by April Smith
“He’s not a lust killer, but it’s very possible that a life stress could trigger him to start killing his victims, or that he goes too far and someone dies.”
“Life stress meaning …?”
“Loss of job, death in the family, anniversary event …”
“Or if he got scared and thought we were onto him?”
“Yes, we are not ready to have this exposed. Eunice?”
“How is the victim?”
“She’s experiencing rape trauma symptoms. Afraid to leave the house. Hypervigilant — overreacts to sudden noises; for example, a leaf blower will trigger a panic attack. The forced oral copulation produced an unconscious reflex where now she can’t swallow. You know the story. This is going to take a while.” “Ana, do you think she escaped, or that he let her go?”
“He could have turned her loose. He’s angry at something that wounded him in the past, right? So I think the message is, You’re going to have to live with this, just like I did. Your life will be like mine. The point is, people, we have a sadistic serial rapist operating in our area.” Rick wanted to know the results of the liaison with law enforcement in Arizona. Just the word “Arizona” made my stomach clench. “What have you got, Detective Berringer?”
“Me?” Andrew shrugged. “Nothing.” He had not taken off the jacket. His heels were stuck out in front of him.
“We’re doing Arizona,” I said quickly. “At the SAC’s request.”
“Oh.”
“They sent us a load of sex offenders. Just starting to sort through the files.”
“If you need help, let us know,” Andrew offered with audacious sarcasm. “I think we’re familiar with the alphabet down in Santa Monica. Are we, Barry?”
Lieutenant Loomis laughed. “Maybe you are.”
I had to bypass Andrew’s resentment and call on Kelsey before Galloway started wondering. She was waving both arms like she had to stop a train.
“Just so you know,” she informed us breathlessly, ‘‘‘lust killer’ is a dated term.”
There it was again. Dated.
“How would you describe it?”
“This man is homicidal,” she said, “due to a sadistic personality disorder.”
“My way is shorter.”
Got a laugh.
“Besides that,” Kelsey insisted, “I have to disagree with a lot of what you said.”
“What Ana has presented here,” said Rick, “is based on the information we now have. That could change. Even though there are over six hundred pages in Rapid Start—”
“I know,” Kelsey said, “I’ve read them all.”
Andrew was giving me the “what an asshole” look.
But Galloway was lowering his reading glasses. “I’m curious to hear what Kelsey has to say.”
My blood pressure hit the red zone.
“First of all,” she began primly, “the offender is not a power-assertive rapist.”
“He’s not.”
“Definitely not.”
People were turning in their seats to watch her with a mix of skepticism and bemusement. Most were ready for the meeting to end.
“He has a sadistic personality disorder, which means the purpose of his infliction of cruelty is not to become sexually aroused, but to cause physical and psychological pain—”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “but sadistic rapists often do need to inflict pain in order to become aroused. Sex and torture of the victim are fused for them.”
“This attack,” she countered, “seems to fit the profile of a sadistic rape. It was calculated. He bound and humiliated her—”
“Yes, out of rage.”
“No.” Kelsey lifted her chin. “It was punishment. It was about pain. The more it went on, the more powerful he felt. As a trained psychologist, I need to say that we’re talking two fundamentally different personality structures.” “Believe me, I’m aware—”
“Well it makes a significant difference as to what he will do next.”
I had to take a breath. I had to take two. I was really, really holding back from taking her apart. But the words that came flying at me—“respect,” “experience,” “snotty little upstart”—had nothing to do with the argument at hand. We were discussing anger, after all, and I had once pulled a phone out of the wall and thrown it across the bull pen. Things did not end well.
“Maybe Kelsey can explain what she means by ‘sadistic personality disorder,’” suggested Rick. “Many of us are unfamiliar with the concept.”
Rick long ago had earned his supervisor spurs.
Now she had license to go on for another five minutes. To me it was everything wrong with specialists coming into the Bureau as a second career. They each think their area of expertise is what’s going to crack the case, all that matters is whether they, as individuals, get points, because that was the corporate culture they came from, and they’ll argue endlessly from their one little narrow point of view. They haven’t been around long enough to get the bigger picture of what it means to be an agent.
I have noticed the more specialized you are, the more pompous.
“Okay, we’ve got two opposing points of view,” Rick said at last, “which we have to look at in terms of the best interests of this case. We have to go forward without biases on either side.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. All I knew was Kelsey had created a divide in which she, suddenly, had authority. An equal say. And she wasn’t even on the squad.
“Pardon me, but this is bullshit.” Andrew was on his feet. “Why split hairs, when it’s staring you right in the face?”
It threw everybody off. Even Eunice arched her eyebrows and folded her arms skeptically.
“You want academic theory, or how about nailing this cretin?”
