The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  And, of course, Jack the Ripper. Rereading a book on the Ripper case gave him pause, because some experts were convinced the scourge of Whitechapel had been a Jew—a shohet whose experience as a ritual slaughterer made him an expert in anatomy. He remembered what Dr. Levi had said, and he thought of the shohtim he knew: Mori Gerafi, a tiny, kind Yemenite who seemed too gentle for the job. Rabbi Landau, who worked out of the Mehane Yehuda market. Learned men, pious and scholarly. The thought of them carving up women was absurd.

  He put the Ripper book aside and forged onward.

  Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis—people chasing pleasure in hideous ways. Interpol and FBI reports—the German theory notwithstanding, America seemed to have more serial killers than any other country. One estimate said there were thirty or forty of them doing their dirty work at any given time, more than five hundred unsolved serial murders. The FBI had begun to program a computer in order to catalog all of it.

  Thirty roving monsters. Such cruelty, such evil.

  Street-corner Mengeles. Why had God created them?

  He finished at two in the morning, dry-mouthed and heavy-lidded, Laura’s drawing lamp the sole illumination in the silent, dark apartment.

  Was it happening right now? The ritual, the outrage—an inert body laid out for dissection?

  Knowing his dreams would be polluted, he went to sleep.

  He awoke at dawn, expecting bad news. None came and he faked his way through Shabbat.

  At nine on Sunday morning he filled an attaché case with papers and went to see Dr. Ben David. The psychologist’s main office was at Hebrew University but he kept a suite for private consultations in the front rooms of his flat on Rehov Ramban.

  Daniel arrived early and shared the claustrophobic waiting room with a tired-looking woman who hid from eye contact behind the international edition of Time magazine. Ten minutes before the hour, Ben David came out of the treatment room with a skinny, large-eyed boy of about five. The boy looked at Daniel and smiled shyly. The detective smiled back and wondered what could trouble such a young child so deeply that he needed a psychologist.

  The woman put the Time into her purse and stood.

  “All right,” said Ben David heartily, in English. “I’ll see Ronny the same time next week.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” She took her son by the hand and the two of them left quickly.

  “Daniel,” said Ben David, taking the detective’s hand in both of his and shaking it energetically. He was a young man, in his early thirties, medium-sized and heavyset, with bushy black hair, a full dark beard, light-blue eyes that never rested, and a fitful nature that had taken Daniel by surprise the first time they’d met. He’d always thought of psychotherapists as passive, quiet. Listening and nodding, waiting for you to talk so they could pounce with interpretations. The one he’d seen at the rehab center had certainly fit the stereotype.

  “Hello, Eli. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Come in.”

  Ben David ushered him into the treatment room, a smallish, untidy office lined with bookshelves and furnished with a small desk, three sturdy chairs, and a low circular table upon which sat a dollhouse in the shape of a Swiss chalet, doll furniture, and half a dozen miniature human figurines. Behind the desk was a credenza piled high with papers and toys. Next to the papers were an aluminum coffeepot, cups, and a sugar bowl. No couch, no inkblots. A single Renoir print on the wall. The room smelled pleasantly of modeling clay.

  Daniel sat on one of the chairs. The psychologist went to the credenza.

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Ben David prepared two cups, gave Daniel his, and sat down opposite him, sipping. He was wearing a faded burgundy polo shirt that exposed a hard, protuberant belly, baggy dark-green corduroy trousers, and scuffed loafers without socks. His hair looked disheveled; his beard needed trimming. Casual, careless even, like a graduate student on holiday. Not like a doctor at all, but such were the perquisites of status. Ben David had been an academic prodigy, chief of the army’s psychological service at twenty-seven, a full professor two years later. Daniel supposed he could dress any way he pleased.

  “So, my friend.” The psychologist smiled cursorily, then shifted in the chair, moving his shoulders with almost tic-like abruptness. “I don’t know what I can tell you that we haven’t covered on Gray Man.”

