Abandoned

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Go on. The words read: Say it. You’ll feel better when you do, I promise. It’s liberating.

I don’t know. Leo-as-Robert-Long types: I just don’t feel right about calling her—or any woman—that.

That’s just programming, brother. The radical feminist movement has conditioned men to be afraid. Let me give you an example. We all know the one word no man is allowed to say to a woman, right?

Cunt. Someone else types: The word of death.

That’s right. Now: Tell me what similar word exists in relation to men?

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

There you go. That’s what I’m talking about. How is that possible?

There are also probably ten times the number of pejoratives for women as there are for men. Leo says: We’ve spent more time throughout history putting women down.

Jesus. One of the men answers: You’re truly brainwashed, aren’t you?

Screw you.

Calm down, guys. The original typist soothes: We’ve all been where he is now, at least most of us have. Let me talk. You still there, Hurting?

I’m here.

Look, I read your story. Let me just ask you this: Are you angry at her? I want you to think for a minute before you answer. Really turn it over, and be honest. What’s the best word for the emotion you feel?

Leo drags out the pause. He finally types:

Hate.

Good. Well, not good, of course, but it’s honest. Now, why do you hate her?

Because. She stopped loving me for no good reason. She aborted my child without even consulting me. And she’s become an emotional stranger with no effort at all.

Okay, Hurting. Now I’m going to ask you another question, and again I want you to really think about it. You ready?

I’m ready.

Here it is: What kind of woman does that?

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.”

Leo types, continuing to play up his reluctance: I guess only a bitch would do that kind of thing.

Good! You’re almost there, brother. Take a breath, and step back. Look at the logic of what you just said. If a woman who’d do that kind of thing is a bitch, and that’s true—then why on earth would you have any questions or qualms about calling her one?

Cursor blinking silence.

I’m starting to see what you mean.

Of course you are, brother. It’s called truth. So?

So what?

So SAY IT. What is your ex-wife, brother? Not what kind of woman would do that, but what kind of a woman is she? What is she?

She’s … a bitch.

Say it again!

She’s a bitch. A fucking bitch.

What else?

A cunt. A lying, coldhearted, baby-murdering cunt!

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.

Whore. Someone has typed: Fucking whore.

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

Leo types: God, I fucking hate her. I HATE HER SO GOD DAMN MUCH! I wish …

He stops typing, waits.

You wish what, brother?

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

Go on, brother. It’s just us here. No one knows your face or your real name. Don’t hold back. What do you wish?

Leo types in a blur of letters: I wish she’d fucking die.

Silence. Then:

We’ve all been in that place. Don’t be ashamed. The first part of reclaiming your masculinity is being honest about your feelings for women. You know how you feel; they don’t. Don’t let them tell you how you’re “allowed” to feel, right?

I gotta go. Thanks.

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.”

“What can you tell us?” I ask.

“A few things. First: He’s probably from the western seaboard. My guess would be Southern California or hereabouts.”

“Why?”

“The victims we’re aware of come from Los Angeles, Oregon, and Nevada. It’s a broad area, but it’s still a comfort zone of sorts. That’s why I say Western Seaboard. I’m thinking SoCal because of the victim in Nevada. A perpetrator living in Oregon is less likely to stray to Vegas as a hunting ground than one who either lives in or grew up in Los Angeles.”

“That actually makes sense,” James allows.

Cooper ignores him. “You said the perpetrator is probably driven by finance as the primary motive, and I agree with you. Then why stay out here, where real estate’s so expensive? It’d be cheaper to set up shop in the Midwest, the South, or some areas in the East. He probably tells himself he’s here because it’s a good victim pool, and there is truth in that, but I think he set up shop here because it’s familiar territory.”

“I can see that,” I say, warming to this line of deduction.

“There are other things we can ascertain in the victim dumps. In both here and Oregon, he left the victims near the police. One on the steps of a police station. In Vegas, he left the victim on a side street. That would suggest he’s much more comfortable in California and Oregon than he is in Nevada.”

“Which means he’d spend more time there, meaning we should concentrate our efforts in those two states, right?” I ask.

He smiles at me, tips that imaginary hat again. “Yes indeed. It’s where he’ll be most predictable. He’ll stray away from the profile more in those areas outside his comfort zone.”

