CHAPTER 47
YOU, SIR, ARE AN INSPIRATION
When Bryan woke up at 6 am on Thursday morning, he found out Angie was not in her bed. He already knew that sometimes she liked to run before PFT, so he knew he would be meeting her at the training field later.
After a shower, he noticed a few energy bars laid out on his study table and that made him smile. No matter how little she had, she always shared it with him.
Angie had once again opted for free coffee at that second floor hangout place. Weirdly, Ben was not there. But someone else was.
"Had a good night last night?" The same brunette woman from the bathroom was now walking towards the blonde one, from the previous night. She held a KitKat bar in one hand and took a bite off of it, in a very weird way that caught Angie's attention.
The blonde looked like trash. Her face was puffed and she looked like she had gotten no sleep at all.
"I don't know…" The blonde commented and it gave Angie the impression that she didn't remember much from that night.
"Are you feeling a little less enraged at those poor people now?" The brunette tried to be nice and smiley, but the blonde was having none of it. Clearly, her intentions hadn't changed.
"I have to go back to the fourth floor. There is a problem with the cleaning staff, they skipped yesterday morning. I sure hope they cleaned this morning." The blonde one excused herself and walked over to the elevator.
A huge imaginary light bulb lit up above Angie's head. Fourth floor needed cleaning staff? Interesting.
She then left the lounge, but not before refilling her coffee cup and grabbing two more cookies.
PFT was a bit exhausting. She hadn't slept enough and she felt her body aching. Recently, she had been pushing herself hard, plus, she had recently been drugged. So, this, combined with the lack of sleep and rest, was starting to show in her body and she felt a little less strong, compared to week one. But that only meant one thing – she had to push even harder.
She went back to the dorm for a quick shower before going to the auditorium. She knew that Doctor Reid's class would be held in the afternoon, so she allowed herself to not be as enthusiastic for the first class of the day. She didn't even remember what was on their schedule, but she was way too tired to even care. She would make an effort to listen, but her brain was busy analyzing something else.
All of that was until the moment Dan walked in with yet another substitute teacher.
Angela's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
"You like old guys?" Bryan teased her for her reaction to the new teacher.
"If you tell me you don't know who that is, I'm never speaking to you again!" Angela said defensively.
Bryan shrugged. The guy surely seemed to have authority, but other than that, Bryan was clueless.
"Internationally acclaimed criminal author, bestseller, a man I want to learn everything from!" She introduced the man who was now standing in front of them.
"Alright-…" Bryan started to speak, only to be cut off by her.
"Shut up! You've never seen nerd Angie until now. Zip it and let me enjoy every second of this class!" She said threateningly.
The Hell with allowing herself to slack off during the morning class. She was now beyond pumped for it to start.
Dan informed them that SSA David Rossi was kind enough to offer to teach them a little something, after years of service at the Bureau and numerous best-sellers on serial killers. This was the closest thing to the perfect Christmas present, for Angela.
Rossi was a lot better with crowds, than Reid had been the day before. They had both held numerous lectures, but Rossi was a natural speaker. He enjoyed a crowd, he knew how to entertain a crowd.
Nobody dared yawn during his class. Yes, there were those ones who were slacking and he could see them hiding on the last few rows.
Then there was the vast majority of those who knew they had to do good at every subject in the Academy, so they were being very careful and paid attention during the whole class.
Then there were the few selected ones that were listening to his every word, as if their lives depended on it. He smiled, realizing that there were quite a few promising future profiler faces in front of him. He loved inspiring people to go into profiling. He had inspired JJ, back in the days, and she was now someone he was proud to work besides.
And then there was this one girl on the front row. She barely even blinked, as to not miss out on a single image that he was showing on the screen. At times, he saw her repeat something to herself, his words, as if she was trying to memorize them right after he had said them. It was kind of cute, actually.
"Okay, now can someone give me an example of an organized serial killer? Someone you have read about. Let's analyze their behavior and crimes." Rossi asked.
He loved being interactive with his audience. He usually started off with some explanations and then he went into specifics, after which he asked people to give examples, so they could analyze them together.
