“No, you first. Tell me what you found in the files.”

“Jack, don’t be so petty. This has become a little bit larger than a newspaper story.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t go first. It’s also larger than the FBI’s penchant for taking information but not giving anything back in return.”

She shook off the barb.

“Fine, I’ll start. But first let me commend you, Jack. From what I have read about these cases, I would say there is absolutely no doubt that they are connected by a single killer. The same man is responsible for both. But he escaped notice because in each case an alternate suspect came to light quickly and the local authorities proceeded with blinders on. In each case, they had their man from the beginning and didn’t look into other possibilities. Except of course in the Babbit case, their man was a boy.”

I leaned forward, beaming with confidence after her compliment.

“And he never confessed like they put out to the press,” I said. “I have the transcript back at my office. Nine-hour interrogation and the kid never confessed. He said he stole her car and her money, but the body was already in the trunk. He never said he killed her.”

Rachel nodded.

“I assumed that. So what I was doing with the material you have here was profiling the two killings. Looking for a signature.”

“The signature’s obvious. He likes strangling women with plastic bags.”

“Technically they weren’t strangled. They were asphyxiated. Suffocated. There’s a difference.”

“Okay.”

“There is something very familiar about the use of the plastic bag and the cord around the neck, but I was actually looking for something a little less obvious than the surface signature. I was also looking for connections or similarities between the women. If we find what connects them we’ll find the killer.”

“They were both strippers.”

“That’s part of it but a little broad. And, technically, one was a stripper and one was an exotic performer. There is a slight difference.”

“Whatever. They both showed their naked bodies off for a living. Is that the only connection you found?”

“Well, as you must have noticed, they were very similar in physical makeup. In fact, the difference in weight was only three pounds and the difference in height was half an inch. Facial structure and hair was also alike. A victim’s body type is a key component in terms of what makes them chosen. An opportunistic killer takes what comes along. But when you see two victims like this with exactly the same body type, it tells us this is a predator who is patient, who chooses.”

It looked like she had more to say but stopped. I waited but she didn’t continue.

“What?” I said. “You know more than you’re saying.”

She dropped the hesitation.

“When I was in Behavioral it was in the early days. The profilers often sat around and talked about the correlation between the predators we hunted and the predators in the wild. You’d be surprised how similar a serial killer can be to a leopard or a jackal. And the same could be said for victims. In fact, when it came to body types we often assigned victims animal types. These two women we would have called giraffes. They were tall and long-legged. Our predator has a taste for giraffes.”

I wanted to write some of this down to use later but I was afraid that any obvious recording of her interpretation of the files would cause her to shut down the exposition. So I tried not to even move.

“There’s something else,” she said. “At this point this is purely conjecture on my part. But both autopsies ascribe marks on each of the victims’ legs to ligature. I think that might be wrong.”

“Why?”

“Let me show you something.”

I finally moved. We were in seats that faced each other. I unbuckled and moved to the seat next to her. She went through the files and pulled several of the copies of photos from the crime scenes and the autopsies.

“Okay, you see the marks left above and below the knees here and here and here?”

“Yeah, like they were tied up.”

“Not quite.”

She used a clear polished fingernail to trace the markings on the victims as she explained.

“The marks are too symmetrical to be from traditional bindings. Plus, if these were ligature marks we would see them around the ankles. If you were going to tie someone up to control them or to prevent escape, you would tie their ankles. Yet we have no ligature marks in these areas. The wrists, yes, but not on the ankles.”

She was right. I just hadn’t seen it until she explained it.

“So what made those marks on the legs?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure, but when I was in Behavioral, we came upon new paraphilias on almost every case. We started categorizing them.”

“You’re talking about sexual perversions?”

“Well, we didn’t call them that.”

“Why, you had to be politically correct around serial killers?”

“It may be very nuanced, but there is a difference between being perverted and abnormal. We call the behaviors paraphilias.”

“Okay, and these marks, they’re part of a paraphilia?”

“They could be. I think they are marks left by straps.”

“Straps from what?”

“Leg braces.”

I almost laughed.

“You’ve got to be kidding. People get off on leg braces?”

Rachel nodded.

“It even has a name. It’s called abasiophilia. A psychosexual fascination with leg braces. Yes, people get off on it. There are even websites and chat rooms dedicated to it. They call them irons and calipers. Women who wear braces are sometimes called iron maidens.”

I was reminded by how thoroughly intoxicating Rachel’s skill as a profiler had been when we were chasing the Poet. She had been dead-on about the case in many ways. Damn near prescient. And I had been captivated by her ability to take small pieces of information and obscure details and then draw telling conclusions. She was doing it again and I was along for the ride.

“And you had a case with this?”

“Yes, we had a case in Louisiana. A man abducted a woman off a bus bench and held her for a week in a fishing shack out in a bayou. She managed to escape and make her way through the swamp. She was lucky because the four women he grabbed before her didn’t escape. We found their partial remains in the swamp.”

“And it was a basophilia case?”

“Abasiophilia,” she corrected. “Yes, the woman who escaped told us the subject made her wear leg braces that strapped around the legs and had side irons and joints running from her ankles to her hips and several leather straps.”

“This is so creepy,” I said. “Not that there is anything like a normal serial killer, but leg braces? Where does an addiction like this come from?”

“It’s unknown. But most paraphilias are embedded in early childhood. A paraphilia is like a recipe for an individual’s sexual fulfillment. It’s what they need to get off. Why someone would need to wear leg braces or have their partner wear them is anybody’s guess, but it starts young. That is a given.”

“Do you think the guy from your case back then could be-”

“No, the man who committed those murders in Louisiana was put to death. I witnessed it. And right up to the end, he never spoke a word to us about any of it.”

“Well, I guess that gives him a perfect alibi for this.”

I smiled but she didn’t smile back. I moved on.

“These braces, are they hard to find?”

“They are bought and sold over the Internet every day. They can be expensive, with all kinds of gadgetry and straps. Next time you’re on Google, plug in abasiophilia and see what you get. We’re talking about the dark side of the Internet, Jack. It’s the great meeting house, where people of like interests come together. You may think your secret desires make you a freak, and then you get on the Internet and find community and acceptance.”

As she said it I realized there was a story in this. Something separate from the trunk murders case. Maybe even a book. I put the idea aside for later and went back to the case at hand.