The Art of Violence

by S. J. Rozan

  “I’ll try to keep out of your way. I won’t go to the witnesses unless I have to.”

  “What means ‘have to’?”

  “I’m hoping to be able to prove it couldn’t have been Sam. If I had the facts, the timelines, all that, I might be able to eliminate him without talking to anyone.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Well, I already talked to people. So did Mason. No one puts Tabor anywhere near either crime scene. No evidence he ever laid eyes on either vic.”

  “You did? I thought you thought he was a whack job.”

  “I do. But being as it’s him, I had to at least think about it. Even called Ike Cavanaugh, detective from the Amy Evans case, to ask what he thought. He, by the way, almost jumped through the phone and punched my face for sending Tabor away.”

  “He thinks it’s him?”

  “Wants it to be. So does his captain. And in case you’re wondering, so does my captain. The whole NYPD and Sam Tabor, everyone wants the same thing, and here’s Grimaldi saying, hold your horses. Like I’m that little Dutch kid with his finger in the dike. Ain’t that a kick?”

  She didn’t seem too upset about her lonely position, so I let it go. “What makes you so sure it’s not?” I asked.

  A uniformed cop walked by, dropped some papers on an empty desk. He didn’t give me a glance. That was someone who’d never make detective.

  Grimaldi, on the other hand, kept her eyes on him until he was gone. “Like I told you, Tabor don’t fit the profile.” She turned to me. “There’s two kinds of serial killers. Quantico calls them ‘organized’ and ‘disorganized.’ You know about this?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “The organized ones are the charming, handsome ones, the ones everyone says afterward, ‘Oh my God, I had no idea, he was just the nicest guy.’ The others are the drooling lunatic head cases. The ones people say, ‘I always knew something was off about him.’ If Tabor was one, that would be his category. But what makes us think maybe these two killings are related is, they’re organized. The vics looked alike: short-haired, skinny little blondes in their late twenties.”

  “The woman Sam killed looked something like that.”

  “That’s true. But these were both drinking in hot bars, bars with a scene. The killer either picked them up there, or followed them when they left. Your guy, no way a bouncer would’ve let him in one of those places. And they were stabbed a couple times, not a couple dozen, like he did Adams. And both outdoors, in the park, not in a basement. With a different kind of knife than he used.”

  “The same knife in both?”

  “Can’t tell, which is one of the reasons we haven’t called it yet. But the same kind. And this guy, it looks like he took trophies. They do that sometimes, to remember by. Your guy didn’t do that with Adams.”

  “What kind of trophies?”

  Grimaldi wagged a finger at me. “Nuh-uh, sorry. We’re holding that back, to ask each of the loonies that confesses. Before you ask, of course I tried it on your guy. He has no idea. See what I’m getting at? The things that make these two like each other make them different than the one Tabor did.”

  “Sam was in prison for five years. And he lives in his own head. Isn’t it possible he changed? Hardened?”

  “I thought you didn’t think it was him.”

  “I don’t. But I can’t help but wonder.”

  “What you’re asking is, could a disorganized killer get organized? I never heard of that. It happens the other way. The organized ones crack up near the end. A lot of them, that’s how they get caught. People talk about them getting careless, but it’s not careless. They want to keep it together like at the beginning, but they just can’t.”

  “Still, wouldn’t it be worthwhile to search Sam’s place? You wouldn’t need a warrant. He’d let you in.”

  She frowned. “What are you talking about? Of course I did.”

  “You did? He didn’t tell me that.”

  “Jerk. He was wasted, so he probably doesn’t remember.”

  “He said you threw him out.”

  “I told him he was a fucking lunatic and I wanted him out of my squad room. Then I drove him home. All the way to goddamn Greenpoint. He was drunk as a lord. Fell asleep on the way. Woke up when we got there, giggled, told me to come on in, have a look around. Goddamn right I was going to have a look around, what did he think, I was an Uber? Head case fell down on the couch and started snoring. You know there’s nothing on the walls, almost no furniture? Mattress on the floor, couch, chair, table. And one of those paintings, tacked on the wall. Up close and personal, that stuff is still revolting.”

  “I wish he’d told me you did that.”

  “Look, the guy’s a convicted killer. I swear to God, he’s blowing smoke out of his ass, but I had to look.”

  “And you didn’t find anything?”

  “Of course not. If your boy wants the world to think he’s a serial killer, he’s going to have to try harder than that. Jesus, you have any idea how many confessions we have since the Post came out? Fourteen. Not including the one who said it wasn’t him, it was his twin brother. Jerkoff doesn’t have a twin brother. Three of them are ex-cons, one with a homicide sheet. Mason and I looked at all of them. They’re all full of shit, and we knew it, but we gotta look.”

  “Are you planning to check out Sam’s studio?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “Sometime this afternoon. Waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”

  “What about forensic evidence?”

  “What, at Tabor’s place? You got the budget to send a forensic team where there’s no probable-cause reason for them to go, I’m sure my captain will be happy to hear it. Otherwise, I say your guy’s a fruitcake and he can go to hell.” She sat back and crossed her arms.

  “All right,” I said. “I hope we’re both right about Sam. And I hope you find the real killer fast. But can I have the information I came for?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Grimaldi pushed to her feet. “I still think he should just jaywalk.” She picked up a file folder. “Let me go xerox some of this, whatever’s okay for you to have. I can’t give you the autopsy reports, but there’s some stuff. Just remember, I wouldn’t even be giving you anything”—a stern look—“except you’re going to keep that freak out of my face from now on, right? Oh, oh, check it out.”

  I twisted to face the door. Filling it was a big-bellied, mustached man with an NYPD twenty-year pin in his lapel.

  “Hey, Ike,” Grimaldi said evenly. “You didn’t say you were coming.”

  “Yeah, but I’m here. This him?”

  I stood as he crossed the room. “Bill Smith.” I offered my hand. To Grimaldi, I said, “Am I? Him?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “This is Ike Cavanaugh, from Queens North Homicide. He worked the Amy Evans killing.”

  “We never met, but I remember your name,” I told Cavanaugh.

  “And I remember yours.” He stared at my hand until I dropped it.

  “I told you I called Ike when Tabor came in,” said Grimaldi. “I also called him this morning, when you called me. Seeing as I’m the clearinghouse, you know. He thinks I’m wrong.”

  “Damn right, I do,” Cavanaugh said. “That fucking sicko says he’s a serial killer, why argue? Grimaldi here, she’s got women’s intuition.” He laid a heavy and sarcastic emphasis on the words. “Plus they sent her to Quantico with the Feebs, so now she knows everything about serial killers. Only thing, she don’t know shit about Sam weird-as-fuck Tabor. She didn’t see what he did to Amy Evans. Sixteen years working Homicide, that was one of the worst I ever saw. And now he says he killed two other girls? Fine, lock his ass back up. He never should’ve got out.”

  “There’s no evidence he did those other two,” I said.

  “There might be, if someone was looking for it. Instead of sniffing the air or feeling the vibes or whatever horseshit.”

  Grimaldi stiffened. