Two Bare Arms

by Blake Banner

  Agent Fenninger listened very carefully, not looking at me but gazing abstractedly at the table. When I’d finished, she blinked once and said, “I agree. Couple of things I want to clarify first, though. Profiling, in any field, is descriptive and not prescriptive. That is so much more so in the case of serial killers, because we know so little about them. Some psychologists suggest that there is actually no such condition as a serial killer. However, what we can do, and we do it rather well, is describe what we have seen and what seems to be typical so far.” She gave a small laugh, as though somebody had just suggested something stupid. “That does not mean that serial killers are somehow required to follow the rules that we at the bureau have laid down.”

  I nodded. “Understood.”

  “Having said that…” She leaned back in her chair and said nothing while she stared at the ceiling. I stole a glance to see what she was staring at. All I could see were the shadows of the raindrops on the windows. “Having said that,” she said again, “I am having trouble reconciling your suspect Zak with the arms. Zak is by definition chaotic and opportunistic. He actually sees himself as a wolf, roaming through a forest, waiting to see what life will bring him.” She smiled, like she was about to indulge in some harmless flippancy. “You know the song from Easy Rider, ‘Born to be Wild’? Well, Zak is looking for adventure and, crucially for me, whatever comes his way.”

  Dehan sighed. We glanced at each other, and her face told me that what Agent Fenninger was saying made perfect sense to her. Fenninger went on.

  “So, either we fit the careful placing of the arms in the lockup into an opportunistic, chaotic behavior pattern, or we dismiss Zak as a prime suspect.” She looked up at the ceiling again, and I realized she had her list of suspects pinned up there. “Hank, if you have him as a suspect, would simply not fall into the category of a serial killer. Serial killers do not kill their partners. Almost, I would say, by definition.” She sat blinking at the table a moment and added, almost impatiently, “I would say that is true of Zak as well, to some extent. In both Hank and Zak’s case, you are looking at killings driven by a motive. Which would put them outside the definition of serial killer.”

  Dehan interrupted, “That doesn’t mean we discard them as suspects. It just means they have a motive, right?” She glanced at me. I nodded. Fenninger went on as though she hadn’t spoken.

  “Peter, who owns the lockup, could certainly fit into the profile of an organized serial killer. Clearly he has issues with women and seeks to humiliate and control them. Such a need for control often speaks to a profound, volcanic rage against women that cannot be suppressed. Women who are perceived as flirty, promiscuous, careless, thoughtless—who step outside of what the man considers appropriate or acceptable behavior—can trigger a profound, destructive rage.

  “We also see a pleasure in taking control in a cold, methodical way. This feeds his ego and would be very much present in the aftermath of the killing. If you look into his past, you are typically going to find a mother who humiliated him, perhaps in public, and a cruel father, or perhaps no father at all. Either way, the father has abandoned him and left him to cope with the humiliation of his mother on his own, so that the only outlet for his rage becomes physical violence. But not against her! He dare not! It must be against an unknown woman, a blank canvas if you will, against which he can project the nightmare image of his mother that he has created in his mind and which he must destroy. So! Your question: does Peter fit the profile? Prima facie, yes, but I would urge you to look into his childhood. You know…” She laughed suddenly. “He may be just a harmless prick!”

  We smiled and she went on. “Dave, certainly, from what you have outlined, would fit the profile. He seems to have a tendency toward obsessive, compulsive behavior. Again, he displays a need to control his environment. His inability to relate may be due to a physical condition like severe dyspraxia or autism, but that inability to relate is a common feature of the organized serial killer. When it is, it is generally the result of a loveless and often violent home life as a child. The obsession with pornography, especially child pornography, is also a common feature. As before, it speaks to a need to control the love object, a fear that if he loses control of her, something bad will happen. She will hurt him in some way. He will lose her love.

