Tucker’s tone was considerably less adversarial when she next addressed Amaia. “Now I understand what you meant with ‘the cast of characters.’ It’s not so much that he’s looking for a family that exactly matches; instead, he wants one he can use to populate his scene. But it’s hard to imagine he’s choosing them by figuring out where a natural disaster is likely to hit.”
“That’s not quite it,” Amaia objected, starting to hit her stride. “It’s not that simple. We have to keep in mind it’s gotten easier to predict exactly where a storm or hurricane is going to hit. He knows that too. The hurricane tells him where to go. It’s God speaking to him. God and the weather forecasters anyhow,” she amplified with a rueful smile. “I believe that’s how he beats everyone else to the scene. He’s in the area before the hurricane arrives, waiting for God to give him the exact coordinates.”
Emerson clicked his tongue in disgust. “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” he said with false affability. “You’re imagining the killer doesn’t choose a family but instead a place—the place where a natural disaster will strike. Sure, they’re no longer that hard to predict, but only up to a point. But if that’s how he chooses the scene, how does our Composer find families that match his criteria once the weatherman tells him where to go? Does God tell him where disaster will strike even before the weather bureau does, so he’ll have enough time to identify candidates? Or do you think it’s all some sort of mystic hocus-pocus like burying bodies under the eaves of the house?”
“That’s idiotic reasoning,” she answered firmly. “And I’m not making assumptions, I’m building a case from the facts. It doesn’t matter what I believe. The important thing is whether he believes it. That’s the power of faith. If this killer justifies his actions as God’s will, or he’s at least convinced that God doesn’t see him as a murderer but as a just man, he’ll attribute to divine guidance events the rest of us think are insignificant. And he’ll have developed his own methodology for selecting his victims.”
Tucker spoke. “We’re still in the early stages, and we don’t yet have all the information, but evangelical killers believe they’re ridding society of the worthless, the perverse, and the miserable. They usually prey on prostitutes, drug dealers and addicts, and anybody they perceive as immoral. We’re just starting to look into the Allen family, but we’ve combed through the lives of the others, and I can tell you now they don’t fit that profile. They’re ordinary families with their good points and bad points, but as far as we can see, they weren’t the sort an evangelical killer would condemn as immoral. Nothing suggests they were guilty of anything.”
Johnson objected. “In the Wuornos case, the killer murdered prostitutes’ clients, punishing the men, not the women. The sin an evangelical killer identifies might not stand out at first glance.”
Tucker considered that, then turned to Amaia. “Then you’re suggesting one or several family members did something, manifested some behavior, that meant they deserved to die?”
“The murderer thought they deserved to die,” Amaia cautioned her. “We have to remember he doesn’t see the world as the rest of us do. Anything any one of them had done—even the children—might strike him as immoral. But that can’t be all of it, since he doesn’t take out only the offending family member. He punishes them all. He sees them all as responsible.”
She felt Dupree’s eyes on her. He was watching her, his head tilted slightly to one side. No, he wasn’t watching her, he was scrutinizing her as he’d done that morning in his office.
Emerson leaned forward. “I still think there’s a flaw in your theory. Sure, all that stuff about disasters determining the place of the crime makes sense. But we still don’t have enough to explain how he chose these families.”
“I can’t explain that,” Amaia admitted, locking eyes with Emerson, not so much to challenge him as to escape Dupree’s penetrating gaze. “It’s too early to answer that question. We can get closer to him once we understand his timing. I’m more interested in figuring out how long he’s been murdering families.”
Emerson was exasperated. “We’ve traced him back to February—”
“For the moment,” Amaia interrupted him sharply, “we can trace his activities back to Cape May. But I’m certain he started long before that. He’s perfected his rite and his method; he knows what he’s doing. He knew Belinda Wright played the role of the grandmother, even though she wasn’t a blood relation. He’s an expert, which strongly suggests experience, practice, and skill. A beginner makes mistakes.”
Dupree nodded slowly. “More about that?”
“The Millers in February, the Masons in March, the Jones family in April, and now it’s August with the Allens. There’s a three-month gap in the timeline. We should look for failures, attacks gone wrong. He can’t be scoring a hundred percent.”
Tucker nodded and stepped forward to face Amaia. “For example, families with the same composition but where not everybody died. Maybe they weren’t all at home when disaster struck.”
Amaia smiled, pleased that Tucker was accepting her ideas. Exhilarated, she continued, “It must be hard to control that many people. He forces them to surrender their weapon, ties them up, gets them into a room, and executes them one after another. Belinda Wright got away—others might have as well. I’m sure he had screwups; taking on a family in the wake of a disaster is a risky business. Too many things can go wrong, and something completely unexpected could always occur.”
Dupree nodded again and addressed his team. “Look for cases where families with a similar composition complained of a suspicious visitor after a disaster. Let’s look for failed attempts, times when the perpetrator had to back off. Maybe a neighbor showed up to help them or outsiders were present; maybe one or several family members were absent. Anything that broke the pattern or complicated his task.”
Amaia nodded at each phrase. Dupree turned to her. “What else?”
“I . . . well, if I were in charge . . . I’d want to know everything possible about these families, every detail of their lives. I’m sure their profiles fit the killer’s criteria in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. It could be some aspect so trivial that we’ve overlooked it. This type of psychopath doesn’t have conventional motivations, but something he finds terribly important is driving him. By understanding the families in depth, we’ll have a better chance of figuring out how the killer gets to them. Despite the geographic dispersion of these random disasters, he’s managed to identify families that perfectly fit his requirements. How does he do that? We need a better victimology profile.”
Emerson leaned close to her and muttered so no one else could hear, “If you were running this team.”
That was a stupid thing for him to say, but it was enough to distract her for a moment.
“Salazar, what else?” Dupree prompted her.
“The geographic profile,” she said, refocusing. “I’d consider a wider area.”