Skin Deep

by Gary Braver

  And with it an ember of an idea that began to glow brighter each day.

  Over the weeks it increased in intensity, and he blew on it like a man on a mission—a mission that across the days and nights evolved into obsession as the growing resemblance stirred up torturous longings, as well as the hurt, grief, and rage: all the hot muck that pressed to the surface.

  For days he went about his work having imaginary conversations with this woman—driving in a convertible, going to the beach, having dinner at a fancy restaurant, listening to her laughter. He also taunted himself with images of her nude and with a single black lace-top stocking.

  And there were the dreams.

  One night she showed up at his bedside in her baby dolls and caressed him while he cried because he didn’t want her to go away. But she said she had to and kissed him on the mouth then wrapped the stocking around her neck and hanged herself. He woke up with his chest aching, his pillow damp, and his head splitting with pain. Another night he dreamt of her peeling off a black stocking and twirling it across her naked body. He felt the arousal, and reached for it like a lure, but suddenly it grew into an entangling thicket that enclosed him and threatened to choke off his air. Thankfully, he shook himself awake. But for the better part of the day, he went about his appointments feeling heavy with guilt.

  At first, he didn’t know exactly what his mission was—just some vague notion that made him want to see Diane Hewson. She was single and so was he. So in a moment of bravado following her final checkup he said that he had two tickets to a Boston Symphony concert and would love to have her join him. And because she was already in town on business, they met at Symphony Hall. After that they went for a drink at a quiet bar. She said she had a fine time and so did he.

  Then the plan took on form and substance.

  Weeks followed, as did his growing need for gratification and release. Although he did not quite divine the kind of promise it would hold, he began to think cunning thoughts while studying Lila’s photo album—the nudes, the drawings, the ads, and publicity posters—and sniffing her clothes and putting her lock of hair to his lips.

  One day, parched with desire, he gave Diane Hewson a call and made a date for the next day. She said she was delighted. Because she lived in Weston, a suburb twenty miles southwest of Boston, she agreed to meet him in the parking lot of the Burlington Mall. They met the next day and he drove them north on Route 128 toward Essex.

  She was dressed for outdoor adventure—cargo shorts, T-shirt, sneakers, and a windbreaker. It was a beautiful early fall day and in the rear seat was a basket of fancy picnic food he had bought at Bread & Circus and a bottle of chilled Taittinger.

  She was a talker and went on about how pleased she was with her surgery and how so many people complimented her. She jokingly hoped that her commercial real estate business would improve as a result. He responded politely, while feeling his head throb with annoyance over her chin, which he kept fixing in his mind, giving it greater length and squaring off the sharpness. And there was that hair. It was a shade too red. Plus she also wore some citrusy perfume that reminded him of cleaning fluid, not the sultry scent of Shalimar.

  It took them an hour to reach Cape Ann. He drove to a secluded launch on the Essex River where the day before he had secured a canoe. Nobody was around.

  “How cool,” she said. “I haven’t been canoeing in years.”

  He untied the rope and pulled the boat out from the brush. They loaded the cooler and picnic basket and then he steadied the boat so she could get in. She would ride in front. In a few minutes they were paddling down the river and into open water toward Hogg Island. Visible was a large old brown house which, he explained, was part of the set for the movie version of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, filmed out there a few years ago.

  They spread a blanket on a grassy rise just up from the water and under a large oak that partly blocked their view from the mainland. They ate patés of goose liver and bluefish, goat milk cheese and aged Gouda, sliced tomatoes and Calamata olives with a fresh baguette, followed by sliced fresh kiwi fruit and melons with chocolate pecan truffles. And they washed it down with the bottle of Taittinger. Diane was rightfully impressed.

  While they chatted, he studied her face, taking in the angles, adjusting them, trying to forgive where they fell short. At once adoring them when for a microsecond they slotted in place, yet simultaneously hating them when they didn’t.

  Feeling the glow of the champagne and the warmth of the setting sun, she took his hand. “This is wonderful,” she said, and put her hands around the back of his neck and gave him a long kiss that made giddy sensations in his genitals.

  It was just what he had hoped for. Along the horizon were long slashes of deep purple clouds and not a boat in sight. But his head was throbbing to distraction. He fingered two pills from his breast pocket and gulped them down, hoping to God that he wouldn’t have a seizure, or if he did that it would be fast and unnoticeable in the dimming light.

  “You okay?”

  “Just a little headache.”

  “I’ve got some Advil.”

  “I just took something.”

  She looked toward the horizon. “We’ll have enough light to get back, won’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  In a short while he felt the ache level off.

  Is it the size of a refrigerator?

  Smaller.

  She put her hand on his. “How you doing?”

  “Better. But maybe you could rub my temples if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course.”

  He laid his head in her lap as she placed her palms against his temples and made gentle circles in the way he showed her. As she massaged away the pain, he stretched out, her breasts hanging above his face. Her nipples were outlined in the white cotton as she moved. And in his mind he saw them rubbing themselves pink and hard with the friction. He groaned.

  “Better?”

  “Mmmm.”

