Anatomy of Fear (14 page)

The way to capture a subject.

It made me think about the unsub, the fact that he drew his victims before he killed them. Was it his way of capturing them?

Beverly Majors said “Thanks” and offered up a wan smile. She had stopped chewing her lip and seemed a little more relaxed. Maybe I had established some sort of rapport with her.

I brought her back to the night Rice had been killed and asked her to try and picture it.

She took a deep breath. “It was raining. I remember because I’d worn suede shoes and they got ruined. Oh, God, that sounds awful. I don’t care about the shoes. It’s just something I remember. I stepped into one of those greasy puddles, you know, in the curb, when gasoline or something mixes with the water?” She swallowed and I could see she was fighting tears.

I asked her to close her eyes and think about the crowd that had assembled once the cops were there.

“Did you notice anyone? Someone who stood out, someone you might have seen earlier in the evening, or anytime before?”

“I don’t think I ever looked at the crowd. I was just staring down into the puddles. I didn’t want to see what was going on.” A tear cut down her cheek.

“I know this is hard, but—”

“It’s okay. I, I don’t even know how I feel. I mean…I can’t locate my emotions. Does that sound weird?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know if Dan and I even had a future, but now…” She took another breath. “Dan was from a rich family and I grew up in a project. I can’t imagine what his parents would have thought if their only son brought home a black girl—and Dan never did. Bring me home, I mean.”

She was so charming and beautiful, it was hard to imagine anyone not falling for her, but I’d witnessed enough to know that
prejudice lay just below the top layer of almost everyone’s skin, regardless of their color. Some hid it better than others, and some tried to overcome it. But it was pretty much here to stay and I guessed Beverly Majors knew that as well as I did.

I asked her a few questions that she couldn’t answer, but seeing her had told me something important.

I went downstairs and sat on the bench she’d pointed out from her dorm window. It was near the north end of the square, just a few feet from the arch and out in the open. Anyone could have seen them. Obviously someone had.

I called Russo right away and told her. The minute I did she said, “Interracial couples! Jesus! That’s what I’ve been trying to get at. The racial angle. I knew it had to be there.”

18

A
gent Richardson handed Monica Collins a printout two inches thick, then took a seat at the conference table beside his fellow field officer, Mike Archer. “Active and inactive soldiers in the tri-state area,” he said.

Collins fingered the stack of paper. “How is it broken down?”

“Military divisions—army, navy, National Guard, active and inactive; New York, New Jersey, everything highlighted by color. Blue is anyone over the age of fifty, so not worth looking at. Yellow are active, but out of state or overseas, also eliminated. Green is active, full-time, which would leave little time for a homicide hobby. Orange are your badly wounded and handicapped, obviously not our man. Red are your psyche discharges, which I’m thinking are priority. Twelve hundred and sixteen of them. National Guard are purple.”

Collins acknowledged his work with a slight nod of approval, then slid the mass of paper back toward him. “Like you said, start with the psyche discharges. And see if anyone’s got a police record or done time.”

She turned her attention to Archer, who had an equally impressive tome in front of him.

“Current list of every art student and art teacher in New York,” he said, patting the papers. “Borough schools included, like Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Queens College, and a place called P.S. 1 in Long Island City, which has an artists-in-residence program. I’m having a couple of Quantico interns go through everything. Off the bat we eliminated the girls. Don’t see our Sketch Artist as a woman.”

Collins nodded. Though she knew all about Eileen Wuornos, the serial killer about whom they’d made that movie
Monster,
and had read about others, women serial killers were still a rarity. “Stick to the men, particularly upperclassmen and teachers.”

“Right,” said Archer.

“This is all fine,” said Collins. “But it’s just a start.”

She spent the next twenty minutes going over each of the murders, the confusing issue of the three vics’ being of different racial backgrounds, which was uncommon, and the fact that the killing method had varied.

