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“According to this report, the girl came out of it unharmed.”
“Unharmed? Not exactly.”
O’Do
“Alice Rose spent the next five years of her life being treated for severe depression and anxiety attacks. When she was nineteen, she climbed into a bathtub and slit her wrists. As far as I’m concerned, Elijah Lank is responsible for her death. She was his first victim.”
“Can you prove there are others?”
“Forty-five years ago, a married couple named Karen and Robert Sadler vanished from Ke
O’Do
“You’re the one who first suggested it, Dr. O’Do
“No one else believed my theory.”
“Well, now we do,” said Rizzoli. “We think the Beast is her cousin, Elijah.”
O’Do
“It wouldn’t be the first time that cousins have killed together,” pointed out Marquette.
“True,” O’Do
“So there’s a precedent,” said Marquette. “Cousins as killing partners.”
“You didn’t need me to tell you that.”
“You knew about the Beast before anyone else did,” said Rizzoli. “You’ve been trying to find him, to contact him through Amalthea.”
“But I haven’t succeeded. So I don’t see how I can help you find him. I don’t even know why you asked me here, Detective, since you have so little regard for my research.”
“I know Amalthea talks to you. She wouldn’t say a word to me when I saw her yesterday. But the guards told me she does talk to you.”
“Our sessions are confidential. She’s my patient.”
“Her cousin isn’t. He’s the one we want to find.”
“Well, where was his last known location? You must have some information you can start with.”
“We have almost none. Nothing on his whereabouts in decades.”
“Do you even know that he’s alive?”
Rizzoli sighed. Admitted: “No.”
“He’d be nearly seventy years old now, wouldn’t he? That’s getting a little geriatric for a serial killer.”
“Amalthea is sixty-five,” said Rizzoli. “Yet no one ever doubted that she killed Theresa and Nikki Wells. That she crushed their skulls, soaked their bodies in gasoline, and lit them on fire.”
O’Do
“A
“How?”
“Just before she was murdered, A
“What’s this?”
“You’re familiar with the FBI’s National Crime Information Center? It maintains a searchable database of missing persons from across the country.”
“Yes, I’m aware of NCIC.”
“We submitted a search request using the key words female and pregnant. That’s what we got back from the FBI. Every case they have in their database, back to the 1960s. Every pregnant woman who’s vanished in the continental U.S.”
“Why did you specify pregnant women?”
“Because Nikki Wells was nine months pregnant. Karen Sadler was eight months pregnant. Don’t you find that awfully coincidental?”
O’Do
“Consider the fact that thousands of people go missing every year in this country. If a pregnant woman vanishes every so often, it’s only a blip against that bigger background; it won’t raise any red flags. But when one woman a month vanishes, over a forty-year span, then the total numbers start to add up.”
“Can you link any of these missing persons cases to Amalthea Lank or her cousin?”
“That’s why we called you. You’ve had over a dozen sessions with her. Is there anything she’s told you about her travels? Where she’s lived, where she’s worked?”
O’Do
“Because the killing isn’t over. It hasn’t stopped.”
“My patient can’t kill anyone. She’s in prison.”
“Her partner isn’t.” Rizzoli leaned forward, closer to the woman she so thoroughly despised. But she needed O’Do
“What if we’re both wrong? Maybe the Beast is just a figment of our imaginations.”
Rizzoli looked at Frost. “Why don’t you turn on that overhead projector?”
Frost rolled the projector into position and flipped on the power switch. In this age of computers and PowerPoint slide shows, an overhead projector felt like Stone Age technology. But she and Frost had opted for the quickest, most straightforward way to make their case. Frost now opened a folder and took out multiple transparencies on which they’d recorded data points in various colors of marker ink.
Frost slid a sheet onto the overhead projector. A map of the U.S. appeared on the screen. Now he overlaid the map with the first transparency. Six black dots were added to the image.
“What do the dots signify?” O’Do
“Those are NCIC case reports from the first six months of 1984,” said Frost. “We chose that year because it’s the first full year the FBI’s computerized database went active. So the data should be pretty complete. Each one of those dots represents a report of a missing pregnant woman.” He aimed a laser pointer at the screen. “There’s a certain amount of geographical scatter there, one case up there in Oregon, one in Atlanta. But notice this little cluster down here in the southwest.” Frost circled the relevant corner of the map. “One woman missing in Arizona, one in New Mexico. Two in Southern California.”
“What am I supposed to make of that?”
“Well, let’s take a look at the next six-month period. July through December, 1984. Maybe it’ll become clearer.”
Frost laid the next transparency over the map. A new set of dots was added, these marked in red.
“Again,” he said, “You’ll see some scatter around the country. But notice we have another cluster.” He sketched a circle around a group of three red dots. “San Jose, Sacramento, and Eugene, Oregon.”
O’Do
“Wait until you see the next six months,” said Rizzoli.
With the third transparency, yet another set of dots was added, these in green. By now the pattern was unmistakable. A pattern that O’Do
“My god,” she said. “The cluster keeps moving.”
Rizzoli nodded. Grimly she faced the screen. “From Oregon, it heads northeast. During the next six months, two pregnant women vanish from Washington state, then a third one disappears one state over, in Montana.” She turned and looked at O’Do
O’Do
Rizzoli looked at the map. “Through that summer and fall, it moves straight east to Illinois and Michigan, New York and Massachusetts. Then it makes an abrupt drop to the south.”