  “So love is organized and controlled in a way where there is no risk of humiliation or rejection. You can see,” she said, as though it were obvious, “how this can lead to narcissism, where love is directed toward himself, instead of toward the object of love. In the end, where masturbation is the only source of loving consolation, he becomes the object of love, controlling his environment and the women in it. I say women, but of course they are not real women, but simply two-dimensional images.”

  Dehan said, “So any woman who upsets that two-dimensional relationship…”

  “Could trigger very violent rage indeed.”

  Dehan stared down at the table, chewing her lip. Special Agent Fenninger leaned back and stared up at the ceiling again, consulting her list, and I stared out at November. It had started to rain again. The naked trees looked like boney hands that had been trying to claw their way out of their graves but had changed their minds because the weather was so awful.

  Fenninger was talking again. “Now, the note and the message on your mirror. These tell me a couple of things. First, and most important for you, he is close to you. He knows you have reopened the investigation. Second, it is possible that he has been inactive since the arms. Both messages: ‘It took you long enough,’ and especially, ‘You’d have done better to leave me sleeping,’ suggest very strongly that he had hoped for a reaction, some official response, back when he killed his victim, but has not killed since. Sometimes serial killers do lose the urge to kill. But now he is telling you that your sudden interest in the case has provoked him and reawakened his hunger.”

  “Great.”

  She stared hard at me. “It is not your fault, Detective Stone.”

  I nodded. “Dave’s interest in the case at the time…”

  “Is suggestive, but far from conclusive. I can tell you that two of your suspects, Peter and Dave, seem to fit, in general terms, a possible profile. But I would need to know a lot more about the crime, which of course is not possible, and you need to find out more about their backgrounds, their childhood relationships…”

  Dehan sighed. “That makes a lot of sense.”

  I asked, “Can we come back to you as we learn more?”

  “Of course, anytime.” She smiled and handed me her card. “I’d be glad to hear from you.”

  Dehan blinked a lot and smiled. “What about me?”

  Special Agent Fenninger smiled at her and rose to leave.

  The door opened and a sergeant leaned in. “Detective Stone, you have a call on line one.”

  Fenninger smiled at Dehan. “It’s okay, I’ll see myself out.”

  “Thanks again!” I called to her neat, petite retreating form and picked up the phone. “Stone.”

  “Detective Stone, this is Detective Marco. I’m with the 62nd Precinct, Rockway Beach?” He said it like he was asking me.

  I said, “Yeah.”

  “We are looking at a homicide that you may be interested in. We’ve got the crime scene guys in right now, but you might want to come down and have a look.”

  “Hank Junkers…”

  “Uh-huh…”

  TEN

  The gray drizzle had turned to heavy rain, with huge, broken clouds dragging in off the Atlantic like ripped sails from some cosmic Trafalgar. What traffic there was crawled through the cascades of rain with their lights splattered and distorted on the roads. It was half past one, but it looked more like early evening. I turned in to Hank’s parking lot. It was cordoned off by yellow-and-black tape that was bouncing and dancing in the deluge. There was a meat wagon and a couple of cop cars, all with their red-and-blue lights, looking urgent and alarmed after the event. The third car was Charles Hanlan’s
, the ME.

  We got out holding up our badges, ducked under the tape, and ran inside. The first thing I saw was Hank. He was lying more or less sideways onto the door. His arms were splayed, like he’d fallen after a hefty blow to his head or his back. His legs were also splayed, as though he’d been standing akimbo. Stuck in his back, about where his heart was, was a dagger. It had been stabbed through a large piece of paper. Charles was squatting next to him, examining the back of his neck. He glanced up and muttered something as I stepped in.

  The CSI guys looked as though they were finishing up. Standing with his arms crossed in a long beige raincoat was the man I assumed was Detective Marco. He stepped toward me.

  “You Stone?”

  I showed him my badge and indicated Dehan. “Detective Dehan, my partner. What happened?”

