AJ’s brows drew together as she looked at the photo. “This isn’t a man.”
“What?”
She turned the stack of photos back so Kate could see the one on top, the one Kate had picked out. “This isn’t a man. It’s a young woman.”
Kate’s attention was riveted by the eyes in the photo. She forced herself to look away from the eyes to look instead at the person. It wasn’t easy, but when she did, she saw that it was indeed a young woman with long, straight, dishwater-blond hair.
“I didn’t notice at first,” Kate stammered, realizing that the explanation sounded silly. “Who is she?”
AJ stared at the photo again for a long moment, then put all the photos back in the envelope and returned it to her satchel.
“Her name is Rebecca Wells. The rest of her family were all murdered in their sleep. Mother, father, and a teenage brother. Both parents had been brutally stabbed several times with a butcher knife and died in their bed. It looked to have been a swift kill before they could wake up to defend themselves.
“The boy apparently did wake up. He was stabbed dozens of times as he struggled down the hallway trying to escape. The killer finally cut the boy’s throat. That ended it.
“The killer then took a shower in the parents’ bathroom, in all likelihood to wash off the blood. Now that I see this photo, I wonder if maybe there was something symbolic about it.
“Rebecca called the police from a house down the street a ways, saying that someone broke in and was murdering her family. She said that she only caught a shadowy glimpse of the killer as she ran out. She begged the police to hurry. The neighbors said she came to their house in nothing but a nightgown.
“When I interviewed her the next day, Rebecca was dressed nicely. Her hair and makeup were in order. She was as calm as could be. She was nonchalant, almost indifferent, as she described what she had been through. She read her statement carefully to make sure I had gotten it correct. She asked that I put a comma in one spot. She even smiled occasionally.”
Kate frowned. “That sounds pretty damn suspicious.”
AJ spread her hands. “Everyone reacts differently. Certain kinds of killers simply have no empathy for their victims. But profilers say that it’s sometimes the way ordinary people react to horrific events. The emotional part of their brain kind of switches off so as not to have to confront the reality of what happened. They try to retain their sense of normality by acting normal.”
“I still don’t see how she could be so calm.”
AJ arched an eyebrow. “How did you? You didn’t cry. Since you arrived at John’s house you’ve been cool and collected. You even smiled at me a few times as I asked you questions.”
Kate didn’t remember smiling. Apparently, AJ remembered such details.
“Maybe on the outside,” Kate said, “but not on the inside.”
“People often wear a public face. You seemed alert and aware to me. The only emotion you showed was anger at the person who had killed John. You didn’t freak out, though. You answered calmly. You asked relevant questions. You took in everything when you went into John’s house, pointed out details that were out of place and out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t think it out of context for you to ask me to fix a comma in your statement.”
“I ask questions for a living.” Kate took sip of coffee. “That’s my job. I focus on small details in order to find out what’s really going on. I guess I fell back on that conditioning. I wanted to be accurate in order to be helpful.”
“Well, this young woman is highly intelligent. She graduated high school a year early and went right into advanced classes in college. She reacted much like you, but with even less emotion.”
“What kind of advanced classes?”
“Chemistry and math.”
“Subjects that don’t have as much human interaction. Dispassionate facts and numbers.”
AJ nodded. “Rebecca told me that she ran for her life when she heard her brother’s screams. She said it in a way that was coldly logical and made perfect sense. Most people would run from that kind of life-and-death danger.
“Still she was one of a half dozen people on my short list. When I questioned her, she insisted that she had never been abused, and that her father and mother were normal, loving, if slightly annoying. She said that her brother had his own interests, mostly online gaming, and didn’t really pay much attention to her, she thought because she was so much more intelligent than he was. The neighbors said they had never heard any fighting and that the parents were nice people. Her brother’s friends confirmed her assessment of him.
“From the way the sheets were arranged, it looked like the killer stood at the side of the bed, slammed the knife into the father three times first, then jumped on the mother, straddling her and stabbing her in the chest a dozen times or so. She drowned in her own blood. The brother was stabbed in the back the first time as he ran into the hallway. Nothing appeared to be stolen from the house. Murdering three people that way—stabbing them to death so violently in their sleep apparently just for the hell of it—is an extreme kind of killing.”
“Especially for a woman,” Kate said.
“Not necessarily. Women can be the most vicious of killers. They can be as heartless and cold-blooded as any male killer.
“Now, because of you, we just may be able to stop a rare kind of psycho—a female serial killer in the making. A sort of female Edward Lester Herzog. Once they get started, they’re hard to find. You’ve helped me isolate a killer, just like John did.”
Kate was unnerved by the description of the murders. With John’s murder and the photos of killers, it felt like she had been unexpectedly dropped into the middle of a horrific dream.
“It at least gives me some measure of peace to know that John was doing something to help stop the men he called the devil.”
