Body Language

by James W. Hall

  The sectional couch was shaped into a U and took up most of the room. It was a green-and-white tropical print. On the glass coffee table was the same bottle of Lucere, a Napa Valley chardonnay that had been at all the other scenes. A high-end grocery store wine, but not rare enough to be helpful.

  Sprawled on the beige rug in the center of the U was a pretty woman in her late twenties with short black hair. She was naked and her slender body had been rearranged. The killer had laid her out flat on her back with her arms hugging her belly as if she’d been kicked in the gut and was fighting for air.

  “Same as number one,” Dan said from the door. “Like maybe he’s run out of poses and he’s starting the cycle again.”

  “Maybe.”

  There was a deep cut at her throat, like the others. She was slender and her eyes were open—dark and disconnected.

  “Landlord found her. A week late on her rent. He knocked, walked in. I’m guessing she’s been dead more than twenty-four, less than thirty-six.”

  “Seems about right,” Alex said.

  The other four women had been naked, as well. All the bodies were laid out in different positions, each one portraying another violent drama. The homicide guys had given each a name. Number one, like this one, was known as “Gasper.” Number two was found lying on her side bent at the waist with her hands covering her ears as if she were trying to shut out some gruesome noise. “Hear No Evil” the detectives called her. Number three had given the namers the most trouble. Like two, she’d been placed on her left side with her legs forward, but this one’s arms had been extended in front of her, one at chest level, one arm stretching out from beneath her head, a flailing motion as if she were trying to fight off a swarm of bees. They called her “The Swatter.” And then about a month ago, they’d found the fourth victim badly decomposed in her Little Havana apartment. Her nude body was lying face up with arms and legs spread as if she were floating tranquilly on the quiet surface of a lake. So “Floater” it was.

  The FBI examined the photos and found no matches with any other signature killings around the country in the last ten years. Their profilers theorized the Bloody Rapist was creating particular scenarios from his past, trying to reconstruct moments of abuse he’d witnessed as a child—probably acts of violence against his mother he was helpless to prevent.

  But that was far too neat an explanation for Alexandra, too off-the-rack. Just as likely the killer had repositioned the women according to the twisted commandments of some crazed inner voice. But these days everyone wanted a formula, a nifty explanation for guys like this. As if his actions might make a kind of sense, raping women, slashing their throats, repositioning them, then leaving a trail of blood leading away from the scene. Like sure, of course, he must have seen his father beat his mother, then leave her in these exact positions on the living room floor, and he’d walked away bleeding from the scratch marks she’d given him, so now the grown-up boy, that poor, twisted son of a bitch, is compelled to re-enact endlessly those traumatic episodes, laying the dead women out like sacrificial offerings to his past.

  Alex hated it, the way the forensic-psychology hotshots had taken over, explaining it all, giving every crime a cute Freudian cause and effect. She hated it because the explanations were always more than explanations. Behind each of their clever scenarios was the same suggestion—that there was logic to evil, a reasonable justification for every fucking horror under the sun.

  The media wasn’t onto the weird arrangements yet, because so far, everyone working the case had been stonewalling, keeping the reporters beyond the crime-scene tape. If the killer was indeed hungry for newsprint, it wasn’t their job to feed him. And, of course, the second the word got out about those eerie poses, there’d be tabloid crews elbowing their way to the front of the pack, making good police work a hundred times harder.

  Slowly, she began to work her way around the perimeter of the room, a full 360 degrees. The light was good. Dan had turned everything on, overhead, table lamps, fluorescent kitchen lights. She had to change film again. Marking it, slipping the used film into her waist pouch. Continuing around the edge of the room to get the complete perspective. Then zooming in for the victim. Pretty woman, athletic. That one-inch incision in her throat, a few quarts of her blood spreading into the beige carpet. Alexandra got close-ups of the wound, the stained carpet.

  Across from the flowery couch was a leather wingback chair, a matching ottoman. Something from a lawyer’s study. Two cheap oils on the walls, sad-eyed clowns and a pelican nesting on a piling—tourist shop trash. But behind the couch was a large black-and-white photograph, a misty Everglades glen cluttered with ferns and alligators lurking beneath the still waters. A guy’s work she’d admired for years. Clyde Butcher.

