“WE’VE PUT TOGETHER a profile of the killer,” Scott Manning told me.
“Does it include his name?” I asked.
Manning looked confused.
“No. A psychological profile based on theories and FBI studies …”
“I know what an FBI profile is,” I said. “I was being sarcastic.”
He smiled now.
“Right, I forget about that little trait of yours.”
“I don’t believe in this profile stuff about unidentified serial killers. I think it’s bogus. You guys put out a profile packed with every little detail about a serial killer. He’s left handed; he walks with a slight limp; he’s married and a loving father at home, but he goes out and kills women because his mother didn’t love him enough or the female babysitter hit him for wetting the bed when he was growing up—or maybe because he saw Silence of the Lambs and thought it would be a swell idea to be like Buffalo Bill or Hannibal Lecter. Then, when you finally catch him, none of these things actually describe him. But you focus on one or two details that fall in the ballpark and play them up. Then you do another profile when the next serial killer case comes along. Me, I think profiles are a waste of time.”
“Do you want to hear what’s in this one?”
“Yes.”
I was sitting in front of Manning’s desk at FBI headquarters. He was wearing a light blue tweed sports jacket, open-collared blue shirt, and navy-colored slacks. His body looked fit even though he mostly sat behind a desk here at the FBI. He looked good. Not that it mattered to me, of course. There was a picture of his wife and their three children on his desk. His wife was attractive. His three children, too. I was fine with all that. Totally fine.
“The first thing we looked at was what this guy might do for a living,” Manning told me. “The murders happened in so many different locations around the country that our guy might well have a job where he travels around a lot. Like a traveling salesman or a truck driver or …”
“Or a military man who moves around from base to base,” I pointed out.
“Or a military man,” he said.
“Like Russell Danziger.”
“Lots of times the killer turns out to be an upstanding citizen, very successful—the last guy you’d suspect to be a murderer. People tend to think serial killers are all weirdos like David Berkowitz was as Son of Sam. But sometimes, they turn out to be seemingly normal people living normal lives. In this case, though, we believe the killer has repressed sexual feelings. That’s because of the personal way he kills his victims—stabbing with a knife or strangulation or with his own hands, rather than a gun.”
I told him how I’d found out Danziger was both emotionally and sexually repressed.
“Also, the guy is highly intelligent,” Manning continued, “methodical and intense. He’s managed to cover up these murders for a long time. He clearly thinks them out—before and after—even though the killings themselves are carried out with angry passion.”
“Highly intelligent,” I repeated. “Successful. Methodical and intense. Sexually repressed. Moved around the country a lot like a military man might have. Sounds to me a lot like Russell Danziger.”
“Many people could fit that description besides Danziger, Clare.”
“Russell Danziger is the only one on our radar right now.”
“All right, the profile does seem to fit Danziger.”
“Then why doesn’t the FBI question him?”
“We can’t question anyone—certainly not a man as important as Russell Danziger—based on a profile. Or because he once donated money to a town where a young woman was murdered. Or because some crazy old guy like Martin Barlow decided he was The Wanderer.”
“That crazy old guy is the reason you found out about all of these murders being connected,” I pointed out.
“Still, we need evidence before we can approach Danziger.”
“What about his DNA? Can’t you check that, too, see if it matches the DNA at the murder scenes?”
“We can’t demand a sample of Danziger’s DNA without confronting him with solid evidence linking him to the murders—solid evidence that we don’t have.”
“Maybe the Army has his DNA on file. I remembered doing a story a while back about how the military now collected DNA from all service members.”
“They do. But that’s for identification of body remains, especially in a war zone. Those DNA files are only available to law enforcement if we obtain a court order. To do that, we’d need the same kind of evidence required to get it from Danziger directly. Evidence, which again, we don’t have.”
I had another idea.
I talked about the case of the Golden State Killer in California that was in the news recently in which DNA had been used to identify the suspect decades after the murders. “They got a possible DNA match from a family member that had submitted it for a genealogy website. It was close enough that they started checking out this person’s relatives—and found him that way. Even if you can’t get Danziger’s DNA now, maybe you can see if the DNA from any of the crime sites matches someone related to him. That would be a start.”
“Danziger’s parents are dead. He’s an only child. No other living relatives show up anywhere.”
“You already checked?”
“I checked. I checked out all the possibilities. None of them will work.”
“What happens next then?”
“We’ve got another FBI team meeting scheduled for this afternoon to go over all of these findings.”
“Called by Gregory Wharton?”
“Of course.”
“Am I invited?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“I’ll see you there.”
I picked up the printout of the profile and put it in my handbag. It was time to go. I looked over again at the picture of Manning’s wife and family. I wanted to say something about them, but I knew that wasn’t smart. I needed to go back to my office and do my job; let him do his job, too. This was going to be all business between us; we had agreed. For me to ask him about his marriage would be wrong and inappropriate. But, from long practice of saying wrong and inappropriate things, I asked him anyway.
“Good. We’ve been making progress. Slower between me and my kids. But we’re working at it. One day at a time, as they say. Thanks for asking.”
I nodded and pretended like that was the answer I was looking for.
“How about you?” he asked. “Are you seeing someone?”
“I am. A very nice guy. You’d like him.”
“Think you might get married again?”
“We’re taking it kind of slow at the moment. I want to make sure that this time it works out.”
“That makes sense.”
There was a long silence.
“Well, this is a bit awkward,” I finally said, standing up. “I better go now.”
“I’ll see you at the meeting this afternoon.”
“See you then,” I said.