Written Off (Forensic Handwriting Mystery Book 7) by Sheila Lowe

Author:Sheila Lowe [Lowe, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Suspense Publishing
Published: 2017-11-07T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The second Claudia was back in the SUV Shawn started peppering her with questions.

“How’d it go? What’s she like? Does she look like a stone killer?”

“Maybe I could fasten my seatbelt before you give me the third degree?”

“Enquiring minds want to know. Did you get the juicy details?”

“What juicy details?”

“The killings. You know—how it felt—with those men.”

“We didn’t talk about that at all. If you want to know those details you should read the court transcripts. I’m sure all the gory stuff is there.”

“Well, what did you talk about?”

“We talked about her kids and how hard it was for her to leave them.”

Shawn threw her a skeptical look. “How hard could it be? She started killing guys right after she hit the road.”

“Serial killers are driven by rage,” said Claudia. “Not all of them do it for sadistic pleasure.” As she said it, the sculpture in Madeleine’s chifferobe came into her mind. As heinous as Roxanne’s actions were in shooting the men who used her, the depravity in Doug Clark and Carol Bundy’s motives in kidnapping young girls and torturing them seemed on an altogether different level.

“Are you cold?” Shawn asked, misinterpreting her involuntary shudder. “I can turn the heat up higher.”

“I’m fine, thanks. When will your study group know whether your project is going to continue?”

“The Maniacs? Semester starts on the eleventh, so we should hear something by then. We’d better not get Warden-Faessel.”

“Susan? Why not? She seems like a nice person.”

“That’s what I mean. She’d never teach the shit—excuse me—the stuff Maddie got into.”

“Like what?”

“Mads showed us crime scene photos. One time, we had a guest lecturer who brought the photos from Richard Ramirez’s kills. Did you ever hear about him?”

“The Night Stalker. Yes, and I’ve seen those photos. They’re really grim.”

“We’re not kids, Claudia. If we’re going into criminal psychology, we have to see them. We need to study what these people are capable of if we’re going to understand their minds.”

“Just make sure you focus on normal childhood development as much as abnormal. You need to understand what’s acceptable before you can judge what’s outside the norm.”

“That’s the first class we have to take. It’s a prerequisite for a Bachelor’s. And you don’t get into Maddie’s regular crim psych class unless you meet a ton of requirements. She didn’t accept just anyone. Once you were one of her general students, to get into the Maniacs, there was another selection process, a whole deeper level. For one thing, we all had to take the MMPI-2.”

He was referring to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a psychometric test that measured adult psychopathology. Claudia considered what she had uncovered in Madeleine’s files. The selection process in this case meant that when Madeleine suspected an underlying pathology in some of her students she used the MMPI-2 to confirm her diagnosis.

“Did she share the results with you?”

He shook his head. “No, she said we’d have to wait until we took the class on psychological testing next semester.”

In light of what she

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