  She’d read about him, how he slogged with his huge camera and a hundred pounds of equipment out into the middle of the soupy Glades. Then he set up his tripod, hefted the camera onto it. Two hours to set up for one shot—all so he could make these huge photographs full of intricate detail. Butcher did magical things with black and white. Made herons and ibises into angels. Put an enchanted sheen on the palm fronds and the saw grass that exposed the sinister grace of that river of grass. Its silence and danger, its holiness.

  Nothing at all like the stuff she did—just one color shot after another, stark and standard. Keeping herself out of it. Keeping her mood, her values, her interpretation buried away.

  She would snap somewhere around three hundred shots of that particular crime scene alone. Probably over a thousand photos before the night was done. And none of them would be art. That was the skill of the job. Keep it dull. Plain and simple and honest and straight. No spin, no subjectivity. Nothing for defense lawyers to argue about. That was what she did five nights a week. She kept herself out of it. Walked through these rooms with the scrupulous dispassion of a Buddhist priest. Not playing with shadows and perspectives, not stalking, like Clyde Butcher did, that perfect moment when sunlight and shadow and the ripples on the water’s surface were in perfect alignment.

  Her job was the opposite of art. Pornographic reality. If she had a gift, it was a talent for watchful emptiness. Standing back, seeing, then getting it all down on her negative—the disinterested purity of fact.

  “You like that?” Dan said from the doorway. “That photograph?”

  “I like it. Sure.”

  “So take it with you. I’ll help you get it down.”

  She looked over at him.

  “Who’s going to know, Alex?”

  “What’re you, cracking up? I’m not taking that thing.”

  “Why not?”

  Alexandra took another look at the photograph and heaved out a breath.

  “Well, for one thing, it wouldn’t fit in my place,” she said. “It’s too beautiful. I’d have to take down all the other crap I got on my walls. Or else move to a better house.”

  Standing in the doorway, he shook his head, stripped a stick of gum.

  “You know, Rafferty, I’m developing a new theory about this blood thing he does.”

  “I don’t like the jokes, okay? Not about this guy. Spare me.”

  “It’s not a joke,” he said. “What I think is, cutting himself like he does is how the guy gets off. Like a sperm substitute.”

  “He doesn’t have any trouble ejaculating,” she said. “There’s plenty of seminal fluid.”

  “Maybe this is like some kind of bigger, better orgasm. He blows his load, kills the woman, then slashes himself. And there’s blood flowing and sperm leaking out, and the goddamn freak is flying off into orbit. All the bells ringing, whistles shrieking, lights going full blast, the guy’s soaring out there into interplanetary nothingness.”

  She stared at him.

  “Dan, maybe it is time for you to retire.”

  “Pathology boys are saying it’s glass he cuts them with, not a blade.”

  “Glass?”

  “Yeah, figure that out. Some kind of special glass.”
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br />   “Special? How?”

  The big man shrugged. “I haven’t read the report yet. Just glanced at it on the way over here.”

  “Let me get this straight. The guy holds a chunk of glass in his bare hand, and when he cuts their throats, he winds up slicing himself in the process. Like either he’s totally stupid or for some reason he enjoys the pain.”

  Romano shrugged again. “Well, I think we can rule out stupid.”

  “Oh boy, the psychobabblers ought to have fun with that.”

  She shot the sprinkling of blood on the beige carpet. Got close-ups of the woman’s throat. Just like the four others, a gash with a little wrist flick, like the letter C. But that was for the ME to figure out, the pathology guys, the blood-spatter techs. Alexandra was just a photographer—cold, neutral eyes.

  They’d send the blood and sperm specimens, tissue samples, hair and fiber off to the FBI lab, the FDLE, have them run their blue-ribbon tests. And it would all be futile. This asshole wasn’t leaving behind anything he didn’t want them to find. They already knew his fingerprints weren’t on file in the AFIS database or with the FBI. The DNA was worthless unless they already had the guy in custody.

