Charlotte Summers stood and walked to the white board. In her late forties, she was elfin and slender, with pale blue eyes, a bobbed haircut. She wore a tasteful chalk-stripe suit, lavender silk blouse. “I know the temptation here is to assume that whoever we are looking for is a religious zealot of some sort,” Summers said. “There is no reason to think he isn’t. With one caveat. The inclination to think of zealots as impulsive or reckless is incorrect. This is a highly organized killer.

“Here’s what we know: He is taking his victims right off the street, holding them for a while, then taking them to a place where he kills them. These are high-risk abductions. Broad daylight, public places. There is no evidence of ligature bruising on their wrists or ankles.

“Wherever he takes them initially, he is not restraining or shackling them. Both victims were given a dose of midazolam, as well as the paralytic that facilitated the vaginal sewing. The sewing is being done premortem, so it’s clear that he wants them to be aware of what is happening to them. And to feel it.”

“What’s the significance of the hands?” Nick Palladino asked.

“Perhaps he is posing them to match some religious iconography. Some painting or sculpture on which he is fixated. The bolt might indicate an obsession with the stigmata, or the crucifixion itself. Whatever the significance, these specific acts have meaning. Usually, if you want someone dead, you walk up to them and strangle them or shoot them. The fact that our subject takes the time to do these things is, in and of itself, noteworthy.”

Byrne threw a glance at Jessica, which she read loud and clear. He wanted her to look into the religious symbol angle. She made a note.

“If he isn’t sexually assaulting the victims, what’s his point?” Chavez asked. “I mean, with all this rage, why no rape? Is this about revenge?”

“We could be looking at some manifestation of grief or loss,” Summers said. “But this is clearly about control. He wants to control them physically, sexually, emotionally, three areas where girls of this age are most confused. Perhaps he lost a girlfriend to a sex crime at this age. Perhaps a daughter or sister. The fact that he is sewing their vaginas might mean he believes he is returning these young women to some twisted sort of virginal state, a state of innocence.”

“What would make him stop?” Tony Park asked. “There are a lot of Catholic girls in this town.”

“I don’t see any escalation of violence,” Summers said. “In fact, his method of murder is fairly humane, all things considered. They are not lingering in death. He is not trying to take away femininity from these girls. Just the opposite. He is trying to secure it, preserve it for eternity, if you will.

“His hunting ground seems to be this part of North Philly,” she said, indicating a highlighted twenty-block area. “Our unknown subject is probably white, between twenty and forty, physically strong, but probably not fanatical about it. Not a bodybuilder type. He was most likely raised a Catholic, of above-average intelligence, mostly likely with an undergraduate degree at the very least, probably more. He drives a van or a station wagon, perhaps an SUV of some sort. This would make it easier to get the girls in and out of his vehicle.”

“What do we get from the location of the crime scenes?” Jessica asked.

“At this point, I have no idea, I’m afraid,” Summers said. “The Eighth Street house and Bartram Gardens are about as disparate a pair of sites as one could imagine.”

“Then you believe they are random?” Jessica asked.

“I don’t believe they are. In both instances, it appears the victim is carefully posed. I don’t believe our unknown subject does anything in a haphazard manner. Tessa Wells was chained to that column for a reason. Nicole Taylor was not randomly dumped in that field. These locations are definitely significant.

“At first there may have been the temptation to think that Tessa Wells was put in that row house on Eighth Street to hide her body, but I don’t believe this to be the case. Nicole Taylor was carefully placed in the open a few days earlier. There was no attempt to hide the body. This guy is operating in daylight. He wants us to find his victims. He is arrogant and he wants us to think he’s smarter than we are. The fact that he placed objects between their hands furthers this theory. He is clearly challenging us to understand what he’s doing.

“As far as we can tell at this time, these girls did not know each other. They moved in different social circles. Tessa Wells liked classical music; Nicole Taylor was into the Goth rock scene. They attended different schools, had different interests.”

Jessica looked at the photos of the two girls, side by side, on the board. She recalled how cliquish things were when she went to Nazarene. The cheerleader types would have nothing to do with the rock and rollers, and vice versa. There were the nerds who spent their free time hovering over the few computers in the library, the fashion queens who were always buried in the current issue of Vogue or Marie Clare or Elle. Then there was her crowd, the South Philly contingent.

On the surface, what connected Tessa Wells and Nicole Taylor was that they were Catholic and they went to Catholic schools.

“I want every corner of these girls’ lives turned inside out,” Byrne said. “Who they hung around with, where they went on weekends, their boyfriends, relatives, acquaintances, what clubs they belonged to, what movies they’ve gone to, what churches they belong to. Somebody knows something. Somebody saw something.”

“Can we keep the mutilation and the found items from the press?” Tony Park asked.

“Maybe for twenty-four hours,” Byrne said. “After that, I doubt it.”

Chavez spoke up. “I spoke to the school psychiatrist who handles the counseling at Regina. He works out of the offices at the Nazarene Academy in the Northeast. Nazarene is the administrative office for five diocesan schools, including Regina. The diocese employs one psychiatrist for all five schools, who rotates on a weekly basis. He might be able to help.”

At this, Jessica felt her stomach fall. There was a connection between Regina and Nazarene, and she now knew what that connection was.

“They only have one psychiatrist for that many kids?” Tony Park asked.

“They have half a dozen counselors,” Chavez said. “But only one psychiatrist for the five schools.”

“Who is that?”

While Eric Chavez looked through his notes, Byrne found Jessica’s eyes. By the time Chavez located the name, Byrne was already out of the room and on the phone.

23

TUESDAY, 2:00 PM

“I really appreciate you coming in,” Byrne said to Brian Parkhurst. They were standing in the middle of the wide, semicircular room that housed the Homicide Unit.