“You have no idea.”
Then Calvin filled me in on some of his current consulting work with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a little-known combat support agency that provides geospatial intelligence to the Department of Defense. The NGIA emphasizes military use of geospatial intelligence, but over the years Calvin and I have both worked with them to help find ways to integrate their GEOINT into law enforcement. However, last year I bowed out when they started pushing for an international cyberinfrastructure that would include an integrated global video array between our spy satellites, private firms, and the GEOINT of our allies.
Calvin and I had never seen eye to eye on this issue.
“But Patrick,” he said earnestly, “even now the Department of Defense is designing the next generation of satellites. By integrating current technology into the satellite systems, we will be able to zoom in close enough to read text off a document, numbers off a cell phone screen, even verify identities through retinal scans. And with laser targeting there’s been talk of-”
“Calvin, please,” I didn’t mean to sound impatient, but I’d heard all this before. “Law enforcement personnel need probable cause to stop a car, tap a phone, enter a house, search a suspect, or even follow someone home. With global video, all that would go out the window, the government could follow anyone, anywhere, anytime.
No privacy. We have a right to live our lives without someone looking over our shoulders every minute of the day. We should use technology to find the guilty, not monitor the innocent.”
“But think of it, my boy. A crime occurs, say perhaps a child is abducted, we review the global video at the time and place of the crime, then follow the offender from the scene, use live tracking, and locate him in a matter of minutes. This is the zenith of environmental criminology. It’s what we’ve been working toward for decades. It will revolutionize the investigative process.”
“We arrest voyeurs and peeping Toms, but now the NGIA is proposing creating one giant webcam for intelligence agencies all over the world so they can peek into the lives of innocent people.
I still say it’s not right. Maybe we can debate this another time. I know you need to catch your flight-”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He brushed a gaunt hand against the air as if he were erasing the words we’d just spoken to each other. “Please forgive me. Your case. Tell me about your investigation.”
Calvin quickened his pace, and I summarized the current case, changing the names and some of the details so that I wasn’t revealing information that might compromise our investigation. Calvin listened astutely, nodding at times to show that he was following what I said, and then at last he asked, “Patrick, have you explored the connection of Monday night’s fire to John Doe’s death?”
“So far all I have is the nexus of time and location.”
“Hmm. I know you don’t typically venture into motive, but has Agent Jiang plumbed your arsonist’s motivation for the previous fires?”
“Ralph assigned one of the field agents to look into the arsonist’s bank records, and she found that the man had made a twenty-five-thousand-dollar deposit within a few days of each of the previous fires. So, if you’re looking for motive, it appears that he did it for the money.”
“Yes, but the money from whom?”
“We don’t know.”
“And regardless, that’s not what the abductors wanted from him in the end.”
“Apparently not.”
“Obviously, you’ll need to follow up with your elusive Dr.O."
“He’s still out of town. It’s on my list for later today.”
“Yes, of course. And Shade, what do you know of this Shade character?”
“Not much. He might be the man we took into custody, but I doubt it. Shade told me on the phone that he was at the rendezvous point and it seems unlikely that would have been the warehouse.
Whoever Shade is, he knows how to mask his GPS location and he knows me. He positively identified me during our brief phone conversation so I’m afraid he might be someone from a previous case, or maybe even a personal acquaintance.”
“Quite so.” Calvin walked in silent repose beside me for a few minutes and then said, “It’s an intricate case to be sure, but I’m confident you’ll be able to unravel it, my boy. I’ll certainly consider all that you’ve told me, and if I have any additional investigative recommendations, I’ll contact you promptly. One word of advice…” Then he began speaking to me as if I was still a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University, and he was still my professor. “Patrick, remember, the devil is not in the details, but in how the details relate to each other. Sometimes you need to stop looking at the facts and start looking at the spaces between them. One cannot adequately understand the movement of the planets through a solar system until one has identified what they all orbit around.”
I was reflecting on his comments when he added, “And now for the personal matter you were reticent to mention on the phone.”
I knew he would be able to tell if I were hiding anything from him, so I didn’t even try. “Calvin, at times my job really eats away at me. The human potential for evil is, well… it’s staggering.”
He read between the lines. “But it’s your personal potential for evil that troubles you most.”
“Yes.”
“We’re all capable of the unthinkable, Patrick.”
“I know. Maybe I know that too well.”
We paused in the shadow of a thick palm tree, and Calvin said,
“I believe the more acutely aware we are of our human frailty, the less vulnerable we are to our base instincts.”
“It’s those base instincts that frighten me the most-not just the inclination we have toward evil, but-”
“The subtle enjoyment of it.”
“Yes.”
He contemplated my words for a few moments. “So, to put it in mountaineer’s terms, how do we know we’re not going to slip off the escarpment when we’re all living on the edge of the cliff?”
“Yes,” I said. “And how do we know we’re not going to push someone else off the arete?” We stepped back into the bright day and continued along the trail.
“The simple answer, Patrick, as you’ve already deduced, is that we don’t. We can never be sure we won’t jump or push someone else.
But that’s not a satisfactory answer because we all want to think that we’re different, that we would never do those things-and yet the edge is within reach of all of us. Nietzsche wrote, ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’ You have looked long into the abyss, my boy. And you’ve seen how alluring it is.”
I thought for a moment. “You’re right, Calvin, except I don’t fight monsters and neither do you. We track offenders who are just as human as we are. Killers, rapists, pedophiles-they do monstrous things and their actions make them more guilty than others, but not less human. The more you search for what makes ‘them’ different from ‘us,’ the more you find that, at the core, we’re all the same.
Offenders aren’t monsters any more than we are.”
“Then, perhaps,” Calvin said with disturbing resignation, “we are all monsters.”
Just what I needed to hear. “It’s such an encouragement talking to you, Calvin. If Dr. Phil ever retires, you ought to apply for his job.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Tessa was waiting for us across the parking lot from the Museum of the Living Artist, in the Casa del Rey Moro Garden. “What took you two so long?”
“I’m afraid we’re still a bit befuddled by this case,” Calvin said.
“I thought it was almost solved?”
“A few remaining conundrums, as it were,” he replied. “Well, I think your problem is, you two need to start thinking more like Dupin.”
“Dupin?” I said.