“Can you read it?” Wilkes asked.
Cardozo leaned toward the screen and squinted.
The West fixates on the search for the wealth to end all wealth, the power to end all power; for the high to end all highs, the sex to end all sex: is there anything else that can more quickly pervert the worldview of the spirit than the ceaseless recourse to material measures of transcendence?
“Who wrote that?”
“Believe it or not,” Wilkes said, “it’s a letter Rumford Haynes wrote to the Rahway, New Jersey, police in April 1964. Rumford Haynes was a handyman who read a lot. Between January 1964 and August 1965 he raped one hundred twenty-three women and murdered twelve.”
“Where did you access the letter?”
“The BSU keeps a file of letters from serial killers. They also keep a concordance to the letters.”
“Concordance,” Cardozo said. The idea struck him as bizarre. “Like in the Bible?”
“Exactly. Ask the concordance for the word worldview, and you learn it’s occurred only this once in BSU history.”
“Okay. Whoever wrote the Society Sam notes dipped into the database for his raw material. But why did that sex to end all sex phrase show up four years earlier in the forged Kohler diary?”
“The same passage is cross-referenced on the database under obsessive personality disorder. Maybe the diary was meant to prove Kohler was a sexual compulsive.” Wilkes cleared the screen. A quote from the first note appeared above the split:
SAM SAM THANK YOU MAAM
KILL THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM CRUMB
BYE BYE SOCIETY SCUM
Below the split a new document unscrolled:
Slam bang thank you ma’am
kiss the girls and make them cum
bye bye human scum
“The author’s name,” Wilkes said, “was Nelson MacIntyre. San Diego, November 1972. Eight victims.”
Another Sam quote, this time from letter four:
ME OW AND THE POODY TAT
OW CAN YOU SEE
HUMPTY DUMPTY GOT THE BUMPTY
And below the split:
The owl and the pussy cat want to see Humpty Dumpty get the humpty.
“Carla Fugazy and Charles Strickland—Billings, Montana, May 1981. A team effort. One of the few instances of a female serial killer. They called themselves the owl and the pussy cat. Carla was the owl and Charles was the pussy. They scored seven victims that we know of.”
A quote from letter six:
WEEP NO TEARS FOR CUT UP CUT OUTS
Below the split:
cut in, cut up, cut out
“Lance Mitchelmore, Seattle, Washington, February 1984. He killed eight women with his mother’s pinking shears. Always sent the same note.”
From the seventh note:
HOW CAN SAM SINK WITHOUT SEX SET WITHOUT TWEET
Below the split:
pas de cinq sans six
pas de sept sans huit
“Hidalgo Beausoleil, Bangor, Maine, October 1979. Killed seven prostitutes. He wrote his letters in French, always un-deux-trois stuff.” Marty Wilkes shook his head with a ruefulness that seemed to say all human suffering was a single self-inflicted hurt. “I doubt there’s a single phrase in Society Sam’s letters that we couldn’t dig up in the concordance. And that thought made me question an assumption I’d made. I’d assumed that Society Sam was a person.”
There must have been something amusing in the idea, because Wilkes smiled, and Cardozo had the impression that his own universe and the world of clinical psychology rotated around distinctly different axes.
“Look at the dates of Society Sam’s hits.” Wilkes tapped an instruction into the keyboard. “See anything odd?”
Seven familiar dates scrolled up the screen.
“The oddity,” Wilkes said, “is that there’s no oddity. They’re spaced at exactly descending time intervals—eleven days, nine days, seven, five, three, one. Most serial killers’ hits approximate a time formula—but Sam’s hits don’t approximate a formula, they are a formula.”
“I told you they were too good to be true.”
“The killings seem to have been scheduled to fit the database.”
“So whoever scheduled them was able to access the BSU files?”
Wilkes nodded. “Now in the database there’s no concordance to serial killings. But there is an index. For example, the markings on the bodies resembled flags. So we search the index for every occurrence of flags.”
Wilkes typed an instruction. A list of twenty-seven names came up on the screen.
