Pretty Girls Dancing(49)

There was a subtle shift in Sims’s demeanor. In his eyes. The relaxed look vanished from his expression, and he was a cop again. “Like you, I worked the special investigations unit, originally out of Athens. But the last dozen years or so, I was loaned out to any serial-crime investigation.”

“Because of your profiling experience.”

The man nodded. “My SAC asked me to attend the first couple of classes at Quantico. It was extensive training, and I studied even more on my own. The agency provided regular opportunities after that to keep up with it. It wasn’t something I planned, but it ended up defining my career.”

“You were the one who linked eight deaths. Attributed them to the same killer.”

“Unofficially, I attributed twelve homicides to the Ten Mile Killer.” The man’s correction surprised Mark. “I believe that eight of the bodies found in the last twenty years could be linked to him. Another I dismissed as the work of a copycat. There were subtle differences in the bruising around the throat, the costuming, and the way the victims were positioned. The other four girls I suspect he’s guilty of killing were never found. Kelsey Willard is one of them. At least, I haven’t heard that her body was discovered.”

Mark shook his head. “No. But it sounds like you were convinced the TMK was responsible from almost the beginning of her case. So there must be more than the final appearance of the bodies that link his victims.”

The man turned a hand. “I identified some similarities, yes. All females, ranging from fourteen to sixteen when they disappeared. There were physical resemblances—they were dark-haired and slender. Attractive. The bodies that were found were clad in leotards, tutus, tights, and ballet slippers, although some of the girls had dancing experience while others hadn’t. All had been manually strangled in the same way. The pattern of bruising on the throat was remarkably similar. None of them showed signs of sexual abuse, although not all of them were virgins. The body dumps were located in fairly remote areas within approximately ten miles of one another in the Wayne National Forest in the southeastern part of the state. And every one of them had a parent that was lacking in some way. Sometimes it was the mother, but most frequently the father.”

He took a breath, then gave a wry smile. “Admittedly, the last link is the most subjective. And evaluating parents who are in the midst of trauma is hardly fair. But the more you dig into the family dynamics, the more you discover about the relationships before the kidnappings. I was still working on strengthening that premise when I retired from the agency.”

A parent that was lacking in some way. Mark considered the words. If Starkey was to be believed, Brian DeVries had sex with a preteen girl when he was a teenager himself. If he’d carried a fetish for girls into adulthood, there had been nothing uncovered in his home or on his computer to suggest it.

But if Mark dug into that portion of Brian DeVries’s life, he might find that this secret from the man’s past had impacted his daughter in some less obvious way.

“Whitney DeVries’s kidnapper posed as a teenage boy from a neighboring town and lured her to a meeting place. Does that match with any of the other disappearances you linked to the TMK?”

Sims thought for a minute. “No. In the first two cases, the killer snatched them out of their homes, from their beds. In the other instances, the girls disappeared when they were out of the house alone. But as you know, MOs change. They reflect opportunity, and the offender can adapt and polish his MO to better suit his purpose.”

“The agent I was partnered with at the beginning of this case seemed to think there was some dissension about whether Kelsey Willard was a victim of the TMK.”

“There was, yes. The lead agent working the case was rather dismissive of the theory.” His shrug was almost imperceptible. “Forensic profiling is still regarded suspiciously by some in our profession. As I recall, the man was going to remain unconvinced until the body was found and definitively matched the physical similarities I just shared.”

“But you don’t think all of the TMK’s victims were discovered.”

The man shook his head decisively. “Have you seen the TMK files?”

Mark nodded. The files were stored in more than thirty boxes in the cold-case room. Much of the information had been uploaded, and he’d requested it, but even the computer files would take a week to go through. “I’m just starting.”

A quick flash of a smile from Sims. “Be sure and take a close look at the photos from the dumps. You’ll see how isolated the areas were. Many of the bodies had remained undiscovered for years.”

“And he hunted within the state lines?”

“As far as we know. The way he left the bodies is a pretty distinctive detail. It would have popped up on CODIS if he’d emulated that elsewhere. It’s probable that he hunted only within the state boundaries. That made us think he was a resident, or hailed from a surrounding state, close to the border. But we couldn’t rule out someone who passed through on a frequent basis. Like a salesman or trucker.”

“What was the closest proximity between victims?”

Sims shot him an approving glance. “You’re thinking of the DeVries and Willard girls. Their towns are what . . . fifteen miles apart?”

“Twelve.”

The man pulled at his lower lip, considering. “Dahlia Humphries and Iris Johnson. Victims four and eight. Their homes were around twenty miles apart. But there were three victims and approximately nine years between them.”