Looking Glass

by Andrew Mayne

  “Just think about it,” says Cavenaugh. “Also, at the very least, think about teaching again.”

  “College?”

  “No. Military and intelligence agents. Maybe we could rub some of your smarts onto others.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He has no idea how tempting it is to have my own lab and the ability to teach again.

  Or maybe he does. What would I compromise for that? What lie would I tell myself?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FAN CLUB

  Your life takes some unexpected turns after you catch one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. The first turn is that the law-enforcement officials who didn’t even believe there was a killer on the loose suddenly manage to create an entirely new narrative about how they’d been tracking him and were close to capturing him. That’s fine—let them tell the media their task forces were actually working on the case and on the verge of nabbing the killer.

  The other twist is that you go from being a lone person shouting into the wind, with almost no one hearing you, to a quasi celebrity with more incoming inquiries and requests than can be humanly managed.

  My in-box is flooded with missing-persons reports from families, conspiracy theories, and at least every few weeks some new nut job telling me that they’re the real Grizzly Killer and they’re coming for me.

  I send them all to the FBI and make sure my conceal-and-carry permit is filed in every place I visit.

  Amid all the noise are lots of desperate voices, people who’ve lost someone and have nobody to turn to. Mothers of missing children, husbands of wives who never came home, and every other conceivable loss you could imagine.

  I used to e-mail responses to almost everyone, directing them to a national missing-persons organization and the appropriate law-enforcement channels.

  Then one day I stopped responding. I was spending hours trying to reply and there simply wasn’t enough of me left.

  The problem is that everyone sees their case as special. Like autograph seekers hounding a celebrity, they think their situation is unique; they imagine their interaction will feel as special to their idol as it does to them.

  At any given time there are ninety thousand missing persons in the United States—and those are only the reported ones. In the Grizzly killings, we discovered an overlooked category of missing but not reported. Because of this, Joe Vik’s real death count is probably in the hundreds, if not higher.

  While everyone who reaches out to me feels their case is special, they can’t understand that theirs is only one case in ninety thousand. A mere statistic, to misquote another serial killer, Joseph Stalin.

  Today, as I arrive home and see a man sitting on my front porch holding an envelope in his hand, I already know his story.

  If he’d been pacing back and forth, compulsively smoking a cigarette, I’d suspect he was a conspiracy theorist, there to tell me that Joe Vik was a CIA plot and, by the way, the earth is flat.

  I have a ready response for those people: What amount of evidence would convince you that you are wrong?

  For the truthers, moon-landing hoaxers, and extremists on both sides of any issue, the answer is simple: nothing.

  When no amount of evidence can convince you that your worldview might be inaccurate, then we’ve exited the realm of reason and entered religious territory. This is why I laugh at the notion of reconciling faith and science. Science is based on the premise that logic and reason can tell us the true nature of reality. Religion is based on the idea that when logic and reason don’t support a predetermined view of reality, they are at fault.

  The next time you get into a political discussion, stop and ask yourself what amount of evidence would change your mind. If the answer is none, then realize you’re actually in a religious discussion, one more zealot arguing with another.

  Have I mentioned I’m not on Facebook?

  I abandoned social media a long time ago, when I observed my scientific colleagues rejecting the concepts of empiricism for emotional arguments, polemics, and outright embarrassing leaps of logic to support things they had arrived at through emotion, not reason.

  While I can turn off social media and send the conspiracy nuts to go harass someone else, the hardest person to deal with is someone who has lost a loved one. Their grief is real. Their reality is more certain than my own.

  When I get out of my car, I can already tell what’s going to happen next. This middle-aged African American man in the blue sweater and blazer is going to pull a photo out of his folder and show it to me. It’ll be his wife, his daughter, his son. They’re missing. The police can’t help. He looked me up online. I’m the only one he can turn to.

  I turn the ignition back on and pull out of my parking spot. If I never see the photo, then I won’t make a connection. I won’t have a face. I can just wait for him to go away, and if he persists, I can call the cops.

  I’m allowed to do this.

  I head toward the exit to my apartment complex and convince myself that I can go grab a beer and a steak somewhere with a free conscience, ignoring the man on the porch.

  I’ve done more than any man should ever be asked to.

  There’s only so much Theo Cray to go around.

  But then who the hell is Theo? What part is left? The part that doesn’t care?

  When I was cowering in the ambulance, waiting for Joe Vik to come for me and Jillian, it was Detective Glenn who was outside trying to give us cover.

  Sure, I found my courage. So did Jillian … god, did she ever. But Glenn had it all along. He died. We lived.

  Would Glenn turn away and leave this man on his doorstep? This grieving man.

  Fuck me.

  I turn my truck around and head back to my parking spot. I take a deep breath and try to figure out how to at least listen to this man patiently, offer him some solace, and maybe help him find some peace and accept what he already knows: the person in that envelope is dead. They’re never coming back. And if someone took them, if it’s been weeks or months, he’s not going to find the killer.

