Invisible Read online

  The place is dimly lit with dark oak, yellow-cushioned seats, and a hardwood floor. Booths line the walls, with tables scattered near a wraparound bar. A football game plays on the projection screens mounted on the walls. Books orders a Domaine DuPage, whatever that is (beer, I assume; I recognize “DuPage” as the county in which Joelle Swanson was killed), while Denny orders a soft drink and Sophie a berry mojito.

  Everyone is happy to have food. For Books it’s a burger, for Denny a club sandwich. I order some French onion soup, and Sophie chooses a pear and pecan salad. Are pretty young women genetically programmed to order fruit-flavored drinks and nibble on rabbit food like salads with low-fat vinaigrette dressing? I mean, couldn’t Sophie just break from type this one time and guzzle a Guinness while devouring some nachos with cheese sauce dripping down her chin?

  The aforementioned Sophie, I note, has the seat next to Books at our square table and has scooted her chair closer. She is hanging on his every word as he regales everyone with some war story. Special agents have lots of tantalizing tales about their exploits—quirky witnesses, silly miscues, charismatic criminals they’ve captured. I’ve heard most of those stories by now. My favorite is from a dozen years ago, when Books was assisting U.S. marshals on a fugitive recapture. He broke through the front door of a Maryland house, tripped over the coatrack, and was knocked unconscious when the rack came down on his head. The other agents had to step over him to get in. They later told him, At least you blocked the exit really well.

  Sophie asks him, “Have you ever hunted a serial killer?”

  “Oh,” he says, blowing out air, “I’ve worked on a few investigations, yeah.”

  He was working on one when we ended our engagement. He caught his killer, then resigned from the FBI. Reginald Trager, who raped and murdered a number of young women in Portland, then sealed the deal by lopping off their heads.

  “Freddy the Machete,” I say, because I know Books won’t.

  Denny Sasser touches his chin. “You worked on ‘Freddy the Machete’?”

  “It’s not as impressive as it sounds, believe me.” As much as Books likes to tell stories, they usually involve him in embarrassing situations. Books isn’t one to play up his own accomplishments. It was one of the first things I noticed about him when we met four years ago. He figured out the pattern of a crew of bank robbers in Virginia to the point that his team was waiting for them when they hit the federal credit union in Arlington. All the research analysts on the team knew that it was Books’s brainpower that got the solve, but he spread the credit around, even walked through the office and left a card for each of the RAs, thanking them individually for their help and noting their specific contributions. RAs notice that kind of stuff. Most of the special agents forget all about us once they’ve solved their puzzles.

  Reginald Trager, dubbed “Freddy the Machete” by the press in Portland, was an unemployed union painter who had recently lost his condominium to foreclosure and apparently snapped. He went on a rampage that included five or six victims—I don’t recall the exact number. It came out later that he had a history of mental illness and a previous conviction for attempted rape.

  “Did he come up with that name himself?” Sophie asks. “Did he, like, leave notes or anything? Did he want to be famous?” I can’t tell if she’s flirting with Books or is professionally curious, trying to sponge up all the experience and wisdom she can. Here’s a question: why do I care?

  Books shakes his head. “Reggie Trager wasn’t capable of leaving notes or wanting notoriety. He was mentally ill, a classic sadistic sexual psychopath. He beat women, decapitated them, and performed sex acts on them.”

  Sophie recoils. “In that order?”

  “Oh, yeah. He performed sex acts on headless corpses. Yeah, this guy was a real monster.”

  “What kind of sex—never mind,” Sophie says, “I don’t want to know.”

  “No, you definitely don’t want to know.”

  But I know. I’m probably the only person who knows, outside the team that caught the monster. The detail was never made public, and Reggie Trager hasn’t even had his trial yet, so it’s basically classified information at the moment.

  The sex act was vaginal rape. But he didn’t use his penis. He used the machete. The blade penetrated clean through the uterus and colon until it came out their buttocks. The only minor consolation is that they were already dead, already decapitated.

