The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(110)

Vail soaked the cotton tourniquet, coughing and struggling to see through the heavy tearing from the intense fumes—and waved it underneath his nostrils. He jerked his head away, groaned, then slowly opened his eyes.

“That’s it, come on. You know who I am?”

“Karen …”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Help me up.”

Vail got behind him and pushed him into a seated position, then freed his hands.

He took a deep breath and wiped his clammy brow with a sleeve. “I was wrong. I got it so wrong I’m embarrassed to admit it. My last case, I thought I was going out with a bang. But apparently I went out with a resounding thud.”

“So Jasmine is the Blood Lines killer?”

“Yes.”

Vail sat down beside him. “We both got it wrong. But how—”

“She’s a cold-blooded, violent psychopath. There’s very little literature on predatory or hunting behavior—as it’s seen with psychopathy—in females. I know of only a few cases, and they’re not well documented. Women prefer poisonings. Far down the list is guns and then knives.” He turned to her. “Sorry. I know you know this. But—but physical attacks like this by a woman are almost unheard of. Especially female on male, if for no other reason they lack the strength to disable.”

“That’s why she used the ether.”

“She probably seduced them to get close, then anesthetized them just long enough to restrain them and ‘play’ with the body, then do the kill. She had as much time as she wanted to have her fun. And between the tree cover and tall fences, no one would see her loading a body into the car at night.”

“She’d still have to be able to lift a body, even if she did it a little at a time. A dead body is … well, dead weight.”

“Ever see one of those hydraulic patient lifts? They use them in nursing homes and dialysis centers. Small yet very efficient, kind of like jacking up a car. Minimal effort, but it can lift a hell of a lot of weight. You put a sling on the patient—or in Jasmine’s case, the victim’s body—and then hook it to the device. A few easy pumps of the lever and you can set the body in the trunk. A child could do it.”

“Curtis saw something like that in the yard, covered with a tarp.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s always a way.”

“So she got the vics here, where she killed them, and then used her car to deposit the bodies at the dump sites wherever we found them. How’d she get them out of the trunk?”

“She’s very strong.” His hands went to his neck and felt the bruise from the tourniquet. “But if she’s not worried about hurting the body, which she wouldn’t be, she’d definitely be able to pull it over the edge and let it fall to the ground.”

Vail heard a noise outside: SWAT had arrived. She called Hurdle—who she suspected was with them, or could reach them—and told him about finding Underwood and Curtis’s pursuit of Jasmine.

“Curtis lost her,” Hurdle said. “We’ve got a BOLO out. He got her plate, so it’s just a matter of time.”

“If you talked with Curtis, you know about Jasmine? About why he was tailing her?”

“I do.”

That was all he said, but she felt there were volumes behind those two simple words.

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess we will. I’ll be at your twenty in two minutes.”

She hung up and turned back to Underwood. “Marcks was not involved in any of the murders?”

“Not the Blood Lines kills. But he had at least two to his credit—years before his arrest. There was a gas station attendant he shot when Jasmine was twelve. Indianapolis. They were on their way back from watching the race—Marcks and Rhonda, his wife, and Jasmine. He went to fill up while Rhonda used the restroom. Marcks got into it with the attendant about something and the guy pulled out a gun. Marcks took it off him and shot him, point-blank, right in the face.”

“And Jasmine saw this?”

“She said she did.”

“And the other kill?”

“Rhonda.”

“So she didn’t slip on a skate in the garage,” Vail said. “I just listened to the 911 tape today. Jasmine really sold it. She was completely believable.”

“Impressive. A psychopath at a fairly young age, who can act.”

Vail’s mouth dropped open slightly. Shit. “She’s good.”

“Yeah she is. And I’m not saying that to be self-serving. But she fooled us. All of us. She even altered her ritual on vics nine and ten to throw us off track, to suggest there were two killers. That’s beyond good, that’s an awareness we don’t often see.”

“There was another murder you probably don’t know about. Marcks supposedly shot a kid during a struggle. Other teen brought the gun. But given everything we now know, I’m not sure anything we were told was true. I doubt there was a struggle at all. He probably just killed the kid.”

Underwood frowned. “Quite the family.”

“But Marcks really is trying to kill Jasmine,” Vail said. “That much I’m sure of. I saw the anger. I mean, Marcks is a violent man. And a killer. I agree with your assessment—he exhibits only some of the psychopathic cluster. And since there’s a genetic predisposition, it makes sense that Jasmine also has these traits—but to a greater extent.” She shook her head. “How could I not have seen it? I mean, I didn’t know her well, but I had a fair amount of contact with her over the years.”