CHAPTER FOUR
Ella couldn’t fathom the idea of slamming whiskies at thirty thousand feet, because alcohol and altitude didn’t mix well. There was still two hours to Wisconsin, but Ripley was drinking like she only had sixty seconds to live.
‘Mia, I thought you quit.’
‘I did. I’m just making the most of Vernon’s generosity.’
‘You’re going to be canned by the time we get to Cedarburg.’
‘Have you ever seen me get canned? Not once. Where is Cedarburg, anyway?’
‘Milwaukee metropolitan area. About twelve thousand pop, and yeah, it doesn’t look like the most vibrant town, judging by the pictures online.’
Ripley said, ‘Great. Milwaukee. That’s where they breed them.’
‘Yes it is.’
‘Jeffery Dahmer. Ed Gein.’
'Walter Ellis, Edward Edwards. Did you know Wisconsin is the only state to ever have three active serial killers at once? Dahmer, Ellis, and Edwards were all killing at the same time.'
‘I didn’t know that, and I didn’t want to.’
‘Why is everyone acting strange today? Are you still mad about our name change? Because I got over that weeks ago and you should too.’
Ripley downed her drink and gently placed the glass on the table between them. ‘It’s not just a name change. You know why Vernon is sending us in blind, don’t you?’
‘Because he didn’t have any info to give us?’
‘No. That’s what he wants you to think.’
Ella shrugged. ‘So, what’s the real reason? Or what do you think is the real reason?’
‘Because he’s trying to phase out profiling.
Randall Carter did the same when he took over the director job, remember?
To a lot of the other agencies, like the CIA and MOD, profiling is old hat.
A relic of the eighties back when we actually had guys like Dahmer and Ellis running around.
Now serial killers are dying, the top dogs want profiling dead too. ’
‘But how would sending us in blind make that happen? We’re still going to profile when we’re there.’
‘Vernon won’t sell it like that. He’ll sell it as a UVCU success story. He'll say, 'My agents hit the ground running, no time wasted on theory.’ I told you. He wants us to be homicide cops, and that’s what we are, because we’re investing a single homicide without any details to go on.’
‘What’s the benefit to Vernon? We solve cases by profiling. Vernon knows this.’
‘So he can lump us all under one banner, and our successes will prop the rest of the UVCU up. Yes, we’ll solve cases by profiling, but the paperwork will say differently. It’ll mention forensics, DNA matches, fingerprint databases, cell tower pings. The top dogs want metrics, not art.’
It was the classic Ripley problem. The woman built airtight arguments on foundations of pure suspicion.
It was difficult to believe but also impossible to disprove, but she did have a point.
Profiling was considered voodoo by a certain breed of agent, and Vernon was undeniably ambitious.
However, the simpler explanation was usually the right one: a new boss, eager to please, had jumped the gun.
Still, Ella had learned long ago that arguing was pointless.
You couldn’t reason someone out of a position they hadn’t reasoned themselves into, so she nodded.
‘Alright, so what do you think’s waiting for us when we get there? ’
‘Hell if I know. A body in a cabin, apparently.’
‘What can we divulge from that?’
‘Nothing, because it’s the specifics that matter. How’d he get the victim to a cabin? Did he kill her there, or was she alive when she got there? If so, did she meet him there of her own free will?’
‘Why would someone take a dead body to a cabin and leave them there?’
‘They wouldn’t,’ said Ripley. ‘Not when they could leave them exposed to the elements to speed up decomposition. Unless they did it for the shock factor, but there are much better places to leave a body for that.’
‘So we can assume she was alive when she got there.’
‘If I was a betting woman, yes.’
‘And if our victim didn’t meet the killer at the cabin, what would we be looking for?’
‘There’d be tire tracks somewhere in those woods, then, because you can’t drag a woman to a cabin with your bare hands. Not an alive one, anyway.’
Ella clapped. ‘See? We don’t need details to profile. The basics are enough to get a good picture.’
‘Yeah, but I’m just basing that on probability.
If you told me two old women had been shot, I’d never guess that the culprit was a grave robbing cannibal who dressed in human skin suits.
If you’d have told me black guys were going missing in the city, I’d have never guessed that a gay white man was harvesting their organs. The devil is in the details.’
Ella stared out of the window at an endless carpet of clouds.
Once again, Ripley had a point, despite its sledge hammer delivery.
Profiling was the science of the probable, but Wisconsin had a long, bloody history of producing the statistically impossible.
She looked over at her partner, who was signaling the attendant for another drink.
Maybe Ripley had the right idea after all.