The Pawn (8 page)

“I know. It seems simplistic, but why that time? Why that place? Why that victim? Locations have use patterns. If we study the sites associated with each crime and the time of day the crimes occurred, it gives us a glimpse into the world of the offender. People typically carry out their routine activities in the most convenient locations. We all do. It’s no different for killers. Just like everyone else, serial offenders tend to move in certain repetitive patterns and directions from their place of residence.”

I glanced across the room to see how I was doing.

Some of the team members had heard this type of thing before. Most large law enforcement agencies these days have at least one strategic crime analyst, and nearly all of them use some form of crime mapping or apply the principles of environmental psychology to their investigations—even if they don’t call the techniques by those names.

Most of the people in the room looked bored.

Well, that didn’t take long, and you still have fifteen minutes
to go.

“Every murder has at least four scenes,” I said. “The place of the initial encounter between the offender and the victim, the site of the attack or abduction, the location of the murder, and the final placement of the body.”

I flipped to an active screen that showed a satellite view of North Carolina, and then I used the cursor to zoom in on the western part of the state. As I moved the cursor, the images tipped horizontally, and the cursor glided like a tiny plane over the three-dimensional mountainous landscape.

I heard someone behind me. “It’s like Google Earth—on steroids.” Chuckles rolled around the room.

“Yeah,” I said, “and lots of them. This is one of the most powerfully integrated geographic information systems in the world. We call it F.A.L.C.O.N.”

“What’s that stand for?” someone asked.

I smiled and glanced at his name tag. “I don’t know, Officer Stilton. We haven’t come up with that part yet, just the acronym. That’s the way government works.” I got a couple grunts of acknowledgment for that. Not many, but it softened the mood in the room a little. “It’s a cooperative venture between the NSA and the FBI—with a little help from our friends at NASA and a certain animation company. I’m not supposed to tell you the name yet, though, not until the software is released.”

I heard Ralph’s voice. “Animation company?”

“We needed someone who actually knew what they were doing to help us with the graphics. They were happy to get a juicy government contract, and we were happy to get the best computer graphics minds in the world. Anyway, using this software, we can pinpoint any place on the earth’s surface down to half a centimeter or so. The team is still working on ways to see through cloud cover—don’t have that quite nailed down yet, but it’s coming. This is just the beta version. We’re hoping to have the prototype available to law enforcement agencies worldwide within the next two years.”

One of the officers I didn’t know spoke up. “Is that a live satellite feed?”

“Not quite,” I said. “Four-minute delay.”

I tapped the remote control, and a three-dimensional map appeared on the projection screen behind me. As I clicked on the screen, new layers overlaid on top of the previous ones, each layer with another array of circles, diamonds, or triangles. “This first map shows where we found each of the bodies,” I explained. “The next one, here”—I clicked the screen again and the diamonds appeared—“ has the residencies of the victims. If we know the abduction sites, I’ve made those appear as ovals.” Once again I clicked, and another layer appeared. “And when the murder site has been identified, you’ll see those in yellow diamonds.”

By now the screen looked a little overwhelming.

“Now, look when I overlay the roads, emphasizing the routes that provide the quickest and most convenient getaway and then compare that to the distribution of homes in the residential areas we’re looking at . . .” A series of glowing lines threaded together, connecting the clutter of symbols and figures, making sense of them, bringing order. “Then, if we impose what we know about the victims’ life patterns and travel routes at the time they were abducted—”

“How do we know those?” Margaret asked.

“Cell phone companies can track the location of each call placed and received through global positioning technology,” I said. “Most new cars also have GPS systems, including Mindy’s Corolla. I downloaded the routes Mindy traveled in her car as well as the time, duration, and location of her phone calls over the last couple of days before her murder. I found something interesting.”

“What’s that?” Agent Tucker asked.

“Based on what we know about the travel patterns of the other victims, you can see that they intersect in four distinct areas: out near the Stratford Hotel, the park next to Mission Memorial Hospital, the downtown district, and over near the university. It’s very possible our killer is trolling those locations looking for his prey.”

