It was about the body.
There was an intimate connection between a killer and the person they’d killed. Bodies were like messages, full of symbolic meanings that only a person who understood the needs and desires and rage that went into snuffing out another life could fully decode.
This isn’t a language anyone should want to speak. Dean was the one who’d told me that, but beside me, I could feel his eyes locked on to the screen, the same as mine.
The corpse had long blond hair. Whoever had taken the video hadn’t been able to get close, but even from a distance, her body looked broken, her skin lifeless. Her hands appeared to be bound behind her back, and based on the fact that her legs weren’t splayed apart, I was guessing her feet had been bound as well. The bottom half of her body was hanging off the front of the car. Her shirt was covered in blood. Even with the questionable camera work, I could make out a noose around her neck. Black rope stood out against the white car, going all the way up to the sunroof.
“Hey!” On the video, a police officer noticed the student holding the phone. The student cursed and ran, and the footage cut out.
Sloane closed the laptop. The room went silent.
“If it’s just one murder,” Michael said finally, “that means it’s not serial. Why call in the FBI?”
“The person of interest teaches a class on serial killers,” I replied, thinking out loud. “If the professor’s involved, you might want someone with expertise in the field.” I looked to Dean to see if he agreed, but he was just sitting there, staring at the silent TV screen. Somehow, I doubted he was enthralled by the weather report.
“Dean?” I said. He didn’t respond.
“Dean.” Lia reached her foot out and shoved him with her heel. “Earth to Redding.”
Dean looked up. Blond hair hung in his face. Brown eyes stared through us. He said something, but the words were garbled in his throat, caught halfway between a grunt and a whisper.
“What did you say?” Sloane asked.
“Bind them,” Dean said, his voice still rough, but louder this time. “Brand them. Cut them. Hang them.” He shut his eyes, and his hands curled into fists.
“Hey.” Lia was beside him in a second. “Hey, Dean.” She didn’t touch him, but she stayed by his side. The look on her face was fiercely protective—and terrified.
Do something, I thought.
Taking my cue from Lia, I crouched by Dean’s other side. I reached a hand out to touch the back of his neck. He’d done the same for me, more than once, when I’d first started learning to climb into the minds of killers.
The second my hand made contact, he flinched. His arm shot out, and my wrist was suddenly caught in a painfully tight grip. Michael jumped to his feet, his eyes flashing. With a jerk of my head, I told him to stay put. I could take care of myself.
“Hey,” I said, repeating Lia’s words. “Hey, Dean.”
Dean blinked rapidly, three or four times. I tried to concentrate on the details of his face and not the death grip he had on my wrist. His eyelashes weren’t black. They were brown, lighter than his eyes. Those eyes stared at me now, round and dark. He let go of my wrist.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“She’s fine,” Lia answered for me, her eyes narrowed to slits, daring me to disagree with her.
Dean ignored Lia and fixed his eyes on me. “Cassie?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I was. I could feel the place where his hand had been a moment before, but it didn’t hurt anymore. My heart was pounding. I refused to let my hands shake. “Are you okay?”
I expected Dean to shut me down, to refuse to answer, to walk away. When he responded, I saw it for what it was—penance. He’d force himself to say more than he was comfortable saying to punish himself for losing control.
To make it up to me.
“I’ve been better.” Dean could have stopped there, but he didn’t. Each syllable was hard-won, and my gut twisted as I realized just how much it was costing him to form these words. “The professor they’re looking for, the one who teaches the Monsters or Men class? I’d bet a lot of money that the reason he’s a person of interest is that one of the killers he lectures about in his class is my father.” Dean swallowed and stared holes into the carpet. “The reason Briggs and Sterling were called in is that they were the original agents on my father’s case.”
I remembered what it had felt like to walk through a crime scene, knowing it had been patterned after my mother’s murder. Dean had been there with me. He’d been there for me.
“Bind them. Brand them. Cut them. Hang them,” I said softly. “That was how your father killed his victims.” I didn’t phrase it as a question, because I knew. Just by looking at Dean, I knew.
“Yes,” Dean said, before lifting his eyes to look at the still-muted TV. “And I’m almost certain that’s what was done to this girl.”
YOU
The president’s lawn was a nice touch. You could have dumped her anywhere. You didn’t have to risk being seen.
“No one saw me.” You murmur the words with a self-satisfied hum. “But they saw her.”
They saw the lines you carved into her body. They saw the noose you slipped around her neck. Just thinking about it, about the way her eyes bulged as the life drained out of her, fragile little arms tensing against the restraints, pale skin dyed with dainty rivulets of red…
Your lips curve into a smile. The moment has passed, but the game—the game is long. Next time, you won’t be so eager. Next time, you’ll have nothing to prove. Next time, you’ll take it slow.
Dean left the room right after dropping the bombshell about his father’s MO. The rest of us sat there in silence, the minutes ticking by, each more saturated than the last with all the things we weren’t saying.
There was no point in trying to take a practice GED. The only thing I could think about was the girl in the video, her body dangling off the front of the car, black noose fitted tightly around her lifeless neck. Dean hadn’t said what it was about the video that had convinced him that the UNSUB was mimicking his father’s crimes.
The fact that her arms and her legs were bound?
The way she was hung from the car?
Logically, those could have been coincidences. But Dean had sounded so sure, and he had believed me at a time when I’d had a theory that sounded just as crazy. Crazier, even.