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chewed his lip. “Four victims
that we know of
. I mean, how many murders out there haven’t even gone into a database? Or have different characteristics? If he started killing young, are the early ones going to match? I assume he’s been developing and learning.”
    “How long since the first murder?”
    Rauser didn’t have to look at his notes. “Keye, this guy has been hunting for at least fifteen years.”
    How many murders had gone unreported? How many cold cases still not entered in a criminal database? I tried to let this sink in. “The last one didn’t satisfy the craving,” I said. “So he writes to you about it. He’s restless, unfulfilled. He’s telling you he’s becoming fully active, Rauser.”
    “You know what really bugs me?” Rauser rubbed the stubble on his face. “The way he leaves them. The bastard knew about the Koto kid. He knows enough about each victim to get in and out at exactly the right time to avoid apprehension. He wanted the kid to find her.”
    I didn’t like thinking about the boy or anyone else finding someonethey love torn and broken and treated with that kind of disregard. It took me a moment to swallow down the growing lump in my throat. “Ritually displaying the body, leaving it for someone close to the victim to find in positions the killer considers humiliating, leaving the body unclothed, postmortem mutilation, it’s all part of the domination theme. It absolutely establishes the killer’s control over the victim.”
    He took more scene photos out of his case, rubber-banded together, each group labeled, and pushed them across the desk. “Why do you think he turns them over?”
    “Maybe he’s not okay with their faces,” I answered, and thought about that. “Maybe it feels to him like they’re watching him.”
    “Jesus,” Rauser said.
    “Positioning the bodies gives him more power. It helps him dissociate and objectify them.”
    I went through the photographs one by one.
Anne Chambers, white female, 20, Tallahassee, Florida. Bob Shelby, white male, 64, Jacksonville, Florida. Elicia Richardson, black female, 35, Alpharetta, Georgia
. And
Lei Koto, Asian female, 33
. Three women and one man of varying ages and ethnicity, all left facedown, stabbed and bitten.
    She died asking
W HY .
They all want some small peace in the midst of chaos. Their chaos, not mine. I do not tell them. I am not there to comfort them
.
    I looked at Rauser. “Homicide isn’t the motive in this kind of crime. It’s merely the
result
of his behaviors at the scene. Manipulation, control, domination—that’s motive.”
    Rauser groaned. “Great, that’s gonna be easy to track down.”
    I looked back at the Lei Koto scene: the little kitchen, pale yellow walls, yellow countertops, white appliances spattered with blood and smeared with her handprints. I’d seen a lot of crime scenes. They all shocked and disturbed me. They all told a story.
    According to the autopsy report Rauser brought with him, there were extensive wounds to the neck and shoulders. The angles suggested that Lei Koto had her back to her killer at some point during their interaction; some of the wounds were clean, some torn and ragged. I looked at the bloodstain analyst’s report. Blood pooled on the kitchen floor, then arterial spray and spatter from her wounds, cast off from a bloodied weapon, dotted the stove, the refrigerator. Walls and floor in the hallwaywere smeared. I understood what this meant. The initial attack came from behind while Lei was still and unprepared, and then she started to move and it continued and continued and continued. The blood spatter proved that she had somehow broken free at one point and tried to get away. Perhaps she’d been allowed that one brief hope of fleeing, just for entertainment’s sake, just so the killer would have something to chase. Already I was learning something about the offender. A patient sadist, to be sure. And a disciplined one. The attack had gone on, according