J. Jance - Rattlesnake Crossing

"Do you want me to give it to you, or should I pass it along to your lead detective-Mr. Carpenter, I assume?"

"I'm sitting here with pad and paper at the ready," she told him.

"Okay, then," Monty Brainard said. "Here goes. In my opinion, you're dealing with a young white male, late teens, early twenties at the most. He's totally self-absorbed. He has no concept that anyone else actually exists. As far as he's concerned, his reality is the only reality."

"You think he's white?" Joanna asked. "You're sure he's not Hispanic?"

"Maybe," Brainard returned. "Hispanic is possible, I suppose, but my gut instinct says no. This is a loner of a young man with some severe issues when it conies to relating to the adult authority figures in his life. He hates women and men just about equally, but I find the fact that he didn't mutilate the male victim telling. There's probably still a sense of fear or awe about adult males. He's primarily targeting women, but he's doing it to get back at the authority figure. Most likely that's his father, but it could be a stepfather or a grandfather, too. Maybe even a mother's boyfriend, but I doubt it.

"Then there's the burial motif. Let me see… yes, he did the rock-pile trick with two of the victims, both Flowers and Brittany. If your people hadn't found the Berridge woman when they did, he probably would have pulled the same stunt with her. I'm sure there's a message in the burial routine, but right now, on such short notice and with the information available, I can't decode it.

"The other ingredient, of course, is the scalping. Once you find him, you can pretty well count on finding a trophy room as well. It's going to be ugly."

Joanna's lunch turned sour in her stomach while Monty Brainard paused. "Am I going too fast?" he asked.

After one or two false starts, Joanna's years of taking shorthand dictation had come back to her and was serving her in good stead. "No," she said, mastering her queasiness. "I'm fine. Go ahead."

"Okay. From what I can see, there don't seem to be any connections at all among the women. Is that right?"

"That's correct."

"So they're probably crimes of convenience. He killed them for the same reason some people go out of their way to climb mountains-they were there. The rage was building for a long time, but the first victim, the one in Phoenix, was most likely his first real taste of blood. After that, there's a long pause. I suspect he was out of circulation for a time. Maybe even incarcerated. The lack of fingerprints leads me to think that, too. Your perpetrator is wearing gloves. 1'd guess he knows his fingerprints are on record somewhere. He also knows that if your investigators find them at a crime scene, you'll be able to find him, too. Anyway, he was locked up until sometime earlier this year. Probably until just before this new set of killings started.

"Unfortunately, Sheriff Brady, I believe not only are you dealing with a serial killer, your guy is in what we call the subcategory of spree. In other words, now that he's started on his tear, he's not going to stop until he's caught or dead. I don't happen to think he's particularly concerned about getting caught, either. To paraphrase Margaret Mitchell-frankly, my dear, I don't think the son of a bitch gives a damn. Which is why the stolen gun collection scares the hell out of me. Is that true? Does he really have access to a whole arsenal of weapons?"

"Sad but true," Joanna replied. "And unlimited ammunition as well."

"Great. Well, be advised, Sheriff Brady. He's liable to stage one hell of a grand-exit spectacle. He'll probably try taking along as many people as possible, including any he's missed so far-like specific family members, for example. Killing all these other people may just be leading up to the main event. Working up his courage, as it were." Monty paused. "What kind of guns?"

"Some of everything," Joanna said. "Including the possibility of several fifty-calibers."

Monty Brainard whistled. "Boy, oh boy, you'd better watch your guys, then. Don't send anybody up against him who isn't armed with the same kind of firepower."

"Great," Joanna said. "You wouldn't happen to be in a position to lend my department a couple of fifty-calibers, would you?"

"Not personally," Brainard said, "hut I can put your request to the local agent in charge out there and see what he can do. Want me to have him give you a call?"

"Yes, that would be fine. Only give him the same two numbers Frank Montoya gave you."

"Will do. Hope this was a help."

"It is and it isn't," Joanna replied. "I feel like I'm climbing up a really tough cliff. Now I've turned over a rock and come face-to-face with a rattlesnake."

"There's one big difference between the guy you're looking for and your everyday, garden-variety rattlesnake," Monty Brainard told her.

"Oh? What's that?"

"As I understand it, a rattlesnake only kills when it's cornered. This guy is looking for kicks. So good luck, Sheriff Brady. You're going to need it."

"Thanks," Joanna said. "I know."

For several minutes after getting off the phone, Joanna simply sat and stared at the instrument. Her conversation with Monty Brainard had opened a gate, leading her into what seemed like the valley of the shadow of death. It had allowed her a nightmarish glimpse of someone totally evil. What she couldn't reconcile in her mind was Ruben Ramos' view of his son with what she had heard from the FBI agent.

Yes, Ruben and Frankie were estranged. But were they that estranged? And if Frankie had just graduated from high school, that meant he was only eighteen now. That would have made him sixteen at the time Rebecca Flowers was killed. Would a sixteen-year-old "sissy" have done such a thing?

And what about Brainard's claim that between that first killing and the next ones, the killer had most likely been incarcerated somewhere? Surely if Frankie Ramos had already been shipped off to juvie for the better part of two years, Ruben Ramos wouldn't have been so concerned about his being charged with either solicitation or minor in possession.

Then there was the nagging question of ethnicity. Brainard had claimed the killer had to be white. Joanna Brady had never met Frankie Ramos, but she had no doubt he was Hispanic. Maybe when it came to sorting white from Hispanic, the agent was just flat mistaken. After all, nobody ever claimed that criminal profiling was an exact science.

Joanna sat there for some time longer with her door shut and without the phone ringing off the hook for a change. Most of her departmental troops were out in the field doing their respective jobs. It was hardly surprising, then, that the Cochise County Justice Complex seemed unnaturally quiet.

In the brooding silence, letting her mind wander and wool-gather, Joanna Brady remembered something Belle Philips had said the night before: "Clyde liked boys." She hadn't said that he liked a single boy. She had used the plural. More than one. Several.

Joanna's heartbeat quickened in her breast. Maybe that was why Brainard's assessment wasn't adding up. Maybe he wasn't wrong, after all, because there was another boy involved in all this. Maybe Clyde Philips had kept a whole stable of young men around him. If so, Joanna had an idea of someone who might know-Clyde's neighbor, the talkative Sarah Holcomb.

The only question in her mind was whether or not Sarah would talk to her. Joanna's last contact with the woman had gone offtrack so badly that she was half tempted to have one of the two detectives do the honors. After a moment's consideration, however, she realized that both Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were far too busy. Both of them were probably up to their eyeteeth interviewing the soon-to-be-departing guests from Rattlesnake Crossing.