Chapter Two

Finding Her Passion

Kelly Neiman's first kill had been in 1992.

Her roommate during her residency was mildly paranoid, so she had done some digging, and had managed to find out about her past. Kelly had transferred from Chicago General, to a teaching hospital in New York City to escape her past. To distance herself from the person she had once been. The girl that she was ashamed of and wanted kept dead and buried. Miranda, a slender, fine boned blonde like she had once been, had been sympathetic, to be sure, but Kelly Chambers was dead and gone. Only Kelly Neiman remained and she wanted to keep it that way.

Miranda had to go.

The weapon she chose had been the first thing she could lay her hands on, the long hemp rope strap from Miranda's handmade shoulder bag. Kelly felt a surge of adrenaline as she pulled the rope taut around Miranda's neck. As she felt it dig into the supple flesh of her throat, cutting off her windpipe and the blood to her brain. She felt a wave of endorphins as Miranda struggled, kicked and jerked before going still as she deprived the young woman of life. When it was over, and Miranda's body was cooling on the floor, Kelly felt more powerful, more alive, than she ever had before. A power greater than Jeremy had taken from her. The power over life and death. She liked it...she reveled in it.

She felt sorry for Miranda, though. This weak mousy little thing she'd murdered...no...euthanized. Miranda would never be violated or brutalized, like her previous self had been. Miranda would never be tainted by the violation of rape. Never be touched by the unwanted attention of men. She brushed out her hair, fixed her makeup and prepared her for burial. She had done her a favor.

She later found what she liked even more than the power she had derived from taking Miranda's life, was the satisfaction and the thrill of getting away with it. She called the police herself and played the shocked roommate, traumatized by her roommate's brutal slaying when the uniforms arrived. Then again when the detectives questioned her. Not one of the cops who spoke to her ever so much as suspected her involvement. Never asking her for more than the usual, cursory questions about Miranda's social life.

The case had gone cold within days and no one ever so much as theorized that she had been killed by a woman. When the detective informed her that they had found no viable suspects for such a personal violent death, she went back to the hotel room the campus had provided and masturbated for hours. Killing Miranda had made her feel powerful, but doing so with near impunity with such absolute perfection that the police were forced to give up, leaving the case unsolved filled the empty void in her soul that her rapist had left behind. For the first time since her violation, she felt almost invulnerable...godlike...euphoric...powerful, and she liked it. She knew it was wrong, but she didn't care.

She wanted more.

Eventually one killing was not enough to satisfy her. A single kill didn't provide the thrill that that first one did, so she began to escalate, become more daring. She was nothing if not brutally efficient, though. She knew it took time to gather and process evidence, she had taken criminal justice forensics courses as a minor and interned at New York City's OCME after her first killing. She knew she could kill three back to back before the CSI's could catch up with the trace evidence from the first scene.

She liked the idea of strangulation...it was not quite so messy as other methods of killing and did not require a lot of strength. It also reduced the likelihood of her leaving DNA at the scene. The idea of using the same type of rope her rapist had used to immobilize her held a certain appeal. Like she was finally taking back her power from Jeremy Donovan.

Jeremy would eventually need to be dealt with, repaid in kind for what he had done to her, but she was not prepared to face him directly. He was still the boogie man...the dark shadow in her nightmares. Still shielded by his family's money. His death would be too easily tracked back to her. Even with her new name and new identity. He might not recognize her anymore but he would still see her coming. Her revenge upon him would have to wait...until she was ready. Until her transformation was complete and she no longer feared him.

In time she discovered that she liked indirectly squaring off against police detectives.

The more experienced, the more competent the better. Beating them, leaving so little evidence behind that the case would go unsolved made her feel powerful. She not only researched her victims, but whom the best homicide detectives were, who was likely to get the cases that fell outside the norm. The ones likely to challenge her...keep her sharp. She was easily bored, and it kept the game interesting.

She never repeated her pattern in the same city twice in a row, however. Never squared off against the same detectives more than once. She was not a fool. She knew her limits, when to walk away.

She had come close to being caught only once.

By late November of 1995, she had perfected her technique, settled into her comfortable pattern. She was in Palm Beach Florida on vacation and was thoroughly enjoying toying with the two detectives assigned to the case. Sergeants Lorenzo and Lance had actually sought her out as a possible witness to the murders she had been committing. It was the thrill that had been missing from the equation. The challenge she needed to keep her interested, because she knew that killing too many too often was the surest way to get caught and lose her power.

They were really good, better than any she had had squared off against previously, and she was sure that they had begun to suspect she knew more than she was telling. But, they simply could not prove she had done anything wrong. Through careful observation, she discovered they had one weakness, however. Anyone who was around them for more than five minutes saw it. The attraction they had for each other, the desire.

Detective Sergeant Rita Lee Lance was beginning to ask the right questions, however and this could not be allowed. She had arranged for Rita's former partner, now husband, and the father of her unborn child, Sgt. Chris Lorenzo to be murdered in front of her eyes by a young man she had been keeping an eye on named Jerry Tyson.

It was a test. Jerry passed, and she arranged things so that the murderer the two had been chasing took the fall. From then on she made a point to be more careful not to get tied to any crime scenes, or to have victims too easily tied to her. To have an exit strategy for when a detective got too close.

It had been a Palm Beach reporter who had first coined the name "The Triple Killer" and she liked it. Even more, she liked that the profile behind the name was still wrong. That authorities still assumed that 3XK was a man.

The profilers would learn to regret that glaring misconception.