death involving water, since he was in his bathtub.”
“It’s weird, though, isn’t it?” Butts remarked. “How often do you see these guys killing men and women?”
“That’s an important part of the profile,” Lee agreed. “But I don’t know what it means yet. He’s also going after relatively low-risk victims—”
“ ‘Low-risk’ victims?” Krieger interrupted.
“Yeah,” Butts said. “In other words, he’s not goin’ after prostitutes and drug addicts—lowlifes who take risks.”
“So that means he’s bold—confident,” Chuck added.
“Right,” said Lee. “He’s taking more chances by going after these kinds of victims.”
Krieger frowned and crossed her long arms over her ample chest. “How can you automatically assume the killer is a man?”
Butts rolled his eyes, but Chuck glared at him.
“Actually, that’s a good question,” Lee said, trying to maintain the delicate truce they had struck with Krieger. “Though there are female serial killers, they’re very rare. Statistically the odds are against it being a woman.”
Krieger made a little puffing sound with her lips and plopped down in the nearest chair with an air of dissatisfaction.
“Right,” Butts said. “I’d say the odds of this being a woman are about as great as the odds that I’ll develop an interest in playing bridge.”
Lee had to smile at the irony of Butts defending the art of criminal profiling, considering his initial disdain when they first started working together. He suspected Butts was more interested in putting Elena Krieger in her place than he was in supporting Lee.
“I think Detective Krieger has an excellent point,” he said. “At this point I think one of the worst mistakes we could make would be to close off possible options, just because they seem unlikely. I think keeping an open mind is really important in a case like this. There are already enough unusual factors to indicate to me that this is not a textbook example of any particular type of offender.”
“Agreed,” Chuck said. “So we keep an open mind, at least for now.”
“What do you mean by ‘not a textbook example'?” Krieger asked. “I didn’t know there was such a thing in your field.”
“Well, strictly speaking, there isn’t,” Lee replied. “No two criminals are exactly alike any more than any two people are identical. But there are greater and lesser degrees of conformity to certain—types, I guess you might say. We use terms like organized and disorganized, rage driven, sadistic, and controlling—but the truth is most offenders are some combination of those types.”
“And this particular offender?” Krieger said.
“I would guess that he has some trauma in his past, probably early childhood, involving water. And in these killings he is playing out some version of that event—reliving it, so to speak.”
“Why early childhood?” said Butts.
“Because that’s when things tend to impact us most deeply. The brain is more fluid in young children, and it forms connections that are almost impossible to sever later on. So when Ted Bundy’s aunt awoke from a nap one day to find five-year-old Teddy placing knives all around her as she lay in bed, she was witnessing the early deviant behavior of a serial killer in the making.”
“Christ,” Butts said. “That really happened?”
“Yes. It came out when his former friend Anne Rule wrote a book about him.”
“I remember that book,” Chuck said. “The Stranger Beside Me, wasn’t it?”
“Right,” said Lee.
Elena Krieger stood up and stretched her long body.
“All of this is quite fascinating, I’m sure,” she said, “but shouldn’t we focus on the matter at hand?”
Butts glared at her, his porous face reddening, as though it were about to sprout spores. He opened his mouth to say something, but Lee intervened.
“Have you been able to establish any link between the victims?” he asked Chuck.
“Not yet. The only link seems to be that they’re dead.”
“And the notes,” Butts pointed out.
“Right. The notes indicate the killer had some interaction with them before he decided to the kill them—but does that fit your usual situation in cases like this? Don’t serial offenders usually prey on strangers?” Chuck asked.
“This case is odd in a lot of ways,” Lee answered. “They do usually kill relative strangers, which helps them depersonalize their victims.”
“And makes them harder to catch,” Butts interjected.
“True,” Lee agreed. “But guys like Gacy and Dahmer had some interaction with their victims before killing them, for example, so I think we should start with the idea that this UNSUB knew the victims—at least to an extent.”
“He must have known the man he killed in the bathtub, no?” Krieger asked. “There was no sign of forced entry.”
“I agree,” Lee said. “A