As if he’d had the words for all the emotions that had flooded him when they’d burst through that door two years ago and found Glen Powell with his gun against the woman’s temple. The exact moment he realized just how badly he’d miscalculated. Adrenaline, fear, anger, determination. Guilt.
The high-rises had given way to housing developments on either side of the interstate. Not scenery that should have kept Abbie’s gaze rapt on its passing, but her silence made it all too easy to hear the echo of that long-ago voice in his mind.
Do you think you would have handled the situation differently if you hadn’t been drinking the night before, Detective?
Wrong question, Doc. It wasn’t the bottle the night before that had been the problem. It was the ones he’d consumed throughout the whole damn case that had blinded him to the perp’s identity.
We acted in a manner in keeping with the facts we had at hand. The outcome couldn’t have been foreseen.
He’d been too late to save Deborah Hanna, but had managed to save his own ass. The exchange hardly seemed even. His team had been cleared of any mishandling of that final scene. But the stench of failure clung to a reputation, was impossible to dislodge.
“You know, there isn’t going to be much for you to see at the beach house,” he said abruptly, shaking off the memories. “Mayor Richards barely gave us time to process the scene before he was hiring new decorators to gut the place. Must have decided that wasn’t enough, because I hear it’s on the market now.”
“That’s a problem when coming in midway through the investigation,” she said. “But I like to see for myself the security that’s in place surrounding the scene. The transportation routes and cover provided nearby. I get a clearer picture of the UNSUB when I can look at what environment he chose for his attacks, and what precautions or risks he took. It would have been even better if I could make these visits at the same time of day the kidnapping occurred.”
He knew where she was going with this. “No way to get an accurate picture of the Savannah State campus as it was last spring with no classes in session right now. Besides, Dixon promised Richards that no one would be allowed inside his place without the lead investigator present.” The landscape was flattening, the evergreens and towering oaks growing scarcer. “I could have asked for you, but I don’t know that he would have changed his mind.” He’d have been reluctant to contact the mayor on her behalf, at any case, and be grilled for an hour about their progress. Right now Dixon was handling City Hall, and that’s what he was paid to do.
Abbie remained silent, and he glanced her way again. Another woman he might figure was sulking because she hadn’t gotten her way, but he was beginning to know her well enough to doubt that. She was working through something in her mind, and he wouldn’t hear from her until she did so.
A few minutes later, she proved him right. “So it was dusk when Amanda was snatched on her way across campus after work. The UNSUB used a surprise attack again. He waited until she got on the bike path through a more wooded section and then jumped her from behind. Fewer people than usual were out and about because of finals week.”
He took up the verbal reenactment. “Those paths were built wide enough to allow use by small campus vehicles. He probably had a car stowed nearby and dragged her to it.”
“She was the only one whose tox screen showed something other than the same elements the others were injected with.”
He nodded, checking his mirrors and changing lanes. They were making pretty good time, primarily because there were few people heading to the beach in the middle of the afternoon midweek. The same drive at this time tomorrow would be hellish. “He used chloroform to knock her out immediately. Probably bound and gagged her in the vehicle. Hard to say because she didn’t come to until at the beach house.”
“And now with Billings’s rape, that makes two out of four times that he’s transported a victim,” she mused.
He didn’t follow her thinking. “Billings was a dump site. For Richards, transporting her was necessary to enact the crime.”
She was looking at him now, impatience showing in her expression. “Forget Billings for the moment. He took a huge risk with Richards. Even disregarding who her grandfather was. And there was no doubt he knew about the relationship. He’s too careful, plans too meticulously for it to be otherwise. And Amanda said the location of the beach house was well known on campus. She’d had parties there frequently.”
“That’s what she told us.”
“Given the kind of assault he plans, he needs time and privacy. Everyone else was attacked in her own home, but a dorm room isn’t going to cut it. Why choose a victim you have to go to so much trouble for? Why risk it?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it. “You’re the profiler. I thought you were supposed to be giving me answers, not more questions.”
She made a distracted gesture with her hand. “My preliminary profile is on your desk. I had a copy sent to Captain Brown and Commander Dixon this morning, too.”
Neither man had mentioned it when Ryne had checked in briefly to update them on the Juarez search, but maybe they hadn’t read it yet. Ryne hadn’t been at his desk all day, so he certainly hadn’t noticed the file.
Then another thought struck him. “When did you complete it?”
She was looking out the window again. “It’s been a work in progress. It was largely done already.”
“And you’re a terrible liar.”
She sent him a cool look. “I happen to be an excellent liar.” At his silence, she finally said, “Okay, I finished it last night when I got home. I couldn’t sleep. But it only took a couple hours to finish up.”
Sleep hadn’t been any kinder to him. He’d still been too wired from the events of the day. And the thought hit him that maybe they could have found a more pleasurable way to summon sleep had they been together.
He shook his head to clear it of the totally inappropriate thought. He could work with women, hell, he
had
worked with plenty of women without being tempted to mix his professional and personal lives. So that didn’t explain his growing awareness of Abbie in a way that owed nothing to the investigation they were working on.
Getting involved with her, even on a casual level, he decided grimly as he accelerated past a slow-moving RV, was the worst idea he’d entertained since coming to Savannah.
“Why don’t you give me the high points?”
“It’d make more sense in written form,” she began.
“Which I’m not going to get to read for hours yet, so summarize it for me.”
