[2017] The Extraction

by Steven F Freeman

  “Good point.” Of course, nearly all the offenders I sought out were males, but at least Sampson is moving forward. Now it’s my turn to contribute.

  In previous clues, the more unusual words often held the key to interpretation. Could the same be true here?

  “Untangle,” I murmur.

  “What’s that?”

  “Could ‘untangle’ be a clue to this guy’s identity somehow?”

  “Could be.” She sounds dubious. “Wait…what about the part that says, ‘this next clue’s a blast’?”

  “Maybe, but what does…?” I freeze. “Wait…‘blast’ as in an explosion. That’s it—a serial bomber! But I helped track down three over the years. Which one is it?”

  “Was one of them ‘tricky to wrangle’?”

  “Hell, they all were, or they wouldn’t have been on the lam long enough to become serial anything.” I scratch the stubble on my chin. “Nicolae Dalca stands out, though. ‘Tricky to wrangle’ would be an understatement for that son-of-a-bitch.”

  CHAPTER 43

  In contrast to my overall professional record, a lonely trunk of failure stood among the forest of success: the Kudzu bomber, so named because he only struck in the southeastern United States.

  Supervisory Agent Kyle, my boss, pulled me into the investigation at its one-year mark—just after the bomber struck for the third time.

  She invited me to her office. “You’ve heard of the Kudzu bomber, right?”

  “Yep. I think everyone has.”

  “I’d like you on that case.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Changing the investigatory team mid-game like this was a bit unusual, at least for profilers. “Isn’t Harrison working it?” The senior profiler worked in the Charlotte office.

  “Yes, but he’s squeezed all the juice he’s going to get out of this one.”

  “I hate to step on his toes.” That’s how I’d view it, if someone else were assigned to one of my cases.

  “About that,” Kyle said with a smile. She knew I could keep a secret. “I’m going to assign him to that new arson case, tell him I need him on something more important, so I’ll be reassigning some of his backlog to other agents.”

  “I see. Can Sampson work the case with me?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  “Definitely. We work better together.”

  “In that case, let her know that I need the two of you back here in my office at noon.”

  At the appointed time, Sampson and I joined Kyle.

  “Have you had a chance to review the perp’s file?” asked our supervising agent.

  Sampson and I nodded.

  “A timed pipe bomb detonated at the front door of Greenville’s police station thirteen months ago,” I said. “Then in June, a mercury tilt-switch package was left in with the rest of the mail at the Youngstown law firm in Birmingham. It blew as soon as it was opened. Four notches on his belt in total, seven if you count the wounded.”

  “That’s right,” replied Kyle.

  “You said he planted a bomb again yesterday. I didn’t see anything about that in this guy’s file.”

  “Correct. The Atlanta PD hasn’t sent across their case notes yet, but the event happened at Satterley,” said Kyle, referring to the three-stack nuclear power plant located twenty-five miles south of Atlanta.

  Sampson and I glanced at each other. This was hitting too close to home.

  “They received a mail bomb,” continued Kyle, “complete with a standard pressure-release switch. It never exploded. The plant’s routine x-ray screen of incoming mail picked it out.”

  “That’s good,” I said, “and not just because they averted a potential disaster. Now we have something we haven’t had before: an intact piece of evidence.”

  “Exactly. Once the bomb squad wraps up its analysis, I want you two to see what you can make of it. This guy hasn’t nailed down a solid MO, at least none we can trace out. We need insight on his personality, something that’ll help us anticipate his next move.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Five months later, our best proved to be insufficient. An explosive formed of Semtex putty and detonated with a remote signal ripped through a U.S. Army recruiting station in Jacksonville, Florida. An NCO and two recruits died, while four others were sent to the hospital with major wounds.

  Within an hour of news of the attack hitting the wire, Sampson and I found ourselves headed down I-75 south in her Camry, bound for the site of the bombing. For the first time, we’d be able to inspect one of the Kudzu bomber’s crime scene ourselves. The possibility of spotting something the forensics team had missed seemed remote, but if nothing else, we’d have a first-hand impression of the perp’s craft. Sometimes that led to unexpected insights.

  We arrived late at night and began our inspection first thing the next morning. We spent most of the day examining each tagged piece of evidence—splinters, shards of glass, bloodstained clothes, pieces of desks, and pieces of bodies. A roughly circular scorch mark identified the plastique’s point of concealment: molded against the underside of a horizontal aluminum rail that had bisected the recruiting office’s glass window at waist level. What remained of the bomb itself had already been transported to the Florida’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations lab for analysis.

  That night, Sampson and I huddled around the forensics report, which described in painstaking detail the materials that had been collected from the site before our arrival.

  We returned to the bomb site again the next morning, hoping for fresh insights. None appeared, so we devoured the lab report of the bomb itself, which arrived that afternoon.

  The bomb was constructed of Semtex, the most common type of plastic explosive. The remote-activated detonator was of a similarly abundant stock. The hundreds of legal outlets of these materials, and thousands of illegal ones, rendered a search for their source an exercise in futility.