I heard some handcuff ratcheting, but I was thrilled. Nobody stood up for you like that at the Bureau.
After a moment Rick composed himself and asked, “Detective Berringer, would you like to share?”
Andrew said, “This guy is former military.”
Now there was interest.
“The victim says the shoes are shined, the belt buckle has to be lined up with the buttons — what do you want, dog tags? He’s former military out of Arizona. Anybody like to place a bet?”
“Just bring me his dick,” said Barry Loomis. “In a paper bag.”
Rick didn’t like wise guys, but he couldn’t argue the logic. Former military made sense. He snapped out assignments: Cross-reference the Arizona sex offenders with military police records. Check for rape charges. Look at the photography angle. Look at the cases on VICAP with this in mind.
The meeting had gone over. We moved out quickly with not a lot of talk. The overhead projector was still running, leaving the amber image of the offender to play against the screen at the front of the emptying room.
All in all, he was having a better day than I was.
Twelve
You can’t go,” I told Andrew. “I have something funny to show you.”
After the briefing I guess I just needed a little contact, so I guided him to Barbara’s office to have a laugh over the bank robbery photograph of our butts, and everything went sideways from there.
Lieutenant Barry Loomis came, too. At first there was professional chatter amongst the four of us, the requisite cooing over Barbara’s baby pictures (she gave me the nod — the detective was hot), and it was nice after the stress of the briefing just to chill, but while we were looking at the doofy surveillance photo from the Mission Impossible caper, the ski mask came up.
“They recovered another piece of evidence, did Ana tell you?” Barbara said.
Andrew looked at me inquiringly. “No.”
“A ski mask,” I said.
“Really?”
“It was kicked under some boxes — in that janitor’s room, remember?”
“Yeah? When’d they find it?”
I shrugged. “A couple of months ago.”
“Wh
ere is it now?” Barry immediately wanted to know.
“I guess at Result Associates.”
“The lab?”
I nodded.
“Why weren’t we informed?” Barry demanded.
I have found that supervisors are supervisors, even if they wear funny ties.
“They’re a little chaotic out there,” Barbara answered. “About as organized as my garage.”
“But they notified the Bureau?”
“Somehow I do remember it coming in.”
“Barbara remembers everything.”
Troubled, Andrew had turned away and was picking at a spot on the top of his head. Suddenly he refused to meet my eyes.
“We have a problem,” Barry said, all bristly. “Obviously we are out of the loop.”
“Just call the lab, and I’m sure they’ll—”
“Because it was a bank robbery,” Andrew interrupted, terse as his boss. “The chief has made bank robberies a priority—”
“And also,” Barry cut in, “there is some sensitivity to a federal agency receiving information and not the locals.”
We all knew the name of that tune.
“Why the big secret?” Andrew asked, in a voice edged with something I had not heard before. He was still scratching at the same spot on his scalp, snowy flakes appearing on the dark blue collar of the cowboy shirt.
“I just found out.”
“You knew it was my case.”
“It’s my case, too. I’ve been kind of busy.”
I did not appreciate his big hulk hanging over me. I felt defensive, like a dog that does not like its head patted.
“If it’s such a big deal,” I snapped, “let’s open Mission Impossible up again.”
“Good idea,” soothed Barbara. “Make it a positive. I don’t believe the case was ever officially closed.”
“We’ll make it right with your chief,” I promised Andrew. To Barbara: “I don’t think Mike would mind if I jumped back in on this one,” envisioning working both cases, willing to stretch, if that would fix it.
“He’d have you back on the squad in a New York minute,” she agreed.
I was waiting for a sign from Andrew that we were still okay.
“As soon as we get a handle on this kidnap deal. All right?”
“We better go,” Barry said.
I tried again. “It’ll be fine.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Andrew said finally.
Well, that was not going to fly. Not with everything else that had been going on. I snagged him on the way out, telling Barry, “I just need Detective Berringer to sign something,” and pulled him out a service door into a cement stairwell filled with unearthly moaning, the Corridor of Winds.
“What is your problem, Andrew? You have been acting really strange.”
“Man, you fucked me up, bad.”
“I did?”
“Withholding information.”
“How can you say that? I was not withholding information—”
“It is humiliating for me not to know about something that important on my case with my supervisor standing right there.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve had other things on my mind—”
“You’re a Fed, you can drop a case with no accountability—”
“What do you mean, no accountability?”
“They can move you all over the map, to fucking Timbuktu, but I live here, I don’t need this shit.”
Suddenly his heavy fist arced the air, so forcefully that I flinched. His shout wafted seventeen floors down.
