A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  ‘You have three choices,’ she said after a short while. ‘Number one, you arrest him on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice. You read him his rights, he gets a lawyer, and then he either answers the questions about where the hell he was last Saturday or he pleads the Fifth. If he pleads then you might have something you can take before a judge for a search warrant on the property. You get inside the property you might find something that ties him to the Sheridan woman or another of the victims. Secondly, you can cite 1989, Lansing versus California State, where a motion to suppress an affidavit from a deceased party was overturned. You could work that in such a way as the black woman’s confirmation of Robey’s presence with Sheridan gives you reason to believe he’s lying. It’s slim - you’d need a very open-minded judge - but it could be tried. Thirdly, and this is what I would do . . . you go visit him at home and you talk real nice to him, and I mean real nice, and you hope to God he lets you into his house.’

  ‘For what purpose?’ Miller asked.

  ‘To keep the monologue going. Jesus, you people are the detectives here. You’ve got someone who wants to talk, for God’s sake. He’s even challenging you about the damned questions you’re asking him. He tells you to come back next time with some smarter questions, right? That’s as good an invitation as you’re gonna get. You better get a shoeshine and a brush-up, change your freakin’ shirt and go down there and talk very pleasantly to him and see what else he’s gonna give up.’ Nanci Cohen turned and looked at Roth. ‘You,’ she said. ‘You like this guy for these killings?’

  Roth shook his head. ‘I like him for something. Whether it’s these killings or not I don’t know, but I like him for something.’

  ‘Seems to me he’s all too happy to speak with you, but you’re not giving him anything interesting to talk about. You have to figure out how to ask him what he wants to be asked, and then go see him.’

  ‘And what is it that he wants to be asked, d’you think?’ Miller asked.

  Nanci Cohen sighed and shook her head. She looked at Lassiter. ‘These guys the best you got?’

  Lassiter smiled. ‘I’m afraid so . . . you know what they say, you just can’t get the help these days.’

  She turned back to Miller. ‘Sweetheart, he’s already told you what he wants you to ask him. He wants you to ask him—’

  ‘Why,’ Miller said.

  ‘On the freakin’ nail,’ she replied. ‘He wants you to ask him why.’

  ‘What about a wire?’ Roth asked.

  Nanci Cohen turned and scowled at him. ‘Thought I told you not to speak. A wire, for God’s sake. Are you serious? This guy has done nothing. You have zero on him, absolutely zero. We take it for granted he’s lying. This thing with the pictures doesn’t wash with me. I also believe what you say about the black woman down in the projects, but we don’t have probable cause, we don’t have any testimony that’ll stand up to a gentle breeze let alone a judge.’ She looked at Miller. ‘You,’ she said. ‘He talks to you more than he talks to your Jewish buddy here, right?’

  Miller nodded. ‘Sure, yes . . . I s’pose he does.’

  ‘Then you go down there. Go to his home. See if you can talk your way in there. Be concerned. Be interested in what he has to say. Find a way to ask him why he thinks these women are being killed. If he’s your whacko then he’s gonna wanna share his shit with the rest of the freakin’ world. These assholes are always the same. All this bullshit about deprived childhoods and God only knows what. So they got a kicking every once in a while . . . Jesus, if everyone that ever got a kicking took it out on a total stranger where the hell would we be, eh? Nevertheless, they’re amateurs, and they’re theatrical, and a theatrical amateur is the worst kind of pain in the ass.’ Nanci Cohen shook her head. She reached down and gathered up her bag. She rose from the chair and straightened her skirt.

  ‘So do whatever,’ she said. ‘No more bullshit about wires, okay? Don’t fuck this up by pulling some stunt that’ll get us kicked out on arraignment. Take it easy. Talk to me. Ask questions. Keep me briefed on everything he says and I’ll tell you when you have something you can get a warrant for.’ She smiled widely at Lassiter. ‘Always a blast, captain. Say hi to your wife for me. She’s a good lady. She has her head set straight. Gotta go.’

  Roth, Miller, Lassiter - each of them said nothing as ADA Nanci Cohen breezed out of the door and started down the corridor.

  When her footsteps disappeared Roth looked at Lassiter. ‘She’s for real, right?’

  Lassiter frowned. ‘What are you talking for? I thought she told you to keep your mouth shut.’

  Miller couldn’t catch his breath for laughing.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Miller went home. He did what Nanci Cohen told him to do. He showered, shaved, pressed a clean shirt and put on a tie. He took the best of his four suits and brushed it down. He cleaned his shoes, used mouthwash, combed his hair, and then drove back to the Second to meet Roth. By the time he arrived it was ten after seven. Roth was waiting outside on the sidewalk for him.

  ‘You’re good with this?’ Roth asked.

  ‘As good as.’

  ‘You scrub up well.’

  Miller smiled. ‘Take a picture . . . you ain’t gonna see this again for a while.’

  ‘He has an apartment on New Jersey and Q over past Chinatown.’

  ‘Did Littman follow him when he left work?’

  Roth nodded. ‘He went to the Carnegie Library of all places.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘No, he was there for about an hour, and then he went straight home. Riehl is there now, says he’s inside, hasn’t moved.’

