“I had Brielle work with someone while I was in the hospital,” he admitted. “I’d always wanted everything digitized to make examination of the evidence easier. With you having been abducted again, I wanted to have the previous case informationhandy when I got a chance to review it. The obvious conclusion at the time was that Larsen was likely the Ripper, even before Bishop spoke to Finney. I expected when I eventually got home and went through this stuff, that conclusion would be cemented in my mind.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. Far from it.”
She shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “The man who attacked me, who attacked us, is behind bars. It shouldn’t matter whether he’s the Ripper or not. So why do you look so serious? And why am I starting to feel concerned?”
He took her hands in his. “Whatever I’ve found, or think I’ve found, there’s no reason for you to worry. You’re safe here, with me. There are four fellow Seekers twenty minutes away if we need them, which we don’t. And I’ve got a pistol in the nightstand in my bedroom.”
“Then why have you been up all night looking at the case file?”
A flicker of unease crossed his face before his expression cleared. “I like being thorough. And, as I said, I don’t like puzzle pieces that don’t fit.”
“Show me those pieces.”
“Teagan—”
“We’re in this together. And we’ll still be in this together when Larsen is brought to trial and we’re both called to testify. Don’t shut me out now. Show me.”
His reluctance was obvious, but he wheeled back in front of the computer tablet. “I can clear the pictures. There’s no reason for you to look at those. I was using them to double-check details in reports.” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he closed files and moved things around on the tablet in front of him without sharing them to the big screens. Then he punched one of the keys, and the various Ripper case files appeared on the large monitors. True to his word, there weren’t any pictures.
He continued to move things around, mostly closing out various documents until he was left with only one screen of data. It was essentially a huge list with different headings with bullets of information beneath each one.
She read some of the headings out loud. “Race, sex, age, marital status, victimology, criminal psychopathy, location, signature...” She shot him a look of surprise. “A profile. You’re working up a profile.”
“More or less. I compiled the information from the Ripper murders along with what we know about Larsen’s recent crimes.” He scrolled to one of the sections labeledOrganized vs. Disorganized. “I’m sure you remember a lot of this from your criminal justice classes. An organized killer is one who plans his crime ahead of time, brings his weapons with him. The disorganized killer grabs a knife out of a victim’s kitchen drawer to stab her. He’s more spontaneous, less controlled and tends to make a lot of mistakes. A disorganized killer is generally easier to find than the organized one because of those mistakes. Which one would you say Larsen is?”
“Easy. Organized. He planned everything down to the last detail, from the camera hidden in the tree over the path where I went walking to the section of fence he loosened behind the Brodericks’ home. He had to have spent months getting that shack set up as his own personal prison, installing the bars on the windows and doors.”
“You get an A plus. He’s definitely an organized killer, which gives us insight into his mind and how he thinks. Mason confirmed that Larsen purchased that shack over a year ago. I don’t know whether he planned to go after you again, or someone else. But he was definitely preparing it well ahead of time for another victim. Knowing he was an organized killer helps predict other things, like that he probably had a steady job.”
“He worked for a realty company,” she said. “Not exactly nine to five, but he would have had some kind of schedule, checked in now and then, attended meetings.” She crossed her arms, remembering what she’d researched on the Kentucky Ripper’s crimes. “But that doesn’t fit what I know about the Ripper.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He punched a few buttons and a list of names and dates appeared on the screen to the left of the main one they’d been looking at. “You should recognize those.”
“The ripper’s victims. Six of them.”
“What do they have in common?”
“Other than the obvious? The carved X’s in their bellies, the fact that they were abducted for days or weeks before being killed? That all of them were stabbed, including the ones you haven’t listed. Some were shot too.”
“Other than all of that. What type of killer was responsible for the kinds of crime scenes we found in those examples?”
She thought about it, then shrugged. “You’re going to say whoever killed them was organized. I remember those crime scenes were pristine. Very little forensic evidence was found. No weapons were left behind. I could go on, but I can’t argue that point. Those particular crime scenes were indicative of an organized perpetrator. But there were eight more killings. And those were the opposite of organized. They were...sloppy.”
“Yes. They were.” He displayed another list of names on the monitor to the right of the main one, the eight victims she’d just mentioned. “All of these were similar because they seemed to be the work of a disorganized killer.”
“Right,” she agreed. “Given the mix of organized and disorganized crime scenes, the conclusion goes more to a mental disease, like Finney suffered from. He was, is, bipolar. The theory was that he killed some in his manic state—the disorganized killings—and some in his depressive state—the organized ones.”
“It’s a popular theory, one the police bought into back then.” He motioned toward the first list. “Consider these victims again. Although they were brutally killed, the number of stab wounds is low. Only three for the first victim, six on another, and something in between for the rest.” He waved toward the second list. “These, however, had anywhere from twelve to thirty-one stab wounds in addition to being beaten in two of the cases. One victim even suffered cigarette burns all over her back.”
“I remember.” That sick feeling was roiling in her stomach again.
“It’s called overkill,” he said. “The killer inflicted far more wounds than necessary to kill his victims. Normally, that might suggest that he knew them, had personal feelings of hate toward them. But it can happen with a disorganized killer as well, with or without a mental defect. He kills in the heat of the moment, because of some imagined slight or explosive anger over something seemingly inconsequential to you or me but that is blown all out of proportion in his mind.”
Again, he motioned toward the screen on the list, the names of the six victims that he’d grouped together. “Here’s another take on these. In each of these cases, there’s evidence that the killer spent a lot of time in the victim’s home during the stalking phase while the victim wasn’t there. What does that indicate?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe I need a refresher course on my college classes.”
