“In this offender’s case, his love map has a strong religious connection, and it was possibly formed around being punished for his own sexuality starting at puberty. In other words, sexual arousal was seen as a sin for which one had to be punished and cleansed. He likely has a Catholic background and has been baptized in the faith. He will likely be hunting his victims some distance away from his area of residence or work.” Grablowski clicked a key on his computer, and red dots appeared on the GIS map.
“Ritter was attacked here.” He pointed to a dot. “Fernyhough over here. Drummond appears to have been abducted here. All areas west of the city, and the Gorge. Hocking, we don’t know yet where she was attacked. But going by what we have so far, your area of peak probability of finding this offender’s place of residence is here.” He tapped a key, and an area on the map washed yellow. It covered the suburbs abutting the city to the east. “His hunting zone is where his desire for anonymity and his desire to operate within his comfort zone meet. Which means his next victim is likely to be found in this area.” He hit another key, and the map to the west of the Gorge went red.
Great help there, Doc ...
“Given the timing of the recent two cases, he’s likely to have recently experienced a major psychological trigger in his life, and this is causing him to devolve fast. Hewillkill again, and soon in my opinion. Bear in mind, also, that he’s fully cognizant of the criminality of his acts. He takes pride in his ability to thwart police. He will be aware of investigative procedures and will avoid leaving behind evidence where he can help it. He will bring his own weapons and other tools of restraint, and he will attend funerals and other public events associated with his work. He is also likely to be closely following the course of this investigation via the media. Media coverage might make him change his patterns to avoid capture.”
“Like we needed a fucking head shrink to tell us that,” Leo mumbled behind Angie. And yeah, for once she agreed with the old misogynist.
Fitz stood up and crossed to the center of the room. Silence pressed down on the group as he started to speak in his strangely high, creaky voice.
“Considering our unidentified subject is likely following media coverage and being tipped off as to what we know, the consequences of these suspected internal leaks to the press are grave. Untenable. And they must be stopped. To that end, I’m informing you all that I have brought in an internal investigations team. Please be forewarned that no one is above scrutiny, and that each and every one of you could be under surveillance, or brought in for questioning, at any time.” He paused, making eye-to-eye contact with each member of the task force in turn. His gaze lingered a fraction longer on Angie. “Wewillfind you. And wewillprosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”
CHAPTER 33
TUESDAY, DECEMBER12
“Angie,” her father said as he opened the door. “What are you doing here so early? You look terrible—you okay?”
“I went to see Mom yesterday,” she said.
“Come inside. Want some coffee? I got a pot on.”
“I’d kill for some.” She left her boots at the door and followed her dad in his checkered flannel housecoat into the kitchen, the underfloor heating warm beneath her socked feet. She set the photo album that she’d brought on the kitchen table and scooted a stool up to the counter. She perched atop the stool and watched her dad pour coffees. She felt beat. When she’d finally drifted into sleep last night, she’d woken in a cold sweat with a sense of a presence in her room. In the gloom she’d seen the child standing at the bottom of her bed in a soft pinkish glow, watching her. Then the girl had put her index finger to her lips and hissed the words ...
Siedz cicho! ... Stay quiet!
... or had it been the shush of the wind coming through a crack in her drapeless bedroom window?
She’d gotten out of bed and flipped on all the lights. Of course there’d been no child in her apartment. She’d self-medicated by drinking more vodka and googling the foreign-sounding words as best she could phonetically—guessing at spellings. She’d come up with various Eastern European and Russian sites and expressions, but nothing made sense. Then she’d reverse-typed into a translator site the English words which she believed held meaning for the foreign ones she’d heard inside her head:Stay quiet!
One by one she’d tried translatingStay quietinto the various Slavic languages. When she’d clicked onTRANSLATE INTO POLISH, she got a hit.Siedz cicho!
Knowing the Google translator’s limits, before she’d come to see her dad this morning, she’d phoned and woken an old Polish friend from her college days, and she’d asked her friend to translate into Polish the phrases:Run, run! Get inside! Stay quiet!
The friend had confirmed what Angie was starting to believe. The words:Uciekaj, uciekaj! Wskakuj do srodka, szybko! Siedz cicho!meant:Run, run! Get inside!—in the context of getting into a car, or a box, or a bus. And,Stay quiet!
Either she was going mad, or she was remembering something in Polish.
Her dad cast a quick glance at her, and then his gaze touched briefly on the album resting upon the table. “How was she?”
“Not good.” Angie accepted the mug he was handing her and took a sip. Steam warmed her face. “She didn’t recognize me, and she said some weird things.”
“She was in a really bad way yesterday. Hallucinating. They sedated her, and she was on other medication as well.”
“I know, but ...” She hesitated, set her mug down, and cradled her hands around its pottery warmth. “She told me that she had a little daughter once named Angie.”
He smiled sadly. “She did. You were little once.”
“But then she said her daughter was gone, just like that. Taken by angels. However, her daughter didn’t belong in Italy, or in heaven, so she was brought back. Mom said she was returned at Christmas. It was snowing and she’d been singing at the cathedral.” Angie paused. “Then she began to sing ‘Ave Maria.’”
Her father’s face changed. Slowly, he set his mug down on the granite counter. “Angie, we almost lost you in that car accident in Italy. Maybe that’s what she meant. You ... were unconscious, face cut, lost so much blood.”
She held his gaze and saw something odd in his features. He was lying. She felt it in her gut, knew the tell signs. Being a cop for so long, you got a feel for a lie, or a cover-up, the various tics and other displacement behaviors when people were avoiding the truth.
“What about her mention of Christmas then, and snow? The accident was in March.”
He dragged his big hand over his thick gray hair, looked away for a moment. “Maybe because you were only really fully on the mend come the following Christmas? You’d had the first cosmetic surgery to your mouth, and it looked like a second operation would finally get you back to almost normal, and we were home by then, and she was getting over it.”
