Chapter 6 Sacrifices #7
“Comfort among murder and mayhem. We might need to keep an eye out on you.”
“Female serial killers are so few and far between that the idea has been all but dismissed by experts, since they are usually created after trauma or for reasons of pure revenge or a sense of morality.”
“You don’t think men have those same ideas?
” Ori’s words were a challenge as we sat around the space dubbed the War Room that had since been vacated by every other agent.
Like everything else, it too was nondescript and I had to wonder what the government was spending all the tax dollars on.
The furniture looked straight out of an office supply catalog and the art could’ve been purchased for any middle of the road hotel chain.
Besides the tablets and the Smart Whiteboard, we could’ve been sitting in a community college or an MLM headquarters.
“You think that family annihilators have any sense of trauma besides the potential damage to their egos that would happen if the world found out they weren’t as successful as they claimed?
Or the men who feign being good guys in order to lure their prey?
Funny how it’s called a Venus flytrap, but women rarely have to use deceptive methods to kill.
Most often men go merrily to their deaths because they never see a woman as a threat until it’s too late. ”
The room had narrowed down to the two of us as I spoke and I knew he was going to say something to irritate me simply because he could.
“And underestimating a woman has been the downfall of many men.”
“This sounds perilously close to the Samson and Delilah parable.”
Alec made the sign of the cross over his chest briefly, and Ori shook his head at me.
“Please don’t get him riled up.”
I wasn’t religious but I also didn’t want to be disrespectful. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
Alec smiled showing he wasn’t offended which allowed me to relax. “Years of training with strict Roman Catholic grandparents. Who also believed in spirituality and ancestral veneration. I’m at war in my head so don’t mind me—”
“Your upbringing shapes how you view the world and interact with it. I won’t say anything offensive I promise. If I caused offense by classifying it that way I apologize. That wasn’t my intention.”
“I wasn’t speaking of Samson and Delilah. Just on the everyday ways that men think that a history of repressing their female counterparts deems them superior. Instead, it ignores and overshadows the leaps that women have made despite efforts to keep them down. Especially Black women.”
Ori’s words felt poignant. Targeted and directed toward me.
Would this be considered progress?
“That was almost kind.”
“I don’t speak on things as trivial as flattery only facts. The truth so happens to be favorable to you.”
And just like that, I wanted to slap him in the mouth again.
Alec sighed at Ori and gave me an apologetic look.
“Now that you’ve lost all the positive ground you’d gained let’s move on.
You’re right. We think that there could have been a pattern that we’ve missed since the Rawlins case was done entirely too efficiently.
The dump site was specific, the way she was laid out was ceremonial.
Nothing about it was by chance and it’s hard to believe someone is this clean on their first kill.
We always find something and that hasn’t happened yet. ”
Alec was laughing at Ori as he tried to turn my attention back to him. I was glad he had the good sense to understand that I was on the verge of walking away and not looking back.
“Don’t you normally need more than one victim to see where the mistakes were?”
It was easier for me to go back into work mode than to make sense of anything Ori did.
“After seeing so many scenes you know what to look for. They were careful, Dr. Avery. No random footprints left behind. No fibers on her body. Nothing that would be an obvious lead back to who they are.”
Alec seemed frustrated and Ori sat silently observing my reactions as they discussed what was happening with the case.
“Is there any other case that matches hers that you’ve seen lately?”
“No. Which is the other anomaly. We can tell this isn’t their first rodeo but nothing that we’ve pulled from local departments or from the surrounding states shows that she’s part of a pattern.”
“The idea of being wrong and the perpetrator being this sophisticated and careful isn’t possible.”
“Possible but not improbable.”
Leave it to Ori to be the most sarcastic one of all but I only nodded since I agreed with him. Their lack of findings didn’t mean that nothing was there. Just that the parameters they normally used weren’t bringing up cases that matched.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could I get the files of girls who have been missing within the last ten weeks in her age range? Sixteen to thirty all races?”
Alec paused and shared a look with Ori. “You are looking for other victims.”
“Possibly. I know you all are convinced this one is an outlier but it might not be. It won’t hurt to look and since it’s me I won’t be taking you all out of investigating this the way it should.”
“We can have them sent over to you within an hour.”