Night work (31 page)

Kate thanked the detective, and when the fax came through a while
later she studied the face with the small blue eyes, trimmed beard, and
dark mole on the left side of the nose, but neither the picture nor the
report told her much. No sign of candy on the body, not in the report
at any rate. She filed it away, and went back to her phone calls.

Of the 200 or so living (presumably living) members of the
abuser's hit list, by the end of the day, the team had succeeded
in making contact with just over half. The others had either moved or
had their phones disconnected, and the investigators were forced to
wait for the local departments and regional agents to report back. Two
of the deaths came to light in this way, but for most of the remaining
names it would be days before the locals got a chance to check the
individuals out and get back to them.

In the meantime, of the 127 men the team had found, men scattered
from Key Biscayne to Seattle, nearly all said that they had received
some form of threatening communication, and three-quarters of them had
gotten a dozen or more letters, faxes, three a.m. phone calls, or
anonymous e-mail messages. Due to their own legal entanglements, the
men on the list were less likely than the general population to
complain to the police, but a number of them had, although neither
police nor telephone companies had been able to identify the anonymous
senders. Even the e-mail had come from public computers in libraries
and Internet cafes.

The Web site did prove to be operated by a woman in Nebraska, which
struck Kate as incongruous, for some reason. Still, remote or not,
Stella DeVries knew her rights and her high-powered lawyer refused to
let her say anything aside from a public declaration that she had not
advocated any act of harassment or violence, and that freedom of speech
included listing the names of accused offenders with the disclaimer
that they were innocent until found guilty in a court of
law--which disclaimer was indeed prominently displayed on the Web
site, albeit at the very end.

The entire Internet side of the investigation was now the property
of the federal authorities, and Kate had no choice but to let other law
enforcement agencies deal with Ms. DeVries and her well-prepared law
team. Kate and Al could only walk around the edges and try to see how
their cases tied in.

Finally, late that evening, Al laid his hand on Kate's collar
and dragged her away from her computer terminal to a late-night diner
much beloved of the cops who worked out of the Hall of Justice.
Kate's back felt permanently hunched, her fingers crabbed into
the typing position. She couldn't remember when she had last
eaten, or what.

They had been living on coffee for all that long day and craving a
strong drink for the last half of it, so they both compromised and had
a beer with their hamburgers. Kate swallowed deeply and closed her eyes
in appreciation; following that brief vacation she sat forward and
returned to work.

"I can't believe how long it takes sometimes for things like this Web site to come to light," she groaned.

"It's only been up for, what was it, twelve weeks?"

"Closer to fourteen."

"And there's obviously a lot of personal support for the
list, off-Web contacts that can't be traced. All the Web site
says is, Here's the guy's name and where he lives;
here's what he's accused of; let him know how you feel.
Nothing about murdering him or hounding him to suicide. I personally
can't see that there's anything illegal about it.
What's the precedent, anyway? Can you get a restraining order
against a Web site?" Hawkin wondered.

"Unless there's a really clear link between a violent
act and a Web site's ranting, it's hard to shut it
down," Kate reminded him. Al no doubt knew this, but he tended to
push the electronic world as far away from his life as he could.

Their food arrived, hot and beautifully greasy, and they turned
their attention to it. In a short time Kate was contemplating a few
limp and lonely french fries and thinking that the hamburger really
hadn't been as large as it looked. The waitress, standing by the
table as if summoned, asked if they wanted something else.

"Actually," Kate told her, "I'd like the same again."

"For me, too," said Al. "And another couple of beers."

The two partners sat without speaking, suspended between the points
of work and companionship, hunger and satiation. When the second half
of their meal came they ate and drank with an almost ritual slowness,
and both sighed at the end.

"I didn't realize I was so hungry," Al said, sounding amused.

