In Death 25 - Creation in Death

fact that a lot of guys past middle age keep up.” Jenkinson pointed a finger at Baxter. “Eighty’s the new sixty.”
    “Sick Bastard has a point,” Baxter acknowledged. “And as a borderline creaker himself, he’s got some insight on it. But I’m saying it takes some muscle and agility to bag a thirty-year-old woman—especially since he goes for the physically tuned ones—off the street.”
    “He could’ve been a kid during the Urbans.” As if in apology for speaking out, Trueheart cleared his throat. “Not that eighty’s old, but—”
    “You shave yet, Baby Face?” Jenkinson asked.
    “While it’s sad and true that Officer Baby Face doesn’t have as much hair on his chin as Sick Bastard does in his ears, there were a lot of kids kicked around, orphaned, beat to shit during the Urbans. Or so I hear,” Baxter added with a wide grin for Jenkinson. “Before my time.”
    She accepted the bullshit and insults cops tossed around with other cops. She let it go for another few minutes. And when she deemed all current data had been relayed, all ideas explored and the stress relieved, she handed out the day’s assignments and dismissed.
    “Peabody, locate York’s ex. We need to have a word. I’m taking Mira into my office for a few minutes. Doctor?”
    “So many avenues,” Mira commented as they started out.
    “One of them will lead us to him.” Eventually, Eve thought.
    “His consistency is both his advantage and disadvantage. It’ll be a step on the avenue that leads you to him. His inflexibility is going to undermine him at some point.”
    “Inflexibility.”
    “His refusal to deviate,” Mira confirmed. “Or his inability to deviate from a set pattern allows you to know a great deal about him. So you can anticipate.”
    “I anticipated he’d have taken number two. That isn’t helping Gia Rossi.”
    Mira shook her head. “That’s not relevant. You couldn’t have helped Rossi as she was already taken before you knew, or could know, he was back in business.”
    “That’s what it is?” Eve led the way to her office, gestured toward the visitor’s chair while she sat on the corner of her desk. “Business.”
    “His pattern is businesslike, a kind of perfected routine. Or ritual, as I said before. He’s very proud of his work, which is why he shares it. Displays it, but only when it’s completed.”
    “When he’s finished with them, he wants to show them off, wants to claim them. That’s why he arranges them on a white sheet. That’s the ring he puts on them. I get that. During the Urbans—if we head down that avenue—bodies were laid out, piled up, stacked up, depending on the facilities. And covered. Sheet, drop cloth, plastic, whatever was available. Usually, their clothes, shoes, personal effects were taken. Mostly these were recycled to other people. It’s ‘waste not and want not’ in wartime. So he takes their clothes, their personal effects, but he reverses, leaving them uncovered.”
    “Pride. I believe, to him, they’re beautiful. In death, they’re beautiful to him.” Mira shifted, crossed her legs. She’d pinned her hair up into a soft roll at the nape of her neck, and wore a pale, pale yellow suit that seemed to whisper a promise of spring. “His choice of victim type indicates, as I said in the briefing, some prior connection with a woman of this basic age and coloring. She symbolizes something to him. Mother, lover, sister, unattained love.”
    “Unattained.”
    “He couldn’t control this person, couldn’t make her see him as he wanted to be seen, not in her life or in her death. Now he does, again and again.”
    “He doesn’t rape or molest them sexually. If it was a lover, wouldn’t he see her as sexual?”
    “Love, not lover. Women are Madonnas or whores to him, so he fears and respects them.”
    “Punishes and kills the whore,” Eve considered, “and creates the Madonna, who he cleanses and displays.”
    “Yes. It’s their womanhood, not their sexuality, he’s obsessed with. He may be impotent. In fact, I believe we’ll find this to be the case when you catch him. But sex isn’t important to him. It doesn’t drive him or, again if impotent, he would mutilate the genitals or sexually abuse them with objects. This hasn’t been the case in any of the victims.
    “It’s possible he gains sexual release or satisfaction from their pain,” Mira added. “But it’s secondary, we could say a by-product. It’s the pain that drives