This place reminded her of Masterson—and maybe she was feeling a little homesick today.
"Anyone else?"
"The Dawsons, three houses down. Kathy Johnson, across the street. In her sixties—lived there since she was first married over forty years ago. Husband died when I was in my thirties, I think. And there's a guy named Ricky Terrell on the corner. He moved in maybe a year before the Gibsons." Bryan paused, motioned for her to walk in front of him on the sidewalk as he pulled the side gate closed. "Everybody else is gone. Moved away or passed on. Lot of turnover on this side of the street. That side, not so much." The other side of the street had slightly larger, slightly better-kept houses. She suspected owner-occupant. But the properties he’d indicated were his seemed well kept.
"Was there anything that seemed off to you? Before it happened, or after? Anything you noticed that didn't sit right?"
"I've thought about that a lot. Cops asked me the same thing back then. Asher's asked me more than once."
"And?"
"And…nothing. Derek and Aimee always paid on time. If there was a problem with the house—Derek would handle it, and let me know. Then I’d pay him for any materials. Or I’d come over and we’d handle it together. Aimee and my wife did a few things together through the church. That kind of thing. They were around our age, but their kids…a little older. We had our oldest then—B.J. He’s seventeen now. My wife Cass was pregnant with our second.”
The front door opened behind them. Knight and Pierce came out onto the porch. Pierce called her name, as if he had something he wanted to talk to her about. She looked at her companion, as he lightly kicked snow off the porch step with a work-roughened boot.
What had happened to the Gibsons had changed him, too. That was what violence really did—it damaged everyone around. And sometimes, they never healed from it. She’d figured it out when he’d been talking—he’d considered at least Derek Gibson to be a friend. It had hurt him when the Gibsons had been killed.
"I appreciate you talking to me," Miranda said. "If I have more questions, is it all right if I call you?"
"Asher's got my number." Bryan looked at her for a moment. "You really think you're going to find something after all this time?"
"I don't know. But we're going to try.”
Chapter 6
Pierce had led them back to the Daviess County sheriff’s department, where they were borrowing workspace as a favor to Pierce from his former colleagues. They dropped their coats in the chair by the door, and then Knight was already on it. There was even a whiteboard and bulletin board already and waiting for them. Miranda set up her iPad and phone. They would use a secure PAVAD Wi-Fi connection and server for everything they did. That was definitely part of her job—Knight and technology was rather funny at times.
“He is a non-familial predatory home-invasion killer,” Knight said.
Miranda agreed. There had been nothing that said the unsub had known the family—or knew them well, anyway. “He is highly organized, and I think he targeted them to feel in control. Sexually.”
There had been multiple signs of sexual assault, and it had been sustained. For hours.
“So Aimee was his target all along. We already suspected that,” Pierce said, leaning against a desk and crossing those massive arms over his chest. “This was all about sex?”
Miranda shook her head. She’d been thinking about the scene, and about what the killer would have wanted from Aimee to have hurt her the way he had. “Not likely.”
“It was more about the control. But this killer feels women are inferior—and one way to control women is through sexual force. He likes the results of that, knowing he dominated. And he wants to relive it. He watched the news, maybe even watched the crime scene investigation from behind the tape. He could have been one of the spectators that day. Maybe even kept news articles. He covered everything religiously. In his mind, he controlled everything. Even the aftermath.”
Knight was just getting started. He understood the killers’ minds they dealt with far more than she did. The man was a little on the terrifying side at times.
There was just also a strong core of honor that ran through him, too. Sometimes, she wondered how much of a hold that honor had on him. It was probably all that kept him from being truly dangerous.
Then again, she spent a lot of time profiling Dr. Allan Knight. It was starting to be a real habit.
She’d been wrong far more times than she’d been right.
“So how similar is he to a typical family annihilator?” Pierce asked. “I’ve read about all of these profiles, but…hell, I haven’t come across them in my career that often. If at all. I’ve had six murder cases in sixteen years, and those were joint with a team out of Indy. That’s it.”
“Not very similar at all. A family annihilator typically faces some kind of stress or trigger—most often financial ruin or exposure of financial struggles. That’s often combined with relationship breakdowns such as divorce or separation,” Knight said. He’d done extensive study into family annihilators. Miranda had read all of his published works. The man was very, very good at what he did.
“Some family annihilators fear loss of status more than anything, or abandonment,” Knight added. “They’re afraid of losing everything, so they orchestrate the end of everything in order to retain control of it. There is typically no sexual violence in family-annihilator situations. They want closure, not domination.”
“That’s why no family connection to the Gibsons was found,” Miranda said. Family annihilators were often easier to figure out. There was almost always a paper trail, and very clear relational ties. “This wasn’t about social loss. This was a need for power.”
“This man was most likely rejected sexually,” Knight said. “Made to feel less of a man somehow—through his employment or his social environment. At heart, he believes he’s powerless.”
“Invisible,” Pierce said. “Hell, doesn’t everyone feel that way at one point or another?”
