A Cruel Season for Dying (12 page)

Sakura was silent. The question remained why the victims were being injected with LSD at all. Apparently, like the bizarre
ritual of the incense and the wings, and the death by cardiac arrest, the psychoactive drug also served some aspect of the
killer’s fantasy. But there was nothing to be gained by raising this point with Linsky.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, “I appreciate your getting back to me so quickly.”

“I am not as fond of late hours as you are,” the M.E. responded, “but I told you I didn’t like mysteries.” He paused for a
moment. “Just remember to keep in mind, Lieutenant, the caseload under which the coroner’s office labors in this city. It
will take me some time to compile the official reports.”

“Of course.” Sakura smiled. This was vintage Linsky. The autopsy results were public documents. The M.E. was assuring him
that he would withhold filing on Carrera and the others as long as possible to keep the forensic details from the press.

Sakura hung up the phone. The water for his tea was boiling. He would have a cup and work awhile longer. He had read his last
report for tonight, but there was one more thing he wanted to do before leaving. He poured the water into the porcelain pot
and reached across the desk for the folder of crime scene photos.

Alone in her Quantico office, Dr. Wilhelmina French sat entombed at her desk six stories beneath the Virginia earth.
Still under sea level
was her private joke, a reference to the geography of her native New Orleans, where only a complex system of levees kept
the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain from creating a second Venice. Willie was a true native of the Crescent City, a descendant
of the town’s original French and Spanish settlers. She was blessed or cursed, depending on the vagrancy of the weather, with
thick black hair that charmingly curled or frizzed. Her magnolia skin was flawless. Tim, her sometime lover, called her only
half playfully a goddess. Most times she, too, felt that energy that prompted him to say it. Other times, like tonight, she
was filled instead with an edginess that was close to desperation, the sudden coldness of a life crowded not only with professional
accomplishments but also with
what ifs
and
might have beens.

She looked down where the yellow light from the desk lamp cut a sharp circle in the windowless dark. Her hands on the computer
keyboard moved inside the glow, punching out the final draft of the report that might very well determine her professional
future.

In the last few years, in addition to her teaching duties at the academy, she had traveled the country on weekends and holidays,
in the weeks between semesters, interviewing and testing every currently incarcerated serial killer. She had surprised even
herself with the level of cooperation she had managed to obtain, not only from prison officials but from the men and one woman
who were the objects of her research.

But then, many serial killers were above average in intelligence and as fascinated with their own pathology as any psychiatrist.
Her study, more rigorous than any that had preceded it, had not provided any great surprise, supporting current theory that
a constellation of factors both genetic and environmental created a serial killer. But its sheer exhaustiveness would establish
beyond question her complete credibility in the field, a credibility she would have to draw on when the real thrust of her
research became apparent.

And the seeds of that research were here in the words that glowed on the screen, not hidden but plainly imbedded in the conventionality
of her results. She had documented in the killers’ own words, in their carefully collected histories, the primary role of
fantasy in their development, from an early inability to connect with the world to the inevitable first act of murder.

Serial killers started small. They started as children. Fire starters, bed wetters, animal torturers who progressed, it seemed,
inevitably to homicide. She was determined to learn everything about the process. And then she wanted to short-circuit it.
She believed it was possible to reprogram the malfunctioning circuits in the limbic brain. Convincing the government to let
her test her theories was another matter altogether.

She mistyped a sentence and cursed. Leaned back in the chair. As always when she was feeling sorry for herself, she imagined
the wry face of Dr. Krieger. He had called her “Joan of Arc” and warned her of what life would be like if she persisted in
her attraction to controversial areas of research. But in the end it had been he who had arranged for her graduate work in
Switzerland, where work with psychoactive drugs was still possible. Her mentor was dead now for two years, but she knew what
he would say:
Plan ahead, but solve today’s problems.

One thing at a time. Finish the report now. Think about the next step tomorrow. Or, maybe, rest now and finish tomorrow. It
had been a very long day.

She saved her work and reached to shut off the computer but dropped her hand. Her brother’s still unopened letter sat on her
desk just beyond the circle of lamplight. She didn’t need to open it to know what it said. Would she be coming home for Christmas
this year? Their father had asked. She really should give Mason an answer. She could telephone or type out a letter. Her brother
remained impervious to e-mail.

She was still sitting motionless, her thoughts wandering backward, when the fax machine signaled a document coming through.
She turned gratefully to the printer.

First page. She recognized Jimmy’s precise writing.
Take a look at these and call me tomorrow.
She grabbed at the pages that followed. Blowups of crime scenes. She placed them side by side on the desk. Swung the lamp
to light them.

