Page 81 of The Accomplice
‘Professor Johnson, I should apologize,’ I said, ‘I had made a note with my colleague’s fountain pen just now and I got ink on my hand.’
There was a circular, dark red stain on my hand from Harry’s pen. From when I’d turned the piston knob on his fountain pen, squirting some into my palm. I then shook hands with Johnson, and before too long I’d made him nervous enough to stroke that beard of his. He held up his hands, saw the ink on his fingers and palm.
It was all over his beard too. The white tufts were now red. The jury had seen it. The people in the gallery had seen it. The prosecutor had seen it and now everyone had seen it.
Apart from Johnson.
‘You have ink on you. Secondary transfer. What was that you were saying ? That people couldn’t get blood on their clothes without noticing it ?’
He stared in disbelief at the ink on his hand and began shaking his head.
‘Professor, you cannot saywhenthat blood got on my client’s blouse,wherethat happened, norhowit happened, can you ?’
He just shook his head, staring at his palm and then looked at me like he wanted to beat some biological matter out of my face.
‘It’s okay, Professor. You don’t need to answer that. The jury has seen enough. I’ll just leave you there – with egg on your face. Sorry, I meantink.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
BLOCH
Bloch’s shoulders burned.
Her hands were freezing. They were numb around the tire iron that she raised and smashed into the ice. Lake used the crowbar, and together they frantically chipped away at the thick casing surrounding the body bag. In this way they had removed the first foot of ice. There were plenty more feet to go.
She raised the tire iron, drove it down and as soon as it hit the block, she lost her grip and it slipped and crashed onto the floor. Panting now, Bloch blew into her hands, rubbed them together.
‘My back is going to give out. I need a breather. Come on, sit down. We need a break or we’re going to get hurt,’ said Lake.
Bloch took up the tire iron, swung it again into the freezer. She lost her grip again and it ricocheted into the air.
‘Come on, stop it. Take a minute,’ he said.
Too exhausted to talk, Bloch sat down on the floor, put her back to the freezer.
‘You really don’t trust the feds, do you ?’ she said. ‘Surprising, considering you used to be one.’
‘Used to be. But I was never a fed. There’s a certain mindset in the Bureau that meant I could never be one of them. Not really.’
‘What’s that ?’
‘Oh, you know. Obeying orders, respecting superiors, following policy. That kind of thing. I won’t do it if it’s wrong. The Bureau gets a lot of shit wrong, but they’re never more wrong than in their pursuit of serial killers.’
‘What do you mean ?’ asked Bloch.
‘The entire approach. A serial killer profile is only as good as the profiler who wrote it. If they stick to Bureau policy it’s probably worthless. They thought they could figure out who the man behind the crimes could be from examining their methods and the psychology of the killings – the theory that they can see the killer’s personality traits in the way he kills, but that is not how human beings behave. A man who goes out at night and kills people isn’t applying the same personality traits that define how he dresses, or how he speaks to his customers at the manager’s desk at Walmart during the day. We adapt our personalities for different situations. My thinking is you don’t look for the man in the crime scenes – you can only look for the killer.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Bloch. ‘Hard to write a profile with that approach.’
‘Profiles don’t work anyway. In the history of the FBI, how many profiles directly led to the capture of a serial killer do you think ?’
‘I don’t know. Fifty ?’ she said, then blew into her hands and rubbed them together, trying to get the blood flowing again.
‘Two.’
‘Two ?’
‘I won’t ask how many profiles have wrongly excluded the perpetrator from a suspect pool, but it’s known to be at least five, for sure, and probably more like twenty.’
