Abandoned: A Thriller (38 page)

James shakes his head. “Strange. He’s succeeded so far due to the simple elegance of what he does. Why change it now?”

“You sound like you admire him.” Callie’s tone is disapproving.

“Facts are facts, not admiration. Dali’s brilliance is in the complete simplicity of his plan and his actions.” He counts off on his fingers. “His clients never meet him. He makes them into coconspirators. He offers financial incentive. He limits his contact with the victims, so they can’t describe him even if they did somehow get away. Look at Heather Hollister. He let her go, and she’s unable to provide us with anything truly probative.

“The time element is crucial and also brilliant. A lot changes in seven years. People move, people die. Cops retire, move on, die. By the time the insurance money is collected, who’s likely to be watching?
Even in the instances where he’s been forced to punish for nonpayment, it’s low risk, high reward, and, as you said, we can be sure that he lets his existing client base know what’s happened, as insurance against similar actions on their part. Simple. Brilliant. Why change all that?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I agree. “What are we missing?”

“I have no idea. I do have another anomaly, though. I spent time hunting through the Internet, looking for sites that cater to symphorophiliacs. There aren’t many out there, and it took some looking. I didn’t find anything—no still photos, no video footage—from any of the locations where we think he engineered car crashes.”

“Perhaps he pervs in private,” Callie says.

“Maybe,” James allows, “but unusual. A paraphilia like that requires regular fulfillment. Sharing is a way of reliving. Something that unique … it’s odd. How does he feed it?”

“So, no good news, then,” I mutter.

“Not entirely true. I did a search for hotels nearby the crash sites—there was only one in a relevant mile radius. A room was rented there under the name of a Heather Hollister on the night of her abduction.”

A thrill runs through me, picks up speed, then dies and blows away. “Seven years in a hotel room? There’s not going to be any evidence to find. Even if there was, it would be tainted.”

“Still,” James insists, “it continues to confirm the profile. There’s no reason for him to rent that room—and more, to use Heather’s name—except to satisfy a desire.”

“How does that help us?” Callie asks.

“It will help with his prosecution, when we catch him. If his need was that strong, there’s no way he’ll get rid of the evidence. He can’t. Find him, and we’ll find the photographs and video footage too. It’s a fairly unique paraphilia, not something you’d find in the average household. It will tie him to the scene, and thus to Heather Hollister.”

It’s a thin bit of optimism, hardly helpful in the moment, but it’s true nonetheless. As a prosecutor once told me,
Catching the guy is only half the battle. Keeping him caught is the other half.

“I have another bit of news,” Callie says. “We found a fingerprint on Dana Hollister’s body bag, on the inside. I ran it through AFIS, and it doesn’t match anyone known to be associated with this case.” She grimaces. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t match anyone else on file either.”

“More strangeness,” James says. “Strange that he’d be that careless, if it’s him.”

He and I stare at each other, more troubled than enlightened by this turn of events.

“Maybe he’s decompensating?” I offer. “That makes no sense.”

“Oh pish. What a bunch of wet blankets you two are,” Callie chides. “Maybe he’s finally grown too big for his britches. Sometimes they get stupid.”

“Maybe,” I agree.

But I don’t think so.

Cunt. Someone else types: The word of death.

No one types, the equivalent of dead silence in cyberspace.

Leo drags out the pause. He finally types:

The silence again. The cursor blinks on the screen, and I get the sense of a group of men in a medium-size room, watching, waiting, eager.

“Go ahead,” Alan tells him. “This is why we came into this room. Time to cross the line.”

They’re in
Bitch Chat.
Alan had discussed with me whether I thought it was too early, but I dismissed this concern. “At the minimum, curiosity is normal.”

Cursor blinking silence.

Various encouragements are shouted by the others in the chat; at least, I imagine them as shouts. I see, in my mind’s eye, that same group
of men in that medium-size room. Some have faces contorted by rage, others are crying. All of them are shaking a clenched fist and shouting the words, again, and again.
Bitch! Bitch! Cunt!

What about my personal favorite? I think.

I search and I find.

I’ve always hated that one, even more than the sacrilegious
cunt.
I’m not sure why.

He stops typing, waits.

“Wait a little longer,” Alan coaches. “Make him pull it out of you. Don’t be too eager.”

Silence. Then:

Leo logs out.