  How do I know this? Because if it weren’t a hopeless case, he wouldn’t be waiting for me on my doorstep. I don’t get the low-hanging fruit, the “It was the handyman with the criminal past” type of cases. I get the ones where there is no evidence. No clues. Not even a body. Just an empty place where a person used to be.

  I can’t fill those places. I can’t even fill the emotional compartments in my own head for the people who are supposed to be close to me.

  “Dr. Cray?” asks the man as he sees me walking up the sidewalk.

  “I got an hour. That’s all I got.”

  He’s already sliding the photo out of the envelope.

  Fuck. He’s got me. The boy has green eyes. Just like the girl in Yemen. It’s a coincidence. I’ve been shown thousands of missing-person photos. Lots have green eyes.

  But this one had to be today.

  Instinctively, I know that I’ll be spending a lot longer than an hour on this one.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE ACCOUNTANT

  “Dr. Cray, I appreciate your taking the time. I’m a big fan of what you did.”

  I’m not sure if vigilantes should have fans, but I take the compliment. “Let’s have a beer while you tell me about …”

  “Christopher. My son’s name is Christopher. I’m William. William Bostrom.”

  Now that I have a face and a name, Christopher is becoming more real, not simply an envelope I can ignore.

  I let William inside and invite him to take a seat at my kitchen table. He sets his envelope down and looks around the apartment. There’s a couch and a television and not much else.

  “Did you just move in?” he asks.

  “About six months ago.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Do you realize that’s a creepy question to have a stranger ask you?”

  Bostrom makes a small laugh. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. I could just be
some crazy guy. I bet you get a lot of those.”

  “Indeed.” I take two beers from the fridge and twist the caps off. “Here you go.”

  “Uh, thanks.” Bostrom takes the smallest sip from his, and I realize he’s not a drinker. He might even be a recovered alcoholic.

  I slide the beer over to me. “I got Diet Coke. Want one instead?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Again, I appreciate you helping me out.”

  We’ll see how appreciative he is when I tell him there’s nothing I can do and ask him to leave.

  I bring him his drink and sit again. “Before we start, it’s important that you understand the only reason you even heard about me is because I noticed a particular way foliage would grow in parts of Montana around areas where bodies had been recently buried.”

  “Yes. Ecotones? Was that it? Areas where different plants were growing while one tried to starve out the other? Also because Joe Vik buried his victims on the lowest-lying area near a kill site so erosion wouldn’t expose the bodies.”

  William had done his homework. It was still surreal to hear people mention Joe Vik’s name in the casual way they’d talk about Charles Manson or Ted Bundy.

  “Basically. The FBI has my system now. Local law-enforcement agencies have started adding it to their forensic investigations.”

  “I’m sure that’ll bring peace to a lot of families.”

  And grief. Many of them are still holding out hope that their loved ones will come home. That’s the hardest part about these kinds of cases. They want me to tell them there’s hope. I have none.

  “Chris was a good kid. Real good kid. I know they all say that. But he had good grades. He stayed out of trouble. I’d come home and the house would be clean. That kind of boy. We’d go to the toy store and he’d throw his allowance into the Salvation Army bucket. That kind of kid.”

  You’re killing me, William. I wanted a drug addict runaway. But I don’t see any of that in Chris’s photo. He looks about nine years old. Big cheeks. Goofy smile. So earnest.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Chris didn’t come home.”

  “How long before he went missing was this photo taken?”

  “A month, maybe.”

  “And the police?”

  William shrugs. “They did what they were supposed to. Talked to neighbors. Put up flyers. Chris’s photo was even on the news. And then nothing. I’d call the detectives, but they’d take longer to answer my calls. The flyers came down and something else would be on the news. Some white girl in Colorado or something.” He pauses when he realizes what he just said.

  I nod. We all look at white crime and black crime differently. The reasons are complex, some of them biased, to be sure, others more basic in-group and out-group perceptions. Whites will ignore the daily death toll in black inner cities, but when a gunman kills nine Christians in a church, who all happen to be black, they’re as outraged as anyone else. That’s because suddenly the victims become relatable.

  “Were there any leads?”

  William shakes his head. “Nothing. At least nothing the police told me.”

  “And this was where?”

  There’s a noticeable pause. “Willowbrook. It’s near Los Angeles.”

  “South of Los Angeles?”

  He nods.

  I remember something about the area. It’s known as South Central Los Angeles. Near Compton. Gang territory—at least as far as I know from the movies I watch. I don’t have a clue beyond that. But I understand his hesitation. It’s an area with an extremely high homicide rate.

  “Chris was a good boy,” he says defensively, assuming I’m jumping to some prejudicial conclusions.

  “I believe you. So he was snatched? Just like that?”

  “Yes. No ransom note. No warning. He was just gone.”

  The mere mention of a ransom note raises a flag. I’d heard that every day there are hundreds of drug-related kidnappings in which family members are held hostage because one party wants something from another. The families of the victims are in no hurry to tell the police that their son got kidnapped because the father failed to pay back a cocaine debt.