  “Kid from the neighborhood came to have his bicycle tire pumped up. Found him sprawled out like that. Ran, told his mom, and she called us.”

  “What made you call me?”

  “Two things.”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out an evidence bag. Inside the bag there was a cell phone. When he touched the screen, it lit up. It was open on the address book at my number.

  “He was about to call me when he was killed.”

  “The phone had skidded over there, under that bike.” He pointed at a bronze Harley 1200, two or three yards away from Hank’s head. “The other thing is this.” He stepped toward the body, and I followed him. “I noted your name, Stone. Take a look.”

  Dehan came up beside me, and we both looked down. There wasn’t much blood on it, so it was easy to read. It said “STONE COLD.”

  I glanced at Charles. He was watching me. He had a way of looking at people that you learn in Harvard. “He was stabbed postmortem.”

  He nodded. “There is practically no bleeding. I’ll be able to tell for sure when I get him back to the lab, but I am pretty certain what killed him was this blow to the back of the head. The bruising is extensive, and it feels as though it broke the vertebra.”

  Dehan asked the rookie question. “How long has he been dead?”

  Charles patronized her with his best Harvard smile. “That’s impossible to tell. Probably, probably, within the last seventy-two hours because there is no immediate sign of decomposition.”

  “The blow—” I pointed at his neck. “—was delivered from the side.” Charles raised an eyebrow at me. I continued, positioning myself behind where Hank had been standing. “If I hit him from here, the blow is going to be on the right side of his neck. It will stun him, but it probably won’t kill him. But his bruise is straight across the back of his neck, which means that, if the killer was right-handed, he was standing there…” I moved to stand on Hank’s left, round about where his feet were. “And I would strike like this, from the shoulder.”

  Charles was watching me and nodding. “Yes.”

  Marco scratched his chin. “What’s your interest in this case, Stone?”

  I was staring at the Harley. I said, absently, “It’s probably related to an ongoing investigation. Does that strike you as strange?”

  I pointed at the bike, and Dehan went and squatted down next to it. There was a neat, conical pile of sand directly in front of Hank’s head. It made a perfect right angle with the center of the open door. I turned and looked behind me. There was a cement column, and at its base there was a heavy champagne bottle. The label had been soaked off, and it was full of water.

  I pointed at it. “Two gets you twenty that’s the murder weapon and…” I narrowed my eyes and stared at the ground about two yards behind Hank. “I am figuring, Detective Marco, that if you look just about there—” I pointed. “—you are going to find traces of red wax.”

  He stared at me like I was crazy but went over, hunkered down, and looked anyway. He squinted, then pulled out his penknife and scraped at the floor. “Well, I’ll be damned… How did you know that?”

  “Believe it or not, Detective, this was a Satanic ritual killing.”

  He made a “really?” face, and I heard Charles snort. I pointed at the bike. “North…”

  Dehan took out her phone. I frowned. She had an app that was a compass. I sighed. She said, “Exactly north.”

  “Thank you. Earth, gold, wealth. You have the bike, the greatest symbol of wealth to a Hell’s Angel, and you have a small pile of dirt.” I pointed behind me. “West, water, emotion, the unconscious. The color green.” I pointed at the bottle. “The weapon through which the killer’s rage was expressed.” I pointed across at the open door. “East, air, communication, the sword athame.” I pointed at where the candle would have stood. “South, fire, red.”

  I stepped over by the door. “So, having knocked him down from the west, using water in a green bottle, I come over here and I take the dagger athame, and I use it to communicate my message by stabbing it into his back. Notice that the blade does not go, as you would expect, between the ribs, but it points north-south. Now…” I stood and took a few steps back. “Charles, in order to fall in that position, how would he have had to be standing? But let me ask you this, before you answer—to have his arms splayed like that, how much force would the blow have had to carry?”

  He stood. He was nodding. “It’s a very good point, John. A powerful rifle might do it. Or a Smith & Wesson magnum. And he would have had to be standing in a very bizarre position, with his legs splayed.”

