26
He lifts a Beck’s off the tray, eyes tracking the man’s wife as she makes her way around the room, lowering the tray for each of them. She disappears and returns with more beer, places it on a low Formica-topped coffee table, and her husband pats her arm the way you would a dog and she smiles.
He wishes his wife were more like this, checks out the matching sofa and club chairs, deep-pile rug, tan wood dinette set seen through an archway, shiny with Lemon Pledge.
A new man to the group, a guy in the military wearing sweats, who calls himself “Ethno,” short for “ethnoviolence,” says, “To be real masculine men you’ve got to do violence against the enemy.”
He recognizes that Ethno is quoting one of his überheroes, the current leader of the World Church.
“Tell your out-of-work friends and any kids you can to join the army, light infantry the branch of choice because the coming race war will be an infantryman’s war, remember that. The army is in desperate need for recruits, and where else can you get the fucking government to train you for free, right?”
This gets everyone’s attention, but after a few minutes the talk meanders back to cars and accounting, teaching and trivia, until the host, who calls himself Swift, after the founder of Christian Identity, interrupts. He pushes up his sleeves, exposing small blue-black tattoos, swastikas, as so many of them have. “What we say in public is a lot different than what we do in private.”
As he says this he looks right at him and he wonders if Swift knows what he’s been doing. He would like to stand up and declare it, but sits there pretending to drink, hand gripping the can so hard it’s denting, fragments of pictures flashing in his mind, coming together and breaking apart.
Swift asks for contributions to support legal defenses for two men in prison, Richard Glynn and Duane Holsten, and tells them what Holsten did: “He killed his brother’s wife and baby because God told him to.” He looks around at each of them, and asks: “Could you make that kind of sacrifice?”
He knows he could.
After that, they take turns reading aloud from Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race and Ben Klassen’s Nature’s Eternal Religion, and after that Swift leads them in the oath, though he can’t concentrate because those pictures of what he is planning next keep vibrating in his head, and after that everyone goes back to stories about their boring day jobs and he’s about to leave when Swift takes him aside and leads him into the basement.
Behind a metal door is a small cinder-block room, walls lined with guns and rifles, pistols and flame throwers still in their original boxes, a crate of hand grenades that Swift cracks open for a peek, and he feels a kind of tug in his loins and a wave of reassurance.
Swift says, “For when the time comes,” and in that moment he feels so close to the man he wants to tell him what he is doing because he knows he will understand, but decides it’s better not to.
27
The NYPD had combined efforts with the bureau, the results of which had produced reams of paper documenting America’s leading white supremacist groups. Terri had stayed up most of the night reading and by morning had reached the conclusion that mankind was hopeless.
She had arrived at the meeting with a throbbing headache, washed down two Excedrin with a cup of machine-brewed coffee, and though the headache had abated, her feet were now tapping, nerves jangling from caffeine overdrive.
The G could not dispute the fact that the locals had been supplying some of the best information-thanks to Nate’s detection of the logo from The White Man’s Bible-and Terri was feeling just a little proud for having brought him on the case.
She suspected Denton would have been happier if the PD had been taken off the case, full responsibility falling on the fed’s broad shoulders, but that was his problem. He was notably absent, some business with the city council, or so he said, though Terri could not imagine what could be more important.
Terri had invited Nate along with her men, anxious for all of them to hear if the Quantico profiler could add anything new to the case.
Collins gave an introductory briefing, basically what the NYPD had provided, then introduced the woman who had already snagged Nate’s attention, tall and slender, black suit jacket unbuttoned to expose her fitted white blouse, everything about her flawless except for her auburn hair, twirled into an ad hoc bun that threatened to topple, providing an unexpected louche touch.
“Dr. Schteir comes to us from BSS,” said Collins. “She has written extensively about the sociopathic mind, and published several articles on hate crime and its effects on-”
“Thanks,” said Schteir, cutting her off. “But I don’t think anyone gives a rat’s ass about my CV.” She flashed a quick smile, and Nate thought he’d fallen in love.
“I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read the profile I worked up, which is in your folders, so I’ll summarize. We’ll first do a little Sociopath 101, and after that I’ll talk about the hate-crime component.” She glanced around the room, and Nate made a point of catching her eye and smiling.
Terri cadged a glance in his direction.
Dr. Schtier counted off on her fingers. “One: The sociopath is unable to give or receive love, though they can fake it quite well when they want to. They are unusually skilled manipulators. Many are the result of abuse and have learned to survive terribly sadistic situations by turning off their feelings. I am not making a case for sympathy, simply stating statistics. Two: They do not feel remorse or guilt like normal human beings. Three: They are egocentric, totally self-centered. These are the general rules-if one can even call them that-which are constantly shifting, and vary from individual to individual. Modern psychology is constantly reassessing them. One must always be prepared for a new manifestation and how the sociopath will exhibit it in a new and novel way.” Her eyes were shining; it was obvious that for Dr. Schteir, sociopaths were a sexy topic.
“I’ll stop counting,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. A sense of superiority. Very important. The sociopath feels he is better than you or me, better than anyone. He is above the rules of normal society, just one of the things that aids him in committing his heinous acts. On the other hand, it can be his Achilles heel. Arrogance can lead to mistakes, tempt him to tease the authority he disdains. It is not uncommon for sociopaths to get close to the press and to the police, as I’m sure you know.” She unconsciously plucked a comb from her hair, and her auburn locks tumbled to her shoulders.
Nate opened his drawing pad and started sketching.
“In the case of your unknown subject, there is no psycho-sexual release, though he undoubtedly receives pleasure from his acts.” She paused. “So, the hate-crime killer…generally, he regards his victims as lesser human beings, or not even human. It’s a tactic employed by soldiers, torturers, and sometimes even politicians.”
This produced a few laughs.
“But seriously…” She pulled her hair back and secured the comb in place. “It’s important to remember that he is driven by the belief that he is right. Just keep in mind a man flying a plane into a skyscraper, dying for a god and ideology he believes in, and you will begin to understand the kind of personality you are dealing with.” She paused to let that sink in. “There are two profiles in your folder. The supposition on your unsub, along with a profile I did two years ago on Duane Holsten, who is serving a life sentence at a criminal-psyche facility for killing eight people-four nurses and two patients at an abortion clinic. Holsten maintains he was doing God’s work, and therefore feels no remorse at all.”