  “Well, I’m afraid there’s not much I can go on. I don’t even know the area. I wish I could be more help. Are the mother and you still together?”

  “She’s dead. And no, her family didn’t take Chris,” he adds, assuming I’m thinking this might be a child-custody matter.

  “And you know this because … ?”

  “Because Chris is dead.”

  “Why are you so sure?” The conversation has taken an odd turn.

  “Because Chris has been gone nine years. I know he’s not coming home.”

  “Nine years?” That trail isn’t just cold; it’s paved over.

  “I know the statistics, Dr. Cray. I’m an accountant. I can do the math. Chris didn’t run away, and he isn’t lost. Someone took him and killed him. God knows what else …” He eyes the other beer bottle in front of me. I’m not sure if I should push it to him or go dump it in the sink.

  “So now that it’s almost ten years later, what do you want from me?”

  “I want his killer. I want the man that took my boy.”

  “That man could be long gone.”

  “Or he could be someone from the neighborhood. Someone I pass every day. He could be right under our nose. Like Lonnie Franklin.”

  Lonnie Franklin, aka the Grim Sleeper, was a serial killer in South Central Los Angeles who was active for three decades. His victims, primarily prostitutes with drug addictions, were the invisibles. Their murders were written off as drug related and cynically blamed on the dead. Dozens of women, already victimized by life, were ignored, all under the nose of the police and Franklin’s neighbors.

  “Do you have any suspects?”

  “No. I’ve walked on every sidewalk, knocked on every door. I’ve seen some shady things, Dr. Cray, but no sign of what happened to my boy. Nobody I could point a finger to and say they could be the one. I talked to his teachers. Every adult he could have come in contact with. Nobody.”

  I take a sip and think my response through. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do.” I stop myself from saying the data set is too small. “Have there been other missing-children reports in the area?”

  “A handful. The police say there isn’t enough for a pattern. Of course they also told the families of Franklin’s victims there was no reason to believe there was an active serial killer.” He raises a hand preemptively. “I’m not saying that’s what happened to Chris. But somebody that would do that to a child, would they do it just once? Would that really be the end of it?”

  “I’m assuming the police pulled up names of known child predators,” I say.

  “I knocked on those doors, too.” He leans back, shaking his head. “Lots of perverts. None that I could tell you took Chris.”

  “I don’t have the tools or resources to really look into this, Mr. Bostrom.”

  “Did you have them in Montana? Did you know what you needed for that?”

  “I had DNA. I’m a biologist. I had blood and hair. I had something to work with.”

  “But you’re also a math guy,” he says. “A computer scientist. You know how to see things in the data that other people don’t.”

  “I’m not psychic. All I know how to do is ask questions.”

  Bostrom stands up. “You’ve been more than kind hearing me out. All I ask is that you let me know if you think of a few questions to ask that nobody else has.”

  We wait outside for his Uber to arrive to take him to the airport. He tells me Chris’s favorite movies. He tells me about the time Chris tried to make him a birthday cake in the microwave. He tells me with great pride about the projects Chris worked on and his ambitions to be an astronaut.

  The kid wanted to be a scientist. He wanted to invent things. He wanted to help people.

  As Bostrom’s Uber drives off into the night, I am chilled by the thought that the man who
snuffed out this bright, little shining light is still out there.

  Statistically speaking, Chris wouldn’t be the only one or the last. Statistically speaking, I have a better chance of finding a living, breathing Al Capone in Chicago than I do of catching Chris’s killer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NUMBER THEORY

  Kerry leans over the top of my cubicle and watches me. She’s realized that sometimes I need a second to shift from the reality in my head to the one around me. “What are you working on?”

  “Just running some numbers. What’s up?”

  “Just a warning. Park is pretty pissed at you. He was ranting earlier about how you interact with clients.”

  “Clients?” I reply. “We’re not an advertising agency. We’re a quasi-legal consulting group given far too much power by people looking for an excuse to pull a trigger. I’m pretty sure Cavenaugh’s not going to give us a bad Yelp review, if that’s what he’s afraid of.”

  She drops into an empty chair and slides next to me. “He’s afraid you’ll take Cavenaugh up on his offer. Park knows that DIA knows you’re the one that’s making this work.”

  “Your graphs have been helpful.”

  She groans. “That’s BS work I came up with so I could leave Silicon Valley and not be expected to pull eighty-hour workweeks. Your Predox system has them all excited. That could be a billion-dollar ticket.”

  “To what?”

  She gives me a funny look. “You really are a weirdo.”

  “Because I don’t want to be a snake-oil salesman like Park? It’s bad enough that I’m working in the factory.”

  “Maybe if you owned the factory, things would be different. Birkett would back you in a heartbeat. I’d follow you, too.”

  “What are you saying? Tell Cavenaugh to shovel some antiterror money my way, just so we can go into some other office and stress over doing the right thing while knowing lives are at stake?”