Whenever he had asked this question, he always got the same answer – Ted Bundy. That was the most commercialized serial killer. Everyone knew his story, even if they weren't into criminology. Rossi hated getting him as an example, he was bored by analyzing his crimes over and over again, at every lecture he ever held.
Angie darted her hand out so fast that she heard a little pop of her shoulder.
Rossi nodded, allowing her to speak.
"Joel David Rifkin, Sir!" Angie suggested "He's an American serial killer who was sentenced to 203 years in prison for murdering nine women between 1989 and 1993. Although, it is believed that he might have killed up to seventeen victims during the same time period, in New York City and Long Island. So, even if he didn't cross state borders for these victims, he still became a federal case, being one of the most clear examples of organized serial killer. Although, he was not fast enough in concealing and dumping that last victim, the one the police found in his trunk when they pulled him over for just a missing license plate. Talk about fate!"
Angie rolled her eyes dramatically.
"Uh, thank you." Rossi said politely. "But I only needed a name, so I could do the analyzing."
"Oh. Sorry. I can get a bit…passionate." She shrugged.
"About serial killers?" Bryan raised an eyebrow and Angie nodded contently, as if she was proud of her weird passion.
"Is that so?" Rossi could hear them, as they were on the first row, right in front of him. As a matter of fact, he had heard every word Angie said to Bryan at the beginning, how she explained their new teacher to Bryan. And it was flattering to him. Also, very much intriguing.
"Why don't you come join me here and we can try analyzing some behavior together, then?" Rossi offered calmly.
Angie tried not to squeal. This was getting better and better with every minute.
The moment she stood next to this man, she felt a wave of something new taking over her. Courage? Interest?
Determination?
Rossi showed her some photos and asked for her opinion on the murders.
"Alright, well photos number three and five do not belong to the same killer, as the rest of them. I also had my doubts about picture number six, but then I realized the MO is the same. Even though victim number six was murdered with much less violence, I can still tell it was done by the same Unsub. See, there is hesitation marks here…and here. Only on this victim, though. Which makes me believe she was the first one – the Unsub was just starting off, he was unsure and he was only experimenting. He probably didn't even want to kill this poor woman. I mean, the fact that, looking at victimology for a second, she doesn't have any apparent visual connection to the other victims, I can rule premeditation out. It was possibly an opportunistic kill – a high risk target, surprised by a blitz attack, as proven by that initial blow to the head, zoom on the right side here, there's a nasty bruising, but it couldn't have been the cause of death. I believe the Unsub just wanted to scare her, but then what started off as simple power play with someone who couldn't defend herself against the Unsub, escalated into violence and that resulted in murder. I believe he didn't even realize the moment he lost her, because he was too busy inflicting pain to the victim. That, originally, was his only goal. But then he got bald, he realized that he liked it and he only got better in his torture later on. Yes, the MO stays the same, but with each victim, we can see his rage escalating. Maybe he was trying to relive the high that the first kill gave him, but it never is as good as the first time. With killing, I mean. Because other stuff…" She trailed off, realizing she was about to be very inappropriate.
"He never changed the murder weapon, but he experimented with points of entry of that knife. Also, the knife used for victim number two has a bigger blade than the others. The opening looks like something made with a butcher knife, like, one of those big knives that people have at home, but use very rarely and don't usually keep in handy, in the first drawer. So, this points to a connection between the Unsub and the victim. And since it was only his second kill, and the first one was a high-risk run away from home, this means that he was escalating fast and he had this sense of being untouchable. Also, I don't think too much time had gone by between the two kills. I believe his cooling off period is extremely short and he was only active for a brief period before his sense of superiority finally brought him to make a stupid mistake and he got caught because of that." She kept on talking.
"Now, going back to victimology, all girls are about the same height, but some are Caucasian and some are African-American. This doesn't help us much with victimology, so we need to go back to profiling the crime. All have had deep wounds, around the genital area. That points to the Unsub's hatred to women. Or impotence. So, if we have two groups of victims, based on ethnicity, we may be looking for someone who comes from an unstable upbringing. Also, what is this cloth next to the victims? It's part of his signature, for sure, because it is present in every photo, but what is it?" She asked.
