Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“Aren’t you going to flag that historic artifact?” Corrie asked.

“We shall leave it for a future archeologist.”

More squawks; more pop-tops, arrow points, a few lead bullets, a rusted knife. Corrie noticed that Pendergast was frowning, as if disturbed by what he was finding. She almost asked the question, and then stopped. Why was she feeling so curious, anyway? This was just as weird as everything else Pendergast had done to date.

“Okay,” said Corrie, “I’m stumped. What does all this have to do with the killings? Unless, of course, you think the killer is the ghost of the Forty-Fiver who cursed the ground for eternity, or whatever.”

“An excellent question,” Pendergast replied. “I can’t say at this point if the killings and the massacre are connected. But Sheila Swegg was killed digging in these mounds, and Gasparilla spent a lot of time hunting up at these mounds. And then there’s all the gossip in town, to which you allude, that the killer is the ghost of Harry Beaumont come back for revenge. You may recall that they cut off his boots and scalped his feet.”

“ You don’t believe that, do you?”

“That the killer is the ghost of Beaumont?” Pendergast smiled. “No. But I must admit, the presence of antique arrows and other Indian artifacts does suggest a connection, if only in the mind of the killer.”

“So what’s your theory?”

“It is a capital mistake to develop a premature hypothesis in the absence of hard data. I am trying my best not to develop a theory. All I wish to do now is collect data.” He continued sweeping and marking. They were now on their third leg, which took them directly over one of the mounds. There was a cluster of points at its rocky base. At several scattered places Pendergast nodded to some fresh holes in the dirt, which someone had made a feeble attempt to hide with brush. “Sheila Swegg’s recent diggings.”

They continued on.

“So you don’t have any ideas about who the killer might be?” Corrie pressed.

Pendergast did not answer for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was very low. “It is what the killer is not that I find most intriguing.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We’re dealing with a serial killer, that much is clear. It is also clear he will keep killing until he is stopped. What I find intriguing is that he breaks the pattern. He is unlike any known serial killer.”

“How do you know?” Corrie asked.

“At the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, there’s a group known as the Behavioral Science Unit, which has made a specialty of profiling the criminal mind. For the past twenty years, they’ve been compiling cases of serial killers from all over the world and quantifying them in a large computer database.”

Pendergast moved ahead as he spoke, sweeping back and forth as they advanced down the far side of the mound and into the trees beyond. He glanced over at her. “Are you sure you want a lecture in forensic behavioral science?”

“It’s a lot more interesting than trigonometry.”

“Serial killing, like other types of human behavior, falls into definite patterns. The FBI has classified serial killers into two types: ‘organized’ and ‘disorganized.’ Organized offenders are intelligent, socially and sexually competent. They carefully plan their killings; the victim is a stranger, selected with care; mood is controlled before, during, and after the crime. The crime scene, too, is neatly controlled. The corpse of the victim is usually taken away and hidden. This type is often difficult to catch.

“The disorganized killer, on the other hand, kills spontaneously. He is often inadequate socially and sexually, does menial labor, and has a low IQ. The crime scene is sloppy, even random. The body is left at the crime scene; no attempt is made to conceal it. Frequently, the killer lives nearby and knows the victim. The attack is frequently what is known as a ‘blitz’ attack, violent and sudden, with little advance planning.”

They continued moving on.

“It sounds like our killer is the ‘organized’ type,” said Corrie.

“In fact, he is not.” Pendergast paused and looked at her. “This is strong stuff, Miss Swanson.”

“I can take it.”

He gazed at her a moment, and then said, almost as if to himself, “I believe you can.”

There was a whine from the machine, and Pendergast knelt and scraped, uncovering a small, rusted toy car. She saw him smile fleetingly.

“Ah, a Morris Minor. I had a Corgi collection when I was a child.”

“Where is it now?”

A shadow passed across Pendergast’s face and Corrie did not pursue the question.

“Superficially, our killer does seem to fit the organized type. But there are some major deviations. First, there is a sexual component to virtually all organized serial killings. Even if it is not overt, it is there. Some killers prey on prostitutes, some on homosexuals, some on couples in parked cars. Some killers perform sexual mutilations. Some killers rape first and then kill. Some killers just kiss the corpse and leave flowers, as if they had finished a date.”

Corrie shuddered.

“These killings, on the other hand, have no sexual component whatsoever.”

“Go on.”

“The organized killer also follows a modus operandi, which forensic behavioral scientists call ‘ritual.’ The killings are done ritualistically. The killer will often wear the same clothes for each killing, use the same gun or knife, and perform the killing in exactly the same way. Afterwards, the killer will often arrange the body in a ritualistic fashion. The ritual may not be obvious, but it is always there. It is part of the killing.”

“That seems to fit our serial killer.”

“On the contrary, it does not. Yes, our killer performs a ritual. But here’s the catch: it’s a totally different ritual each time. And this killer doesn’t just kill people: he kills animals. The killing of the dog is completely mystifying. There was no ritual at all involved there. It has all the earmarks of the ‘disorganized’ type. He simply killed the dog and ripped off its tail. Why? And the opportunistic attack on John Gasparilla was similar—no ritual, not even an effort to kill. He just, ah, seems to have taken what he needed—the man’s hair and his thumb—and gone away. In other words, these killings share elements of both organized and disorganized serial killers. This has never been seen before.”

He was interrupted by an explosive squawk from the metal detector. They had almost reached the end of the test line; ahead of them, the grassy slope descended through a fold of land to the great sea of corn below. Pendergast knelt and began to scrape away the dirt. This time he did not uncover anything. He placed the metal detector directly on the spot and adjusted some dials while the machine continued shrieking in protest.

“It’s at least two feet down,” he said. A trowel appeared in his hand and he began to dig.

In a few minutes, a sizable hole had been excavated. More carefully now, Pendergast trimmed the edges of the hole, going down scant millimeters at a time, until his trowel touched something solid.

A very small brush appeared in his hand and he began to sweep dirt from the object. Corrie watched over his shoulder. Something began emerging into view: old, twisted, curled up. A few more sweeps revealed it: a single cowboy boot with a hobnail sole. Pendergast lifted it out of the hole and turned it around in his hand. It had been neatly sliced down the back as if with a knife. He looked at Corrie and said:

“It appears Harry Beaumont wore a size eleven, does it not?”

There was a shout from behind. A figure was huffing his way out of the Mounds toward them, waving his hands. It was Tad, the deputy sheriff.