Beneath a Weeping Sky rcc-3

by Frank Zafiro

  The three men turned and made their way toward the street where Tower’s unmarked detective’s vehicle sat behind the officers’ marked cruiser. On the way, Ridgeway could hear Tower muttering but couldn’t make out the words. Once at his car, the detective got in without so much as a thank you and pulled away.

  “What’s up with that?” Ridgeway complained. “We just walked around in the rain for an hour knocking on doors and he can’t even say thanks?”

  “He’s probably under the gun over this. I imagine Crawford is all over him.” Gio opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat.

  Ridgeway slid into the passenger seat. “I’m sure it helped that you brought up the Rainy Day Rapist thing.”

  “I didn’t bring it up.” Gio fired up the engine. “The media brought it up. I just passed it on.”

  “Whatever,” Ridgeway said. Although he knew Gio was right. “My guess is that it was that fluff head from Channel Five.”

  “Shawna Matheson?” Gio dropped the car into gear. “She’s hot.”

  “She’s an idiot,” Ridgeway answered, but he knew it didn’t matter which of the newscasters actually said something first. Once one of them has it, they were all like a bunch of parakeets anyway, with no sign of an original thought.

  Gio turned onto Lincoln Road. “Whatever pressure he’s under now, it’s nothing like what he’ll be facing now that the media is hyping this story.”

  Ridgeway didn’t answer, but he knew Gio was right.

  1301 hours

  He cruised through the East Sprague corridor, eyeing the prostitutes that posed in the doorways. None so far had been willing to venture out from protective cover when he slowed down to examine them. The drizzle of cold rain kept them huddled like drowned cats in the doorways, staring bleakly out at him.

  He decided it was too much work today. Perhaps he could save it up and spring it on some other bitch later tonight or tomorrow.

  He reached for the car radio, turning to the news station for the top of the hour coverage.

  “Police continue to search for clues,” the polished male newsman’s voice intoned, “in the brutal rape of a woman on River City’s north side last night. This is the second such rape by the man now dubbed The Rainy Day Rapist.”

  His jaw dropped.

  The Rainy Day Rapist?

  He shook his head in disbelief.

  How could they call him that? It was a stupid name. It made him sound like some wimp in a musical or something. There was nothing powerful about a name like that.

  He pulled into a convenience store parking lot, where he stopped the car and took a deep breath. He knew that part of what he was doing was compulsion. He couldn’t stop it, even if he wanted to. He’d read about it in college, at least in the couple courses he managed to take at the community college. He understood the concept intellectually. But it was a different story when it became a reality. When the urge to dominate came over him. When these bitches need him to put the whammo down -

  He stopped. What good had it done him, though? To end up with a name like this?

  He gripped the steering wheel and took stock of his career. He’d raped three women already, not counting whores. Well, okay, maybe the first one didn’t count, either, since he didn’t exactly seal the deal. And the cops must not be counting it, since the media didn’t report it. Or maybe the stupid bitch didn’t even call the cops. But number two and three called the cops. They definitely counted. And the last one got the whammo good. She figured out exactly what kind of man she was dealing with.

  And yet, when his crimes finally go public, they saddle him with a ridiculous nickname like this? What level of respect was that?

  He wondered if he should respond. There was a payphone across the parking lot. He could call in and muffle his voice. Or better yet, maybe he should send a letter into the newspaper, like the Zodiac Killer.

  That thought stopped him cold.

  The Zodiac…Killer.

  No one ever called a killer by some stupid name. They respected a killer because they feared him. Only women feared a rapist. Everyone feared a killer.

  A sudden calm washed over him. He realized he had found his answer.

  His purpose.

  His destiny.

  1317 hours

  Tower shook the rain off his jacket as soon as he entered the police station. Without pause, he made his way straight toward the Crime Analysis unit. He intentionally chose his route to avoid the door to the Major Crimes bullpen, just in case Lieutenant Crawford was watching out for him.

  “Hey, girl,” Tower said as he stepped through the door to the cramped Crime Analysis office.

  Renee looked up from a stack of reports with bleary eyes. “Hey back,” she said. “Did you find anything on your canvass?”

  Tower shook his head. “Nada. I need your help.”

  Renee yawned and rubbed her eyes. “All right,” she murmured.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Tower said.

  “I won’t,” she assured him.

  “Am I pulling you off something big?”

  Renee shrugged. “Just trying to figure out this Rainy Day Rapist.”

  Tower frowned. “That’s a stupid name. Where’d it come from?”

  “I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say good old Channel Five.” Renee stood and walked to the nearby coffee pot. She filled her cup and held the pot out toward Tower, offering.

  Tower considered, then shook his head. “Naw, I’m coffeed out.”

  “Suit yourself.” Renee shuffled back to her seat and sat down lightly. She curled her legs to one side in the giant, black chair and sipped from her cup.

  Tower let his head dropped forward toward her expectantly. “So?”

  Renee acted surprised. “Oh, you want a report?”

  Tower cast a baleful look at her.

  Renee cocked an eyebrow back. “Careful, cowboy. You throw around looks like that and you will find yourself in a shootout.”

