Switch

by William Bayer

  "Could this have been done with a sword?"

  "Conjecture. Even if you brought me such a weapon I might not be able to say for sure. It was a very clean cut. No kind of weapon signature. Of course, if I had a sword with blood and tissue on it, then I could link it to these women. But I already checked on that, and I suspect you are not going to find it uncleaned."

  "What do you mean you checked?" Yoshiro's formality was starting to get on Janek's nerves.

  "I thoroughly examined both sets of wounds. No tissue cells or blood from one in the wounds of the other. I would surmise the same instruments were used but cleaned up in between. I understand, by the way, that the drain checks were negative for blood in both apartments."

  Janek looked at him. The man was obviously upset. "You discovered the switch, didn't you?"

  Yoshiro nodded. "I was working on the Ireland cadaver and right away I realized the two pieces didn't fit." He shook his head. "We've had decapitations in here before but never with the heads placed back on. I want to emphasize the oddity of that. The heads were not placed atop the bodies casually. They were literally pressed into the bodies as if an attempt was being made to recombine the heads and bodies in a way the killer preferred."

  "Yes," said Janek. "I see. That does seem very odd."

  Yoshiro looked at him. Suddenly he swept off his glasses. "I am a forensic pathologist, not a psychologist, Lieutenant. But I would say, based on my understanding of human nature, which comes from personal observation, the reading of poetry and literature, and some courses I took at Cornell Medical School..."

  "Yes?"

  "I would have to say that it seems to me that this man was trying to create people as much as to destroy them. Do you see what I mean?" Dr. Yoshiro snatched up his glasses and put them on again. "He killed them, certainly. But to use the parts his own way. So in a sense we could say he was a creator. Destroyer and also creator. Both. It's a difficult concept, I know. I've had some difficulty even thinking about it. I can't seem to deal with it, which is strange considering the sort of work I do. Normally I am quite imperturbable. Taking apart bodies, performing autopsies—none of that disturbs me at all. But I am confused by this case. It disturbs me very much. I sense a man here who has presumed to create new human beings, who has presumed to play at being God. And now please excuse me. I have a terrible headache. I must take some aspirins and lie down. You will get a complete report, of course, as soon as we finish up. Excuse me now." He rose and bowed slightly from the waist.

  Janek nodded and withdrew. A strange little man, he thought, with a strange and sensitive reaction. A scientific man, assured and confident, until he begins to ponder the meaning of the crime and then his head aches and he becomes confused. He senses mystery, creation and destruction, vectors he cannot reconcile. And such irreconcilability strikes hard at a man who slits open bodies and weighs organs and deals daily with the gross carnality of human beings.

  It was also striking at himself, Janek thought, as he drove over to the precinct house. There was something here that transcended a brutal homicide. Something awful, evil, and fascinating too.

  Sixth Precinct headquarters was one of those new police buildings that had grown old very fast. Built a dozen years before to be as indestructible as a public school, it had quickly acquired a patina of grime and the stench of all precinct stations: stale cigarette smoke, stale sweat and the effluvia of human distress.

  Aaron Rosenthal had already organized the special squad office on the second floor in back. Desks, telephones, filing cabinets, a map, and a wall-size cork bulletin board to which he'd tacked the crime-scene photographs. The Ireland photos were on the right, the Beard photos on the left. Between them was a diagram showing the various routes between the two apartments. There was plenty of room left for any new documentation that might later come along.

  Aaron was a superb detective, a fine tracker, excellent at interrogation and brilliant on the phone. He was a forty-three-year-old detective second grade, equivalent to a sergeant, balding, paunchy, bespectacled, with hideous mutton chop sideburns, a quick smile, a lovely wife, four gorgeous daughters, and a hard-edged New York cynicism which Janek greatly enjoyed. Occasionally he wore a yarmulke to work, a mystery to his colleagues, since there was no correspondence between this action and any known Jewish holidays. There was speculation that Aaron was doing private penance for a misdeed in the past, but like so many mysteries facing the Detective Division the mystery of Rosenthal's yarmulke had been relegated to the "unsolved" file drawer.

