by Baxter Clare
"Hey," Noah interrupted, "did I tell you Les made two jump-shots last night?"
It took Frank a moment to pull her thoughts together.
"What?" she asked, rather dreamily, and Noah cut her a quick glance.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I don't know. You look...weird."
She ignored him even though she felt weird. Frank was trying to clear her head by studying the two men in the car next to her. A song with a hard bass line beat inside their car. She wondered what percentage of hearing loss they were incurring. The driver felt her staring and turned to glare. Frank's arm was resting out the open window, and the driver rolled his window down too.
"What you lookin' at, bitch?"
He had two blue teardrops under one eye and a partially shaved head with a gang tat on the back. Frank grinned widely, showing teeth, and smoothly pulled her hand in under her jacket. The cholo must not have liked what he saw in Frank's eyes because he just sneered and looked ahead, but he made sure to roll his window up.
"Friend of yours?"
"They're all my friends, No. I'm sworn to protect and to serve."
Practice hadn't gone well, and his father had snarled at him all the way home.
"You think you're smarter than me now, don't you?"
"No, sir."
"Think you know more than your old man?"
"No, sir."
"Well I'm not too old to take you on and you're not too big."
They pulled into the garage. His father tossed the keys at him.
"Wait for me in the office," he growled before slamming into the house.
Had it not been for dread, the boy wouldn't have felt anything as he dragged himself into the little locked room. He'd stopped crying years ago and had never imagined fighting. His father joined him after ten long minutes, his scowl replaced by an excruciating smirk.
13
Richard Clay welcomed Frank with a gentle handshake and an honest, open appraisal. Frank respected Clay. He'd been with the Behavioral Science unit for a long time and knew a lot. Unlike some of the other head-shrinkers who were just crawling toward their pensions, Clay was genuinely helpful.
"I appreciate your time, Dick."
"This sounds like an interesting fellow you're chasing. I'm curious to see what you've got on him."
"Well, not much. That's part of the problem."
Frank outlined their perp's MO, showed Clay all their photographs, and briefly justified her reasons for tying the eight rapes and four murders to the same perp. He asked a few questions, then took his time studying the information.
Clay was soft-spoken, and Frank had been sitting on the edge of her chair to hear what he said. Now she relaxed, absently observing him. Although Clay was close to retiring, he looked fit and wiry. Trim white hair encircled a tan bald spot. His eyes, behind wire-framed granny glasses, were warm and dark. Frank had consulted with him before and enjoyed his thoughtful collaboration. As was his habit, he wiggled a pen through his fingers like a drum majorette manipulating a baton. Frank wondered if he did magic tricks for the grandchildren lined up in photos on his windowsill.
After examining the data, he cleared his throat and proceeded to quietly enumerate his thoughts. He corroborated Frank's theory that their man didn't have a lot of confidence, ticking his justifications off on his fingers. Clay paused and asked, "Are you following my train of thought?"
Frank summed up: "A physically indistinct person can indicate an emotionally indistinct person which may indicate a lack of confidence."
"Exactly."
"Which," she continued, "supports his blitz style of attack. He doesn't have the confidence or charisma for a direct confrontation."
"Yes."
Clay looked slightly disappointed that Frank had already reached that step. He was a methodical man and liked laying theories out in baby steps.
"I think this might be one of your greatest insights into his character. If we agree your fellow has a lack of confidence, we can make a number of generalizations about him."
Clay put down the pen and started counting on his fingers again. He listed things Frank had already considered, such as low income and average intelligence. Probably no higher education. If he worked, Clay suspected, it would be at menial jobs, and probably alone or with few others around him. Clay didn't think he'd have good social skills, and partly because of this, he'd be single, though he might have a girlfriend. He suspected that any mutual sexual encounters would probably not be satisfactory for either partner, more discouraging than fulfilling.
Neatly aligning the victims photographs, Clay scanned them through the lower half of his bifocals. Frank was taping their conversation, but she glanced up from the notes she was scribbling as he asked, "Has anything I've said meshed with your calculations?"
"A lot. It's hard to slip him into a specific category—organized/ disorganized, nonsocial/asocial—because his characteristics overlap. But I agree with your assessment of his personality. It fits well with his basic MO."
"Did you submit a report to the FBI?"
"It's not back yet. I know an agent there who's going to work it up their list, but it'll still take a couple of weeks."
"Do we have that long?"
"Hey, you're the doctor."
Clay smiled, then looked perplexed as he picked up Nichols' picture.
"I wouldn't think she fit in here."
Frank explained why she thought Nichols had been done by the same suspect and asked Clay what he made of the preference for clothed victims.
"That's an interesting aspect." Clay swiveled his profile to Frank, furiously working the pen in his hand. "Why would you keep clothes on an assault victim?"
"Maybe he's embarrassed," Frank offered. "Doesn't like women. Maybe he's afraid of them, maybe they're dirty. A clothes fetish?"
A smile tweaked Clay's lips. He was in his element and loving it.
