And now for the big question. “So, could you run through the profile for me?”
“You actually want to hear the profile?”
Careful, Pat.
“Yeah. I do.”
She hesitated for a moment. “Hmm. OK. Well, I’ve been revising it all morning in light of Jolene’s abduction. It helped me pass the time while I rode back from Charlotte with two very large, very hairy state troopers. I think they were both named Bubba.”
I smiled.
“I should mention I don’t like doing verbal profiles. Too many details get lost, forgotten, misunderstood…”
“I promise that whatever you say will not be held against you.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Intimately.”
Hmm. I’m not sure that came out right.
Or maybe it did.
“Give me a few minutes to collect my thoughts.”
We drove in silence up the winding road toward Arrowhead Mountain. I was anxious to hear what she had to say but forced myself not to bother her. After about twenty minutes Lien-hua looked up from her notes.
“OK,” she said. “Here we go. Looking at the style of killings and the demographics of crime in this region of the country, I’d say he’s Caucasian. Definitely male. Based on the sophistication of the crimes, the organization displayed, and the intricate way he’s linking the crimes for us, I’d say our offender is older, probably late thirties, early forties. He’s experienced. These aren’t the first crimes he’s committed, but he hasn’t been caught, hasn’t served time. He works alone, no partner.”
“How do you know?”
“Our guy is proud of his work, confident, arrogant. As you noted from his phone call, narcissistic. He wouldn’t want to share the limelight with anyone. He works solo. High birth order, possibly an only child.”
“What about military service?”
“No, he would look at it as beneath him. Too menial.”
Hmm. She was pretty good.
“He’s not trying to hide the identities of the victims in any way. He wants us to know who he killed and even when she died-though I don’t know why yet. His behavior at the scenes is very ritualistic. The posing, the yellow ribbon, the clues from his next victim, and the chess piece are all part of his signature. It’s all very elaborate, very specific. But yet each crime is unique. And everything he’s done, including the phone call, speaks of his need to control others.”
“Hang on. Back up a minute.”
“What?”
“Signature. I’ve read some conflicting research on it. Apparently, it’s not as stable as they used to think.”
She wavered her head back and forth to show me she wasn’t convinced. “Still inconclusive. Basically, whatever an offender does at a crime scene that he doesn’t need to do in order to commit the crime tells us something about him, about his past or his priorities-his goals. That’s his signature. Does he commit overkill by stabbing the victim more than necessary? That shows rage. Does he mutilate the bodies in a specific way, take a unique souvenir from the victims, or leave clues for the police? That’s all signature. Modus operandi is more the way he commits the crime.”
“But neither MO nor signature is completely static or consistent,” I said.
“Right.” She cleared her throat slightly. “So let me give you a little test, Dr. Bowers. Why do MO and signature change?”
Easy. No problem.
“Well, in every series of crimes you have escalation and adaptation,” I said. “In addition, sometimes offenders change how they commit a crime and what they do at the crime because of the victim’s reaction. For example, if a woman struggles with a rapist, he might bring a knife to the next crime to threaten his victim, or some kind of restraints to subdue her. Changes in his life situation, personal injuries, traumas, things like that affect killers just like they affect the rest of us. Or he might begin to take steps to destroy or reduce physical evidence after he comes under suspicion or is interviewed or tested for DNA by the police.” I paused, thinking. “OK, how did I do?”
“I’d give that a B+.”
“What? Why not an A?”
I liked the way we’d slipped into bantering with each other. It felt natural, comfortable to be talking with her.
I aimed the car toward the curve of the road up ahead. A splash of early morning sunlight landed on the windshield.
“You left out experience,” she said. “Just like in any profession, he gets better with experience.”
Man, and I knew that one too. “OK,” I said. “You win.”
She consulted her notes again, smiling slightly. “No blitz attacks, which tells me he’s able to gain the trust of his victims. Probably a smooth talker, very manipulative. He keeps records of the crimes, writes about them. Maybe in a journal or a diary, or even a blog. His need to control women leads me to believe he’s been married and might still be, but if he is, his wife doesn’t know about his double life. He’s addicted to power, domination, and control, but the irony is that even though he prides himself on being in control, he can’t control himself. He can’t stop. He can’t resist showing off.”
So far, despite my natural tendency to discount profiles, I couldn’t argue with anything she’d said. It all seemed to fit.
“He’s forensically aware, maybe even served in law enforcement. An observation: apart from the first murder, none of the abduction sites were the same as the murder sites or the dump sites. He might be doing that to confuse us, or to show off, I’m not sure yet. His elaborate cat-and-mouse tactics and ability to steal from his future victims and the whole incident at the mall show a high degree of premeditation and versatility-breaking and entering, robbery, stalking, abduction, murder. This man has a high IQ-above average for sure, maybe even genius level. He’s familiar with the area and probably lives nearby, or went to high school or college here at some point.”
I nodded. “That fits the geographic profile.” The turnoff to the trail was just ahead; I slowed down and eased up the dirt road that led to the trailhead. “The farther a body is from a main road, the more likely it is the offender is local and familiar with the area,” I said. “It’s a pretty stable pattern in geo profiling.”
“Dr. Bowers, why do you always say derisive things about profiling but then refer to your work as geographic profiling? You’re a profiler too.”
Ouch. That hurts.
“No need to get personal,” I said. “After all, I thought we were friends.”
She cleared her throat. “Based on how he responded to you at the mall, I’d say he works in a job that requires good judgment and quick thinking. And he’s able to compartmentalize this area of his life. His co-workers wouldn’t even have a clue about the killings. He’s been doing it for a long time, Pat, and he’s not going to stop until the day he dies or the day we take him down.”
Now she was talking my language. I pulled over to the edge of the road and stopped next to a sign announcing that we had arrived at Upper Ridgeline Trail.
We climbed out of the car, and I grabbed the backpack filled with my climbing gear.
“You think you’ll need all that?” she asked.
“Never know,” I said, heaving the pack onto my shoulders. “There are a lot of cliffs in the area; we may need to get a different perspective on the scene. By the way, I’m impressed with your profile. Really. I am. Usually profilers just repeat what we already know about a crime. I think you’ve uncovered some of what this guy is really about.”
“Why, thank you, Dr. Bowers,” she said politely. “So what’s my grade?”
“B.”
“Wait a minute, I gave you a B+.”
I grinned. “I know. I think you grade on the curve.”
The sun was blazing through the liquid sky, burning off the lowlying fog and lighting up the patchwork of autumn colors covering the mountain range. A few clouds had found their way into the morning sky and wandered around just east of us. It had rained last night, and the ground smelled damp, pungent. A little musky. All around me the rain-washed brightness of the day seemed solid enough to touch.