Free Twisted by Jay Bonansinga

table, around the backs of the investigators who were glancing over their shoulders at Grove’s Xeroxes, each grainy photograph looking pretty darn irrefutable. “At roughly 5 o’clock last night, Hurricane Darlene hit the Gulf Coast around Panama City, with winds of maybe a hundred miles an hour or so, which would make it a category-two storm. Satellite images tracked the storm’s eye across the Choctawatchee Bay and into—”
    â€œBeg your pardon, sir?” Nesbitt interrupted. “But what in heaven’s name does this have to do with modus operandi? Are you referring to God’s modus operandi?”
    Grove offered the coroner a cold smile. “Time of death on each body, and the location of each dump, correlated perfectly with the position of the eye.”
    â€œOkay, hold your horses a second,” Pilch chimed in. “I want to make sure I’m following this. You’re telling us all these murders occurred inside the eye of a storm.”
    Grove did look away from Nesbitt. “Different storms, different eyes ... but yeah.”
    â€œHow do you know they didn’t happen somewhere else and just blew into the path of the eye after the fact?”
    â€œIt’s possible ... but I think they happened in the eye,” Grove asserted. “I went back and checked the illustrious Dr. Nesbitt’s time of death on Moses De Lourde. The official record states the professor died between midnight and two o’clock that evening, which tracks perfectly with the moment the eye passed directly over Algiers.”
    Another tense beat of silence. Pilch looked at Brenniman, and Brenniman looked at Arliss, and Arliss looked at the rainbow-colored spiral taped to the blackboard: Hurricane Darlene viewed from space, her dark nucleus like a bullet hole in a pristine blanket of gray.
    Grove knew they all thought he was crazy, but he didn’t care. He was no longer interested in the MO. The modus operandi was the least critical part of any psychological profile, and it was the only part that was fluid and could change according to opportunity. Far more interesting were the patterns and signatures of the killings—those uniquely personal compulsions that always remained static. The imagery of the eye, the ritualistic fetish of hurricanes, and the obsessive flirtation with Grove himself. Sooner or later, the accumulation of these patterns and details would reveal something far deeper here, far more savage, far more intricate: the purpose.
    To the criminologist, purpose is the finest edge you can put on a profile. It reveals the raison d’etre of the act. Often the only purpose of a psychopathic killer is to derive sadistic pleasure. But once in a while—and these cases are as rare as albino tigers—a case is so complex and mysterious and seemingly motiveless that the purpose becomes the final touchstone by which the killer will ultimately be caught. That seemed to be a real possibility here: The eyeballs and teeth being removed, the systematic wounds, the murders happening inside hurricanes—it would all ultimately reveal purpose. It always did. Take Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance. It would turn out to be his collection of “mementoes” of “souvenirs” ranging from victims’ belongings to their actual severed body parts that would ultimately lead profilers to conclude that Dahmer’s purpose was to fill an agonizing, bottomless pit of loneliness. In this case, Grove suspected a purpose far more ritualistic and obscure. But he didn’t have it yet.
    Not yet.
    â€œThe caribineer is all smooth glove,” Grove went on. “No latent prints. The perp is A-positive, size eleven double-E shoe. Lab results also indicate that the killer may very well have disabled the victims before killing them. Traces of sodium pentobarbital were found in the victims’ bloodstream, as well as indications they were tortured before they lost their