Abandoned: A Thriller

by Cody McFadyen

  “What about before the Internet?” James says.

  Leo shrugs. “Not my area, sorry. But he could have been using the Net for a long time, anyway. Chat rooms have been around for a while, and BBS’s—electronic bulletin board systems—were already popular in the late seventies. He could have been operating on a primitive version of what we’re talking about for the last twenty-five years if he was really tech-savvy. A little longer, even.”

  Monsters, casting nets into the information sea. Pulling the nets back in, filled with their catch of the hate-filled and the hungry.

  “Good, Leo,” I say. “Now I need you to follow up on this hypothesis of yours.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The LAPD Computer Crimes Unit has taken Douglas Hollister’s computer. I want you there, peeking over their shoulders. Fill them in on your theory and scour his computer for evidence to back it up. I want the name of the website he used to visit.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. LAPD CCU is a good unit. They know what they’re doing, and I’m on good terms with them. Geeks are competitive but not all that territorial.”

  “We also have three other abduction victims who were … returned. We’re pretty sure it’s the same perp. We’re going to be liaising with the departments involved, and this may lead us to other Douglas Hollisters. If so, we’ll need to fine-tooth their systems too.”

  “Just let me know. Is that it?”

  “We work here,” Callie chides. “Real work. We don’t get to sit around all day parked on our posteriors, sipping coffee and perusing Internet porn. Chop chop.”

  Leo gives her a sympathetic smile. “Envy is tough.”

  “So I was thinking,” Alan says.

  Leo has left, and we are back to the whiteboard, back to our list, scrawls in black and blue marker that look disconnected, maybe a little bit deranged, like puzzle pieces cast onto a coffee table. We stare at them and talk about them and fumble to find and add new pieces. A finished puzzle is always the same: a face, with a name written below it.

  “Our perp keeps things simple. He searches for men who want their significant others taken out of the way,” he says.

  “What about unsatisfied wives who want their husbands gone?” Callie interjects.

  “Possible,” I allow, “but not really pragmatic. Roughly sixty percent of spousal murders are committed by men, so they’re the largest demographic.” I smile at Alan. “Skewed target group acknowledged, no man-hating intended.”

  “No problem. Back to my thinking. He finds guys who want to take that extra step. A divorce won’t do it either, because they don’t want to split the money, or they don’t want to share the kids, or just because they hate the wife so much. He cuts a deal with the husbands: Take out life insurance on her, if you haven’t already, and I’ll grab her and hold her. No one will ever find a body because there’s no body to be found, and seven years later, you declare her dead, collect the insurance money, and give me my split.”

  “That sounds right,” I agree.

  “So what does he do with them after the seven year period is up?”

  James’s sigh is both dismissive and derisive. “He kills them, of course. He kills them and disposes of the bodies in a decisive way, so they’ll never be found. Maybe he cremates them, or cuts them up and feeds them to pigs, but whatever he does, it’s not a productive line of questioning.”

  “Really, smart-ass? Then what is?”

  “The same as before: methodology. We have an idea now of how he selects his victims. We know from Heather Hollister’s interview how he treats them. The next logical question is: Where would he keep them?”

  “Well …” I say, thinking. “We have three mutilated victims in three different states: California, Nevada, and Oregon. Do we think he has different holding houses in each state?”

  “Absolutely,” James says.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the most pragmatic solution. The longer he travels with his victims, the greater the risk of getting caught. Much easier and much safer to house them locally.”

  “I agree with the princess,” Callie says.

  “These would be places that he’d own,” I say. “Rentals would be risky too. No good having to take an ax to the landlord because he dropped in for a surprise cup of coffee.”

  “Agreed,” James says.

  “So what kind of properties would we be talking about?” I ask.

  “Remote,” Alan says. “Either because it’s literally remote, like out in the boonies, or figuratively remote, as in no one’s around or no one gives a shit.”

  “Warehouses?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so,” Callie replies. “There are too many variables in a warehouse district. Squatters, or fires, or drug busts because someone is growing the wrong kind of nursery. He’d want something dedicated, something no one else could interfere with.”

  “I can think of all kinds of things to fit that bill,” Alan says, “but if I were him I’d probably just have it built. Concrete building on private land, add the custom stuff—steel cots and eye rings for the shackles—myself.”

  “How would he keep an eye on them when he travels?” I ask.

  “Video surveillance is something you can watch over an Internet connection now,” Callie says. “I know because Sam has been installing a number of them at our house. They transmit an image to your computer, and you can access the feed from anywhere in the world as long as you have a connection to the Net.”

  “Sam’s a little paranoid, huh?” Alan asks.

  “Careful. I think of it as careful.”

  “We’re cutting too wide a swath here,” I say. “Even if Alan is right, so what? I’m not sure how we’d go about doing a statewide search for concrete structures built by individuals and, if we did, what it would net us. We don’t know where he’s located.”

  “Geographic profiling might help,” James says. “He’s a commuter, but it can’t hurt.”

  Geographic profiling is essentially a mathematical process that attempts to predict the most likely location of a serial offender, and it’s based on the same bedrock as the rest of what we do: Behavior is everything.