“But if that’s so,” Callie says, “wouldn’t that also be where he’s most likely to make a mistake?”

“You’d think so, but no. He’d be far more careful in unfamiliar territory, whereas he’d be more relaxed—however infinitesimally or subconsciously—in those comfort zones.”

“What else?” James ask, interested now.

“Prefacing all of this with ‘in my opinion,’ of course, I’d say that you can ignore all suburban neighborhoods. They’re too small and packed too close together. Neighbors want to know you and your business. I considered the woods in Oregon and the desert in Nevada but rejected those. I agree with the idea that he’d keep an eye on his victims while traveling, and that requires that he be on at least the outskirts, where Internet connectivity is still available.” He consults his notes briefly. “Business districts are a good choice, because people are by and large keeping their heads down. They don’t own a business zone the same way they do the space where they live, and so they’re less observant. It also would allow him to rent or buy the space he needs in the name of a business, giving his personal information another layer of protection. I considered warehouses, and while that’s still a possibility, I don’t think that’s how he’d go. Warehouses tend to be in out-of-the-way areas—good for him—but they also have a higher probability of being the victim of attempted burglaries or squatters.”

“Somewhere in between,” James says.

Cooper nods. “Just so, young Jim. Those side streets, away from the strip malls and the main arteries. Where they put the business parks and such. That setting would fulfill his needs for privacy while keeping him within shouting distance of the streets and freeways, which he requires based on his abduction pattern. He’s taken the victims we know of from what are essentially urban areas. That’s an uncertain affair, and he’d want to get them back to his lair as quickly as possible.”

“Urban areas seems so risky,” I say.

“Yes and no. People tend to be more observant in your residential enclaves. If he’s decisive enough—and it surely seems that he is—urban areas are better in many ways. You have the highways, you have the streets. You can get almost anywhere in Los Angeles, at the right time of day, within forty-five minutes.”

“That’s true,” James says. “He timed these abductions mid-evening, which would be after most rush hours.”

“Right again,” Cooper says. He shuffles through his notes, seems to find his place. “Here we go,” he continues. “He’d own the properties he’s using. He doesn’t want to have to deal with a landlord snooping around. The victim described concrete walls. That doesn’t point to office space, though I suppose he could have bought the building and put in some aftermarket changes.”

“That would leave a trail,” James says.

“I thought the same. If I were going to do it—and keep in mind that we’re in the realm of pure guesswork now—I’d buy a piece of land and build myself a small storage unit building.”

“Personal storage?” I ask.

“Just so. Build it, but don’t advertise, and make sure the front office is never open. No one thinks twice about places like that getting few visitors, or getting visitors at odd times of the day or night. They’re generally gated off, and there are places where you can pull a car in and empty it out without anyone seeing a thing. Security-camera placement isn’t unusual either.”

“Or climate control,” James adds. “More upscale places offer it as an option, for people who are storing climate sensitive belongings, such as paintings or books.”

“It does make sense,” I allow.

Cooper shrugs. “That’s where my road ends, I’m afraid. Not sure if it’ll help you much in the final analysis, and there’s more guesswork than certainty there, but you asked and I answered.”

I stare at the whiteboard, seeing it but not seeing it. My gaze unfocuses. Workmanlike, I read. Torture, I think. Decisive.

Something’s knocking, wanting to be seen.

“I know that look,” Earl says, his voice soft. “Whatcha thinking, Ms. Barrett?”

The vagueness coalesces.

“I’m thinking about a man with, so far as we know, a perfect record of abduction. He follows his prey, gets to know their routine, and then he swoops in and takes them cleanly. It’s something you said. He’s decisive. Confident.” I look at Cooper. “Trained?”

James responds first. “Possible. These abductions are precision activities. You don’t arrive at that level of competence naturally.”

Earl twirls his mustache. “Military? Law enforcement?”

“It’s just a thought.”

“That makes sense as much as anything else. Still guesswork, but good guesswork, I think.”

“We’ll look into it.” I hold my hand out for Cooper to shake, which he does. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate the insight.”

“My pleasure. What’s your next move, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m going to talk to someone I know who could do exactly what our perp does without breaking a sweat.”

“He’s ex-military, I take it?”

“She’s an ex-something.”