Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

There you go. That’s what I’m talking about. How is that possible?

There are also probably ten times the number of pejoratives for women as there are for men. Leo says: We’ve spent more time throughout history putting women down.

Jesus. One of the men answers: You’re truly brainwashed, aren’t you?

Screw you.

Calm down, guys. The original typist soothes: We’ve all been where he is now, at least most of us have. Let me talk. You still there, Hurting?

I’m here.

Look, I read your story. Let me just ask you this: Are you angry at her? I want you to think for a minute before you answer. Really turn it over, and be honest. What’s the best word for the emotion you feel?

Leo drags out the pause. He finally types:

Hate.

Good. Well, not good, of course, but it’s honest. Now, why do you hate her?

Because. She stopped loving me for no good reason. She aborted my child without even consulting me. And she’s become an emotional stranger with no effort at all.

Okay, Hurting. Now I’m going to ask you another question, and again I want you to really think about it. You ready?

I’m ready.

Here it is: What kind of woman does that?

The silence again. The cursor blinks on the screen, and I get the sense of a group of men in a medium-size room, watching, waiting, eager.

“Go ahead,” Alan tells him. “This is why we came into this room. Time to cross the line.”

They’re in Bitch Chat. Alan had discussed with me whether I thought it was too early, but I dismissed this concern. “At the minimum, curiosity is normal.”

Leo types, continuing to play up his reluctance: I guess only a bitch would do that kind of thing.

Good! You’re almost there, brother. Take a breath, and step back. Look at the logic of what you just said. If a woman who’d do that kind of thing is a bitch, and that’s true—then why on earth would you have any questions or qualms about calling her one?

Cursor blinking silence.

I’m starting to see what you mean.

Of course you are, brother. It’s called truth. So?

So what?

So SAY IT. What is your ex-wife, brother? Not what kind of woman would do that, but what kind of a woman is she? What is she?

She’s … a bitch.

Say it again!

She’s a bitch. A fucking bitch.

What else?

A cunt. A lying, coldhearted, baby-murdering cunt!

Various encouragements are shouted by the others in the chat; at least, I imagine them as shouts. I see, in my mind’s eye, that same group of men in that medium-size room. Some have faces contorted by rage, others are crying. All of them are shaking a clenched fist and shouting the words, again, and again. Bitch! Bitch! Cunt!

What about my personal favorite? I think.

I search and I find.

Whore. Someone has typed: Fucking whore.

I’ve always hated that one, even more than the sacrilegious cunt. I’m not sure why.

Leo types: God, I fucking hate her. I HATE HER SO GOD DAMN MUCH! I wish …

He stops typing, waits.

You wish what, brother?

“Wait a little longer,” Alan coaches. “Make him pull it out of you. Don’t be too eager.”

Go on, brother. It’s just us here. No one knows your face or your real name. Don’t hold back. What do you wish?

Leo types in a blur of letters: I wish she’d fucking die.

Silence. Then:

We’ve all been in that place. Don’t be ashamed. The first part of reclaiming your masculinity is being honest about your feelings for women. You know how you feel; they don’t. Don’t let them tell you how you’re “allowed” to feel, right?

I gotta go. Thanks.

Leo logs out.

“That was good,” I tell him. “Virtuoso performance. The hasty exit at the end was a good touch.”

“Conflicted and full of hate,” Alan agrees. “Just the right elements for a psychotic break. Hopefully it’ll catch Dali’s attention.”

James is signaling to me.

“I have to go, guys. Let me know when you decide to go back into the chat.”

“Will do.”

The connection is severed. “What is it?” I ask James.

“Earl Cooper is on his way over to see us.”

I stretch, trying to purge myself of the toxic mix of excitement and frustration. “Let’s hope he has something helpful to say.”

“I have some observations, but I’m not sure how useful they’re going to be.”

Cooper sits in one of our office chairs, relaxed but watchful. He twirls one end of his handlebar mustache.

“We’ll take what you’ve got,” I reassure him.

“Fair enough.” He settles back, seeming to collect his thoughts. “Much of geographic profiling is about the concept of a ‘mental map,’ the cognitive image we develop of our surroundings. This ‘map’ is developed via experience, travel, reference points, so on. We all have safe areas, zones we’re most comfortable or confident in, and those tend to be close to home, though not always so. You following?”

“I think so,” I say.

“It’s true often enough that the first killing is usually the most helpful when it comes to geographic profiling. I’ve interviewed a couple of bad boys who were correctly pinpointed by what I do, and I showed them how we found them. Each one said that it made sense. They killed close to home and dumped the bodies in areas known to them. They thought they were being clever, but when I showed them the facts, they realized that they were operating subconsciously within a very definite comfort zone.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “First-time killers haven’t been emboldened by their success. There’s a lot of excitement there, but there’s also a lot of fear. Staying relatively close to home would be reassuring.”

“That’s right. Travel to a foreign country and you understand the concept real quick: We’re most comfortable in familiar surrounds. Here’s an example: Which one of you has spent time around train yards?”

No one raises a hand.

“Well,” he continues, “in that case, if one of you was to kill a man—or a woman—it’s not likely you’d do it near the tracks. But one of the more famous cases of success in geographic profiling is the one I mentioned to you earlier, and it involved just that factor: All the bodies were found near train tracks.”

“You mentioned this before,” James says, sounding bored. “The perpetrator was a transient, right?”

“An illegal immigrant, actually, young Jim. It’s a simplistic example, but a good one for our purposes. You had a man in a country that was not only strange to him, it was hostile by default. If he got caught, he’d be deported. So he hobo’ed, traveled by rail. When he started killing, it was only natural that he’d do it by the trains.

“Now, back to the lecture. So we all, knowingly and unknowingly, develop comfort zones. They’re spatial, and they have degrees. You’re most comfortable in your own living room. You’re more comfortable in your backyard than your front. The local grocery store? Less comfortable than the living room, but you’ve shopped there plenty, so that’s all right. The place you work every day is probably fairly safe. You form a mental map, and when it comes time to commit a crime, that mental map comes into play. You’re going to consider the factors, control what you know: escape routes, what areas are most deserted, where does the light from the streetlamps end.

“Boiling it down to a greater simplicity, by way of example, let’s say we have two neighborhoods right next to each other. One is a white lower-middle-class neighborhood. The other is predominantly black and poor, with a higher crime rate. A white man gets killed inside the white neighborhood, shot dead on his green lawn behind his white picket fence. What’s the first assumption?”