The Assailant

by James Patrick Hunt

  His mother had not abused him. Indeed, she had seemed like an older sister to him. Later, he would decide that she was silly and frivolous and girly. A nonentity.

  His father had remarried, a less pretty, more stable woman with her own children. Raymond’s stepmother had tried to take to him but, like most grown-ups, had trouble doing so. Raymond remembered overhearing her tell his father, “There’s something missing from him.” A disagreement over a toy led Raymond to slap his eight-year-old stepsister across the face, hard enough to knock her to the ground and fatten her lip. The parents tried to mediate the “problem,” but the swollen lip was visible evidence that couldn’t be ignored. Raymond was no longer allowed to be with his stepbrothers and stepsisters. His father had tried to spend time with him alone after that, but the visits grew less and less frequent and eventually ceased.

  Other bad memories would surface at times, and he had to concentrate to suppress them. He had to will them away. The bullying at school. The cruel laughter. The dismissive glances. The invisibility. He had hated the bullies, but more than that he envied them. And he knew he would have done worse if he had their power.

  The dreams began about the time he reached puberty. Dreams that he knew were different from other boys’. He didn’t dream about cars or sports or amusement parks. He didn’t dream of girls he knew from school being naked and doing things with him or to him. He dreamed about a pretty girl at school being naked and covered with shit and dirt, all her black hair shaved off and dozens of sharpened pencils driven into her head. He would wake from these dreams startled but not frightened. He knew even at that age that he should not discuss the dreams with anyone. As he got older, the dreams became more vivid and detailed. And in time he came to realize that the dreams were fantasies.

  In college, Raymond had sat in a classroom once while a student argued with a psychology professor. The professor had been lecturing that bad parenting makes bad children. A student asked if the reverse was also possible—that bad children could make bad parents. The professor got upset and told the student that that sort of thinking was fascist and reactionary. The student seemed to take some pleasure in rattling the professor.

  Raymond would remember that exchange from time to time. He would forget that the offending student was a young woman.

  THIRTY-THREE

  They were in a cramped conference room, Hastings, Klosterman, Rhodes, and Murphy. Hastings put Springheel Jim’s letter on top of the viewfinder, and it came up on the large monitor screen.

  Hastings knew that all of them had already read the letter. But he wanted an open exchange of ideas. He had his own impressions, but impressions weren’t evidence and they could be misguided, like anything else.

  He didn’t want the entire task force in on this. It could be argued that he was having a secret meeting, away from the scrutiny of the masses. But there wasn’t time to be careful of protocol.

  Hastings waited as the detectives reread the letter. Then he said, “My thinking is, the guy’s educated.”

  Klosterman said, “Why?”

  “He uses words like demise and pedestrian. And he talks about us having small minds.”

  Rhodes said, “I don’t know, George. I was in the navy and I met guys who’d never gone to college, and they could finish New York Times crossword puzzles in about ten minutes. You don’t have to be college educated to write. Or use words.”

  “Okay.” Hastings considered this. “But were they older or younger?”

  “Usually older. Been in the service for a long time.”

  “So they’d read a lot.”

  Rhodes shrugged. “There isn’t much else to do on a ship, when you’re not on duty.”

  Murph said, “Okay, if he’s not educated, he reads a lot. But then what?”

  Hastings said, “He says we’re pedestrians. It’s not enough that he does these things, he has to let people know he’s smart. Smarter than the rest of us.”

  “So smart he writes letters to newspapers?”

  Klosterman said, “He’s boasting. He wants to taunt us.” “He wants to be noticed,” Rhodes looked at the other detectives. “He wants credit.”

  Hastings looked at the letter again. With his pen, he pointed to the references about Adele Sayers’s earring and Marla Hilsheimer’s bracelet. Hastings said, “He’s keeping trophies.”

  Klosterman said, “That’s not unusual. For a sadistic killer, it’s not unusual.”

  “If we knew who he was,” Murph said, “we could get a warrant to search his house and probably have enough to convict him right there.”

  “If we knew who he was and had cause to search.” Hastings took the letter off the viewfinder. He replaced it with a sheet of paper with three names written on it. They were:

  1. Reesa Woods

  2. Adele Sayers

  3. Marla Hilsheimer

  Hastings said, “We know that he targeted these three women. We know that he knew who they were and where they would be. So. How? How did he know about them?”

  Rhodes looked around the room to see if anyone would speak first. Then he said, “I checked out Adele Sayers. After she left Roland Gent, she set up her own Web site. I checked that out. It’s fairly typical. Her face is blanked out; you can just see her body. It could be that the killer found her through that Web site, not through Roland.”

