date. Polly Amherst, the woman whose murder had obsessed John McCafferty in Baltimore, had not yet made the list.
SECONDARY VICTIMOLOGY—PRELIMINARY
Gabriel Ortiz, Sarasota, FLstudent
HM, DOB 6-1-82, DOD 2-14-92
Ligature strangulation, molestation
(kapok fiber)
Robert Smathers, Chicagostudent
BM, DOB 8-11-81, DOD 8-15-93
Manual strangulation, mutilation antemortem
Althea Granadine, Dallasstudent
BF, DOB 10-10-84, DOD 1-4-94
Multiple stabbing, chest, mutilation antemortem
Manuela Cortez, Albuquerque, NMhousekeeper
HF, DOB 4-11-46, DOD 8-16-94
Multiple blunt force, mutilation postmortem
(kapok fiber)
Theresa Lofton, Denver, COstudent, day care employee
WF, DOB 7-4-75, DOD 12-16-94
Ligature strangulation, mutilation postmortem
(kapok fiber)
“Okay, once again we are missing one,” Doran said. “Baltimore. I understand the case was not a child, but a teacher. Polly Amherst. Ligature strangulation and postmortem mutilation.”
She waited a beat in case people were writing notes.
“We are still in the process of having files and data faxed in on these cases,” she continued. “This was just put together for the meeting. But, preliminarily, what we are looking at as far as these secondary cases go is a commonality involving children. Three victims were children, two worked directly with children and the last one, Manuela Cortez, was a housekeeper who was abducted and murdered at some point while going to the school her employer’s children attended to walk them home. The extrapolation is that the intended targets in this chain were children but in half the cases perhaps something went wrong, the stalking pattern was somehow interrupted by the adult victims, and they were eliminated.”
“What is to be made from the mutilation?” an agent on the outer rim asked. “Some of it’s post and with the kids . . . it wasn’t.”
“We’re not sure, but a guess at this time is that it might be part of his cloaking. By using different methodology and pathology he has been able to camouflage himself. On this page these cases may look similar but the more complete the analysis the more different they are. It is as if six different men with differing pathologies killed these victims. In fact, all the cases were submitted on VICAP questionnaires by the local agencies but none drew matches to the others. Remember, the questionnaire is now up to eighteen pages.
“Bottom line, I think this offender’s read up on us. I think he knew how to do things differently enough with each of these victims so that our trusty computer never scored a match. The only mistake he made was the kapok fibers. That is how we have him.”
An agent on the outer rim raised his hand and Doran nodded at him.
“If there were three incidents of kapok fiber being recovered, why didn’t we get a match on the VICAP computer if all cases were entered like you said?”
“Human error. In the first case, the Ortiz boy, kapok was indigenous to the area and dismissed. It wasn’t put on the questionnaire. In the Albuquerque case, the fibers were not identified as kapok, the survey was not updated. An oversight. We missed the match. We only got that from the field office today. Only in the Denver case was the kapok seen as significant enough to include on the VICAP request.”
There was a groan from several of the agents and I felt my own heart sink a bit. The possibility of confirming that there was a serial killer at work as early as the Albuquerque case had been missed. What if it hadn’t been missed, I wondered. Maybe Sean would be alive.
“That brings us to the big question,” Doran said. “How many killers have we got? One who does the first string and another who does the detectives? Or just one? One who does them all. For the moment, based primarily on the logistical improbabilities associated with two killers, we are pursuing a theory of linkage. Our assumption is that in each city the two deaths are linked.”
“What’s the pathology?” Smitty asked.
“We’re only guessing now. The obvious one is that he sees killing the detective as a way of covering his tracks, ensuring his escape. But we have another theory as well. That is that the first homicide was committed by the offender in order to draw a homicide detective into the frame. In other words, the first kill is bait, presented in such a horrific fashion as to attract a homicide detective’s obsession. We are assuming that the Poet then stalked each one of these officers and learned their habits and routines. That enabled him to get close and carry out the eventual murder without detection.”
This silenced the room. I got the feeling that many of the agents, though surely veterans of numerous