“You’ll get no argument there, Gracie,” I said. “But remember, in almost every example of serial couples you’re referring to, sexual assault was also a feature—and none of the throwaway deaths have exhibited any such aspect.”
“Yes, but you just said it,” Gracie protested. “In almost every case—some teams got their gratification simply from the murders.”
“Correct again,” Mike replied, all seriousness, now, his flirtation for the time suspended. “So let’s go on to say, for the sake of argument, that we have a serial team on our hands: two people—or probably, like I said, more than two—for whom sexual assault is not part of the goal. They get off on the killings alone. But how do you explain the staging of the death scenes? When has a serial team, or any serial killer, for that matter, exhibited that kind of careful, tidy cover-up? Serials take trophies, and even, in most cases, want their victims found, usually in horrifying shape. Look at Ted Bundy, supposedly the king brain of the serials—he used to take victims’ heads home and use them as centerpieces on his table, for Christ’s sake. Plus serials, again almost always, claim the credit for the kills, in some way—if not before then after they’re caught. Some even boast about the details—as Bundy eventually did—in terms that’re deliberately provocative.”
“Right,” I agreed. “And think about the notification to Steve Spinetti’s office, in that light: it contained none of the attempts to taunt law enforcement or, conversely, of the furtiveness of usual serials. It was a simple, straightforward statement, one that seemed to say, ‘Go there quickly, and find her body before it is further and publicly desecrated.’ It was so nondescript that nobody even made note of it, at first. None of that suggests your usual stranger murder, does it?”
Gracie shook her head at last, and let out a long breath. “No…”
“But even then,” I added, “the official investigators didn’t get the main point: the intimacy of parts of the scene—the arrangement of Shelby’s personal things, along with the actual lividity in the body, which showed that not only was someone with her right after she died, but that she’d likely known the person who was with her, quite possibly well. Contrast that with the supposed brutality of the ‘murder scene,’ and the profile simply doesn’t work. To say nothing of the fact that those carefully tended possessions would have been prime trophies, for a serial.”
“Yeah.” Gracie nodded, less reluctantly than as though she had some difficult facts to add. But she had one last ounce of fight left in her: rallying, she shook her head, as if to clear it of all we’d said, then protested, “But, see, there’s still one thing I don’t get. I’ve read your book on Laszlo Kreizler, Trajan. And I’ve heard both of you, in other places, voice your objections to the limits of forensic science—but you used forensic science yourselves, in reaching your conclusions about Shelby Capamagio!”
“You apparently didn’t read my book very closely, Gracie,” I countered. “We object, as Dr. Kreizler did, to the manner in which criminal science has consistently been coerced into becoming forensic science—not only because it so heavily serves the aims of law enforcement and prosecutory officials, but because it supports their tendency toward pursuing their initial theory of a case.”
“And so, Gracie, we limit ourselves to criminal science,” Mike added quickly, speaking once again with what I suppose he thought was great charm, but which was coming off more like indulgence, and as such didn’t appear (to my rusty eyes, at least) to be having much effect on her. “Which means we pay careful attention to the differences between the way evidence is collected by experts and teams who are independent, and the idiots—not you, of course—who are the paid employees of the state, meaning the prosecution, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time. The Capamagio scene was a good example of that. Weaver and Kolmback collected what they needed to support their own as well as law enforcement’s initial theories—theories they wanted to be true, or were told would be true, to serve both their investigative purposes and their own as well as their bosses’ political ambitions. But once we were in, we collected anything that we could, in the time we had, regardless of where it might lead. On the scene and later, we sorted through all that information, guided by only one thing.”
Gracie nodded a bit. “The context of Shelby’s life,” she said, looking from Mike to me. “As Dr. Kreizler would have put it.”
