“Quite a bit,” he said quietly.

“And she does know about all this, right?”

“Yes,” he said, more quietly. He’d known it would end in disaster. All of it. Everything. Just a matter of when. The rest of his life blank and empty like that old marquee in front of the Grove Drive-In Theater.

“Janelle’s not around to corroborate Howard’s tale,” said Hambly. “And I’m not going to. I really don’t want to show those pictures. I’ll just stay out of it.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You’re no good to me if you lose your family, your congregation, and everything you’ve worked for. And you’re a nice guy.”

“You’re beyond evil.”

“Think about it, Judas. And imagine the alternative.”

26

IT TOOK NICK ALMOST one hour to make the evening drive from Santa Ana to Los Angeles. Damned traffic. But nice to be driving the Red Rocket, which was usually for Katy and the kids. The 428 cc would really go if you stood on it. Too bad there were so many cars on the road right now, but on the way home he’d fly.

He used the time to wonder about Neemal and the odd kinks in some men’s minds. Which was one of the reasons why Nick had wanted homicide detail. To understand the kinks. But why do that? To understand himself? Maybe. He had a theory that everyone had kinks. Different kinds. Different amounts. He turned on the news and watched the smog-stained peak of the Disneyland Matterhorn go by. A little red bobsled zoomed out of the mountain and back in.

The FBI “Road School” was held at the sheriff’s station downtown. Nick had heard about it from some friends in the Southern California chapter of the International Association for Identification. The FBI had this agent named Doug Teteni who could show you how to learn more from a murder scene. They said Teteni could make sense of things that didn’t make sense at first. Teteni was especially good at what the FBI called “stranger murders”-where men would kill people unknown to them, wait, then kill again. Teteni had worked on the infamous Gein case in Wisconsin, where the guy had made clothing and adorned furniture with the skin of his victims.

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.