Willie had seen a lot of dead bodies, murders of the worst kind. Dismemberments. Mutilations. Women and children mostly. Always
it was the details that stayed with her—the exposed whiteness of a thigh, a mouth frozen open in a scream. These nude male
bodies disturbed her in a different way. Not a visceral reaction but a purer kind of fascination that made her uncomfortable.

She looked at the clock.
Call me tomorrow.
Just like Sakura to leave her with a million questions. A student’s revenge. Her best student. Her inscrutable friend. She
loved to tease him with that one, but it was this quality in him she loved best. Perhaps inevitably, people had become for
her little more than specimens, far too easily pigeonholed. Jimmy remained among the few exceptions.

Her fingers hesitated on the phone. She could probably still catch him at the office.

There was no reason for him to keep the mask. In fact, he should have thrown the obscenity away since it only served as a
reminder that Thomas Graff had never shown the night of the Halloween party. But
that was the point precisely. The garish red image of the devil’s face was a most effective device to stoke his anger, keep
warm his resentment of the priest’s intrusion into his life. He didn’t want to like Father Graff. Didn’t want him to save
St. Sebastian. He would gladly go down with the ship he’d never wanted to captain. At this stage of his life, his heart had
no room for a champion of good deeds. It was a sin he was willing to live with.

He had already taken Graff to task on the Halloween party, but certainly not to his satisfaction. The priest’s excuses, though
they seemed genuine enough, his mea culpas, though sufficiently sincere, still rankled. In reality, he should have been pleased
by the man’s absence, since such events were part of his grand agenda for parish renewal, and his no-show insinuated a lack
of commitment to the cause. And he’d offered no alibi for his associate’s truancy, though the ladies were ready enough with
forgiveness and with endless explanations for the children, who fawned over the priest as much as they did. He remembered
hearing a rumor somewhere that a young Thomas Graff had been engaged.

The outer door opened and closed. He glanced up at the clock.
11:05
in the night. Almost tomorrow and Graff was just returning to the rectory.

“Father Graff … ,” he called from his study.

“Father Kellog, you’re still up.” Graff paused before the open door, his briefcase in his hand.

“It’s late.”

He glanced at his watch. “I lost track of time. Mrs. Ziober insisted I stay for supper, and the table talk sort of turned
into another meeting. There were some really good ideas thrown around.”

“Thrown around…?”

Now he set his case down and walked into the study. “Father Kellog, I know we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of the parish-renewal
program. But I promise in the long run—”

“What I don’t see eye to eye is your conduct. You act more like a businessman than a priest.”

“I am a businessman, Andrew, for the Church.”

“But you are God’s priest first.”

He bowed his head, then looked up. His eyes were clear and shockingly steady. “I know. I came late to my vocation, Father
Kellog, but I have not forgotten why I entered the priesthood.”

“Then I won’t have to remind you again.”

“Good night, Father, in the future I’ll mind the clock more carefully.”

Despite his best intentions to go home, Sakura, on his second cup of tea, sat skimming the canvass reports for the neighborhood
surrounding Westlake’s building. The phone buzzed.

“Jimmy?” Willie’s voice.

He stopped reading and smiled. “Good evening, Dr. French.”

“I’m glad I caught you. These damn photos of yours would have had me up half the night…. Is this your case?”

“Yes.”

“You could have faxed me the autopsy reports. I can’t even tell how he’s killing them.”

“I wanted your impressions of the scenes first.”

“Not fair, Sakura. What he’s doing to the victims is at least as important as how he’s leaving the scenes.”

“Humor me.”

Her response was an expressive exhalation. “Where’s this happening?” she asked him.

“In the victims’ bedrooms. All three were homosexuals. No forced entry. We think they were random pickups. No evidence that
any of them knew each other.”

“The level of control is amazing. He’s organized as hell and he’s not hiding the bodies.” She fell silent, and he imagined
her studying the photographs.

“The scenes are so structured … ,” she began again.

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” he said. “The killer could be staging the scenes, trying to make us believe it’s a cult.
But where’s the blood? If he’s smart enough to pull this off, he’s smart enough to make a better show of it.”

“I think it’s posing—the structure of the scenes is part of his signature. He’s using the victims as props to convey his message.”

“But then what’s the message?” he said.

“Those wings are certainly suggestive.”

“Swan wings,” he said. “Confirmed through the lab. It seems the birds are plentiful all along the Coast. But we’ve no idea
how he’s getting them.”

“The obvious symbolism is angels,” she said, “but he could be operating on a deeper level. Wings could simply indicate that
he believes he’s liberating the victims in some way. From their homosexuality maybe. The hands placed over the genitals could
support that.”