That’s when I felt it-the cold clutching at my heart. The paralyzing, stabbing pain in the chest. Shortness of breath. Panic.
Edgar. Had he found me? Had he given me his drug and chained me here, waiting for the right moment to begin whatever sick Poe-derived deprivation he had in store for me? I pulled at my bonds, but they were secure. I was chained down like a dog on a leash, utterly at his mercy, powerless to help myself. Any moment, he would return with his axe, his dental implements, his-
“Ready for some coffee?”
Patrick appeared in the doorway, carrying a small tray with two cups. “Maybe I’m wrong, but you seemed less the tall-glass-of-OJ type and more the stiff-cuppa-joe type.”
“Why the hell am I chained up?”
He looked up absently. “Oh. Right. Sorry about that.” He put the tray down and fumbled in his pockets for a key.
“You forgot? Is this some twisted power trip for you? You get your jollies by chaining up women with your big stud FBI toys?”
“I didn’t want to do it.”
I quieted. “You didn’t?”
“Do you remember anything about last night?”
Thinking hurt, but I made myself do it anyway. I recalled the phone call from Edgar, of course, the bar, the thing on the hood of the car. After that, it got a little hazy. Well, actually, it was a void.
“Maybe you’re used to, um, this sort of activity, Susan, but I have to tell you-I’m not.”
“Look, just undo the cuffs, okay?” He reached over and freed me. He smelled good. He was already scrubbed and dressed and aftershaved and ready to tackle the day.
I didn’t realize how stiff my arms were until I could move them again. They ached. I managed to work them back down to my side. They tingled as if they had been asleep for a thousand years. “Where are my clothes?”
He pointed. I crawled out, clutching the sheet to me, and started dressing. “I hope I didn’t-”
“No. You were great.”
“I… was?”
“Unpredictable. Intense. But great. Really.” He grinned. “Something like that is good for you every now and then. Shakes things up a little.”
“Yeah. I feel the same way,” I said, wondering what the hell had happened.
“I got some food from the diner downstairs if you want it. But my hunch is-” I made a gagging face. “Yeah. That was my hunch.” He smiled. “I’ll be in the next room. When you’re ready, I’ll drive you to work. You don’t have a car, remember?”
“Okay.” It went against the grain, but damn it, I had to say it. “Patrick?”
“Yeah?”
I tried to smile. “Thanks.”
I actually ventured a slice of toast as we drove to the office. And even after we arrived, I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye. We walked together to my desk.
“What’s this? Another package?” I picked it up. It was about the size of a bowling ball, wrapped in brown paper. “It has my name on it.”
“Susan! Get rid of it!” Patrick cried. He shouted for assistance, but I was already unwrapping it. “Susan! We need to have it-”
“It’s not a booby trap. He wants me alive.”
“Not again! For God’s sake-”
Too late. I lifted the lid.
The stench emanating from that box was unlike anything I had ever smelled in my life. And I’ve been around corpses, sickness, all kinds of filth.
“My God!” Patrick cried, covering his nose and mouth, staring at the wet, viscous, blackish red lump in the box. “What is it?”
There was a card, hand-lettered in block print. He hadn’t bothered to encode it.
DR. FARA AND I HAD A NICE HEART-TO-HEART. SEE?
BEHAVIORAL PROFILE-EDGAR
BY SUSAN PULASKI, M.A., LVPD,
AND PATRICK CHAFFEE, BSS, FBI
Based upon what is generally accepted about serial killers and their crimes, Edgar is probably a white man, between twenty and forty. He is more likely a book-reader than an athlete. He may have some physical deformity. He is literate, perhaps highly so. He is intelligent, as evidenced by his familiarity with and adoption of the works of Poe and his proficiency with ciphers. Various witness statements have described him as both tall and short, thin and wide. Although this could indicate that Edgar is in fact two people, it is more likely that some of the descriptions are inaccurate. At this time, we have no way of knowing which reports are erroneous.