“That’s why I used him,” AJ said, “and why I hated using him. He was helping me catch evil men, and, in a way, I was taking the devils out of the world for him. I only wish I could have caught that last one, the one who came too close, the one who didn’t want to be seen for who he was.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Kate let out a sigh. “But how could the things John was doing be real?”
“You had the same reaction he did to the same photo of Herzog. You had that same kind of reaction to the other two photos. It’s not just John, it’s you, too.”
“I know, but …” Kate ran her fingers back through her hair in frustration.
She remembered that her boss had once told her that he didn’t understand it, but she seemed to have some kind of radar for the rotten apple in the barrel. She always thought she was simply conscientious at what she did—paying attention to details, looking for patterns and connections, picking out inconsistencies in things people told her. He told her that she might not to be able to see it within herself, but she had a unique, uncanny ability to focus in on the responsible party.
Even so, she wasn’t able to do that by the look in their eyes. At least, she had never been aware she was doing anything of that nature. Of course, in her job she dealt only with lowlifes, liars, cheats, and thieves, not killers.
“What’s happening to me, AJ? John being able to do things like that—recognize a killer—is one thing. Even though I never believed him, he’s always said he could tell if people were bad. But I’ve never been able to do that sort of thing before.”
Leaning back in the booth again, AJ studied Kate’s eyes for a long while before speaking in a quiet tone. “I believe that seeing that photo of Herzog was what’s called a trigger event.”
Kate squinted her skepticism. “A trigger event.”
Detective Janek seemed to have uncovered more than simply what she had learned with John.
“That’s what it’s called.”
Kate stared at the other woman. “I don’t understand. I could never do it before. Maybe John could, but I couldn’t.”
“You don’t
really know that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your chances of being hit by lightning are better than your chances of actually running across a serial killer in person. They only loom so large in our minds because their crimes are so horrific. They are everyone’s bogeyman, and yet the vast majority of people will live their entire lives without ever seeing a serial killer, or even a garden-variety murderer, for that matter. Your chances of seeing a killer are further reduced because you don’t do drugs, you don’t turn tricks, you don’t live in a dangerous neighborhood.
“The photo of Herzog, printed from a negative, is undoubtedly the first killer you’ve ever seen. It hit you at an emotional level. That triggered your awareness of an ability you didn’t even know you had.”
“But John was able to do it since he was little.”
AJ opened both hands in a gesture of the unknowable. “My guess is that when John was very young, maybe with his mother holding his hand, he crossed paths with a murderer. In that chance moment, he looked up into the eyes of a cold-blooded killer, much the same as you did tonight.
“It was most likely an accidental sighting on John’s part, but as random as it was, seeing that level of evil in a killer’s eyes”—AJ tapped her temple with a finger—“triggered his conscious awareness of his innate ability.
“Because it started when he was so young, he was always tuned in to it. Going out caused him anxiety, most likely because one time when he was out, he saw a killer.
“As he grew older he likely learned to recognize varying degrees of that cunning quality in lesser criminals and the various degrees of depravity in between. Regular criminals are a lot more common, and while capable of murder, they haven’t yet crossed that lethal line. I suspect that as time goes on you will also learn to have a more granular feel for it.
“The point is, like John, you’ve always had the ability to recognize whatever it is the both of you see in a killer’s eyes. You were born with that ability to see evil. You just haven’t ever seen a killer before to trigger your awareness of it.”
“But what was it, exactly, that John could see when he looked at certain photographs? What is it that I see?”
With her fingertips, AJ slowly turned the cup around and around in its saucer as she considered how to answer. “In the beginning,” she finally said, “I asked myself that question a thousand times. I could see what John was clearly capable of doing, the same as you just did, but my head told me that it wasn’t possible. I couldn’t do it. I’ve never heard of anyone who could. I couldn’t comprehend what John was able to do. To try to make sense out of it I started doing research.”
“Research? How do you research something like this? It’s not like you can go online and search for ‘devil sightings.’ ”
AJ smiled. “Actually, it turns out you can.”
She waved off the distraction, returning to the matter at hand. “I wasn’t even sure exactly what it was I was looking for, except that I needed to find some kind of common thread among killers, some key thing that made John able to detect them.
“There were endless dead ends along the way, endless crazy theories about killers, and an endless number of both sincere and deluded people who believe the devil walks among us—that kind of thing. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t really the devil that John was seeing.”
Kate idly tapped her thumb on the side of her cup. “Ever since he was young, that was what John called people who scared him the most. I always knew that it was simply his word for a truly frightening person.”
“After showing him enough photos of killers I figured that much out,” AJ said.
She looked back up at Kate, returning to her story. “Whenever I could find the time after I put Ryan to bed, I did research. If I found a promising book, I’d read it. None of them were helpful. After countless dead ends I began to find little bits and pieces of things that weren’t crazy, pieces that felt right. That enabled me to refine my search.
“In the end, it was your brother who finally gave me the key.”
“John?” Kate frowned. “What key could John give you?”
