The Blood Poet

Day 58

The first note is a bloody mess on an otherwise pristine white wall, close to the body but far enough away you can’t help but notice it only when you’ve turned from the bed in horror. It’s so hastily scrawled it’s almost impossible to read, and the dripping really doesn’t help.

For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself

Quoting the Lipstick Killer, or coincidental phrasing? The Infinite Monkeys theorem says that an immortal monkey with a typewriter will eventually, inadvertently, start banging out Shakespeare. The law of statistics makes it clear it is possible for serial killers to mimic each other even when they didn’t know the other killer existed, especially with more general practices in knotwork or injury types. Oftentimes, it’s less about mimicry than using the simplest processes possible. But the swirling, decorative ‘c’ out of place with the chicken-scratch around it makes me think it’s a quote. In the original 1946 crime scene note – written in lipstick, and how the killer got their moniker – each c has a distinctive swirl at the top that makes it look more like a child’s attempt at a lowercase e. In the original, that odd flourish is also there in the lowercase k, making ‘kill’ look like ‘Rill’ – it’s used enough it looks like an odd if natural part of the killer’s version of cursive font. My UnSub doesn’t have flourishes anywhere else in the note, doesn’t even use that flourish on two of the three cs.

A quote, then. And one designed to let us know he’s smart enough to know his murder mythology. Whether he hopes we’ll worry about the age of the next victim remains to be seen – it’s possible he’s just Googled ‘serial killer quotes’ and has no idea about the context of the case. But is there a message in the use of the quote, or is he simply trying to profit off the established fear and revulsion of the original killer’s crimes?

The UnSub might not be the most original, but it’s not the wit or artistry that’s the problem here. While there are a few potential additional readings, the main message is clear: this body won’t be the last.

Truthfully, I’d already figured that out. Though it’s the first time he’s made contact so directly, it’s the third crime scene he’s dragged me to. All female victims, all identical methodology and staging. All upmarket apartments that look borrowed from a lifestyle magazine, but all in areas just downmarket enough to not bother with expensive security set ups. Might be he has a grudge against moderately successful women. Might be he’s savvy enough to know pretty young white women getting butchered gets far more media attention than any other victim type beyond adorable white little girls. Likely, it’s both.

Attention-seeking killers are the worst – they’ll try and prove themselves smarter than investigators, which is great because more often than not they end up screwing up and making themselves easier to catch. The downside, of course, is that they tend to tantrum-kill if they think the investigators are being uncomplimentary in their profiling. They’re also liable to escalate their kill rate to keep attention firmly on them. They’re like possessive partners – they don’t want you even glancing at someone else, and they’ll lash out viciously if they even suspect you’re working other cases. It’s a dirty, uncomfortable feeling to know that, for now at least, I’m his as much as his victims are.

The game is simple: he wants my attention, I offer him my attention. I tell the media I want to help this man, tell them that I believe he has a very compelling reason for what’s happening, and I am willing to work with him to understand and help him. The reporters roll their eyes, but they know the game, too, so they publish the phone number that sees our junior officers overrun with nonsense within two hours.

Day 60

The boss tells me two other murderers, jealous of the attention on the media dubbed Blood Poet, called in to gloat, and are currently in interview rooms. My UnSub doesn’t call, not that I expected him to.

Day 61

The UnSub proves himself an attention-seeker with another body and message. It’s a small mercy (one pointedly not said within hearing range of media or family) that unlike the Lipstick Killer, his MO hasn’t shifted towards child murder after his first note.

I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.

H.H. Holmes. So he’s either a serial killer fanboy readying an insanity defence or a chronic Googler. Wonderful. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch him before the BTK murder poetry kicks off.

Day 73

We are not that lucky.

Day 80

The revised profile I offer the media is designed to stroke an ego rather than to be used in an investigation. The questions are flying, more pointed and dangerous as the days keep piling up without an arrest.

Ma’am, we are doing everything we can to solve this case. However, the person you mentioned does not fit the profile, and has video-verified alibis for all murders except one. It’s not enough to throw someone in jail for this crime. It has to be the actual murderer.

No, Minister. We have no real leads at this time. The killer is highly resourceful, and prepared. We’re getting closer, but unless the UnSub messes up, this case is unlikely to be resolved quickly.

