Page 22 of Saving Meadow

I hoped the poor girl didn’t play poker; she couldn’t hide a single expression.

“Okay. Dinner would be nice.”

By the time Officer Lance and Kilby made their way to the office, it was a quarter to four. Meadow lived at least thirty minutes away, and I still had to take Sally home before I picked her up. Of all fucking days to be running late.

The men watched Mandy’s session with Meadow, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Watching the first time had been bad enough, but the second time was torture.

“Dr. Brown, can you walk me through your interview?” Officer Lance asked. The skepticism was hard to miss.

“I see you’re not a believer.” Mandy smiled at the man. “As you saw on the recording, I explained to Meadow hypnosis is a psychological state of focused relaxation - an altered state of awareness where your mental process works differently. It’s called top-down processing. The brain processes top-level information first – memories and expectations. Those memories have a big impact on the bottom – and how your brain senses or perceives those expectations. When Meadow relaxed and focused on the details of her attack while she was in an altered state, she was able to remember what she saw, felt, and heard, not what she thought she was supposed to see.

“Top-down processing explains the placebo effect. A doctor gives a patient a pill, real or fake, and tells him he’ll feel great after he takes it. He feels better. His brain expects it. He has an involuntary reaction to the pill,” Mandy finished.

“Hypnosis opens your mind to suggestion,” Officer Lance countered.

“Of course, it can. But as you saw, I didn’t offer suggestions.”

“I’m not sure I’m sold on the woman serial killer. Women don’t kill with such extreme aggression.”

“They don’t, or they can’t?” I asked.

“What do you mean, SA Clark?”

“You said they don’t kill with such extreme aggression. That’s not true. Women kill with the same brutality as a man. However, they typically don’t become serial, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.”

“What makes this woman different? If we had fourteen dead men on our hands, I might be apt to believe a woman was the offender,” the officer continued.

“When a woman is wronged, say her husband or boyfriend cheats on her, she blames the woman. It’s the woman’s fault her man stepped out of the relationship. What does she have that I don’t? Why her? Women obsess; they fixate on what they think are their own inadequacies. It consumes them and eats at their self-worth until they turn vengeful and indignant. The offender cannot kill the object of her obsession, so she kills substitutes, beautiful women that remind her of all the things she is not. She defaces her victims, taking their beauty and turning it into something unattractive and grotesque,” Mandy explained.

“Why the stab to the stomach?” Officer Lance’s tone had turned slightly less argumentative. “The overkill to the face is enough to kill them.

“Symbolic. The trauma is always to the lower abdomen, pelvic region,” Ben answered.

“Goddamn. That’s one pissed off woman,” the officer agreed. “Why the change in dates?”

“Trauma. The first trigger happened on the seventh. Four years later a second trigger happened on the twentieth,” Joel told him.

“It’s no secret I don’t put a lot of stock into profiling. It’s a crapshoot. But we can use all the help we can get, so I’d appreciate a new report I can present to my guys. We already have more patrols set for the twentieth, but I can’t cover every bar in the city. My tech specialist has tried to recover the last crime scene’s security hard drive with no luck. I’ve asked SSA Kilby to let your girl take a crack at it. I hope we catch this bitch before I have another dead woman with her face mutilated.”

“We’ll have something for you in the morning, and Kristy is already working on the hard drive.” Kilby stood, signaling the meet was over. The rest of us followed suit and waited for Kilby to escort the officer to the lobby.

“Has he always been a dick?” Mike asked.

“He’s not a dick,” Mandy started. “I’ve known Officer Lance a long time. He’s an old school, by the book type of guy. If you cannot see it or touch it, it’s not real. But he’s a good homicide detective. Believe me, he wants to catch this guy…umm… woman just as bad as we do.”

I checked my watch and saw I wouldn’t have time to drop off Sally or change before I had to be at Meadow’s.

“I’m done for the day. See you all tomorrow.”

I turned to call for Sally, who was patiently waiting for me at my desk when I heard the laughter.

“Damn, hot date?” That was from Ben.

“I’ve never seen him try to run out of here so fast,” Mandy added.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Mike said, causing the rest of the group to roar with amusement.

“Careful Mike. Your age is showing. No one says that anymore.” I didn’t bother turning around when I flipped the group off over my shoulder. They could laugh all they wanted. I had a date with pretty Miss Holiday. They could all suck it.