Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(13)

She expected to smell the lightly floral tea Mira preferred, and instead scented good, strong coffee.

“Coffee.” Eve almost sighed it.

“I need it.” With a smile, Mira handed Eve a cup before she took a seat in one of her blue scoop chairs. “As I said, a day. And you’re having one yourself. A body, Peabody said, left in the playground near the new house. Have you spoken with Mavis?”

“Not yet. It’s on the list.”

“Which is long.”

“It is. I’m just back from the field so haven’t written it up yet.”

“So you’ll tell me.”

“Female, Caucasian, twenty-six, a bartender walking the few blocks home after closing.”

Still standing, she ran through it all as the department’s top profiler listened.

She pulled out her ’link, called up the crime scene record to show Mira the body, the message left.

“It looks like it was written with a crayon.”

“The lab’ll confirm.”

Nodding, Mira studied the images.

“The look? The way he dressed her, styled her? It reminds me of my mother’s sister—my aunt—back when I was a child. Photos of her from that time frame. She was, according to my mother, a bit of a wild child.”

“Morris said the clothes were outdated.”

“Yes. To my eye as well.”

“You’d be two who’d know.”

With a smile, Mira brushed back a wave of her mink-colored hair. “It’s a … hard look, again to my eye. The makeup, the hairstyle. Hard rather than edgy or overtly sexy. Certainly not traditionally or classically maternal. At the same time, it’s all so very exacting. A lot of care went into creating this look. It mattered. She—the woman he, or she, sought to re-create—mattered. There’s as much love here as hate. Maybe more.”

“He kept her for ten days, had to have chosen her, known her basic routine. All that takes time and care.”

“It does,” Mira agreed. “She fit the outline, either physically or by lifestyle. She worked in a bar, perhaps the one she represented worked in a bar. Or worked nights. Certainly something about the victim sparked this need to take her, keep her, try to make her into the original.”

“The mother.”

“Almost certainly the killer’s mother or mother figure.”

Mira sat back again, sipping her coffee as she chose her words.

“No sexual aggression or rape, no physical violence beyond the abduction and the killing blow. I agree she must have been drugged when the tattoo and the piercings were done—and these markings will reflect the original. A woman, most likely, at least in her upper seventies—to fit the fashion he chose, potentially older. She’s either dead or has broken ties with the killer. Assuming mother, the killer would be at least late fifties. He shows control, patience, organized behavior, maturity.

“If this is his first, and you’ll check for like crimes, there’s a trigger. A betrayal by the mother figure, her death, her abandonment, remarriage. Something that drove him to need to replace and re-create.”

“She didn’t measure up—the victim. Or he killed her to punish the original because she did, in his mind, measure up. Why sew up the killing wound and hide it under the ribbon?”

“It’s all so tidy,” Mira added. “A hard look, but so clean, so perfect. There may be remorse here, but it strikes me as more likely leaving an open wound is incomplete, untidy, and even the stitches would spoil the image. He’s angry with her—she’s bad—but she still represents Mother. Precise, controlled, a perfectionist with the maturity to plan it out, but the lettering on the sign?”

“Like a kid’s. Not precise.”

“The child in him—the angry child—lashed out. The mature tidied it all up. He’s psychotic, with a mother obsession that drove him to—in his mind—matricide.”

“He’ll kill her again.”

“Almost certainly. The love/hate, the rage/need, all must be met. The killer’s a man or woman likely at least fifty-five, and I think more likely at least sixty, and his mother figure was Caucasian, blond at the time he’s re-creating, with a build that closely matches the victim’s. She liked to party—or he sees her that way, he remembers her, from childhood, that way. He wants her back as much as he wants to destroy her. He didn’t give her a wedding ring.”

“People don’t always go for those.”

“More so, much more so, in the era I believe he’s re-creating. Unmarried woman, widowed or divorced. The father isn’t important to him. It’s only her. It’s only them. He won’t have siblings. Or had no relationship with them, has none now. The killer isn’t in a relationship, lives alone. He may have a skilled job. If indeed the killer is male, he’s asexual or impotent.”

“I’m leaning male.”

Mira set aside her coffee, recrossed her legs. “Why?”

“From what I’ve seen, mothers and daughters have—generally—a different sort of dynamic than mothers and sons. A guy’s more likely, it seems to me, to deify or demonize the mother figure. I feel like if the killer was the daughter—or saw herself that way—there would have been some violence on the vic. You know, ‘You ruined my life, you bitch.’ And there wouldn’t’ve been so much effort put in to make her look, you know, pretty.”