"After analysis, each cloth left next to the victims turned out to be soaked in some cheap alcohol. Always different, but always cheap." Rossi said briefly. Clearly he knew how the investigation had turned out, he had all the answers, but he wanted his students to try and guess them, too.
"Alcohol. Cheap alcohol. Unstable upbringing and hatred to women. His first victim being a white female, the youngest one of all. Okay, the Unsub is a white male, who grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father, who was always absent from home. He had been married twice – to a Caucasian and then to an African-American woman, both of whom our Unsub hated with passion. He started pouring his anger on that young run away girl, because she must have reminded him of his father's first wife in some way. Maybe the hair? The clothes? The way she spoke? And then he moved on to the other woman, an older lady, whom I suppose he knew, as he surely would have had to be familiar with the house, if he got all the way to the kitchen and had the time to grab the biggest, sharpest knife from the cupboard, not the top one, as previously mentioned. So, she was another reminder of the second wife. But why? What was the connection? If he knew the victim, did the victim know the second wife? And then I would say that neither of the kills really fulfilled him, so he spiraled and went on a killing spree, trying to find the most suitable surrogates for both those women that he really wanted to punish. The origins of his anger would date back to his childhood. Maybe he saw his father punish one, or both of his wives. Maybe he witnessed one or both of them being murdered by the father? He tried to suppress his urges, all these years. But then, after the accidental first kill, he couldn't get enough of it. So he kept on going and the only way he could be stop was if he got detained. Although, if this turned into a maniac psychosis killing spree, he wouldn't have let anyone catch him. He would have made sure they killed him, before they caught him. So, my best guess is that the Unsub was a white male, in his early 30's, from an abusive home, alcoholic dad, as the soaked cloth was a symbol of leaving something behind; disorganized as the victims were all left as is and the bodies were not staged; a bit chaotic in his crime scenes, always adding something new while also staying true to his MO; he was someone who was unable to keep even a part-time job for more than a few months, someone who preferred working at night and probably drove a really old car. Red one. He may or may not have had a stable relationship before, but if he had, then his previous partner would have left him because of weird sudden violent outbursts. He was heterosexual, but very awkward with women. There might have been minor instances of animal abuse in his childhood and he would have wet his bed until the age of ten, at least."
"Is that all?" Rossi said ironically. The girl hadn't shut her mouth for the past five minutes already.
"No." She said and it did not surprise Bryan. Angela always had more to say.
"He would also be unable to tie shoe laces. He probably wears those ones with the sticky strap." She added the most weirdly specific piece of information on the Unsub. And she sounded convinced about it.
"What makes you add that?" Rossi challenged her.
"In all of his victim's photos the shoes of the victims are untied. Unlike the ones in photos three and five, which is one of the reasons why I excluded them immediately. Tying one's shoe is something people learn as kids, from their parents. And we've already established he did not have the best upbringing. So, leaving his victims' shoes untied is a way for him to punish both of his father's wives for failing to educate him on things in life, simple things such as tying his own shoe laces. This is his unique signature, along with leaving the alcohol-soaked cloth. The MO is the angle of entry of the knife. The wounds are at different height, but always at the same body region. And always at the same angle. So, maybe he witnessed his father kill one of his wives in the same way and that's what triggered the psychosis that, years later, allowed him to turn into a killer himself. He's recreating something he saw, he had fantasized about it for years, so he perfected that angle and is now reproducing it perfectly, every single time." She said with conviction.
"Is that all, now?" Rossi asked, this time the irony even more obvious…to anyone, but her.
"No." She replied one more time. "He also would be the kind of killer who would take trophies from his victims. And since he hates his father for marrying women who failed to educate him and turn him into a good human being, I'd say, as far as victimology goes – these are all married women, whose life he had somehow injected himself into, maybe through his part time job; and whom he hated for being the epitome of what he had needed his father's two wives to be. So he wanted to hurt them, transferring his rage onto the opposite of what he wanted his original victims to have been. Transference is often seen in killings, ticked by psychosis. The Unsub was unsure which he hated more – the women who failed him or the women who could have been potentially good at bringing him up. He sees them as his own family and, when he realizes that this is just a fantasy, he kills them."
She stopped speaking, but only so she could take a breath.
