Unsub is a white male, mid-twenties to late thirties, college graduate with possible postgraduate education, exceptional intelligence. Excellent cognitive functioning.
Unsub is polite, introverted, formal in his manner and social interactions. He is controlling in relationships, with a low capacity for intimacy. He is a compulsive perfectionist with no close friends.
He is well coordinated, with good reflexes. He may exercise regularly in a private setting. He would be seen as self-contained and methodical. He is skilled in the use of a handgun and may be a gun collector or target shooter.
His vocabulary is subtle and precise. Syntax and punctuation are flawless, with no ethnic or regional traits. This may be the result of a cosmopolitan education or broad cultural exposure, or the result of an effort to obliterate the evidence and memories of his upbringing.
Noteworthy are the employment of biblical cadences and avenging imagery in his condemnation of greed, his choice of “The Good Shepherd” as his form of identification, and the placement of the Noah’s Ark animals at attack locations. The religious context—in which white (light) represents good and black (darkness) represents evil—may explain the targeting of black vehicles, underscoring the equivalence of wealth with evil.
His preparation and execution are highly organized. The attack locales indicate careful reconnaissance—all situated on roads commonly used as connecting arteries between main highways and upscale communities (i.e., promising areas for him to find his target victims). The roads are all unlit, thinly populated, with no tollgate or other surveillance-camera positions.
All attacks were carried out on leftward curves. All of the victim vehicles, subsequent to the shootings, exited the pavement on the right side. The evident reason being driver incapacitation resulting in the relaxation of purposeful leftward pressure on the steering wheel, resulting in the car’s tendency to drift from the direction of the turn back to a straighter line of movement. The further consequence would be for the disabled (unsteered) vehicle to move away from the shooter’s vehicle (which would be in the lane to the left of the target at the moment of the shot), thus minimizing the chance of a collision. The level of foresight and timing in this process would place our unsub among the most organized of killers.
MOTIVATION LEVEL-1: Unsub’s stated rationale for attacks is the injustice inherent in the unequal distribution of wealth. He claims that the cause of this inequity is the vice of greed and that greed can be eliminated only by eliminating the greedy. He conflates greed with the ownership of a super-luxury vehicle and has chosen Mercedes as the archetype of that vehicle, making it the identifying characteristic of his target victims.
MOTIVATION LEVEL-2: The Good Shepherd case appears to be one in which a classic psychoanalytic formulation may apply: an underlying oedipal rage against a powerful and abusive father. Throughout his Memorandum of Intent, the unsub repeatedly conflates greed, wealth, and power. Also supporting the psychoanalytic interpretation, the unsub’s choice of weapon (one of the world’s largest handguns) has unavoidable phallic implications and is an obvious marker for this type of pathology.
NOTE: An objection might be raised to the father-hatred motivation, based on the inclusion of a woman among the victims. However, Sharon Stone was exceptionally tall for a woman, had her hair styled in a unisex crew cut, and was wearing a black leather jacket. Viewed at night through her vehicle’s side window with only faint dashboard illumination outlining her face, she may have presented a visual impression that appeared more male than female. It may also be that the unsub’s single criterion was the luxury vehicle itself, making the gender of the driver irrelevant.
The document concluded with a list of related journal articles in fields such as forensic linguistics, psychometrics, and psychopathology. That was followed by a list of professional books by heavily credentialed Ph.D. authors: The Sublimation of Rage, Sexual Repression and Violence, Family Structure and Societal Attitudes, Pathologies Fostered by Abuse, Societal Crusades as Expressions of Early Trauma, and, last on the list … Mission-Driven Serial Murder by Rebecca Holdenfield, Ph.D.
After staring for a long moment at that final familiar name, Gurney scrolled back to the beginning of the document and read the whole thing through one more time—doing his best to keep an open mind. It was difficult. The less-than-scientific conclusions wrapped in scientific language, and the overall academic smugness of the writing, triggered the same argumentative feelings in him that were triggered by every profile he read.
In his over two decades of homicide experience, he’d discovered that profiles were occasionally dead-on, occasionally dead wrong, but mostly a mixed bag. You never knew until the game was over whether you had a good one, and, of course, if the game never ended, you ended up never knowing.
But it wasn’t just the fallibility of profiles that bothered him. It was the failure of many of their creators and users to recognize that fallibility.
He wondered why he’d been so eager to read this one, why it couldn’t wait till later, seeing that he had so little faith in the art. Was it just the combative mood he was in? The desire to pick holes in something, to argue about something?
He shook his head, disgusted with himself. How many pointless questions could he come up with? How many angels could dance on the head of a pin?
He sat back and closed his eyes.
He opened them with a start.
The dashboard clock said it was 5:55 P.M. He looked down the street at the house where Meese lived. The sun was low in the sky, and the house was now in the shadow of the giant maple in front of it.
He got out of his car and walked the hundred yards or so to the house. He went to Meese’s door and listened. Some kind of techno music was playing. He knocked. There was no response. Again he knocked, again no response.
He took out his phone, blocked the ID, and called Meese’s number. To his surprise, it was picked up on the second ring.