  Books enjoys a sip from his pint of caramel-colored beer. He probably can’t help enjoying the attention. I can’t blame him. If you’re going to leave the Bureau, it’s a nice case on which to exit.

  I take a gulp of my water, not being in the frame of mind for alcohol, and let Books bask in the glow a minute. But he’s not much for basking, and I catch him eyeing me when I look his way.

  “Emmy wants to talk about our case,” he says. “So where do we start?”

  “With your profile,” I say. “I want to hear your profile of our subject.”

  28

  BOOKS SMACKS his lips after another sip from his pint. “Can’t do it,” he says, which he’s already said to me several times. By several times, I mean every single day since I dragged him onto this case. He turns to Sophie, the pupil. “Before you can work up any kind of a meaningful profile, you first, obviously, have to establish the commission—”

  “Of a crime,” I interrupt. “But Books, let’s assume these are murders. Murders covered up by arsons. What’s your profile? I know you have one.”

  He allows for that and gestures to Sophie again. “Profiles are an art, not a science,” he says. “It’s not like you can plug facts into a machine and crank out your profile. You have to thoroughly evaluate the crime scene, interview victims if you can—all things we haven’t done here. And even then, you can be pretty far off.”

  “Were you far off in your profile of Reggie Trager? ‘Freddy the Machete’?” Sophie asks, practically cooing. If she gets any closer to Books, I might have to find a machete of my own.

  “Well, now that’s a good example, Sophie,” he says, as if he’s about to pat her on the head. He’s not blind. He can admire her Barbie-doll looks, and he can see the way she’s looking at him. “We were able to analyze the crime scenes and the victims. It was clear to us that he didn’t plan the crimes much at all; he wasn’t careful or logical about his victim selection; he made no attempt to cover up his crimes or modify the crime scene in any way. His victims were violently mutilated, sexually assaulted, and decapitated. They were all white, early twenties, and blond.

  “From that, we drew our profile. We believed he was a classically disorganized killer suffering from mental illness. He was a white male in his twenties or thirties. He was socially withdrawn. He had no friends, didn’t talk to neighbors, showed no interest in socialization whatsoever. He grew up in a family where he was disciplined severely, probably by a mother. He was likely a high-school dropout. He had no meaningful relationships with women and was quite possibly impotent. He was either unemployed or engaged in manual labor. He had recently experienced something rather stressful, something like being fired from a job or a breakup with a woman. He had violent fantasies against women and was unable to control them. He lived somewhere within a one-mile radius of the victims. And his first name was probably not Freddy.”

  Sophie gives him a full-wattage smile. Oh, that Books, he’s a real jokester these days. “Why did you think he lived close by?” she asks.

  “Disorganized killers usually don’t travel by car. They’re too caught up in their fantasies. It’s not like they carefully select a victim, drive there, commit the crime, and drive home. No, they act on pure impulse.”

  “Okay, yeah.” Sophie is transfixed by the professor. “So how were you wrong?”

  “Well, for one thing, he took his murder weapon with him. Most disorganized killers use whatever’s on hand; they aren’t capable of planning to walk around with a weapon, ready to pounce. But Reggie carried that machete under his long
black coat and took it with him after every murder. Also, he kept a souvenir from each victim. That’s atypical of disorganized killers, who usually just commit the crime and leave.

  “But the biggest thing of all,” Books continues, “is that his last victim wasn’t random at all. His last victim was the same woman he’d attacked years before, when he was convicted of attempted rape. So he had definitely planned that out. In fact, those things that distinguished him from the typical disorganized killer are the reasons we caught him. Once that last victim was attacked, a simple background check took us to the guy who’d attacked her previously, who just happened to live seven blocks away from her. And once we rousted him, we discovered he had a machete and all those souvenirs.”

  “What were the souvenirs?” Sophie asks, beaming.

  “Another thing you don’t want to know,” says Books.

  “I do. C’mon.”

  “He took their tongues,” I say. “He cut them out and kept them in a shoe box under his bed.” I hate to spoil her appetite. She could use a good meal.