  From the autopsies and blood-spatter patterns, they could tell the guy was highly organized, under strict control. The whole event had the feel of a finely tuned script, a lockstep ritual. Same white wine at every scene. Even the same amount of chardonnay left in the bottle each time.

  No witnesses ever remembered seeing him arrive. No one saw him depart. Apparently, the guy was a charmer of lonely hearts. All the women he’d chosen were loners, vulnerable women, recently divorced or separated. Awkward and unsure, back on the market after some wrenching failure. Easy prey.

  After two sips of wine, a few hors d’oeuvres, he punched them in the face, slammed them to the floor. He was strong and quick, and once he got started, he was ruthless. Somewhere during the act itself, he reached back for his weapon and plunged it into their throats, stayed mounted until he’d ejaculated, then climbed off their cooling bodies. The ME had come up with that opinion, comparing the temperature of sperm with the temp of the body. Nothing high-tech about it.

  Then a few minutes postmortem, most likely after he’d dressed and recovered, the killer arranged his victims into the pose he’d selected, and a minute or two later, he began to dribble that trail of blood away from the scene.

  Though the sequence was identical every time, the women were all different. No regularity to body types or hair color or socioeconomic background. Either the killer wasn’t that particular or his fantasizing capabilities were so powerful that he could incorporate a lot of different types into his horror show. The only similarity among the women was their ages. They were all in their late twenties.

  Based on the very limited evidence he was leaving behind, Alex doubted he’d be caught from police work alone. Probably their best hope was that the killings would someday stop gratifying the guy and his passions would grow so pressurized inside the locked chambers of his heart that the walls would rupture and he’d blow wide open and do something out of character, wild, stupid, clumsy. Or better yet, there was the outside chance he would meet a woman who outmatched him, someone who could block that first punch and answer it with a high-caliber counter-punch—someone with a quick draw and a fast trigger, who’d make him spill his blood in earnest.

  Alex only hoped it happened on her shift, so she could take a roll or two of the asshole’s corpse.

  The apartment was crowded with cops by the time she was leaving. Media trucks in the parking lot, halogen lights blazing, helicopters fanning the moonlight. Alexandra Rafferty got in her van and moved on to a quiet neighborhood in the Grove, a home invasion with a husband and a wife pistol-whipped but alive. After that, she did a convenience-store robbery on Biscayne Boulevard, the clerk shot twice in the face for sixty-three dollars and two six-packs of Colt 45. As the sun was coming up, she did a domestic-abuse case in Little Havana. A Latin man in his sixties who’d stabbed his teenage boyfriend twenty-five times in the genitals. The old man had to be sedated before he would let go of the mutilated body of his lover.

  TWO

  At the end of their shift, Dan Romano tagged along behind Alex down the overbright corridor to the photo lab. They passed a couple of janitors who were mopping the glaring tile while they exchanged quick bursts of island patois.

  “That thing in the apartment.” Dan stepped around the mop bucket. “My saying it was okay to steal that photograph off the wall? Hey, I’m sorry, Alex. I don’t know what I was thinking about. I was out of line.”

  “Yeah, you were, Dan. Way out.”

  “You can forget it happened, can’t you?”

  “I forgot it the second it occurred.”

  They rounded the last corner and pushed through the swinging doors. The raw chemical smell poured out of the developing room. Early shift was on already, which meant Junior Shanrahan stood behind the counter, smiling at her. In his early twenties, Junior was an inch or two over six feet, with shoulders so broad, he seemed taller. He was hulking behind the counter, wearing his usual bright blue granny spectacles and a white hair net and smock.

  Whenever she showed up, his smile brightened and his eyes seemed to track her every move. Nervous and deferential, like the kid had a crush on her. Junior high stuff. She expected him to pass her a folded-up love note any day now. Invite her to the prom.

  “This whole retirement thing’s got me fucked up, Alex, facing the void. My whole ethical orientation has gone to shit.”

  “Understandable, Dan. Perfectly understandable.”

  Alexandra started unloading her grocery sack of exposed film onto the counter. Each roll in its own envelope, with case information inside.