“And you’ll notice,” Wilkes said, “La Rue Newton heads the list. Let’s consider another aspect of the killings. Location. Obviously street and stairway are going to turn up a lot of examples. So let’s look at something more unusual—boutique.”
Wilkes typed in the word boutique.
“Three,” Cardozo observed.
“Let’s look at instance number one. The unsolved murder of Minnie Wells in the Marcella Lambiani Boutique, San Francisco, May 1983.” As Wilkes spoke, the data scrolled up the screen. “The victim was murdered in a changing room. The suspected assailant carried a boom box, and he played a rap music tape. Is the tune familiar? Okay, let’s ask the index about clippings.”
Wilkes typed the word clippings on the keyboard. The computer flashed the message One Moment Please, and ten seconds later an endless page of amber print scrolled up the screen. “There’ve been over two hundred documented instances of newspaper clippings left at the murder scene.”
“How many were society columns?”
“Four. Now here’s the big one. Candles.” Wilkes typed the word and pressed the Enter key. A river of print began climbing up the screen—and up, and up. “We’re dealing with close to a thousand instances of candles.”
“Semen,” Cardozo said.
“With semen you hit the jackpot. Practically ninety percent of serial killings involve the transfer of semen.”
“Ever had a killer who syringed his own semen into his victims’ mouths? Or dropped in pubic hair from a collection that wasn’t even his?”
“Not till Society Sam,” Wilkes said, “and believe me, he’ll be a fresh entry in the database: the first serial killer totally synthesized from the literature.”
Cardozo had a sudden, almost drugged awareness of another reality co-existing within the one he was sworn to uphold and protect—and totally opposed to it. “Could a United States senator access this material?”
Wilkes looked over at Cardozo and his mouth shaped a grim smile. “Anyone in a government office would be able to. A cleaning woman could do it. None of this stuff is classified.”
SEVENTY
Sunday, June 23
TERRI STOOD BY THE STOVE, breaking eggs into a mixing bowl. “Did you know the city has a museum of old fire trucks?”
Cardozo shook his head. He’d spent the night tossing, too restless to sleep, and now he felt too unrested to wake up. “I think I read about it.”
“Does it interest you? Because Josh is a fire-truck nut and we’re going this afternoon. He thought you might like to come along.”
“He thought?”
She looked over at him. “Something wrong?”
“It seems funny you didn’t think I might like to come along.”
Her face crinkled. “I just thought you might like to meet Josh. Or have you lost interest?”
“Not if you haven’t.”
“I don’t know.” She beat the eggs with a fork. As she tipped them into the frying pan they made a hiss. “Josh gets excited about a lot of so-what things. Like old fire trucks.”
Cardozo took a long swallow of coffee and waited for it to pry his senses open. “Maybe we could skip the fire trucks and Josh could come over for lunch.”
“Today?”
“Why not? I’m home.”
“I’ll ask him.”
Across the kitchen, the telephone made a purring sound.
Why can’t my p
hone at work sound like that? Cardozo thought.
“Maybe that’s him.” Terri lifted the receiver off the wall. She listened for a moment and turned. “For you, Dad.” She handed the receiver across the table.
“Cardozo.”
It was the call he’d been dreading—the precinct, saying a seventh Society Sam victim had been found.
“HOW DID SHE DIE?” Cardozo said.
The assistant M.E. was kneeling over the body. She had long cinnamon hair, and she worked with an expression of cool, unhurried detachment. “Bled to death.”
Cardozo frowned. “Are you sure? The others died of asphyxiation. The stomach cuts were postmortem.”
The assistant M.E. glanced at him through huge, unstinted fashion glasses. “Just look at this floor. If these cuts were postmortem, that was a nosebleed.”
Cardozo looked at the floor. Blood had pooled in a three-foot-diameter oval and caked deep rust-brown. Toward the edge of the pool it was beginning to flake.
He gazed down at the dead girl. She lay faceup, long blond hair splayed out on the warped, scuffed floor-boarding of the narrow hotel room. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.