Archer displayed a photograph of the knife that had killed the college student, Rice, a detail of where the blade met the handle, the words
WEAPON OF CHOICE
clearly etched into the steel. “It’s a small mail-order company,” he said. “They advertise in the back of magazines like
Soldier of Fortune.
Problem is they stopped making this particular kind of knife six years ago and their files only go back five, or so they say. Even so, they were not happy to give up their client list, but I’ve got it.” He waved a fax. “Quantico ran the addresses. Ninety percent of these yokels have their weapons sent to PO boxes.”

“No surprise there,” said Collins. “Did you check out the ownership of the PO boxes?”

Archer nodded. “Got about a fifty percent return. The other fifty rented boxes under John Smith, paid for the month their
weapon was being shipped, and that was it, gone. Paid cash, of course.” He sighed. “Interns are checking out the fifty percent that are checkable.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said Collins, but she had a feeling their unsub was too smart for that. If he’d bought the knife by mail order with intent to do damage, he’d have covered his ass. Still, it was something to do. She’d report what they had found and what they were doing to her superiors at Quantico. They liked reports and paper and at least she had plenty of that. She was scheduled for an audiovisual hookup in a couple of hours, which did not thrill her; the idea that there were a whole bunch of agents in a room watching her made her nervous.

She glanced at her watch. “Locals will be here soon for the meeting. Let’s see what they have to offer.” She looked from Archer to Richardson. “This meeting is strictly informational. There’s no need to give them what we’ve got.”

19

T
erri left the meeting with Dugan, Perez, O’Connell, and a headache. The bulk of the agenda had been how to manage the media. According to Denton, by way of the mayor, by way of the FBI, they still wanted a total blackout. No serial killer. No racial angle. Any crime that had to do with race, even hinted at being a hate crime, was incendiary. But trying to keep a story like this out of the press these days?

As if,
thought Terri.

The work was to remain divided between the three precincts, each assigned to handle one of the three murders, thereby dispelling the notion that they were in any way related, though in actuality they would be tripling efforts and pooling information.

To Terri’s mind this baroque process would undoubtedly slow down the investigation. She had worked enough cases to know that the number of bodies working on it did not necessarily mean success, particularly if the bodies would be working out of different precincts and under separate commands. It seemed to her a guarantee for confusion, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her crew was on the Harrison Stone murder, the black man shot in Brooklyn, which was further complicated by the fact that the
Brooklyn division still had official jurisdiction, another way to allay suspicion that the cases were connected. She wasn’t sure why the feds had not completely taken over, her best guess being they were short on manpower and wanted the NYPD to do the legwork.

Collins and her field officers had arrived late and tried to act like they knew nothing and everything all at once. Terri could see they were fishing but not sharing.

For now, she was just happy to be out of the meeting. She leaned toward one of her detectives. “You’re related to Cole in the Twenty-third, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s married to my sister, a good guy,” said O’Connell. “You want me to keep up with what they’re getting on the Acosta case, that it?”

“We’re supposed to share information, right?”

“I hear you.”

“You can tell Cole we’ll share too.”

“So what did you make of
Lewinsky
?” asked Dugan.

“Who?”

“The case agent, Monica, as in…‘Lewinsky.’”

Terri cracked up. She needed the laugh and appreciated it. “Nice,” she said. “It’s Lewinsky from now on.”

“What do you say we chip in and buy her a blue dress?” O’Connell said.

“With a big fat
stain
on it,” Perez added.

All three men laughed and Terri joined them, enjoying the joke at Collins’s expense. A rarity. The men working under Terri had rarely shared anything with her except their resentment.

Nothing like a common enemy,
she thought.

“The G has more than they’re letting on, but that’s nothing new.” She dropped her voice to a whisper so her men had to move in close. “But so do we, and let’s keep that between us.”

