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  I catch Tommy’s eye, and we grin at each other.

  “May I present Mr. and Mrs.—”

  Father Yates is cut off by the black Mustang with the tinted windows that roars up in the parking lot about fifteen yards away. It stops, engine rumbling. The door opens and a woman is tossed out onto the asphalt. The door slams shut and the car speeds off. The car has no license plates.

  The woman stands up. She’s shaved bald and is wearing a white nightgown. She stumbles toward us. When she’s about five yards away, she puts her hands to her head, turns her face to the sky, and begins to scream.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We’re a strange group for the hospital. Callie is still wearing her wedding dress, though she slipped on a pair of tennis shoes. I’m still in my maid of honor gear, and Tommy and Samuel and Alan and James are in their tuxedos.

  The woman collapsed after screaming, and we sprang into motion. Callie and I ran over to administer first aid. Tommy and Samuel raced to see who could call 911 first. Kirby went racing after the black Mustang, heels and all, with a gun that had somehow been secreted underneath her bridesmaid’s dress.

  Until the ambulance arrived, the woman remained essentially unconscious, her eyelids fluttering and the occasional moan escaping from between her lips.

  Her appearance had been shocking. She was gaunt, though not emaciated. Her lips were cracked and she appeared to be dehydrated. The skin under her eyes was almost black, but not from physical abuse. They were the eyes of someone who hadn’t slept in days, or maybe weeks.

  Her skin was the whitest I’d ever seen, pasty, almost paper white. She reminded me of those blind albino rats you hear about sometimes, born in the dark and raised without ever seeing the light.

  “Marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck,” Callie had noted with a nod of her head.

  I’d checked, and she was right. They were scars, though, not just marks. The signs of someone who’d spent years in shackles.

  “What happened to you?” I murmured, as the ambulance pulled up. The paramedics jumped out and rushed over, all business. “I’m going with her,” I said.

  “I’ll take Bonnie home,” Elaina offered.

  Bonnie protested. “I want to go to the hospital.”

  “No, honey.” I guess there was something in my voice that told her not to argue; she wasn’t happy about it, but she left with Elaina and no further protest.

  “We’ll meet you there,” Alan said. “Hell of a way to end a wedding.”

  “I guess we’ll see you guys later?” I asked Callie and Sam. “You have a honeymoon in Bora-Bora. You’re hitched, so head out.”

  “Tsk-tsk,” Callie said to me, shaking her head. “You should know me better than that.”

  There was nothing after that, because the paramedics had hustled the woman into the back of the ambulance and were eager to get rolling. They’d already placed an IV by the time the doors closed behind me.

  “She’s severely dehydrated,” one of them said to me, shouting to be heard over the sirens. “Heart rate is way too fast.”

  He didn’t have any other wisdom to impart, and we fell silent. I studied the woman as we barreled down the highway.

  I put her in her early forties, about five-five. She had a long face, not unattractive, and a slender frame to go with it. Lips neither full nor thin. There was nothing striking about her—hers could be the face of a hundred middle-aged women—but I could not shake the idea that she was somehow familiar to me.

  Her fingernails were a little too long, and they were filthy. So were her toenails and her feet. I’d moved down to examine them more closely and noted that the bottoms of her feet were heavily calloused.

  “Almost like she never wears shoes,” I muttered to myself.

  The scars on her ankles were thicker than I had first noticed, uneven circular bands, as though they’d been cut open and healed again and again. Which they probably had.

  We’re in the hospital now, and I’m watching as the doctors and nurses attend to the woman. She’s started to come awake and is fighting them. She’s screaming. Her eyes are wild.

  “Put her in restraints,” the doctor orders, and the woman goes even more insane.

  I rush over and put a hand on the doctor’s arm. He glances at me, annoyed at the interruption of his rhythm. I show him my FBI badge and explain to him what I think. Point out the scars on her wrists and ankles.

