The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(54)

“Special Forces?” Vail fought to keep a straight face. “I wouldn’t know anything about that stuff.”





27


Vail looked up at the racing flag-style sign, which read “BLUES” in red letters, protruding from a weathered vertical wood plank facing.

“I think the owners of this restaurant missed an opportunity.”

Ramos sat forward in his car seat. “What are you talking about?”

“The sign says Blues and it’s red. Shouldn’t it be … I don’t know, is blue too obvious?”

“All I care about is the food. Their barbeque pulled pork is awesome.”

Fifteen minutes later, Vail was staring at Ramos’s plate. “I’m not sure about those fried pickles.”

“What?” Ramos leaned back and appraised the side dish, tilting his head. “Are you saying they look like a bowl of penises?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Want to taste one? They’re very good.”

“I’ll pass. But I will try one of those hush puppies.”

“Go for it.” Ramos gestured at her meal. “How’s the crab cake?”

“Very good. Glad I listened to you.”

“I don’t get to Moorefield, West Virginia, very often. But when I do, I’ve gotta stop at Blues Smoke Pit.”

She looked past his head at the framed Jackson Browne album cover on the wall. “I have that CD. People think it’s called ‘Saturate Before Using’ because those are the only words on the cover. But that’s just the label of a burlap bag that’s pictured in the photo on the cover. The album’s really only called ‘Jackson Browne.’ It was his first.”

“Thanks for that bit of trivia,” Ramos said. “I can now die happy.”

“Not a Jackson Browne fan?”

“I’d rather talk about Roscoe Lee Marcks.”

Vail stopped chewing. “Seriously? Hall of Fame rock musician or depraved serial killer and you’d rather talk about the killer? Over dinner?”

“I’ve got an iron stomach.”

Vail lifted her brow. “Suit yourself. But if you lose it, lean left or right. Don’t vomit all over me. Deal?”

“You think I’m some kind of wuss?”

“I’d never call you a wuss, Rambo. So what do you want to know about Marcks?”

“What makes him tick? What kind of * are we dealing with? If I can get a sense of who this guy is, maybe it’ll help me think like him.”

Vail pursed her lips and gave a nod. “I agree with your approach. So, I didn’t do the behavioral assessment on Marcks. I inherited the file when I joined the unit. And I was learning, feeling my way. I had a sense of things, but compared to what I know now, well, as in anything, you get better the more you do something. So I’m starting to think I should give his assessment a fresh look.”

“The profiler who had the case before you did, he wasn’t any good?”

“Thomas Underwood? Shit yeah. He was one of the founding fathers, he made the BAU what it became. Ressler, Underwood, Douglas, Hazelwood. Those guys were visionaries.”

“But.”

“But maybe Underwood was distracted, thinking more about retirement than about his last case. I don’t know. Maybe that’s not fair. None of us are perfect. Maybe he missed something. I’ve got a call into him to ask him some questions.”

Ramos picked up one of the fried pickles and took a bite. “So what are you seeing now that conflicts with the profile?”

“Can you not do that while I’m … just put that thing down. Given what I’m about to tell you, it’s in poor taste. So to speak.”

Ramos looked at the pickle, then dropped it on the plate and sat back. “Done.”

“I’m working on the theory that Marcks is a homosexual sadomasochist.”

“Okay. Is that unusual?”

“Not sure how to answer that. There’ve been a lot of them, relatively speaking. One of the legendary homicide detectives, Vernon Geberth, broke out the most common types of homosexual serial killers into three groups: those who target male homosexuals, those who go after both gay and heterosexual male victims, and those whose victim preference is young males and boys—pedophiles. Homosexual serial murders typically involve sadomasochistic torture and lust murders, as well as child and thrill killings.

“In one variation or another, you’ve got some of the better known ones. Jeffery Dahmer. John Wayne Gacy, Wayne Williams. William Bonin. And two really sick bastards—as if the others weren’t depraved enough—Robert Berdella and Larry Eyler. If we look at common features across a broad spectrum of homosexual serial killers, we see role-playing, domination and control, humiliation, sadistic sexual acts. They often commit lust murders, where the offender focuses his attention on the sexualized areas of the body, like cutting or excising the genital areas.”

“Like a penis or vulva?”

Vail glanced down at the plate of pickles. “Yeah. And nipples, rectum, throat, or breasts. Evisceration is also common.”

Ramos bit his top lip. “Okay.”

“So Marcks exhibited some of this, as you know. But other key characteristics weren’t present. He didn’t engage in overt domination and control role playing—as far as we know. But another common feature, keeping a trophy of the killings, he did do. It’s the one thing that tied together a lot of the murders after he was arrested, at least circumstantially. Some, but not all, of the vics were represented in this trophy stash. He kept them stored behind a false wall in his bedroom closet.”