something compulsive in his behavior that has nothing at all to do with being street smart. He may be doing it to satisfy an inner need.

“The killer initiates aggressive acts while the victim is still alive. In these two cases the facial beatings, the vaginal bruising and abrasions, the bite marks, all inflicted while the victim was alive. But in each of your cases there’s one exception. The autopsy shows that Moser’s nipple was cut off postmortem, probably because this was his first killing and he hadn’t perfected his procedure. Also—you don’t have the photographs in front of you now, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m looking at my copies and you can see hesitancy cuts, almost scratches, around the nipple—an indication that he was new at it. Sometimes, even with a guy like this, the first time you cut up a human body is a little unnerving. But with these guys, it’s usually only the first few moments, from then on they take to it like a duck to water. In fact, this guy conforms to the true character traits of organized killers when he gets to Samenov. He mutilates her before she is dead, having to gag her to muffle her screams. Except for the eyelids. Those were removed after death only because he couldn’t keep her head still enough to do it before she was dead, and it was important to him not to do a messy job of it.”

Grant paused, but it was only for emphasis. Palma quickly adjusted the telephone she was holding between the side of her chin and her raised shoulder. She was frowning. “…he couldn’t keep her head still enough to do it before she was dead…important to him not to do a messy job of it…” How the hell could Grant make these kinds of statements?

“Fantasy and ritual are paramount for the organized offender,” Grant went on. “This is very important to remember because it’s a window into the guy’s mind. There’s evidence of it everywhere, both victims are blond, the use of certain kinds of ligatures which he must provide himself, the use of a particular kind of makeup which he must provide himself, and the specific manner of application, the specific funereal positioning of the body, and the removal of the eyelids, which is a far more significant amputation than the removal of the nipples. This guy has a specific fantasy. And watch carefully on the next one: you’re likely to see something new with the next victim, something additional as he tries to ‘perfect’ his fantasy.

“Now we come to a couple of anomalies. First: usually an organized murderer will hide the body. He does not want it to be discovered, as the disorganized murderer often does. To do this it’s usually necessary to transport the body, and of course it wasn’t done in either of these cases. Second: often organized killers don’t know their victims even though they may have watched or stalked them for hours, or even days, prior to killing them. Their victims are targeted strangers. But in these cases there’s every indication that this killer knew both women.

Moser checked into a hotel to be with him. Samenov apparently let him into her house. They were not strangers to him.”

Grant paused for another sip of tea, for which Palma was grateful. She had been jotting notes as furiously as possible and her finger was aching after having filled several pages in her notepad with wild, hasty handwriting and a puzzle of arrows, boxes, underlined phrases, exclamation marks, and circled words. Grant was spilling a wealth of information.

“So who are you looking for?” Grant was off again. He was relentless. “In general, experience tells us that sexual homicides are the exclusive domain of males. There have never been any female sexual killers. All other kinds, yes, but no sexually motivated female killers. So we eliminate half the population right away. Crimes of this nature are overwhelmingly intraracial. Not always, but mostly. So, until we know more, we can consider that we’re dealing with a white male.

“He’s a man of above-average intelligence, socially and sexually competent. He’ll be employed in a skilled profession, not a laborer. He’ll have a high birth order, the first or second child in a family. He will have used alcohol during the crimes and will have suffered some precipitating situational stress: a divorce, job loss, some emotional trauma that pushed him too far. More than likely he’ll be living with a partner and will have good mobility, a car of his own. He will follow his crimes in the news media and may even try to interject himself into the investigation by being a helpful witness, a volunteer of some insignificant information. Also, if you find this guy’s home you may find newspaper clippings of the crimes. You may also discover that he’s taken a personal souvenir from the victims or their homes—some piece of jewelry or clothing, or even pieces of their bodies.”

Grant heaved a big sigh, and Palma heard the chink of the teacup.

“Questions,” he said.

Jesus, she thought. “No, everything’s perfectly clear.”

There was a pause for a couple of beats and then Grant laughed, an easy laugh that had no urgency about it. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I could ease off a little.”

“There’s a lot to absorb,” Palma said. “Two questions.

First. What piece of information would help you more than anything else at this point?”

“To know if Sandra Moser was bisexual,” Grant answered. “That would tell us worlds about the offender. It’s such a key attribute. Oddly, in profiling sexual homicides, the more bizarre behavior exhibited at the scene, or in the circumstances surrounding it, the easier it makes our job. Anomalies are always more informative to us than conformities because they’re revealing. They’re personality markers just as phenotypes are blood markers. And remember, always: behavior reflects personality. What he does is how he thinks.”

“What’s the best advice you can give me at this point?” Palma asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Try to crawl inside the guy’s mind,” Grant said without hesitation. “Everything you do, every piece of information you seek or get, every person you interview, every question you ask, should be done for this one purpose. When you’re able to start thinking like he thinks, when you can anticipate him, then you’ve got him, and solved a part of your problem.”