The Ripper Gene (4 page)
I glanced at him, having momentarily forgotten anyone else was in the amphitheater with us. “That’s right.”
“Well,” he said, still grinning, “Agent Woodson requested a lunch meeting with you after your lecture, so for the next hour she’s all yours.” He looked back and forth between us, questioningly. “That is, provided you don’t have concussions?”
We both laughed at that.
“However,” he said, “before that, I do need to speak with her for a minute or two in private, if that’s okay.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”
Woodson held up a finger to indicate she’d be right back, then followed Bob out into the hallway without a word.
I found myself slightly unnerved by Agent Woodson’s sudden shift in attitude from the lecture. Maybe my caution was warranted, maybe it wasn’t. She seemed just a little too eager to make a name for herself in the eyes of her peers and her instructors, maybe just a little overzealous.
Then again, it reminded me of someone I knew all too well, around the time I was preparing to leave the academy myself, just as Bob had intimated.
* * *
It turned out that Agent Woodson’s company wasn’t just tolerable, but actually enjoyable. Over lunch she took a genuine interest in both my personal and professional history. After we took a seat in a private room of the lunch cafeteria, she asked me to explain in more detail how I really came to discover the ripper gene and join the FBI.
I gave her the canned story of how I’d gone to medical school but didn’t want to be a doctor. How I saw a study that showed the amygdala regions of the brain lit up in normal people exposed to terrifying scenes of mutilation, but how the same horrific scenes led to no responses in serial killers. How I’d studied the works of neurobiologists at Penn and other institutions, who’d insisted there was a biological basis for violence, no matter if people didn’t want to admit it. How my own thesis research led me to look for a genetic basis explaining why the wiring of limbic brain regions of serial killers seemed so different from those of normal persons when visualized by fMRI and other imaging techniques.
“That’s when you discovered the ripper gene?” Agent Woodson asked.
“Exactly.”
“Great name for the gene, by the way.”
“Thanks. We eventually showed that ripper encoded a dopamine transporter that localized to the amygdala region of the brain. It was the perfect culprit. Most people carry normal copies and as a result have normal transmission in the amygdala. In other words, they like pictures of bunny rabbits and are repulsed by mutilated corpses. But in the small set of unfortunate individuals carrying two dysfunctional copies of the ripper gene, dopamine transporters are turned on like crazy, depleting the available dopamine in their brains and causing a signaling defect in their amygdala. They respond no differently whether they’re looking at a rabbit in a garden or a torture victim in a basement.”
Woodson shook her head in wonderment, but didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, my thesis showed that deficits in ripper gene function were present in more than seventy percent of the serial killers I tested. The prevalence in the normal, nonincarcerated human population is around two percent.”
Woodson whistled. “Impressive stuff. But that’s weird. You’d think scientists would have seen that significant of an odds ratio long before, in classical genome-wide association studies. I mean, if the mutation rates were that different between normal persons and serial offenders. Don’t you find it surprising that someone hadn’t already found it?”
“Aha, but that’s just it,” I said. “Notice that I said, very intentionally,
deficits
in ripper gene function. Not
mutations.
That’s why the new DNA tools are so important. Different DNA methylation patterns can completely turn genes off or on, but scientists weren’t paying attention to methylation back then, just to DNA sequence. We came along and showed that methylation of the DNA was just as important as its sequence, and when you looked at the sum total of the myriad types of DNA variation, genetic differences of many types across multiple loci became relatively strong predictors.”
Woodson nodded as she followed the logic. “Cool,” she said softly, and took a sip of her coffee. She seemed to be studying me for a moment, as if making a judgment call of some sort in her mind. “So how did you become involved with the FBI?” she asked suddenly. “Did you apply straight out of graduate school?”
“Oh no, I’d planned on becoming a professor. But my career took a U-turn when Bob came to Harvard’s psychology department to give a lecture entitled ‘Behavioral Profiling and the Criminal Mind,’ which was absolutely fascinating. Come to think of it, I took him to lunch after his lecture.” I raised my eyebrows.
Woodson smiled.