  “I can take you,” Tower said.

  “Not with that shoulder rig, you won’t.”

  “Newsflash,” Tower said to her. “You don’t even carry a gun.”

  Renee smiled mysteriously. “Not that you can see.”

  Tower held up both palms. “I surrender.”

  “Wise move.” Renee returned to her coffee, sipping and staring at the wall.

  Tower waited patiently. Renee was, in his estimation, an odd duck at times. He wasn’t sure how the neurons in her brain fired exactly, but he was usually pleased with the result. All it seemed to take was some banter and a little patience.

  “I don’t think it’s about rain for him,” Renee told him.

  “How’s that again?”

  “The Rainy Day Rapist,” Renee said. “I don’t think it fits. I think the rain is a coincidence.”

  Tower shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Though,” she added, “now that he has this name in the media, that may just change.”

  “May?”

  “Yes. It may. Then again, it may not. You never know, at least until there’s a more detailed profile of the suspect. And that’s something we really don’t have just yet.”

  “That’s helpful,” Tower said. “Thank you, Nostradamus.”

  Renee cocked her eyebrow again. “I’m just letting you know what I think. That’s because there isn’t much for me to say that I know.”

  Tower walked wordlessly to the coffee pot. He grabbed a small white Styrofoam cup and filled it halfway.

  “I thought you were coffeed out,” Renee said.

  Tower turned back to her and did his best to cock an eyebrow. “I’m getting the feeling I’m going to need it.”

  Renee chuckled. “Touche.”

  Tower stepped over to her desk. “You’ve read the reports?”

  Renee nodded. “MacLeod’s was especially good.”

  “She’s a good troop.”

  “She covered everything you could ask for. The one before that — Giovanni,
I think — was pretty solid, too. That’s the good news.” Renee sipped her coffee and continued. “The bad news is that when I run his M.O. as a distinct, specific M.O., I get no hits.”

  “So run the basic M.O. Blitz attack, and so forth.”

  “That’s too general. I get a phone book of rapists.”

  Tower sighed. “Same as the first rape, then.”

  “Exactly. There’s really no difference in the M.O., other than the location. Even that’s similar.” Renee held up one hand, then the other. “Park, park.”

  “Yeah,” Tower agreed. He sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then said, “Odds are it’s one of those guys that popped up when you got the phone book.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded. “I’m running all of them to see who’s incarcerated, who’s out of state and who’s still a possible suspect. The problem is that while we have a distinct M.O. in both cases, the victims don’t really provide much information. Neither one saw him. He didn’t say much.”

  “He said ‘whammo.’”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “That’s pretty unique.”

  “Too unique.” Renee leaned forward and fished a computer printout from the stack of paperwork on her desk. “I ran that term through our system. I came up with zero exact hits. Here’s a list of close matches.”

  Tower took the paper from her hand and scanned the list. There were seventeen entries.

  “Most of those,” Renee explained, “aren’t used in anywhere near the same context.”

  “Context how?”

  Renee lifted a finger. “Not the same type of crime, for starters. There wasn’t a single use of anything similar to ‘whammo’ in any rapes. Same story with any assault by a male subject on a female victim. Also, even in the instances where some form of the phrase pops up in a couple of male-on-male assaults, the usage is completely different.”

  “How different?” Tower asked.

  Renee s closed her eyes for a moment. Then she said, “I think one guy said something about getting blindsided in a fight. He said that he was dealing with one issue and then wham! He was hit from behind.”

  “That’s not even close.”

  “Nope. My point exactly.”

  Tower waved his Styrofoam cup at the computer. “I figured you could do better with all this.”

  Renee sighed. “I’ve told you this before, John. It is better. We may have come up empty on the search, but we came up empty that much sooner.”

  “Oh, great,” Tower said. “Because I hate to wait for disappointment.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” Renee said calmly. “It doesn’t solve anything.”

  “It isn’t supposed to,” Tower grumbled.

  Renee reached into her stack of papers and removed a yellow sheet of legal paper. She extended it toward Tower. “Take a look at this.”

  Tower reached out and took the paper. “What is it?”

  “Questions.”

  “I’ve already got plenty of those.”

  “Still.”

  Tower looked down at the legal sheet. Renee’s measured writing stood out against the yellow paper. She’d written three questions.

  Why does he rape?

  Who does he hate?

  Is he evolving?

  Tower looked up at her. “Are you serious?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because,” Tower answered, “how in the hell am I supposed to know the answer to these questions?”

  “That’s the point.”

  Tower stared at Renee. She stared calmly back. Tower took a sip of coffee and considered her words. After a full thirty seconds had passed, he shrugged, “You win. Explain this to me before my head explodes.”

  Renee smiled graciously. “Your head won’t explode.”

  “I can feel it pulsing already.”

  Renee waved his words away. “Look, John. You’re a detective. You follow the clues, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “But in this case, you don’t have any witnesses. Not even the victims are truly witnesses to anything other than some bare facts.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Forensics hasn’t come through at all.”