  Dehan was looking from Charles to me. “You’re saying he was positioned after he was killed.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. What shape is he in?”

  She stared at him. “A five-pointed star. A pentagram.”

  “Zak had several around his club.”

  Marco sighed loudly. “Is this your investigation, Stone?”

  “I think so. I’ll get my commander to call your precinct. I don’t mind who has it, as long as you’re willing to share your information. This man is probably dead because I questioned him about a cold case.”

  He was shaking his head. “I’ll talk to the chief. You want it, you’re welcome to it.” He stepped away, dialing his precinct.

  Charles was stripping off his gloves and closing his black bag. “You done with the body?”

  “Yeah. You’ll let me know if anything unexpected shows up?”

  He saluted and left, and the guys brought in the gurney to take Hank away. Dehan watched them wheel him out and asked me, “Why do you know that?”

  I stared at her a long time, like I was wondering whether to tell her something or not. Finally, I sighed and said, “There is an ancient mystery. It dates back to the fifteenth century, 1455, in Germany. Though it is said that the mystery is rooted in much older traditions that go back to ancient Japan and Korea…” I paused. She was watching me, waiting. I said, “Books. It’s called books.”

  “Jerk. Why would you read a book on ritual magic? Athame, the north, gold, earth…”

  I shrugged. “You start reading Freud, that leads you to Jung, next thing you know you’re reading Kabbala. One thing leads to another.”

  The CSI team were bagging the bottle and the sand and dusting the bike for prints when Marco came back.

  “We’re happy to let you have it, Stone. My chief will call your chief, and we’ll send over all the stuff. Take it easy.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up and he left. The CSI guys finally packed up and left too, and Dehan and I were left alone. I stood staring at the space where Hank had lain, trying to visualize what had happened.

  Dehan spoke suddenly. “He must have brought the candle, the bottle, and the sand with him. He would have stepped in here…” She stood in the doorway, with the rain spattering behind her, looking in. “What did Hank say? How did he receive him?”

  “He was scared.”

  “Because he pulled out his phone and started to call you, walking away, toward the bike. That means one thing. He recognized his killer as somebody dangerous, that you needed to know about.”

  “That’s good.” />
  “So is the killer alone? If it’s two or three Angels, good luck finding anyone who noticed some bikers at a bike garage on a rainy day. “

  “Either way, he didn’t run and it doesn’t look like he put up a fight.”

  “So he was scared enough to call you, but not panicking or fighting for his life. For some reason he walks over there, toward the Harley.” She paused. “Now that’s important.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Harley is the right color for the north. I can’t imagine that the killer brought a 1200 CC with him just to place it in the north end of the garage when he killed him. So we have to believe that the positioning of the bike was fortuitous. Which suggests a degree of opportunism. The killing pentacle was constructed around existing elements. The door for the air, the bike for the north.”

  I sighed and rubbed my face. A cold breeze crept in through the door and wheedled its way into my ankles.

  “Ritual and note suggest a serial killer. But we are both thinking Zak—it all points to Zak, which would make it a motive killing, a punishment execution. And, also, as Fenninger said, Zak does not fit our profile.”

  We were silent a moment, and then she went on like I hadn’t said anything.

  “Hank moves toward the Harley, dialing your cell. As he does so, Zak, or whoever, moves across, taking out the bottle to place himself in the west, and smashes him in the back of the neck. Probably intending to stun him and not kill him. He, or they, then set him out in a pentagram, place the sand and the candle, move over to the east, and stab him with the knife, through the note. A note for you, to tell you you are cold, on the wrong track.”

  “It’s rash,” I said. “The door is wide open, and somebody could have turned up at any moment. It shows huge arrogance and recklessness. Also, as you say, he didn’t know if Hank was dead. If he had been alive, the note would have been saturated and barely legible. It was not planned or carefully thought out.”