“How could our UNSUB have known in advance that there would be something to watch?” I asked.
Once was a coincidence. Twice was a pattern. In our line of work, patterns had meaning. Sometimes, they told us about a suspect’s routine. Where they lived. How they spent their time. The radius in which they traveled.
But sometimes?
A pattern told us about the killer’s need.
“I need to watch,” Dean said, his words echoing my thoughts almost exactly. “The last moments…the decisions…”
“How do you know?” I asked again, the question catching my throat. “How did you know those teens were going to jump? Why were you there?”
To watch. The answer to the second question drowned out all possible responses to the first. To mourn.
Typically, any indicators of mourning—flowers, dressing the victim, covering the face—were signs that an UNSUB felt some degree of remorse. The posthumous honoring of a victim was an expression of complex emotion, one that allowed a killer to simultaneously make amends and retell the story of the death in their own head.
“You didn’t kill the first two,” I said, feeling Dean’s presence on the other end of the phone line, as surely as if he’d been there in person. “They killed themselves. They jumped.”
“Kelley didn’t,” Dean said, his voice throaty and low. “She didn’t jump.”
“You didn’t mark her body.” Those two facts were enough of a divergence from the voyeur’s MO that I should have wondered if we were talking about two different people.
But the alternative was that we were dealing with escalation.
You’re the watcher. You serve as witness. But Kelley didn’t go over the edge of her own volition.
“What if she was supposed to?” I asked suddenly. “What if Kelley was supposed to jump?”
I’d wondered earlier what the killer had seen in Kelley.
“She was vulnerable,” I told Dean. I closed my eyes for a moment, then shifted to Kelley’s perspective. “I was vulnerable. I climbed the steeple willingly. I just…I hurt.”
Despite Kelley’s father’s objections to the contrary, he’d believed she’d killed herself.
“You were in pain,” Dean said simply, “and now you’re not.”
Maybe I’d been looking at the markers—ivy, stone—all wrong. Maybe they weren’t signs of mourning—or remorse.
Maybe they were symbols of honor. Release.
“I trusted you,” I said, still trying to view this from Kelley’s perspective. “I either told you what I was planning…”
“Or,” Dean replied softly, “it was my idea.”
How could an UNSUB have known in advance that two teens were going to kill themselves? Either they told you—or it was your idea.
Standing outside the church, looking up, it was too easy to picture Kelley up there, staring down.
“I didn’t jump,” I said, speaking on her behalf. “Maybe I wanted to.
Maybe I thought about it. But it didn’t feel right.” I’d recognized earlier that Kelley wouldn’t have wanted a death that would mangle her body beyond recognition. Was that what she’d realized, up on the steeple? “I didn’t jump,” I said fiercely. “I didn’t want to.”
“You were in pain,” Dean repeated what he’d said earlier. “And now you’re not.”
“Is that what you think this is?” I asked. “Not murder, but mercy?” “There’s something holy about what I do,” Dean replied steadily.
I couldn’t stay in Kelley’s perspective any longer. “Something holy,” I echoed Dean, “about the height and the fall.”
If jumping to her death hadn’t been Kelley’s idea, if someone had pushed her toward it, that suggested the manner of death held significance to the UNSUB instead. You planted the idea in her head. You encouraged it.
And when she couldn’t do it…
“It’s a sacrament,” Dean said. “A rite.”
I thought of Kelley, looking down at the world from high up on a church. She hadn’t wanted to do it. She’d chosen not to.
“Kelley didn’t want your mercy,” I said lowly, addressing the nameless, faceless killer with that much more vehemence than before.
“But,” Dean countered, “she needed it.” For the longest time, he was silent on the other end of the line, and I stood outside the church, my face chapped from wind, my limbs like deadweight on my body as I sorted through all I knew.
“What have you read,” Dean asked me finally, fully himself and not speaking for the killer anymore, “about assisted suicide?”
The question took me by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. If our UNSUB had witnessed the first two suicides, if he or she had known they were going to happen, had in any way encouraged them…
That could be seen as assistance.
And Kelley? She’d been “assisted” right over the edge.
“What do you know about mercy killings?” Dean said, amending the term he’d used before. “So-called ‘angels of death’ typically begin with a loved one, often one who has asked for assistance. But after that…” He trailed off for a moment. “They don’t stop, and their victims aren’t always willing.”
“Mercy,” I said, latching on to part of what Dean had said. “Even for the unwilling.”
Like Kelley.
“What’s the typical profile for a mercy killer?” I asked, trying to view this objectively, trying not to think what Kelley’s final moment, rushing toward the ground, realizing she’d been pushed, would have been like.
“Most often,” Dean said, “you’d be looking at someone whose occupation grants them access to victims whose health has degraded to the point that they cannot fight back.”
Kelley had been young and healthy—physically. Mentally, however, she’d struggled. I hadn’t spent enough time on the other two files to know anything about the first two victims, but given that they had jumped, I had to assume that they’d had that much in common with Kelley.
Young. Vulnerable. In pain.
We were looking for someone with access to vulnerable teenagers— most likely, an adult. A teacher. A volunteer. A parent. A coach. Someone these kids trusted. Someone who could lead them right up to the brink and watch them fall.
“A mercy killer needs more than access,” I said. “They need a skill set that will allow them to go undetected.”
“Right,” came Dean’s reply. “In most cases, you’d expect some form of medical training.”
Medical training. Access. “Have you ever heard of an angel of death who preys on people with mental health issues?” I asked Dean.
“No.” He hesitated, just for a moment. “But I’d give it ten to one odds that the person who fits that particular profile has some kind of background in the mental health field.”
We were looking for someone with access to vulnerable teens. Someone with experience in mental health. Someone, I thought, with psychological training, who knows exactly what to say to push someone over the edge.
I barely felt the first drop of rain—or the second. I could see the lighthouse in the distance, and suddenly, I flashed back to the moment when I’d been close—so close—to talking Mackenzie down from the ledge.
“Dean,” I said suddenly. “Our killer likes to watch.”
My boyfriend replied, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t form another coherent sentence, because all I could think, as the sky opened up and rain came down in sheets, was that Mackenzie was still out there on that ledge.
Right where you want her.
YOU
Poor little Mackenzie. What she’s been through. What she’s suffered. She needs help. Your help.
Release.