  One suggestion is that there are basically two types of offenders: the commuter and the marauder. The marauder is a localized offender. He commits his crimes in a geographically stable area. The marauder is the best candidate for geographic profiling.

  The commuter is mobile or transient and commits his crimes over large distances. He tends to be a complex hunter who can cross cultural and psychological boundaries. He’s the hardest to pin down with geographic profiling. Son of Sam was a marauder; he was caught because of parking tickets. Bundy was a commuter; he was caught because he wouldn’t stop killing and the evidence and his own decompensation caught up with him.

  Geographic profiling is relatively new but has been steadily building its own database of interesting behavior tidbits. When lost, for example, men will go downhill while females will go up. I didn’t believe it when I heard it but am assured it’s true. Another: A right-handed criminal who has to scram in a hurry will run to the right and discard weapons to the left. Geographic profiling is a controversial, complicated, but sometimes useful tool.

  “I’m not sure how useful it will be in this case,” I say. “Four victims only, in three different states? Not too many variables to plug in there.”

  James shrugs. “We should do it anyway.”

  “You have someone in mind?” I ask.

  “Dr. Earl Cooper. He’s a little annoying, but he knows his science.”

  I stare at the whiteboard. It stares back, mocking me with silence and incompleteness. I wonder about the other Heathers, women stuffed into darkness and kept there until they can no longer see the light. I stand up and grab my purse.

  “Let’s go see the man.”

  Motion is motion. Stillness is death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Dana Hollister listens to a loud hum that never goes aw
ay. It’s as if someone picked a single note and is singing it with forty mouths. It’s taken over her world, that hum.

  Most of the time it runs over her like water, and she is submerged. There is light and there is the hum and there is no thought.

  But every now and then, the hum stutters.

  These are millisecond flashes. Once, the hum stuttered and she thought a single word: I, she thought.

  Then the hum returned, drowning out even the idea of the rest. A stutter comes now, longer than the others. She swims up inside herself, from the bottom of a lake filled with syrup. The man, she thinks.

  The man bending over, a needle in my eye. Something is seen.

  The humming is coming, a roar in the distance.

  Something is seen that’s important. Something about the man.

  I should tell them.

  Who is them?

  Who am I?

  I—

  The hum covers her, and she is nothing again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Earl Cooper, as it turned out, came to see us. He’s standing in our office, something from another time.

  He’s wearing a cowboy hat and boots and a flannel shirt and a pair of battered blue jeans. He’s a short man, about five-seven, and he’s broad in the chest but thin in the waist. He’s sixty-two years old and looks every minute of it. He has a craggy face, a huge nose, and, to top it all off, a handlebar mustache that’s been waxed at the ends. It’s a good face, unique, made by its wearer rather than the other way around.

  The eyes sparkle with intelligence and have a depth of distance that tells me he’s seen things, done things, gotten dirty in the living of life.

  Once you get past all of the exterior apparel, it’s the eyes that reveal the most: This is a vital, intelligent man with a touch of the maverick and a dash of the sad.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he says to me, with a bare smile as he shakes my hand. “Heard about your work. Sorry about your family and your face.”

  It’s so brief and so genuine that I can take no offense from it. “Thank you, sir.”

  Earl Cooper seems like a “sir” to me, the way some older men just naturally are. He’s an elder, a teacher with experience to be listened to, and it’s draped all around him like a cloak of quiet certainty.

  “Young James has a quick tongue, but he’s pretty sharp. That’s why I put up with his back-talking. He came to a forensics symposium I was speaking at.”

  “Where are you from, sir?” Alan asks.

  “Texas. Place near Dallas. But I come out here three months of the year to consult and lecture. Pays the bills and keeps me occupied.”

  “Are you a cowboy, Earl?” Callie teases.

  He grins at her, and it lights up his face. “Me? Naw. I’m just an academic who wears cowboy boots. I do some shooting, though.”

  “What kind?” I ask, interested.

  “Handgun,” he says. “Nine mil is my gun of choice.” He rolls his eyes. “Some of my contemporaries think that’s sacrilegious, but I don’t give a hoot. I looked for a gun I liked and that was the one.”

  “I use a Glock,” I tell him, pulling my jacket aside so he can see it.

  He nods in approval. “Nice weapon.” He squints at me. “You any good?”

  “Good?” Callie says. “Honey-love, she’s a natural gunfighter.”

  “That a fact?”

  “I’m competent.” Shooting is one of the few things I don’t bother to be modest about. “I did some comparisons based on my own scores at the range. I’d probably rank within the top hundred in the world if I competed.”

  “For women?” he asks.

  “Top hundred, period.”

  He grins again, delighted. “That’s something I’d like to see! Most of the boys involved in the gun game are good enough, but there’s a few that’d be pretty upset to be bested by a woman. You should compete sometime.”

  I grin back. I like Earl Cooper. “Maybe I will.”

  “Have we had enough bonding time?” James asks, rancorous and impatient, as always. Maybe we dislike James, when we dislike him, because he’s our conscience. “Can we get to the matter at hand?”

