by Steven James
“Actually, I’ve got a theory on that.”
“Let me guess, it has to do with serial killers?”
“Well”—she’d taken a little air out of my balloon—“yes, actually.”
“That villagers maybe . . . what? Found bodies, mutilated or something, and didn’t think a human being could ever be capable of doing that to someone?”
I nodded. “The term ‘serial killer’ is fairly recent. They used to be called ghouls or fiends and were often attributed superhuman powers—often they weren’t even considered human. After all, it’s a lot easier to believe a monster could do those things to another person than to accept that it was someone who lived in your same village, maybe next door, maybe even in your own home.”
“Those who should know killers best, often know them the least.”
“Yes.”
“And those around them suspect nothing at all.”
“That’s right, all too often they suspect nothing at all.”
“But,” she said, “it’s worse this way, that’s my point. With monsters, I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you had real monsters they’d be easy to identify, you know? Werewolves and vampires only look like the rest of us some of the time, sometimes they look like what they really are.”
Now I saw where she was going with this and concluded her thought for her. “But serial killers always look like the rest of us. They never really look like what they are.”
“Or maybe they always do.”
That was a troubling thought.
She looked at me intently. “I’ve been thinking about it since we talked about how clever criminals can be in prison—how they could ever act so inhuman to each other. Do you know how to turn someone into a monster?”
“I’m not sure. No.”
“Let him be himself without restraint.”
Then she went to her room and left me to sort through what she’d just said.
We’d had discussions on this subject before, and she’d quoted to me the words of Dr. Werjonic: “The road to the unthinkable is not paved by slight departures from your heart, but by tentative forays into it.”
Being yourself without restraint.
Taking deeper forays into your own heart.
Two ways of saying the same thing.
She reemerged, brought her cereal and a copy of Michael D. O’Brien’s novel Island of the World with her to the car, and we drove to see Lien-hua.
As I picked my way through the morning DC traffic, I reflected on what Tessa had just said about people turning into monsters.
I think it was Plato who first recorded asking people what they would do if they weren’t visible—if they could do anything without consequence or chance of discovery. Almost no one answered the question by listing all the good things they would do for other people. Instead, they fantasized about all the things they could get away with, all the things that society and culture and their own consciences constrained them from doing on a day-to-day basis—a Lord of the Flies sort of thing.
Inadvertently, both Plato and Tessa had identified one of the premises of environmental criminology: crimes almost never occur in the presence of an authority figure.
Are students better behaved when the teacher steps out of the room? Are gang members more law-abiding when the police stop patrolling their neighborhoods? Is genocide less frequent when the UN stops imposing sanctions?
No, we don’t become kinder, gentler, and more virtuous in the absence of authority figures, we become more violent and ruthless. The unrest and genocide in Africa over the last thirty years hasn’t been because of closely guarded, fair laws, but in large part because of the absence of anyone to enforce them. The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery.
What an encouraging thought to start the day off with.
• • •
Lien-hua was asleep when we arrived.
I figured that, more than anything else, resting would help her recover, so rather than wake her, I lost myself in reviewing online case files from the previous Basque crimes while Tessa read her novel.
The morning became the afternoon.
At twelve thirty my daughter and I had a quiet lunch in the cafeteria, and at twenty after one Lien-hua was still asleep when I left to attend the briefing south of the city at NCAVC headquarters.
To try to catch a monster who looked just like the rest of us.
25
Ralph and I passed through security at Tarry Lawnmower Supply and met up with the rest of the team in conference room 2B.
Cassidy was there, as well as Doehring, SWAT Commander Shaw, and two other NCAVC agents, one of whom was the agent who’d been following up with Saundra Weathers’s friends and family to try to locate which campground she’d taken her daughter to. His name was Gavin Syssic and he was a slim, studious man close to retirement who knew how to get things done.
The other agent, a platinum blond woman in her late twenties named Sara Hammet, had been working with Doehring and his officers to interview the water treatment plant employees.
“Alright,” Ralph said. “We all know how much Pat loves briefings, so let’s make this one brief.”
“I appreciate that,” I replied.
I filled everyone in on Lien-hua’s progress, then Ralph nodded toward Sara. “What do we know about the people at the treatment facilities?”
“Not much. No one recognized Basque or remembered seeing him around. Neither did the woman who owns the car he stole, or the man who owns the garage where he stowed Lien-hua’s car.”
“And we still don’t know whose prints those were on the novel?”
“No.”
Doehring spoke up. “We talked with the owner of the apartment building Basque took Lien-hua to. The guy says that the man who rented the apartment called himself Loudon Caribes, paid six months’ rent in advance. Cash. He rented the place two weeks ago.”
“Six months?” Gavin shook his head soberly. “I guess Basque was definitely planning to use that place again.”