“Correct,” I replied. “The context of Shelby’s life. Those theories that only made sense given who she was, what she’d been through, who her friends and boyfriends were, what she wanted out of life—things that the DA’s office, and the governor’s people above them, really couldn’t care less about. To that crowd, Shelby was and remains just one thing: another throwaway child, and therefore part of a growing and embarrassing problem. But she was, let me tell you, a whole lot more. That girl was a house afire—indeed, in some particular way, all of the dead throwaways seem to have had one thing in common: they were not pathetic, lost souls, they were kids fighting back against the situation into which they’d been thrown, and they were kids with ambitions of their own. Shelby, bound and determined to enjoy the good life, rather than slide into the tweaker hell of her parents; Kyle Howard, who wanted to be a literary scholar; Kelsey Kozersky, who had a passionate desire to defend abused horses, and to work with the best of those animals, too—in all of these, and I suspect in the boy Donnie’s life, there isn’t the suggestion of passive victims, willing to accept what life had thrown at them. That, I believe, is the most important connection, concerning how and even more why they died; a connection that we will need to examine more closely—when we get the chance…”
And I hoped that chance was coming, now: for Gracie had finally hung her head in resignation, as she began to toy with her little Jimmy Choo black flats. “I see that—I do,” she murmured. “And I also see that your way of looking at the case does effectively rule the serial aspect out. But—I’m afraid there’s another reason I’ve been asking all these questions. I’m about to tell you guys something that, and I’m serious, will mean the end of my career, if it’s revealed that I was the one who leaked it. I’m not like you two—I can’t just go off and teach some course at SUNY. I’ve got to keep my public career going, at least to the point where I can publish—maybe not publish anything as fundamental as your book on Dr. Kreizler, Trajan, but something. On the other hand—you ought to know. You’ve been straight with me, and I owe you that much. But I warn you, guys—it doesn’t get any more reassuring, or smell any better, the closer you get to it. Because you think you’re one step ahead of them, but—I’m not so sure. And when you hear exactly what they’re doing, you might understand why it’s taking them so long to set their scheme up…”
{iv.}
Mike and I glanced at each other, somewhat surprised at the depth of Gracie’s passion. She’d already told us an awful lot, without thinking that she was putting her career in jeopardy; but there was plainly another dimension to be explored, one that frightened even her, and it was all I could do to override the growing pain in my stump and continue to sound measured.
“All right, Gracie,” I said. “I think we can manage that pledge.”
“And you’ll vouch for your—” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the entryway. “Your apprentice out there?”
“Hey, who’m I gonna tell?” Lucas called.
“Lucas!” I said sternly. “This is important—get serious or I’ll hit you with an entire brick!”
“Nice,” Lucas mumbled. “Nice way for a doctor to talk…”
“Don’t worry about him, Gracie,” Mike said. “Go ahead.”
Our guest turned from one of us to the other a last time, trepidation all over her face; but then, at last, she began: “Okay—so, when I say that they might be more than a step behind you guys, I’m not making it up. And I’m afraid you only have yourself to blame, Trajan. When you delivered your lecture to Frank Mangold and his sniper buddy the other night, the pair of them may not have taken you s
eriously, but everybody else who was listening certainly did. See, I think you guys have let yourselves get a little overwhelmed by being run out of New York—”
“We weren’t run out—” Mike started, but I cut him off:
“Shut up, Michael, and let Gracie finish.”
Mike shrugged the point off, and Gracie went on: “My point being, whatever it was that caused you guys to leave New York, I think you underestimate how much of a worry you can still be to law enforcement upstate. Hell, even in the city, now that that nasty little Irishman’s left the police commissioner’s office, there are already rumors—which you did not hear from me—that his replacement and the new mayor regret what happened, and might be open to you two coming back in your…informal capacity. If you’ll agree to check with them in the future, that is, before going public with your conclusions, and if you won’t keep making the NYPD and the lab look stupid.”
“We promise nothing,” Mike said imperiously, once again trying to be coy with Gracie; but this really wasn’t the time for it:
“Mike, I thought I told you to shut up,” I said, very seriously, before Gracie continued:
“Anyway, up here, the effect is even more pronounced. Just look at how the mere thought of your getting actively involved in this case has made law enforcement in this whole area—not just Burgoyne County—have kittens.”