  The rest of our Jacksonville analysis did little to inform us about the perp behind the crimes. None of the offender’s personality shined through his work. Other than demonstrating a penchant for changing his routine, the site of the bombing revealed no useful information. The victims targeted, the types of bombs, the means of delivery—the offender varied them all at random intervals.

  At dinner with Sampson that night, I leaned back in my chair with a sigh. “If only the guy would leave a ransom demand—or better yet, a note, some kind of manifesto that would lend insight into his reasons for this killing spree.”

  “Yeah,” said Sampson. “Anything would be better than what we’ve got—which isn’t much.” She drummed a trio of fingers on her closed lips. “Could his profile be constructed based on what he’s not doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not leaving anything behind. Why? Is he afraid of leaving some kind of clue so obvious we’d be able to track him down right away? And what about the changing MO? Again, what personality would drive that kind of behavior?”

  “Interesting,” I replied. “Let’s run with that idea.”

  And so we did…throughout the five-hour drive back to Atlanta the next day. That afternoon, we presented our ideas to Kyle.

  “The perp’s insistence on leaving no physical evidence isn’t unusual,” said Sampson, “but going out of his way to avoid an MO is.”

  “And…?” said Kyle, cocking her head.

  “We think that suggests he’s unusual in some way and afraid he’ll be easy to track if he gives in to his natural inclinations.”

  “So he’s smart enough to be that self-aware.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “He may be painfully aware of his difference. Whatever it is, it may be a source of social isolation. He may feel it will influence his behavior in such a way as to give himself away unless his actions are some kind of undecipherable smorgasbord of attacks.”

  “So far, it’s working” said Kyle. “The question is what kind of difference would lead to that behavior?”r />
  “Exactly. We don’t think it’s general intelligence. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to think that far ahead in the first place.”

  “Maybe a physical deformity?”

  “Could be. Although the bomb placements suggests the offender has good physical skills. More likely, it’s something else—stuttering, Tourette syndrome, weight or height issues, a short fuse…the list is pretty long. But we think his difference is something others would notice right away.”

  “There’s no shortage of people matching one of those conditions,” said Kyle. “But besides this guy, no one else has decided to vent their frustrations by planting bombs.”

  “We don’t know if that’s why he’s planting the bombs,” I said. “Our theory is more about why he keeps shifting his MO. But his difference could explain both. And one other thing…he probably has his own car, considering he’s planting bombs in different states.”

  “He couldn’t use the bus?”

  “It’s possible, but if he’s smart enough to execute the rest of his plan, he’s probably smart enough to recognize the inherent risk of toting bombs onto public transport.”

  “Makes sense,” said Kyle, pausing to reflect. “Let’s talk about motive. The perp is mixing things up with his technique, but what about the targets? Any pattern in the people he’s going after?”

  “Only in the most general sense,” said Sampson, crossing her legs and leaning forward. “Authority figures. People who represent some kind of control over society.”

  Sampson gave a shake of her head. “That’s pretty general, too.”

  “It is, but it still narrows down his profile somewhat. He’s not pulling a Jack the Ripper ‘kill-the-prostitutes’ routine. His choice of targets suggests he’s different, socially isolated, and bears anger towards authority, perhaps for not protecting him at a younger age from those who ridiculed his difference.”

  Kyle nodded. “It does hang together. The next question is what advice we give those looking for him.”

  “Pretty much what we’ve just covered,” I replied. “Look for some kind of difference that’s relatively obvious…social awkwardness…enough intelligence and mobility to plan multiple bombs using different techniques in cities all over the southeast.”

  Kyle sent that information to the investigators. They followed up on several hundred promising leads, only to come up short every time. I’d grown accustomed to “getting my man,” and the frustration of failing to do so in this case grew every day. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. My profile, if it can even be dignified with the label, had been so vague as to include a great swath of the population. It felt like we were chasing a ghost. The perp could be almost anybody. Nice job, Grinder.

  The detectives on the case tried to trace back the physical materials used to construct the bomb, but those parts turned out to be so ordinary that most of them could have been sourced through a local hardware store. Searching for the more rare components didn’t help, either. The investigatory team theorized the perp was using black web sites to buy those specialized ingredients under the radar.

  Six months later, the Kudzu bomber struck again. He detonated an explosive in an electrical substation complex in Charlotte, North Carolina. For the first time, he repeated the type of explosive used—a pipe bomb. This time, no one died. Not that he didn’t try. The device was mounted near a doorway, but it detonated with no one nearby.

  This event heralded another first: the perp left a note taped to the substation’s main gate.

  The time for punishment arrives. For too long have the oppressed been silent. Now the righteous strike down the evil. Only a few lovers of fairness will join this cause. But the rain is made with the drop, and when enough drops join, a flood will fall on the heads of those in power who conspire against us.

  Giving a note like this to a profiler is like feeding raw steak to a ravenous tiger. At last, something to chew on!