  "How do you like the case?" Janek asked. He'd only spoken briefly with Aaron the day before.

  "Goddamn horror show. Sorry about Al, Frank. Lou all right?"

  "She'll make it," Janek said. "You talk to Taylor yet?" Taylor was the precinct commander, a uniformed captain not overly fond of detectives who used his space but were not under his control.

  "He's pissed at Hart. Wanted these rooms for a rape crisis center."

  Janek looked around. "Nice. Sweep it out yourself?"

  "Everything but the interrogation rooms. Thought I'd leave them just the way they were."

  Janek checked the pair of cubicles separated by a short corridor which allowed observation through narrow slits of one-way glass. "Better buy some roach spray," he said. "You know...yesterday I couldn't stand having to deal with this. I actually prayed aloud the guy would come in this morning and confess."

  Aaron shrugged. "Yeah. Well, when they're that easy they're no fun."

  They went downstairs, then out to the Taco-Rico on Seventh Avenue South where they ate lunch and talked. Aaron knew all about Stanger and Howell and the fistfight in the morgue. Everyone knew about it. "It's Sweeney. He blabbed, and how now they're being punished by having to work the case under you."

  "Sweeney's saying that?"

  "That's what's going around."

  "That prick. Yesterday I let him drive my car."

  "He told you you needed a ring job, right?"

  "Said my engine sounded bad." Janek glanced at Aaron. "He blabbing about that too?"

  "Not that I know of. But cars are his sideline. He owns a piece of a garage." Aaron eyed him carefully. "You know, Frank, you really ought to be more excited about this case. Got great potential. Kind that can make you famous."

  "Yeah, I know, it's the big bizarre case you wait for all your life. Great if you solve it. The worst kind if you don't."

  "We'll solve it."

  "I'm not so sure. Anyway, I don't like it all that much."

  "Right now you don't. But you will, Frank. When you get into it you will."

  After lunch they returned to the office and stared together at the crime-scene photographs. They each stood before a set, then changed places, then changed again. Then Janek started pacing, back and forth, looking for something which he felt was there that he had missed before. What was it? Something revealing, abnormal, even beyond the abnormality of the switch. Something about the way the crime scenes looked. Something . . . he didn't know exactly what.

  "See anything?" he asked Aaron finally.

  "Guess you do, the way you're pacing around."

  "Do you?"

  "Crime-scene photos."

  "Yeah, of course."

  "Maybe there's something else."

  Janek waited, and when Aaron didn't continue he became impatient, wondering if he hadn't looked too hard seeking an aura which wasn't there.

  "Too perfect," Aaron said after a while.

  "Interesting. What do you mean?"

  "Not sure."

  "Come on, Aaron."

  "They're contrived, somehow."

  "Yeah?"

  "Like they were meant to be photographed, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean."

  "The killer didn't take the pictures."

  "Of course he didn't. Still..."

  "You mean the scenes look like they were arranged to be photographed?"

  Aaron was bent over now, peering very close. "Hmmm. I'm not sure about that
either."

  "You said 'too perfect.' Now, just what does 'too perfect' mean?"

  "I don't know."

  "Symmetry?"

  "Sure there's symmetry when you switch heads around."

  "We know that already. But is there something else?"

  "There is something, Frank. Something that hits you until you look too hard and then you don't see it anymore."

  "So what is it, for Christ's sake?"

  Aaron stood back, shook his head. "Beats me."

  "Well, I'll tell you what I think it is. Arrogance. Conceit. 'I defy you to solve this crime. I defy you to figure it out and find out who I am. I did it and I'm superkiller and you cops are suckers. You'll never find me and if you do I'll never tell you why.'"

  Aaron nodded. "Yeah. There's definitely that, and maybe something else, like our killer set this up to drool over. I think that's what I mean by contrived."

