Dr. Calvin Werjonic PhD, JD, eminent professor, world-renowned criminologist, was offering to help me with this case? Sure, the news media had released information regarding it, but how did he know I was the one working it?
Curious to see if any of his lecture notes might be applicable to what we were looking at here, I spread the photocopied pages across the table.
To my disappointment, his notes weren’t typed or organized in any clearly discernible manner, but they were handwritten scribbles that were, in most cases, almost indecipherable.
He’d probably been teaching the material for so long that he didn’t need many prompts to get him started on each topic. That might have been good if I were sitting in a lecture hall listening to him, but it wasn’t good for me sitting here in my apartment tonight.
However, he did include photocopied pages from one of his articles that appeared last year in the
Geospatial investigation involves the evaluation of locations related to a crime to deduce the most statistically probable region out of which the offender bases his criminal activity. The complementary field of environmental criminology focuses on understanding the way offenders cognitively map their environments and rationally choose to act within their awareness space while committing their crimes.
The two approaches work in conjunction with each other to provide a vigorous and robust new paradigm for analyzing linked serial offenses and tracking those who commit them.
Unlike profilers, who deal with the psychological reasons that might have motivated a crime, environmental criminologists look for the significance of the location of the crime to both the offender and the victim. Instead of asking what the offender might have been thinking while he committed the crime, we ask why he was there at that specific place at that specific time:
(1) What do the choice of the crime’s location and the timing of the crime tell us about the offender and the victim?
(2) What purpose do these locations serve for him? Expediency? Opportunity? Isolation?
(3) What do the locations of the crimes tell us about how he’s choosing his victims?
(4) What led him to this specific victim and location? How and when did his life intersect with the victim’s to create the encounter that precipitated this crime?
These were four lines of inquiry worth thinking about, in depth, in regard to this case.
The article went on to discuss victimology, that is, the study of the victim and inferences that could be drawn from his or her cognitive maps. Fascinated, I read the rest of it carefully with a highlighter in hand.
When I was done, I shuffled through the rest of the notes and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to decode them all tonight, not when I was so tired, but that I might be able to make my way through them better in the morning when I was fresh.
Today had become one of those days when it seemed like the morning couldn’t possibly have occurred within the same twenty-four-hour span of time. Too much had happened, too much had filled in the spaces between the moments.
Tomorrow never looked so good.
At last, I crawled into bed with thoughts of the case and of Taci and of the nightmares I’d had last evening all vying for my attention, all wrestling to be the thing that followed me into my dreams.
And when I closed my eyes, I had no idea which of them would win.
DAY 3
Tuesday, November 18
The Landfill
49
6:02 a.m.
The nightmares left me alone.
I dreamt of Taci instead, and woke up thinking about our weekend getaway to Tennessee the first weekend of October. We’d been close as a couple when we headed down there and when we returned, we were even closer, with shared memories of day hikes in the Smoky Mountains and evenings in front of the fireplace at a bed-and- breakfast nestled up in the hills.
It was a nice note to start the day on and when I got out of bed I felt much more rested than I had yesterday morning, which was a relief because I had the feeling this might shape up to be another long day.
I wasn’t scheduled to meet Taci until seven thirty, nearly an hour and a half from now. Anthony’s Cafe was downtown, which gave me an idea.
When you’re working cases like this, the odd hours, the long hours, it’s easy to eat poorly-admittedly one of my weaknesses. And, for me at least, it’s easy to miss workouts. Getting motivated to exercise wasn’t usually the issue for me because I loved to trail run, climb, hike, anything outdoors. But finding the time to get out and play when you’re in the middle of a case can be tricky.
My climbing buddy, Reinhold Draeger, operated the South Wall Climbing Gym, which wasn’t too far from Anthony’s Cafe. The morning’s agenda seemed to lay itself out neatly for me: slip in a workout at the gym, grab breakfast with Taci, review Werjonic’s notes and the case files, meet with the task force at HQ, then call Dr. Werjonic at eleven.
Even though I climb with ropes when I’m at the crags, working out close to the ground without them is a great way to develop finger strength, leg work, and breathing. It’s called bouldering and an hour of that would be more than enough of a workout for this morning.
Before leaving my apartment, I taped up my hands to protect the sores from being torn open by the holds, some of which were pretty sketchy. Then I took off.
Because of my unusual work hours, Reinhold had given me a key to the gym and now I parked, went in the back entrance, and had the place to myself. Climbers have their own jargon and, while most people might talk about pulling themselves up a climb when they’re making moves, we talk about pulling them down. So, after warming up and working past the pain in my hands, that’s what I did on some of the stoutest climbs in the bouldering cave.
Counterintuitively, it often seems that stepping away from a case and letting that curious, secret part of my brain work on it is the best way to get a fresh perspective.
Often it’s in the moments of quiet that the tiny threads of a case imperceptibly intertwine. I guess it’s human nature, though. We gather facts, try to process them, but don’t often tie them together until we’re in the shower or on the golf course or waking up in the middle of the night. Just ask any novelist, any artist, any scientist.
And sometimes we think of them when we’re upside down in a bouldering cave.
Sometimes.
Like today.
Halfway through one of the hardest climbs in the cave, a V9 problem that I’d never been able to send, it struck me.
All sixteen missing persons, as well as the homicide victims we knew about, came from Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Why did the offender-or offenders-skip over the state of Indiana?
The questions from the article that I’d read last night from Dr. Werjonic flashed through my mind:
(1) What does the choice of the crime’s location tell us about the offender and the victim?
(2) What purpose do these locations serve for him? Expediency? Opportunity? Isolation?
(3) What do the locations of the crimes tell us about how he’s choosing his victims?
(4) What led him to this specific victim, and location? How and when did his life intersect with the victim’s to create the encounter that precipitated this crime?