  Once the note itself was hurried off to the forensics lab for analysis, Sampson and I hunkered down over its image to tease out what psychological inferences we could.

  A few hours later, we presented our findings to the team of investigators working to track down the Kudzu bomber. Kyle, my supervising agent, managed to find a chair at the back of the packed meeting room.

  I used a projector to display an image of the note onto a whiteboard, then launched into our findings without preamble. “The gist of the note is striking a blow to persecutors. That’s textbook paranoid schizophrenia.”

  “So the dude is crazy?” asked a junior agent from the center of the room.

  “Yes. And that’s good, at least in terms of tracking him down. Schizophrenia has been widely studied for decades. Between our general knowledge of the disease and this specific note, we can make some pretty solid inferences about our perp.”

  “Such as…?”

  “Now understand that nothing we say is guaranteed. But we’re not randomly guessing, either. Paranoid schizophrenics share characteristics eighty, eight-five percent of the time, so we can make some pretty good hypotheses even without the note.”

  “So why are you just making them now instead of two years ago?” asked the junior agent.

  “Because we had no proof we were dealing with a schizophrenic at all. He could have been a member of ISIS or a home-grown terrorist group…another Eric Rudolph.”

  Looking chagrined, the agent nodded and fell silent.

  I cleared my throat. “The hallmark of paranoid schizophrenia is believing people or organizations or even groups of organizations are plotting against you. Another hallmark is that the schizophrenic’s anger never dims. He holds his grudge forever. The Kudzu bomber’s note proves he fits these descriptions. He’s filled with anger at his supposed persecutors. But here’s the kicker: he’ll appear more or less normal to those around him. He’ll be anti-social…a loner…probably no wife or girlfriend. But other than that, he’ll look pretty regular.”

  “So he could be anyone…a nobody,” said Kyle.

  “Exactly. But don’t get me wrong. He’ll appear normal unless the object of his grudge comes up in conversation.”

  A bald agent next to Sampson scratched his pate. “Why does he have a grudge in the first place?”

  “That’s part of the mystery of this disease. He takes permanent offense against something you or I would forget. And the frustrating part about trying to figure out the connection between the bombing targets is that it often only exists in the mind of the schizophrenic. For instance, a serial bomber back in the fifties was pissed off at an electric company he used to work for, so after he bombed his former employer, he later ended up bombing a movie theater ‘cause its power lines ran from the electric company. What does that mean for us now? It means we might never know the exact connection between the targets unless we catch the Kudzu bomber and ask him. Now, the note and bombing locations suggest anger at some kind of authority figure, but there’s so much variety among the targets that it’s hard to say which one originally pissed him off…or which one he’ll strike at next.”

  “We can narrow down his physical description a little, though,” said Sampson.

  “A note lets you do that?” asked a skeptical Hispanic agent sitting to my left.

  “Somewhat,” replied Sampson. “The Kudzu bomber is almost certainly a man.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Women develop schizophrenia less often than men. They’re only about forty percent of the total. And those that have it express it more as depressive symptoms, not the kind of negative, violent behavior we’re seeing here.”

  Heads nodded around the room.

  “Men who develop schizophrenia usually do so between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. And the paranoid subtype don’t usually express until a while after the first symptoms of schizophrenia appear. Odds are, the event that caused the bomber’s grudge happened once he moved out on his own, when he was forced to interact more with society. The first bombing was not qu
ite two years ago. So that would put him somewhere in his late twenties. There’s also a chance of late-onset schizophrenia, which usually doesn’t appear until the forties. But that’s less common and usually doesn’t involve violent behavior. So we’re thinking late twenties is the best bet for our perp.”

  Heads nodded again, more vigorously this time.

  “We’ve summarized this in a document that I’ll e-mail in a few minutes,” concluded Sampson. She nodded my direction. “Grinder and I would appreciate any leads or new information you uncover. It’ll help us refine this guy’s profile.”

  The meeting began to break up. Agent Petran, an olive-skinned man with charcoal hair, lingered behind until only the three of us occupied the room.

  “I might be able to help narrow down the perp’s profile a little more,” he said.

  “That’s great,” I replied, “but why didn’t you mention it in the meeting?”

  “I’m first-generation Romanian.”

  That threw me, so I looked at Petran to continue.

  He glanced at the whiteboard, where the photo of the note continued to shine. “‘The rain is made with the drop’,” he read off. “Seems like kind of an odd expression, doesn’t it?”

  “The whole damn thing is odd, if you ask me,” I replied.

  He chuckled. “Yeah. But that’s not something this guy made up. It’s a Romanian proverb. Cu picătura se face ploaia. The literal translation is, ‘The rain is made with the drop.’ In English, it carries the meaning used in the note: ‘Every little bit helps’.”

  “So the guy could be an immigrant and translated his note directly from Romanian,” I said, mulling over this possibility. “Maybe trying to speak English as a second language was the difference he feels conspicuous about.”

  “Could be,” said Petran, “especially if he came as an older child or young adult. My parents have been telling me for forty years how it’s a lot harder to master a second language at that age.”