“Those who should know killers best, often know them the least.”
“Yes.”
“And those around them suspect nothing at all.”
“That’s right, all too often they suspect nothing at all.”
“But,” she said, “it’s worse this way, that’s my point. With monsters, I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you had real monsters they’d be easy to identify, you know? Werewolves and vampires only look like the rest of us some of the time, sometimes they look like what they really are.”
Now I saw where she was going with this and concluded her thought for her. “But serial killers always look like the rest of us. They never really look like what they are.”
“Or maybe they always do.”
That was a troubling thought.
She looked at me intently. “I’ve been thinking about it since we talked about how clever criminals can be in prison — how they could ever act so inhuman to each other. Do you know how to turn someone into a monster?”
“I’m not sure. No.”
“Let him be himself without restraint.”
Then she went to her room and left me to sort through what she’d just said.
We’d had discussions on this subject before, and she’d quoted to me the words of Dr. Werjonic: “The road to the unthinkable is not paved by slight departures from your heart, but by tentative forays into it.”
Being yourself without restraint.
Taking deeper forays into your own heart.
Two ways of saying the same thing.
She reemerged, brought her cereal and a copy of Michael D. O’Brien’s novel Island of the World with her to the car, and we drove to see Lien-hua.
As I picked my way through the morning DC traffic, I reflected on what Tessa had just said about people turning into monsters.
I think it was Plato who first recorded asking people what they would do if they weren’t visible — if they could do anything without consequence or chance of discovery. Almost no one answered the question by listing all the good things they would do for other people. Instead, they fantasized about all the things they could get away with, all the things that society and culture and their own consciences constrained them from doing on a day-to-day basis — a Lord of the Flies sort of thing.
Inadvertently, both Plato and Tessa had identified one of the premises of environmental criminology: crimes almost never occur in the presence of an authority figure.
Are students better behaved when the teacher steps out of the room? Are gang members more law-abiding when the police stop patrolling their neighborhoods? Is genocide less frequent when the UN stops imposing sanctions?
No, we don’t become kinder, gentler, and more virtuous in the absence of authority figures, we become more violent and ruthless. The unrest and genocide in Africa over the last thirty years hasn’t been because of closely guarded, fair laws, but in large part because of the absence of anyone to enforce them. The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery.
What an encouraging thought to start the day off with.
Lien-hua was asleep when we arrived.
I figured that, more than anything else, resting would help her recover, so rather than wake her, I lost myself in reviewing online case files from the previous Basque crimes while Tessa read her novel.
The morning became the afternoon.
At twelve thirty my daughter and I had a quiet lunch in the cafeteria, and at twenty after one Lien-hua was still asleep when I left to attend the briefing south of the city at NCAVC headquarters.
To try to catch a monster who looked just like the rest of us.
25
Ralph and I passed through security at Tarry Lawnmower Supply and met up with the rest of the team in conference room 2B.
Cassidy was there, as well as Doehring, SWAT Commander Shaw, and two other NCAVC agents, one of whom was the agent who’d been following up with Saundra Weathers’s friends and family to try to locate which campground she’d taken her daughter to. His name was Gavin Syssic and he was a slim, studious man close to retirement who knew how to get things done.
The other agent, a platinum blond woman in her late twenties named Sara Hammet, had been working with Doehring and his officers to interview the water treatment plant employees.
“Alright,” Ralph said. “We all know how much Pat loves briefings, so let’s make this one brief.”
“I appreciate that,” I replied.
I filled everyone in on Lien-hua’s progress, then Ralph nodded toward Sara. “What do we know about the people at the treatment facilities?”
“Not much. No one recognized Basque or remembered seeing him around. Neither did the woman who owns the car he stole, or the man who owns the garage where he stowed Lien-hua’s car.”
“And we still don’t know whose prints those were on the novel?”
“No.”
Doehring spoke up. “We talked with the owner of the apartment building Basque took Lien-hua to. The guy says that the man who rented the apartment called himself Loudon Caribes, paid six months’ rent in advance. Cash. He rented the place two weeks ago.”
“Six months?” Gavin shook his head soberly. “I guess Basque was definitely planning to use that place again.”
“Could have just been the normal lease time,” Doehring pointed out. “Anyway, wanna know what Caribes means?” He didn’t wait for a response. “It’s the root word for ‘cannibal.’”
Well, that was appropriate.
“Gavin,” I said, “go ahead and do a background on that name — Loudon Caribes — see if anything comes up. Also, look up other iterations of ‘caribes’ or ‘cannibal’ and the root words for ‘anthropophagy’ and ‘maneater.’ Add those to the mix.”
Anthropophagy was an antiquated word that meant “cannibal” and was really only used today by law enforcement agencies.
“Got it.” He typed a few notes into his laptop.
“Did you reach anyone who knows where Saundra Weathers is?” I asked him.
“No. Not yet.”
I spent some time detailing the geoprofile I’d come up with, and Doehring agreed to get some officers looking into possible sightings of Basque in the three hot zones I’d identified as likely anchor points for the crimes. “And,” I said, “let’s follow up on apartments, condos, and homes in those regions, see if any have been rented under this Caribes alias.”
Understanding the travel patterns of the victims of a crime spree reveals information about the travel patterns of the offender, so when I develop a geoprofile, I always consider not just the primary and secondary crime scene locations, but also the victimology. What are their preferred routes to and from work? Where were they going, and what were they doing when they encountered the offender? Where are their favorite places to hang out or eat at? I’m really interested in why and where the offender first met up with that victim, how his life intersected with hers.
Basque had been implicated in five murders in the DC area over the last year. “Let’s take a closer look at the places where the victims’ lives intersected. Maybe they all shopped at the same grocery store on their way home from work or bought life insurance through the same agent. I’m thinking the key to finding Basque is finding him through them.” I didn’t want to admit it, but I did anyway: “It’s possible he’s been taunting us with these other attacks and we haven’t noticed. And let’s see if any of the previous victims have any connections with me. Sara, I can do the online work, but with Lien-hua laid up, I—”
“Sure, I’m glad to make the calls.”
“Great.”
So, the process: We would establish the typical travel routes by interviewing family, friends, and coworkers to find out about the habits and known routine routes of the victims. Some of this we already had; some of it we needed to get.