“Anyway, six months later my stethoscope was collecting dust on a bookshelf while my ass was getting whipped back into shape at the academy in Hogan’s Alley.”
Woodson nodded in knowing agreement, about to reply, when a knock on the private dining room door interrupted us.
“Madden? Is there an Agent Madden in the house?”
I knew the voice but couldn’t quite place it. When the door opened, however, voice and face blended into one. Parkman. Alan Parkman.
I’d worked with him once before. I’d been in Quantico back when he’d been Special Agent in Charge in Philadelphia. Back then, Parkman had taken it as a slap in the face that Jim Raritan had assigned anyone, much less me, from the BAU to
his
case.
My first day in Philly, Parkman greeted me in city hall, reiterating how he didn’t need some Southern-fried “behavioral fucking profiler” wasting FBI time on the case. Just as the mayor walked past, I reminded Parkman that I’d been called in because he had failed to nab a seven-time rapist who operated in “broad fucking daylight.”
We solved the case, but needless to say, Parkman and I didn’t play racquetball together after that. With the cruel irony that sometimes accompanies us in life, Parkman eventually took my place as a “behavioral fucking profiler” in BAU-2 when I voluntarily requested a transfer down to New Orleans. He liked to think that he actually chased me out of Quantico, even though he’d had nothing to do with it.
Now, Parkman leaned through the door, hanging on to the door frame with one hand, sweeping the room with his eyes. He’d always reminded me of a Wild West gunfighter, with his slicked-back black hair, handlebar mustache, and tiny black eyes. The only thing missing was a black ten-gallon hat.
He smiled when he saw me. “Raritan’s looking for you,” he said, looking from me to Woodson and back to me again. “And come to think of it, he didn’t look too happy, either.” His smile grew even wider. “In fact, I think he looked downright
pissed.
Well, see you later, Madden.”
The door closed behind him.
I looked across the table to Woodson. “Well, looks like I have a date with the big boss earlier than I expected,” I said, standing up and placing my napkin on my plate. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”
Woodson smiled and stood as well. “Nice meeting you too, Agent Madden. Good luck with Big Jim; sounds like you’ll need it.” She extended her hand and I shook it. “See you around,” she said, and then vanished through the door before I could reply.
I stared after her for several seconds. Despite our bout in the Q and A session after the lecture, I’d warmed up to her considerably over the course of our lunch. But there were more important things to deal with, and chances were very good that I’d never lay eyes on her again.
I latched my briefcase, exited the dining room, and headed to the cafeteria exit, in the direction of Jimmy “Big Jim” Raritan’s office. Unless Parkman was just messing with me, I needed to find out exactly why my boss was so pissed. By my calculations I had about five minutes for soul-searching before I arrived at his office.
I had one phone call to make before that.
I called Terry while walking to Raritan’s office, and he unfortunately confirmed that the CSIs hadn’t swabbed the letter
A
from Anna Cross’s body, and that the body had already been cleaned up by the coroner’s office. We had no chance of swabbing the letter and getting DNA from that letter
A
now.
I hung up, disappointed that we’d missed the opportunity. Though it was ninety-nine percent likely that it had been her own blood, I couldn’t overlook the fact that we’d seen no smears in any of the cuts found on her body that could have indicated the source of the blood used to draw the
A
. It seemed we’d never know.
As I knocked on Raritan’s office door, I suddenly questioned the wisdom of withholding the Anna Cross case from the quarterly report I’d submitted the day before. But I had no time to consider it further, as a guttural utterance devoid of emotion emerged. “Come in.”
I entered and found the hulking man leafing through a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Big Jim Raritan. Six foot five, three hundred pounds. A former Oklahoma Sooner who played defensive end for the Pittsburgh Steelers for four years before his anterior cruciate snapped like a piece of jerky and forced him into early retirement.
Now he was head of the FBI Academy’s fabled Behavioral Analysis Unit 2, or BAU-2 as it was called, the unit responsible for serial, spree, mass, and other murders. He took over after Bob retired, and in so doing immortalized himself on a short list of famous profilers who’d headed the various incarnations of the original Behavioral Science Unit ever since it was founded in 1972.
