The Last Nightingale (32 page)

THE
FIRST
KNOWN investigative procedure that can accurately be called a “criminal profile” is frequently attributed to Dr. Thomas Bond in the late 1880s. The London physician was called in to examine the body of Mary Kelly, one of Jack the Ripper’s more savagely disposed victims. Initially, Dr. Bond was only asked to determine whether or not the victim’s remains indicated that the perpetrator had any surgical skill, but the doctor was so horrified by the intensity of the crime that he stayed on to reconstruct the event and develop a speculative description of the killer. This approach was so unprecedented that there was not even a name for this new system of thinking about the relationship between an individual personality and a specific crime. However, in spite of the apparent novelty, the insights that Dr. Bond employed are all, at their essence, part and parcel of the timeless human capacity for wisdom. The same quest drives the appreciation for the psychological aspects of crime fiction. Avid readers of crime fiction have eyes honed for the vagaries of human personality.

Dr. Bond based his work upon (a) inferences taken from the crime scene; (b) the condition of the victim’s body; and (c) the random nature of the crime. History tells us that Bond’s work did nothing to reveal the identity of The Ripper. Nevertheless, in terms of engendering a whole new way of thinking about the psychology of crime, it was and still is a wellspring that serves anyone who searches for greater understanding of human behavior by accumulating insights into its most deviant forms.

Since the methodology of profiling is one that guides an investi-
gator to a deeper and more three-dimensional view of an unknown subject, those same tools are equally effective in deepening the way in which crime fiction is written. This is part of what makes it so appealing to contemporary readers.

The more commonly known aspects of the field of criminal profiling have entered the Western world’s zeitgeist to the extent that the general public now possesses a language for delving more deeply into motive and into personal point of view in the telling of a story than it has at any time in our past. Today, a well-considered characterization of a criminal profiler will show a flawed individual with feet of clay, perhaps in many ways little different from the quarry.

Perhaps largely due to the effects of TV and film, most people today realize that the reputation for “dark arts” being behind the methodology of modern profilers is simply the result of the startled amazement that often greets a good profiler’s conclusions. The prosaic reality is that the professional profiler merely employs a system of thought created to help investigators think unthinkable things while they do intolerable work, and yet remain focused on their goals and their job functions. The patterns that a profiler is trained to study are the result of thousands of bits of information accumulated over generations of law enforcement experience regarding how criminal behavior tends to work.

The skilled profiler questions how the given criminal behavior (as indicated by the crime scene)
served
the perpetrator during the commission of the crime. Just as important, the profiler asks how such needs in the perpetrator may have been caused in the first place. Writers of crime fiction have learned to answer these questions also, because modern readers of crime fiction are far more sophisticated about criminal psychology.

Unfortunately, at the same time that public awareness of the profiling field has grown, the use of the word “profiling” in the media has sometimes taken on a churlish political tone. It’s not difficult to see why. Today, that word has been distorted until it covers
a range of meanings. It might refer to the specific field of behavioral analysis taught at the FBI academy, or instead to the use of overbroad physical descriptions for targeting a certain group, or it might even describe the sparking point for spontaneous outbursts of stranger-on-stranger violence. Whether or not these uses of the word are accurate in any given example, as an aggregate they have imparted a politically incorrect aroma to the word profiling that the core concept does not deserve. The fact that certain people or media organizations misuse any term or topic does not diminish its value in more earnest and capable hands.

So let’s assume that today, those capable hands belong to you, reader. Let’s hunt for the meaning of the idea of “profiling” as it applies to you and to me, regardless of what the folks at Quantico are teaching their recruits. And why not? You are a reader of mysteries, ready to pursue the answer to a puzzle through a menagerie of dark fantasies, are you not? Thus you may be “profiled” enough to deduce that you employ a number of skills in your reading and in your daily life that you would also be employing if you were to profile someone in the most educated use of the term. Scientific profiling simply provides an experimentally verified structure for utilizing natural insights into human behavior. You, reader of mystery fiction, a born profiler, may have figured that out already.

The old-school name for it was “learning to be a solid judge of character,” or words to that effect. But the skill set starts about as far down the mammalian chain as you care to go. You can pick any single example among all the conscious creatures and still be assured that if that creature gets rudely slapped in the side of the head every time it turns to the right, it will eventually adopt a movement pattern that consists primarily of left-hand turns.

It is self-evident that all living things must be
expected
to choose behaviors that increase their chances of survival, which they will understand to be those things that help them avoid pain. Pain itself is our most powerful message of
Don’t Do That.

So let’s not. Instead, let us assume that there is a constructive
purpose to be made of the million little slaps to the head that events and people give us, every day of our lives, and try turning to the left for a while, just to see if anything improves. Profiling, then, is the logical extension of that fundamental survival behavior. While the insights provided by good crime profiling are impressive, the results that those same insights can offer to our personal lives are desirable and real.

The very process of living among others of our civilization will guarantee the constant abrasion of cross-purposes and misunderstandings, but we define our social selves by how we deal with such things. At the same time, those daily conflicts teach us countless mini-lessons about others that we file away, without even thinking about it. They become part of the individual database that we each possess—our private shorthand for making quick decisions under pressure. In the making of those decisions, the countless little flashes of memory work together, with the goal of refining our ability to handle passing challenges with a minimum of pain or danger.