“This is Robert.” The voice was smooth, actorish.
“Hello, Robert. This is Dave.”
“Dave?”
“We need to talk.”
“Sorry? Do I know you?” The voice had tightened a bit. “Hard to say, Robert. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t. Why don’t you open your door and take a look at me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your door, Robert. I’m outside your door. Waiting.”
“I don’t understand. Who are you? Where do I know you from?”
“We have friends in common. But don’t you think it’s kind of stupid to be talking on the phone when you’re right there and I’m right here?”
“Wait a second.” The voice was confused, anxious. The connection was broken. Then the music stopped. A minute later the door was opened tentatively, not quite halfway.
“What do you want?” The young man who asked the question was standing partly behind the door, using it as a kind of a shield or, Gurney thought, as a way of concealing whatever he was holding in his left hand. He was about the same height as Gurney, just under six feet. He was slim, with finely cut features, tousled dark hair, and shockingly blue movie-star eyes. Only one thing marred the picture of perfection: a sour look around the mouth, a hint of something nasty, something spiteful.
“Hello, Mr. Montague. My name is Dave Gurney.”
There was an infinitesimal tremor in the young man’s eyelids.
“Is that a familiar name to you?” asked Gurney.
“Should it be?”
“You looked like you recognized it.”
The tremor continued. “What do you want?”
Gurney decided to follow a low-risk strategy, one that he found particularly useful when he was uncertain how much a target subject knew about him. The strategy was to stick to the facts but play with the tone. Manipulate the undercurrents.
“What do I want? Good question, Robert.” He smiled meaninglessly, speaking with the world-weariness of a hit man whose arthritis was acting up. “That depends on wh
at the situation is. To start with, I need some advice. You see, I’m trying to decide whether to accept a job I’ve been offered, and if I do, what the terms ought to be. You familiar with a woman by the name of Connie Clarke?”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“You’re not sure? You think maybe you know her, but not definitely? I don’t get that.”
“The name is familiar, that’s all.”
“Ah. I see. Anything come to mind when I tell you her daughter’s name is Kim Corazon?”
He blinked rapidly. “Who the hell are you? What’s this about?”
“Can I come in, Mr. Montague? This is pretty personal stuff to be talking about in a doorway.”
“No, you can’t.” He shifted his weight slightly, his left hand still out of view. “Please get to the point.”
Gurney sighed, scratched his shoulder in a vaguely absent way, and fixed a dead stare on Robby Meese. “The thing is, I’ve been asked to provide personal security for Ms. Corazon, and I’m trying to decide how much to charge.”
“Charge? I don’t … I mean … I don’t see … What?”
“The thing is, I want to be fair. If I don’t really have to do anything—if I just have to hang around, keep my eyes open, be ready to handle what comes along—then that’s one kind of fee schedule. But if the situation requires, shall we say, preemptive action, then that’s another kind of fee schedule. You get my question here, Bobby?”
The eyelid tremor seemed to be getting worse. “Are you threatening me?”
“Am I threatening you? Why would I do that? Threatening you would be against the law. As a retired police officer, I have great respect for the law. Some of my best friends are police officers. Some of them are right here in Syracuse. Jimmy Schiff, for example. You might know him. Anyway, the thing is, I always like to do a fee analysis before I commit to a job. You can understand that, right? So let me ask you again: Do you know of any reason why my provision of personal security services to Ms. Corazon would require me to charge anything more than my normal fee?”
Meese started getting a shaky look in his eyes. “What the hell am I supposed to know about her security problems? What’s this got to do with me?”
“You’ve got a good point there, Bobby. You look like a nice young man, very handsome young man, who would never want to cause anybody any trouble. Am I right?”
“I’m not the one causing trouble.”
Gurney nodded slowly, waited, feeling the current shifting.
Meese bit his lower lip. “We had a great relationship. I didn’t want it to end the way it did. These stupid accusations. False charges. Lies. Defamation of character. Bullshit complaints to the police. Now you. I don’t even understand what you’re here for.”
“I told you what I’m here for.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense. You shouldn’t be bothering me. You should be visiting the scumbags she brought into her life. If she has security problems, it’s because of them.”
“Who would these scumbags be?”
Meese laughed. It was a wild, caroming sound. A theatrical sound effect. “Did you know she’s fucking her professor, her so-called academic adviser? Did you know she’s fucking everybody who could possibly advance her trashy career? Did you know she’s fucking Rudy Getz, the biggest scumbag in the whole fucking world? Did you know she’s completely fucking crazy? Did you know that?” Meese seemed to be riding an emotional horse that was getting away from him.
Gurney wanted to keep it going, see where it would lead. “No, I didn’t know any of that. But I’m grateful for the information, Robert. I didn’t realize she was crazy. And that’s the kind of thing that could affect my fee schedule, big-time. Providing security for a crazy woman can be a huge fucking pain in the ass. How crazy would you say she is?”
Meese shook his head. “You’ll find out. I’m not saying another word. You’ll find out. You know where I was this afternoon? At my attorney’s office. We’re taking legal action against that bitch. My advice to you is to stay away from her. Far away.” He slammed the door.
