Switch

by William Bayer

  Howell gaffawed.

  There was a quality to the apartment that aroused Janek's compassion. Hallowed ground, he thought. Ground that had been made sacred by the terrible act performed upon it, the taking of human life, the spilling of human blood.

  Plants hung from the ceiling in front of the windows—he felt like watering them; already they'd begun to wilt. A cloth bedspread in faded rainbow stripes—needed a laundering; now it was stiff with congealed blood. Pile of quiz papers on the desk, half of them graded, half still unread. It was the apartment of a nice person who had tried to create a little refuge for herself. A dog dish half full of water stood just outside the kitchenette. A leash and a light-tan belted raincoat hung from an old-fashioned coat stand beside the door.

  The crime-scene crew had been thorough. No physical evidence, tracks, fibers, prints. Neither apartment had been ransacked, and both were double-locked. Stanger, who was balding and cadaverous, was pointing through the bathroom door.

  "Stabbed in here. Toothbrush on the floor and toothpaste in her mouth. Seems she was brushing at the time." He stopped, noticed they were gaping. "Well, guess that's pretty obvious. Anyway, he must have been waiting for her in the tub. Stabbed her in the back through the shower curtain. Plastic's shredded. Protected him from spatter. Then turned her over, still wrapped in the curtain, and started working on her chest. No defensive wounds on her palms or arms. Looks like he took her by surprise."

  "Brilliant," whispered Sal.

  "Excuse me," said Stanger. "I'm trying to make a presentation to the lieutenant here if that's okay."

  "It's okay," said Janek. "You're doing great. Go on." He glanced at Sal, a signal to lay off.

  "After he killed her, he wrapped her in the shower curtain and dragged her over to the bed. Undressed her, laid her face down, then cut off her head. Medical Examiner says two different weapons—short pointed knife in the can, something longer with a sharp blade out here. No sexual assault—front, rear or mouth. And nothing missing far as we can tell, except her keys. No one heard anything or saw anyone enter or leave."

  Janek shook his head. "Nobody heard anything?"

  "Just the dog. The dog barked, but she did that every night. She barked whenever anybody crossed the hall. People have complained a lot about this dog. Someone even wrote a letter to the landlord a couple months ago."

  "Well, there's your motive," said Sal.

  "What happened to the dog?"

  "Injured. Killer kicked her in the head. ASPCA took her away. Put her to sleep, I guess."

  "There goes your witness."

  "Knock it off, Sal." Stanger was still too beaten down to stand up to razzing. He'd made a fool out of himself at the morgue, been dressed down by the CD, suffered the indignity of a black eye, and now Janek knew he'd be useless if someone didn't puff him up. "Any idea how he got in?"

  "Assuming for now the perpetrator's a he, Amanda could have let him in, though that doesn't fit with hiding in the shower. No sign of forced entry, so I checked out the super. He carries his keys on a huge ring on his belt, and everyone who knows him swears by him up and down. My gut feeling is our guy came in off the fire escape. Now, notice there's an accordion grill. It was closed, but there isn't any lock. Seems strange, maybe, since she's got a high-security lock on the door, but a lot of these girls are afraid to lock their grills. Makes them nervous. They want to get out fast if there's a fire."

  So, Stanger was a self-styled expert on the lifestyles of East Side single girls. Janek didn't agree with Hart, he didn't think Stanger was a jerk. Just a reasonably hard-working mediocre detective. No wonder he wanted to keep the case. A chance for glory: society girl homicide. He could hang out at Second Avenue singles bars for weeks talking to her friends, cadge himself a hundred drinks, get laid a couple times, maybe even get lucky and pick up something that would help him break the case.

  "What about a boyfriend?"

  Stanger shook his head. "She didn't go out. A loner. Lonely sort of girl. No one ever heard anything through the walls. And so far as anyone around here knows she never gave a party or had a guest stay overnight."

  "Little Miss Perfect," muttered Sal. "I don't buy that. I don't believe in that."

