Dan said, “The guy gained access to the building by forcing a window in the first-floor apartment, which was unoccupied at the time because the owners were away. The guy then broke down the front door of the Berrys’ apartment using the same kind of jack that the engine companies use. It took out the whole Goddamned door, frame and lintel and everything.
“It’s impossible to say exactly what happened next, but judging by the cuts on Nina Berry’s throat, the guy probably persuaded Joe to co-operate with him by threatening Nina with a knife. That’s Arne’s theory, anyway.”
Dan looked at him sideways, his cigarette dangling between his lips. Then he said, “Are you ready for this? The guy got Joe to crouch down on his hands and knees, and then he nailed him to the floor.”
“He did what?”
“He nailed him to the floor. Then he nailed Nina to the floor, facing him. One nail through each hand, one nail through each knee. Damn great railroad nails.”
“Mother of God,” said Larry. He knew better than to ask how the killer had persuaded Joe to stay still while he nailed him down. He had once been caught in a deserted building close to the Embarcadero by a wild and homicidal young Neapolitan, who had threatened to blow out his stomach with a pump-gun. Larry had heard himself saying nothing but “yes, sure, whatever you want.”
Dan impatiently blew his horn at a taxi that was dawdling in front of him. “There’s worse. The guy raped Nina, right in front of Joe, by the looks of it. Also—we don’t know when—we don’t like to think when—he got the kids out of bed, and nailed them to the wall. That’s right, you heard me. He nailed them to the wall.”
His voice was rough and dry and expressionless, like somebody dragging a mail sack across a concrete yard. He repeated the words as if he had memorized them, and didn’t want to think what they actually meant.
“They may have seen their mother raped, they may not. But whatever happened, he doused them with some kind of inflammable fluid, and set them alight.”
Larry stared at him. “He burned them? And they were still alive?”
“That’s right. But he didn’t stop there. He set fire to them, but he didn’t let them die. After a short while, he smothered the flames with a blanket. Then he walked right out, leaving two seriously burned children hanging from the wall, and their parents nailed to the floor—presumably to witness their children’s agony.”
Larry swallowed. but couldn’t speak. Dan spun the Chevrolet’s wheel with the flat of his hand, and turned into Fulton.
“We’ve seen some bad ones, right?” he remarked. “But how the hell can you begin to understand something like this? How can you begin to understand one human being wanting to hurt other human beings so much?” It was the first time that he had shown any real rage.
Larry said, “If the guy walked out. leaving the kids to suffer and Joe and Nina nailed to the floor to listen to them—how did they die?”
There were red and blue lights flashing through the fog, and almost a solid block of Fulton was crowded with police cars and fire-trucks and ambulances and TV vans. Dan pulled in behind the medical examiner’s car, crimped his tires against the curb, and pushed down the parking-brake.
“It must have been more than Joe could stand, listening to his children suffer. He dragged himself up off the floor. God knows how he did it. He pulled huge lumps of flesh out of his hands and his knees. Then he crawled into the bedroom and got his gun. He shot his children, and then Nina, and then he shot himself.”
Larry took a deep breath. He didn’t know whether he wanted to get out of the car or not. What he really felt like was going home.
“What does Arne think?” he asked. “Is he sure that there was just one assailant?”
“No question. Male, and physically powerful. And despite the fact that he didn’t kill them himself—the way he killed everybody else—Arne’s sure that it’s him. Satan, no less.”
“No eye-witness descriptions?”
Dan shook his head. “Not yet—although it’s quite possible that somebody saw him enter or leave and doesn’t have the nerve to say so. You remember what happened after the last two killings? Those warnings that were sent to the Chron? ‘Anybody who points the finger will lose it.’ ‘Anybody who saw anything will lose their eyes.’ Great way to encourage public-spiritedness, don’t you think?”
“What about the press?” asked Larry, rubbing his eye. “How much do you want them to know? Have you told them yet that it was Joe who wasted the family, and not the assailant?”
