“This is Chief of Detectives Pittman. What's the situation over there?”
“I think we have a serial killer. Mother, daughter, a little boy. Second family in less than a week. Electricity was shut off in the house. He likes to work in the dark. ” I ticked off a few gory details for Pittman. That was usually enough for him. The chief would leave me alone with this one. Homicides in Southeast don't count for much in the greater scheme.
A beat or two of uneasy silence followed. I could see the Sanders family Christmas tree in the TV room. It had been decorated with obvious care: tinsel, shiny dime-store decorations, strings of cranberries and popcorn. There was a homemade tinfoil angel on top.
“I heard it was a dealer got hit. Dealer and two prostitutes,” The Jefe said.
“No, that's not true,” I said to Pittman. “They've got a nice Christmas tree up.”
“Sure it is. Don't bullshit me, Alex. Not today. Not right now.”
If he was trying to get a rise out of me, he got one.
“One victim is a three-year-old little boy in his pajamas. He may have been dealing. I'll check into it.”
I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't say a lot of things. Lately, I'd been feeling I was on the edge of exploding. Lately means for about three years or so.
“You and John Sampson hustle over to Washington Day,” Pittman said. “All hell has broken loose here. I'm serious. ”
“I'm serious, too,” I said to the chief of detectives. I tried to keep my voice down. “I'm sure this is a signature killer. It's bad here. People are crying in the streets. It's almost Christmas.”
Chief Pittman ordered us to come to the school in Georgetown, anyway. All hell had broken loose, he kept repeating.
Before I left for Washington Day, I phoned the serialkiller unit inside our own department; then the “super unit” at the FBI's Quantico base. The FBI has computer files of all known cases of serial killings, complete with psychiatric profiles matching M.O.'s up with a lot of unpublished serial-killing details. I was looking for a match on age, sex, type of disfigurement.