Page 35 of Cooper’s Passion

15

Anita went over all the details she’d been able to piece together about the serial killer’s victims, where they were from, where they were abducted, and where they were eventually found dead. Cooper turned out to be a good listener, only interrupting her when he needed anything clarified. Telling him about every case she’d unearthed helped her to refresh her own memory about the various different victims and why she’d concluded that they’d all been killed by the same man.

“Let me go over these again,” Cooper said after over two hours and reached for a stack of printouts.

“Go ahead. I want to look over some of the autopsies again,” she said and picked up the file which contained all the autopsies she’d been able to obtain.

Anita leaned back in the sofa cushions, and closed her eyes for a moment, when she felt Cooper’s hand on her thigh.

“Tired?”

“Just a little.” She opened her eyes.

“Come, put your feet up while you’re reading.”

Cooper helped her lean back against one corner of the sectional sofa, while he freed her of her shoes, and took her legs and laid them over his thighs.

“Hmm. That feels much better. Thanks.”

He smiled at her, then turned his gaze back to the stack of papers in his hands. Anita began reading the autopsies, this time specifically searching for any mention of puncture wounds. When she’d read them previously, she hadn’t really looked at smaller wounds, scratches, and tiny cuts, because she’d assumed that most of them were defensive wounds the women had sustained while fighting for their lives. But now, she knew what to look for. She went through report after report. Some were more detailed than others, but only a few of them noted two unexplained puncture wounds. Some medical examiners wondered if an animal could have left the puncture wounds, one theorized that the victim could have been bitten by a snake. However, since there was no swelling around the bite wound, and no venom was found in the victim, a snake bite seemed unrealistic. Besides, the space between the two puncture wounds was too wide to belong to a snake. Their fangs were closer together.

What all autopsies had in common was the fact that the female victims had been exsanguinated, though the method was unknown.

Jacob’s crying pulled her from her thoughts. Cooper jumped up from the couch and lifted the boy out of the playpen. She noticed him sniff.

“Looks like this little boy needs a diaper change.” He walked toward the hallway. “I’ll be back.”

She heard him soothe the toddler by talking to him in a calming voice. Anita had to smile at that. Despite looking so young, Cooper was a real adult, a man who pitched in wherever help was needed, a man who was good with kids and seemed to have a great relationship with his family. And he even cooked. Was there anything this man couldn’t do?

Anita put the autopsies aside and reached for the stack of notes about the thirty-five victims. Well, it should be thirty-six now, if she included Janet Fillmore, but she hadn’t had a chance yet to write out a profile sheet for her. She grabbed another file, fished an empty profile sheet out of it, and began noting everything she knew about Janet in the various boxes.

She booted up her computer and checked her emails. Her father had already sent her more information about Janet. There wasn’t much that looked important. Janet had a business degree from a university in Arizona. She’d never had any brushes with the law apart from a speeding ticket when she was barely nineteen. She was a member of a Wednesday night book club that met at the local library. All in all, she’d had an unremarkable life. Nothing tied her to the other women the serial killer had targeted, nothing apart from her blonde hair, blue eyes, and tall stature. By that measure, Anita herself fit the profile too. What was she overlooking?

She paged through the stack. The women had nothing in common. They worked in different industries. There was a lawyer, a doctor, a schoolteacher, a branch manager of a bank, a business owner of a furniture store, a manager of a restaurant, a supervisor at a meat packing plant. None of these women had the same skills, the same education, the same kind of job.

When it came to their family situation, they had just as little in common. Some of them were married, some single, some divorced, some widowed, some with children, some without, some looking after their elderly parents, some without any family at all. Again, they didn’t fit a pattern.

“Hey.”

Anita looked over her shoulder, and saw Cooper returning with a happy and calm looking Jacob in his arms. Instead of putting him back into his playpen, he sat down next to her and rocked the boy on his knees.

“I’m frustrated,” she confessed. “I’ve looked at these files for so long that I can’t see anything anymore. Nothing apart from their physical appearance ties these women together. But that can’t be all there is. Serial killers get drawn to their victims by something more than just looks. There has to be something.”

“It’s in there, I’m sure. We just can’t see it yet,” Cooper said, his voice calm. “Don’t beat yourself up.” He motioned to the documents on the coffee table. “You put all this together by yourself. Nobody else saw the patterns you detected.”

“I know, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. And no matter what I look at, there’s nothing that makes these women similar in anything else but their looks. One was a schoolteacher, another one a branch manager of a bank, Janet was a business owner, another woman a lawyer, another one a doctor. They didn’t work in the same industries, or the same positions. Their family situations were different too. They—”

“Did you say positions?” he interrupted.

“Yes, why?”

“Show me the victim profiles again,” he demanded and switched Jacob onto his other knee.

Anita held the pages out for him so he could read them.

“Managers, supervisors, business owners, schoolteachers…” Cooper murmured. “That’s it. The positions all these women held were positions of power, of authority.” He pointed to one sheet. “Even the doctor is in a position of power, telling her patients what to do. And the teacher, she tells children what to do.”

“Oh my God, how did I not see that?” She could barely contain her excitement.

“You were too close to it. But when you step back, you can see it. He’s selecting women in positions of power who are blonde, blue-eyed, and tall. That can only mean one thing.”

Anita nodded excitedly. “He’s been rejected or humiliated by a woman in power, and he’s taking it out on women who remind him of the woman who hurt him. He’s taking revenge on them for something another woman has done. He’s not gonna stop, not after that many kills. And these are only the ones I could find. I bet if we go farther back, we’ll find more.”

She tried not to think it, but she couldn’t stop herself. It was always in the back of her mind. If they went far enough back, they would find that Helen Diaz was one of his victims. She’d held a position of power as the principal of a small elementary school, and physically, she fit the profile too. But Anita couldn’t give voice to her suspicion, not yet.

“We’ll have to find him fast.” Cooper pulled his cellphone from his pocket and scrolled through it. “I have an idea.”