  "This one comes close. Good teacher. Everybody liked her. Not bad-looking either. Walked her dog on a regular schedule: before she left for work, soon as she came home, and every evening around nine o'clock. Both parents teach school upstate. A married sister in Hawaii. I think the guy came in through the window when she was out with the dog, which suggests he knew her habits. He might have seen her coming out of school one day. There're creeps who linger around up there. The school warns the girls not to talk to them. He could have spotted her there, followed her home and she never even noticed. Once he picked up on her routine he'd know when it was safe to slip inside and wait."

  A perfectly decent second-rate theory, Janek thought, except it didn't take into account the other girl and the switch. Stanger still hadn't come to grips with the fact that Amanda Ireland was not an isolated case.

  As they drove over to look at the other apartment, Janek instructed Sal. Check the taxi sheets and the drivers of the crosstown buses. Time how long it would take to walk. Talk to patrolmen who were on duty that night and find out if any cars were ticketed or double-parked. Talk to doormen along the route. Did anyone see a man coming back and forth on Saturday carrying some sort of package or bag? The killer crossed town at least twice and possibly three times. He was carrying heads, and also weapons. He returned to one of the crime scenes and possibly to both. He might have had blood on him. He might have acted strange, impatient, nervous, tense. That was Sal's job—run down the mechanics, figure out how the killer had gotten back and forth. And yes, for now, work on the assumption the killer is a male, but don't forget to ask about a woman too.

  The call girl's name was Brenda Beard; she'd used the name Brenda Thatcher in her work. She'd lived on West Seventy-third between Broadway and West End, a good/ bad block—addict center and a welfare hotel along with expensive apartments carved out of once-elegant private homes. Her studio was on the third floor of a subdivided Victorian mansion, accessible by a small self-service elevator and a set of seedy stairs. No fire escape, no way in except her door, which meant she let the killer in, which meant she knew him, or had taken him for a john.

  Howell made his presentation. There wasn't much to tell. She'd been killed in her bed, had been naked when it happened. The killer turned her over, sliced off her head, then turned her back and mounted Amanda's head on her, face up. The bed should have been drenched with blood but wasn't, which suggested something similar to Amanda's shower curtain, a plastic sheet perhaps, though nothing like that had been found.

  Late Monday morning a man had called the police emergency number. Howell had dug up the tape recording of the call. The man reported a murdered girl, gave the address, then hung up. Police broke down the door, found the body and ID'd it on the basis of documents in her purse. Howell speculated that the person who had called was not her killer but her pimp.

  "...the way I see it she was supposed to turn up somewhere and give him her money and when she didn't show up he came looking for her at home. He had a set of keys to the apartment—pimps insist on that. He took one look, saw there was a murder, knew it wasn't her, got spooked, and ran down to a phone booth and called it in. Maybe he even stuck around to see her carried out. Probably still doesn't know what's going on. I don't think the killer would have called. Everyone knows we tape, and there weren't any calls on the East Side case."

  Janek was pleased—Howell, at least, had joined the cases in his mind. "So who's the pimp?"

  Howell smiled. "Only had this case a couple hours yesterday. Give me half a day, Lieutenant, and I'll have him for you. And plenty of stuff on this Brenda, too."

  Sure of himself, Janek thought. Probably knows lots of call girls, pimps and other lowlife in the neighborhood. While Stanger was thin and his expression desperate, Howell was hea
vy and full of bluster, a good-natured bully, a basic street cop who happened to carry a detective's shield.

  Janek told them what to do right there in the apartment. He was tired of them, wanted to get rid of them, be alone and look around.

  "Each of you has a girl. Go to work on her. Run down everything, then write it up. How did she live? Where did she shop? Where did she hang out? Who did she know? I want their personal address books, too. Tomorrow Aaron can put them together and cross-match. Killing two people is one thing. Switching their heads is something else. Someone, let's say for now a male, knew them, killed them, then he made the switch. Why? Maybe he wanted the whore's head on the goody-goody's body, or the other way around, or both. Maybe he had a goddamn Madonna/whore complex. Maybe he had some sort of obsession about rearranging their personalities and he felt compelled to bring it off. Maybe this is voodoo, hocus-pocus, some crazy terror cult. Whatever it is, the benefits were temporary—he had a few seconds to admire his handiwork, then he left the mess for us. Didn't try to cover up. Knew we'd discover the switch, and didn't care. Why? What's the connection? Somewhere, sometime, both girls had contact with our guy. And that's how we're going to find him, by finding out where their lives intersect. Because he had a reason, sick as it was. He went to a lot of trouble and took a lot of risk to arrange things almost faultlessly in a very peculiar way."

