“It’s part of my investigation,” Dewitt protested.
“We’ll see,” replied Morn. “What’d you find there?” he asked.
Dewitt was anxious to be kept informed about the Lumbrowski investigation because of its obvious connection to the suicide murders that he was already working on. But a veteran like Morn had his own way of doing things. Dewitt dared not challenge that. The best he could hope for was an occasional phone call.
“A roll of tape. He used masking tape this time, not duct tape.” Dewitt pointed to the sealed window. He felt emasculated, the child sent to his corner. How could they simply take the investigation away from him—these churls who knew next to nothing about evidence collection? Most of the old-timers like Morn lacked faith in trace evidence, misunderstood its importance, believing it instead to be circumstantial, a word any FI abhorred. Dewitt walked away dejectedly from the crime scene. Nelson followed a few feet behind like an obedient attendant.
“Sorry, Sergeant,” Nelson said. “You deserve the case, not these guys.”
“We’ll see who gets this case,” Dewitt replied, returning his gear to the trunk of the car. “Leave it to Lumbroswki,” he added. “He can piss me off, even in death.”
2
Dewitt was amazed that once in a great while the system actually worked. Following his discouragement at the Lumbrowski crime scene, he returned to the office, to discover a message from the director of the Atascadero State Mental Hospital. A phone call later, based on the urgency of the case, he had arranged an afternoon interview with convicted murderer Harvey Collette.
Despite the fact that Collette had been interned at the time of both kills, the modus operandi between these murders and the Collette kills was too similar to be considered coincidence. Someone knew the details of Collette’s methods, which made it worth talking to Collette.
He used the nearly two-hour drive to review the evidence and dictate his recollection of the investigation to date. He ate a Quarter Pounder for lunch and arrived at the institution at ten minutes past one.
The director’s office reeked of that same pungent medicinal odor that plagued all doctors’ offices. The refurbished utilitarian furniture implied a budget stretched by demand and limited by legislature. The older man behind the desk, Dr. Bradford Shilstein, was pale-faced and sad-looking. He wore smudged glasses with heavy frames and had an oblong gravy stain on his tie. A folder lay open in front of him.
“Mr. Collette is one of our permanent patients,” he began, “a resident. You asked for anything I can tell you about him that might help your investigation. Some background is in order before your interview.”
“Please.”
“You won’t find this in any police file.” He eased back comfortably, a man prepared, perhaps even desperate, to talk. “Harvey Collette’s fascination with death and asphyxiation seems to have begun during adolescence, and developed rapidly into a preoccupation. One common trait among homicidal psychotics is an initial experimentation with house pets. It’s not fully explained, but we see it repeatedly. It may have to do with a form of conditioning… preparing one’s self for taking a human life by first starting with a less challenging prey. Collette is a good example. The first life he ever took was that of his mother’s cat. He asphyxiated it by trapping and containing it inside a piece of Tupperware. By the age of twenty-one, he was working as an animal-control officer, terminating strays at the pound. He was later transferred to the actual collection of the animals; he became a dogcatcher, Detective. Only he wasn’t bringing all the strays back to the pound with him.” He read from the folder in front of him. “He killed fifty-seven strays on his own. All by asphyxiation. He was caught and arrested. And this is where the system first failed us: He was fined three hundred dollars, given a preliminary and cursory psychiatric evaluation, was found ‘competent’”—he glanced up—“whatever that means, and was released. Within a year he had found employment at a muffler repair shop. His preoccupation with asphyxiation continued. By the time authorities caught up to him, he was suspected of having killed two people, both by rigging their exhaust to ‘leak’ into their vehicles. Substantial proof was not forthcoming, or if it was, it was not properly handled. The case was dismissed before going to trial.”
“Will he cooperate with me?”
“You can try. We place Collette in restrictive wear when his area is being cleaned, when his medication is administered. In the past year, he’s grown quite violent. Nearly killed an orderly. Very unusual for a trapper.”
