Switch

by William Bayer

  Janek shrugged. "Still not coming clear."

  "It will. It will. You must have some kind of theory. I know you're not sitting on your can."

  "Got some theories, sure."

  "Like what?"

  "Walked through it Saturday night. Was struck by how thrilling it must have been."

  "A real thriller. Yeah. Looked into voodoo? I was thinking about voodoo the other day."

  "Doesn't check out."

  "Try some of our black detectives. Lots of experience there. Great resource waiting to be tapped. Sex?"

  "No semen."

  "So he wore a rubber. I never heard of a whore who didn't have semen in her ears."

  "Doesn't smell like sex to me."

  "Then what does it smell like?" Hart was getting irritable. Janek spoke softly. "I'd say some very special kind of thrill."

  "You keep talking about thrills. You mean the switch?"

  "The whole ritual. The switch would have been part of it," Janek agreed.

  Hart scratched the side of his face. Janek could hear his nails scrape his cheek. "Sorry, Frank, you're losing me. Just what are you trying to say?"

  Janek stood up, picked a speck out of his eye, walked over to the window, peered down at Police Plaza, at the hundreds of people crossing the square, so rapidly, like ants. He turned. "There's only one connection we can find between the victims, and that looks like a typical New York coincidence."

  "There's got to be a connection."

  "Sure. But it's not like the whore was taking French lessons in the morning and the French teacher was whoring after work. The connection's in the killer's mind. It's like you told me in the car. A psychological crime. The killer's fantasy. His stunt. His private little treat."

  Hart held his face as if struck by a migraine. His cold little eyes were sparkling now with pain. "You're still being enigmatic, Frank."

  Janek turned back to the window, looked down again at the figures scurrying below and practiced switching a couple of their heads. "When someone's dead," he said, "and you do something to his body, you're not doing anything to him—you're making a display. Like in war when the enemy kills one of your guys and they strip him and set him up in the forest with his genitals cut off and stuck into his mouth. They haven't done anything sadistic to him, because he was already dead before the mutilation was carried out. They've done it for your benefit, the guy who finds him later, and, on a deeper level, they've done it for themselves. The ostensible purpose is to demoralize you. A display like that fills the viewer with anger and despair. It works subconsciously—breaks down the spirit, replacing the cool skill it takes to fight with a hot and clumsy debilitating rage." He turned back to Hart. Not a bad improvisation; he wondered if the Chief was dazzled.

  "So if that's the ostensible purpose, what's the real one?"

  "The underlying benefit is for the displayers themselves, a way of acting out their anger coolly without having to worry about the person fighting back. Or squirming, or screaming, arousing their pity or making them afraid. A dead guy's just so much meat, so you can treat him like meat. Maybe you kill him in anger so you can cut him up afterward with an almost kindly feeling in your heart."

  Hart was slowly nodding his head. "I think I see what you mean."

  Janek didn't understand how that was possible, since he couldn't see it himself. "Anyway," he said, "here's the bottom line. Whoever did this gave himself a lot of satisfaction, a good part of which could have been the effect it would have on us. The business with the heads is so implausible it makes me wonder if that may have been his point. To add a complication which would be even more disturbing than the homicides. A way to almost beautify his crime, turn his maniacal rage into a twisted kind of art."

  Hart sucked in his lips. "That's one weird theory, Frank."

  "This is one weird case."

  "What you're telling me sounds very strange."

  "I know. Deep waters. Limitless depths."

  "More like you're setting up to dump this one in the files. Because if you're saying what I think you're saying, you're telling me you may never run it down."

  Janek shook his head. "All I'm telling you is I don't think I'm going to solve it by turning up some overlooked piece of physical evidence, or, excuse the expression, by good old-fashioned detective work."

  Hart leaned back disgusted. He didn't like the reference to his own frequent exhortations to "wear down shoe leather" and "in my experience it's the tedious routine work that breaks the case." He examined Janek skeptically. "So how are you going to solve it?"