  Miller was quiet for a moment. Robey at Carnegie Library? Another coincidence? ‘And what have we learned about our John Robey?’

  Roth shook his head. ‘Nothing at all. He’s never been arrested, not even a traffic violation. His name appears on social security, the land registry, a couple of membership organizations affiliated to the college, and then if you track back far enough you find stuff on him as an author. He published two books, last one in 2001. Doesn’t appear to have given many interviews. Seems to have played the whole thing down. Of course, we don’t have his fingerprints so we can’t check on AFIS or anything like that, but right now, as far as we can tell, he’s clean.’

  ‘So we know no more than we knew this morning,’ Miller said.

  ‘Seems that way. He isn’t exactly a public figure.’

  ‘Public figure I don’t need,’ Miller said. ‘What I need is something that tells us whether or not he’s capable of doing these things.’

  ‘So go there,’ Roth said. ‘Go there and get him talking.’

  ‘And if he won’t?’

  Roth shrugged. ‘Then we’re no further backward than we are now. We do what we can until there’s something better, you know what I mean?’

  Miller held out his hand. ‘Car keys.’

  Roth took them from his pocket and tossed them toward Miller. Miller caught them and started towards the underground parking lot.

  ‘Good luck,’ Roth called after him.

  Miller didn’t reply, didn’t turn back.

  He walked down the incline into the semi-darkness of the Second Precinct car park.

  Forty minutes later Robert Miller pulled to the curb a half block from the junction of New Jersey and Q Street. He sat there for a little while, listening to nothing but the sound of the engine cooling, the hum of distant traffic, the intermittent rush as a car passed by on the other side of the street. To his left a small group of young women emerged from the doorway of a bar, laughing together; one of them started running toward the crossing, the others followed her, and then they sort of collided in a huddle at the edge. Miller closed his eyes and listened. He listened to everything. He could hear the sound of his own heart, and it was beating fast.

  At four minutes past eight Miller stood at the bottom of the stairwell that led up to Robey’s apartment. His hands were sweating. Eve
n as he’d crossed the road he’d questioned the sense of what he was doing. There was nothing illegal, nothing discreditable, nothing underhanded about visiting with Robey. He wanted to talk to the man. Rather, he wanted the man to talk to him. He wanted to know what he’d meant, and ever since he’d left his own apartment, that same question had been playing back and forth in his mind. The expression Robey had used, the one about the squall that never became a storm.

  And then it came to him. Almost as if it had been there all along. Almost as if it had been wrapped in a box somewhere in the recesses of his mind, and merely raising the question, merely directing his attention toward it, had caused it to open up. The memory surfaced, and he was standing right back there in Catherine Sheridan’s house, and he could see the TV screen, he could see the whole room before him, and from the TV came those words.

  ‘Gotta see Poppa, Uncle Billy.’

  ‘Some other time, George.’

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘There’s a squall in there, it’s shapin’ up into a storm.’

  It’s A Wonderful Life. The movie that was playing when Catherine Sheridan was killed.

  The memory came at him slowly, but when it arrived it arrived with sufficient force to stop him cold. He reached out his hand and steadied himself against the wall.

  Too many coincidences. Too many altogether.

  Miller took several deep breaths. For a moment he felt light-headed, a little nauseous, and then he put his foot on the first step and started up towards Robey’s apartment.

  Once again John Robey seemed unsurprised by Miller’s appearance.

  ‘Detective Miller,’ he stated matter-of-factly when he opened the door.

  ‘Professor Robey,’ Miller replied.

  There was an awkward silence, and then Robey looked down for a moment. ‘You have come with more questions I presume.’

  ‘No, no more questions. I have come with answers.’ He smiled as best he could. ‘Not exactly answers . . . more like information that doesn’t make sense, and I figured that if I explained myself . . .’ Miller took a deep breath. He tried to focus, to center himself. He tried to make everything level and solid and quiet.

  Robey opened the door wide and stepped back against the wall. ‘Come in, Detective Miller.’

  Miller took a step forward, then another, and then a third. He passed Robey, and when he heard the door close behind him he knew there was no way out of this.

  ‘Come on through,’ Robey said. ‘Come and tell me what this thing is really all about.’

  Miller let Robey pass, and then he followed him through to a room in the rear of the apartment. A dark carpet, a sofa against the right hand wall, the window on the left overlooking the back of the building. The walls were painted a uniform parchment color, and on the wall facing him were a series of line drawings with stainless steel frames. There were eight of them, each no more than quarto-size.

  ‘You appreciate art, Detective Miller?’ Robey asked.

  Miller nodded.

  ‘These are prints of course, but very good ones. You’ve heard of Albrecht Dürer?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of Durer.’

  ‘These were preparatory works for Knight, Death and the Devil, St. Jerome in his Cell, Melancholia I. The one at the top is from the Apocalypse series.’

  ‘They are quite something,’ Miller said.

  Robey smiled. ‘They are more than something,’ he said quietly, and though his words should have suggested criticism, Miller did not feel criticized.

  ‘Please . . . sit,’ Robey said, and he indicated the sofa. ‘You would like something to drink perhaps?’