The seemingly exaggerated limp in Jimmy’s walk belied the massive power of muscles hidden beneath the two-piece suits that were now his uniform. He motioned me into a chair and sat behind his desk. “Agent Madden. Good lecture today. Please, take a seat.”
I did. “So, what’s on your mind, Jimmy? Parkman made it sound like I’d find a raving lunatic in here.”
Jimmy waved in exaggerated fashion. “Oh now, I might have been a little out of sorts when Alan ran into me earlier. I’d just found out about an aggravating new problem. But I’m all better now, Lucas, because I’m looking directly at the man who’s going to help me resolve it.” He peered at me another second, just long enough to make me wonder whether I should say something, before he continued. “But we can get to that in a moment. First, let me know what’s going on down in your neck of the woods. Any new activity? Anything we should be putting into ViCAP?”
The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP, was a database that stored characteristics of crime scenes and allowed investigators across the country to query it for similarities between crimes in different locales. For the database to work, it had to be populated. Whenever any FBI field agents came across a crime that seemed linked to the work of a serial offender, we needed to enter the data concerning certain characteristics of the crime scene into the ViCAP database.
As Raritan’s words worked through my brain, I realized that I hadn’t entered the particulars of the Anna Cross case into the computer system yet and was reminded of my decision to withhold the case from the quarterly report.
“Nothing new,” I finally said. “Looks like we’ll have enough physical evidence to get an easy conviction in the serial arsonist case down in the Quarter.” I shrugged. “It’s been quiet. That’s all I have on my end.”
Jimmy just kept looking at me, or through me, perhaps, and finally tossed a file onto the desk between us.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows, as if noticing the file for the first time himself. “Oh, that? That’s the Anna Cross file we received earlier today from the Stone County Police Department down in Mississippi.” He shook the file so that the black-and-white photos fell to his desk. The top photo was a face I knew all too well already, Anna Cross’s eyes fixed in death, with the massive bloody
A
smeared prominently across her forehead.
My stomach dropped. “Oh, that case. Well, that actually occurred in Mississippi. They just brought me over last night to check it out. I thought you just wanted to know about anything new in my Louisiana jurisdiction, so—”
“Don’t give me that horseshit, Lucas. What’s the matter with you? Why isn’t this in ViCAP already? Can you tell me that?”
“It’s an isolated murder, Jimmy. Overkill. I think it’s probably just some jealous lover.” I shrugged. “We’ll support the investigation, if it comes to that. But the cops down there are trying to locate an ex-boyfriend as we speak.”
Raritan rubbed his hand over his mouth and chin in what appeared to be an exaggerated attempt to keep his composure. “I see,” he said. Then he flipped through the photos again, pulling one out. “So what’s this? What do you make of this?”
I glanced down at the picture to find a photograph of the apple from the laboratory, and the razor extracted from it. I sighed. “It’s the apple we found next to the body. It had a razor in it.”
Raritan leaned back. “An apple with a razor in it. And you’re looking for boyfriends? Let me ask again, in a different way that you may better understand. So what the hell’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy. I guess I just hoped—”
“This ‘hope’ you refer to,” he said, cutting me off midsentence, “is a real pain in my ass, Lucas, every time. For such a good profiler, getting you to start working on a serial murder investigation is like pulling teeth. Why is that?”
“It’s not that simple,” I said.
Raritan slammed his fist on the table. “Yeah, I know it’s not that simple, and I don’t care. And I’m tired of these slow starts of yours. What are you doing down there? Trying to wish, or hope, crimes out of existence? We can’t go through this shit again, Lucas.”
I cringed. Whenever anything resembling a problem surfaced, it always came back to the Juan Alvarez case. Arguing with Raritan about profiling seemed exactly like what it would be like to fight with a wife over a onetime, one-shot affair. The slightest problem would resurrect it, over and over, whether relevant or not.
Whenever there was the slightest hint that I’d made an error in judgment, I’d inevitably be taken to task, straight back to the case of Juan Alvarez. As I stared across the table at Raritan I knew I’d never live it down.