Nick sat in the back with a couple of guys he had met at the academy. Teteni was slender and neat, with rimless glasses and a crisp white shirt. He looked like a professor, Nick thought.
Teteni began talking about a New York City psychiatrist named Dr. James Brussel, with whom Teteni had worked. It was Dr. Brussel who was asked by the New York police in 1957 to help solve the Mad Bomber case. Nick remembered that. He’d been a freshman at Long Beach State when the arrest was made. The Mad Bomber had detonated thirty bombs in New York City since 1942. His targets had included Radio City Music Hall and Grand Central Station. He had sent angry, revealing letters to various newspapers. Dr. Brussel was given crime scene photographs and copies of the letters and asked to describe the bomber for the police. Doug Teteni read the last few words of the description Brussel had given:
“Look for a heavy man. Middle-aged. Foreign-born. Roman Catholic. Single. Lives with a brother or sister. When you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned.”
Teteni went on to say that when police arrested George Metesky for the bombings, he was heavy, single, middle-aged, foreign-born, Roman Catholic, and lived with not one sister but two. When Metesky was allowed to put on his jacket for the trip to the station, he put on a double-breasted suit coat and buttoned it.
A respectful murmur rose in the room. Nick was stunned and mystified by the details Brussel had come up with. Seemed like magic or witchcraft. He wondered for a second if he was in the wrong profession altogether. He would never have been able to do what Brussel did.
Teteni went on to say that, because of the letters, the Mad Bomber case had actually been fairly simple. Metesky had revealed a lot about himself in the letters he wrote. The buttoning of the coat was a small extrapolation Brussel had made based on the neatness and craft with which Metesky had constructed and concealed the bombs.
But Brussel would never have known so much about the suspect if he had not used inductive reasoning. Brussel and Teteni were encouraging homicide investigators across the nation to “observe the singularities of a crime” and draw “larger conclusions about the nature and motive of the criminal.” To understand who might be responsible for a crime, Teteni said, you had to “read the murderer’s book.” Teteni said that in order to catch certain killers, “detectives should learn to think like them.”
Nick got the uneasy and thrilling feeling that he was just now beginning to comprehend something very important.
We need to learn to think like criminals, said Teteni, because of the “changing nature” of murder in America. He said that traditionally, people were killed by people who knew them and lived close by. Now, said Teteni, with society becoming more mobile, opportunities were arising for a new kind of killer. This was the “stranger killer,” who preyed upon unknown victims, often for sexual reasons. Teteni predicted that in the decades to come, greater mobility and less stability in the United States would create rising homicide rates and falling solution rates. That greater mobility and less stability, though often considered to be the mark of a free and prosperous society, would also lead to a weakening of traditions that kept our society in balance.
Nick thought of Ronnie Joe Fowler. Mobile. Sex attack in Oregon. Maybe one here? But his alibi was good. He’d been where he said he was on Tuesday, October first. Out on Woodland in Laguna Canyon. Dodge City. Not the SunBlesst packinghouse in Tustin.
Still, Nick agreed with Teteni. The changes that were coming. Nick had never quite connected his gut feeling that his country was slipping somehow, with the mobility that Teteni talked about. But Nick had felt strongly for the last year or so that things were unraveling and would not be reraveled. Destroying to save. Mutual Assured Destruction. PCP to LSD. Kill the pigs. Burn down the village, your mind, your city, the world. He’d talked with David and Andy about these things not long ago. David was hopeful that meaningful, relevant Christian ministries such as his own would help maintain a balance. Andy thought the changes were good and America needed them. Nick didn’t know what to think.
Next, Teteni talked about “singularity,” in the sense that anything unique or unusual about a crime scene could be used to suggest what kind of person had committed the act. For instance, he said, a murder victim whose face was left covered by the killer with her own jacket was killed by someone with an active sense of right and wrong. He covers because he is ashamed of what he’s done. Or a rapist who attacks suddenly from behind, with deadly force, is probably inexperienced and uncomfortable around women. He can’t persuade her to go off with him to a safer place. The investigators will find him to be reclusive and physically unattractive. Teteni said that the more unique and unusual things were found in a crime scene, the better chances they had of solving the crime.
Nick tried to figure Janelle Vonn’s head being cut off. A way to emphasize a need for silence? What could she know that would warrant murder and mutilation? Was it for something she had said, or even thought? How did this relate to the fact that she was raped? Could she have been the victim of one of these new “stranger killers” who was not even in California anymore?
Last, Teteni then talked about sexual fantasy, control over helpless individuals and perpetrators who did not experience remorse. Perps who had once wanted to be policemen. Perps who took “mementos.” Perps who went back to the crime scene. Perps who made him think that he was in the presence of evil, though that word was imprecise and out of fashion at the bureau now.
Teteni smiled weakly and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. It looked to Nick like Teteni’s job was taking a lot out of him. Reminded him of David.
After the class, Teteni sat at a table in the back of the room and examined the crime scene photographs from several case files brought by the detectives. Each detective told Teteni the basic facts of the case while the FBI special agent considered the photos. The detectives were told not to describe their prime suspects, if they had one.
Nick stood up close so he could see the pictures, too, and try to understand how Teteni was learning from them. Unlike Dr. Brussel’s dramatically detailed description, Teteni’s speculations were more general but still practical.
When it was his turn, he handed Teteni the packinghouse photographs and described what they had discovered so far.
Teteni set the file on the table. Then opened it to the crime scene pictures. He listened and turned the pictures while Nick talked.
Nick saw that Teteni was patient and focused, but somehow methodical, too. He appeared to spend exactly the same amount of time on each photo. His hand ready to turn it over. Like an internal clock was ticking.
Finally he looked up at Nick.
“This packinghouse closed operations when?”
“Sixty-four.”
“It’s hidden in the orange groves, or at least obscured by them?”
“Obscured.”
Teteni flipped to a packinghouse exterior. Nick could see the orange trees buffeted by the wind.
“You probably wouldn’t know about it unless you had lived in the area?”
“Probably not.”
“Visible from any public road?”
“No.”
“Transients use it for sleeping, maybe young people for sex and drinking and drug use?”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t killed there?”
“No. We haven’t found out where yet.”
“Vaginally raped?”
“Yes sir.”
Teteni turned to a picture of Janelle’s severed head. Eyes open. Seeing nothing. “I think it’s a ruse.”
“Sir?”
“Call me Doug. This is not a stranger killing. This has nothing to do with transients. He knew her. He believes that she insulted and betrayed him in some way that is unspeakable to him. He killed her on impulse, by strangulation-no weapons and very little forethought. If he obtained the saw himself, it was likely after he’d killed her. More likely that he stumbled on it in some way, that it was already there, or already in his possession for other reasons. He removed her head to symbolically make sure she would never insult and betray him again. And to make himself appear insane. He placed her body here, in surroundings unrelated to her or to himself. I don’t think he’s done this kind of thing before and I don’t think he’ll do it again.”