“Will you cool out?” I said. “What’s going on? You yell at me over the phone that I shouldn’t tell you how to do your job, now I embarrass you in front of your boss. I mean, what am I doing that’s so wrong?” “You’re in my way.”
I lost my balance then, as if I’d suddenly looked down those seventeen stories and realized I was standing on a ledge.
“If I’m in your way … I’m sorry … I’ll get out of your way.”
“No. Look. I’m sorry.” He took my hands, drew me into a tense embrace. My eyes were open, staring at the cinder block. When he spoke again, his voice was spent. “Got to go,” he whispered hoarsely.
I stepped back. “If I’m making you so miserable—”
“It isn’t you.”
“Then—”
“Later? Okay? Barry’s waiting.”
“Okay. Listen.” Still. The contact. “That was a good idea about the suspect’s military background. And thanks for standing up for me with Kelsey.”
It took a moment for him to remember. “That? It was just such a waste of everybody’s time.”
He hadn’t been defending me; it was just politics as usual, move the boring shit along. I found myself fighting a dull panic.
“Like your cowboy shirt,” running a finger along the decorative white edging that swirled above the pockets. “Want to go for a ride? How about tonight?”
He pulled on the handle of the metal door. A helix of wind sucked it back.
“Sure, when I get off. Around seven.”
The hair on our heads flew up in the draft.
We happened to be standing together on line in the cafeteria. It was three that afternoon and I was just getting lunch.
Galloway said, “Are you and Kelsey Owen having a personality conflict?”
“Kelsey? No, of course not.”
“I think we should pay attention to what she’s saying. She gives things an interesting twist. She’s green, but I think she’s got some good ideas.”
“Me, too.”
“So why don’t you listen to her ideas?”
“I listen.”
“Didn’t look that way.”
I couldn’t focus on how things had looked as far back as that morning. I had tried to be open, or at least appear that way, but now it was past and we had moved on to the next phase, and I was numb and dumb after ten grinding days with no sleep.
“She said you never answer her e-mail.”
“You want me to hold her hand, I’ll be happy to hold her hand. Whatever you want me to do, Robert, I’ll be happy to make you happy.”
“It’s not about me being happy.”
We were at the cashier. He could have paid for me and I could have paid for him, but that’s not the way it is.
“I’m going to work in a summer camp,” he mused. “I don’t want to be the camp director, nothing like that — I’m going to be the guy with the rake, keeping the area clean, where the kids throw stuff out of the tents.”
“You don’t think the Bureau is summer camp?”
He smiled. We walked outside, and I felt sorry for him, the way the sun burned through to the roots of his curly thinning hair. Wasn’t he hot in those turtlenecks? We were each holding our cardboard tray. I had a packaged tuna sandwich and a large black coffee, which would have zero effect. We had been heading toward the main entrance, but now he stopped.
“I’m going to take a break,” indicating the outdoor tables.
My cue. “See you later.”
But he stayed put. “You think I’m pitiful.”
“I don’t think you’re pitiful, I think you’re a great leader.”
He smiled painfully. “We’re all a team. Part of the Bureau family, and that ain’t no jive.”
We were squinting at each other against the sun.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“All right.”
About this time I had started to experience blackouts, nanoseconds of sleep that, like it or not, shut down the brain. I was fading in and out, with no defenses. After the grueling and unresolved encounter with Andrew, I could not grasp what else might possibly be expected of me. The rebuke came then, through a flickering daze.
“You were a kid once, too,” I heard Galloway say.
I went up to my pod and ate the tuna sandwich. I made some arrangements, and when they were complete, left a message on Kelsey Owen’s voice mail, reporting what I had done:
; “Hi, Kelsey, it’s Ana Grey. I wanted you to know that I had a talk with the SAC about your theories, and based on my conversation with him, I have gone ahead and placed three agents on undercover assignment at different S&M bars in the Valley. Actually, one is a regular black leather bar and two are dungeons run by a dominatrix, where sadomasochists go to be punished with whips and racks, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the pathology. I think if we’re looking for a sadist, we should look where sadists hang out, don’t you?
“By the way, little lady, if you think this is your ticket to profile school, think again. There’s a code around here called not ratting each other out that even the brass catches on to. You want to tell me something, have the guts to tell me in person.
“And one more thing. I take pride in my work. It’s hard, what we do — to treat people fairly, whether they’re the good guys or not. Sitting down and interviewing the victim is one thing. But to sit down and interview a rapist, or someone who has done something that, in your past, you were a victim of yourself, that’s something else. That’s a result of time on the street.
“Not everyone can do what we do. I’m the kind of person who, when I hear the national anthem, I get all teary-eyed. It’s a feeling. Patriotism. I don’t know. But whatever that feeling is, you have it or you don’t. Like I said, I will keep you informed.”