  “I’m not sure, myself.” Daniel pulled the forensic reports and crime summaries out of his case and handed them over. He drank coffee and waited as the psychologist read.

  “Okay,” said Ben David, scanning quickly and looking up after a few moments. “What do you want to know, specifically?”

  “What do you think about the washing of the bodies? What’s the meaning of it?”

  Ben David sat back in his chair, flipped one leg over the other, and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Let me start with the same warning I gave you before. Everything I tell you is pure speculation. It could be wrong. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Given that, my best guess is that the pathologist may very well be right—the killer was attempting to avoid leaving physical evidence. Something else to consider—and the two notions aren’t mutually exclusive—would be a power play, playing God by preparing and manipulating the body. Were the corpses positioned in any way? Posed?”

  Daniel thought about that.

  “They looked as if they were set down neatly,” he said. “With care.”

  “When you saw the first body what was your initial impression?”

  “A doll. A damaged doll.”

  Ben David nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I like that. The victims may very well have been used as dolls.”

  He turned and pointed to the miniature chalet. “Children engage in doll-play in order to achieve a sense of mastery over their conflicts and fantasies. Artists and writers and composers are driven to produce out of similar motivations. The creative urge—everyone wants to be godlike. Sex killers do it by destroying life. Gray Man tossed his victims aside. This one’s more creative.”

  It sounded blasphemous to Daniel. He said nothing.

  “Collecting accurate data on sex killers is difficult, because we have access only to the ones who get caught—which may be a biased sample. And all of them are liars, so their interview data are suspect. Nevertheless, the Americans have done some good research, and a few patterns seem to hold—the things I told you about Gray Man. Your man’s an exceptionally immature psychopath. He’s grown up with a chronic and overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness—a creative blockage, if you will. He’s been constructing power fantasies since early childhood and building his life around them. His family was intact. His family life was a mess but may have appeared outwardly normal to the casual observer. Normal sex doesn’t work for him. He needs violence and domination—helplessness of the victim—to get aroused. In the beginning, violent fantasies were enough to satisfy him. Then, while still a child, he moved on to torturing and possibly having sex with animals. As an adolescent, he may have progressed to human rape. When that no longer fulfilled his power needs, he began killing. Murder serves as a substitute for intercourse: beginning with some sort of subjugation and following it with stabbing and hacking—the exaggerated sexual metaphor, the literal piercing and entry of the body. He chooses women as victims but may be latently homosexual.”

  Thinking of the rumor about Dr. Darousha, Daniel asked, “What about an active homosexual?”

  “No,” said Ben David. “The key word is latent. He’s fighting to suppress those impulses, may even be hyper-masculine—a real law-and-order type. There are homosexual sex killers, of course, but they usually murder men.” Ben David thought for a moment. “There are records of a few pansexual murderers—Kurten, the Dusseldorf Monster, did away with men, women, children. But unless you start turning up male victims, I’d concentrate on latent homosexuals.”

  “How can a latent homosexual be spotted?”
r />   “He can’t.”

  Daniel waited for more. When it didn’t come, he asked, “What about the earrings? Gray Man didn’t take anything.”

  “Gray Man was crude, scared—slash and run. The earrings are trophies, as was the uterus taken from your second victim. Other killers take underwear, clothing. Your corpses were found naked, so your killer may have taken clothing as well. The trophies are a temporary substitute for killing again. Mementoes, similar to the heads collected by hunters. They’re used for masturbation, to retrigger the power fantasies.”

  Ben David glanced at the reports again. “The ultimate power play is necrophilia. No mention is made of rape. Did your killer have post-mortem intercourse with the victims?”

  “The pathologist found no semen,” said Daniel. “It may have been washed away.”

  “Possible impotence,” said the psychologist, “or he could have masturbated away from the body. It would make serum typing impossible—more avoidance of physical evidence. Not a stupid murderer, Dani. Definitely smarter than Gray Man.”

  Daniel thought: Stupid, “crude”. Gray Man had eluded capture.

