"Gab?" Maybe she was napping.

The guest room door was still closed. Birdie was asleep on my bed.

"You two really have it rough." I stroked his head. "Whoo. Time to clean your pan." The odor was noticeable.

"Too much on my mind, Bird. Sorry."

No acknowledgment.

"Where's Gabby?"

Blank stare. Stretch.

I replaced the litter. Birdie acknowledged by using it, pawing a large portion onto the floor.

"Come on, Bird, try to keep it in the pan. Gabby's not the neatest bathroom mate, but do your part." I looked at her jumble of cleansers and cosmetics. "I think she cleaned up a little."

I got a Diet c.o.ke and changed into cutoffs. Plan dinner? Who was I kidding. We'd go out.

The answering machine blinked. One message. Me. I'd called around one. Hadn't Gabby heard it? Had she ignored it? Maybe she'd turned the phone off. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she wasn't here. I went to her door.

"Gab?"

I knocked softly.

"Gabby?"

Harder.

I opened the door and looked in. The usual Gabby mess. Jewelry. Papers. Books. Clothes everywhere. A bra hung from the back of a chair. I checked the closet. Shoes and sandals tossed in heaps. Amid it all, the neatly made bed. The incongruity of it struck me.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h."

Birdie slithered past my legs.

"Was she here at all last night?"

He looked at me, jumped to the bed, circled twice, and settled. I dropped next to him, the familiar knot tightening in my stomach.

"She's done it again, Bird."

He spread his toes and began to lick.

"Not so much as a stinking note."

Birdie focused on inter-toe s.p.a.ces.

"I will not think about this." I went to unload the dishwasher.

Ten minutes later I had calmed enough to dial her number. No answer. Of course. I tried the university. No answer.

I wandered into the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator. Closed it. Dinner? Reopened it. Diet c.o.ke. Wandered to the living room, set the new c.o.ke next to the earlier can, clicked on the TV, surfed the channels, chose a sitcom I wouldn't watch. My mind raced from the murders to Gabby to my garden skull and back, unable to fix on anything. The cadence of dialogue and canned laughter provided background noise as my thoughts bounced around like atomic particles.

Anger at Gabby. Resentment at letting myself be used. Hurt that she would do it. Apprehension about her safety. Fear for a new victim. Frustration over my helplessness. I felt emotionally bruised, but couldn't stop beating myself.

I'm not sure how long I'd been there when the phone rang, the sound sending adrenaline pouring from wherever it rooms when not on duty.

Gabby!

"h.e.l.lo."

"Tempe Brennan, please." A male voice. Familiar as my Midwest childhood.

"J.S.! G.o.d, am I glad to hear from you!"

John Samuel Dobzhansky. My first love. Counselors. Camp Northwoods. The romance outlasted that summer and the next, thrived until our freshman year of college. I went South, J.S. went North. I chose anthropology, met Pete. He trained in psychology, married, divorced. Twice. Years later we'd reconnected at the Academy. J.S. specialized in s.e.xual homicide.

"You got that Camp Northwoods feeling?" he asked.

"Up in my head," I finished the line from the camp song. We both laughed.

"I wasn't sure if you'd want me to call at home, but you left the number so I figured I'd try."

"Glad you did. Thank you." Thank you. Thank you. "I want to pick your brain about a situation we've got up here. If that's okay?"

"Tempe, when will you stop disappointing me?" Feigned hurt.

We'd had dinner at Academy meetings, the possibility of a fling hanging heavy between us at first. Should we tamper with teenaged memories? Was the pa.s.sion still there? Nothing verbalized, the idea waned bilaterally. Better to leave the past intact.

"What about the new love interest you were telling me about last year?"

"Gone."

"Sorry. J.S., we've had some murders here that I think are tied together. If I give you an overview, can you opine on whether we have a serial?"

"I can opine on anything." One of our old pet phrases.

I described the Adkins and Morisette-Champoux scenes, and outlined what had been done to the victims. I described how and where the other bodies were found, and how they'd been mutilated. Then I added my theories about the Metro and want ads.

"I'm having trouble convincing the cops these cases are connected. They keep saying there's no pattern. They're right to some extent. The victims are all different, one is shot, the others aren't. They lived all over the place. Nothing hooks together."

"Whoa. Whoa. Slow down. You're going about this all wrong. First of all, most of what you've described has to do with modus operandi."

"Yes."

"Similarities in MO can be useful, don't get me wrong, but disparities are extremely common. A perpetrator may gag or tie his victim with the phone cord at one scene, then bring his own rope to the next. He may stab or slash one victim, shoot or strangle the next, steal from one, not from another. I profiled one guy who used a different kind of weapon at every scene. You still there?"