Although he has used a southern accent in his telephone communications, that is probably an affectation associated with his idolization of Poe. If he has any natural accent at all, it is more likely that his origins are in the western United States, Nevada or the surrounding states. Although he has used many Vegas-area locations for his crimes, we cannot assume that he is a native or even that he currently resides here, especially given the propensity of serial killers to move from one place to another. It is possible that the Sin City reputation attracted him. Many of his actions-punishing strippers, removing body adornments or nail paint, dyed hair, etc.-evidence a desire to enforce old-fashioned values.
There are no indications of great wealth, but he must have some income flow. Several of his crimes have required unusual props or equipment. All have involved a drug that cannot be obtained legally in this country without a prescription. Tire tracks suggest that he drives a truck.
Serial killers commonly bear great hostility toward women, often triggered by a negative early female influence. In this case, however, despite the fact that he has murdered at least four women, there are some indications that he holds women in an almost Victorian-era reverence. His background may reflect the conflicted influence of both females he adored and females who abused him. In any case, he likely had a violent and chaotic childhood with little stability. Broken marriages, domestic violence, and early exposure to death are all likely. It is also likely that the male head of his household was absent for a protracted period during his childhood.
Given this rather bleak upbringing, detectives should look for an adult who as an adolescent, or even earlier, was lonely, isolated, withdrawn, angry, and violent. He likely had an active fantasy life in which he imagined himself an important or powerful personage. His fantasies may have involved domination and retribution against those who he felt wronged him. He was probably preoccupied with sex, even more so than most adolescent boys, and had no close friends, much less a girlfriend or sexual partner. During these years, his psychological disorder would have become progressively more apparent, making interpersonal relationships more unlikely. Sports, extracurricular activities, and hobbies would not have appealed to him. He may well have developed an interest in pornography, possibly involving young girls.
The psychological portrait of Edgar that emerges from all the information we have gathered is that of a narcissistic, self-absorbed, antisocial individual. He has an insatiable desire for attention. Despite his antisocial tendencies, deep down he wants to impress, wants people to be appreciative of his work. The crimes Edgar has committed evidence an ability to compartmentalize and rationalize extreme behavior. Thus far, he has acted in conformity with a preestablished pattern, but his recent variation from his previous victimology model-in order to wreak revenge on Fara Spencer-suggests that his innate psychological controls may be slipping.
Edgar’s demands for attention-the coded messages, the gifts, the phone conversations, depositing corpses in clever “theme” locations where they are certain to be found-are all classically infantile. Presumably his basic needs were not met early in life and he is psychologically overcompensating for that deficiency now. He has not progressed beyond the self-absorption that characterizes the infantile stage. Although he justifies his acts with some purpose we do not as yet understand, fundamentally he is trying to give himself the psychological nutrients he did not receive in youth.
A sense of superiority and a desire for control characterize the antisocial personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder. The
DSM-IV
does not require us to choose between the two diagnoses, and indeed, Edgar shows traits of both. Because Edgar is afraid of being controlled by outside forces, he will increasingly attempt to control others and subjugate them to his will.
Another disturbing possibility is dissociative personality disorder-what is commonly called multiple personality disorder. Although this has been used in the past as a legal defense by multiple murderers who showed no true pathology of it (Bianchi, Gacy), there are instances of it being a bona fide aspect of the psychological makeup of a serial killer. Of course, even normal personalities can develop imaginary friends and playmates, talk to themselves, etc. But for those suffering from the disorder, one or more alter personalities acquires a specific sense of self. The alter personality can become an outlet for the individual’s worst instincts and desires. Should such a personality emerge, the scale of Edgar’s activities could escalate to a horrifying degree…
O
’Bannon looked up from the thirty-page document he held in both hands. “Good report, Susan. Damn good.”
I fluttered my eyelashes. “Well, I try. Do you mean you’ve actually read it?”
“Twice. And I plan to read it again tonight. I get something new out of it each time. I’m giving you a special commendation for it.”
“Well, be sure to give Patrick credit, too. He came in late, but he’s been a huge help.”