Younger than Terri.
At one time she must have had a pretty, rather doll-like face. Now it was puffy and startlingly white. Her abdomen had been slashed in the same flag design as the others—except this time the killer had pulled her clothing out of the way and cut directly into the skin. The pattern seemed extraordinarily clear and exact.
The killer had left her breasts exposed. They were the small prematernal breasts of puberty.
The room had no wastebasket. The victim had used a Woolworth’s shopping bag instead. A young male detective was bagging the contents in separately labeled evidence Baggies: an empty yogurt carton, a give-away sample of hair-conditioner, an empty carton of Maxx larger-shape lubricated condoms, and Robbie Danzig’s new gossip column “Robbie’s Rumors,” neatly clipped from the June nineteenth edition of the New York Tribune.
There was a hard white flash of light as the police photographer snapped a picture of coins and cosmetics and bits of paper that littered the dressing table.
“She’s in pretty good shape. Most of. these kindergarten cases are.” Using steel tweezers, the assistant M.E. was lifting particles from the mouth area that Cardozo couldn’t even see. She transferred them one by one to a plastic evidence Baggie. “Not that they take any care of themselves at all. They’re just too young for anything to have started falling apart.”
This living woman, Cardozo thought, resents this dead woman. “How long’s she been dead?”
“From what I can see, around four days.”
That figured. It was usually around day four that a dead body began stinking badly enough to annoy the neighbors, and Lorna Webster was stinking so strongly the lab men had scattered ammonia crystals to counteract the smell.
Classical music was playing softly from a small portable radio on the windowsill. “What’s the music?” Cardozo said.
“Mozart’s twenty-fifth piano concerto.” Lou Stein was crouched at the edge of a pink bath mat that had been pressed into duty as a scatter carpet. He was examining a dark area on the fringe that could have been the dirty heel print of a jogging sneaker.
He was smoking a cigar, and the dark lump of ash winked red. On crime scenes where there was a rotting body, nonuniformed male personnel sometimes smoked cigars to cover the stink. To Cardozo’s nose, Lou’s cigar didn’t cover anything—it just added a stink of its own.
“Wait a minute.” Lou Stein’s flash beam rippled along the edge of the mat and stopped. “What the hell’s that?”
His gloved finger folded back a corner of the mat. The beam of light played over a two-inch area of pale white seepage in a crack between floorboards.
“That looks to me,” Cardozo said, “like what’s left when a candle burns down.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Monday, June 24
“THE CHAIR ON OONA ALDRICH’S TERRACE,” Dan Hippolito said, “is wrought iron. If Dizey Duke had gripped the back hard enough, it could have caused the bruise on her left hand.”
“If she was in fear for her life,” Cardozo said, “if she was trying to anchor herself to keep from going over the wall?”
“That would do it.”
“And the bruise on Nita Kohler’s left hand?”
“Going by the photos, I’d say it could have been caused the same way—gripping the back of the same chair or a similar chair in the same or similar circumstances.”
“Thanks, Dan. You’ve cleared up a lot. I appreciate it.” Cardozo hung up the phone, not at all happy.
In the squad room a detective was screaming, “We got a squeal. Who’s up?”
Ellie Siegel stepped through the door. “Any surprises in the reports?”
Cardozo shook his head. “The seventh note was assembled from the same materials as the other six. The little hooker was killed with the same knife, same MO as the others. The blood cells in the semen are type O—same as Rick Martinez’s. No surprises. Except this time the pubic hair is his too.”
“That’s a switch.”
“He had time, this time, for real sex. Syringeless.” Cardozo stretched and pushed himself an arm’s length from the desk. “What did you find out from the Wall Street post office?”
Ellie helped herself to a chair. “You’re not going to love me, Vince.”
“Love was never an issue between us.”
“The note was postmarked P.M. Friday. The earliest, the very earliest it could have been mailed is Friday morning.”
“But Martinez died Thursday afternoon.” Cardozo sighed. “Okay. Dead men don’t mail letters, right?”
