After a moment of silence, I continued. “Okay, next is victimology. What did the victims share in common, what did the killings have in common? Any leads there? Agent Woodson?”
Woodson took over. “All the victims have been in their late twenties or early thirties, all white.” She flicked to a slide of their faces, pulled from their driver’s licenses. “There are no obvious links among the three victims to date, although we’re cross-referencing the credit card receipts of each as far back as three years. Beyond all three sharing Caucasian origin, there are no demographic commonalities of note. One victim was married, the other two were single. Two blondes, one brunette. One girl had a tattoo, the others didn’t. A Virgo, a Sagittarius, and a Libra.”
At this St. Clair and Harmon chuckled. “Not leaving any stones unturned, huh?” Harmon asked.
Woodson shrugged. “We’re covering every commonality angle we can dream up right now, beyond the standard ones. Doesn’t look like they share a single common link at this point. I could go through the laundry list, but won’t. There haven’t been any hits yet. We’ll keep the team updated as data become available. That’s all we’ve got for now.” She sat back down.
“Okay then,” I said, “if there are no questions, let’s move on to how they were killed. Terry?”
Terry flicked to the next slide, a close-up photograph of one of the knife marks discovered on the bodies. He also fanned a photocopied stack of micrographs around the table. “The weapon of choice is a knife,” he said, “and these are some close-ups of one of the knife wounds. Notice the jagged and imperfect serrated edge that leaves this sort of a pattern, a tick-tick-tick-tack-tick sort of repeat.” Terry highlighted each of five jagged marks with a laser pointer. “This pattern was found on the body of the first victim.”
He clicked to the next slide, a side-by-side comparison of two separate knife wounds, blown up to about twentyfold magnification. “That same tick-tick-tick-tack-tick pattern shows up on knife marks on the other two bodies as well. We’re pretty certain the same knife did this. We’re matching fractal edges right now by electron microscopy, just to put a statistical certainty to it, but we’re already in the ninety-nine percent likely range, by eye. The computer will take that likelihood even higher.” He paused before adding, “Trust us, the same knife did this, and the same killer is responsible for all three victims so far.”
He flicked to the next slide, a photocopied report form. “We’ve also run a preliminary scan of the weapons database in Quantico and reconstructed the blade that most likely caused the slash marks on the victims. It suggests that the cutting blade is from a Khyber knife series, a heavy-duty knife with a ten-inch blade and a locking mechanism.” Terry paused. “Suggesting our killer had a rural upbringing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Khybers are hunting knives, and the broken edges imply it’s seen better days, so to speak.” Terry shrugged. “He may not be a mountain man. It may just possess some sort of special meaning to him, since he’s clearly committed himself to using this rather imperfect weapon on his victims rather than a sharper blade.”
I thought of the jackknife my own father had given me, which I’d carried in my pocket every day for the last twenty years. If nothing else, Terry’s hypothesis was worth keeping in the back of our minds. “Okay. Anything else?”
“All of the victims’ cars have been found at places of business, abandoned. A strip mall, a bar, and a boutique. These victims were followed, then abducted while conducting their day-to-day activities. We’re definitely not dealing with a simpleminded, opportunistic killer. We have an organized killer here, in case that’s not apparent to anyone.”
“Thanks, Terry.” I waited a moment but still no one spoke, so I continued. “Okay. Next topic of interest, we know the cuts are premortem, because there’s plenty of blood loss from the wounds.” I highlighted the close-up cut marks still on the screen. “Although the serrated edge is imperfect, Terry’s photos just reinforced how straight these cuts are when they’re made. And yet these victims were alive. We don’t understand how the killer is able to make such straight lines on still-living victims.”
“The victims make no movement at all in response?” one officer asked.
I nodded. “For some reason, the victims are unable to resist.”
“But how could that be?” a different officer asked.
“The victims are either forcefully restrained or hypnotized or numbed or drugged or something. That’s the only way those slash marks could stay so linear but still cause active bleeding. And there’s no evidence the victims were restrained physically because we’ve got no ligature marks or bruises. So that leaves us with victims who were hypnotized, drugged, or otherwise incapacitated.”
