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“Even if he’s as tall as me, he can’t see what he’s doing from this position,” I say. “And there’s no good hold except a choke hold if you want them to remain upright. Did you find any bruising around the neck?”
Ida shakes her head.
“Why don’t the victims struggle more? If someone grabbed me from behind, I’d struggle on reflex, everyone would from the surprise alone,” I add.
“Me too,” Ida says in a quiet voice, but Eva doesn’t reply. She’s just walking around the scene we’re recreating with a very thoughtful expression on her face.
“Could the hesitation marks occur while the victim is struggling?” Eva asks.
“I would say no because they’re too uniform and really just concentrated around the final wound. On a struggling person, they’d be all over the place. And the killing wound itself would not be as precise and clean either.”
“That makes no sense,” I say and release the dummy. “Do they just stand there and let it happen?”
“I think I know why,” Eva says. “Do a choke hold again and get as close as you need to be to stab the victim.”
I do as she tells me. From this position, my next reflex would be to use my legs to bring the person I’m holding to the ground. Or to drag them away. It takes concentration to just stand still like this, my face pressed into the side of the dummy’s face.
He whispers something in their ear,” Eva says. “Something that shocks them into standing still.”
“Or the knife pressed to their chest does that all on its own,” I add.
She looks at me with very bright eyes. The light in them is the same whenever she has figured something out.
She shakes her head. “No. It’s either he introduces himself and all the victims know him well, or he tells them what they need to hear. And then they surrender willingly.”
She can’t possibly know that, but seems to believe it wholeheartedly, so I see no point arguing about it. She’s developed an instinct for serial killers over the years, and the accuracy with which she can read the psychos downright creeps me out sometimes. So I don’t usually dwell on that and I won’t now.
Plus, I’m all for this eerie sixth sense of hers leading us to the killer sooner rather than later.
