Anatomy of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

who was right-handed—and the lab had confirmed it. The sketches had come from the same kind of sketch pad, the glue that had held them in place still detectable along the edge of each. It was something, a connection, though nothing a DA could take to court. If they were lucky they might find something on the drawings other than the vics’ blood, though so far there was nothing.
    But it was the same MO, the unsub had a signature, a ritual. Something else Rodriguez had been right about. She’d fed that info—two vics, two drawings—into VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, but there’d been no match.
    A serial killer. Something no one wanted to say aloud. Not yet. Terri knew what it meant: that the feds would be all over it, and soon. Serial killers were their thing. Though in the last few years those particular bad boys had ceded a little bit of their numero uno status to terrorists, which the bureau was not quite as good at capturing or deterring, not that there was any way to deter serial killers unless the government opted for sterilizing all potentially abusive parents, for a start, which Terri thought was a damn good idea. Of course there was still that unexplainable part, the “evil gene” so many scientists were talking about these days. Score one for nature versus nurture, thought Terri. No doubt that cheered the parents of the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world.

    “You saving that picture for framing?” Schmid asked.
    “Sorry,” said Terri. She handed it back to the detective and cut out of the booking room, thinking about Nate Rodriguez and his special gifts. She wasn’t sure how he was going to help her, but she was working on it.

8
    T he odor hit me in the face the minute I entered the apartment and I froze, worried, until I realized it wasn’t that kind of smell. I knew that smell, had had the misfortune my very first week on the beat to find two bodies in the final stage, the putrefaction stage, in an abandoned crack house where they had obviously OD’d. I’ll never forget it.
    I called out, “¡Uela!” and followed the odor’s trail down the dim hallway. It revealed itself in the kitchen, a large pot bubbling away on the stove, steam rising from it. I leaned over it holding my breath. Weeds. My abuela had been wasting her social security check at the local botánica, nothing unusual about that. She’s a true believer, a practicing santera, a sort of neighborhood priestess. People flock to her for answers and guidance. I think it’s because she’s kind and understanding and has a gift for making people feel good about themselves, but she sees it as her calling, and she’s devoted.
    I went into the living room, which was decorated with bright purple curtains; a pink afghan throw on the couch; a mix of bold prints on the pillow covers; walls covered with drawings I’d made over the years, a few pictures of saints mixed in, and the eight-by-ten glossy of my father, a graduation photo from the police academy just above a white-clothed table tucked into a corner, the bóveda, a shrine to the dead. I’d seen it hundreds of times in various forms. Right now it held a dozen glasses and goblets filled with water, and I knew what it meant: My grandmother was asking something of her ancestors.
    I took a step into the hall and heard voices from behind the closed door of the cuarto de los santos, the room of the saints, where my abuela held her consultations.
    I knew better than to disturb her, though I thought it was nonsense; and occasionally dangerous, when someone should have been in a doctor’s office rather than the back room of a railroad tenement in Spanish Harlem, but it was impossible to convince my grandmother of that.
    The door opened, the woman beside my grandmother looked up, startled when she saw me, gasped and crossed herself. Not a surprise. Many of the followers of Santeria remained Catholics. It didn’t seem to matter they were practicing a religion that bastardized the