  Rhodes showed them what he had downloaded. The Web site was listed under “Estelle” and it was broken into a few subcategories: contact, biography, gallery, “donation” rates. There was a section that said she expected her clients to be gentlemen, that she preferred that they be professional businessmen, that she showered before each date and expected them to do the same, that drinking was fine but drunks were not. Another paragraph stated that there was a two-hour minimum and that for the sum of two thousand dollars, you could get eight hours to “learn the art of stimulation.” Her stats were given: weight, height, hair color, breast size, and shoe size. There was also a pair of shoes in one of the gallery photographs. The biography declared that she was drug-and disease-free and that she looked for the same. At the end of the contact subsection was a paragraph stating that this was not an offer for prostitution but that anything that occurred during their time together was a matter of personal choice between two or more consenting adults of legal age. That all donations were for Estelle’s time and companionship only and that she would not discuss or agree to any type of solicitation. Further, that any attempt to compromise her position on these issues would result in termination of the date and forfeiture of all donations.

  Murph said, “They always give out information about shoes. A lot of shoe fetishists out there.”

  Hastings said, “Where’s her computer now?”

  “I checked with Escobar. He said her apartment is sealed.”

  “Okay, but did county take the computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Can you follow that up, examine the hard drive?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hastings said, “Well, let’s walk through this. I see her image on the Internet. Her face is blanked out, so I don’t know what she looks like. I contact her via e-mail. And then what?”

  “Maybe she gives you her cell number,” Murph said. “After you come to an agreement on money.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she agrees to meet you.”

  Rhodes said, “They can be pretty cautious, some of these girls. Adele Sayers, Reesa Woods . . . they want ‘professionals.’ Guys who are clean, have money, and aren’t going to beat them up.” He shrugged. “But I don’t know if he had been with her.”

  “You mean,” Hastings said, “he could have contacted her just to find out what she looked like. Just to find out who she was. And no more.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Rhodes said, “Because he didn’t have sex with her. Or with Reesa Woods or with Marla Hilsheimer. There was no sexual contact. Not every psychopath is a sexual sadist. And vice versa.”
>
  “So what?” Klosterman said.

  “So, maybe he contacted her, agreed to meet with her, and showed up . . . just to see her.”

  “To see her,” Klosterman said.

  “To see what she looks like. So he would know where to find her. So he could follow her later.”

  “To the Thunderbird Motel,” Hastings said.

  “Yeah,” Rhodes said. “We know she didn’t go there to meet with him. Mickey Crawford admitted he was there to meet her. So the killer followed her there.”

  Hastings said, “The long and short is, you believe that he looked at what you looked at.” Hastings gestured to the Internet downloads.

  “Yes.”

  Hastings was thinking in terms of prizes again. For a few moments, nobody said anything.

  Then Murph spoke. “George?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Hastings said. “Let’s wrap this meeting up. Howard, check out that computer. Find out who contacted her. Murph, go with him. Joe, come with me for a minute. I want to check something.”

  A few minutes later, Hastings was at his desk, in front of his computer. He googled Marla Hilsheimer and found the site of the real estate company she worked for. She was dressed professionally, looking smart and cute in front of a house that she had sold.

  Klosterman was standing behind Hastings’s chair. “I don’t see anything about donations,” he said.

  Hastings shook his head. “That’s not what I was thinking.” He turned around. “How did he know about her? How did he know about Marla Hilsheimer?”

  Hastings clicked on another site. An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

  And there she was.

  Pictured at a society function, standing next to her much older husband. She was wearing a black cocktail dress that accentuated her ample bosom. She was a looker, all right. A woman of forty that younger and older men would be drawn to. A trophy to her husband, if you wanted to be uncharitable about things. A prize.

  The detectives were quiet again. The whir of the computer the only sound.

  Klosterman said, “You think he saw her in the newspaper?”

  “Yeah,” Hastings said. “I think he did.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Hastings was alone when he returned to the Thunderbird Motel. He parked the Jaguar in the spot where they had found Adele Sayers’s Camaro. He walked away from the car and looked at it from different points around the motel parking lot. He stood in front of the lobby and looked at the car, pretending it was hers.

  The medical examiner had said that there were no traces of semen in her at the time of her death. Mickey Crawford had said that he was asleep in his motel room when she came knocking. She had knocked on the door of that room on the other side of the parking lot. He followed her here, watched her get out of the car, Hastings thought. Jumped out of his car and got into hers while she was still in sight. Her back would have been to him. It would have been dark, but all she would have to do was turn around to see him.

  Quite a risk he was taking. He didn’t wait until she got into the hotel room before he got into her car. Why didn’t he wait? Was he too anxious? Did he get off on the risk? Did he perhaps want to be seen by her?

  If she turns around and sees you, what do you say? Do you introduce yourself, show her that you’re harmless? Deceive her the way you deceived Marla Hilsheimer?

  Were you bored? Was that it? Did you want to change it up to keep it interesting?