“Unh-hunh. All we’ve released so far is that the Berry family were attacked and tortured and that they’re all dead. I don’t want to say any more until we have a clearer idea of what really happened.”
A reporter from the Examiner had caught sight of Dan and Larry sitting together in the car, and was hurrying up the street toward them, followed by nearly a dozen more reporters, and the jiggling light of a TV camera.
“‘Grief for a while is blind, and so was mine,’” Larry quoted. He had always liked Shelley. Shelley was kind of strange, and good on death. “‘I wish no living thing to suffer pain.’”
Dan smashed out his cigarette, and gave him a counterquote. “‘Gentlemen, it’s time to grab the bull by the tail and look the facts squarely in the face.’ James McSheehy.”
Already one of the reporters was rapping her knuckles against the car window. Larry recognized her as Fay Kuhn, who had been writing sensational features about the Fog City Satan ever since the ritual killings had begun. Fay Kuhn, ex-Oakland Tribune, was pretty and educated and always well tailored. Her most controversial story so far had been to link the killings with comparable murders that had taken place in San Francisco in 1906, when five families had been ritually slaughtered, as well as nine prostitutes in a bawdy house on O’Farrell.
Dan Burroughs’ answer to that story had been: “You’re trying to suggest it was the same guy? What should we do? Hit the sunset homes?”
Larry climbed out of the car. Fay Kuhn was on him at once.
“Lieutenant Foggia, can you tell me what you feel about taking over the Fog City Satan case?”
Larry gave her a small, carefully packaged smile. “I haven’t yet been officially informed that I am taking over the case. And, besides that, we don’t really like to call the perpetrator the Fog City Satan or anything else. He’s not the devil, he’s not superhuman. No matter how sick or sadistic his behavior might have been, he’s a human being with a father and a mother and friends and family and a name of his own. All I’m going to say tonight is that we’re going to find out what that name is.”
Fay Kuhn tossed back her shining brunette bob. She always reminded Larry of Jackie Onassis, when she had been Jaqueline Bouvier – very groomed, and very young. Platinum Card Cunt, as Detective Linebarger would have put it – the kind of woman that any man with an income less than $350,000 a year shouldn’t even attempt to ask out for lunch. She said, sharply, “Do you seriously think that you’re going to be able to find out what that name is, where Lieutenant Knudsen has failed?”
Dan slammed his car door shut and called, “That’s enough, Fay. We have work to do.”
But Larry said, “Lieutenant Knudsen hasn’t failed in any respect. For instance, you wouldn’t say that a space-shuttle shot has failed, just because it hasn’t landed yet. Lieutenant Knudsen is a supremely good detective, and if I was to be allocated this assignment, I know that I would find his preparatory work to be impeccable.”
“It’s ‘were’, actually,” Fay Kuhn corrected him. “Not ‘was’ to be allocated—‘were.’”
He looked at her narrowly, trying to work out if she were serious or not. “That’s your department,” he said, at last. “You look after the wasses and the weres, I’ll find your Fog City Satan.”
Rick Tibbies, from the Chron, piped up, “Larry! The rumor is that these are all revenge killings… somebody settling some old scores. Is there any basis in fact for that?”
But Fay Kuhn grinned at L
arry, and said, “So you admit you’re taking over the case?”
“No, ma’am,” Larry replied. “But I have one small favor to ask.”
“I’m booked for dinner all this week,” Fay Kuhn retorted. There was no doubt about it, she was quick, quick, quick.
“It’s not that, Ms Kuhn. I just want the Ex to cut out those cute headlines. You know the ones. ‘Foggia in a Fog.’ ‘Befogged Foggia Hunts Fog City Sicko.’”
Rick Tibbles repeated, “What do you think, Larry? Are these revenge killings or what?”
Larry shook his head, but he didn’t take his eyes off Fay Kuhn. “Who knows? If they are, we still don’t see the connection.”
“Foggia in a Fog, hunh?” asked Fay Kuhn, with a wicked smile.
Dan came around the car and took hold of Larry’s arm. “Come on, folks. Lieutenant Foggia has work to do.”