  The next moment she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long, open, wet probing kiss that tasted of cool champagne and hot intentions. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and instantly her hands encircled his neck and began caressing the back of his head as she pressed her breasts to his chest.

  She pulled back to catch her breath. “I’ve been to a lot of doctors in my life, but this is the first time I’ve ever made out with one.”

  “Always a first time for everything.”

  She smiled. “How’s the head?”

  “Better.”

  She kissed the nape of his neck and munched her way to his ear. He nuzzled his face into her breasts as she slid her hand down his side to his front. Her hand slipped under his shirt and inched down to his belly and lower. She undid his belt and began to zip down his fly.

  “No,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You first.”

  Without a word she removed her top and gave her breasts a rub as if to wake them; then she removed her shorts, revealing small white panties. In the afterglow of the sun, he watched her get to her knees then rub the front of his pants. She moaned in disappointment because he was flaccid.

  Still in her panties, she pulled down his pants, removed his shoes until he was lying flat in his underpants. She kissed the lump of his genitals, then glanced at him in dismay. She put her knees together and shimmied out of her panties and then restraddled him. He said nothing. Just studied her face.

  She grasped the band of his shorts and pulled them down over his feet. She lowered her face to his mouth for several wet seconds, then nibbled a line down his chest, his belly, and below. He closed his eyes and strained with all his might, but nothing. So she put him into her mouth limp as he was.

  Again he strained and arched, seeing Lila in his head, groaning against the horrible realization that things were not working. Meanwhile, this woman was doing all she could.

  “Wait a sec,” he said, and he reached for his pants and pulled something out
of his pocket.

  “What’s that for?”

  In his hand he held a black lace-top stocking. “It might go better if we played a little game.”

  “A little game?”

  “Get on your knees and drag it across me.” And he showed her.

  She looked at him blankly, wondering if he was joking or weird. But she did what he said. She knelt beside him and ran the stocking up and down his body, making curtsies and turns and teasing brushes against him while she had him rub her with his hands. He locked his eyes on her face as she did several passes, occasionally closing his eyes to bring Lila to mind, then opening them again at the slightest twinge. This went on and still he could not be aroused.

  “I don’t know what the problem is,” she said.

  In his head Lila stood over him cooing and teasing him. But not this woman. Her face was off—the weak dwarf chin, the too broad brow that he could do nothing about, nor the green eyes, the carrot hair. And he hated what he saw—an incomplete forgery.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you okay? You look strange.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I do. You’re just nervous. It’s okay.”

  He muttered something and sat up, feeling as if his head would burst.

  “Pardon me?”

  Suddenly the magma chamber split open. In a blinding flash, he grabbed the stocking and in one precise movement he had the material noosed around her neck. “Dirty girl,” he growled.

  She never knew what hit her.

  81

  “It does looks like her,” said Jackie. “But it’s probably just an unfortunate coincidence.”

  Steve was sitting at her dining-room table, the printout of the Essex River woman plus a photo of Dana sitting side by side.

  Jackie sipped a glass of wine as she studied the two images. The last time she saw Dana was at a party three years ago and she didn’t remember her clearly. “But this is a digital reconstruction, so at best it’s generic—the heart-shaped face, the big eyes, the full mouth.”

  “What about Farina?” he said, and laid a shot of her beside the other two.

  Jackie studied the three images. “Again, only vaguely. At the right angles, lots of people resemble each other, like those funny separated-at-birth shots of celebrities—you know, John Kerry and Herman Munster, or Courtney Cox and the singer Nelly Furtado.”

  “Me and Brad Pitt.”

  “There you go—spitting images.”

  She was probably right since there were differences in the fleshiness, the shape and length of the noses, the slant of the eyes, and, of course, the hair. Generic similarities crossed with paranoia. Nonetheless, Bowers’s reconstruction photo was disturbingly resemblant of Dana.

  Jackie picked up the photo of Dana. “How long ago was this taken?”

  The shot was of them at the pool bar in Negril, Jamaica. “Twelve years ago.”

  “You have a more recent photo?” She peered over her glasses, wondering why he had brought an old photo.

  “It’s the only shot I have. We’re separated.”

  “Good heavens, I didn’t know.” She squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Me, too. But we’re working on it.” He sipped his Pepsi.

  “And I hope for the best.” She glanced at the photos again. “If nothing else, there’s consolation in the fact that both these photos are of younger women, and our stalker’s hunting women about forty. Even if Dana has aged well, and I’m sure she has, it’s merely a coincidence.”

  “But my guess is it’s the same killer. The chemical analysis says the stocking is the same material as the others. So it may be another Wolford.”

  “And it looks like homicide since nobody commits suicide by tying a stocking around their neck, then throwing themselves into the ocean. It’s one or the other. Both look like murder, then cover-up.”

  “That’s the consensus.”

  “And, like you say, there are too many elements in common—the socioeconomic levels, their ages, marital status, their living situations—all single and living alone, most having just separated from men. Their appearances, body types plus the lack of any evidence of foul play, and the suggestion that the victims knew their killer. And, of course, the method of killing. I also think there’s some kind of progression in his MO.”