“All right,” I said, perhaps a bit impatiently. “So we still have our mojo. Or something vaguely resembling it. What’s that got to do with the case?”
“Well, like I said,” Gracie answered, “everybody was listening very closely when you declared that Latrell had told you about who was behind at least the positioning of the boy Donnie’s body, using the word ‘them.’ There were reporters around, by that point, and they heard it, too; so the higher-ups knew they weren’t going to get away with pinning this on a lone killer—which made their job about a hundred times harder. I mean, think about it, if they’d just wanted to haul in one repeat offender and frame him, don’t you think they would have done it by now? Of course! But too many people are aware that you’ve said pretty definitively that this is not a one-man job—that’s part of the reason I wanted you to give me your argument. I wanted to know that I could be sure, myself.” She paused, glancing at Mike and smiling just a bit. “It certainly wasn’t for the pleasure of listening to Dr. Smooth, over here…”
“Hey,” Mike replied instantly, moving a few inches away from her. “I’ve just been trying to protect you from the thoughtlessness of my severely desocialized partner over there, Dr. Chang. But if you consider it such a huge imposition—”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Michael,” Gracie laughed quickly, pulling him back. “Wo oi ni.” (Which I knew meant “I love you,” from hearing, I’m sorry to say, Mike call it out to Chinese strippers, on nights when he was particularly plastered.) “You know that.”
Mike was pleased by their renewed proximity and her words, but he still managed to groan, “You know, I really do not remember you being this cold in New York, Gracie…”
“Stop digging your hole deeper, idiot,” I told my partner, at which our guest laughed again, this time in sympathy, and touched Mike’s chin, pulling his head up. “Come on, Gracie,” I said, sensing we were nearing the point of this meeting, and not wanting to dilute it with any more nonsense. “Let’s have the whole thing, if you please.”
Taking one more big breath, Gracie lit one of her own cigarettes and began to tell the tale I’d been afraid we were going to hear: “The reason it’s taking them so long to pick their sucker, Trajan, is because, like I say, it can’t be a sucker, anymore—it’s got to be at least a pair of them. And finding one chump you can sweat into confessing to any part of child serial murder is enough, but finding two? That’s not easy. Oh, there’s candidates available, but so far, none of them have been half-witted enough to fill the bill. But today…Today I heard that they’ve actually got a couple who look like they’ll do. A man and a woman, married, who’ve been brought up on molestation and child pornography charges before. And they’re getting it all in place, the couple, the body, the evidence—they’re right on the verge of making it happen.”
I said nothing, just kept trying to pace the pain in my thigh away; but Mike managed to murmur “Jesus,” almost breathlessly, having once again halted his attempts at flirtation dead in their tracks. It wasn’t hard to see why, either: the moment of confrontation seemed to be dead ahead, and what that might mean for the two of us was hard to judge—but it wasn’t likely to be pleasant. Everything from our exclusion from all future cases in the area to threats against our jobs at SUNY certainly seemed in the offing.
“What about names?” I asked, forcing myself to move on to more concrete matters. “Have you found out who this couple are, where they live, anything we might actually use?”
“I’m getting there,” Gracie answered quickly. “See, one of Cathy Donovan’s minions has got a huge crush on me—”
Mike stared at her in disbelief. “Oh. That’s great. I take endless shit, while you’re off playing around with some Irish gweilo in Fraser who’s got an Asian fetish.”
My partner was, in truth, generally a fairly suave character with the ladies—but he really didn’t know which foot to put in his mouth next, in Gracie’s case: she once again frowned and whaled on his arm with her fist, a sight that gave me some small satisfaction. “Damn it, Michael, I just told you—he has a crush on me. And I’m using it, that’s all.”
As Mike moaned I studied Gracie more carefully, finally asking, “And us? Are we being used, as well, Gracie?” She looked suitably taken aback, which had been the point of my question; and before she had time to express her resentment, I continued: “Forgive me. An unworthy remark, but one designed to produce the response it did. I believe you have come here with only the best intentions, which include beating the tar out of my colleague.”