They walked shoulder to shoulder down the sloping incline of Fulton Street, jostled on both sides by reporters and cameramen. Larry turned around once to see where Fay Kuhn had gone to; and glimpsed her powder-blue suit on the opposite side of the street. For some reason, she obviously felt that she had everything she needed, for now; and Larry wondered what he might have given away.
Dan led the way through the police lines and up the front steps of the condominium. The stairs were marble, with black-painted cast-iron banistairs. The walls were papered with yellow-and-black flowers. Somebody had attempted to make the building look very turn-of-the-century. On the first landing, there was a framed reproduction of The Stomach Dance by Aubrey Beardsley, a devilish creature grinning and dancing.
As they climbed, police officers and photographers and paramedics came clattering down the stairs in a constant stream, their faces pale, like extras in a Fellini movie, and the whole building echoed with voices and flickered with reflected camera-flash.
At last they reached the Berrys’ apartment. Larry stood on the landing looking at the demolished doorframe for three or four minutes, while Dan waited patiently beside him. The firefighter’s jack lay where the Berrys’ attacker had dropped it, on the plaster and rubble and broken brick. The front door hung sideways at a crazy angle, security chains dangling uselessly. A brass nameplate on the door announced Berry.
“How many apartments in this building, Dan?” Larry asked thoughtfully.
“Three. The occupants of both the other two apartments were away.”
“Do you think this guy would have known that? Or cared?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t seem to be too worried about how much noise he kicked up.”
“Next door, that way?”
“Empty. They use it for storing carpets. On the other side, they’re Armenian. They don’t hear nothing, they don’t say nothing. They don’t even speak Armenian.”
“Who reported the shots?”
Dan brushed plaster from the sleeve of his suit. “Somebody who said they were a neighbor. No name, surprise, surprise.”
Larry said, “Did you ever see anything like this, Dan? The whole Goddamned door taken out, just for the sake of a killing? I mean, robbery, for sure. They’ll dig their way with coffee-spoons from one side of Nob Hill to the other, for a few thousand bucks. But this is strange. This doesn’t fit with anything at all.”
They stepped into the apartment. The living-room was unnaturally lit with halogen lamps, so that it looked as bright as a TV-set. Larry could already see Arne Knudsen standing in the center of the room, wearing the vivid grass-green raincoat which had earned him the nickname Jolly; and Phil Biglieri the medical examiner, salt-and-pepper bearded, baggy-eyed, tired, in brown corduroy slacks and a brown tweed sport coat; and Houston Brough, Arne’s partner, leather-jacketed, stocky and gingery and cropped, with his lower lip permanently set at “belligerent”.
Dan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Take a deep breath, okay? This is something like you never saw before.”
Larry hesitated. “Can I trust you, Dan?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I want reassurance.”
“Reassurance? What are you asking me for, a security blanket?”
“I just want to hear it from your own lips that you haven’t dropped this truckload of blood and guts straight in my lap because you know for sure that it’s going to bury me. I just want to hear it from your own lips that you’ve assigned me to this case because you really believe in what I can do.
He paused, and then he said, “I just want to hear it from your own lips that you’re not bailing out Arne Knudsen and using me for your fall guy.”
Dan sucked in his cheeks; and then coughed. “You know something, Larry?” he said. “You’re too damned paranoiac for your own good. You can invent punishments for yourself that never even crossed my mind.”
“We’ll see,” Larry told him. He knew how devious Dan Burroughs could be. He had seen too many promising detectives diverted to cases that looked glorious; but which had eventually taken all the steam out of their careers. In particular, he remembered Bill Hyatt, a brilliant and enthusiastic officer—the kind of guy who looked right, spoke well, and could handle almost anything that came his way. Dan had given him the Murisaki homicide—one of the most complicated ethnic killings that the San Francisco police had ever had to handle—and after three months Bill Hyatt had turned in his badge. “Either I kill myself, or turn into a Japanese, or quit. Given the alternatives, I quit.”
Larry said, “Never mind. You want me to crack this assignment, I’ll crack it.”