"Yes."

"A criminal's MO is never static. It's like anything else, there's a learning curve. These guys get better with practice. They learn what works and what doesn't. They're continually improving their technique. Some more than others, of course."

"Comforting."

"Also, there are all kinds of random events that can affect what a perpetrator does, regardless of his best-laid plans. A phone rings. A neighbor shows up. A cord breaks. He has to improvise."

"I see."

"Don't misunderstand. Patterns in MO are useful, and we use that. But variations don't mean much."

"What do do you use?" you use?"

"Ritual."

"Ritual?"

"Some of my colleagues call it a signature, or a calling card, and it's only seen at some crime scenes. Most perpetrators develop an MO because once a plan works a couple of times they gain confidence in it and believe it lowers their risk of getting caught. But with violent, repet.i.tive offenders there's something else operating. These people are driven by anger. Their anger leads them to fantasize about violence, and eventually they act out the fantasies. But the violence isn't enough. They evolve rituals for expressing the anger. It's these rituals that give them away."

"What sort of rituals?"

"Usually they involve controlling, maybe humiliating the victim. You see, it isn't really the victim that's important. Her age, her appearance may be irrelevant. It's the need to express the anger. I did one guy whose victims ranged from seven to eighty-one years in age."

"So, what would you look for?"

"How does he encounter his victim? Does he jump her? Does he use a verbal approach? How does he control her once he's made contact? Does he a.s.sault her s.e.xually? Does he do it before or after he kills her? Does he torture his victim? Does he mutilate the body? Does he leave anything at the scene? Take anything away?"

"But can't those things be affected by unexpected contingencies also?"

"Of course. But the critical thing is he does these things as part of his fantasy enactment, his anger dissipation ritual, not just to cover his a.s.s."

"So, what do you think? Does what I described have a signature?"

"Off the record?"

"Of course."

"Absolutely."

"Really?" I began taking notes.

"I'd bet my a.s.s on it."

"Your buns are safe, J.S. Do you think it's a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t?"

I heard a rattling as he switched the phone. "s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.ts are turned on by their victim's pain. They don't just want to kill, they want their victims to suffer. And-and this is critical-they're s.e.xually aroused by it."

"And?"

"Part of your pattern says yes. Insertion of objects into the v.a.g.i.n.a or r.e.c.t.u.m is very common with these guys. Were your victims alive when this was done?"

"At least one. Hard to tell with the other two since the bodies were so decomposed."

"Sounds like s.e.xual sadism is a possibility. The real question remains, was the killer s.e.xually aroused by his actions?"

I couldn't answer that. No s.e.m.e.n was found on any of the victims. I said this.

"Useful, but doesn't rule out SS. I had one guy who'd m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e in his victim's hand, cut it off, then grind it up in a blender. Never found s.e.m.e.n at the scenes."

"How'd you get him?"

"One time his aim wasn't so good."

"Three of these women were dismembered. We know that for certain."

"That may show a pattern, but it's not proof of s.e.xual sadism. Unless it was done before the victim's death. Serial killers, whether s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.ts or not, are very cunning. They put a lot of planning into their crimes. Postmortem mutilation doesn't necessarily mean there's a s.e.xual or s.a.d.i.s.tic component. Some cut the body up just to make it easier to hide."

"What about the mutilation? The hands?"

"Same answer. It's a pattern, it's overkill, but it may or may not be s.e.xual. Sometimes it's just a way of rendering the victim powerless. I do see some indicators, however. You say the victims were unknown to their killer. They were savagely beaten. Three suffered object insertion, probably antemortem. That combination is characteristic."

I was writing furiously.

"Check whether the objects were brought to the scene or were already there. That could be part of this guy's signature, planned as opposed to opportunistic cruelty."

I noted it, starred it.

"What are some other characteristics of s.e.xual sadism?"

"Patterned MO. Use of a pretext to make contact. A need to control and humiliate the victim. Excessive cruelty. s.e.xual arousal from the victim's fear and pain. Keeping victim memorabilia. The-"

"What was that last one?" I was writing so fast my hand was cramping.

"Memorabilia. Souvenirs."

"What kind of souvenirs?"

"Items from the murder scene, pieces of the victim's clothing, jewelry, that sort of thing."

"Newspaper clippings?"

"s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.ts love their own press."

"Would they keep records?"

"Maps, diaries, calendars, drawings, you name it. Some of them make tapes. The fantasy isn't just the kill. The stalk before and the reenactment afterward can be a big part of the turn-on."

"If they're so good at avoiding detection, why would they keep that stuff? Isn't it risky?"

"Most of them think they're superior to the cops. Too smart to get caught."