“Could have just been the normal lease time,” Doehring pointed out. “Anyway, wanna know what Caribes means?” He didn’t wait for a response. “It’s the root word for ‘cannibal.’”
Well, that was appropriate.
“Gavin,” I said, “go ahead and do a background on that name—Loudon Caribes—see if anything comes up. Also, look up other iterations of ‘caribes’ or ‘cannibal’ and the root words for ‘anthropophagy’ and ‘maneater.’ Add those to the mix.”
Anthropophagy was an antiquated word that meant “cannibal” and was really only used today by law enforcement agencies.
“Got it.” He typed a few notes into his laptop.
“Did you reach anyone who knows where Saundra Weathers is?” I asked him.
“No. Not yet.”
I spent some time detailing the geoprofile I’d come up with, and Doehring agreed to get some officers looking into possible sightings of Basque in the three hot zones I’d identified as likely anchor points for the crimes. “And,” I said, “let’s follow up on apartments, condos, and homes in those regions, see if any have been rented under this Caribes alias.”
Understanding the travel patterns of the victims of a crime spree reveals information about the travel patterns of the offender, so when I develop a geoprofile, I always consider not just the primary and secondary crime scene locations, but also the victimology. What are their preferred routes to and from work? Where were they going, and what were they doing when they encountered the offender? Where are their favorite places to hang out or eat at? I’m really interested in why and where the offender first met up with that victim, how his life intersected with hers.
Basque had been implicated in five murders in the DC area over the last year. �
��Let’s take a closer look at the places where the victims’ lives intersected. Maybe they all shopped at the same grocery store on their way home from work or bought life insurance through the same agent. I’m thinking the key to finding Basque is finding him through them.” I didn’t want to admit it, but I did anyway: “It’s possible he’s been taunting us with these other attacks and we haven’t noticed. And let’s see if any of the previous victims have any connections with me. Sara, I can do the online work, but with Lien-hua laid up, I—”
“Sure, I’m glad to make the calls.”
“Great.”
So, the process: We would establish the typical travel routes by interviewing family, friends, and coworkers to find out about the habits and known routine routes of the victims. Some of this we already had; some of it we needed to get.
That was time-consuming, and thankfully, Sara would be heading up that part of the process.
Meanwhile, I could log into the Federal Digital Database and review phone records to study the GPS locations, where calls were made and received, and comb through credit card receipts to find where the victims shopped, ate out, bought gas, and so on to identify their travel patterns.
From working the Basque case over the last ten months, I’d done some of this already, but it was time to take it to the next level.
Cassidy offered to follow up on the lock I’d picked in the tunnel beneath the water treatment plant to see if he could figure out where it might have been purchased. “Maybe we can dig up something on Basque—a credit card, a check—who knows. I’ll see what I can do.”
We spent the rest of the briefing analyzing what we knew, then split up job responsibilities and Ralph brought the meeting to a close.
Traffic was not kind to me and I didn’t get back to the hospital until six.
26
When I entered Lien-hua’s room, I noticed that the pile of cards and the number of flowers had continued to grow. She told me that Tessa had stepped outside for a minute. “Don’t worry, the officer from the hallway joined her.”
“Did she say she was going to get some fresh air by any chance?” It was the euphemism Tessa used when she was really heading out to grab a smoke.
“Yes. That’s how she put it. Smoking, huh?”
“Yup.”
Well, I could address that later.
Lien-hua shifted in the bed. “Remember when I was in the hospital in San Diego last year and Margaret brought me a card?”
“Yes.” FBI Director Margaret Wellington had been the head of the NCAVC at the time. “And then she suspended you for some ridiculous little—”
“Well . . .” Lien-hua pointed to an impressive bouquet in the corner of the room. It looked almost as nice as the one Brineesha and Tessa had brought by earlier.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. The note said she knew I liked flower arranging and that she hoped this was done well enough for me to enjoy. And it is.”
Margaret was not exactly known for her sentimentality, and a gesture like that from her was nothing short of extraordinary.
The two of us had a long and patchy history together. Six years ago, when I’d brought up some missing evidence in a case to the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility, things had pointed back to her. As it ended up, she wasn’t censured but was shuffled off to serve a stint at the Resident Agency in Asheville, North Carolina—an assignment she definitely did not consider to be an upwardly mobile one.
However, her fortunes had turned and over the last few years she’d moved steadily up the ranks. Last year, after Director Rodale resigned, the Senate approved Margaret as the Bureau’s Director, and now she was enjoying the office she’d been aspiring to ever since I first met her.
Over the years I’ve noticed that to a lot of people, power is as addictive as any drug is. Once they’ve snorted it, once it gets into their system, it’s the hardest habit of all to kick. Lately, it appeared that being FBI Director wasn’t even enough power for Margaret. It was no secret that she was eyeing politics, and I had a feeling I knew who would be running in next year’s congressional election for Virginia’s first-district seat.