  “No. I think he was wearing a condom.”

  Renee nodded. “And probably gloves and a hat.”

  “Probably.”

  “So the conventional clues are a dead-end.”

  “So far, yeah.”

  “Then it’s time to get unconventional.”

  “Unconventional? How?”

  Renee pointed at the paper in Tower’s hands. “You ask yourself those questions. You try to answer them.”

  “With the puny evidence we have?”

  Renee shrugged. “With the evidence. And with your own mind.”

  Tower rolled his eyes. “You want me to profile him. Like those FBI guys.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That’s exactly what it sounds like,” Tower said. “And that shit is just theory and voodoo.”

  Renee stared at him with a flat expression, saying nothing.

  After a minute, Tower began to squirm. “What?”

  She shook her head slightly at him. “John, I don’t appreciate the attitude. I’m trying to help you here.”

  “I realize that. But-”

  “There is no but,” Renee cut him off. “And on top of that, I’m not asking you to dance with bloody chickens or something. I’m asking you to perform a little bit of a Victimology exercise, that’s all. Major Crimes does it all the time in homicide cases.”

  Tower snorted. “Sure, in homicide it makes sense. Most people are killed by someone who knows them. But they can’t tell the detective who killed them. So if you get to know the victim, you have a better shot at figuring out who the killer is.”

  “This is no different,” Renee insisted.

  “A rape victim is different than a homicide victim. She’s still alive. If she knows her attacker, she can name him. This is a stranger rape. It is very different.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re just looking at the suspect instead of the victim.”

  “An unknown suspect,” Tower corrected.

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Tower said, frustrated. “That is the point. With a known homicide victim, you can try to fill in gaps about her.” He tapped the notepad Renee had written on. “But I don’t know who this guy is, so there’s no way I can answer these questions.”

  “You have to use your imagination,” Renee said, her face tightening into a scowl.

  “Two things, Renee.” Tower held up one finger. “One, I can’t present my imagination as evidence in court.”

  “I know that,” Renee answered quietly. “I’m not suggesting — ”

  “And two,” Tower raised his voice to override hers. “Just run the list of suspects that match the basic M.O. and let me know who is still a viable suspect. I’ll run down each lead.”

  “I’m not against the shoe leather approach,” Renee said, “but if you want to get an edge on this guy — ”

  “Sounds like you and Crawford both like the same method,” Tower interrupted. He drank the last of his coffee and crumpled the small cup. “Just get me the names, Renee.”

  Renee’s eyes narrowed. “Fine.”

  Tower tossed the crumpled Styrofoam into the trash. Then he set the yellow paper on her desk next to her. “And if I want any voodoo, I’ll call the F.B.I.”

  Renee didn’t answer.

  Tower left the room without a word.

  1900 hours

  “Do you have any objection to this interview being taped, Officer Chisolm?”

  Chisolm shook his head coldly.

  “Can you verbalize that response, please?” Lieutenant Hart asked.

  Chisolm waited a full fifteen seconds before enunciating clearly, “No, sir, Lieutenant. I have no objection to this interview being recorded on audio tape.”

  Hart pursed his lips in irritation at Chisolm’s mock politeness.
The reaction warmed the veteran officer’s heart. Then Hart continued, “And would you like to have Union representation present?”

  “Do I need my Union rep?”

  “That’s your decision, Officer. I can’t advise you either way.”

  “Am I accused of something or am I a witness?”

  Hart smiled coolly. “You are the accused.”

  Chisolm nodded his understanding. “And who is the investigator?”

  “I am,” Hart replied.

  Chisolm allowed a slow, confident smile to spread across his face. “I don’t think I’ll need any Union representation here tonight,” he said.

  Hart didn’t seem to know whether to scowl at the inference Chisolm was making or revel in the even playing field. Both reactions flashed on his face before he appeared to settle for assuming a neutral expression. “That’s fine,” he said officiously. “Then we’ll get right to business.”

  “Let’s,” Chisolm said stiffly, folding his hands in front of him.

  Hart was staring down at his notes and didn’t notice. “What is your current assignment, Officer?”

  “Patrol.”

  “Were you working last night?”

  “I was.”

  “Did you respond to assist Officer MacLeod on a call?”

  “Probably more than one,” Chisolm replied evenly.

  “This would have been at 2325 hours.”

  “That’s a very precise time.”

  Hart looked up. “It is, Officer. Do you recall responding to assist Officer MacLeod at that time?”

  “No,” said Chisolm. “Why don’t you refresh my memory?”

  “It was at Northgate.”

  Chisolm raised his eyebrows in recognition. “Ah. Then yes.”

  “You remember now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you respond Code-3?”

  “We don’t tend to call it Code-3 anymore, Lieutenant.”

  “What?”

  “Lights and siren?” Chisolm answered. “We don’t usually call it Code-3 anymore. We’re moving to plain language on the radio. We just say ‘responding code’ now.”

  “Well-”

  “That’s probably changed since they moved you out of patrol,” Chisolm added.

  “What?” Hart’s jaw clenched. He glared at Chisolm.