  Stanger and Howell listened carefully. Both seemed to respond to his authority. He warned them again about leaking the switch to the press, then dismissed them but signaled Sal to stay. "What do you think?" he asked, after the other two had left.

  "I liked what you said about a Madonna/whore complex."

  "You think they knew what the hell I was talking about?"

  "Probably not. But they will when you're through with them."

  "Hart thinks they're jerkoffs."

  "They seem average enough to me."

  "Clods, right?"

  Marchetti nodded and grinned.

  He was an excellent detective, young, in his late twenties, with a good mind and the kind of willfulness Janek liked. He had thick black hair, sideburns, a mustache, was divorced, played the stock market, followed hockey and prided himself on his marksmanship. He had worked narcotics for three years and had acquired the habits of a narc—toughness, compassion, quick reflexes and stubbornness. Janek knew lots of narcotics detectives and knew all about their faults. What he liked about them was the way they leeched onto a case, then stuck to it, refusing to give up.

  "You called Amanda 'Little Miss Perfect.' Really think she's too good to be true?"

  Sal shrugged. "Don't know, Frank. Taught school. Walked her dog alone. No boyfriend. A little too young and attractive to be such a spinster, don't you think?"

  "There are girls like that."

  "Yeah—I guess."

  "Well, we'll see, won't we?"

  Marchetti nodded. Janek sent him on his way.

  He sat alone then in Brenda Thatcher Beard's apartment, trying to imagine the sort of life she'd led. Phone ringing all day, clients calling, making appointments, lots of no-shows, then strange men coming in to spend the night. The place was decent enough. There was a bamboo bar with three stools, bottles of whiskey and liqueurs on the shelf behind. The couch was the same dusty chocolate velvet as the drapes, and there were red light bulbs in the lamps, with dimmer switches attached.

  He opened the closet. It was stuffed and there was an overpowering aroma of perfume. No cheap whore's perfume, but a scent that was erotic, heavy and dark. He examined some of the clothing, a black silk nightgown, a black leather outfit complete with chrome chain belt, and a red satin dressing gown with padded shoulders and an Oriental monogram, the sort of thing women wore in 1940s films.

  It was a working whore's closet filled with the artifacts of her maligned and necessary trade: spiked heels, black underwear, douche bag hanging from a hook. In the bathroom he found an array of antibiotics, a leg razor, a hair dryer, a hair curler, cosmetics, plus assorted dildos stored with the spare rolls of toilet paper and a pair of handcuffs in the cupboard beneath the sink. Traces of an attempt at something better, too. Brenda had tried to be a model once, had had ambitions to be an actress—there were glossy photos and résumés stashed with the spare light bulbs and the sewing kit.

  Janek looked around. In both substance and mood the place was completely different from Amanda's. Not a refuge but a shop, a place to practice an ancient craft. In the stills Brenda's hair was curled, while Amanda's hung long and straight. They were completely different people, had lived totally opposite lives. But, somehow, their lives were joined.

  Something had gone wrong for both girls, someone had come in and murdered them and switched their heads, and suddenly Janek was terribly tired, weary of the case, even though he had just started out on it and it showed promise of being the kind that could make the papers and win him a commendation if he should manage to bring the killer in. Maybe that was what made him feel tired: the thought of having to hunt a person so deranged. Yes, potentially it was a great case, bizarre, spooky, the sort that gives nightmares to single women and to middle-aged detectives too. But he was already exhausted at the prospect of those nightmares, of having to go up against a mind so twisted and unfathomable that he knew he would have to reach down to the twisted unfathomable depths within himself if he was ever going to manage to link in. Hart was right—this was psychological, and he was not looking forward to becoming obsessed with it, probing himself to discover who and why.