  “Anyway,” Books says, clearing his throat, “my point is, it’s not like we drew up some perfect profile and nailed Reggie Trager. It was dumb luck. He made a big mistake attacking his previous victim again. He might as well have sent us an engraved invitation.”

  “That doesn’t mean profiles can’t help,” I say. “And it doesn’t mean you don’t have one for our subject.”

  “I don’t, Emmy. I need to know more.”

  “Tell me one thing about our subject, Books,” I say. “Just one. And don’t say he’s highly organized, because I think we all get that much.”

  Books shakes his head, bemused.

  “One thing,” I say.

  “He’s getting better,” says Books. “Organized killers improve and hone their methodology with each murder. Our subject was probably pretty good all along. But if he’s real, if there really is a man going around murdering people and torching the scenes and making it look accidental, then he’s turned this hobby of his into a well-oiled machine.” Books blows out air. “He’s not going to hand himself over like Reggie Trager did,” he says. “We’re going to need good police work, yes, but we’re also going to need all kinds of luck.”

  “Oh, my God,” I say, pushing my chair away from the table. “That’s it, Books.”

  “What’s it? You found inspiration in ‘we’re going to need all kinds of luck’? Wow, I knew I was good but not that—”

  I’ve already left the table. I move from a brisk walk to a jog until I’ve jumped into the first taxi I can find.

  29

  I’M BACK at the office on Roosevelt, banging on my keyboard, poring over data, when Books pops his head into the office. “Emmy, always with the flair for the dramatic,” he says. “You mind telling me what bee got into your bonnet? It can’t be anything I said. All I said was our subject was getting better.”

  “That’s all you needed to say.”

  My eyes move to the large map of the United States, the stars now numbering fifty-five, indicating the various sites of the fires. Thirty-two are red, showing the fires that began about a year ago and ended at the beginning of January with Marta’s fire.

  “Where was the first fire?” I ask.

  “The first…I’m not sure I remember,” he admits. He doesn’t have the data burned into his brain like I do.

  “Atlantic Beach, Florida,” I say. “September eighth, two thousand eleven.” That was part of our subject’s cross-country September-to-January spree before he came back to the Midwest.”

  “Okay, so?” Books says.

  “So, how do we really know this was his first kill?”

  “We don’t,” Books concedes. “Not for sure. But you kept going back in time and you didn’t find any more fires that fit the unique characteristics. The single victim, found at the point of the fire’s origin in the bedroom, determined to be an accidental cause…”

  “Exactly,” I say. “The accidental cause. Anything that wasn’t determined to be accidental, I didn’t analyze, I just totally skipped over. Because it didn’t fit into the pattern.”

  “Okay—so?”

  I’m still typing along, using the NIBRS now, the database to which I didn’t have access while I was suspended and doing this from home. The data is almost dancing off the screen; I have to be careful I’m not going too fast. When the juices are flowing and the data is voluminous, it’s like a treasure hunt, one gigantic puzzle, the answer somewhere out there for me to find.

  “So,” I say, “you were right when you said he’s probably getting better. Maybe he wasn’t so good at the beginning of his murder spree.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see. Maybe the first fire, he didn’t cover it up so well. Maybe it was determined to be an arson.”

  “Exactly, Books.” Which is why it’s nice to have NIBRS, which reports arsons and suspicious fires.

  “I’ll bet he screwed up the first one,” I say. “Maybe more than just the first one.”

  “So you’re—what? Casting a net across the country for arsons set before that first Atlantic Beach fire?”

  “Not across the country. We think he lives here in the Midwest, right? So I’m starting there.”

  Books is silent behind me. I finally look back at him.

  “That’s a lot of work, Em. Even narrowing it down to the Midwest, that’s a ton of data to process. You’re going to start now? It’s eleven o’clock at night.”

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I say. “Or when we catch this guy.”

  30

  BOOKS IS still lingering at the doorway as I type.

  “What?” I say.

  “We were—we were going to head out for a drink.”