T
erri had asked me to join her crew after their meeting with the feds. We were on the third floor of Midtown North, a conference room between Terri’s office and Department Command. It had a view looking west over Fifty-fourth Street with a quarter inch of the Hudson River visible between a couple of high-rise buildings. I was feeling a little uncomfortable, Dugan and Perez eyeing me, their faces saying:
What the fuck is he doing here?
Perez, in particular, maybe because he was Puerto Rican and saw me as some sort of competition for the Latino seat, which was absurd, but what could I say? O’Connell was friendly, but he seemed a little drunk. When Terri had finished her recap of the meeting with the FBI, Perez finally came out and said it: “So what’s Rodriguez doing?”

“Making a sketch,” she said.

“How can he make a sketch if we don’t got any witnesses?”

“Some of the witnesses saw more than they think. Rodriguez is trying to piece something together.” She looked over, gave me a slight smile, and I returned it.

The detectives were all on last-name or nickname basis. Dugan was alternately “Duggie” or “Howser,” Perez was “Pretzel,” and O’Connell was “Prince.” I had no idea why they called him that. Maybe he was a fan of the
Purple Rain
pop star. None of the guys had a nickname for Russo. She was just Russo, though they probably had plenty behind her back. I could only imagine what they were calling me.

Terri reviewed the cases, stopping to ask her men for their opinions, a smart move. I’d seen enough to know that guys on the force didn’t much like taking orders from a woman, particularly one younger than they. She had this way of tilting her head and squinting when any of her men were talking, as if she was really
listening. It could have been an act, but I didn’t think so. I was really starting to like her; respect her too. And there was another factor: She was sexy as hell in her tight black jeans and white blouse open at the neck, thin gold chain resting against her olive skin. I thought about doing some sketches of her while she walked back and forth, but was afraid I’d start imagining her naked and the way my drawings had been spontaneously creating themselves these days, I couldn’t chance it.

“Is there anything you’d like to add?”

It took me a second to realize Terri was talking to me. I cleared my throat and reiterated what I thought was a major point. “You’ve got a killer who’s making portraits of his victims, so it’s obvious he stalked them and chose them for a reason.”

Perez looked up at me with a sneer. “Yeah, I think we know the reason—the racial angle we’re not allowed to talk about because it
upsets
people.”

“There’s that,” I said. “But I was thinking more about the stalking angle—that the guy had to have watched his victims for some time to be able to draw them.”

“How about telling us something we don’t know?” said Perez. “You spent, what, three days on the street? Too tough for you out there?”

There were smiles teasing O’Connell’s and Dugan’s lips.

Their resentment didn’t surprise me.

“Six months,” I said. “And you’re right, I don’t have the street experience, and I’m not going to pretend I do. But I went through the academy, just like you, Perez. And I spent some time in Washington.”

“Ooh, Washington.” Perez shook his hand like I was hot stuff, and I let him have his fun. For a minute.

“I’ve put seven years into the job. How long have you been on
the force?” I asked the question knowing the answer: he’d only been working five years.

“What’s that got to do with the fucking price of tea in China?”

Terri laid her hand on his arm. “This isn’t productive.”

“Productive, my ass.”

“Exactly,” said Terri. “So just make nice, okay?”

Perez opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but stopped.

I could have said more too, but Terri was right, it wasn’t productive. Still, I wasn’t going to apologize for my lack of street creds. I’d made hundreds of drawings and probably interviewed as many witnesses as he had.

“The unsub’s drawings are obviously his signature,” I said. “And he takes his time.” I was reminded of what had just happened between me and Beverly Majors. “Could be that in the act of drawing his victims the unsub is creating some sort of bond with them.”

“Not that they know of,” said Perez.

“No. Of course not. But that doesn’t matter. Not to him. The relationship is in his mind. It’s the way visual people think, in pictures. It’s a way to see the world and make sense of it.”

“Visual people? You mean crazy people,” said O’Connell.

“In this case, yes.”

“So, you’re suggesting he draws the vics to make a bond with them; but why?” asked Terri.

“Could be his way to see them more clearly, to remember them and chart them. He must see the couples out in public and become fixated on them, the way these guys often do; then he draws them.”