"Now, about the trophies – they would have to embody a unity, a promise, the same promise he never got to hear." Angie was now holding the remote to the power point presentation that was on the screen and she flicked back and forth between the photos. "There. All victims are missing their wedding rings. And you can see swelling on victim number four's ring finger, as it was possibly removed postmortem. Like, the Unsub had been in a rush with this kill, or maybe he had been interrupted. So he would have had to come back later, to collect his trophy, at which point the body would have started to swell and he would have found it hard to remove the ring, but since it is crucial for his ritual, he did so anyway."
"Jesus Christ, she's banging good at this!" Bryan muttered to himself.
He knew Angie was good, but not at everything. He didn't know what she excelled in, until that moment. She seemed so calm and peaceful on that podium. She had been intimidated during Reid's class, she had hated the tactical driving and sometimes in the laboratories she would second-guess her results, even in chemistry, which she loved. But there, standing next to this man who was, apparently, a criminology superstar, she looked like she belonged.
"Thank you, Miss Hunter." Rossi said slowly, giving her time to speak her last words, if she needed to.
"Does anyone disagree with the profile she suggested?" He asked the trainees.
Nobody spoke. They didn't feel as prepared as to be able to comment anyway. Profiling was not the most popular discipline in the Academy and that was okay, because it meant that the few ones who decided to pursue it as a career path, were highly motivated and clearly good at what they were doing. Rossi had seen a lot of people try profiling and fail at it. But Angela, something about that girl, gave him hope.
"Now, the killer was a 31 year old white male, living in a suburban area, driving a red Pontiac Aztec, model 2001, to and back from his part-time nighttime job as a substitute garage keeper. Childhood background of extreme violence, frequent trips to the ER with suspicious broken bones. Major psychological trauma and child neglect got the school to file a warning to Social Services, which resulted in him being taken off school at the age of twelve, while he was still wetting the bed, and being homeschooled by his only parent – the father. His schooling methods involved hitting the kid regularly with a golf stick and drawing bloody lines down his spine with a knife. During his childhood, the father had two significant lady companions. The first one he married – a Caucasian female, older than him, who vanished suspiciously one day and nobody saw her again. The common suspicion was that he had murdered her, but this was never backed up by any actual evidence. The second woman, an African-American, he only lived briefly with, but, even if she liked his torture and often joined him in torturing the kid, she ended up leaving him for another man. The Unsub also knew all of his victims from the parking lot where he worked for the past five months after being kicked out of his previous part time job as a worker in car services, following a scandal that involved him plunging a knife in an unhappy customer's car tire. The first victim, however, was an opportunistic kill. In his late teen years, he had experimented inflicting pain on animals, but it infuriated him to not be able to hear their pain, so after years of trying to repress his urge to inflict pain, one day he came across this young run away and he decided to see what it felt like to torture another human being. It all escalated from there. And he managed to leave six victims behind – three white and three African-American women, in the span of four weeks, before he was eventually caught and shot after he threatened an FBI Agent with a knife to her stomach. He was wearing sneakers with sticky straps and after a thorough search of his home, the police found no shoes with ties." Rossi gave them a brief summary of what had happened.
Out of all things Angela could have done, to try to seem like a normal human being, out of it all – she dabbed.
It was small and quick, as she casually brought one hand to her forehead. It looked like she was just pushing a strand of hair from her face. It was almost invisible. But it was there and it was going to haunt her through her future career.
Rossi, just like all of the other teachers, had been instructed to be rough and severe with this one trainee, but he just couldn't find it in him to be rude. Even when Dan was giving him looks from the side, as if he was urging him to find a flaw and to smash it against Angie's content face.
Rossi just could not find one.
"That was…impressive." He said hesitantly, as Dan was ready to get up and go strangle him. "How old are you?" He asked curiously.
"Twenty-three, Mr. Rossi." She replied, looking like the most innocent little thing, standing in front of him, but standing tall, her head held high, because she knew she deserved to be proud of herself.
"How old were you when your interest in profiling started?" He asked some more.
"Three. That's when I stopped playing with silly toys in the back yard and I started to realize that there are a lot of things in life that I didn't know about. So, I wanted to know about them." She was coming off as truthful, but it just sounded weird. "Oh, but I didn't start learning about that kind of stuff until I was eight."