“In an imperfect world like ours, they do not.”
“Then someone else mailed it. Someone who didn’t know Martinez was dead till they heard it on the Friday afternoon news.” Cardozo sat there letting the implications drift through his mind. “Look at Society Sam’s notes—they’re written in idiomatic, quirky English. People who spoke with Martinez don’t remember him having that kind of command of the language. And there’s no way he could have gotten to those mailboxes all over hell and back. He had a regular job and he was there six days a week. An accomplice had to have written and mailed all the notes.”
Ellie smoothed out her skirt. “Could I ask a rude question? Who’s the accomplice?”
“I can’t give you the name.” Cardozo opened his desk drawer. “But this is the voice.” He brought out the Sony cassette player and placed it on the desktop. He pressed the play-back button. After three beeps and two hang ups a man’s voice spoke.
“Hi Rick, how are you doing? I’m phoning Tuesday, June eighteenth. Thanks for completing the pickup yesterday. You have one more pickup scheduled, the timing and the merchandise are up to you. Have fun. I’ll meet you Thursday, June twentieth, two P.M., on the path at West Seventy-first, just inside the park. Look for me on the bench. See you then.”
There was the clicking sound of a phone hang up. Cardozo stopped the tape.
“That’s not an accomplice,” Ellie said, “that’s an employer. Martinez was his hit man.”
Cardozo nodded. “A Medellin hit man. Import the very best.”
“Vince, you’re a mess.” Ellie rose and walked to the filing cabinet. “I tidy this up for you every day, and every day it looks like a dog was digging for a bone.” She opened the drawer and tucked dangling papers back into their proper folders.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that. You’re spoiling my filing system.”
Ellie turned. “Why was Martinez working at the gym? He didn’t need the second paycheck.”
“I can think of reasons. It made him less of an unexplained presence in the city—and so long as Braidy was scheduled last, it simplified one of the hits.”
Ellie closed the drawer. “Do you recognize the voice on that tape?”
“No. Do you?”
She shook her head. “Did he s
how up in the park?”
“Didn’t see him.”
“So you have no idea who he could be.”
“Except for one thing: Either he knew Carl or he knew me, or he knew us both. Because he was there. And he saw us first.”
There was a distinct wryness in Ellie’s smile. “That narrows it down to half the New York phone directory.”
Cardozo frowned. He made a complete 360-degree turn in his swivel chair.
“Wait a minute,” Ellie said. “He has some kind of connection with Bodies-PLUS. He knew they had an opening for a towel boy. And he knew Dick Braidy worked out there.”
Suddenly something inside Cardozo’s chest took a flying jump. “Hold it. I think I know—in fact, I know I know where this guy gets his medical insurance.”
“I NEED A FAVOR.” Cardozo was leaning against the head-high partition that separated Monte Horlick’s cubicle from the rest of the fourteenth floor of the Blue Cross building. “Was Richard Martinez covered on a group policy?”
Monte Horlick’s fingers danced over his computer keyboard. Amber print crawled up the screen. “SACBA. They’re a Federal subagency. Substance Abuse Control Budget Administration.”
“Could you give me a list of all the policy holders?”
Horlick brushed the low-hanging blond bangs out of his left eye and tapped an instruction into the keys. The printer beside his desk clattered to life.
Eight minutes later, Cardozo was squinting at eleven accordion-fold sheets of single-spaced dot-matrix print. Here and there a familiar name leapt out at him: Kristi Blackwell, the Delanceys, the Guardellas, mother and son, Rad Rheinhardt of the New York Trib, Lawrence Zawac of Internal Affairs. Most of them were followed by the suffix cow. “What does cow mean?”
“Cooperative wraparound. The holder has his primary wraparound with another employer. The SACBA contract picks up the slack.”
“What does this capital T after Nan Shane’s policy number mean?”
“Terminated.”
“ARE WE STILL ON FOR LUNCH?” Tori said. “One sharp at Archibald’s?”
“Does it have to be Archibald’s?” Leigh said.
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