“So,” I said, referring back to the flowers, “word has definitely gotten around about your quirk.”
“I suppose it has. And I’m starting to think that there’s more to Margaret than meets the eye.”
I said, “Did I ever tell you that she mentioned to me one time that she volunteers at a shelter for battered women on the weekends?”
Lien-hua was quiet. “That’s something I didn’t know.”
Last summer a serial killer had left a DVD in the trunk of Margaret’s car that contained footage of seven of his victims—some in the process of being killed. But that wasn’t all it contained. There was also footage someone had filmed of her asleep in her own bed—video that was taken from inside her bedroom.
That night, the man who’d murdered those other women had been killed and we never found out for certain if he was the one who’d invaded her privacy, snuck into her bedroom, and filmed her as she slept.
Most people didn’t know about it, how much it had affected her.
While Tessa was out of the room, I took the opportunity to recap the NCAVC meeting to Lien-hua. She listened intently and then suggested I add her own home and travel patterns to the geographic mix. “Remember? Victimology? I’m one of those now. Let’s see if we can find out where Basque’s life might have intersected with mine, or mine with any of the other known victims’.”
It made me feel a little uncomfortable talking about her in these terms, but she was right—she was a victim.
“I’ll add the data when I get home.”
A moment passed. “Pat, I have to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“Catching him, putting him away, are you trying to find Basque for revenge or for justice?”
It wasn’t an easy question to answer. “Sometimes those two reasons converge, you know that.”
“You need to be objective about this, Pat, or Ralph might remove you from this case.”
Many times on television shows as soon as a killer threatens a detective, he’s removed from the case so things don’t get “personal.” It might be a useful screenwriter’s device, but it’s not the reality of life on the streets. If it were, criminals could evade capture by simply intimidating the people investigating them so that different officers or agents would have to be continually assigned to their case, and it would slow down the investigation.
“Ralph wouldn’t do that.”
“He could. If you’re not approaching things impartially.”
“That’s the last thing I would want to do.”
“Why on earth would you say that?”
“Anger sharpens my focus.”
“No”—she was drifting into profiler mode—“if you get too emotionally involved in a case, it’ll skew your judgment.”
“There’s a saying in India,” I said. “‘A mind that is all logic is like a knife that is all blade.’”
She looked at me quizzically. “Talk me through that.”
“The harder you grip a blade, the tighter you squeeze it, the more you’ll bleed. You need something other than the blade to hold on to or you’ll never be able to wield the knife properly.”
“So you’re saying you need emotion.”
“I think so, yes. And passion. You need to care. And I care about you enough to pursue both justice and revenge. Whichever one, whatever it takes, I want it to be personal. That’ll make me angry enough to catch him.”
“Catch him.”
“Yes.”
“Or kill him?”
I was quiet.
“So the fable isn’t true,” she said. “About the hare being faster because it’s running for its life. You’re saying the hound can be
more motivated when he has enough anger to drive him.”
I didn’t correct her.
Her eyes showed a mixture of understanding and concern.
Tessa returned to the room smelling of cigarette smoke and carrying takeout from a vegetarian Indian restaurant across the street from the hospital. “I figured we could use some real food.”
“Did you get enough fresh air?” I asked her somewhat pointedly.
“Um . . .” The look on her face told me she knew she was busted.
“No more of that.”
“Right.”
She must have known just as well as I did that this would come up again, but for now it was a step in the right direction, and at least that was something.
• • •
As we were finishing our rather late dinner, Brineesha swung by and, after about twenty minutes, took Tessa home so she could get to her homework. I planned to return home soon myself, but just as a precaution I had an undercover car follow them.
After they were gone Lien-hua said, “Pat, how’s your lecture coming for tomorrow morning?”
“I called Dr. Neubauer. He’s going to cover for me.”
“The pollen guy? From the Lab?”
“Yeah. The lecture is about forensic palynology and its relationship to geospatial investigation.”
“Sounds scintillating.”
“Oh, it would have been, but I figured Neubauer could cover the palynology portion better in his sleep than I ever could. Anyway, that way I can be here.”
“I think you should go teach. If you lurk around here all week it’s going to make me feel guilty.”
“I’m not lurking.”
“What are you doing?”
“Lingering.”
“Ah. Well, if you linger around here too much I’ll feel guilty that you’re not out there doing what you need to be doing. I really just need to rest anyway. If I’m lucky, I might be able to get released Wednesday or Thursday.”
“The doctor said it might be six days,” I said protectively. “Plus one more after they cast your leg.”
“I’m a quick recoverer. Teach your class in the morning and then you can linger here in the afternoon.”