  “Good morning, Ms. Rafferty,” Junior said. “How’s the Ansel Adams of corpses doing this fine day?”

  “Ansel Adams?” Dan was staring at Junior Shanrahan, taking in the hair net, the blue glasses. “Who the hell’s that?”

  “Famous photographer,” Alex said. “It’s a compliment.”

  “More like a joke,” said Junior.

  “Christ, I’m getting too old for this. Everybody’s doing stand-up, and I’m not getting the gags anymore.”

  Junior took her rolls of film one by one and logged them on his clipboard, then dropped them into the empty slot. A chute carried them back to the processing lab, where the minideveloper was already churning out new prints. Same kind of machine you’d find in Eckerd Drugs.

  “Get anything good last night?” Junior was peering at her through his blue lenses. At his hairline, near the edge of the netting, a small vein pulsed.

  “Bloody Rapist again,” said Alex.

  “Christ, I hate that guy. Turns my stomach looking at those naked girls.”

  “Oh, come on, Junior. All the bodies you see. All the gore.”

  “You mean it doesn’t bother you? The slit throats? Their bodies twisted up like that? Man, that shit gives me nightmares.”

  “Nothing wrong with nightmares,” Dan said. “Means you still got a conscience. Day you stop having bad dreams, that’s when you know your soul’s shriveled up. You’re on your way to being a psychopath.”

  Junior dropped another envelope down the chute and looked at Dan with a vague smile. Alex watched him handle the envelopes of film delicately in his large hands. Fingernails nicely trimmed. A well-maintained kid.

  “We’d like to get these back by tonight, Junior. Think you can jump them over the ones in line already?”

  “Anything for you, Ms. Rafferty.”

  She couldn’t see his eyes behind those glossy blue hexagonals, but she could feel him watching her. A little trick some men performed, a tactile stare.

  “So what’s our latest thinking on the bodies? Got any idea yet why he repositions them like that?”

  “Classified,” Dan said.

  “Which means,” said Alex, “if you come up with any good explanations, Junior, you let us know, okay?”r />
  She turned to go.

  “Sure thing, Ms. Rafferty. And hey, maybe if I solve the case, I can get promoted out of this stinking lab. I’ve inhaled so much chemical soup, I’m starting to glow.”

  She turned back around to his eager smile.

  “You solve this case, Junior, we’ll make sure you get a corner office and preferred parking. Hell, we’ll even spring for a week at the Delano Hotel.”

  “Can I have that in writing?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word,” Alex said.

  She and Dan were almost to the corner when Junior called out, “I’m going to need that offer in writing.”

  He sounded dead serious.

  Alexandra ran the same stretch of beach every morning after work—to get out of her head, back into her body.

  Black jogging bra, white shorts, barefoot. Her car parked across at the Seaquarium lot, Alex doing sprints down the empty distances of Crandon Park. Across the bay, the towering limestone pillars of downtown Miami were candied by the rising light, a pink-and-gold coating that gave a sugary, fairy-tale radiance to the city, magic dust sparkling off the chrome and polished glass. From that distance, a mile, maybe two, the city seemed gorgeously serene. None of the grit visible, no stench of gunpowder, nor the haze of tension and danger from the long night before. For half an hour each morning as she did her sprints, the city was washed with a powerful dose of fresh sunlight and the steady breezes of a new day, and for that little while it was almost possible to believe that her hometown might still be saved.

  Dash fifty yards, walk ten, dash another fifty. Stay in the soft sand for maximum resistance. In thirty minutes, she could crank her heart rate up to 175, make her skin shine, make every muscle sing. Sweat out the rancid hours of the night before. Go home somewhat cleansed.

  She was twenty-five minutes into it, pulse hammering, her left calf on the edge of a cramp, as she slowed to another short walk. Down the beach, headed her way, was an elderly couple; the man leading the way was bald and shirtless, wearing a baggy pale blue bathing suit. Trailing him by a few feet was a woman with her white pants legs rolled up. She had on a loose flowered shirt and her white hair straggled from beneath a blue porkpie hat. She was swinging one of those wands, a metal detector, scrounging for pennies at the edge of the surf.