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triad: bed-wetting past a nor-mal age,
fire-starting, and cruelty to animals. As you know, the most common
motivators for serial killers are domination, manipulation, and
control. This man is a loser who feels society has screwed him. He
will come across as extremely confident, but in actuality he feels
inadequate. His murdering of women is a redirected hatred of his
mother. The babies are simply innocent victims. Killing them makes
him feel as if he's not only getting back at her, he's saving
himself at the same time. In short, his overriding fantasy is to
rid himself of his domineering, abusive mother." She stopped.
"There's more, but that's probably enough for now. I can see I'm
boring you."
    Boring? "Hardly that."
    What the hell was Abraham thinking? And the
weird way she'd delivered "her profile" only reinforced his idea
that he was dealing with some wacko.
    Yet he couldn't deny that it bore an uncanny
resemblance to the profile put out by their own guy. Had she
somehow gotten a copy? That would explain things. That and the fact
that ever since retired FBI Agent John Douglas began writing his
profiling books, everybody wanted in on the game, and everybody
thought he, or in Dunlap's case, she was an expert. But let Ms.
Dunlap get a good look at a violent crime scene and she'd be out of
his hair.
    "And you came by this knowledge . . .
how?"
    While he spoke to her, Ivy was intensely
aware of his presence in the crowded hallway, but also the presence
of people she couldn't even see. They filled the building, sitting
in offices, riding elevators, flowing out the double glass doors to
board buses on the noisy Chicago street.
    The city of Chicago housed millions of
people. She could feel those people. She could feel their pulsating
presence, smothering her, suffocating her. And not only feel the
people who were there now, but also the people who had been there
before.
    "I have a degree in criminal psychology and
have been studying psychopathic behavior for the last ten
years."
    "That doesn't necessarily make you an expert.
Have you had any actual field experience?"
    She let out a heavy sigh. "Listen, I don't
want to argue. I'm tired, and I still need to find a place to stay.
A place that allows cats."
    Cats?
    He looked past her. Now he could see that
under the bench where she'd been sitting was a gray plastic animal
carrier, the kind people used on airplanes.
    She'd brought her damn cat with her.
    Ivy knew that coming back to Chicago would be
one of the hardest things she'd ever done. She'd mentally prepared
herself. She'd pulled in, shut herself off, focusing on her
immediate problems—finding a place to stay and dealing with the man
in front of her.
    Interacting with another human being was the
last thing she felt like doing at the moment, especially one as
irascible as this one.
    "A cat?" he asked, his voice echoing her own
disbelief.
    Indeed, why had she brought poor Jinx
here?
    "You brought your cat?"
    Detective Irving wore black dress pants, a
rumpled white dress shirt, and a tie that had been yanked open at
the throat. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, and he was
sweating. Behind her, in a dark corner where the wax on the
linoleum had turned a yellow brown, an oscillating fan blew
stagnant air in their direction.
    Click, half circle, click, return.
    "I didn't have anybody to leave him with,"
she said.
    One hand at his waist, elbow out, he
scratched his head with his free hand, completely at a loss. In
that moment, she allowed herself to feel a little sorry for him.
For a fraction of a second, she wondered what his home life was
like. It could be bad. Really bad. She thought of several
combinations of bad scenarios, then let it go.
    Abraham hadn't given her any personal
information on Max Irving, only saying he was the best at what he
did, going so far as to relate a case where Irving had used
hypnosis to aid in an investigation.
    As she looked at him now, she was surprised
to distantly note that some women would