“That was good,” I tell him. “Virtuoso performance. The hasty exit at the end was a good touch.”

“Conflicted and full of hate,” Alan agrees. “Just the right elements for a psychotic break. Hopefully it’ll catch Dali’s attention.”

James is signaling to me.

“I have to go, guys. Let me know when you decide to go back into the chat.”

“Will do.”

The connection is severed. “What is it?” I ask James.

“Earl Cooper is on his way over to see us.”

I stretch, trying to purge myself of the toxic mix of excitement and frustration. “Let’s hope he has something helpful to say.”

“I have some observations, but I’m not sure how useful they’re going to be.”

Cooper sits in one of our office chairs, relaxed but watchful. He twirls one end of his handlebar mustache.

“We’ll take what you’ve got,” I reassure him.

“Fair enough.” He settles back, seeming to collect his thoughts. “Much of geographic profiling is about the concept of a ‘mental map,’ the cognitive image we develop of our surroundings. This ‘map’ is developed via experience, travel, reference points, so on. We all have safe areas, zones we’re most comfortable or confident in, and those tend to be close to home, though not always so. You following?”

“I think so,” I say.

“It’s true often enough that the first killing is usually the most helpful when it comes to geographic profiling. I’ve interviewed a couple of bad boys who were correctly pinpointed by what I do, and I showed them how we found them. Each one said that it made sense. They killed close to home and dumped the bodies in areas known to them. They thought they were being clever, but when I showed them the facts, they realized that they were operating subconsciously within a very definite comfort zone.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “First-time killers haven’t been emboldened by their success. There’s a lot of excitement there, but there’s also a lot of fear. Staying relatively close to home would be reassuring.”

“That’s right. Travel to a foreign country and you understand the concept real quick: We’re most comfortable in familiar surrounds.
Here’s an example: Which one of you has spent time around train yards?”

No one raises a hand.

“Well,” he continues, “in that case, if one of you was to kill a man—or a woman—it’s not likely you’d do it near the tracks. But one of the more famous cases of success in geographic profiling is the one I mentioned to you earlier, and it involved just that factor: All the bodies were found near train tracks.”

“You mentioned this before,” James says, sounding bored. “The perpetrator was a transient, right?”

“An illegal immigrant, actually, young Jim. It’s a simplistic example, but a good one for our purposes. You had a man in a country that was not only strange to him, it was hostile by default. If he got caught, he’d be deported. So he hobo’ed, traveled by rail. When he started killing, it was only natural that he’d do it by the trains.

“Now, back to the lecture. So we all, knowingly and unknowingly, develop comfort zones. They’re spatial, and they have degrees. You’re most comfortable in your own living room. You’re more comfortable in your backyard than your front. The local grocery store? Less comfortable than the living room, but you’ve shopped there plenty, so that’s all right. The place you work every day is probably fairly safe. You form a mental map, and when it comes time to commit a crime, that mental map comes into play. You’re going to consider the factors, control what you know: escape routes, what areas are most deserted, where does the light from the streetlamps end.

“Boiling it down to a greater simplicity, by way of example, let’s say we have two neighborhoods right next to each other. One is a white lower-middle-class neighborhood. The other is predominantly black and poor, with a higher crime rate. A white man gets killed inside the white neighborhood, shot dead on his green lawn behind his white picket fence. What’s the first assumption?”

“That one of the scary black people came over and shot that poor white man, of course,” Callie says.

Earl smiles. “That’s correct, little lady. What’s the likely truth, based on what I’ve been saying?”

“That he was killed by someone on his side of the tracks,” I say, getting it.

“Just so. Comfort zones.”

“All very interesting,” James says, conveying with his tone that he thinks anything but. “How does it help us here, now?”

“In due course, young Jim,” Earl says, seemingly unaffected by James’s misanthropy. Maybe he’s used to difficult students. “We consider other factors too. We look at the abduction site and the dump site. We examine the likely escape routes and see what that tells us about him. So on.”

I grimace. “I think I’m starting to understand why you said you might not be able to help much. We don’t know who his first victim was. The abduction sites were built around the victim, not the perpetrator. And the dump sites were chosen for effect, not convenience.”

Earl mimes tipping a hat at me. “That’s correct, Ms. Barrett. Add to that mix the fact that he’s operating in three separate states we know of and …” He shrugs. “Makes things a little tough.”