“What about the toxicology reports?” someone asked.
“Good question,” I said, “but they showed us nothing initially.” I refocused on Woodson. “Do you have any updates based on the reanalysis you’ve been doing lately?”
“An update maybe, but not a lead. Not yet.” Everyone turned in unison to hear what she had to say next. “Even though the initial tox screens came back normal for all three victims, I did notice that all three victims had extremely high levels of caffeine in their system. I had hoped this might suggest a commonality of a coffeehouse used by the killer to identify and select his victims. But it’s an unlikely lead at best.”
“So tox is a dead end?” Raritan spoke up from Quantico for the first time, over the videoconference monitor.
Woodson swung her eyes to him. “For now, yes, but I want to take a more in-depth look at the raw data. There’s something strange about the caffeine peaks from the original mass spec traces, but I can’t put my finger on it just yet. We’ll look into it.”
I waited, but Woodson was finished. “So,” I said, “all in all, the relatively sparse physical data, the victimology, and the MO give us an initial profile that suggests we have a mobile killer with a car, someone who’s local, likely a Caucasian male due to the victimology, who may be using some sort of nonphysical restraint while he slashes his victims, after they’re abducted, while they’re still alive. Victims are abducted in daylight from out-of-the-way locations. In short, we appear to have an organized, non-opportunistic killer on our hands.”
I clicked to the next slide. “Now for the crime scene profile. The SWK takes his time here, folks. He takes at least enough time at the crime scene to position the victim’s body. He dresses her up, but spread-eagles her legs. It’s sexually evocative posturing without a hint of sexual gratification for the killer. He’s obviously not trying to elicit excitement in the body positioning; he’s just positioning the victim for discovery. He’s banking on its shock value once the person who finds the apparently living body realizes that the victim is dead.”
Raritan spoke up again from the monitor. “This is the strangest aspect of the entire case, in my estimation. Why does he cover them up if he goes through all the effort to position the women sexually? What do you make of it, Lucas?”
“Not sure. Most of the so-called lust murderers position bodies sexually, but the bodies are always naked, scantily clad, or even left midviolation with a foreign object. I honestly don’t have a clue why the SWK would pose his victims in sexually suggestive positions but fully clothed. That one’s open to interpretation all day long. No precedent, as far as I know.”
Raritan nodded on the screen.
“Any trace evidence?” asked one of the locals.
I glanced at Terry and shook my head imperceptibly before answering. “Nope, nothing so far. No saliva, no semen, no skin under the victims’ fingernails. Nada.” I looked around the rest of the room and shrugged. “We just have to believe we’ll come across some physical evidence eventually, if we keep looking.”
Terry stared at me, but didn’t object. I knew he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t at least mention our pet theory about the bloody lettering on the victims’ foreheads possibly coming from our killer. But he’d seen the slight shake of my head and had trusted my instincts. Although an exciting possibility, the idea that our killer might
intentionally
be leaving his own blood behind was just too speculative for this forum. Terry and I would need more evidence before I was willing to float that idea in front of Raritan.
“So what about the signature, Lucas?” Parkman asked over the video monitor. “Any ideas there?”
Due to a slight delay in the video feed, Parkman moved his lips about a half second ahead of each word. Despite the seemingly earnest question, a smug smile appeared on Parkman’s face before the question ended over the audio conference speakers.
I knew his game. He was hoping to bait me into a premature interpretation, just like the Alvarez case. He’d get no such pleasure from me. “No ideas of my own,” I answered pleasantly, “but we could discuss the killer’s signature as a group if that would be worthwhile.” I looked around the room with an earnest expression that surpassed Parkman’s. “I mean, as long as we’re finished reviewing all the other evidence here first?” I kept my tone as similar to a second-grade teacher’s as possible, and watched in silent glee as Parkman’s body language stiffened to an almost comical extent on the other end of the video monitor.
Everyone stayed silent. A discussion of the signature was probably just what they were waiting for, and probably the main reason they’d come.
“Okay then,” I said, “let’s talk about the Snow White Killer’s signature, at least to this point in time.”
