Page 9 of Girl, Sought

Luca turned the radio down a notch. ‘You seeing any blood in those pictures?’

Ella flipped through them again. ‘Not a drop. Which means…’

‘Strangulation.’

‘Yeah. And I never met a woman who strangled other women. Which means our unsub is likely a man.’

Contrary to what TV shows portrayed, strangling someone took notable physical strength. The effort required was comparable to holding a 50-pound weight in the bicep curl position for five minutes. It didn’t sound like much, but in the moment, it took its toll on the muscles.

‘You know, Hawkins, we might be dealing with… your favorite subcategory of killer.’

Luca kept one hand on the wheel and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other. ‘No. Don’t say it.’

‘I’m sorry, but I think this guy sees himself as… an artist.’

‘Ugh,’ Luca breathed. ‘I hate artists.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘You’ve got a point. All that theatricality. Comes from the kind of person who likes the smell of their own shit. Just give me a simple pervert with mommy issues any day of the week.’

Ella inspected the photos again. ‘Well, the jury’s still out, but I’ve never met a killer with this kind of grandiosity that didn’t think they were God’s gift to… something.’

‘Good, because those pretentious assholes are never as smart as they think. They always go too far and make mistakes, like BTK. Any other cases like this? Ever?’

Ella glanced at the highway and pulled up her mental database. ‘Nothing exactly like this, but there are pieces that fit. Jerry Brudos in the sixties. He had a thing for women's shoes, dressed his victims up. Robert Berdella took posed photos of his victims. And Harvey Glatman – he'd do these elaborate bondage photoshoots before killing his victims.’

She paused, considering. ‘But those guys were all about sexual gratification. There’s no sexual component here. More like... Robert Hansen. Remember him?’

‘The Baker Butcher?’

‘Yeah. He'd hunt women in Anchorage, but first he'd keep them at his house. Dress them up, play act these weird domestic scenarios. It wasn't about sex. It was about control. About making them into his idea of perfect companions.’

Rain began to spatter against the windshield. Ella spread out more photos of Eleanor's death tableau. ‘Our guy's got that same need for control. But instead of playing house, he's turning women into dolls. Making them permanent.’

‘Any cases specifically involving dolls?’

‘Closest I’ve got is Edmund Kemper dismembering his sisters’ dolls as a kid.’

‘So we’ve got something unique on our hands,’ Luca said. ‘Could be some kind of fetish or fantasy, or it could just be a middle finger to the victim.’

‘This is a message, not an escape. He's not becoming the dolls, he's turning the dolls into an extension of his ego.’

Luca checked the GPS. ‘Just under ninety minutes. You want to get coffee first or head straight there?’

‘No time for coffee. I need to see this collection room in the flesh.’

‘Here we go.’ Luca grinned. ‘I know that tone.’

‘What tone?’

‘The one that says you're already hooked.’

Luca had a point. The thought should have disturbed her more than it excited her. But these were the cases that got her blood pumping - the weird ones, the ones that required her to think in frequencies most people couldn't hear. Regular homicides were just math problems. This was something else entirely.

‘Can't help it,’ she admitted. ‘Look what we've got. Ritualistic elements, organized methodology, specific victim selection, unique signature. This freak's telling us a story with every detail.’

The rain picked up and drummed steadily on the roof. Ella settled back in her seat, already building theories, connecting dots, seeing patterns. Medical leave had dulled her edge, but now she was back in the game.

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