AJ laced her fingers together and leaned in on her elbows. “I asked myself, what was the primary characteristic John presented when he recognized that these men were killers?”
In that instant, Kate knew.
“Fear.”
AJ showed her a small smile. “That was also your reaction to the photos. That’s the thing that links it all together.”
“Fear? But how?”
AJ pressed her lips tight in thought for a moment. “As man evolved, one of the abilities we developed—like most creatures—was fear. That was the key.”
“Fear? Fear is an ability?”
“Of course,” AJ said with a one-handed gesture. “It’s basic to survival. Fish fear herons, so they hide. A deer hears wolves approaching and it runs for its life.
“If our ancestors weren’t afraid of saber-toothed tigers—or whatever predators they had back then—they’d have been eaten. People with too low a level of fear more easily fell prey to predators. People who were afraid ran away or hid to survive another day. Because they survived, they passed that trait on.
“Fear of dying is a basic survival mechanism for most creatures. Over hundreds of thousands of years it has evolved into a finely tuned ability in us all. We don’t have to intellectualize it; we’re born with it.
“That inborn sense is so highly developed that we don’t even realize the countless clues we’re using. Our brains simply register the sum total of those clues as an instantaneous fear response—a gut reaction.”
“So we were afraid of saber-toothed tigers and snakes and spiders. So what?”
AJ arched an eyebrow. “The predator we learned to fear the most was our own kind. Man is the most dangerous predator walking the face of the earth. He is also the most complex. We need to get along with other people as a matter of survival, and yet our ancestors also had to be wary of others of their own kind who very well might intend them harm.
“While brute force needed no subtlety, predatory individuals learned to offer strangers a smile, or friendly small talk until they could get close enough to strike. Even today, serial killers are frequently exceedingly charming individuals.
“That meant that potential victims had to learn to key in to little clues if they were to survive. Predators in turn had to learn to fine-tune their skill if they were to survive. It was an ever-escalating war of natural selection between predator and prey.
“Man is both.
“As a result, over many millennia we developed a keen sense for telling when others mean to do us harm. That sense of fear is one of our most valuable skills.”
Kate made a face. “I don’t know …”
“When you see a guy out of the corner of your eye as he walks up behind you and you suddenly get goose bumps, that’s the product of evolution meant to protect you. Your inherent sense of fear picked up on clues that his approach was not random or innocent, but predatory. You probably couldn’t identify the individual reasons, but your goose bumps show that your highly developed human brain has already identified them.
“When you walk to your car and notice someone standing nearby watching you and for some indefinable reason he gives you the creeps, that’s your inner fear analyzing a vast collection of tiny clues and urging you to get in your car, lock the doors, and get the hell out of there. You don’t have to consciously evaluate the situation.
“These days we’re supposed to ignore our inherent fear of threat. We’re told that it’s wrong, that it’s immoral, it’s prejudiced for us to be afraid of others. We’re made to feel shame for our fear. Yet this birthright of fear is what has enabled mankind to survive. When it comes to matters of life and death, fear helps to keep us safe.”
“And so you think that because of John’s limited mental capacity he didn’t comprehend such complex social pressures and instead relied on his baser instincts more than most p
eople?”
AJ nodded. “I think so. He didn’t have the social filter that says fearing other people is prejudging them.”
Kate felt a bit guilty for telling John that very thing, that he shouldn’t judge people without knowing them.
“I’ve seen the grainy surveillance video of the attack on your friend Wilma,” AJ said. “Passersby ran to help her once she was down, but they avoided looking at the men who attacked her, avoided looking at evil. That woman where John worked, the one who was robbed in the alley, wouldn’t turn around to look at the man who was threatening her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at evil. Most people refuse to see evil.
“Criminals look for that kind of person, the ones preoccupied on their phones, or looking in windows, or simply spaced out. Most criminals want to avoid risk and keep the odds in their favor, so they look for the easiest prey. There is always plenty of it, so why take a risk?”
“That would mean that the predators have also evolved and learned a counter-skill.”
AJ smiled. “Exactly.”
Kate had never thought about it in quite that way.
“As a police officer I watch a person’s body language for any possible threat the person may represent. We’re trained in self-protection, but that threat profile originates in our primitive fear. I use that fear to help keep me from being hurt. That is, after all, the purpose of our fear.”
Kate had a hard time imagining AJ being afraid of anyone. “I’ve seen plenty of people who don’t fit your description. They don’t try to hide who they are.”
“You’re right,” AJ conceded. “Predators come in all varieties. There is certainly no shortage of predators who are loud, arrogant, and aggressive. There are thugs and gangs of every sort. They deliberately try to intimidate people. They pick fights, bully, rob, brutalize. They’re the animals who beat their wives and girlfriends. They’re the ever-growing packs of jackals snapping at the edges of society.
“Even though they’re a different kind of predator, that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. They have no empathy for others. If they corner you, you give them what they want and run—if you can.