Travis nods. ‘It’s something.’
Kristin watches the interplay of body language. It’s like watching a really good tennis match. She sees Emma tear her eyes away from the window again. She swallows more coffee, wets her lips. Kristin wonders why she hesitates, then realizes Emma must be preparing to talk about Simon – that’s always a touchy subject with Mr Bell.
‘I’ve been thinking about the posing,’ Emma says finally. ‘According to Simon, posing originates in fantasy.’
‘Oh yes – I know this.’ Kristin’s pleased that she can contribute, although she only remembers the basics. ‘It’s about control, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Emma confirms. ‘Sometimes it’s about controlling the direction of the investigation, to throw the police off the scent. But I don’t think this guy is doing that. For him, it’s about controlling the victims.’
‘He takes such care with them,’ Kristin reflects. ‘The dresses, the veils, the way they hold the flowers …’
‘Simon called him a romantic.’ Emma’s expression flashes briefly, in a way Kristin can’t interpret. Then she resumes her neutral tone. ‘But the places and poses the girls were dumped in suggest the killer is rejecting them. Like they were unworthy in some way.’
‘So, he has a … a romanticideal,’ Travis suggests. ‘When the girls don’t meet his standards, he rejects them.’
‘Simon claims the killer is asking a question –Who will love me?’ Emma meets Travis’s eyes, looks away uncomfortably.
Kristin plays with a strand of her own hair. Out the window of the car, faint mist below, and sun glittering on the brown waterof the Occoquan. ‘Perhaps he gets angry when the girls don’t love him back.’
‘But none of them will ever reciprocate,’ Emma points out. ‘He’s just going to keep grabbing girls, and they’ll all be rejects.’
‘Which is why he’s escalating,’ Travis suggests.
Emma nods. ‘He’s getting more frantic and angry with each rejection.’ Her eyes lose focus as she seems to recall something. ‘It’s like … the thing he’s doing brings no relief.’
‘What is he looking for relief from?’ Travis asks.
Kristin thinks she knows. ‘Loneliness.’
‘Shame.’ Emma locks eyes with her. ‘You feel embarrassed when you’re rejected.’
Travis squints. ‘So he wants an emotional connection with the girls. When he’s denied that, he takes what he wants from them physically—’
‘But that’s ultimately unsatisfying,’ Kristin points out. ‘Finally, he kills them.’
Emma’s eyes are thoughtful again. ‘Then he puts his shame back onthem– he humiliates them publicly, by dressing them up and dumping them in the gutter.’
‘Like he’s jilted them at the altar.’ Travis chews his lip. ‘That’s a lot of intense emotion. Do you think he might be a suicide risk before we catch up to him?’
‘No,’ Emma says, hesitates. ‘Maybe.’
Kristin thinks it’s rather confident of Mr Bell to assume they’ll catch this man when the police didn’t catch Simon for ages. But now she is considering it. ‘I don’t think so. I think he’s drivenby self-righteousness. He displaces his own responsibility onto others – he blames the girls for all of it. He would never blame himself.’
‘These guys never do,’ Emma says, her lips thin. She is watching the trees out the window as the road climbs. ‘But we can catch him. Somewhere in this information is the key. This guy is not infallible. Serial killers have hugely inflated egos – they don’t think they’ll make a mistake. But they do. That’s how I got away from Huxton. He made a mistake, and I saw it. I took my chance and got free. The College Killer will make a mistake, too. We just have to be ready for it, and recognize it when we see it.’
‘I want all of this down on paper,’ Travis says firmly. ‘We should give a report to Jack Kirby at Quantico, and he can pass it on to Carter.’
He spends the rest of the trip writing things down in a notebook, asking Emma and Kristin to supply any details he’s missed. In this fashion, it doesn’t seem to take them long at all to arrive at FBI Headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. McCreedy drives them down into the quiet of the underground parking garage – he gets to sit in the car and enjoy some peace as they sign in.
For Kristin, everything is new: the white corridors, the way they have to swipe their IDs. Interestingly, both Travis and Emma seem more comfortable here than at Quantico. Kristin observes how their shoulders have relaxed. They’ve moved subtly closer to one another. Travis rakes a hand casually through his dark hair.
In the elevator, Emma says, ‘We’re not getting these lab results before Carter, are we?’
Travis shakes his head. When they’re in transit or on the street, he usually seems a little overdressed in his dark suits, but here, inside a federal building, they make him look more agent-like.
‘They faxed the lab results to Pittsburgh already. I just want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.’ He turns to Emma. ‘Look, you oughta know – Glenn Neilsen had a car accident.’
Her mouth opens. ‘Oh shit.’