Gracie smiled, though Mike did not, and I half-expected to hear Lucas laugh from outside; yet—strangely, it seemed—he did not.
“But do tell me one thing,” I continued. “How, exactly, have you come to work so closely with all these people, including, apparently, Frank Mangold and the BCI?”
Gracie nodded. “Very good, Dr. Jones. See, a while back, I came to the realization that I’m sure you did long ago—that the job description ‘criminal profiler’ just doesn’t mean what it used to.”
“No,” I said, trying not to let my own emotions on the subject show. “It certainly does not.”
“Oh, I get it, Gracie,” Mike needled, sensing an opportunity to return fire. “You’ve changed your business card.”
But she only balled another fist at him, making him cover his arm and shy away. “Don’t start with me again, you. I did what I had to, when I got up here. Just like you guys did. And in my case, yes, that meant a slight change in how I defined myself, professionally.”
“And just which title did you pull out of your hat, Gracie?” I asked.
She turned my way, figuring that I wasn’t going to like what I heard. “I’m now known as an expert in ‘Criminal Threat Assessment.’ Fairly clever, if I say so myself—and it’s opened a lot of doors.”
I nodded. “It’s actually quite brilliant,” I said, surprising her. “Exploiting all the current fears in one name—seriously, Gracie, well done. But can we ask what the job actually consists of?”
“Yes,” she replied, “although I’m sure you’ve already guessed. For the most part, I’ve been dealing in geographic profiling. Not quite the same thing as psychological profiling, but it covers a lot of the same ground—mapping out kill patterns, trying to determine stalking grounds, anticipate where murderers may strike next, all of it. Not a tough leap.”
“No,” I answered. “You’ll get no argument from me.”
“Yeah?” Mike said skeptically. “Well, you will from me. I mean, come on, Gracie—in the old days, wŏ de ài”—which I was also aware, from the same unfortunate experiences with Mike and strippers
, translated to “my love”—“the main elements of geographic profiling—and Trajan will check me if I’m wrong here—were part of psychological profiling. All that mapping of crimes, connecting the sites through the idea of the killer as a predator with a defined hunting ground—there’s nothing new, there. Even Dr. Kreizler practiced a form of it, and that was over a century ago.”
“Hang on, Mike,” I interrupted, knowing his last point to be accurate, but now certain that Gracie had come to us with no mixed motives and wanting to help her out. “I’ve met Kim Rossmo,” I went on, speaking of the Canadian police criminologist–turned–Texas State University professor who had devised geographic profiling, “and he’s a dedicated, clever man. Coming up with his system was, at least in part, a way to keep some of the most controversial principles of psychological profiling alive, in a professional world that’s grown increasingly hostile to them.”
“Correct,” Gracie answered proudly. “And, like I say, it’s opened a lot of doors. Particularly on this case. After all, the murders did all occur in Burgoyne County, and it is therefore logical to assume that the killer or, rather, the killers have some kind of passionate feeling toward or about the county itself. Which is a valuable thought to consider. Even Frank Mangold’s been able to see that much, and that’s how I’ve been of some use to him; and, in turn, how I’ve ingratiated myself with some of his people. Now, I’m sure I don’t need to show you the map I made up for them—it’s nothing that you haven’t already done yourselves, I’m betting.”
“Probably a safe bet,” I said, smiling just a bit.
“Right—but the main point is that, using it, the BCI were led to focus on Burgoyne County, and over here in the eastern part, in particular.” Steeling herself, Gracie retrieved another cigarette from her bag, lit it off her last, and continued: “I don’t know, though—I’m afraid I created a bit of a monster…See, Cathy Donovan’s boss basically does whatever Frank tells him to do when it comes to this kind of stuff. And so, using my map, Frank convinced the DA to go after a pair of suspects in this area. They’re on the offender rolls, but they’re not murderers, for God’s sake, and that’s what makes me feel so bad.”