Chapter 6
Pierce had led them back to the Daviess County sheriff’s department, where they were borrowing workspace as a favor to Pierce from his former colleagues.
They dropped their coats in the chair by the door, and then Knight was already on it.
There was even a whiteboard and bulletin board already and waiting for them.
Miranda set up her iPad and phone. They would use a secure PAVAD Wi-Fi connection and server for everything they did.
That was definitely part of her job—Knight and technology was rather funny at times.
“He is a non-familial predatory home-invasion killer,” Knight said.
Miranda agreed. There had been nothing that said the unsub had known the family—or knew them well, anyway. “He is highly organized, and I think he targeted them to feel in control. Sexually.”
There had been multiple signs of sexual assault, and it had been sustained. For hours.
“So Aimee was his target all along. We already suspected that,” Pierce said, leaning against a desk and crossing those massive arms over his chest. “This was all about sex?”
Miranda shook her head. She’d been thinking about the scene, and about what the killer would have wanted from Aimee to have hurt her the way he had. “Not likely.”
“It was more about the control. But this killer feels women are inferior—and one way to control women is through sexual force. He likes the results of that, knowing he dominated. And he wants to relive it. He watched the news, maybe even watched the crime scene investigation from behind the tape. He could have been one of the spectators that day. Maybe even kept news articles. He covered everything religiously. In his mind, he controlled everything. Even the aftermath.”
Knight was just getting started. He understood the killers’ minds they dealt with far more than she did. The man was a little on the terrifying side at times.
There was just also a strong core of honor that ran through him, too. Sometimes, she wondered how much of a hold that honor had on him. It was probably all that kept him from being truly dangerous.
Then again, she spent a lot of time profiling Dr. Allan Knight. It was starting to be a real habit.
She’d been wrong far more times than she’d been right.
“So how similar is he to a typical family annihilator?” Pierce asked. “I’ve read about all of these profiles, but…hell, I haven’t come across them in my career that often. If at all. I’ve had six murder cases in sixteen years, and those were joint with a team out of Indy. That’s it.”
“Not very similar at all. A family annihilator typically faces some kind of stress or trigger—most often financial ruin or exposure of financial struggles. That’s often combined with relationship breakdowns such as divorce or separation,” Knight said.
He’d done extensive study into family annihilators.
Miranda had read all of his published works.
The man was very, very good at what he did.
“Some family annihilators fear loss of status more than anything, or abandonment,” Knight added.
“They’re afraid of losing everything, so they orchestrate the end of everything in order to retain control of it.
There is typically no sexual violence in family-annihilator situations. They want closure, not domination.”
“That’s why no family connection to the Gibsons was found,” Miranda said. Family annihilators were often easier to figure out. There was almost always a paper trail, and very clear relational ties. “This wasn’t about social loss. This was a need for power.”
“This man was most likely rejected sexually,” Knight said. “Made to feel less of a man somehow—through his employment or his social environment. At heart, he believes he’s powerless.”
“Invisible,” Pierce said. “Hell, doesn’t everyone feel that way at one point or another?”
Yes. Her friend was definitely struggling lately.
Payton had hinted as much. Miranda was going to make a point of getting Pierce alone, and getting the man to open up.
She was a good listener—she made sure of it.
“Exactly. He blames society for it, and women, his boss—anyone he believes takes from him without giving.”
“Then why assault Aimee at all?” Pierce asked. “The things he did to her—it feels personal.”
“It is, in his mind. In a lot of ways, anyway. Even though she was just a stand-in for the woman he really hates” Miranda thought about it for a moment, separating out the details about the woman’s son and husband.
“Aimee was everyone who had ever wronged him. He was punishing her, over and over, for whatever failures he thought women had caused him specifically.”
“And where was Terra during those hours?” Pierce asked. “He had to keep her somewhere. She was thirteen, eighty pounds. She was capable of getting away if given the opportunity.”
“There was no opportunity. He had made sure of that before even stepping through that front door,” Knight put it bluntly.
“My bet is Terra was already secured somewhere else before he even touched her mother sexually.” Miranda had imagined it from every scenario.
And DNA reports and all forensics reports had shown that the DNA of the daughter had been where it had been expected to be.
There had been no significant signs of trauma to Terra in that home recent enough to indicate she had been there.
They had no indication the girl had been there at all, except that she was missing.
And her backpack with her most recent homework assignments half completed had been found on the foot of her bed.
“What surprised me most is that there weren’t other signs of Terra being held there.
Blood, urine. Anything. Twelve hours is a long time for a grieving, traumatized child to be bound and controlled in one location.
There would have been signs—biological or physical.
Or even just plain environmental. If he’d had her on the couch in the living room, for example, I seriously doubt she’d have been able to hold her bladder for that long.
Not as terrified as she would have been.
And if he’d killed her immediately, he probably would have used the two weapons he’d brought with him—knife or gun.
Unless he cleaned up the evidence for that.
But why would he do that—and not Aimee or the others? ”
No gun had been found at the scene, and neither had the knife that had been used to kill Aimee. It was most likely he’d brought the weapons with him—and taken them with him when he’d left. Premediated.
“That would be too much deviation from his script,” Knight said.
He was a big believer in life scripts of the unsubs.
He’d studied that as well. He was a very well-educated man, her partner.
But almost emotionless in his delivery. That had caused some problems for local law enforcement at times, but when they worked together, Miranda made up for it.
Even they had their own life scripts they lived by.
Everyone did. Just some were more aware of it than others.
“He probably tied up Aimee, carried Terra outside to his vehicle, secured her, then went right back inside—free to do whatever he wanted, as long as he wanted. Taking Terra could have just been another way to control her mother.”
“Something about this family triggered him specifically,” Miranda said.
It was the only thing that made sense. It could have been the composition of the family, the location, their ethnicity or religious background.
It could have been Aimee’s physical characteristics, or something she’d said when meeting the killer casually around this town.
It could have been anything. Miranda and Knight were there to help Pierce narrow it down.
Identify the trigger, identify the location, and maybe… help find the man responsible.
“Now we just need to find out what,” Knight said.
It was really kind of creepy when he read her mind like that. It just was.