  “Progression?”

  “From outright murder of the Essex River woman to staged autoerotica.”

  “Maybe he just got cagey. The Stubbs family and friends protested the suggestion that said it was suicide, saying that she had too much to live for and wouldn’t have intentionally taken her own life. It wasn’t her.”

  “Oh. So you’re saying he decided after Stubbs to cover his tracks and make it look like accidental autoerotica.”

  “Yes, but he still used the stocking.”

  “Well, that’s the thing with serial killers. No matter how clever they are, they’re slaves to their core pathology and rituals. This guy’s MO may change: he may do it in the bedroom or bathroom or on a river; he may show up in the daytime or middle of the night—but he can’t escape the need to strangle with a black stocking. It feeds his needs. It’s his signature, technically his ‘personation.’ And it’s what links the deaths.”

  “What I want to know is how they’re linked to him in life. How he finds his victims. What brings him to them.”

  “Maybe the question is what brings them to him.”

  What brings them to him. Steve felt a slight shift in the room’s coordinates. “Such as what?”

  “I don’t know, but it might be an angle to consider.” She took a sip of wine.

  He nodded. “What we’ve never gotten was a handle on his motive or intent. None of the cases showed any sexual activity, injury, mutilation—none of that.”

  “You have to remember that serial killers choose their victims because something in their manner or appearance—body style, hair, eyes, facial characteristics, et cetera—something fuels perverse fantasies and drives them to attack. Essentially, their victims are nothing but props.”

  “Redheads who resemble my wife.”

  “Let’s just say attractive redheads.”

  “And the driving mechanism is a combo of hate, revenge, rage.”

  “All of that, and control. Given the weapon and circumstances, I’d say these killings were sexual even though some basics are missing. Most rise out of the quest for heightened erotic experience, generated by the physical and psychological torture and killing of a victim. A sick, dark pressure builds and builds until the perpetrator can only relieve the craving with another killing. So he pursues another victim out of a rising compulsion.”

  Steve nodded as twenty years of classroom inevitably seeped out of her.

  “Since deviant sexual behavior is often rooted in childhood trauma, I’d say this killer harbors a deep hatred of women, which suggests an abusive female guardian whose influence left him beset with a sense of impotence. And that traumatization has manifested itself as murderous rage.”

  “So, the guy’s killing his mother.”

  “Something like that. Analysts of the Freudian persuasion would theorize that intimate assaults like these represent a merging of homicidal and suicidal urges—that is, in murdering his victim he’s slaying that part of him that’s been damaged and, thus, restoring his masculine self-esteem.”

  “Sounds pretty convoluted.”

  “That’s Freud. But it all circles back to men either screwing and/or killing Mom and themselves.”

  “And because Mom is probably dead, he’ll continue killing until he’s stopped.”

  “Yes, because the compulsion is never satisfied.”

  “But what about the lack of sexual abuse?”

  “That’s unusual, I must say. But while the killings are technically sex-free, they’re still sexual—the nakedness, the bedrooms and bath, the sexy undergarment. It’s possible he’s a voyeur but not a rapist. That he gets fulfillment by simply killing.”r />
  “Or maybe he can’t rape. Maybe he’s impotent,” Steve said. That was Neil’s theory.

  “Maybe. It’s possible he experienced sexual rejection as a boy and loathes or fears sex.”

  “Or maybe he can’t perform but is hoping to with each victim.”

  “All sorts of possibilities,” Jackie said. “Whatever drives his obsession is a disease that almost never goes away. It’s like compulsive eaters, gamblers, drinkers, people hooked on pornography. Studies show that certain areas of the brain become stimulated under compulsions—none more powerful than sex, which combines a complex of emotional needs with the persistent drive for the next orgasm. It’s pure biology, which in the extreme kills.”

  “It’s the next one we want to prevent.”

  “Yes.” She looked at her notes. “Unfortunately, the intervals between these give no indication when he’ll need to kill again. Sometimes they kill in spurts, sometimes they wait years.”

  “What does he do between killings?”

  “He leads a normal life. Goes to work, plays with his kids if he has any, makes tee time and school committee meetings. And nobody knows that behind his exterior lives a brutal predator.”

  “Ted Bundy.”

  “Yes, and hundreds like him.”

  “What else do you see?”

  “As you know, profiling isn’t an exact science. That being said, I’d say he’s a white male between thirty-five and fifty-five, physically strong, smart, college-educated. He probably lives alone, is alienated from family and friends. But given the lack of evidence at the crime scenes, he’s very clever and has a strong sense of control and the ability to fabricate a good image.”

  “A good liar.”

  “Yes. Given how he probably knew the victims, I’d say he’s a charmer, maybe good-looking and a good talker—enough to lure women to bed then strangle them. And that suggests someone with good standing in the community since some of his victims were upper-middle-class, fashionable women.”

  Steve nodded and let her go on.

  “He’s not particularly mobile. Unlike the common myth of someone who travels the country looking for victims, most serial murderers kill close to home. In this case eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. So he probably lives and works within a hundred miles of Boston.”