“So what do you think the killer does? He makes them put on leg braces and then he rapes them? Does the suffocation mean anything?”

“Every detail means something, Jack. You just need to know how to read it. The scene he creates reflects his paraphilia. More than likely this is not about killing the women. It’s about creating a psychosexual scene that fulfills a fantasy. The women are killed afterward because he is simply finished with them and he can’t have the threat of them living to tell about him. My guess is that he may even apologize to them when he pulls the bag over their head.”

“They both were dancers. Do you think he made them dance or something?”

“Again, it’s all conjecture at this point, but that could be part of it, yes. But my guess is that it’s about body type. Giraffes. Dancers by trade have thin muscular legs. If that is what he wanted, then he would look at dancers.”

I thought about the hours the two women spent with their killer. The stretch of hours between abduction and time of death. What happened during those hours? No matter what the answer, it added up to a horrible and terrifying end.

“You said something before about the bag being familiar somehow. Do you remember how?”

Rachel thought for a moment before answering.

“No, there’s just something about it. Some familiarity. Probably from another case but I can’t place it yet.”

“Will you put all of this through VICAP?”

“As soon as I get the chance.”

The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a computer data bank of the details of thousands of crimes. It could be used to find crimes of similar nature when the details of a new crime were entered.

“There’s something else that should be noted about the killer’s program,” Rachel said. “In both cases he left the bag and neck ligature in place on the victims but the limb constraints-whether braces or not-were removed.”

“Right. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know but it could mean a number of things. The women are obviously constrained in some way during their captivity. Whether it is through braces or otherwise, those are removed but the bag stays in place. This could be part of a statement, part of his signature. It might have a meaning we are not aware of yet.”

I nodded. I was impressed by her take.

“How long has it been since you worked in Behavioral Sciences?”

Rachel smiled but then I saw that what I had meant to be a compliment had made her wistful.

“A long time,” she said.

“Typical bureau politics and bullshit,” I said. “Take someone who is damn good at something and put them somewhere else.”

I needed to get her back on focus and away from the memory that her relationship with me had cost her the position she was best suited for.

“You think if we ever capture this guy we’ll be able to figure him out?”

“You never figure any of them out, Jack. You get hints, that’s all. The guy in Louisiana was raised in an orphanage in the fifties. There were a lot of kids in there who had contracted polio. A lot of them wore leg braces. Why that became the thing that got him off as an adult and led him down the road to serial murder is anybody’s guess. A lot of other boys were raised in that orphanage, and they didn’t become serial killers. Why one does is ultimately just guesswork.”

I turned and looked out the window. We were over the desert between L.A. and Vegas. There was only darkness out there.

“I guess it’s a sick world down there,” I said.

“It can be,” Rachel said.

We flew in silence for a few moments before I turned back to her.

“Are there any other connections between them?”

“I made a list of similarities as well as a list of dissimilar aspects of the cases. I want to study everything further, but for now the leg braces are the most significant to me. After that, you have the physical pattern of the women and the means of death. But there’s got to be a connection somewhere. A link between these two women.”

“We find it and we find him.”

“That’s right. And now it’s your turn, Jack. What did you put together?”

I nodded and quickly composed my thoughts.

“Well, there was something that wasn’t in the stuff Angela had found on the Internet. She only told me about it because there wasn’t anything to print out. She said that she found the Las Vegas stories and some of the old L.A. stories when she did an online search with the phrase trunk murder, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Well, she told me that she also got a hit on a website called trunk murder dot com, but that when she went to it, there was nothing there. She clicked a button to enter and there was a sign that said it was under construction. So I was thinking, because you said this guy’s skill set included being able to do things on the Internet, that maybe-”

“Of course! It could have been an IP trap. He would be alert for anybody fishing around on the Internet for intel on trunk murders. He could then trace the IP back and find out who was looking. That would have led him to Angela and then to you.”

The jet started its descent, again at an angle that was much steeper than anything I had experienced on a commercial flight. I realized I was digging my fingernails into the armrest again.

“And he probably got a big thrill when he saw your name,” Rachel said.

I looked at her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your pedigree, Jack. You were the reporter who chased down the Poet. You wrote the book on it. Mr. Big Bestseller. You were on Larry King. These serial guys pay attention to all of that. They read these books. No, actually, they study these books.”

“That’s great to know. Maybe I can sign a copy of the book to him.”

“I’ll make a bet with you. When we get this guy, we’ll find a copy of your book in his possessions somewhere.”

“I hope not.”

“And I’ll make you another bet. Before we get this guy, he will make direct contact with you. He’ll call or e-mail or get to you in some way.”

“Why? Why would he risk it?”

“Because once it’s clear to him that he’s in the open-that we know about him-he will reach out for attention. They always do. They always make that mistake.”

“No bets, Rachel.”

The idea that I had or would somehow feed the warped psychology of this guy or anyone else wasn’t what I wanted to be thinking about.

“I guess I don’t blame you,” Rachel said, picking up on my discomfort.

“But I appreciate that you said ‘when we get this guy’ instead of ‘if we get this guy.’ ”

She nodded.

“Oh, don’t worry, Jack. We’re going to get this guy.”

I turned and looked back out the window. I could see the carpet of lights as we crossed from the desert into civilization again. Civilization as we know it. There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren’t enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

We landed at Van Nuys Airport and got into the car Rachel had left there earlier. She checked in by phone to see if there was anything new on Angela Cook and was told there wasn’t. She hung up and looked over at me.

“Where’s your car? At LAX?”

“No, I took a cab. It’s at home. In the garage.”

I don’t think any line so basic could have sounded so ominous. In the garage. I gave Rachel my address and we headed off.

It was almost midnight and traffic on the freeway was light. We took the 101 across the bottom of the San Fernando Valley and then down through the Cahuenga Pass. Rachel exited on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and headed west.

My house was on Curson a block south of Sunset. It was a nice neighborhood full of mostly small houses built for middle-class families that had long since been priced out of the neighborhood. I had a two-bedroom Craftsman with a separate single-car garage in the back. The backyard was so small, even a Chihuahua would have felt cramped. I had bought the place twelve years earlier with money from the sale of my book on the Poet. I split every check I got from the deal with my brother’s widow to help her raise and educate their daughter. It had been a while since I had seen a royalty check and even longer since I had seen my niece, but I had the house and the kid’s education to show for that time in my life. When I had gotten divorced, my wife made no claim on the house, since I had already owned it, and now I had only three years of mortgage payments before it was mine free and clear.