Riley knew that the slides she was about to show would shock her FBI Academy students. Some of them probably weren't going to be able to take it. She scanned the eager young faces watching her from the half-circle of tiered desks.
Let's see how they react, she thought. This could be important for them.
Of course, Riley knew that in the whole range of criminal offenses, serial murder was rare. Still, these young people had to learn everything there was to learn. They aspired to be FBI field agents and they'd soon find that most local law officers had no experience with serial cases. And Special Agent Riley Paige was an authority on serial murder.
She clicked the remote. The first images to appear on the large flat-screen were anything but violent. They were five charcoal portraits of women, ranging in age from young to middle age. All the women were attractive and smiling, and the portraits had been done with skill and loving artistry.
As Riley clicked, she said, "These five drawings were made eight years ago by an artist named Derrick Caldwell. Every summer, he made lots of money drawing portraits of tourists on the Dunes Beach Boardwalk here in Virginia. These women were among his very last clients."
After the last of the five portraits, Riley clicked again. The next photograph was a hideous image of an open chest freezer filled with dismembered female body parts. She heard her students gasp.
"This is what became of those women," Riley said. "While he was drawing them, Derrick Caldwell became convinced, to use his own words, that they 'were too beautiful to live.' So he stalked them one by one, killed them, dismembered them, and kept them in his freezer."
Riley clicked again, and the images that came up next were more shocking still. They were photographs taken by the medical examiner's team after they'd reassembled the bodies.
Riley said, "Caldwell actually 'shuffled' the body parts, so that the women were dehumanized beyond recognition."
Riley turned toward the classroom. One male student was rushing toward the exit, clutching his stomach. Others looked on the verge of throwing up. A few were in tears. Only a handful appeared to be unperturbed.
Paradoxically, Riley felt pretty sure that the unruffled students would be the ones who wouldn't survive academy training. To them, these were just pictures, not real at all. They wouldn't be able to handle true horror whenever they had to face it firsthand. They wouldn't be able to handle the personal aftershocks, the post-traumatic stress that they could suffer. Visions of a flaming torch still slipped into her consciousness from time to time, but her PTSD was decreasing. She was healing. But she was sure that anybody first had to feel something before they could recover from it.
"And now," Riley said, "I'm going to make a couple of statements, and you're going to tell me if they're myth or fact. Here's the first. 'Most serial murderers kill for sexual reasons.' Myth or fact?"
Hands shot up among the students. Riley pointed to an especially eager-looking student in the first row.
"Fact?" the student asked.
"Yes, fact," Riley said. "Although there can be other reasons, a sexual component is the most frequent. This can take various forms, sometimes rather bizarre. Derrick Caldwell is a classic example. The medical examiner determined that he committed acts of necrophilia on the victims before he dismembered them."
Riley saw that most of her students were typing notes into their laptops. She continued, "Now here's another statement. 'Serial killers inflict increasing violence on their victims as they continue to kill.'"
Hands went up again. This time Riley pointed to a student a few rows back.
"Fact?" the student said.
"Myth," Riley said. "Although I've certainly seen some exceptions, most cases show no such change over time. Derrick Caldwell's level of violence stayed consistent while he was killing. But he was reckless, hardly an evil mastermind. He got greedy. He took his victims within a period of a month and a half. By drawing that kind of attention, he made his capture all but inevitable."
She glanced at the clock and saw that her hour was up.
"That's all for today," she said. "But there are many mistaken assumptions about serial killers and a lot of myths still circulate. The Behavioral Analysis Unit has collected and analyzed the data, and I have worked serial cases in locations all over the country. We still have a lot of information to cover."
The class broke up, and Riley started packing up her materials to go home. Three or four students clustered around her desk to ask questions.
A male student asked, "Agent Paige, weren't you involved in the Derrick Caldwell case?"
"Yes, I was," Riley said. "That's a story for another time."
It was also a story that she wasn't eager to tell, but she didn't say so.
A young woman asked, "Was Caldwell ever executed for his crimes?"
"Not yet," Riley said.
Trying not to be rude, Riley brushed past the students toward the exit. Caldwell's impending execution wasn't something she felt comfortable discussing. The truth was, she expected it to be scheduled for any day now. As his principal captor, she had a standing invitation to witness his death. She hadn't decided yet whether or not she'd go.
Riley felt good as she walked out of the building into a pleasant September afternoon. She was, after all, still on leave.
She'd suffered from PTSD ever since a maniacal killer had held her captive. She'd escaped and eventually taken down her tormentor. But she hadn't gone on leave even then. She'd continued straight on to finish another case. It was a grisly business in Upstate New York that had ended with the killer committing suicide right in front of her by slashing his own throat.
That moment still haunted her. When her supervisor, Brent Meredith, approached her with another case, she'd declined to accept it. At Meredith's suggestion, she'd agreed to teach a class at the Quantico FBI Academy instead.
As she got into her car and started to drive home, Riley thought about what a wise choice it had been. Finally, her life had a sense of peace, of calm.
And yet, as she drove, a creeping, familiar feeling began to set in, one that made her heart begin to pound in the middle of a clear blue day. It was a heightened sense of anticipation, she realized, of something ominous to come.
And try as she might to envision herself in this calm forever, she knew, she just knew, it wouldn't last.