  Ben David raised his cup and emptied it, then dried his beard with the back of one hand. “In order to dominate, you need subjugation. Some killers tie up their victims. Yours used heroin to subjugate, but it amounts to the same thing. Total control.”

  “Do you attach any significance to the use of drugs?”

  The psychologist got up, walked to the credenza, and poured a second cup of coffee. “I don’t know,” he said, upon return. “Perhaps he’d experienced some sort of peak sexual experience related to drug use. A lot of what turns people on is the result of chance associations—the coupling of some random but significant event with sexual arousal.”

  It took a moment for Daniel to assimilate that. “An accident?”

  “A Pavlovian accident—in this case, repetitive pairings of sex and violence. It may very well be the root of sexual deviance—generations of English sadomasochists were created by the practice of caning public school students. Beat a horny adolescent frequently enough and you’re going to establish a mental connection between pain and arousal. The same may be true of sexual psychopaths—most of them claim to have been abused as children, but then again, they’d say anything that was self-serving.”

  “Could the use of sedation indicate someone with medical experience?” asked Daniel. “Along with the fact that he took care to avoid physical evidence?”

  “Do you have a physician suspect?”

  “No.”

  “Did the pathologist feel the mutilation indicated exceptional surgical skill?”

  “No.”

  “Then I wouldn’t place much stock in that hypothesis. Why would a doctor use something crude like heroin, when he could get his hands on more precise anesthetics? What it does indicate is someone with drug experience, which, unfortunately, is no longer a small club in this country. Anything else?”

  “When we talked about Gray Man, you said he would probably be withdrawn, an antisocial loner. Do you feel the same about this one?”

  “At the core, all psychopaths are antisocial. They’re incapable of achieving intimacy, view people as objects, have no sense of empathy or compassion. Gray Man was impulsive and meek, which led me to guess that he was socially inadequate. But this one isn’t so clear-cut. He’s cold, calculating, takes great care to wash the body, prepare it, clean it—he’s a stage director. Arrogant and intelligent, and those types often come across as sociable, even charming. Some even have apparent romances with women, though when you examine the relationship closely it turns out to be warped or platonic. The more sophisticated sex killer doesn’t necessarily shun the public eye. In fact, he may even jump right into it. He may be attracted to politics because it’s also a power game: There was an Englishman—one of the homosexual killers—named Dennis Nilsen. Labor union activist, well liked by everyone, terrific social consciousness when he wasn’t strangling boys. The American, Ted Bundy, was a law student, also politically active, good-looking, suave. Another American, Gacy, entertained children with a clown act, raised funds for the Democratic party and had his picture taken with President Carter’s wife. Semipublic figures, every one of them.”

  Ben David leaned forward.

  “Internally, your man’s a cesspool, Dani. Get to know him on an intimate level and the psychopathy starts popping out—lies, false claims, inconsistencies in personal history, poor impulse control, situational conscience. He believes in rules but doesn’t believe they apply to him. But outwardly, he may very well look normal. Better than normal—a persuasive manipulator.”

  Daniel thought of Fatma’s naïveté, Juliet’s possible brain damage. Easy pickings for someone like that.

  “What about religious fanaticism?” he asked.

  Ben David smiled. “The avenging murderer cleansing the world of whores? Movie nonsense. Some of these guys claim they’ve got some greater moral purpose, but it’s more self-serving garbage and if no one buys it, they quickly drop it. Basically, they kill to achieve orgasm.” He looked at the reports again.

  “Both your victims were Arabs,” he said. “One thing you should consider strongly is the political component.”

  “Neither Mossad nor Shin Bet has come up with any terrorist connections—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” the psychologist cut in, impatiently. “Don’t limit your thinking to some organized political cell. As I said, psychopaths are attracted to political issues because politics is power. I’m suggesting to you a solitary psychopathic killer whose violent fantasy life is interwoven with political elements.”

  Ben David shot out of his chair, went to the bookshelves, ran his fingers along the spines of the volumes, and pulled out several.