"First of all, they're not women, only girls. And to me, why he's assaulting the girls isn't as telling as how he's doing it. Do you ever have dreams that you're naked?"
Caught off-guard, Frank chuckled self-consciously.
"Sometimes," she admitted.
"And how do you feel?"
Frank had to think for a moment. "Like I need to get some clothes on."
"Why?"
She'd worked with Clay enough to know he was going somewhere with this, so she humored him.
"I don't want anybody to see me."
"What would happen if somebody saw you?"
"It'd be embarrassing."
"So if someone took your clothes off how would you feel?"
"Pretty pissed," she responded quickly, but knew from Clay's penetrating gaze that he wanted more. She felt sympathy for his patients.
"I'd be..." Frank ran a list of adjectives through her head and settled for "...vulnerable."
The doctor nodded happily.
"It would be very demoralizing, and it would place your attacker in a position of power. He'd have the advantage and be superior to you."
"Which I would think this guy would like to do to his victims."
"But he's not, is he? Think about it. Taking someone's clothes off is a highly personal act. Whether it's consensual or not, it's a very profound intimacy."
Clay sat back, waiting for Frank to make the leap.
"So he doesn't want that."
He nodded, encouraging her on to the next step. He could see she was struggling.
"Okay, this...detachment from his victims is more important to him than making them feel vulnerable."
"Right."
"Why? I don't get that. I would think he'd want to impress them with his power."
"How big did you say our suspect is?"
"Probably around six feet, maybe over, weighs maybe around two hundred pounds."
"Alright. And how much did his heaviest victim weigh?"
Frank shrugged. Agoura was around one hundred twenty pounds.
&nbs
p; "And how tall?"
"About 5'4"."
"So he's already got a considerable size advantage over these girls. If we assume he's taken them all by surprise, he has that advantage as well, and he maintains that advantage by choking them, rendering them even more helpless. These victims are very nonthreatening. He has them completely at his mercy and he knows it."
"So why doesn't he take it a step further?"
Clay leaned across the desk at Frank. In his enthusiasm his voice became louder and he gestured with open palms. Frank sat back, intrigued.
"He doesn't need to. What's critical to him is to assault these girls. He's very physical. He's not looking at them, he's not talking to them except to keep them from giving him away, he's not touching them. What does that tell you?"
Frank pushed her lips together and draped an arm around her chair, aware of Clay's scrutiny.
"Well," she finally answered, "I'd guess our boy doesn't want to make any emotional connection with his victims. He just wants to physically dominate them. What I wonder, though, is what that lack of connection means—I mean homicide is a very emotional business."
Clay nodded, adding, "For your average murderer. This guy you are dealing with has bounced far out of the norm. Serial offenders, the good ones, can only do this because they are so unable to relate to people. They don't have what we call normal emotional connections. What your offender is doing to his victims is highly satisfying for him. Through his physical actions he's achieving some kind of an emotional release. Because he's not engaging his victims at all, I'd be inclined to say he's reliving something that's happened to him, something intensely personal and private. Only now he's on the giving instead of the receiving end, and that's where his satisfaction comes from. Now he is indisputably in control."
Clay held up pictures of Agoura and Peterson, going on to explain the rage evident in the assaults. He suggested that pent-up rage might have come from the suspect's own abuse.
Frank puzzled, "Then why not assault boys if he's trying to relive it, or choose victims more closely resembling his attacker?"
"Okay," Clay said patiently. "One of the things we know about this man is that he prefers teenage girls. For some reason, at some point in time he became fixated on them. Yet this fixation is not personal. Look at the variety of victims he's selected. White, black, Hispanic, blonde, brunette, thin, plump. He's all over the place. I think his lack of focus indicates more concern for an abstract image than a real one. Girls this age represent some thing to him rather than some one. What I suspect drives him is visions of himself with so much power. The fantasy of him abusing these girls is far more important than who the girls actually are."
Clay paused before adding, "You asked why he's not choosing boys to relive this. There could be a number of reasons. If he was assaulted, I think it was by someone older, definitely someone with considerable power, a parent, teacher, close older relative. It could have been a female, but I think again we'd see him assaulting a specific stereotype, someone that resembled his abuser. That leads me to think it was a male who abused him, an older male, someone he doesn't feel able to strike back against. If this person raped him, that would explain his anal fixation."
Frank shook her head.
"Also, attacking boys could be too confrontational, too personal. It would be harder to disassociate from a boy," Clay continued. "Whoever he is, he is crazy like a fox."
"He's smart," Frank agreed. "Careful."
"This could go on awhile, couldn't it?"
"Maybe," Frank said coldly, "but sooner or later he's going to trip up. And when he does, I'll be right there waiting."
They made it into the district play-offs. His team had fought hard all season, and they were finally here. He had fought harder than anybody, knew the rest of the team was riding in his wake, but he didn't care. It was his junior year, and he needed this moment. Dressing in the locker room, he remembered his father's face in his this morning.
