He had known he would not want to walk back to town, and a hitchhiker would be noticed. Deeper in the woods, not near any trail, he had taken a secondhand bicycle he bought this morning and chained it to the trunk of a tree, before covering it with leaves and dirt. Even in the blackness, the arithmetic was simple: just count his steps from the concrete block that held the trash bin across the parking lot to the spot one-hundred-fifty steps into the woods where the bike lay waiting.
Ten minutes later, he was on the road, pedaling toward town, nothing more than a silhouette in the night, “Aileen” as dead as Tom.
Rossi stepped forward. “What is he saying? He’s saying ‘Go screw yourselves.’ ”
This got a few laughs in the big hall.
Rossi continued: “But, just for the record? He’s not limiting that sentiment to the five of us on this stage. He’s saying it to every man and woman here. This UnSub thinks he’s smarter than all of you and all of us, put together. And, so far, folks… he’s been right.”
No one laughed at that. The auditorium fell silent and Rossi stepped back, nodding to Hotchner to continue.
He did. “There are some other things we’re pretty sure about, too,” the team leader said. “He’s white. Serial killers hardly ever cross racial lines. He’s between thirty-five and fifty.”
All across the audience, pens were scribbling furiously in notebooks; here and there, mini-cassette recorders were held up.
“These are not the crimes of a young offender,” Hotchner was saying. “These murders are too sophisticated, too organized, the fantasy too well formed, to have been committed by someone who hasn’t had years to develop it. He also has patience. Some of these crimes took a long time to set up… and evidence suggests he’s even stalked some of the victims.”
Morgan said, “That’s a patient man. He’s going to have a job that allows him freedom to come and go as he pleases, as well.”
“He’s single?” one cop called out.
“Not necessarily,” Prentiss said. “It’s just as likely we’ll find that he’s married. He might even have kids too.”
Morgan nodded. “He’s not acting out the sexual aspects of the crimes on his list, and that is a major, significant omission. No sexual evidence has turned up in these crimes. So there’s no reason to think that he’s married or not. Remember Dennis Rader, the BTK killer in Wichita, Kansas? Married and with two kids.”
Reid added, “Andrei Chikatilo, the Russian serial killer, was also married and had two children.”
Taking back the reins, Hotchner said, “Also like Rader, who had a job with a security company for fifteen years, our UnSub will be a police buff or work in security or he could have applied for the police and been turned down. He could, presumably, even be a current officer.”
No mention of Detective Denson would be made today, however; Hotchner had made that clear to his team.
Rossi said, “But he is very likely to find a way to inject himself into this investigation. Further, he’s got his own car. These crimes have taken place around the city, and they’re too far away from each other for him to walk or take public transportation.”
Hotchner picked back up: “His car will be either a police-type vehicle, like a Ford Crown Victoria, or something larger, perhaps. That fifty-five-gallon drum got to Chinatown somehow. The vehicle will be nondescript and probably a dark color, navy blue, gray, maybe black. He’s moved in and out among people both at Bangs Lake and Chinatown, yet no one seems to have noticed him.”
An audience member asked, “You really think it could be a cop?”
Rossi stepped forward again. “We’re not saying it’s a cop any more than we’re saying it’s the night watchman at Navy Pier. This is a typeof person. We put all the pieces together, and we narrow down the list of suspects from everybody in the United States, to everyone in the Midwest, to men in Illinois, to white men in the greater Chicago area, to cop buffs with too much time on their hands.”
Morgan said, “Eventually, we’ll get down to one guy and the sooner, the better. We can do this, but we need your help.” He pointed at random faces in the audience and tapped his finger, bing bing bing bing. “You’re our eyes in the streets, guys. Allof you. Which is why we’re trying to help you know what to look for.”
The briefing lasted another half hour and, when they were through, a few officers and detectives hung around to ask even more questions. By the time the BAU team left the university, it was after nine at night and any reasonable person would be heading home; they, however, grabbed a quick snack at a diner, and were soon back in the field office and at work on the case.
Prentiss had hoped to go back to the hotel to get some laundry done. They’d packed for only a few days and had now been here a week. If she didn’t get some laundry done soon, all the perfume in the world wouldn’t prevent her from being mistaken for a Cubs player after an extra inning game.
She continued to work the victimology, trying to discern why one potential victim was chosen over another.
Addie Andrews and Benny Mendoza had probably been nothing more than victims of opportunity on that rainy April night. The UnSub had chosen the time and place for a reason—mimicking Berkowitz— making the identities of the victims less significant. Killer needed a necking couple and, on that particular night, few couples would have been out. The weather had seen to that.
With the two girls at Bangs Lake, the story had been different. They were two among hundreds that day. Why them?
Donna Cooper was a brown-haired, straight-A student, and a cheerleader in high school. Her friend, Casey Goddard, had also been a brunette young woman going to college part-time and working two jobs to pay for it. She, too, had been a bright girl and a good student. Of the hundreds of girls who had been at Bangs Lake throughout that sunny June day, why had these two been chosen over all the others? Certainly more than two bikini-clad brunettes had been on the beach that day.
Prentiss was still puzzling over that when a face appeared on the screen of her laptop: Penelope Garcia.
“I’ve got news,” Garcia said.
“Try to make it good news,” Prentiss said.
“You’ll have to decide that from your end. First, rain washed away any fingerprints on the outside of Bobby Edels’s car.”
“How about the interior?”
“Wiped clean. Even Bobby’s fingerprints were gone.”
Prentiss said, “The car was missing a long time— they might have just evaporated.”
“The crime scene tech I talked to said there were signs that the car had been wiped. The killer might have been in the car.”
“Or even moved it,” Prentiss suggested. “Have you come up with any good reason for the car being dumped in that neighborhood?”
“Sorry. Could be the UnSub moved the car from wherever he abducted Bobby. But this much we know: the car didn’t have plates, and was wiped clean. If the towing company hadn’t filed for the title with the Vehicle Identification Number, we still wouldn’t know where it was.”
“Meaning no offense whatsoever, to a valuable member of our team? Nothing you have said sounds even remotely like good news.”
But on the little flat screen, Garcia was smiling. “Well, I do have one more thing.…”
Noting the glee in the computer expert’s tone, Prentiss sat forward. “Spill.”
“Our friend Detective Jake Denson,” Garcia said, with triumph in her tone, “had a connection to one of the young women who disappeared.”
Prentiss felt the air go out of her. More worthless information. “Garcia, we knew that. It’s a small town, they worked at a local convenience store Denson frequented, and now he’s investigating their disappearances. End of story.”
“Here’s a brand- newstory,” Garcia said. “Casey Goddard used to babysit for Denson’s kids, before his divorce. His ex-wife and the kids? Moved away.”