Tall, Dark and Deadly: Get Lucky

Lucky looked at Syd. She was wearing a plain T-shirt with her trademark baggy pants, sandals on her feet instead of her boots. Sometime between last night and this morning, she’d put red polish on her toenails.

“What would you do?” he asked her, taking a doughnut from the box that was open on the table. “Fight or…” He couldn’t even say it.

She met his gaze steadily. “I’ve been going through the interviews with the victims, looking for a pattern of violence that correlates to their responses to his attack. A majority of the women fought back, but some of them didn’t. One of them pretended to faint—went limp. Several others say they froze—they were so frightened they couldn’t move. A few others, like Gina, just cowered.”

“And?” Lucky said, dragging a chair up to the table.

“And I wish I could say that there’s a direct relationship between the amount of violence the rapist inflicted on the victim and the amount that she fought back. In the first half-dozen or so attacks, it seemed as if the more the woman fought, the more viciously he beat her. And there were actually two cases where our perp walked away from women who didn’t fight back. As if he didn’t want to waste his time.”

“So then it makes sense to advise women to submit,” Lucky figured.

“Maybe at first, but I’m not so sure about that anymore. His pattern’s changed over the past few weeks.” Syd scowled down at the papers in front of her. “We have eleven victims, spanning a seven-week period. During those seven weeks, the level of violence our guy is using to dominate his victims has begun to intensify.”

Lucky nodded. He’d overheard Syd and Lucy discussing this several nights ago.

“Out of the six most recent victims, we’ve had four who fought back right from the start, one who pretended to faint, and Gina, the most recent, who cowered and didn’t resist. Out of those six, Gina got the worst beating. Yet—go figure—the other woman who didn’t resist was barely touched.”

“So if you fight this guy, you can guarantee you’ll be hurt,” Lucky concluded. “But if you submit, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of his walking away from you.”

“And a chance of being beaten within an inch of your life,” Syd said grimly. “Keep in mind, too, that we’re making projections and assumptions based on six instances. We’d really need a much higher number of cases to develop any kind of an accurate pattern.”

“Let’s hope we don’t get that opportunity,” Mike Lee said quietly.

“Amen to that,” Thomas King seconded.

“I still think, knowing that, I would recommend zero resistance,” Lucky said. “I mean, if you had a shot at this guy just walking away…”

“That’s true.” Syd chewed on her lower lip. “But actually, there’s more to this—something that puts a weird spin on the situation. It has to do with, um…” She glanced almost apologetically at the other men. “Ejaculation.”

Rio stood up. “Whoops, look at the time. Gotta go.”

Syd made a face. “I know this is kind of creepy,” she said, “but I think it’s important you guys know all the details.”

“Sit,” Lucky ordered.

Rio sat, but only on the edge of his seat.

“Actually, Lieutenant,” Mike said evenly, “we’ve got a required class in five minutes. If we leave now, we’ll be on time.” He looked at Syd. “I assume you’ll be writing a memo about…this for the other members of the task force…?”

Syd nodded.

“There you go,” Rio said with relief. “We’ll read all about it in your memo.”

All three men stood up, and Lucky felt a surge of panic. They were going to go, leaving him alone with Syd, who wanted to discuss…Yikes. Still, what was he supposed to say, “no, you can’t go to class?”

“Go,” he said, and they all nearly ran out the door.

Syd laughed. “Well,” she said, “I sure know how to clear a room, don’t I?” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t want to follow them, Lieutenant? Read about this in my memo instead?”

Lucky stood up to pour himself a cup of coffee from the setup by the door. He had to search for a mug that was clean, and he was glad for the excuse to keep his back to her. “Nothing about this assignment has been pleasant. So if you think this is something I need to hear…”

“I do.”

Lucky poured himself a cup of coffee, then, taking a deep breath, he turned to face her. He carried it back to the table and sat down across from her. “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”

“According to the medical reports, our man didn’t…shall we say, achieve sexual completion, unless the woman fought back,” Syd told him.

Oh, God.

“We need to keep in mind,” she continued, “the fact that rape isn’t about sex. It’s about violence and power. Domination. Truth is, many serial rapists never ejaculate at all. And in fact, out of these eleven cases of rape, we’ve got only four instances of sexual, um, completion. Like I said, all of them occurred when the victim fought back, or—and this is important—when the victim was forced to fight back.”

“But wait. You said a majority of the victims fought back.” Lucky leaned forward. “Couldn’t he have been wearing a condom the other times?”

“Not according to the victims’ statements.” Syd stood up and started to pace. “There’s more, Luke, listen to this. Gina said in her interview that she didn’t resist. She cowered, and he hit her, and she cowered some more. And then, she says he spent about ten minutes trashing her apartment. I went in there. The place looked like there’d been one hell of a fight. But she didn’t fight back.

“I’m wondering if this guy was trying to simulate the kind of environment in which the victim has fought back, in an attempt to achieve some kind of sexual release. When he went back to Gina after he tore the place up, he kicked the hell out of her, but she still didn’t do more than curl into a ball—and, if my theory’s right, she therefore didn’t give him what he wanted. So what does he do? He’s angry as hell and he tears at her clothes, but she still doesn’t resist. So he grabs her by the throat and starts squeezing. Bingo. Instant response. She can’t breathe—she starts struggling for air. She starts fighting. And that does the trick for him, maybe that plus the sheer terror he can see in her eyes, because now, you know, she thinks he’s going to kill her. He achieves sexual completion, inflicts his final moment of pain upon her by burning her, then leaves. The victim’s still alive—this time.”

Oh, God.

“It’s really just a matter of time before he squeezes someone’s throat too hard, or for too long, and she dies,” Syd continued grimly. “And if taking a life gives him the right kind of rush—and it’s hard to believe that it won’t—he’ll have transitioned. Serial rapist to serial killer. We already know he’s into fear. He likes terrorizing his victims. He likes the power that gives him. And letting someone know she’s going to die can generate an awful lot of terror for her and pleasure for him.”

Syd carried her half-empty mug to the sink and tossed the remnants of her coffee down the drain. “Fight or submit,” she said. “Fighting gives him what he wants, but gets you a severe beating. Still, submitting pisses him off. And it could enrage him enough to kill.”

Lucky threw his half-eaten doughnut into the trash can, feeling completely sick. “We’ve got to catch this guy.”

“That,” Syd agreed, “would be nice.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUKE O’DONLON WAS WAITING when Syd pulled up.

“Is she alive?” she asked as she got out of her car.

The quiet residential area was lit up, the street filled with police cars and ambulances, even a fire truck. Every light was blazing in the upscale house.

Luke nodded. “Yes.”

“Thank God. Have you been inside?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I took a…walk around the neighborhood. If he’s still here, he’s well hidden. I’ve got the rest of the team going over the area more carefully.”

It was remarkable, really. When Syd had received Luke’s phone call telling her Lucy had just called, that there’d been another attack, she’d been fast asleep. She’d quickly pulled on clothes, splashed water on her face and hurried out to her car. She felt rumpled and mismatched, slightly off-balance and sick to her stomach from exhaustion and fear that this time the attacker had gone too far.

Luke, on the other hand, looked as if he’d been grimly alert for hours. He was wearing what he’d referred to before as his summer uniform—short-sleeved, light fabric—definitely part of the Navy Ken clothing action pack. His shoes were polished and his hair was neatly combed. He’d even managed to shave, probably while he was driving over. Or maybe he shaved every night before he went to bed on the off chance he’d need to show up somewhere and be presentable at a moment’s notice.

“Is the victim…?”

“Badly beaten,” he said tersely.