“A what?” Dewitt asked. Shilstein’s buzzer rang.
The doctor said, “That’ll be Collette. We can talk more afterward.” He glanced up. “Did you bring the movies as I suggested?”
Dewitt tapped his briefcase. “The tapes,” Dewitt corrected. “I could only find a couple new releases.”
“Then by all means barter with him. He’s on medication, but don’t let him fool you: He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’ll control you if you allow him to. Look him in the eye. Do your best to imitate his tone of voice, his words. Meet him on his terms. Establish a rapport. If you befriend him, he’ll open up to you.”
***
The drab tile hallway and acoustic ceiling were reminiscent of the schools of his youth. Smoke detectors had been added recently; a galvanized conduit ran the length of the corridor, connecting the sensors. A linebacker of a male nurse took Dewitt’s briefcase away from him, made him empty his pockets and remove his belt and both shoelaces. Shilstein had mentioned none of these precautions, and Dewitt found the routine unsettling. Finally, the door marked VISITORS A was unlocked and Dewitt was admitted.
The room had survived the years poorly. The table, bolted to the vinyl floor, was badly chipped along its edges. Four metal chairs surrounding the table were also bolted to the floor. Collette’s shoulder-length hair and thin but shaggy beard did nothing to enhance the appearance of sanity. A different man than the one in the mug shots taken five years earlier. Wet red lips, bloodshot eyes, flat nose with enough hair escaping each nostril to make a paintbrush. This was how the movies portrayed insanity. Guys like this. What went on behind those eyes? The straitjacket showed faded bloodstains that someone had endeavored to bleach. He sat there with his bound arms folded defiantly across his chest, his skin as pale as the straitjacket, his eyes in a drug-induced half-mast. He looked as if someone had stabbed him in the eyes.
Dewitt felt fear creep up his spine and tighten his throat. A hideous odor filled the small room, a smell completely foreign to Dewitt, a smell that had not been there just moments before. It terrified him, this odor. As a result, they sat in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes. Dewitt rubbed his hands in an attempt to warm them, finally lifting them unconsciously to his mouth and blowing into them.
Collette saw this and grinned. “My name’s Harvey,” he said.
“Yes, I know. I’m James Dewitt.”
“Another doctor?”
“No, a cop.” He added, “I’m Detective Dewitt. I need to ask you some questions.”
“Federal?”
“No,” Dewitt said.
“Married?”
“No.”
“Did Shilstein tell you the reason I killed them?” He answered himself: “Because the dead make such quiet lovers.” He rolled his eyes and his thick pink tongue moistened his lips. “You get tired of the animals. I hear sheep are nice”—he grinned—“but there weren’t any sheep in my neighborhood.”
Dewitt attempted to collect his thoughts. “I have questions.”
“Let me out of this and we’ll talk.”
Dewitt ignored it. Recalling what Shilstein had told him, Dewitt said, “Your crimes were very difficult to solve.”
The man nodded.
“You fooled the police by making it appear the victim had committed suicide.”
“They did commit suicide. They died of asphyxiation.”
“How would you feel if someone were copying you?”
“Im
itation is the most sincere form of flattery.”
“Is someone imitating you?” Dewitt asked.
“Are they?”
Dewitt described the two crime scenes—Osbourne and McDuff—and then asked, “What do you think?”
“It’s not what we think, it’s what we know,” said Collette, rolling his eyes.
“And what do you know?”
“More than you,” the man said. “At least you think I do or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I’m here to try and learn from you,” Dewitt said. “Someone is imitating you, but unlike your case, we’ve found no indication of suffocation prior to the staged suicides. How do you suppose a person could pull this off, Harvey?”
“The killing is nothing. It isn’t even particularly fun. It’s being with them afterward that’s amazing. The body cools quite quickly. Did you know that?”
The bitter odor filled the room again. Dewitt pulled at his collar and unfastened the top button of his shirt.