One reporter calls the statements I’m making ‘love notes to a murderer’ as though it's not standard practice regardless of the investigator's gender, asks whether I’m just another woman taken in by the power of a predator, the sort who’d send Bundy love notes were he alive. I barely make it to the bathroom before I throw up.

Day 81

It’s almost inevitable that the next quote is another BTK poetry special.

In that small world of longing, fear, rapture, and desperation, the game we play, fall on devil ears

The only thing worse than the poetry style is the grammatical errors, really. The more right wing news stations start running op-eds about the feasibility of female investigators (can we trust them not to try and bed the killers they’re catching?). I’m taken off the case until the UnSub murders the new investigator. And the one after. And the one after. The longest another investigator lasts is three days.

Day 105

My first day back on the investigation, a parcel is hand-delivered to the precinct, addressed to me. He’s a decent enough forger to absolutely nail the slightly off-putting font of the Lipstick Killer, and I can’t help but wonder if he poured the blood into an ink pot and used a small brush. How much practice does it take to master blood calligraphy?

The paper is high quality, soft even through the latex gloves. Watercolour, if I had to guess. He’s left the blood to dry before folding the page up to fit into an envelope, and flecks of blood from the folds fall like glitter into the large evidence bag I’d grabbed, just to be safe.

Alone, now in another time span I lay with sweet enrapture garments across most private thought

I hand the evidence to the forensics team. The powers that be put a protective detail on my home.

Day 106

This week’s crime scene is an anomaly. Possibly a shift towards the true subject of his focus. An older victim – in her forties rather than her twenties, and in a more security conscious home, a house this time, rather than an apartment. A place the UnSub had to work hard to even get inside of. He spends more time with this victim lets his sadism out in new and horrifying ways.

You know, clowns can get away with murder.

For the first time, he leaves something at the scene. A pair of vibrant, yellow clown shoes, placed like slippers at the side of the bed opposite to the curled-in form of the victim.

I am strongly encouraged to start sleeping at the precinct until he’s caught. At least it means my security detail have access to bathrooms, coffee, and the ability to move around as they want.

Day 109

The shoes were bought at a second hand shop by a homeless man paid $50 to go in and buy them for a guy he couldn’t see well given the hoodie shadowing his facial features. CCTV footage doesn’t catch a glimpse of his face, and he is lost from view when he hits the subway.

Day 113

The call comes in at 11:52pm: screaming in an apartment complex from a tenant who has never before earned a noise complaint. There’s nothing in the description to say it’s our guy, but still, I drive like hell, Mack and some junior officer whose name I don’t bother remembering (he’s twitchy enough he’ll be on stress leave within two months, three weeks if you believe the majority of officers in the betting pool) following in a second vehicle. The property manager is waiting with a key for me, shaking and crossing himself, his eyes flicking towards the stairs as though expecting the UnSub to come sprinting past any moment. I tell the rookie to get his statement, ignore Mack at my heels to focus on reaching apartment 6 in timeframes to make Olympic sprinters green.

The sound of a woman sobbing hides the click of the lock.

There was no way to tell with certainty whether he wrote the messages while the victims were alive, and the general consensus was that it was unlikely done premortem because it creates far too many opportunities for the victim to escape or grab a weapon. Still, we’re looking at some pretty compelling evidence that they were. She’s clutching her heavily bleeding side, wailing and begging for divine intervention as he scrawls the latest message.

Catch me if you ca- the crack of gunfire, loud in the stillness but almost immediately overpowered with near-inhuman screeching and cursing as he hits the ground, clutching his leg tightly. He rolls to face me, barely memorable features red and scrunched in pain and fury that shifts to wide-eyed surprise and something dangerously close to betrayal. His gaze flickers over my features, lingers on my chest before wandering back to my face. He opens his mouth, readies to speak before I turn and wander off to help his victim.

Mack, bless him, calls it in. Knows the power in my pointedly ignoring every attempt made to draw a response from me, and if his grin shows more teeth with every thwarted attempt to speak with me, I’m hardly gonna call him out on it.

I won't spare the UnSub another glance until he’s in an interview room. The howls of outrage as he’s wheeled away to the ambulance, more cops surrounding him than strictly needed, are like music.