  “Can’t you just sedate her?” I ask.

  “We don’t know what’s wrong with her,” he says. “Her heartbeat is erratic; we don’t know if she’s been given any other drug. Restraints are safest.”

  “If you put her in restraints, you’re going to send her over the deep end. You’ll be doing more harm than good. Trust me, please. I’ve seen this before.”

  I don’t know if it’s my badge or my scars or the certainty in my voice or all three, but I seem to get through to him. He nods once.

  “Four milligrams of Ativan, IM,” he barks. “No restraints.”

  The team changes gears to accommodate this new order without a hiccup, and I back away to let them do their job. The woman howls as they hold her down and jam the needle into her arm. She continues to struggle for a few moments, and then she starts to relax. Gradually, they let her go. Her breathing slows and her eyes close again.

  “Doctor,” I say, getting his attention again. “Sorry, one other thing. I need her checked for signs of sexual abuse. Full kit, please.”

  He agrees and turns back to his patient. That’s when I notice something on the floor under her gurney. I insert myself and I bend down and pick it up. It’s a single sheet of white letter-size paper, folded into a square. I open it. Black typed letters say:

  As promised, now delivered. Follow the line of inquiry. In answer to the questions you’ll have later: Yes, there are more. Yes, I will kill them if you come after me. Be satisfied with what I’ve given you.

  I scan the woman’s gown and see a single side pocket. The note must have fallen from there. I refold it and put it inside my jacket. Games. So many of them like games.

  I watch them work on the woman and I wonder: What is it about some of these predators that they get off on stealing a life from another person? Isn’t it enough to rape them? Why is such complete destruction necessary?

  It’s a silly question, a mix of the rhetorical and wishful thinking. I know all the answers to all the questions. If not intellectually, then in the core of me.

  It’s a ratio. A mathematical thing. The greater the degradation, the more intense the sexual high. It’s really no different, in its own way, than a meth-head or a heroin addict. Many rapists and serial killers talk about their first rape or murder as a pinnacle. The first high is the highest; everything after is an attempt to recreate it.

  I’m involved in the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s interviews of captured serial murderers. We contact them, try to get them to fill out a questionnaire, and then get them to agree to a taped interview. Some aren’t interested, but most are. They’re malignant narcissists—how could they refuse?

  One of the men I interviewed kept recordings of the screams of his victims. Nothing else. He didn’t have photographs, he didn’t video the rapes or murders, and he kept no physical trophies. His fulfillment came from the auditory reliving of his victims’ screams.

  He was a small, squat man named Bill. He wore glasses—old-fashioned horn-rims—and was in his early fifties. I’d seen photographs of him before prison, and he was a family man, as some of them are. There was one photo of him with his somewhat-withdrawn wife. His arm was around her, and he was smiling at the camera. They were in their front yard and it was a sunny California day and he was wearing a chambray shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and tennis shoes. A set of suspenders held up the pants.

  Three things struck me about the photograph. One was the date: The photo had been taken while Bill was holding his second-to-last victim. He’d abduct them (middle-aged women, always with dark hair and large breasts) and ke
ep them in a soundproofed trunk inside a soundproofed storage shed on the rear of his property. Bill had bought land in Apple Valley some time ago, and he had nearly an acre.

  The second was that smile. It was utterly benign. There was nothing about him (other than perhaps the downcast eyes of his wife) that said you should beware. Bill wasn’t the next door neighbor you needed to keep an eye on. He was a balding, middle-aged man, who looked like his worst fault might be some slightly off-color jokes at the wrong times, for which he’d apologize profusely.

  The last was his belly. It wasn’t huge, but it was fat, and it didn’t fit the rest of him. He didn’t have a fat face, or thick arms, or heavy legs. It was the belly of a troll from the fairy stories. The belly made my stomach churn a little, because of all the facts I knew.