“You look stupid in that tie. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Everyone tells me that,” Dewitt said, still trying to maintain the recommended rapport. He pulled off his glasses and polished them.
“I’m an original, Dewitt. I’m a genius. Did Shilstein tell you I’m a genius? Did you talk about my tests?”
“A genius could figure out how this is being done.”
“I’ve seen it on the news. I know all about your cases. More than you think. Much more. But you’ll walk out of here. I won’t. That requires a little motivation.”
“Now I think you’re lying. Don’t lie to me, Harvey. I brought movies with me—new movies—but you won’t get them if you lie.”
“Let me see them.”
“They wouldn’t let me bring them in. They think you’re dangerous, Harvey.”
He began to wrestle inside the straitjacket. “I hate this thing!” He fell off the chair. Dewitt stood and moved toward him. A guard burst through the door, confirming they were being watched. He held a stun stick in his right hand—a souped-up version of a cattle prod, brother to the more advanced Taser. Dewitt knew about them from a seminar in special weapons.
“Stand back!” the guard demanded. “It’s a ploy. He wants to bite you.” The guard waved the stick threateningly at Collette. “Back into the chair, pal, or this here hard-on is going to bite you.”
Collette was back into the chair immediately, eyes on the stun stick. With the guard standing by, Dewitt spent the next five minutes attempting to make contact with Collette.
“Get me out of this,” is all the man would say.
Shilstein entered the room and stared at Collette. “Okay, Harvey, you win. We’ll transfer you to tennis court. But if you don’t help the detective here, no television—none—for a week. That’s what your little charade just bought you. Come with me,” he said to Dewitt. “It’ll take a few minutes.”
They were walking down the hall, Dewitt’s unlaced shoes giving him trouble. “That smell,” he said.
“Strange, isn’t it? But not uncommon. Quite a few of our residents in this wing display this same behavior. Potential victims, those who have escaped harm, say the odor is even stronger just before the kill. One woman claimed it was paralyzing. You all right?” he asked.
“When you don’t see this side of things…” Dewitt began. He wasn’t sure how to finish.
“Unsettling,” the doctor replied. They reached the office. Dewitt took the same chair, Shilstein his place behind the desk. “It should only be a few minutes until they’re ready for you.”
“The stun sticks?”
“We used to use medication in emergency situations. On low-voltage settings, the sticks are far more practical. No risk of improper medication, no preparation time. To our surprise, the presence of the sticks—just the threat of their use—has reduced violent outbursts by over fifty percent.”
“And on higher settings?”
“The guards are discouraged from using the higher settings,” Shilstein said, adding, “You did pretty well in there. Very important to establish the rapport early. Perhaps you noticed the effectiveness of negotiation. Especially true of Collette. You need to use those tapes more effectively. He wants them. You understand?”
“The guard claimed he would have bitten me. True?”
“As I said earlier, he’s broken out of the trapper mentality. It’s not entirely understood why. People like Collette, they’re continually making us rethink ourselves. We should always remember there are no rules, there are only patterns.” He wrote something down and then tapped the two files in front of himself. “You asked me to review these.”
“As a forensic psychiatrist, I thought you might offer some insight into the character of the killer I’m after. A psychological profile.”
Shilstein smiled. “Former forensic psychiatrist. I’m out of that business. I’m an administrator now. Oh, I still keep up on it. I dabble. Have you asked the FBI for a profile?”
“This has all happened so quickly. I thought I’d call them tomorrow.”
“Those fellows at Quantico are amazing. You’re familiar with the cases of Dr. James A. Brussel?” He didn’t wait for Dewitt’s acknowledgment, assuming all in law enforcement were at least aware of the father of forensic psychiatry, a man who could, by simply visiting a crime scene, predict the age, behavior, habits, and clothing of the at-large suspect. “There are people at Quantico as good as Brussel. I am not one of them,” he said. “Forensic psychiatry is a tricky field. The psychiatrist walks a delicate line between his own thoughts and those of the psychotic he’s after. Even for the most stable of minds, it can end up a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde existence.” A wry smile then of a man afraid of himself. “It was Brussel who said it’s amazing the human mind works at all, even more amazing that most of us manage to keep it under some sort of control. Some sort of control, Detective. You see the wisdom of that statement?”