"What's that phrase? My sides were clapping together
like an empty portmanteau." Kate belched demurely and pushed away
the plate, leaving the trimmings of lettuce and orange slice.
"Whatever a portmanteau is. So, Al. What do we do? Are these
about to become the feds' completely, or still ours, or
what?"

"They're still ours until they kick us off. The hit list
is their business--we just uncovered it. You did. Though I
wouldn't wait for any more thanks than you've got."

"I won't. So it's back to our very own trio of abusers."

"And possibly what's-his-name, Goff, in Sacramento."

"Be nice to find out if anyone in the city has regular contact
with Ms. DeVries and her list. You suppose the FBI will tell us?"

"I don't think we should wait for that either."

It was frustrating not knowing what information would come from the
federal investigation-and frustrating to know that the feds might well
solve all three murders in one day, by working them from the opposite
direction.

"We go on as before?" Kate asked.

"Who knows? We might even get there first."

"I suppose," Kate said thoughtfully, "it
doesn't really matter where the killer--or
killers--found out about their victims. I mean, they could have
gotten the names out of newspapers and court reports, inside contacts
in the hospitals and shelters, even just word of mouth. Man beats wife,
the neighbors know. That seems to be the way the Ladies find their
victims. Berry Doyle and the rest of the LOPD victims aren't on
the Web site."

"But, who would respond to stranger's troubles by
killing the stranger's abuser, or rapist? A lot of people might
want to , but wanting is a long way from doing. Strangling an
unconscious stranger isn't a thing just anybody can do. Assuming,
as we have been, that they are strangers."

"I agree," she said. "It takes someone with a
major load of resentment and anger. Cold rage." The word brought
to Kate's mind the troubling title she'd seen on
Roz's desk. "You know, Roz Hall's Ph.D. thesis is on
'women's rage' and something about violent goddesses.
Maybe I should take a closer look at it."

Hawkin cocked his head at the tone of her voice. "And at her?"

Kate rubbed her face tiredly. "I've been turning that
over in my mind a lot, and I just can't say what I think.
She's an obvious candidate, because she's so involved in
the movement here, but you know, I can't see it, can't see
her working herself up to that kind of hatred. Still, God knows
she's a woman with a lot of sides to her. I think it may be time
to ask some hard questions about her alibis for the nights
involved."

"Probably better if I do it. I'm not a friend."

"Let me start, see what I come up with. I'll hand it over to you if there's not a conclusive negative."

"Who else, other than her?"

Kate gazed off into the night street outside the diner, assembling
her thoughts. "We tend to think of anger as a sudden thing, an
eruption into violence that fades and is over, either permanently or
until the next time." Most of the homicides they dealt with were
this way, either in the home fueled by alcohol and stress or on the
street corner fueled by drugs, territoriality, and young male hormones.
Hawkin nodded, and Kate went on. "Serial killers are something
else, of course. They work either on voices in their heads or sexual
impulses. Anger feeds into it, but it's secondary." Again
Hawkin nodded, and Kate sat forward, laying her forearms out on the
worn Formica table.

"Then there are the terrorists, mass or serial killers who tie
their anger in with their intellect." God, she thought uneasily;
could I describe Roz Hall any more clearly? "For them, rage is
channeled through political action; their personal resentments and
injuries, all their personal histories are given meaning by what they
do. Revenge is taken not on the individual soldier who beat you up or
the guy from the other side who blew up your little sister with a pipe
bomb, but on all of 'them," the whole group that soldier or
the bomb-thrower represent."

"Sounds like you've talked this over with Lee," Al commented.

"No." He looked up at the tight, brief negative, and she
had to explain. "I can't go into this without making Roz a
part of it, and Lee and Roz are close. They were lovers, a long time
ago, and Roz has done an enormous amount in bringing Lee back to life.
We owe her a lot. I owe her. They're family."

"I don't know that Roz has anything to do with these
murders--like I said, I can't believe she does. But I think
she has either knowledge or at least her suspicions. She talked about
the inviolability of confession in a way that sounded...
potential. As if nobody had come to her yet to confess, but she thought
they might. And the subject matter of her thesis shows she's been
thinking about the idea of women's anger for a while."