  Miller shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine, professor.’

  Robey took a chair from against the wall and positioned it on the opposite side of a low coffee table.

  ‘You live here alone?’ Miller asked.

  Robey smiled. ‘You know I do, or you’re nowhere near the detective I thought you were.’

  Miller was struggling to find some point to begin. He believed he was not altogether clear on what he was trying to begin.

  Robey made it easy for him. ‘I checked you out,’ he said. ‘I went to the library after I left you this afternoon. I looked up newspaper reports, this Sheridan woman you were talking about, and I know who you think I am.’

  Miller opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Robey said. ‘I am not offended. I understand what you are doing, and more importantly why it needs to be done. You have a job to do, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Miller replied. ‘A job to do.’

  ‘And there is something that makes you think I can help you - either because I am the man himself, or I knew this Sheridan woman, thus I might understand why she was chosen?’

  Miller leaned forward and looked directly at Robey. ‘I have five dead women. The first one died—’

  ‘In March,’ Robey interjected. ‘The second one in July, another in August. Catherine Sheridan was murdered five days ago, and this woman you mentioned before, Natasha Joyce . . . she was murdered two days ago.’

  ‘I thought you knew nothing of these things.’

  ‘I didn’t. Not until you brought them to me, and then, like I said, I went and did a little research.’

  ‘You read newspapers in the library.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Which library?’

  Robey laughed. ‘What on earth does that matter?’

  ‘Humor me, professor.’

  ‘Carnegie Library, you know it?’

  ‘I do. I know it well. And if I went down there tomorrow morning and spoke to—’

  ‘Julia Gibb?’ Robey said. ‘And asked her if I’d been there today asking for newspaper articles about the recent Ribbon Killer murders, would she confirm that I had in fact been there, and that I had asked for those very same newspaper articles, and would she tell you that this Catherine Sheridan who was murdered actually came into the library the very morning of her death? Would she tell you this? Yes, she would, Detective Miller, she would tell you exactly what I’m telling you now.’

  ‘You know the woman there then?’

  ‘Yes, detective, I know the woman there. I am a college lecturer. I visit the library frequently—’

  ‘Did you ever meet Catherine Sheridan there?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of.’

  ‘And how long have you been using the library?’

  ‘All the years I’ve been at the college.’

  ‘Which is how many?’

  ‘I told you. I’ve been at Mount Vernon since May of 1998.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I was teaching elsewhere.’

  ‘Another college?’

  ‘It’s on my resume, which I know Alan Edgewood has already shown you.’

  Miller was quiet for a moment, and then he leaned back once more and tried to relax. ‘Tell me something, professor . . . .what do you think about these murders?’

  ‘What do I think? Probably what most people think.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I don’t know. A sense of horror perhaps. A sense of tragedy. I look at it as a man, perhaps because we fundamentally believe that if we were faced with such a person we would give as good as we got. We would be better equipped to fight back. The abiding emotion is one of numbness.’

  ‘Numbness?’

  Robey smiled knowingly. ‘This stuff doesn’t touch my life. This sort of thing doesn’t even reach me. Numbness. The incomparable ability we all possess to pretend that such things only ever happen to others, and they more than likely deserve it. We are extraordinarily capable of convincing ourselves that it happens over there, and as long as we don’t look over there then we won’t have to deal with it.’

  ‘I deal with it.’

  Robey nodded. ‘As do I.’

  ‘In what way do you deal with such things?’ Miller asked.

  ‘I possess an inquisitive nature, Detective Miller. You come to me and ask of my whereabou
ts. You imply that I know something. You mention the names of women I do not know, and then you walk away. I am not going to leave it be. I want to know what you think; why you would consider that I could be capable of something like this. I want to understand what it is about me that gives you such an idea. I am inquisitive. I look. I listen. I try to understand.’

  ‘And from what you’ve heard, what you’ve read in the newspapers, what is your impression of what I am dealing with here?’

  ‘You are dealing with a nightmare.’

  Miller laughed suddenly, unexpectedly, an inexplicable reaction. It was just a simple statement of opinion, stated so emphatically, with such certainty, and voicing a thought Miller himself had had so many times, that he reacted.

  Robey inhaled slowly, exhaled again. ‘If I were you?’

  ‘Yes professor, what would you do if you were me?’

  Robey leaned back and crossed his legs. He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling for quite some time. When he returned his gaze to Miller there was something almost sympathetic in his expression. ‘I would find the common denominator, detective.’

  ‘Between?’

  ‘The women.’

  ‘The common denominator.’

  ‘Yes indeed. Five dead women. All of them apparently murdered by the same man. They all live in Washington. Right now that’s all that seems to exist as a common thread. A serial killer is killing women who live in Washington, but there must be something else. I know I must be stating the obvious. I can imagine that more time has been spent trying to identify the common thread—’

  Miller cut across. ‘You want to know what the only thread is? The only thread is you. You say that you didn’t know Catherine Sheridan, and yet Natasha Joyce saw your picture and confirmed that you went down to the projects a few years ago looking for a man named Darryl King. I could take you over to see Natasha Joyce, but hell, oh shit, she just happens to have gotten herself murdered too.’