  "Maybe by inspiration," Janek said.

  Hart snorted his amusement. His little eyes glinted now with mirth. "Grand. That's grand, Frank. Well, you just go back uptown and get yourself inspired. And if anything hits you and it happens to work out, please be sure and let me know."

  At the precinct house that afternoon, a carnival atmosphere: Howell and his promised roundup of Upper West Side whores. Other detectives assigned to the Sixth came in to help keep order and watch the fun: an endless stream of squealing, chattering, hooting ladies of the night.

  Formal interviews: "Now, in regard to your clients, Ms. Fernandez . . ." Snappy retorts: "Head freaks? Johns into heads?Honey, they're all into heads. I mean head is where it's at..."

  Janek enjoyed the parade, a respite from the frustrations of the case, and he could see that Howell reveled in it. Howell would make a great Vice Squad detective, he thought; he took the proper corrupting pleasure in depravity.

  While Janek watched he practiced switching heads. He tried out a bleached blonde's on a black girl, and then the reverse. But by seven o'clock things started growing tense. Howell was cutting into working hours, the humor was wearing thin, and none of the women had even heard of Brenda Beard. Janek finally shooed them out; Howell could finish with them downstairs. When, finally, the squad room was cleared, he and Aaron were left alone. Aaron studied the victim profile books. Janek, sensing a glimmer of a notion, went again to the wall and stood before the crime-scene photographs.

  He looked, stared, peered, walked away, strode back and squinted again, bringing his face up close. Yes, there was something. He tried it again. Yes. Feeling a small rush of triumph, he called Aaron to the wall.

  "Remember how we stood here the first day? The way we paced back and forth studying the shots?"

  "Sure. Something bugged us."

  "Remember what you said?"

  "I said 'too perfect,'" Aaron paused. "Didn't I?"

  "You also said 'contrived.'"

  "Yeah. I remember now. That's sort of like your lady friend's 'arranged.'"

  "You said, 'Something that hits you until you look too hard and then you don't see it anymore.'"

  Aaron agreed that that was what he'd said.

  "Okay. I want you to try something."

  Janek unpinned two of the photographs, one from each side, shots taken of each victim from approximately the same angle directly above their beds. He pinned them back onto the cork beside each other in an empty space.

  "Now what I want you to do is shift your eyes back and forth and try and switch the heads in your mind. What happens is you hold the image of one and superimpose it for a split second on the other. You may have to practice. I've been doing it all day. Took me a while to get the knack."

  Aaron tried it. Then he stood back and blinked. "They keep slipping back to where they belong."

  "The idea is to carry a face a little to the side. Try moving one. Move Amanda right to left. Leave Brenda where she is."

  "Okay."

  "Now move Brenda."

  "This is tough work, Frank. All I'm getting is a kind of flash."

  "A flash is good. A flash is all you need."

  "Strange—I mean what I'm doing here is putting them back together the way they were."

  "Right. You're putting them back together. So keep on doing it awhile."

  "It's coming now. You're right. It does get easier."

  "Keep going."
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  "What am I looking for?"

  Janek was silent.

  "Wow. This could get to be a nasty habit."

  Janek stood back; he didn't want to lead Aaron on. "Hmmm. 'Something that hits you until you look too hard and then you don't see it anymore.'"

  Silence.

  "Now I'm getting confused."

  "How?"

  "Getting them mixed up."

  "Go on."

  "They seem almost..."

  "What?"

  "I don't know—interchangeable?"

  Janek exhaled. "That's it."

  Aaron shut his eyes tight to clear away the images. He turned from the wall. "You mean that they fit each other so well?"