  "Please, God, let it end tomorrow," he whispered. "Make the bastard come in tomorrow and confess."

  He was careful locking up the apartment, Brenda's lock and the police lock the crime-scene crew had installed. The door should be marked, he thought, with a cross, the way in Europe they marked a spot on a road where a fatal accident had taken place—to inform passersby of hallowed ground.

  The Photographer

  He lived fifteen blocks north on West Eighty-seventh between Columbus and Amsterdam. He walked uptown on Broadway in the early-evening heat, past old people sitting on benches in the center strip, through the crowds, the West Side ethnic mix, people hurrying home from work, stopping at supermarkets, turning into bars. He tried hard to put the case out of his mind. He only wanted to think now of Al DiMona and to grieve.

  His apartment was cool, a semi-basement with cage-door entry under the stairs to the house where his landlord's family lived. He hadn't done much to fix it up, had furnished it out of the Salvation Army, and had installed his father's old accordion bench against a wall, where it was littered now with tools and the inner workings of broken accordions. He found a beer in his refrigerator, took off his jacket and dug out the card the girl had handed him at the cemetery. "Caroline Wallace," it said, "Photographer." He sat down on his bed and dialed.

  The phone rang six times and he was about to give up when she answered in a hurried breathless voice.

  "This is Frank Janek."

  "Who? Oh—right. Hold on."

  He imagined her putting down packages, unslinging her camera, maybe blotting her forehead with her arm.

  "Yes, Lieutenant Janek—"

  "Frank, please."

  "Right. Ah—how are you?"

  "Can I see you this evening?"

  "This evening? What about?"

  "Like I told you this morning..."

  "You said you wanted to talk. You didn't say anything about a meeting."

  "Is there some problem with a meeting?"

  "No problem. I'm just curious what you want."

  "You know I was close to Al."

  "Yes. Of course..."

  "I wanted to ask you some questions about him."

  "Was there something special?"

  "Yeah. A few things I don't understand. Louella DiMona told me he was going out a lot. That he was away from the house most afternoons. And I just wondered..."

  "You wondered if I could enlighten you about where he was."

  "Yes. Something like that
."

  "Well, I guess I can." There was a pause. "I'm in Long Island City. Want to come over here?"

  "If tonight's no good—I don't want to trouble you—"

  "Tonight's fine. Let's get it over with. Look—I just brought up some Chinese food. If you get here quick enough you can help me eat it up."

  He felt a little strange as he drove to Queens. He didn't know anything about her, had no idea how well she'd known Al, and from the look of her it didn't add up that she and Al had been having an affair. But she had picked up very fast on his probe about Al spending a lot of time away from home. She was going to "enlighten" him. It was as if she'd expected him to ask what had been going on.

  Traffic was light on the Queensboro Bridge. He glanced into his rearview mirror back at Manhattan, saw the city strung out with lights. There was still a glow in the sky behind the buildings. He loved this romantic vision of New York, luminous city set powerfully against a fading sky.

  Coming off the bridge he thought of Hart eating dinner with his wife (he'd seen her once, at the ceremony when Hart had been sworn in), and Stanger studying women from a lonely bar stool, and Howell shaking down a pimp, and Sal Marchetti slicking down his hair for a date, and Lou DiMona grieving, and his own wife, Sarah, sitting in the Staten Island house where he had left her two years before, perhaps missing him a little, missing his brooding presence, as she stared blankly at the television set watching the horror of the local evening news.

  Long Island City was an old industrial area just across the East River, a low-crime area inhabited by serious working-class people, members of unions devoted to their families. Caroline Wallace's building was a prewar industrial structure; she'd described her apartment as a loft. Janek knew there were painters and sculptors and photographers who had moved to this section when the Manhattan artists' area, Greenwich Village and Solo, had become fashionable and the rents had gone too high.

  He parked, entered, found her name. She'd clipped down her business card to fit the slot beside her bell.