  Or did it make you feel clever to get inside the woman’s car? To hide and wait for her to come back so you could spring? . . . Maybe the fact that she returned to the car early made it more fun? An unexpected kick.

  Hastings pulled out his cell phone and called Rhodes.

  “Howard?”

  “Yeah, George. I’ve got the computer. I’m at county with it. Escobar wants to keep it here for the time being, but he’s letting me look at it. The e-mails for the last three weeks have been tracked and identified. Except one. It’s from the county library. Here in Clayton.”

  “He used the computer at the library?”

  “Yeah. You can use it without having to leave an identification.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Rhodes said. “I still don’t know if he went to Harvard or not, but he’s smart.”

  “You guys going to check out the library?”

  “Yeah. We’re going in about ten minutes.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do.”

  Hastings drove downtown.

  He parked near the Adam’s Mark Hotel. He took the elevator up to the room Reesa Woods had shared with Geoffrey Harris. Hastings stood in the hallway for a few minutes, looking at a closed door. A maid came down the hall with her cleaning cart. She looked at him curiously, and he said hello and took the elevator down to the lobby.

  In the lobby, he asked for the desk manager. It was not the same guy they had dealt with before, but Hastings referenced himself and the man cooperated with him. They went back up to the room, which was vacant and clean. The desk manager remained in the room with the detective. Hastings looked around, trying to feel things that probably couldn’t be felt. The manager grew uncomfortable with the silence and said, “We’ve got this reserved for this evening. But we don’t expect the guest to check in until four o’clock or so.”

  Hastings nodded at this. A moment later, he said, “Okay.” And they both walked out.

  The desk manager said, “Was there anything in particular you were looking for?”

  Hastings shook his head. He had little idea, really.

  The elevator doors opened at the mezzanine and two men got in. They had name tags dangling from their necks. They were well-dressed men, wearing slacks and expensive golf shirts. The tags read, NATL.

  After a moment, Hastings asked, “What’s that acronym?”

  The smaller guy said, “National Association of Trial Lawyers.”

  “You’re here for a convention?”

  “Yeah. Some genius said we should have it here instead of Vegas.”

  “It’s what happens when you let women plan it,” the other lawyer said.

  Hastings smiled with them and they got off the elevator in the lobby.

  The desk manager turned to him and asked if there was anything else he could do. Hastings told him that there wasn’t and thanked him for his time.

  On his way out, Hastings looked around the lobby again. His gaze took him to the escalator going up to the mezzanine. He wondered why the lawyers hadn’t just taken that. Conventioneers. As Klosterman had once said, if you want to bring convention business to the city, you’ve got to have two things: casinos and pussy.

  Hastings went back to the desk manager.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The campus was different now. It was hard to believe that it was twenty years since he had last been here. Twenty years earlier, there hadn’t been all these walls and modern buildings and humanistic, erotic art that seemed out of place. Twenty years earlier, it had looked like what it was: an unassuming midwestern Catholic university.

  George Hastings at eighteen. From no place, Nebraska, to a university in the biggest city he had ever seen. There on a baseball scholarship, and it had taken him some time to stop believing that he was too dumb to be there. Maybe they accommodated athletic-scholarship recipients at other universities, but they hadn’t been too generous to him. He was expected to take nine hours of theology and six hours of philosophy along with everyone else. Even if his major was communications, the standard for most academically challenged jocks.

  Those courses were a vague memory now. He remembered one of them involving circles inside other circles and discussions of fire, air, and water, and he never did figure any of it out, but somehow got a C anyway. Being a baseball player at the time, he was actually somewhat proud of this. Until he later learned that just about everyone else that ever took the class got an A or a B.

  Now he sat on the wall that he had sat on in his youth and wondered how he had ever
managed to fit in at a place like this. He wasn’t meant to be a professional baseball player. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be a college graduate either. But a talent for the sport had gotten him the college degree. And then, lacking any sort of trade skill, he had become a policeman. Not out of any thought-out ambition, but mainly because he didn’t know what else to do.

  Getting nostalgic in your middle age, he thought. But watching the girls and boys go by, he thought, Nostalgic for what?

  The kids dressed differently now, but they looked the same. Now they looked like kids. To him they did, anyway.

  When he first picked out Rita Liu from the crowd, he was not sure it was her. Again, she appeared younger than her actual years. Younger and not so shiny, as call girls often appear. She blended in. Maybe better than he had.

  Hastings remained where he was, seated on the brick wall in the quad. A grown man out of his element, his legs folded, his sport jacket and sidearm covered by an overcoat.

  He locked his eyes on Rita Liu. She noticed him, first with curiosity, then with anger.

  She walked over to him. Now she was standing before him. Her face was weighted and she no longer looked like a kid. “What do you want?”