The slam was followed by the sound of two locks snapping in place. It might all be an act, thought Gurney, but it sure as hell was an interesting one.
Chapter 15
Escalation
As Gurney followed the directions of his GPS back toward the interstate, the murky reflection of a fuchsia sunset was spreading across Onondaga Lake. On just about any other upstate body of water, it might have been beautiful. What lurks in the backs of our minds, however, has a profound effect on the way we process the data our optic nerves transmit. Thus what Gurney saw was not a reflected sunset but the imagined hell of a chemical fire burning on the toxic lake bed fifty feet below the surface.
He was aware that remediation efforts were addressing the damage to the lake. But this movement in the right direction made little difference in how he saw the place. In an odd way, it made it worse. Like seeing a guy coming out of an AA meeting makes his problem look more serious than seeing him coming out of a bar.
A few minutes after he got on I-81, Gurney’s phone rang. The ID was from his home landline. He glanced at the time. It was 6:58 P.M. Madeleine would have been home from her part-time job at the clinic for at least three-quarters of an hour. He felt a little stab of guilt.
“Hi, sorry, I should have called,” he said quickly.
“Where are you?” She sounded more concerned than annoyed.
“Between Syracuse and Binghamton. I should be home a bit after eight.”
“You were with that Clinter fellow that long?”
“With him, with Jack Hardwick on the phone, in my car with case documents Hardwick e-mailed me, with Kim Corazon’s ex-boyfriend, et cetera, et cetera.”
“The stalker?”
“I’m not sure what he is. For that matter I’m not sure what Clinter is either.”
“What you told me last night made him sound dangerously unstable.”
“Yeah, well, he might be. Then again …”
“You’d better pay attention to—”
Gurney had driven into a cell dead zone. The connection was broken. He decided to wait for her to call him back. He stood the phone upright in one of the drink holders in the console. Less than a minute later, it rang.
“The last thing I heard you say,” he began, “was that I’d better pay attention to something.”
“Hello?”
“I’m here. We were in a dead spot.”
“I’m sorry—what did you say?” It was a female voice, but not Madeleine’s.
“Oh, sorry, I thought it was someone else.”
“Dave? This is Kim. Are you in the middle of something?”
“That’s all right. By the way, sorry I didn’t get back to you. What’s happening?”
“You got my message? That RAM is going ahead with the first installment?”
“Something like that. ‘Project is a total go,’ I think is what you said.”
“The first show will air this Sunday. I had no idea it would happen so fast. They’re using the rough demo material I shot with Ruth Blum, just like Rudy Getz said. And they want me to proceed with as many more interviews as we can do with the other families. The series will run on consecutive Sundays.”
“So things are moving ahead the way you were hoping?”
“Definitely.”
“But?”
“Oh, I don’t have any reservations about that. That’s all great.”
“But?”
“But … I have a … a silly little problem here.”
“Yes?”
“The lights. They’re out again.”
“The lights in your apartment?”
“Yes. I told you about the time all the bulbs were loosened?”
“That’s been done again?”
“No. I checked the lamp in the living room, and the bulb is tight. So I guess it must be the circuit breaker. But there’s no way I’m going down in the basement to check it.”
“Have you called anybody?”
“They don’t consider this an emergency.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“The police. They might be able to ask somebody to drop by later. But I shouldn’t count on it. Circuit breakers are not a police matter, they said. I should call the landlord, or a maintenance person, or an electrician, or a friendly neighbor, or, apparently, anybody but them.”
“Did you?”
“Call my landlord? Sure. Got his voice mail. God only knows if or when he checks it. Maintenance guy? Sure. But he’s down in Cortland working at another building owned by the same guy. Says it’s ridiculous for him to drive clear up to Syracuse to flip a circuit breaker. No way he’s going to do that. The electrician I called wants a hundred-fifty-dollar minimum to come to the house. And I don’t have any friendly neighbors.” She paused. “So that’s … my silly little problem. Any advice?”
“Are you in your apartment now?”
“No. I came back out. I’m in my car. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be in there with no lights. I’d keep thinking about the basement and what could be down there.”
“Any chance you could go back home, stay at your mother’s until things get sorted out?”
“No!” Her response was as angry as the last time he’d raised the issue. “That’s not my home anymore—this is my home. I’m not running off like a frightened little girl to my mommy, just because some asshole is playing games with me.”
But a frightened little girl is exactly what she sounded like to Gurney. A frightened little girl trying to act the way she thought a grown-up would act. The image filled him with an almost painful feeling of anxiety and responsibility.
“Okay,” he said, impulsively moving into the right lane and onto an exit ramp at the last second. “Stay where you are. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
After driving most of the way at eighty miles an hour, nineteen minutes later he was back in Syracuse on Kim Corazon’s rundown block, parked across the street from her apartment. Dusk had slipped into night, and Gurney hardly recognized the place he’d seen in the daylight two days earlier. He reached into his glove box and took out a heavy black metal flashlight.