  "You got it. I think that's what we saw before. And it goes with something else that's strange about this case, something we've never talked about. Remember how the people who first found the bodies weren't sure what they'd seen. Pierson didn't notice that it wasn't Amanda. He took one quick look, then turned away. It didn't register on the super either. And Bitong said he thought something was wrong but he didn't know exactly what. When you think about it, that was pretty strange, and that it took the Medical Examiner to discover there'd been a switch. Look at their faces again. They're similar, not identical, not like twins or even sisters, but close enough so you could get confused. Same features, roughly the same-shaped eyes and chins, same hair color, similar haircut, same age and size. If you squint—well, on a quick-glance basis they look more or less the same."

  Aaron studied the photographs. "I think that's true. Funny it didn't register."

  "You explained it yourself. If you look hard you don't see it anymore. The resemblance is superficial. When you look for it, it disappears. I think, too, if we'd seen the bodies it would have been clearer than it is in photographs."

  Aaron grinned. "That's fantastic, Frank. You're good. I'm sure you're right. But—" he looked at Janek evenly—"okay, you got something. So now tell me what it means."

  Janek smiled, walked back to his swivel chair, sat down and stretched his legs. He waited while Aaron poised himself on the rear ledge of his desk.

  "Suppose the resemblance is the connection we've been looking for. Quite a different thing than mounting a blonde's head on a brunette. Seems to me if you wanted to make these women look different you wouldn't choose this particular pair."

  "So?"

  "So, suppose you don't want them to look different. Suppose you want to keep them looking pretty much the same."

  "Why?"

  "To change them in a certain way, but keep the illusion going that you haven't. Take Amanda: so distant, self-contained, inaccessible. Stick the head of a whore who sort of looks like her on her and you give her a whore's personality. Better still, stick her head on the body of a whore and you get an Amanda who's basically a slut."

  "What about the other way around? Stick Brenda's head on Amanda's body and that way clean up her act."

  "Sure. But why bother? I'm betting on Amanda. She's the one you can't get to, the one you'd want to change. She's so good, you know, so clean, the kind you'd want to dirty up. It seems to me that, once you decide on that, it's a relatively simple matter to shop around for a whore who looks the same and, when you find her, start to plan your switch."

  "A headhunting expedition. I don't know, Frank. You're in the stratosphere. I mean, if that's what you want to do, why not just mount Amanda's head on the whore and leave it at that?"

  "Then what do you do with Brenda's head?"

  "What difference does it make? Stash it in the closet. Roll it under the bed."

  Janek shook his head. He felt sure Aaron was wrong. "You're neat and orderly. You're an artist constructing a puzzle. You're into symmetry and design. You don't like loose ends, so you've got to replace the head you took."

  Aaron gazed at him, then announced that he was going home. He'd participated in some pretty weird brainstorming sessions since he'd been in the division, he said, but tonight's was the weirdest yet. He turned when he reached the door. "This kind of stuff can make you crazy, Frank. I'd come down off of it if I were you. You got a theory, sure, and for all I know you're right. But where does it leave you? How does it help you find the guy?"

  Janek wasn't sure where or how, but he felt that it would help, that if he could enter into the madness of this crime the madman would stand revealed. There was always a reason. Killings for gain or revenge were easy, the motives obvious and stark. This was a crime conceived in the shadows and carried out purposefully in the night. There was precision in it and passion. Concentrated rage and a love of order. A need to beautify. Even some strange, unfathomable, as yet uncatalogued species of love.

  He sat alone in the squad room after Aaron left. Yes, he was betting on Amanda. He thought of calling Caroline, telling her what he'd discovered, then suggesting he come over and spend the night. He stared at the phone, thinking about that. But in the end he didn't pick it up.

  When he left the precinct house he drove downtown, ate dinner at a Greek restaurant on Howard Street, then lingered over his coffee staring into space. When he came out it was nearly ten. He got back into his car, crossed to Brooklyn, followed the expressway to Queens, exited on Greenpoint Avenue, then worked his way to Corona, knowing that though he was pretending to wander the outer boroughs he was heading straight for the block where Al and Lou had built their wood-frame house.

  He parked a few doors down and across the street, turned off his ignition and extinguished his lights. Most of the houses were still lit. He could glimpse the glow of TV screens in living rooms, hear the occasional sound of raised voices, of children laughing, a door being slammed, a dog barking from someone's porch.