  His last victim, Mary Booth, had survived her ordeal. It was her testimony, more than anything else, that put Bill away. There were certain things in her testimony that I couldn’t help remembering when I looked at that photograph. Her interviews had been digitally recorded, and I had listened to them the week prior to my meeting with Bill. I could hear her voice in my head as I looked at Bill’s smiling face and fat stomach.

  It had been Alan who was called in to interview Mary. We hadn’t been the ones to catch Bill, but Alan was the best at interviewing either victims or criminals, and her testimony was too important.

  “Mary,” he’d said, his voice gentle. “I’m going to take you through slowly. There’s no rush here, okay? Anytime you need a break, you tell me, and that’s it. We stop, and we stop for as long as you need us to.”

  Some people would assume Alan’s size would work against him in interviewing a rape victim. He had a way of turning it around, though. Instead of being threatening, he became their protector. The hugeness of him became the most comforting thing there was.

  “Okay,” she’d agreed, her voice faint but strong. Mary Booth turned out to be a tough cookie, all in all. She’d been rocked hard by what Bill did to her, but she hadn’t been broken.

  “It’s important that we’re thorough, Mary,” Alan had said. “The more specific you can be, the better. It’ll be easier for him to attack generalities, you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if there are any tics to the guy, like, phrases he used a lot, if he ever hummed a song, or if he has any distinguishing physical characteristics, such as moles or tattoos, anything at all, it’ll help. I realize remembering those kinds of things won’t be easy for you, but I also know you want to put him away, so I’m going to push you on the details.”

  “I don’t want to put him away,” she’d said.

  Alan paused. “You don’t?”

  “No,” she’d replied. Her voice wasn’t faint anymore. It was clear and level. “I want him to die.”

  To his credit, Alan had taken this in stride. I could almost see him, no expression of surprise or widening of the eyes. Just a nod to show he understood. Which he would have. “Fair enough. So then—you ready?”

  “How’s this for a distinguishing physical characteristic?” she’d asked, continuing as though Alan hadn’t spoken. “He has a giant cock.”

  This time, I’d heard the surprise in the length of Alan’s pause. “Sorry?” he finally managed.

  “Bill,” she’d said, her voice still strong but with a faraway sound to it that made me certain she was looking off, remembering. “He has the biggest cock I’ve ever seen. It has to be ten inches long and God knows how thick. I remember clearly how it would stick out past that fat white stomach.”

  “I see,” Alan said, finding his stride again. “He has a large penis. Anything else?”

  “He has a scar on the inside of his right thigh.”

  “Okay. This is good, Mary. What else?”

  It had been her turn to pause. Something in the nature of that pause, the feel of it, made me certain what she was going to say next was something horrible.

  “He has a tattoo on the bottom of his stomach. He’d lift up the fold of fat when he was making me … pleasure him with my mouth. ‘Look!’ he’d say, and I did. There were two letters.”

  “What were the letters?”

  “An S and an O.”

  “Did he tell you what they stood for?”

  “Yes. He said they stood for Slave Owner.”

  There was more, too much more. Hours of it. Alan took her through every brutal moment, demanding every sordid detail with that same gentle insistence. There were times she wept, but most of the time her voice was strong.

  The prosecutors made the jurors listen to every minute, and her testimony did its job, along with the damning physical examination and other evidence.

  So number three, when I saw that photo, was the belly that poked at the chambray shirt. I couldn’t stop seeing it hovering above her, pendulous and sweaty, with the code tattoo that only his victims would ever understand. That and the smile, the endless false smile.

  His hands had been folded and perched on the belly when I came into the interview room. The smile had been there too. Only his eyes betrayed him. They’d roved over the scars on my face like a starving man looking at a thick and juicy steak. He wasn’t cuffed, and we were alone. I wasn’t afraid of him here. Bill would love to record my screams, but setting was everything to him, as was privacy, and this wasn’t the place.

  I sat the digital recorder on the table.

