I recalled the scars and burns on Jennie's body, and I understood, as I suspected Jessica Parker had understood, that some scars go more than skin-deep, straight to the soul.
On the night of her parents' roast, according to the police report, Jennie had had the rare good fortune to be at a sleepover at a friend's house, only three blocks and a short walk through the woods from her own home. No arson inspectors were brought in to sift through the ashes, as there was no evident cause for suspicion, the house was small and wooden, and the local fire department found traces of cigarette butts sprinkled around the bed of Terry Margold, a known drunk and careless slob.
Beyond the age of adoption, Jennie was shuttled into the foster home system. Twice, she had to be relocated after accusations of sexual abuse that were never proven, though a medical examination-conducted when she was only thirteen and first entered the child welfare system-revealed that Jennie's virginity was a long and distant memory Her cervix was unnaturally enlarged with unusual erosion, indicating extensive and painful sexual activity with adult-sized male organs.
Reading through the thick ream of reports from various Ohio State Child Welfare Agency officials, over the years Jennie displayed none of the classic symptoms of abused childhoods- she remained well behaved, no trouble with the authorities, no truancy, no drugs, no alcohol, and no transparent personality disorders. Jennie Margold, in fact, was regarded as a shining exemplar of the welfare system's healing vitality and success. She remained a top student, popular, brilliant, talented, and driven.
I wasn't judging the hardworking welfare officials of that very fine state, nor did I doubt Jennie's precocious flair for deception. Yet somebody should have had enough sense to know that, contrary to all outward appearances, no child spawned in such a shower of horrors could emerge internally intact. In effect, the more normal she appeared the less normal she probably was.
In an analysis of possible motives regarding the recent murders, some anonymous investigator wrote:
Jennifer Margold would benefit from the administration murders in two very striking ways. She would exploit her knowledge to humiliate and professionally eliminate George Meany and maneuver herself into position as his replacement. She would also end up with a private fortune, estimated at some twelve and a half million dollars.
No kidding. These were the correct rational motives, but reason and logic had nothing to do with why Jennie killed.
Near the back of the report I found an attachment from a profiler named Terry Higgens with this more insightful description:
Serial killers are either internalizers or externalizers. The internalizer likes distance, likes to create separation between him/herself and the victim, and conceivably the crime. Most internalizers are predatory bombers or arsonists. Internalizers are cowardly and normally choose victims who are smaller or weaker, as a fair match is the last thing they want. There are exceptions, however. And when they tackle larger, more powerful victims they unleash a frenzied assault, a blitzkrieg of ferocity in an attempt to overwhelm and neutralize the victim.
It wasn't hard to see what led Terry Higgens to lump Jennie in this particular pool. In all likelihood, Jennie's first crime was murder through arson, and her MO in these more recent murders was a variation on the theme, killing anonymously from a distance, through surrogates. Also, no prey is more powerful than the United States government. Just as Terry Higgens diagnosed, Jennie had unleashed an assault that was fierce, unrelenting, and punishing, a frenzy of killing with such centrifugal impact it squashed our ability to react. Her diagnosis went on to say:
It should be further noted that many sociopathic individuals, particularly psychopathic serial killers, have a perverse fascination with police work. They attempt to get and stay near the police, hanging around cop bars, shooting ranges, places where the police tend to congregate. In fact, some have been known to attempt to become police.
As a final note, we would point out that pyschopaths are lifelong killers. They start with small crimes, they improve through experience, and they evolve higher-level skills. Recurring success breeds a psychosexual need to escalate their violence and achieve satisfaction by committing ever more heinous crimes.
I thought these observations sounded too clinical and detached to put any human face on. Certainly they did not sound like the Jennie I knew. I had never observed her revealing even a twinge of satisfaction or pleasure at the sight of her victims.
Like the rest of us, Jennie appeared horrified and appalled, though it was now clear that the Jennie you saw and the Jennie you got were very different species.
But as I thought about it, the ingredients of this foul casserole-an internalizer, a psychopath, a need to escalate the violence-clearly linked the perpetrator to the crime, nor was there the slightest doubt who choreographed this carnival of slaughter. Still, there's a wide gap between knowing it and proving it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Likewise, I thought Jennie's background and Terry Higgens's prognosis explained why Jennie plucked poor Jason Barnes from the immense and varied pool of government servants undergoing background checks. Essentially, Jennie hunted for herself, at least a reasonable mirror of herself, a psychological doppelganger she could knowingly bring into sharp focus for the rest of us, because, really, Jennie was describing someone she knew intimately: herself.
Ergo, Jennie was self-aware enough to know who she was, and how she got there. I knew that if I talked with psychiatrists they would tell me that for most, self-knowledge is the first step on the road to salvation and self-perfection. Yet for others, I think, it is the direct path to self-resignation. For whatever reasons, Jennie chose not to fight her inner demons; she chose to feed their terrible urges.
Perversely it was probably this same self-awareness that drew Jennie to the study of psychology-as girls of the sixties used to say, to find herself-just as it gave her the extraordinary acuity to understand other twisted minds. Recalling her words when we discussed Jason, she insisted that he was a victim of his past, that predestination grasped and led him, just as it guides us all. I think, looking back on it, that Jennie wasn't talking about Jason; she was offering me her Jungian rationalization for her own state of being.
But crazy as she might be, an insanity plea was out of the question. She knew right from wrong, and she knew that what she had done was in every moral sense wrong, because she went to such fierce and imaginative lengths to escape detection. In fact, Jason was a shadow of her own sad history in almost every way, except one-Jason eluded the conscription of fate, Jennie did not.
But in Larry's words, the Bureau now had a problem of Holy Shit proportions flopping around its plate. The scale, sophistication, and difficulty of the recent murders suggested a killer with long practice and varied experience. There had to be a long treadmill of escalation in Jennie's past. The Behavioral Science Unit now had to sift through every case Jennie ever worked-particularly her most notable successes-to determine whether the investigator might also have been the predator. Scary thought. But I had my own big problem.
As though reading my mind, Jennie interrupted my musings and asked, "So are we here to talk about your problems, or about mine?"
"You are my problem."
"Oh… Poor little Sean got his feelings hurt."
We were getting nowhere. Which was exactly where Jennie's taunts were meant to land us. But this was her idea, so somehow I was on her agenda, I thought I knew why and suggested, "You must be wondering how I knew."