A madman is on the rampage in the Los Angeles streets. The City of Angels has become The City of Fear. And everyone from the Oval Office down wants a quick result. The heat is on Jake Mottram, head of the FBI's new Spree Killer Unit, and psychological profiler Angie Holmes to find the madman responsible. Until now, they've been great together. Both at work and in bed. But a killer is about to come between them, in ways that could cost them far more than their careers. Will they survive the spree about to come? Spree Life and death in LA - like you've never seen it before.
Release date:
May 20, 2014
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Print pages:
111
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His mind zinged with static from yesterday’s murders.
The thrill of the kill still pumped in his heart. He’d slept well. The best rest he’d ever had. Now he was relaxed. Satiated. Like he’d made love all night then slept all day.
But it had been better than sex.
Less effort. More pleasurable. Less physical. More spiritual.
And another thing—any dumb fuck can have sex.
Few can do what he did.
Take a life.
Lives to be precise.
The media had announced that there’d been three deaths. Two teachers and a child. Others injured.
Shame.
He’d aimed to kill the running man, the balding teacher with the tires of belly fat, but had pulled his shot at the last minute. It had been the excitement. Distractions. Inexperience.
Next time he would do better.
Better and better.
Until he achieved what he wanted.
Perfection.
Murder, thought Shooter, is like art. You have to suffer for it. Work hard. Stamp your mark. Not mind that some assholes won’t recognize the beauty of what you create. You have to have a plan and a structure. Something important to say. But you must be able to improvise as well. That’s where the flair is.
Shooter shut his eyes and drifted back to the scene.
The shade had felt cool after the long walk in the sun, his throat dry from the dusty tracks he’d worked his way down. The woods smelled of Douglas fir and wild garlic. He’d settled in the long grass between trunks of evergreens and trained his telescoping sight on the strawberry fields.
He’d controlled his breathing. Learned to be patient. Caught himself listening to the rustle of birds in the dense green canopy of branches and leaves. He’d focused. Cut everything out. In his hands he’d felt the cool metal of the AR-15. Panned the rifle left and right. Taken practice shots like a golfer swinging a club.
Then came that wonderful thump of rifle stock against shoulder. Like an arm punch from a friend. And that delicious crack as the cartridge exploded and the slug smacked the air.
Shooter relived it all in slow motion. Birds screamed and scattered in the faultless blue sky. A hundred yards away the first of the pickers went down.
His pick of the pickers.
The memory made him smile. Those kids around the female teacher had sniggered at first. They’d thought she had slipped, looked stupid, spilled her basket of berries. Gotten strawberries all over her face and hands. Something to smirk about for the rest of the year.
Then they’d seen the red spurting from her back and chest and the little fuckers had screamed holes in the clouds.
Shooter stretched out on his rough bed and remembered his second shot.
He’d stayed calm and taken it well. The young male teacher had been staring in horror at his colleague when he’d squeezed the trigger and dropped him in the dirt.
Then there’d been panic. Screams he could hear from all the way across the fields. People running everywhere. Through the chaos, he’d killed the girl in the bright dress and injured the fat boys and the baldy teacher. It hadn’t been good. Not how he’d wanted. Not clean. Not accurate enough. He’d lost his calmness. It had been like their panic had infected him. He’d snatched the shots. Swung the rifle like he’d been swatting flies. It had been bad.
Next time he’d do better.
Much better.
Shooter counted his blessings. He’d gotten away. The cops had been even less effective than he’d expected.
Looking back, he could see that crazy fuck at the Observatory had done him a favor. He’d figured chasing dumbasses like Corrie would drain the LAPD and FBI of their best men. Tire them out. Make them slow to respond.
He’d been right.
The first law enforcement teams to get to the Strawberry Fields slaughter had been the hick-town sheriffs and the leather-clad motorcycle riders of the California Highway Patrol. He’d watched them later on the TV news, with their puffed-out chests and heavy gun belts. An S&M drag show. What a joke. They hadn’t an investigator’s brain between them.
Shooter had slipped away before they’d even gotten there, let alone closed down the area.
He’d been back in his bolt hole, sipping soda and watching events on the news, long before SWAT had rolled into town with their armored meat wagons and big egos.
He got out of bed and smiled. Today was a new day. He was a different person.
He was famous.
LAPD HQ, LA
Serial rape-homicide.
Every cop in the world knows SRH is almost always the trump card in the grand game of winning all the resources needed for an investigation.
The only thing that beats it is child murder.
Once Lindsey Knapp died, Lieutenant Cal O’Brien found his penny-pinching chief more than willing to staff up his investigation to the level he’d asked for several months back.
As a result, psychological profiler Angie Holmes found herself at LAPD HQ, standing at the front of an incident room full of cops, presenting her insight into the offender who’d raped five times and killed once.
All those gathered across the four rows of chairs had been copied on her preliminary profile. They’d been warned in writing that it was a filtering device for investigators who had possible suspects in mind. It wasn’t a magical divining tool that would pull offenders out of the ground.
“What you have got”—Angie told the room—“is a psychological profile, not a psychic one. It’s based on best guesses, formulated off the back of half a century of compiled statistics and operational experience, but they are still guesses. So, please do not exclude lines of inquiry, or suspects, solely on the grounds of the assumptions I’ve made. Use the profile to prioritize. Look first for people and things matching my outlines, but do not exclude anything that you would have investigated if you’d not had this profile.”
Once she’d finished, she turned to the task O’Brien had given her of providing them with a better understanding of the nature of the UNSUB. “Can you dim the lights please?”
A hand hit a bank of switches at the back of the room. Dust floated in a shaft of white projector light.
Angie looked across the pensive audience and began, “Rapists fall into four principal categories. Every half decade or so it’s fashionable to change these names, but I work on FBI diagnostics that existed way before any of us were born.” She pulled up the first slide.
1. Power Reassurance.
2. Power Assertive.
3. Anger Retaliatory.
4. Anger Excitation.
“Type one is by nature a sneak and weakling. He usually lives in the same area as the victims he attacks. He may have snooped on them. Once this type of offender has begun his criminality he will feel the need to regularly offend.” She took a pause to make sure they were all paying attention. “The perp you are chasing started as a Power Reassurance rapist, but as you’ll see, he has a dangerous mix of other categories as well.” She walked into the light of the projector and tapped the screen. “Type Three—Anger Retaliatory—he’s loaded with badness from here, too.” Angie changed slides.
1. Attack duration is short.
2. Attack is extremely violent.
3. Violence is used before, during and after rape.
4. His main goal is to vent his cumulative aggression.
“Make no mistake,” she continued, “the death of Lindsey Knapp will not have frightened or deterred him. To the contrary. He will . . .
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