  “Mr. Keats, as agreed, I’ll be recording this.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  We went through the usual set of questions, and he was pretty cooperative. His mother had been the abuser. She abused his sister physically and him sexually. She forced him to abuse his sister sexually. He grew to like it, or so he thought. His mother had dark hair and large breasts, of course, just like his victims. It was both predictable and pathetic, and I remember that it made me feel a little tired, though I was careful not to show it.

  We arrived at the area that interested us both the most, though for different reasons: the screams.

  “Has that always been a source of sexual excitement for you?” I asked.

  Everything in these interviews is very formal, including the phrasing. It’s always a source of sexual excitement, never a turn-on. This is deliberate. Keeping things clinical and professional makes you a mirror, neither a judge nor a participant. They love to look at themselves in the mirror.

  “Not really,” he said, in an even, pleasant voice.

  “I see. Was there a point where that became a necessity of fixation?”

  He rolled the question around, watching me as he did. I saw the change in his eyes, the calculation. He was looking for feedback. Locked away from the world, from his drug of choice—rape and murder—he was searching for a way to feed his hunger.

  He leaned forward, letting those hungry eyes stare at my scars without restraint.

  “Did you scream when he cut you, Smoky?” he asked me.

  I stifled the sigh. I’d expected this. I wasn’t offended or disgusted or angry. I felt nothing. This was a game, and he was playing his part, thinking he was original when in fact he was as expected as they come.

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course I did.”

  His eyes widened, almost fluttered. “And did he like it when you screamed?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know? That he liked it?”

  I wanted to deny him this, but I knew that shame would only be a bigger turn-on for him. I also knew this was the price for his explanation. I could refuse it, of course, but I wanted to know why he loved their screams so much. I met his gaze without flinching.

  “His penis grew inside me when I screamed. It got harder. I could feel it.”

  I said this with the same clinical detachment that a physician might use. Tumescence, I heard in my mind.

  It didn’t matter to Bill Keats. He couldn’t hide his reaction. He sucked in a breath and crossed his legs involuntarily. One eye twitched.

  “It’s your turn, Mr. Keats.” />
  He blinked a few times, reining himself back in from whatever great dark ocean he’d been drifting on. I could almost see him filing away the image of me in his mind for later use. He nodded. He leaned back in his chair again and perched his hands atop his belly. The smile returned.

  “The first woman I ever raped,” he said. “I went to penetrate her.”

  I remember thinking his use of penetrate was prissy and that this was telling.

  “And?” I coaxed.

  “I hadn’t even entered her yet. But she knew what I was about to do and she screamed. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. She knew what was about to happen and knew she couldn’t change it. The misery I heard in that scream was … well. It was perfect. I ejaculated then and there, before I even got inside her.” His look grew pensive. “She never screamed again like that. Not even when I was strangling her. That was the sound of her breaking.” His eyes found mine again, and the smile returned. It seemed more thoughtful to me, somehow. “I’ve been searching for that same sound ever since. I didn’t get that scream on record. I wasn’t prepared. It’s my greatest regret.”

  “And did you?” I asked. “Did you ever find that same sound again?”

  He shook his head, wistful. “Close,” he said. “Very close, sometimes. But never the same.”

  It took another ten minutes to complete the interview, and I was glad when it was done. I’d gotten what I wanted. Now I’d get to walk out of that place, while Bill—he of the belly and the horn-rims and the big false smile—would not. He’d die in a cage. Not enough by far, but it would have to do.

  “Come on,” he said to me, as I was turning to leave. “Tell me something about myself.”

  I frowned. “Sorry?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve read everything about me, heard everything. I’ve answered all your questions, filled out all your forms. So? You’re the expert. What can you tell me about me?”

  I saw the real desire in his eyes. I’d seen it before in the eyes of these men. It was one of those injections of humanity, a shade of gray where you’d prefer just black and white. Their own misery was their biggest secret. Why? they wanted to know. Why am I the way I am?