Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(77)

“Gwyneth, I need to ask you one last thing,” Rachel said. “To look at a picture—a composite sketch put together with the help of the people in the bar with you that night. I want you to tell me if it looks like the man who did this to you.”

She paused. Nothing appeared on the screen.

“Is that okay, Gwyneth?”

Another pause, then:





SHOW ME




Rachel took her phone from her back pocket and opened the photo app. She pulled up the composite and held the phone a foot from Gwyneth’s face. Gwyneth’s eyes darted back and forth as she studied the photo of the drawing. Then her jaw started working.





YES


HIM




“The man in this composite looks like mid-thirties to me,” Rachel said. “Is that what you remember?”





YES




Tears began to fall again down Gwyneth Rice’s face. Her father moved in with the paper towel. Rachel stood up and stepped away, putting her phone back in her pocket.

“It’s okay, Gwynnie. It’s okay now,” Rice consoled. “Everything’s going to be all right, baby.”

Rachel looked at me and then back to the bed. In that moment I saw the distress in her eyes and knew this was not any clinical interview for her either.

“Thank you, Gwyneth,” she said. “You have been a wonderful help. We are going to get this man and I will come back to tell you.”

After Rice stepped out of the way, Rachel returned to her position next to the bed and looked down at Gwyneth. They had bonded. Rachel reached a hand to Gwyneth’s face and lightly touched her cheek.

“I promise you,” she said. “We will get him.”

Gwyneth’s jaw went to work and she repeated the same message she had sent at the beginning of the conversation.


DON’T TAKE HIM ALIVE





36

We didn’t talk until we were out of the building and walking toward the parking lot. It was dark out now.

I had seen Rachel’s blue BMW when I had pulled in and parked next to it. We stopped behind our cars.

“That was intense,” Rachel said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How was the dad out in the hallway?”

“Ugh. I never know what to say in that sort of situation.”

“I had to do that, Jack. Get him out of the room. I wanted her to speak freely because it’s important we know the details. We can assume that what happened to her happened to the other victims who we can’t talk to. Gwyneth provides the template.”

“And what is the template?”

“Well, for one thing. There was no rape. She invited him back to her apartment, ostensibly to show him the place for comparison since he was supposedly looking for a place to live. They had consensual sex—he used a condom—but not to completion. He couldn’t keep an erection. He pulled out and that’s when the nightmare began. He forced her up from the bed to stand naked in front of the bathroom mirror. He made her look at herself as he twisted her neck in a forearm lock.”

“Oh, shit.”

“He was naked too and she felt his erection come back against her back as he thought he was killing her.”

“Fucker gets off on the act of killing them.”

“All serials do. But the fact that there was no rape is important. It lends itself to why he is targeting women with the DRD4 gene. He thinks it gives him an edge in getting his victims into bed. There seems to be a psychological play in that. He doesn’t want to be a rapist. Doesn’t like what that says about him.”

“But killing women is okay, just not raping them first.”

“It’s weird but not unique. Have you heard of Sam Little?”

“Yeah, the FBI’s top serial.”

“Caught here in L.A. and good for as many as ninety murders of women across the country. He only started confessing to the murders once the investigators stopped calling him a rapist—which in his case he was. He was okay with admitting to killing women but would never admit to a single rape.”

“Weird stuff.”

“But like I said, not unique. If this is part of our profile, it could be useful to strategically put something in your story or the press releases that follow to motivate the offender.”

“You mean like have him come after me or Emily or FairWarning?”

“I was thinking more about him making contact with you. There are plenty of examples of serials reaching out to the media to sort of correct the record. But we would take safety precautions just the same.”

“Well, I would have to think about that, talk to Emily and Myron for sure.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t do anything without everybody being on board. It’s just something to think about at this stage.”

I nodded.

“What else did you learn from this?” I asked. “Anything that struck you as a profiler?”

“Well, he obviously dressed her afterward,” she said. “All the victims except for Portrero were dressed. All of them before Portrero were dressed and then dropped off in sometimes elaborate ways in an attempt to cover the murder. I would have to take a hard look at the other locations and where the women lived, but Portrero might show a change. He never removed her from her apartment.”