“Larry—” Dan began; and for a moment Larry saw something on that gray crumpled valise of a face that he had never seen before, which was caution, and possibly concern. Caution, for sure – and that reassured him more than any words that Dan could possibly have spoken.
“You know something, Dan?” he told him, squeezing his elbow as he passed through to the living-room door. “You’re a fuck. A total fuck.”
Dan grunted in amusement. “Gone are the days, Larry.”
Arne Knudsen glanced up as Larry came into the living-room, but said nothing. He must have guessed already what was going down. Houston Brough looked shifty, and mumbled something that could have been “How’re you doing?” Larry was about to say, “Hi, Jolly,” or “How’re things, Jolly?” but he found himself face to face with the most stark and hideous tableau that he had ever encountered in twelve years on homicide, and his mouth simply refused to work. He just stood and stared, and his whole body seemed to dissolve, like a plate-glass window slid into clear running water.
He saw Nina Berry first. She had fallen forwards, so that her white cheek was pressed against the floor; but she was still half-crouched in the position in which she had been nailed. A dark crimson map of congealed blood spread from her head, a slowly-creeping continent of wasted life. The blood had already begun to soak into the oak: and it occurred to Larry, oddly, that they would have to tear up the whole floor before they could sell this condo again.
About two feet from Nina Berry’s parted hair, there were two large nails sticking out of the floor. Each of these nails was decorated like a matador’s lance with fragments of bloody flesh. The other two nails still protruded from Joe’s kneecaps. Joe was now lying on his back on the far side of the living-room, with a .38 revolver still clenched in both hands, the muzzle stuck in his mouth. His brains had been blasted up the wall in a tall triangular spray, and then halfway across the ceiling.
Joe’s knees were torn and bloody and his hands were torn and bloody. Larry could even see the tendons and ligaments, like Rembrandt’s anatomy lesson. There were bloody tracks all around the room, showing where Joe had been crawling.
There was no way of imagining what Joe had suffered, as he had shuffled from one side of the room to the other, first to kill his family, and then to kill himself.
The children were the worst, and when Larry looked at them he knew that he would never be able to forget them, and that this spectacle would haunt him asleep and awake for the rest of his l
ife. They were pinned to the wall, side by side, and they were both charred black and scarlet, although they were still recognizable, and part of their nightclothes was still intact. Their arms had broken free from the nailheads, and were clenched up in front of them as if they were two dancing monkeys, and their feet were clenched.
Joe had shot both of them in the face. From the angle at which they had been hit, he had probably been kneeling. Caroline was unrecognizable. No face, nothing, just a hole crammed with minute steak. Joe Junior, although his face was lamp-black, like an 18th century blackamoor statue, and the top of his head was missing, could have been peacefully asleep.
Larry took a long, long look at them, and then turned away.
Arne said, in his distinctive Swedish lilt, “It’s not so pretty, is it?”
Larry’s mouth was filled with garlic-tainted bile. All he could do was shrug, and swallow.
Arne turned around on his heel, his raincoat rustling. “He broke down the door, and he tortured them… but unlike all the other incidents, he left them alive, and walked out.”
Arne had tight wavy hair, like Shredded Wheat, and expressionless agate eyes. Sue-Anne in Records had said that he was the best lover she had ever had. Maybe that was why Larry disliked Arne so much. For his reputation, for his analytical coldness, and for his bright green raincoat. He didn’t think much of his bulbous conk, either.
“Why do you think he walked out?” Larry asked. “There was no way that he could have been sure that Joe was going to go for his gun and kill them all. There was no way that he could be sure that Joe was even going to be able to move. Supposing one of them had survived? Even one of the kids?”
Arne slowly shook his head. When he spoke, he spoke with almost fastidious certainty. “I think that he walked out because he was quite sure that they wouldn’t want to stay alive,” Arne replied. “I think that he was quite sure that he had taken away their whole reason for living.”
“That’s the way you read it, is it?” asked Larry.
“What else?” Arne wanted to know.
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