"There's going to be a scout from USC at the game today. This is your chance, boy. Don't blow it," he'd warned, and the boy had no intention of that. He dressed quietly, and alone, not sharing in the nervous, pregame banter caroming off the locker room walls. He stayed focused, reviewing over and over in his head, like a prayer, the play signals. He saw the team reacting to the quarterback's calls, thought of his moves in response to his teammates, the defense. He was ready. He was so ready he was almost getting a hard-on. No one better get in his way because there was no stopping him today.
This was finally his moment. At last his father would be proud. This was it. Do or die.
14
The days that followed were monotonous and frustrating. Frank and Noah had followed up on all the assaults they could and were glad when they wrapped up interviewing the girls. Lisa McKinney was the last girl they talked to, a gangly blonde sporting a healing scar for her fifteenth birthday. When Noah asked her about it, she shot him a look full of misplaced venom, vehemently declaring, "That's where my face was pressed against a rock when he was pounding on me."
"What did he pound you with?" Frank asked easily, thinking it might be better if she took over the questioning.
"He was ramming his head and his shoulder into me the whole time he was...," the girl's defiance faltered, "...doing what he did to me."
Her account was much like that of the later victims.
Based on the limited recall of their one possible witness, Frank had a sketch drawn of their perp. Two of the girls confirmed that their assailant had brown hair and one remembered him wearing dun-colored workboots. The sketch was widely distributed, and a special task force was set up to handle the subsequent load of phone calls. The majority of calls were ridiculously unrelated. One woman reported a man with the same height and weight, but he was black. It turned out he was her ex-boyfriend and she wanted to get back at him for breaking up with her. Another caller was sure she knew the man and took Bobby and Jill straight to him. He was a Vietnamese grocer, stood barely taller than Jill's big tummy, and couldn't have weighed more than one hundred thirty pounds. The caller accused him of tipping the scales, and the detectives left them screaming insults at each other.
But the call they all liked best, the nine-three decided after a late afternoon round of pitchers, was the old Mexican guy who pointed to his stocky neighbor next door, insisting he was the one. "I know he don't look like the description," he assured them, "but I seen him change. He don't know I know, but I can see it," he confided. He explained to Gough and Nookey how the neighbor could shift shapes, that he could become anybody or any animal he wanted to be. The old man said he'd seen him turn into a bat, a black dog, even a beautiful woman one time. After the interview, Nookey spent the day howling like a werewolf and Gough eagerly counted his remaining days on the force.
After several weeks of back-to-back interviews, the nine-three had followed up on some solid leads, even arresting two felons with outstanding warrants, but none of them had led to their perp. Frank spoke with the lead detectives on the Culver City cases, questioning their methodology and generally pissing them off. She didn't understand how they had missed the connection between the assaults at the parks and the dump at Culver City High.
To their credit, they had seen the connection. But it still hadn't given them anything new to go on, other than they were looking for their man in a wider area, making their search even more difficult. They justified not putting up posters because they didn't have the personnel to handle the additional work it would entail.
Returning from CCPD, Noah drove and Frank checked out the deteriorating scenery. Storefronts were gaudy with tinsel and canned snow. Someone, maybe a wishful kid, had chalked a crude Christmas tree on a crumbling block wall. A banger had scrawled his placa through it, but a rival had rubbed him out, spraying his name and affiliation over the original message. The city impressively whitewashed graffiti as it occurred, but in South Central they'd conceded the battle.
The afternoon was cool, somewher
e in the fifties Frank guessed, but she still had her window down. Once a cop always a cop, hyper-alert for the anomaly in the scenery, the thing that didn't belong.
"Tracey wants you to come over for Thanksgiving dinner. You'd better come, 'cause you know she'll kick my butt if you say no."
"How's she doing?" Frank asked, by way of side-stepping the invitation.
"She's good. I think she's mellowing with age. She's cranked about all the hours I'm putting in lately, but at least I'm not sleeping on the couch or banging on your door at 2:00 a.m."
Both detectives grinned.
"And the kids," he continued, "when was the last time you saw them?"
"Labor Day?"
"You're kidding. Man, that's way too long. You gotta come over. I'm telling her you'll be there. One o'clock."
"Hmm. I'll call and find out the time myself. Last time you invited me it was three. I thought she was going to kill me until I told her you said five, and then you were almost the dead man."
"Three, five, whatever."
"I'll call."
They drove in silence for a while before Noah said, "Hey, Frank?"
She glanced at him.
"What do you think about setting up a decoy and trolling for him?"
Frank shifted in her seat, chewing slightly at the inside of her lip.
"Crossed my mind."
"And?"
"Too many drawbacks, not enough potential."
"Yeah, but there's a lot of drawbacks to being dead, too. I mean, how many bodies we gotta go through before we can catch this guy?"
"Where would you start?"
"The area where we found Nichols. We know that's his 'hood—"
"We think that's his 'hood."
Frank consistently reminded her detectives when they were speculating. The worst thing they could do was get locked into an idea. If it was wrong, they'd lost valuable time on a fool's errand, and the more committed they were to an idea, the harder it was to see other options. Noah continued impatiently.