Dewitt waited out Shilstein’s contemplation. The doctor said, “I did look these over briefly, and of course I’ve followed the cases on the news. For what it’s worth, I do have an opinion. Mind you, as I said, this is no longer my field.”
“Please.”
“You asked about trappers. I’ll come to that. First, we need to discuss bloodless crimes. Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Ogden Spires?” Dewitt shook his head. Shilstein shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” He checked his watch—a man waiting for a train. “There are those—women, most often—who, despite their perceived need to kill, abhor bloodshed. Not murder, but the spilling of blood. What we see in these cases are poisonings, drownings, arsons, electrocutions, and suffocations. Harvey Collette is—was—one of these killers. Clearly your killer seems to be one of these. Or, I should clarify: He wants you to believe he is one of these. That is a more complex concept, and we will come back to that, perhaps, but I believe our first assumption is that he is a bloodless killer. None of his victims had been physically abused in any way, correct?” he asked rhetorically. “And that is significant.” He tapped the files again. “I believe you are correct in your assessment that our friend is not a serial killer, or even a sensational killer, but instead, wants you to believe that is what he is. This we can assume from the similarity to Collette’s murders. This modus operandi is merely a convenience… something he has convinced himself will mislead authorities. However, we mustn’t overlook the possibility that this manner of killing is not only of convenience but necessity. That is to say, the work of a bloodless killer who lacks originality and quite possibly is working from a different agenda. It would be premature to speculate what that agenda is. But this bloodless trait leads us directly into Spire’s term the trapper syndrome.”
He toyed with his watchband. “We divide sport hunting into four broad categories: those who hunt for pleasure; those who hunt for profit; those who hunt aggressively; those who hunt passively. A guide hunts for profit; your weekend Joe, for pleasure. Most buy a shotgun or a high-powered rifle and kill th
eir game. But a subset individual hunts passively… bloodlessly, trapping his prey in snares, nets, or pits, or poisoning a food or water supply. The vast majority of homicidal personalities we see are aggressive killers, but certainly not all. A small percentage—homicidal arsonists, et cetera—kill their prey through the method of trapping. Incapable of bloodletting, they must find a way to perform the act in what they deem a clean manner.
“An example: Harvey Collette. A rapist, unlike other rapists, he did not brandish a knife or a handgun; he suffocated his prey… and his prey were trapped inside the confines of their own houses. Collette was driven by sexual fantasy, encouraged by pornography,” he said confidently. “Collette can recall his kills in remarkable detail. He will describe to you the way her skin felt, the way her hair smelled, exactly how he performed the murders and especially the sex act. Others, with less vivid a fantasy, are incapable of such details.
“I believe your killer,” Shilstein continued, “to be incapable of a blood-related crime. This, I believe, he or she shares with Collette, which is why he chose Collette to imitate. He is a trapper, adept at luring his victims into his trap—in whatever form that takes—and subsequently killing, presumably through asphyxiation. But a serial killer like Collette? No. Highly unlikely.” Shilstein closed his eyes tightly. He reviewed the files for several minutes and then looked Dewitt in the eye.
“Your killer is single, living alone. He is employed in a managerial position. His forte is organization. He is in his middle forties. He drinks lightly before his crimes. What he lacks in creativity, he makes up for in meticulous execution. He is a careful planner. He fantasizes about his kills. He follows the investigation in the papers. He had no interest in his first two kills. His target all along was Howard Lumbrowski. He could be a cop, though I think that unlikely. He dresses casually, has no trouble in social situations. Blends right in. And, of course, the obvious… I assume that’s why you’re here, and you’re to be complimented for your insight. He has had contact with Harvey Collette. Intimate contact.”
Probable Cause Page 13