At first he didn’t think she’d answer. But finally she said, “I don’t claim to have a clear handle on him yet, because I’m still puzzled by his selection of victims. TV depiction aside, serial rapists typically don’t engage in specific, symbolic considerations when choosing their targets. He doesn’t seem to have a ‘type’ either, at least aside from low-risk attractive women. But it’s clear that we’re dealing with a sexual sadist. His attacks will be largely premeditated, never impulsive, and he’ll fantasize about them prior to the acts themselves.”
He couldn’t resist ribbing her. “You keep saying ‘he.’ You’re finally convinced it’s a man?”
She shot him a sidelong glance. “As I said before, he almost certainly is, although I won’t be
convinced
until we get evidence proving it. But for the record, my pronoun selection is chosen for ease of conversation, not as a reflection of my opinion on that subject, all right?”
He subsided, stifling a grin at the barely discernible edge to her tone. She was normally so composed, getting a rise out of her was an accomplishment.
“The surprise approach is often used by men who are uncertain of their abilities to approach the victim with a con, or to overpower them. But with the care he takes to avoid detection, I don’t want to give that fact too much importance. It may be just one more method he employs to ensure he isn’t identified. Most of these offenders have above average to high intelligence.”
She was warming up to her topic, turning, as much as the seat belt would allow, to face him. “Raiker has largely discounted the disorganized versus organized dichotomy, but I still find it an important descriptor, as long as evidentiary facts and information form the basis of the profile, rather than the descriptors themselves.”
He made an agreeing noise, although he had a flashback to a college calc course when the professor embarked upon an “explanation” in which the class got lost completely.
“So given that preface, I’d label this offender as organized, simply by virtue of the extent of preparation he does prior to the act. He takes a great deal of trouble to make sure he can’t be identified, which may be because he has no intention of killing the victim or to avoid being ID’d by a by stander. He’s been doing this a long time, at least leading up to it, and he won’t stop until he’s caught.”
“And you know that because . . .”
“He can’t,” she said simply. “We’re talking about someone who must intentionally inflict suffering to enhance his own arousal. And once he’s experienced that high, that power, nothing else will ever satisfy him.”
“So the porn won’t hold him any longer.”
She gave him an approving look. “Only in the short term, in between attacks. The reports have indicated that none of the victims were missing any personal items. No photo IDs, no lingerie.”
“Because this type of offender doesn’t take trophies?” Ryne guessed.
“Oh, he does. But he’s most likely to photograph or film the victim, either during the assault itself, or afterwards, posed in demeaning ways that will be gratifying for him later when he wants to relive the attack. None of the victims mentioned it, but once injected, they wouldn’t necessarily notice.”
A grim sense of revulsion filled him. “I hear rapists don’t do well in prison. Maybe that is better than a death penalty.”
“Sexual sadists, more than other rapists, are highly ritualistic. He’s acted these fantasies out long before these of fenses. Maybe with a willing partner, perhaps with a paid one.”
He glanced at the clock on the dash, wondering if Cantrell and McElroy had discovered anything while questioning prostitutes. “So he’s escalating.”
She nodded. “And he’s bold, but careful. That’s why I’m puzzled about his selection of Amanda Richards. He could have chosen any number of other women, heck, any number of other girls on that campus, with far less risk.”
Something in him stilled. “You’re saying she was chosen because of her relationship to the mayor.”
“We have to figure his selection of the victims is done as carefully as is his preparation for the attacks themselves. There’s no way he didn’t know of the relationship. So why her? It definitely was the most complex attempt made to date, with the greatest risk involved.”
“We spent a great deal of time and effort investigating just that angle,” he admitted. “Even considered the fact that the first rape was designed to make the second look like the act of a serial offender, when Amanda was the intended victim all along.”
Abbie’s tone was sharp. “That wasn’t in the report.”
“No kidding. Was it some sort of payback for someone the mayor pissed off? Believe me, those possibilities are endless. Or could it have been a ploy to distract him from the reelection campaign he’s engaged in, which, from all accounts, is brutal.”
“So you looked at his rival.”
Ryne nodded. “Inside and out. And the fact that he’s running against none other than the city’s most senior alderman . . . well, you see the need for discretion.” His voice was sour. “Can you imagine the press if the media got wind of the fact the mayor was using the SCMPD to investigate his political rival?”
“Politics reek at any time, but especially when they taint an investigation.”
“Exactly. Luckily we were able to convince the mayor after doing a bit of checking that Alderman Lewis had little to gain by arranging the rape, since the act casts the mayor in a more sympathetic light.”
“God,” Abbie muttered.
He wholeheartedly shared the disgust evident in her reply. “And the same thing was true of anyone who had a beef with the mayor. His granddaughter’s assault might be arranged, but to perpetuate three other rapes? The odds of that being the case decreased with every assault. And this unknown drug compound being used made it even less likely.”
“I agree. I’m not saying Amanda Richards doesn’t meet whatever twisted criteria this guy is using to make his selections. But he deliberately included her.”
She stopped suddenly, and he looked over at her. “What?”
“I was just wondering what the media coverage has been like surrounding the attacks. There weren’t copies of any articles in the case files.”
He grimaced, slowing the car as they approached the bridge to Tybee Island. Traffic was thicker here. “Violent crime in Savannah is worse than the national average in nearly every category. So far this year we’ve had thirty-five rapes reported. So the perp’s first assault didn’t even merit a blurb on the evening news and was buried on page ten of the newspapers. But with the second victim being the mayor’s granddaughter . . . well, you can imagine the frenzy.