Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I’m sorry, I had to finish those notes for the case Chavez wanted me to give an opinion on,” I tell my teammates as I hurry into the conference room and slip in my chair. I’m only ten minutes late to the meeting, but I prefer to be punctual.
Walker nods, and I can tell he isn’t upset with my tardiness—it only bothers me. I really was focused on the notes for Chavez, but I also may have checked my phone a few times to see if I had any new texts from Ryan.
I’m a mere mortal, but I’m convinced that man’s smile may test my previously held beliefs regarding supernatural powers.
Don’t even get me started on that dimple.
“We were just going through updated CPM scores, and Mason was letting us know about a significant update for one of our high priority cases, a personal favorite of yours with the established nickname.” Walker indicates for Mason to continue, and I brush off the annoyance at hearing this killer glamorized with an alliteration nickname.
“Earlier this week, during a regional violent crime briefing in New York City, a detective from Boston’s Police Department was discussing the staging of The Carnation Killer’s victims. While presenting the known cases, a New York Police third-grade detective brought up a case that he believes is the same unsub, including the picnic blanket and carnation placed on the victim’s sternum.
” Mason pulls up the images from the New York City case, and it looks eerily similar to the other crime scenes.
It’s not enough to assume it’s the same unsub, but there are multiple similarities to our other crime scenes.
“How was this not on our radar? The secluded area, the picnic blanket. I mean, I can see the carnation from here!” Kelly raises his voice from the back of the room, but his anger isn’t surprising—or wrong.
“The initial investigation thought the flower was from an interrupted date or romantic setting, and the lead detectives on that case didn’t see the need to enter the case into ViCAP until they received the toxicology results, and their lab was backlogged,” Mason explains, pulling up additional reports onto the screen.
“When the tox report came back and indicated ketamine usage, they should have put this information into ViCAP immediately, but…”
“But they didn’t,” Kelly finishes for him. “Listen, I get it. I’ve been where these guys are, but that doesn’t justify that we had an entire case, what, six months ago, that should have been on our radar?” Kelly hates bureaucracy, especially when it withholds justice.
“Mason, can you walk us through the entire case, please? Let’s score it and go from there.” Walker doesn’t address Kelly’s outburst, but he doesn’t need to because we’ve all felt that same frustration.
The suspect has a consistent pattern and a clear signature—highly organized, methodical.
With the exception of the survivor, Monica Jackson, the killer has taken the lives of six known victims. At each crime scene, he uses a common picnic style blanket that can be found at most major big box stores and leaves a single carnation on the victim’s body.
Each of the six victims were positioned with their hair brushed away from their face, clothing all intact and smoothed, and there was no evidence of sexual assault.
Prior to Monica Jackson’s attack in May of last year, the cause of death was positional asphyxia, but after she got away, the unsub escalated. Victims six and seven were both killed by manual strangulation in addition to being sedated at the time of death.
The method of killing wasn’t the only escalation after Ms. Jackson’s attack.
He shifted from injecting his victims with valium—as was the case with Monica’s attack—to injecting them with ketamine.
The shift is an escalation of behavior, giving him more control of his victims in a shorter time period, and minimizing the risk of another failed crime scene.
This supports one of my suspicions: I believe it is highly probable that this unsub works in the medical field, like a doctor, nurse, patient tech, first responder, or even a veterinarian.
It’s not common for someone to have access to liquid forms of valium, but access to ketamine is even more limited.
However, if they had routine access to a hospital or emergency room—human or animal—there’s a plausible explanation for how they obtain the drugs they’re using to incapacitate their victims.
This scene or staging is very important to this unsub, which begs the question, why?
It appears he is invested in the appearance of his victims. Otherwise, he wouldn’t make sure their hair was neatly brushed away from their face and their clothes were straightened.
He stages them postmortem, so they look a very specific way whenever they are discovered.
The lack of sexual assault is interesting because at first it presents as nonsexual, but that assumption is as dangerous as is potentially false.
It’s possible he’s unable to perform or avoids it altogether for some reason, so to him, this may be sexually gratifying in nature.
Even if there is no physical evidence to support that theory, some offenders experience sexual gratification from the control, ritual, and even staging.
There is very limited physical evidence in general, which is not accidental.
He is highly intelligent and detail-oriented, and there have only been trace amounts of touch DNA recovered from the scenes.
If he had realized he left even tiny amounts of skin cells behind, he would likely have tried to remove them.
But even that trace amount has allowed us to confirm that these cases are indeed connected—a fact we are keeping completely under wraps.
If the unsub is a first responder, there’s a real risk he could overhear or be fed details through law enforcement channels, and we cannot let him know that we have confirmed the connection of victims. If he were to confirm our findings, it could cause an escalation, and that is the last thing any of us want.
The only thing we want is to find him and stop him before he takes another life.
“Is it possible that the victims are stand-ins for someone he lost and he is trying to recreate that connection?” Tara asks.
“Like a former girlfriend or spouse type thing?” Kelly adds.
“That would give us something to look into as potential demographics, say a veterinarian that lost a spouse in the region who fits the other markers of the unsub,” Mason chimes in.
I nod. “Those are definitely possibilities, especially if he has veterinary access to ketamine. If we find someone who fits that profile, it would be worth looking into the circumstances of their spouse’s death.”
“Considering all of these updates, what does that bring the updated CPM score to, Mason?” Walker asks as Mason plugs the numbers we discussed into his database.
“The updated score is now seventy-eight,” Mason replies. “This officially reclassifies the case from high priority to critical.” The declaration is not surprising; multiple escalation factors and increasing victim count mean the serial killer known as The Carnation Killer is now our top priority.