I clicked the screen again, and this time the screen had several pulsing, red, wedge-shaped regions. “We can see that the most likely locations of the initial encounter or abductions are here, here, and here.” I used a laser pointer to draw attention to the pulsating areas of the map. “By taking into consideration everything we know about the crime—the observable offender patterns, urban zoning, population distribution, topographic features, traffic flow, weather conditions at the time of the crime—we can extrapolate the anchor point—”

Oh, great word, Pat. That’ll really impress them.

“The what?” It was Sheriff Wallace.

“Extrapolate. It means to—”

“No, the ‘anchor point’ part.”

“Oh,” I said. “Anchor point, right. That’s the offender’s home base. Might be his house or maybe a girlfriend’s or a relative’s place. Maybe where he works. As long as his base is stable, we can use the principles of geographic profiling to pinpoint its most likely location.”

I took a drink of water.

Ten minutes and you’re out of here.

“Offenders tend not to commit crimes too close to their home base, or too far away from it. Once we’ve defined his hunting area and drawn a line connecting the two farthest crime scenes, we create the radius of a circle.” I did this on the screen with the laser pointer. “Within this circle here”—I clicked on the screen, and a blue-tinged circle appeared near the center of the larger circle—“there’s about a 50 percent chance our offender has his anchor point.”

“Just like pins on a bulletin board.” The officer who said it made sure he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.

I’d heard all this before, but still I felt my temperature rising. “Yes, the principle is the same. But we’re not just looking at crime distribution here; instead we’re taking into account sequence, distribution, origination, and timing. The order of the crimes is significant. The first crime in a series often occurs closest to the killer’s anchor point. Then he moves out as his hunting grounds get overrun with investigators. However, the body dump sites tend to move closer toward his anchor point as he gets more confident with each crime that he’s able to commit without getting caught. So timing and location are significant. Also, places carry meanings for people. We all view the world, our surroundings, through the lens of our personal experiences and perceptions. If I can figure out what the locations of this series of crimes mean to the offender, it’ll help me figure out what type of person we’re looking for. Instead of asking ‘Why did he do it?’ I ask ‘Why did he do it
here
?’ For example . . .”

I pulled up a photo of Jamie McNaab. “Jamie was found beside a parking lot. Now look back behind her, just to the right, there”—I pointed with the laser pointer—“See? There’s a sign that reads ‘No Loitering.’ It’s subtle but symbolic.” I flipped to a picture of the crime scene of Reinita Lawson. “Reinita was found on a trail leading to Tombstone Caverns—also symbolic. He’s taunting us.”

“How come no one noticed that before?” Sheriff Wallace asked. Before I could answer Agent Tucker said, “No one was looking.”

I wished he’d stop doing that.

“So, what about the motive?” asked Lien-hua, who had stopped doodling and was looking at me with keen interest and perhaps a hint of antagonism.

“I leave motives to the profilers.” I smiled.

She didn’t.

“And that means . . . ?” She let her voice trail off and then added, “What, exactly?”

I figured someone would ask these questions, but why did it have to be her?

“Well, instead of probing into his mind to try and guess what the guy is thinking, I’m trying to study his life to find where he’s living. I think too many investigations get sidetracked by trying to uncover the motive—”

“Excuse me, Dr. Bowers.” She set down her pen. “Did you just say
sidetracked
by looking for motive?”

I slid the remote control into my pocket. “Yes, Agent Jiang, I did. Jurors love motives. So do people who read mystery novels and thrillers. Without a motive we feel cheated. The plot needs to make sense. We’re addicted to explanations. But in the real world, some things don’t have an easy explanation. Motives are never clear, never distinct, never exact.”

“What are you talking about?” It was Sheriff Wallace this time. “Without motive, why would we do anything?”

OK. I wasn’t exactly sure where my briefing had started to get away from me, but this wasn’t in my outline.