That is why, although we must acknowledge that any given group of four or five large and rowdy young men lounging against the corner of an alley are
not necessarily
drunk and dangerous, no reasonable person would condemn another individual for crossing the street to pass. If the men really are just a few guys hanging out on a corner and not a threat, then they won’t take offense just because someone quietly avoids them. They will realize that the stranger is simply being cautious. Therefore, those who do cross to the other side and safely pass by can legitimately congratulate themselves; they may not have formed a criminal profile
per se,
but their natural profiling abilities may well have saved them from an unpleasant, dangerous, or lethal experience.

The problem with profiling, then, is (1) it works; and (2) it is too easy for the general ideas of profiling to be “borrowed,” without having to also acquire the knowledge and skill to properly and fairly apply the principles to the work. We think of young black male de-
fendants insisting that they were pulled over by the police on a charge of nothing more than Driving While Black, or Hispanic citizens caught up in a sweep of illegal immigrants. In such cases, we know that it is reasonable to at least consider the possibility of bigotry, otherwise such accusations would fade into the same background static produced at any courthouse full of defendants. Whether or not the arrests had anything to do with bigotry or deliberate persecution, when suspects are incarcerated due to errant attempts at profiling, many emerge from the experience deeply shaken and permanently outraged.

Nothing changes the fact that in the wrong hands, stereotyping that is inaccurately
called
profiling can be used as a tool of bigotry, and that any tool can be turned into a weapon. The fact that the profiler’s tools are powerful should only assure that they are handled with care. There is too much of value there, to avoid it. In our daily lives, profiling skills allow us to extend our universal right to avoid pain or danger by employing our experiences to help predict future actions.
A million tiny slaps to the head
—each one a single bit of the data used to sort out the angels from the demons, the talkers from the doers, the safety from the danger.

The commonsense elements of wisdom, old as civilization, are plain to see in the standardized thinking of professional criminal profilers. Consider the fundamental concept behind modern profiling in the United States, today: the categories of Organized versus Disorganized crimes. These terms can pertain to the crime scene itself as well as to the perpetrator(s), and the FBI teaches this fundamental division of crimes and crime scenes to its trainees. Under this system of observation and conclusion, our unknown perpetrator or perpetrators immediately give away a great deal about themselves, simply by leaving the crime scene in a state that must inevitably fall into one category or the other. The result is a delineation that not only works for crime investigation, but one that is the logical extension of insights that ordinary people have used for centuries to spot potential trouble with others.

When these emotionally driven types go through a crime scene in a frenzy, they reveal a lack of self-control that is fundamental to who they are. These killers will be careless about potential evidence while they are lost in the act of the crime, while the sensations of the moment overwhelm any concern for consequence. That trait will also extend throughout their lives. Once captured, this person’s physical and social life will undoubtedly reflect an inability to sustain normal habits and a sociable disposition. These perpetrators are generally shown to be persons of lesser intellect, or those whose lives are not dominated by the use of their mind. They can seldom provide a credible character witness who will speak up for them.

Disorganized killers tend to live in a personal state that makes them comparatively easy to spot. They generally do not blend well in polite society. If they do get away from the crime scene, often it is because they break and run, then wander tramp-like for days, weeks, or longer, between places where a desperate person on the run might hide for a day or two. They often go so far off the grid that conventional means of tracking them are useless, making them much harder to locate than other suspects.

Meanwhile, back in ordinary life, we all employ the rudiments of the same insights every day. They are simply more basic versions of those same insights that prompt profilers to expect that a Disorganized crime scene indicates a perpetrator who will display a marked lack of discipline and self-control throughout the rest of his non-crime life. We know that if friends or relatives begin to detach, to become emotionally unpredictable, to let their personal appearance slide, that we are watching someone’s stability crumble. The wild beast that anyone can become under the right combination of stressors will loom closer to the surface as their personal stability collapses. We need no police training to feel deep concern for any
loved one who begins to show signs of deterioration in attitude, in conduct. We see such things and hear internal warning sirens going off in the background.

An Organized crime scene may not display obvious signs of “organization” as we think of it around the home or office, but the entire scene will tend to display strong and obvious signs of a constant decision-making process that was carried out by the perpetrator throughout the commission of the crime. With the Organized perpetrators, there is seldom if ever a point during the commission of their crimes when they are so out of control that they lose themselves in the moment and do stupid and self-incriminating things. Once such a perpetrator is captured, experience also shows that they will usually live an otherwise “normal” and acceptable life. They hold workable positions within their level of society. They will have a peer group. The general structure of their lives, in addition to the crime scenes they leave behind, can be said to be organized. The fact that they are less likely to have a criminal record than a Disorganized perpetrator results from their ability to sustain relationships and to put down roots in their community.

But a close look at the human relationships of even the most self-disciplined Organized killer will reveal them as uniformly superficial. Since an individual does not fundamentally change from one situation to the next, even if one’s social behavior skillfully adapts to what is expected, the Organized killers maintain only superficial relationships in life because they do not have the time, energy, or motivation to invest much of themselves into anyone else. The obligations of honest and open relationships are too complex for this kind of person to handle. The risks of sustained contact and actual intimacy guarantee that sooner or later, something would give it all away and reveal untellable secrets.

They are able to maintain the visage of sanity for the world, so long as nobody looks too closely. This chameleon effect is how they hide in plain sight.

We read about them while knowing that the same dark energy that drives such people to their nightmarish deeds also exists in many other areas of life. Those other areas will, from time to time, present themselves to each of us.