  Something to look for, if and when a suspect came along. The murders were bizarre. Maybe that was it: they were too bizarre. As if they were meant to be bizarre—crimes that were bizarre were generally not committed that way intentionally.

  Janek planted his elbows on his desk, rested his forehead against his fingers. When Sal came in he felt relieved; he could stop thinking about how crazy this case was going to get.

  Sal read to them from notes. "Taxi sheets covered. Notices up in the fleet-company garages. Circulars out to the owner-drivers. So far no one remembers any particular crosstown passengers that night. Bus drivers don't remember, either. 'Don't even look at them,' they say. Bus driver/passenger relationships tend toward the superficial. I guess that's what they mean."

  "I see this investigation is broadening your sensibilities," Aaron said.

  "I'm getting to be a regular crosstown-transit expert, yeah. Talked to some of the doormen. Nothing yet. They have special weekend shifts. The men rotate. I'll try a few more tonight."

  When Stanger and Howell called, Janek told them to come in. When they arrived the five detectives pulled their chairs into a circle. Janek turned to each of them in turn. Aaron took notes on a legal pad.

  Stanger reported that Amanda Ireland's parents were in town, staying at a Tenth Avenue motel. "Very nervous people. The kind that hate New York. The father ID'd her. Mother wouldn't go. I didn't mention anything about the switch. Thought maybe you'd want to talk to them and bring that up yourself."

  "I do want to talk to them," Janek said. "Set it up at the motel. No reason to mention the switch unless, of course, they're not sufficiently outraged."

  "Oh, they're outraged all right."

  "They say anything about boyfriends? She ever mention anyone in her letters?"

  "No one except this art teacher, the one from the Weston School. But he's gay. Very upfront about it. Nice kid. They were close. In fact—"

  "Bring him in."

  Stanger looked surprised. "I spent a couple hours with him, Lieutenant. He's okay. Remember, he threw up."

  "Something funny there. If he's an art teacher why didn't he notice he was looking at someone else's head?"

  "He's very sensitive."

  "A lot of killers are sensitive. If they were close they exchanged confidences. He may be holding something back. Maybe Amanda liked girls. You get to stay the good guy, Stanger. I want a go at him myself." Janek turned to Howell. "What about the pimp?"

  "There was one. People in the building saw him. And they were seen together on the street."

  "Who is he?"

  "An Oriental. Funny name. Bitong. Supposed to be very slick. Soon as I find him I'll haul him in. I got a theory maybe he was trying to teach a lesson. Switching the heads and all as a warning to his other girls. You know, like you get your head cut off if you don't do like you're told."

  "Doesn't sound very slick to me. Why the schoolteacher and why the switch?"

  "Who knows? Chinese mumbo-jumbo. Maybe Amanda was doing high-class tricks for him. East Side. You know—discreet."

  "Forget it," snapped Stanger.

  Howell ignored him. "Or maybe Amanda was just a target of opportunity. I mean I try to put myself in a whore's place." They all broke up at that. "I'd be scared shitless by what happened to Brenda. I'd kiss the Chink's behind all night and never think of crossing him again."

  "We're getting too theoretical," said Janek. "What have you got on johns?"

  "She ran an ad in Screw. Every other week. With a telephone number, too. What's odd about that is that when they advertise they usually work in pairs. Two girls. Roommates. That way there's some protection in case they run up against a creep. Running a phone ad's just one notch up from the street, and on the street at least you get a look at the guy. With a phone ad you're working blind. Calls from out-of-town businessmen, kids, crazies too. Anyone. Everyone. There's no protection against weirdoes. Working alone like that, Brenda took a chance every time she opened up her door."

  "I like that better than the pimp-punishment idea," said Sal. "A blind call. He sounds good on the phone. She lets him in figuring she can handle him. Then he turns on her, so fast she doesn't have time to raise her hands. Whores get nailed like that all the time."

  Howell was getting edgy. Janek could see he'd already thought of that and now was thinking that Sal and the rest of them were treating him like he was dumb.