  I feel something swim around in my stomach. This is different about Books. Back when he was full-time with the Bureau, when he was hot on a chase—a time-sensitive, lives-at-risk chase—the last thing you’d ever catch him doing was drinking alcohol. He was constantly on edge, always rethinking the evidence. There would be times, when we were together, that he would be sitting next to me or across the table at dinner, but I could tell he was miles away, trying to find his way inside a monster’s head, challenging assumptions, reexamining angles, closing this eye, then that eye, wondering if it changed the picture at all. I recall being in a movie theater with Books once when, for some reason, I turned to him in the middle of the show, the light playing on his face as the scene on the screen changed, his eyes open wide and glossy, and I could tell that if you saw behind those eyes, they wouldn’t be looking at the movie screen at all, they would be replaying some crime scene in Alameda or New Orleans or Terre Haute.

  And now we’re in the middle of a chase, and he wants to go out for a drink. It’s not hard to see what’s changed.

  We are heading out for a drink, he said. We. But we doesn’t include me. And as much as I’ve come to like Denny Sasser, I don’t think he’s up for painting the town at eleven o’clock at night.

  Books has every right to do this, I remind myself. He’s a single man and Sophie’s a single woman.

  You dumped him. You’re the last person on Earth who has the right to comment.

  And don’t you have a job to do? Aren’t you here to stop a killer? Even if you’re the only one who really believes that this killer exists?

  “You should go out, then,” I say, not breaking stride in my typing. “I’m going to keep at this.”

  “You sure you don’t want to come along? Or I could join you here—”

  “No, I’m fine,” I say. “Sometimes I’m better when I’m just alone, focusing on this stuff, anyway.”

  If ever I uttered a true statement, it is that one. I’m better alone. I’m more comfortable alone. I’m supposed to be alone. These numbers and statistics, these patterns and cross-references and data, this hunt is all the company I need.

  I turn and listen to Books’s footfalls along the carpeted hallway, until he’s out of earshot. Then I get back to work.

>   31

  * * *

  “Graham Session”

  Recording # 8

  September 4, 2012

  * * *

  Good day, all. I’m enjoying a burger—rare, of course—and a plate of fries while I watch an old football game on ESPN Classic. I’m using my recorder as a fake cell phone, as I always do in public places like this tavern. I wasn’t planning on lecturing you tonight, but it occurs to me as I watch this football game that we have, as they say, a teachable moment.

  I’ve been thinking about how much my artistry resembles that of a quarterback. I know, I know—you’re picturing one of these steel-jawed poster boys like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady and thinking, What the hell do they have in common with a homicidal artist like Graham?

  Anyone can play quarterback badly, just like anyone can stick a knife into a couple of people or pull a trigger or hold someone down under water. But to be the best, to reach the pinnacle, requires self-denial, sacrifice, discipline, humility, and preparation. You have to hurt yourself, scold yourself, analyze yourself, recognize your weaknesses at the same time you try to eliminate them. And those weaknesses you can’t eliminate must be minimized. You must create a plan that highlights your strengths and hides your flaws. You have to do more than simply want to win. Everybody wants to win, for goodness’ sake. But precious few of us are willing to prepare to win. You must do things that are difficult, unpleasant, painful.

  You must do today what nobody else will do, so tomorrow you can accomplish what others can’t.

  And then, of course, there is the ultimate test of the quarterback: the audible. Going off plan. Looking over the landscape and making an on-the-spot decision to change up what you’re doing. That’s what I’m about to do.

  Because I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting Luther. Luther Feagley, seated just two stools down from me at the bar, with a lovely gal named Tammy. Luther isn’t going to win any prizes for intelligence or class. Or for his wardrobe, which consists of a gray T-shirt that says “Don’t Fuck with the Huskers” and baggy shorts. But, oh, he’s full of talk with his lady friend, Tammy, about the fundamentals of football, and she seems not to know very much about the sport, which means she is taking everything he says as gospel, even when discerning lads like myself know that Luther is falling short in his discussion.