  What was he doing here?

  He had no desire now to visit Lou, confront again her confusion and hurt. He had not come to spy on her house, or to imagine Al still alive inside. He felt no particular remorse, did not believe he had let Al down, should have been there, could have been there, might have saved Al if he had. It was something else, something troubling, something he felt but could not confront. He was resisting it just as for days he had resisted seeing the resemblance between Amanda Ireland and Brenda Beard. It eluded him, but, sitting in his car demanding an explanation, he knew finally the reason he was there: he had come to take a measurement.

  He drove slowly, fifteen miles an hour, which he guessed was roughly four times the speed of a person moving normally on foot, and made his way bythe most direct route he could to the vicinity of Caroline's tennis club. When he was near, roughly halfway between it and her building, he stopped, checked his watch and speedometer and began to calculate. No matter how he figured it, and he tried it several different ways, it did not seem possible that a sixty-six-year-old man could have walked that distance in less than an hour.

  And that was just too long for a man who never walked anywhere, who so hated to walk that he'd take his car out on a sparkling autumn day just to drive three blocks for a pack of cigarettes. Which still didn't rule out other possibilities. Al could have come by bus, except he'd have had to change buses three times, or he could have driven over, parked in the neighborhood, then taken a brief stroll around though there wasn't anything worth strolling by or to. Which didn't make it impossible—in the solitude of his retirement Al might have taken to making unexpected expeditions to nondescript neighborhoods in Queens. Oh yes, there were possibilities, infinite possibilities, but the most likely one of all, Janek knew, and the one that wrenched his heart, was that the encounter of the fallen bicycle had never taken place.

  The Stash

  Approaching the Queensboro on his way back to Manhattan, he passed a line of hookers on Northern Boulevard lingering in the doorways of the closed and shuttered shops. This, he knew, was the infamous "Truckers' Row" about which there were many tales—of a cross-eyed whore whose eyes uncrossed only when she came, and a Park Avenue socialite the teamsters called "the Countess" who waited there with the hookers because she required the rough
embraces of burly tattooed arms.

  Driving by them, Janek wondered if the Switched Heads killer had also cruised this strip in his long search for a prostitute whose face resembled the inaccessible impenetrable Amanda of his dreams.

  A bad night for Janek, of blocked trails and ideas he could not sustain: Al and Brenda, Amanda and Caroline; heads mounted on bodies upon which they did not belong. He flung himself from side to side seeking sleep to end his agony, found it finally, but in the morning when he awoke he felt a stab of panic followed by an aching loneliness.

  Showering, he heard his telephone. He turned off the water, stood naked and still listening to the rings resound like moans. It was Caroline, he knew, and knew that he wasn't ready yet to deal with her. The thought that when he did he must show her a concealing face caused him to shiver on the tiles.

  When he was dressed he called her back, told her he was about to leave for work.

  "You sound, I don't know, like you're under strain," she said.

  "Guess I am. It's the case. The pressure's on me now."

  "Missed you last night. Missed watching you take off your gun." He didn't answer. "Something the matter, Frank?" He was stunned; this was the first time he could recall her using his first name.

  "I think something is the matter," he said. "But I can't talk about it now. I'm running late."

  "Tonight?"

  "Sure."

  "I hear something in your voice I haven't heard before."

  "Didn't sleep well. I'll try to call you later on."

  A long pause. He knew she was struggling, deciding whether to ask him to explain what she was hearing in his voice.

  "Goodbye till later, then," he said.

  Another pause, and then her own rueful "Goodbye."

  At the precinct house there was the smell of a case going bad: detectives making busywork; a lack of firm direction and control. There was no way he could fake it. He had no theory to define the work. He told his team to keep plugging, then took the victim profile books into one of the windowless interrogation rooms, shut the door, sat down at the tiny table, checked out the crummy atmosphere and settled down to read.