“Whoever did it, it’s brilliant. I think you’ve nailed him.”
“I think so, too.”
“Has the lab said whether that heart belonged to Fara Spencer or not?”
I sat on the opposite corner of his desk, facing him. “At this point all they can say for certain is that it came from an adult female of approximately her age. But they’re planning a DNA analysis-compared against a sample taken from her daughter’s corpse-as soon as possible. And of course it was pretty sliced up. In addition to all the other exclusionary factors in Edgar’s profile, I think we can rule out the possibility that he’s a trained surgeon.”
“And the coded message? The one in the bottom of the box.”
“To my astonishment, Darcy wasn’t able to solve it instantly. But he’s working on it. Apparently Edgar made this one even more devious than the previous ones.”
O’Bannon folded his hands in his lap. “The boys tell me you’re seeing Patrick Chaffee. Socially. True?”
I squirmed. “Sorta.”
He nodded. “Fine man. Solid. Far as I can see. He’d be good for you.” He nodded again, then turned his eyes toward the window. “Don’t hurt my boy.”
I rose to my feet. “I’ll take care of him, Chief. Promise.”
We were in a classroom setting-a private conference mandated by O’Bannon between me and all the detectives on Granger’s team. I didn’t know what the point was, with Granger so openly hostile to my work. When he was with his boys, at any rate. O’Bannon told me he’d seen Granger after hours marking up a copy of my report with a yellow highlighter.
“So we’re looking for some freak who’s talking to himself?”
“Well, perhaps,” I said, with a degree of tolerance that startled even me. “And there are other markers, too. The fake accent. The assumed Victorian sensibility. The obsession with the works of Poe.”
“How could we search for any of that?”
“Well,” said one of Granger’s new lieutenants, “we could check the libraries. See who’s been reading Poe.”
“Or the video stores,” suggested another. “Aren’t there a lot of Poe movies?”
“Both good ideas,” I said, giving them the verbal pat on the back I knew they’d never get from Granger. “And don’t forget this little prank he’s playing with the bodies, depositing them in faux graveyards. How many of those can there be?”
“A good Internet search could tell us,” said the first lieutenant. “I’ll get on that immediately.”
“Even if you don’t find him, any action that disrupts his usual patterns could be valuable. Remember-we’ve gotten more information from his last little escapade with Fara Spencer than all his previous murders put together. Why? Because that crime wasn’t part of his plan. For once, he acted impulsively. He saw an opportunity and he took it. If we can get him to do that again, he may make another sloppy mistake. He may be smart, but he’s still working under some handicaps.”
“Like what?”
I gave the class a little smile. “He’s nuts.”
21
If I wasn’t mistaken, my lawyer’s office was in one of the high-rises Howard Hughes used to live in while he was hiding out in Vegas, before he took up semipermanent residence at the Sands in 1966. Everyone seemed to think he’d lived here forever, maybe even died here, but in fact he was only in Vegas about four years, made some bad investments, split. From publicity hound to Vegas recluse-although I suppose the hermit routine was another way of generating attention. But while he was here, he influenced world politics-and football games-consorted with (and according to some, bribed) both LBJ and Nixon, got progressively balmier, and tried to buy ABC to prevent miscegenation on
The Dating Game
(true!), all the while protected from the world by his bubble of loyal attendants. Until he died. But hey-he got a parkway named after him, one you just about had to use to get to the airport. Could be worse.
When we arrived at the courtroom, I saw that the Shepherds were looking their usual saintly selves. He was wearing a plain-vanilla suit and tie; she was wearing a cotton print maxi. Did they always dress like that, I wondered, or was this a courtroom ploy to show how different they were from me? Particularly in dullness. I would’ve preferred to avoid them altogether, but I didn’t want to be rude. The judge’s bailiff or someone might be watching.
“Nice to see you again,” I lied. “Rachel couldn’t come?”
“The judges prefer not to have the minors present at these hearings,” Mrs. Shepherd explained. “If the judge wants to talk to her, he’ll call her to his chambers. Besides, she has basketball practice.”