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and probably working in the metro area.” He gave a little salute and added, “Great work, FBI. That narrows it down to about two million guys in this city.”
    “He needs time and space to engage the fantasies that drive his violent behaviors,” I said. “So it makes sense they’re thinking he lives alone. And, according to his letter, he’s taking pictures, so that helps keep the fantasyramped up. What he’s doing with them, he’s already imagined in vivid detail. It’s just a matter of inserting the victim. He probably sees himself in a relationship with them somehow. Are there secondary scenes?”
    “Primary scene and disposal site are one and the same. Does all his work on them right there. What does that tell you?”
    “He doesn’t
have
to remove them to a secondary scene, because he knows he’s not going to be interrupted. He’s obviously engaging in the kind of precautionary acts that make him feel secure about their schedules, the neighbors, and that the door will open.”
    “There’s no evidence of rape, no seminal fluid, but the Bureau labeled it sexual homicide. Why? This just ups the wow factor for the press.”
    “Well, the stabbing thing is usually associated with sexual behaviors.”
    “Jesus Christ,” Rauser erupted, startling me. “I can’t wait to announce that we’ve got some kind of sexual lust killer out there. We have a press conference in two hours. And I have the pleasure of telling the city we have a serial.”
    I remained very still even though I didn’t feel calm at all. My desk was covered in death scene photographs and Rauser was emitting stress hormones that were leaping across the desk and slapping me in the face. We did not have a history of being great together when one of us was stressed out. We’re a bit like puppies, Rauser and I, much better at playing and not so good at calming each other down. Generally a fight breaks out when we’re both cranked up.
    Rauser looked away. “I’m grasping at straws and you’re not giving me anything I don’t already know.”
    I thought about the taunting letter and about the medical examiner’s report. I couldn’t stand it when Rauser was disappointed with me. I loved and hated the way I felt around him. That Daddy thing again. It was a hook for me and always had been. My father barely spoke a word to me or any other member of our family, and when he did, it was like the clouds had parted and you suddenly felt all warm inside. Both my brother and I spent too much of our childhood trying to draw him out in order to repeat that feeling, and I’ve spent too much of my adult life looking for that from men. My mother, on the other hand, was almost never quiet. She handed out her criticisms liberally and her approval sparingly, which only seemed to compound our psychoses.
    “Violent offenders report having had penetration fantasies while they’re stabbing,” I told Rauser. “The theory follows that the offender uses a knife instead of a penis. The stabbing tends to be around the sexual areas of the body, and in some cases the stabbing has also been postmortem and therefore not about victim suffering but something very different. In criminal psych circles it might be called something like regressive necrophilia.”
    “What else?” he asked.
    “Writing to you now after being silent for so long, if it really has been fifteen years, playing games with law enforcement—it’s all meant to heighten the level of excitement and challenge. Just killing isn’t enough anymore.”
    “He doesn’t just kill, Keye, he mutilates them,” Rauser reminded me, and ran a hand through thick salt-and-pepper hair.
    “I’m sorry. I wish I could help. I really do.” I only half meant it, of course. It was just what I said when Rauser was worried about something.
    “You can,” he said, surprising me. “Come to the station and read all the reports from all the scenes. Break it down to something practical I can use to figure out who this