  Earl curls his mouth down. “Curb it a little, son,” he says.

  “I’m not your son,” James retorts. “And there are other women locked away in the dark out there, just like Heather Hollister was.”

  Earl sobers at this and nods. “Ah yes,” he says, his voice soft. “The impatient hunter, the one who can never put down his gun or take his boots off. I used to be just like you, son. You better learn to turn it off or one day you’ll burn out.”

  “The business at hand,” James says, practically grinding his teeth.

  “Give it up, Earl,” Callie opines. “This is who James is, sad but true.”

  “I guess I knew that. Fair enough, young Jim, we’ll get to the meat of the matter. What can I do for you all?”

  I brief him in detail on the case. He listens intently, rolling his mustache at times, asking questions at others. When I finish, he is silent for a while, staring at our Sanskrit scribbling on the whiteboard.

  “Well,” he drawls finally, “I’m not sure how much help I can be, but I’ll tell you what I see and then I’ll take all the data home and give it a figure.”

  “That’s all we’re asking,” I say.

  “What do you know about what I do?”

  “Just the broad strokes. Callie is our criminologist. She’s pretty conversant in general forensics, but we bring in experts like yourself for the specialized fields all the time.”

  “Fair enough. Geographic profiling is the bastard stepchild of profiling,” he says. “In other words, for many, the jury’s still out. With good reason. There are a lot of factors that can throw a wrench into the works. The main one, in your case, is a lack of data. Geographic profiling is all about data. Number crunching, variables. Your boy has dropped four people in three different states. He selects his victims via the Internet. That’s unhelpful.

  “We operate with four basic types in geographic profiling, when it comes to offenders. We have the hunter. He looks for his victims in his home territory. He’s the one my kind of profiling works best for. We have the poacher. He travels away from his home to hunt. He’s smarter, he knows you don’t shit in your own backyard. You have the troller. He’s an opportunist. He’s most likely your disorganized offender. He sees what he likes while he’s out doing something else and he acts on the impulse. Then you’ve got the trapper. He lures the victim to him, controls the situation.”

  “There’s a lot of overlap there,” I observe.

  He nods in agreement. “Very good, Agent Barrett. That’s correct. The troller can operate in his own home area, like the hunter, or he could only troll when he’s away from home. The traveling salesman as rapist, so to speak. The poacher can create a kind of ‘new home territory.’ He thinks he’s being smart by choosing his victims from somewhere else than where he lives, but then he gets comfortable with that particular area and only draws from it. He could also be unconscious of the decisions that drove him to choose that ‘away’ spot.

  “That’s one of the principles that underpin geographic profiling: We tend to operate in our comfort zones, knowingly or not. The theory, then, is that location—both of abduction and dumping—tells us something important about where an offender lives. A famous and simplistic example is the case where bodies were always being found near railroad tracks. It pointed to an offender with an on-the-move, drifter mentality. That helped narrow the search and, though it wasn’t the only factor, contributed to finding the perpetrator, an illegal immigrant who’d been deported numerous times before.”

  Listening to him, I guess that Cooper is probably a lecturer in demand. He has a laid-back but engaging way of speaking that makes you feel as if you’re just having a conversation. Sitting in the living room, feet up on the coffee table.

  “The key with your boy and me, if I’m any help at all, is going to come down to
distance. There’s a difference, you see, between perceived distance and actual distance. If any of you have ever walked toward the mountains on a horizon or tried to swim across a lake to the other shore, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. They look close, but you could walk for days before you reached those mountains or swim ’til you drowned and never reach that other shore.

  “It works in reverse too. A killer might think something is just too far when it’s actually too close to home. It helps to know method of transportation—in this case a car—as that gives us an idea of his mobility range.”

  “It sounds like a drifter is easier to catch with geographic profiling than a man with a car,” Alan says.

  “That is a fact,” Cooper agrees. “It’s unhelpful that your boy is operating in different states. Still, the distance factor might turn up something. In relation to the abductions, I mean.”

  “How’s that?” Alan asks.

  “Where he took them, how he took them. He’s a pragmatic man. What does that tell you?”

  I nod, seeing it. “That he’s not going hundreds of miles away,” I say. He smiles. “Kee-rect.”

  “But that’s not always going to be under his control,” Callie says doubtfully. “His victim choice is limited by need—the needs of his clients. He can’t know where they’re going to be located.”

  “Good thinking,” Cooper says, “but not so fast. Los Angeles proper—the city, I mean—is somewhere around forty miles wide. Hell, Portland is only about a hundred forty-five square miles to Los Angeles’s four hundred seventy, and it’s not long after you leave the city that you can be out in the middle of the woods.”

  He turns to the whiteboard.

  “The parking-lot angle is a good one. I think you’re right. He’s taking them there because he needs to feed his little sexual sideline of making the cars crash. That’s behavior. Combined with geography, it tells us what? What are you missing there?”

  It’s a gentle probe, a teacher’s insistence to look. We all stare at the whiteboard, James and I most of all. I see it first, a forehead slapping moment.