The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,23
Wuornos case, the killer murdered prostitutes’ clients, punishing the men, not the women. The sin an evangelical killer identifies might not stand out at first glance.”
Tucker considered that, then turned to Amaia. “Then you’re suggesting one or several family members did something, manifested some behavior, that meant they deserved to die?”
“The murderer thought they deserved to die,” Amaia cautioned her. “We have to remember he doesn’t see the world as the rest of us do. Anything any one of them had done—even the children—might strike him as immoral. But that can’t be all of it, since he doesn’t take out only the offending family member. He punishes them all. He sees them all as responsible.”
She felt Dupree’s eyes on her. He was watching her, his head tilted slightly to one side. No, he wasn’t watching her, he was scrutinizing her as he’d done that morning in his office.
Emerson leaned forward. “I still think there’s a flaw in your theory. Sure, all that stuff about disasters determining the place of the crime makes sense. But we still don’t have enough to explain how he chose these families.”
“I can’t explain that,” Amaia admitted, locking eyes with Emerson, not so much to challenge him as to escape Dupree’s penetrating gaze. “It’s too early to answer that question. We can get closer to him once we understand his timing. I’m more interested in figuring out how long he’s been murdering families.”
Emerson was exasperated. “We’ve traced him back to February—”
“For the moment,” Amaia interrupted him sharply, “we can trace his activities back to Cape May. But I’m certain he started long before that. He’s perfected his rite and his method; he knows what he’s doing. He knew Belinda Wright played the role of the grandmother, even though she wasn’t a blood relation. He’s an expert, which strongly suggests experience, practice, and skill. A beginner makes mistakes.”
Dupree nodded slowly. “More about that?”
“The Millers in February, the Masons in March, the Jones family in April, and now it’s August with the Allens. There’s a three-month gap in the timeline. We should look for failures, attacks gone wrong. He can’t be scoring a hundred percent.”
Tucker nodded and stepped forward to face Amaia. “For example, families with the same composition but where not everybody died. Maybe they weren’t all at home when disaster struck.”
Amaia smiled, pleased that Tucker was accepting her ideas. Exhilarated, she continued, “It must be hard to control that many people. He forces them to surrender their weapon, ties them up, gets them into a room, and executes them one after another. Belinda Wright got away—others might have as well. I’m sure he had screwups; taking on a family in the wake of a disaster is a risky business. Too many things can go wrong, and something completely unexpected could always occur.”
Dupree nodded again and addressed his team. “Look for cases where families with a similar composition complained of a suspicious visitor after a disaster. Let’s look for failed attempts, times when the perpetrator had to back off. Maybe a neighbor showed up to help them or outsiders were present; maybe one or several family members were absent. Anything that broke the pattern or complicated his task.”
Amaia nodded at each phrase. Dupree turned to her. “What else?”
“I . . . well, if I were in charge . . . I’d want to know everything possible about these families, every detail of their lives. I’m sure their profiles fit the killer’s criteria in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. It could be some aspect so trivial that we’ve overlooked it. This type of psychopath doesn’t have conventional motivations, but something he finds terribly important is driving him. By understanding the families in depth, we’ll have a better chance of figuring out how the killer gets to them. Despite the geographic dispersion of these random disasters, he’s managed to identify families that perfectly fit his requirements. How does he do that? We need a better victimology profile.”
Emerson leaned close to her and muttered so no one else could hear, “If you were running this team.”
That was a stupid thing for him to say, but it was enough to distract her for a moment.
“Salazar, what else?” Dupree prompted her.
“The geographic profile,” she said, refocusing. “I’d consider a wider area.”
“How wide?” Johnson asked.
“Nationwide. Let’s look anywhere a natural disaster has struck over the last two years. If nothing turns up, we may have to go farther back.”
“That’s crazy!” Johnson exclaimed.
Emerson spoke to Johnson as if Amaia weren’t present. “I guess she