"But…you were just a child!" He protested. Was she taking the piss out of him with this story?
"Up until then, yeah." She said calmly, as if there was nothing weird about her words.
Rossi then let her go back to her seat, while he continued the class with more examples of how profiling had helped his Unit catch killers. He found out that, while Angie was taking a lot of notes about his personal suggestions and tactics, she took none when he was explaining the theory – what criminal profiling was, the different types of serial killers and their characteristics and so on.
He then repeated the experiment with one more volunteer from the class and, while the guy had clearly also read a lot about profiling, his final profile had been much more inaccurate. Whereas Angie's was chillingly spot on.
"May I have a word?" Rossi raised his hand, after he dismissed the class, waving at Angie.
Bryan let her know he'd be hanging out with the other trainees for lunch, since he knew it was her day to go to her job at the library.
"What are your career goals within the Bureau?" Rossi asked, casually leaning against the pretentious teacher's desk that was in the middle of the podium.
"I only have one goal." She stated.
"May I know what it is?" He asked, finding it weird that she was able to avoid answering a direct question.
"Yes." She smiled. "When the time comes."
He tried not to sigh. He was a man who liked answers.
"I think you have it in you to be a profiler. You analyzed every detail quickly and you spotted the additional photos that I threw in the presentation. I can see you've obviously done your reading in advance. In fact, speaking of reading…" He reached under the desk and grabbed his newest book.
"I would like to give you this. I have a feeling you'll like it." He said while flipping over to the blank dedication page at the beginning of the book.
Angie put her hand over his, just as he was about to start writing a personalized note for her.
"I loved the personal attachment you put into this book. Your word flow is so easy and pleasant to follow and your comparison to butterflies is just so accurate. Chapter four, I can tell, was hard for you to write, because it's the most personal example you give and you changed your writing style up just a tiny little bit, throughout this chapter, before going back to your usual style in chapter five. Also, there was a typo in the Acknowledgements section and you can request a fresh new batch of books to be printed out for free, since it was the editor's mistake, not yours." She smiled innocently.
Rossi was at the loss of words. "But, that book just came out a few months ago. Where did you get it? And how do you know about the butterfly comparison? I only ever mentioned that during my book tour, but it never made it to the book."
"Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, May 10th." She stated, quite like a robot.
"Huh?" He remembered that name. "Oh, yeah. It was the first stop of my book tour. Book was on sale, exclusively, during the tour." He added, realizing she must have been there and bought the book from his mini vending station after the presentation.
"Mhm. You also signed it for me." She added.
He felt a bit weird to not have remembered her, but then again, he had met thousands of students during his tours and lectures in different universities.
"How about this one then? It's old, but still very much relevant." He grabbed another book, intending for it to be his excuse for not remembering her.
"I worked sixty-seven hours below minimum wage, in a nasty bar with no air conditioning, at the beachside, in August." She wasn't making any sense.
"But it was all worth it when I was finally able to hit that Pre-order button on this book back in 2016." There it was – what she was actually trying to say.
Rossi put the book down and studied the girl for a moment. Young, beautiful, full of life and sparks shining in her eyes. If he saw her on the street, he'd suppose she was into music, dancing with her friends, laying on the beach, maybe doing something artistic, such as drawing or some kind of a sport. But, never in a million years, would he have guessed that she was so deeply interested in serial killers.
"Then how about that – you can come on tour with me when I launch my next book. And you can come present one of the examples, on stage, with me…huh?" He suggested.
In the back of his mind, he was thinking to himself: "Also because I hope you'd join the BAU after graduating, so you can come work alongside all of us and learn everything you ever wanted to know about profiling, so when one day I present a new book, you can present the example of a case that you would have worked by my side, kid."
"I think we have a deal, Sir." She smiled and excused herself. "I need to go or I'll be late for work. It was really…I mean, really really nice to listen to you again and to get to learn from you. Thank you so much for all the effort you've put into this class and your research and wow, you have invidious amount of experience behind your back. You, Sir, are an inspiration!"
She then walked away calmly, leaving him intrigued by her.
