“I think I’ll leave that one alone.” Uzi sat forward in the chair. “Anything you can tell me on the stuff I sent over?”
Vail rested her elbows on her desk. “Lots. I pulled in a guy from ATF. Turk Roland. He’s with ABIS, their Arson and Bombing Investigative Services subunit.”
“He as good as you?”
“If we’re talking bombs, he and Art Rooney are the best. Rooney’s out on medical. We call Roland the Turkmeister.”
“The Turkmeister?”
“He just co-authored a new study for the NCAVC,” she said, referring to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. “I read through it, learned a lot.”
“So maybe getting you into trouble was a good thing.”
“Let’s not go there.” She pulled a file from a stack beside her computer and splayed it open. “Here’s the deal. As much research as there is on serial killers, there’s very little on bombers. That’s why this new study was so important. Basically, bombers are classified by motive. There’re several categories, from experimentation to vandalism, excitement, revenge, diversion, political-ideological, and criminal enterprise. Let’s focus on the last two, since my impression is that whoever’s done this is operating in a group and has gone through significant effort to blow up the veep’s choppers. The planning alone rules out a lot of our potential suspect pool.”
“Cool. Then what does that leave us with?”
“Assuming we’re not dealing with some Middle Eastern terrorist sect, bombers in general tend to be white males, averaging five-ten, a hundred eighty-five pounds. Your UNSUB will likely have one or more body tattoos. He might have some form of disfigurement because of accidents while building or testing his bombs. So look for facial scarring or missing fingers.”
“So we’re looking for an average white guy with tattoos and missing fingers. Shouldn’t be too hard to find. Reminds me of this play I once saw about a one-eyed woman from Guadalajara with a wooden leg.”
Vail tilted her head. “Are you mocking me?”
Uzi leaned forward in his seat and rested his forearms on his knees. “Yes. I’m making fun of you, but this is good stuff. Go on.”
“I take my work very seriously.”
“Me too. Go on.”
Vail eyed him for a moment, then continued. “He’ll live in a middle-class neighborhood. He’ll be heterosexual. You’ve got about a fifty-fifty chance that he’s married. If he is, he’ll have one to three kids.”
Uzi’s eyebrows rose. “You’re shitting me.”
“Here’s the kicker. Unlike serial killers, these guys tend to come from fairly stable home environments. Your UNSUB’s parents earned a decent living, and both parents were probably present through his childhood. In fact, he likely had a warm relationship with both of them, though it was a bit better with the mother—”
Uzi began lifting papers and file folders, as if searching for something.
Vail stopped talking and watched Uzi rifle through her desk. “Uh, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m looking for your crystal ball.”
She turned away. “Look, Uzi, you’ve been through this process before. You know what a profile consists of.”
“He’ll have one to three kids? He had a warm relationship with his mother, but less so than his father? Come on. I mean, how accurate do you think this is?”
“I can only tell you what the research shows. Like I said, we know much more about serial killers. And this isn’t my area of expertise. But after talking with Turk, I have confidence that this info is in the ballpark. Besides, this is only meant as a way to narrow the field a bit, not hand you the name and address of your offender.”
Uzi sighed. “Okay. What else?”
“Your UNSUB will have a good relationship with his kids, and probably with his wife, too, but that’s not as certain. He’ll be bright, and educated through high school — maybe even some college. But socially he’ll be an underachieving loner.”
“What about religion?”
“Most likely Protestant. Possibly Baptist. Not fervent, but it does matter to him.”
“I was just kidding.”
“Actually, I thought it was an excellent question.”
“Oh yeah? Then I was serious.” He winked, then asked, “What about military service?”
“Are you joking now or serious?”
He dipped his chin and eyed her from an angle. Squinting, he said, “Serious.”
“Then it’s another good question. There doesn’t seem to be a hugely significant association with military service, though a fair percentage, maybe thirty percent of known bombers, did serve. Army and Marines. But I think a better way of looking at it is that these people do tend toward a fascination with explosive devices, ordnance, ammunition, and so on. Whether your UNSUB officially recognized these interests in an organized military fashion might not be the case. But I would look first at the military and use it as a comparative database.”
“Organized military fashion. So he might’ve gotten his kicks elsewhere, like with a militia?”
“Yes.”
“And the ‘underachieving loner’—socially — that would also fit with a militia.”
“Could,” she corrected. “Could fit. Remember, these are guidelines, not absolutes.” She paused, glanced at her notes, then rocked her head back. “All that said, here’s something that’ll sound the radar. Bombing is the assassination method of choice for militia groups.”
Uzi’s eyebrows rose. “Is that right?”
“If you look back thirty years,” she said, consulting her notes, “they’ve typically used bombs to get even with their enemies. Pipe bombs, fertilizer bombs, even artillery. But C-4 would be relatively new for them. At this point, I should tell you that profiling them might be a tad bit harder because you’re dealing with group behaviors.”
“Does this throw your profile out the window?”
“Not necessarily. And we could still be talking about an individual here.”
“Then let’s go on. Will he be employed?”
“Yes. Chances are good he’s in a decent financial position. First of all, he used C-4. He had to have gotten it from somewhere. Unless he stole it — which ATF would know about — it’d require money and contacts — which again could suggest an organized group. Groups provide the ability to pool resources and influence. And the comfort to draw up and execute such an aggressive plan.”
While Uzi considered what she had said, Vail glanced again at her notes.
“Here’s something that may be of immediate help. It’s likely your guy did time as a juvenile. Probably even multiple felonies, which might help narrow things. As an adult, he’s probably had three felony arrests.”
“So he’s a guy who’d been in our system.”
“Yeah, but there’s a caveat here. If he is with a group, the bomb maker is the one who’s been in the system. The top dogs might not show up in our database. But—”
“We’ll get the guy with the dirty fingernails to roll on his bosses.”
“Look for bombing/explosive and burglary/robbery offenses. If he did do time, that’ll likely be the deal.”
“Are these guys like serial killers— Will any power rape type of thing show on their sheets?”
She shook her head. “Even though there’s often a sexual component to some bombers’ motives, rape or sexual assault isn’t their vice.”
“Okay,” Uzi said. “Let’s step back a second. I think we can assume this bomber is part of a group, and this group has political/ideological motives, or is interested in revenge. Agreed?”
Vail shifted in her seat. “The branch is creaking.”
“William Ellison was a bright guy. Could he have been our bomber?”
“He certainly had access, and he had intimate knowledge of the mechanical aspects of the helicopter, more than enough to take the thing down. But is he the guy who built the bomb? Maybe. Not necessarily. From the info you faxed me, Ellison fits certain aspects of the profile. But he also falls outside it in a lot of ways. Big thing is that he didn’t have a criminal history. He was single, didn’t appear to be in a significant relationship, and his childhood was not exactly what you’d call stable or warm and fuzzy. There was a note in there about his father, who skipped when little William was two.”