Page 92 of Kill For Me Kill For You
Flicking through the book, she found one of the pages where she had turned down the corner, to mark it as potentially important.
Serial killers are most vulnerable to apprehension by law enforcement when they are at the high point of a pattern of accelerating crisis, which we examine below. Yet these patterns of accelerating crisis are not present in all serial murderers. Expert opinion is divided, but some leading psychologists, law enforcement specialists and criminologists believe there is another type of killer who follows no pattern. They are highly organized, they have no innate psychological trauma, no hallucinations, no psychosis whatsoever. They do not fall into any category of the current or past DSM and therefore have no clinical mental illness of any kind. In short, they kill whomever they please, whenever they please, at random. They are the great white sharks of the human species . . .
Amanda shuddered, skipped two paragraphs and began reading again.
Often, with serial killers, there will come a time of crisis when they are most vulnerable to apprehension by law enforcement. These crimes often follow a pattern. Particularly with perpetrators who experience some form of psychosis, be it visual or auditory hallucinations. The pattern is cyclical for serial murder. First, the perpetrator fantasizes about the murder, sometimes for long periods of time. Then, a victim is selected and stalked. Again, the length of time involved can vary and this stalking period can take months or years. This builds up to the moment they take action, and gain fulfilment from the crime.
The memory and experience of the murder becomes a realization of the fantasy and that is enough for them in the beginning. Some killers never move on after this, but some do. As the heightened experience of the murder diminishes, the cycle begins again. What emerges is a continuous spiral of murder where, as the pattern continues, the cycle accelerates. And while every murder delivers a sense of pleasure and climax to the serial killer, it is also traumatizing, even though they don’t experience it in this way – it actually deepens and heightens their psychosis, helping to create the state of crisis. This has been observed in numerous cases, Jeffrey Dahmer, for example. There was a break of nine years between his first and second victim. Then it accelerated to one a year and got faster still. At the time of his arrest, he had killed four men in the space of three weeks and was in a state of traumatic crisis . . .
Amanda put the book down. She was no psychologist, but, whichever way you looked at it, Ruth was doing this with greater frequency.
She picked up the phone to call Billy and walked into the bedroom to see if she had anything to wear.
That’s when she remembered there was still a black garbage bag of clothes in the bathroom. They had bloodstains on them. Quinn’s blood. And in among them was the second burner phone. She had to get rid of it, right now. Throwing on some sweats, she grabbed the bag and her smokes.
She took the elevator down, went through the small lobby and out onto the street. Fishing the pack out of her pocket, she lit one and smoked while she walked. Four blocks up and on the right was an alley with dumpsters.
It was a quiet morning, with few people on the streets. It would be a little busier later with the parade, she guessed. With any luck, no one would see her dump the bag. She made it to the alley, but the gate was drawn across it. Locked.
There was an alley beside her building. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. She couldn’t walk the streets with the bag. Too many cameras.
She turned and headed back to her building, then stopped twenty feet from the entrance.
Detective Farrow exited her building. He took out his cell phone and began flicking his finger across the screen. Amanda slowly backed away. A twenty-four-hour laundromat was on her right. Those places never close, not even on Thanksgiving. She pushed the door and it opened. She went inside. Two people were in there, a little way from the door towards the back, staring at their phones. Amanda stayed by the window, keeping Farrow in sight. Then her cell phone began to vibrate in her pocket.
She took it out, stared at the screen.
Farrow was calling her.
He stood in the middle of the street, the phone at his ear.
Amanda held her cell in her hand. She’d known the cops would come for her once they’d connected her to the Quinn murder – probably with her DNA. She just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. She’d been sure she’d have at least another day, maybe two. Farrow and Hernandez were working the Quinn case. She knew that all too well. He was here to arrest her. If he wanted to check in on her, he would pick up the phone. He never came to her apartment unannounced.
Her thumb hovered over the green circle with the picture of an old-style telephone in the center. She looked up at him, trying to read his body language. He was facing away from her so she couldn’t see his expression.
It was a little noisy in the laundromat. A couple of the big industrial dryers were going, and the radio played over the top. If she answered, Farrow might hear the dryers. He might turn round and see her.
She let the call go to voicemail. Safer that way.
Farrow talked. She couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw his jaw working. Then he looked at the phone, ended the call and put it back in his jacket. He made his way across the street to his car, got in.
He didn’t drive away.
Amanda hunkered down in the window, making herself small in case he saw her. She had a bag of bloody clothes in her hand from the attempted murder case he was investigating. On no account could he see her.
She wondered if she could sneak out the front door and make it back to her apartment without him noticing. Moving closer to the front door, she kept her eyes on him as he sat behind the wheel of the car. He faced forward.
Taking hold of the door handle, she began to pull it down.
Farrow’s head swung round, back in the direction of her building, and Amanda ducked, hiding behind a change dispenser. She waited, afraid to move. Glancing behind her, she saw the two people in the laundromat still on their phones, taking no notice.
She stepped back, took a seat on the end of the bench that divided the room, sat up straight. She could just see over the bank of coin machines and the small counter at the front of the window. The top of Farrow’s car was visible. She inched off the seat, checked to make sure he was still behind the wheel.
And he was, thank God.
After ten minutes he still hadn’t driven off. He was waiting for her. Watching the entrance.
Amanda knew then she had run out of time. She needed to make herself disappear and find Naomi as soon as possible. But the money she’d taken from Quinn’s lockbox was in her apartment. With her laptop.