“I’m not saying people aren’t motivated to do things,” I said, “just that ‘motive’ isn’t the silver bullet it’s so often made out to be in criminal investigations.” I looked around. I got the feeling that with every word I said I was only digging myself in deeper. But I plowed forward anyway, trying not to sound like I was picking a fight. “Why do you get up and go to work each day, Agent Jiang? To make a living? Maybe obligation? Ambition? Passion? To prove yourself?”

“To pick up men?” Tucker interjected. A few people laughed. He said it good-naturedly, and I got the feeling he was trying to help me save face, but Lien-hua just glared at him. I wished he’d just shut up.

“To catch the bad guys,” she announced. Her overly simplistic answer was drenched in sarcasm.

“Yes, good. But also to make a living, to pay the bills, to do something you’re good at . . . right?”

“Your point is?”

C’mon, man. It’s your first full day in town. Don’t go making
enemies already.

“My point is, everything we do is a tangle of motives, dreams, regrets, shame, hope, desire—all overlapping and competing with each other, vying for our attention, our lives. As soon as we try to force a crime into a neat little package called ‘revenge’ or ‘lust’ or ‘anger’ or ‘greed,’ we miss the subtle realities of life and tend to overlook the social context of the crime.”

Lien-hua shook her head. She wasn’t convinced. “But without showing a clear motive, you can almost never get a conviction.”

I just wanted to finish this thing up and head out to visit some of the crime sites. I felt anger awakening inside me.
Keep still. Keep still.

“Yes, that’s true,” I said slowly. “Showing motive is helpful for getting a conviction, but to show one motive is to ignore the others. Life is never that simple.”

“But don’t you want to get a conviction?” she said.

“My job isn’t to convict them, it’s to help you find them. It might make jurors feel better and readers feel more satisfied to name a motive, but I’m not trying a case or writing a novel. Most of the time people don’t even understand the things
they
do, let alone what
other people
do. And sometimes things just happen without any apparent reason at all. Life doesn’t always make sense.”
Yeah.
People you love get cancer and die. Families fall apart. You lose
your direction, your focus, your clarity. Life spins out of control. No
rhyme. No reason. No sense at all . . .

The room was quiet. Everyone was staring at me. For a moment I wondered if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud, but then I realized I must have caught myself just in time. “When it comes to crime,” I said at last, “there may be such a thing as a primary motive, but there’s not such a thing as a singular motive.”

Wallace again. “So if you don’t look for motives, what do you look for?”

“Patterns. Habits. Choices. Understanding the intersection of this place and this time and this victim with the life of the offender.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Bowers.” Ah, yes. I should have known Margaret would join the fun sooner or later. “For centuries investigative work has focused on motive, means, and opportunity. You’re telling us we’ve done it wrong all these years?”

I wonder how long she’s been waiting to ask that question.

“Of course not, Agent Wellington. An offender can’t commit a crime without the opportunity to do it or the means to carry it out. But what led up to the opportunity? Why did he have those means available at that specific time? That’s what I’m looking for. I’m not trying to get into the mind of the killer, I’m trying to get into his shoes.”

“Dr. Bowers,” Margaret said, breathing through her nose. She took a slow and deliberate look at her watch. “I have a press conference in less than twenty minutes. Do you have anything more . . . concrete to add to this investigation?”

I wished I had something to throw at her. A rottweiler came to mind.

“Actually, I do. I was just getting to that. Let me show you how all this is going to help us catch this killer.”

13

“Here”—I pressed a button and illuminated two regions of the map—“are the optimal search areas, the most likely anchor points for our offender. This area just west of Asheville, and this region of city blocks downtown. It cuts out 84.6 percent of the search area. Also, I looked up how many suspects there are so far—2,432 names on the master list. Only 12 percent of them work or live in these regions. I checked. At least this gives us a place to start.”

Some of the officers looked stunned that I seemed to know what I was talking about. Ralph looked a little confused. “But why are there two areas?”

Before I could say anything, Tucker answered for me. “In some cases, the mathematics of a geo profile render a bipolar solution; in other words, there are two places equally likely for the offender to reside in or to use as his anchor point.”