  “Here,” he said, placing the books in Daniel’s lap.

  The first three were American paperbacks. Cheap, cracked editions with brittle, yellowed paper. Daniel studied the cover illustrations: lurid, cartoonish paintings of impossibly voluptuous women, naked, bound and gagged, and tormented by hypermuscular, whip-wielding men in leather costumes so glossy they looked wet. Costumes emblazoned with swastikas and iron crosses and the SS death’s-head logo. In one illustration, ribbons of blood ran down the woman’s meaty thighs. In another a slavering, razor-toothed Doberman pinscher aimed its snout in the vicinity of the victim’s crotch.

  The women strained against their bonds and their eyes were wide with terror. Their tormentors grinned and fondled groins bulging grotesquely.

  The titles: Eat This, Jewbitch. Nazi Lovemasters. Gestapo Rape.

  Daniel opened one of them, read several lines of explicit, sadomasochistic pornography, and put the books down angrily.

  “Disgusting.”

  “I got them when I was at Harvard,” said Ben David, “in a used-book store near the campus. There’s a small but steady market for this type of thing.”

  Daniel opened the fourth book. A hard-cover volume entitled This Must Not Happen Again: The Black Book of Fascist Horror. He turned pages, saw grainy photographs. Mountains of human skeletons. A row of empty-eyed corpses, partially corroded by lime, lying three-deep in a muddy ditch. Severed arms and legs, waxily artificial. The leer of a German soldier as he shot a naked woman in the back.

  “Read the chapter on ‘Murder for Profit,’ ” said the psychologist. “The surgical experiments.”

  Daniel found the section, skimmed it, then closed the book, his anger growing. “What’s the point?”

  “The point is that racist politics and psychopathy can be comfortable bedfellows. Mengele, all the other camp doctors, were psychopaths. Hannah Arendt claimed they were normal, banal men, but their psychological evaluations indicate otherwise. They were attracted to the Nazi philosophy because it fit with their psychopathic natures. Hitler reinforced and legitimized them with power and status and technology—serial killers in the employ of the State. The point is, Dani, that if Arab girls keep turning up slaughtered,
you’d do well to consider that your psychopath has a thing against Arabs.”

  “A Jewish race murderer?” Daniel thought of the Ripper book. The shohet theory.

  “It could be a self-hating Arab,” said Ben David. “Serial killers often turn against their own kind. But don’t exclude the possibility that a member of our tribe is running around butchering Arabs just because it’s an unappetizing contingency. We’re not all lambs. There’s a reason for the sixth commandment.”

  Daniel was silent. Ben David misread the look on his face as resistance and threw up his hands.

  “I don’t like it either, my friend. You wanted my speculations, you got them.”

  “I was reading about psychopathic killers last night,” Daniel reflected, “and found myself thinking about them in Nazi terms. A phrase came to mind: street-corner Mengeles.”

  “You see”—the psychologist smiled—“you don’t need me. Your unconscious is guiding you in the right direction.”

  He handed the reports back to Daniel, who put them into his case and removed a folder. The summary on Schlesinger, it had finally arrived yesterday from Civil Guard Headquarters. He gave it to Ben David, saying, “What do you think of this one?”

  More rapid scanning. “This tells me nothing,” said the psychologist. “An old man with stomach pains—Kupat Holim claims it’s in his head. The classic psychosomatic dodge.”

  “He was the Hagah man patrolling Scopus the night the first one turned up,” said Daniel, “giving him excellent opportunity. An old palmahi, hates Arabs—which could give him a motive. He likes to drive around the city at night and he has psychological problems.”

  Ben David shook his head, held up the summary.

  “There’s nothing in here about psychological problems. He has stomach pains and persistent hunger pangs that the doctors can’t identify. So they cover for their feelings of inadequacy by using psychology to blame the victim.” He gave the folder to Daniel. “I’m not saying this Schlesinger isn’t your man. If you have evidence, go for him. But there’s nothing in here that’s relevant.” Ben David looked at his watch. “Anything else?”