  "A reasonable theory," said Janek, "and so is the pimp. We have to talk to the pimp to eliminate him, anyway. Now let's look at Howell's target-of-opportunity idea, look at it and turn it around. Say Brenda's the target of opportunity. She's easy. All you got to do is call her, act smooth and set up a date. But Amanda's not easy. She's not going to let you in. So say you're after Amanda and you want to do a switch, you need another head, right, so you pick up Screw, pick out a whore, and make an appointment—the whore's sole function is to provide you with that second head. Then you see Brenda's just a randomly chosen victim, and it's Amanda who's really interesting." Janek glanced at Stanger. "We got to know much more about her. And how, for sure, he got in. It makes a big difference if he came in off the fire escape or if she opened up the door. If Amanda let him in it's a whole new ball game, because that means she knew him, she's the focus and Brenda's just auxiliary."

  They all nodded. At least Janek had a theory that Amanda was the prime target, even if there were no grounds to say that yet. Before they broke up he urged them again to look for connections. "If the girls knew each other, or if their paths crossed, then at least we have a place to start. Until then we're working in the dark. So far we got a lot of notions but no clear idea what we're dealing with. Is this a one-time double homicide with a purpose, or a thrill-kill that could turn into a series? That's something we all better think about, too, because if the guy who did this thinks he's getting away with it, he just might try it again."

  Chinatown

  When he was finally alone in the office he telephoned Caroline Wallace.

  "Hey, Janek, I was hoping I'd hear from you." She seemed genuinely pleased that he had called.

  "That was fun last night. Now it's my turn." He suggested he drive over, pick her up and take her to dinner in Chinatown.

  She brought her camera with her, the same Leica he'd seen at the burial, slung over her shoulder with half a dozen leather containers for film dangling from the strap. No equipment bag; she said she liked to travel light. She never went out without her camera, she said, since she never knew what she might happen to see.

  Inthe car he asked if she'd had it with her the day she'd fallen off her bike and been picked up by Al.

  "Always the detective, aren't you?" She was amused. Then she frowned. "No, I didn't take it to the tennis club. There'd been some pilfering in the locker room."

  "So you don't always carry it with you."

  "I guess I don't. You're a very clever man." She smiled, raised her camera, leaned back against her side of the car, took a shot of him driving and smiling back.

  He took her to a restaurant he liked, upstairs on Mott Street where the food wa
s cheap and good and the waiters didn't speak English very well. She took a couple more shots of him while he ordered. He played up to her by clowning with the waiter. Click. Click. He liked the idea of being photographed. She must like me, he thought, or else she wouldn't bother.

  "You Chink out a lot, don't you, Janek?"

  "Yeah, but two nights running is maybe pushing it a little bit."

  "In China they Chink out every meal, so I guess we'll both survive."

  "Tomorrow," he told her, "I may Chink out again. I got to interrogate a Chinese pimp."

  She said she'd like to photograph him conducting an interrogation.

  "To catch my aggression?"

  "Sure. Especially when you bang him around. You do bang them around, I hope. My dad used to tell me how cops know how to hit a guy, work him over real good, without leaving any marks."

  "Yeah. Back in 1902. I knew you were a cop-hater. Cops' kids always are."

  "I think cops are the best, finest, gentlest men around." She was serious and he was only sorry he didn't agree.

  "What attracts you to aggression?"

  "Just my hang-up, I suppose."

  "Only men, right?"

  "Female aggression might be interesting, but in the book I'm sticking to the men."

  "Is this book going to be a put-down?"

  "Of your gender?" She laughed. "No. Not at all. There's an elegance about male aggression. The poses. The stance. The eyes. The look. It's the best part of being human. We're social animals. Aggression makes the world work. And so, too, I guess, does gentleness, but that's another book."

  "I can imagine," he said, looking at her closely, "that you could do a book on that."

  "Mothers cuddling babies. Lovers kissing tenderly. It's been done to death, and anyway it's too maudlin for me just now."