I flicked to the next slide and the words “A TAN CAT” shone in big red letters on the projection screen. “It’s a complex signature, for certain, and it’s composed of two distinct components. First, there’s the deliberate message left on the foreheads of the victims.”
“What the hell does that mean, ‘a tan cat’?” one of the sheriffs from Mississippi asked.
“Honestly? At this point, your guess is as good as mine. It’s not much to go on, but we’ve turned it over to our linguistics colleagues in the Jackson field office nonetheless.” I raised my eyebrows in Shelly’s direction. “Do you want to mention anything at this juncture?”
Shelly stood and addressed the group. “Well, our group typically assesses verbal or written tendencies in kidnapping and ransom cases. But from time to time we also work with cryptographers and code breakers in the Bureau on cases like this.”
“So y’all think them words are a code of some sort?” asked one of the officers from Saint Tammany Parish.
“It’s possible, but we’re only dealing with three words so far. We’ve exhausted references to tan cats in English and American literature and found nothing to date. Given its brevity, it’s likely that we’ve only found a portion of what is intended to become a much longer message from the Snow White Killer at this point.”
“Reminds me of a child’s story, or some sort of a fairy tale or something,” Donny said, from the back of the room. “A tan cat,” he repeated softly.
“It reminded us of that, too, Donny,” Shelly said. “But we’ve not found any references to a tan cat specifically in any fairy tales or children’s stories so far. ‘Puss in Boots,’ the Cheshire cat from
Alice in Wonderland,
you name it. None of them are tan, per se.”
She shrugged with a look of genuine disappointment. “We wish we could help more, but we just don’t have enough to go on for now, Lucas. That’s all we’ve got. For now.”
“Thanks, Shell,” I said, and looked around the table. “Any more questions?”
The room stayed silent, so I continued. “Then let’s consider the final aspect of the Snow White Killer’s modus operandi.” I flicked to the last slide depicting a photograph of an apple, sliced in half, with a razor embedded inside. “Here’s the second part of the signature. We just discussed the dangers of trying to prematurely interpret the brief message our killer is leaving behind. It’s safe to say it’s probably too early to conjecture on the meaning of the razored apples he leaves behind as well.”
“This guy is leaving apples with razors inside?”
“That’s right,” I said, looking at each of the officers around the table. “So for those of you who don’t know, our killer has left each of his victims holding an apple with a razor inside, every time. Maybe the razors inside the apples symbolize Halloween, or maybe it symbolizes some sick attempt to bring an urban legend to life. We really don’t know.”
“So why show us at all, if you don’t know what it means?” A younger cop in the front row asked, leaning back.
“Well,” I answered, “mainly so you guys can figure out if you’re dealing with the true Snow White Killer or not, at your next copycat confession from the next schizophrenic that walks through your doors.” I let the simple explanation hang in the silent room for several seconds before continuing. “We need to keep this peculiar aspect of the signature to ourselves,” I said, “at least for now, if we want to leverage it for verifying or nullifying confessions down the road. The only people that know the killer is leaving behind a razor in his apples are the officials on this conference call and the killer himself. Let’s keep it that way.”
For the last five minutes of the videoconference, I summarized the relevant facts and reviewed the assignments of the various agents. Shelly would continue to coordinate linguistics and code deciphering, while Faraday and Tucker would interview neighbors and families. St. Clair and Harmon would review the data and items recovered from the searches of the victims’ houses. Last, Woodson and I were going to function as rovers. Wherever we were needed, we’d go. We were the points of contact for all the local departments.
The session adjourned and officers and agents filed out of the room. Donny waited around and shook my hand after the rest of the locals left.
“Don’t be a stranger,” he said, with a tired smile. “I sure as shit hope I don’t need to call you anytime soon.”
“I sure as shit hope you don’t, either.”
Donny nodded somberly. Once to me, once to Woodson, and then he left.
After everyone cleared out, Woodson and I sat back down at the conference table and looked up at the video screen, where Raritan and Parkman still waited. Parkman spoke first, in a tone that almost sounded reconciliatory. “Nice debriefing.”