"Terrorism, like Peter Mehta said. Against abusers." Hawkin sounded more thoughtful than dubious.

"Selective terrorism. Although if they could come up with a
way to eliminate large numbers of abusers at one throw, I doubt that
they'd hesitate." Kate thought of the flyer advocating
poison pills for male babies, triggered at the first sign that the boy
was becoming abusive.

"Terrorists generally go for publicity," Al objected.
"Why haven't they sent in a manifesto to Channel Five or
the
New York Times?"

"Maybe they thought they'd see how many they could get
away with before it came out and the abusers started to watch their
backs."

Hawkin took a thoughtful bite of his elderly orange slice.
"So, not one vigilante, but 'they." How many do you
see here?"

"I suppose it could be one person."

"Male or female?"

Kate started to answer, then closed her mouth and thought for a
minute. "You know, we've been thinking of this as a
woman's thing, but there's no reason it couldn't be a
man. Someone who lost a sister, maybe, or whose daughter was raped.
God," she said with a laugh, "wouldn't that be
ironic? Woman's revenge carried out by a man."

"Sensitive New Age guy goes overboard."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Now you're writing newspaper headlines?"

"I may need a second job to support the new kid. But you were saying it could be one, or--?"

"If it's a single individual, a woman, she's got
to be strong enough physically to handle a man the size of James
Larsen, and with an immensely strong personality that could plan and
carry out a series of methodical murders without falling apart."

"Either that or she's nuts."

"Either that or she's nuts," Kate agreed.
"But even that is a form of strength. If it's a group, on
the other hand, I'd say it has to be a small one, probably no
more than two or three. Like you said, finding a person who could help
you commit murder in cold blood wouldn't be that easy. Anything
but a very tight group, you'd have someone who talked or bragged
or fell to pieces with remorse."

"I agree. But finding them through the Web site is no longer
our business. Unless, of course, we happen across the bigger picture in
our own investigation." Hawkin scratched his bristly jaw and
shoved back his chair. "Time to go home, Martinelli. Get your
beauty sleep, give Lee a back rub, sing Gilbert and Sullivan karaoke
with Jon."

Kate too got to her feet. "You make it sound so attractive, Hawkin."

They sorted out dollar bills for the waitress, and went their separate ways.

When Kate got home she found the lights turned down and the
house's other residents asleep. She also found a package waiting
for her on the table in the hall, an oversized mailing envelope
containing something the shape and weight of a box of typing paper.
Clipped to the end of the envelope was a note in Lee's writing
that said:

Roz came by with this tonight, said she had the impression that you wanted to see it so she printed you a copy.

Hope you're not going to try to read it in bed.

--L.

It was a box of typing paper, or 487 sheets of it, anyway, unbound. On the first page was the title.

women's rage and men's dishonor: manifestations of the violent goddess in the hebrew bible

Chapter 18

KATE HAD NO INTENTION of settling in to read 487 pages of turgid
doctoral prose, not after the day--the string of
days--she'd had. She made herself a cup of decaf coffee that
was mostly hot milk and sat at the kitchen table with the massive piece
of work to glance through it, more so she could tell Roz she'd
done so than from any great interest.

Two and a half hours later she suddenly realized that
if
she didn't go to bed soon, she would not be going to bed at all.
Once she had decided to skip over the lengthy footnotes with their
detailed discussions of opposing points of
view
and debates
of the subtle meanings of words and objects, the text moved right
along. Indeed, instead of the usual dry technical language employed by
every thesis Kate had ever seen, Roz wrote in straightforward, even
lyrical English prose that drew the reader on, and in, as if this was a
popular work designed to inspire a general audience. Why was she
surprised, Kate asked herself; everything that damn woman set her hand
to was compelling, why not her doctoral thesis?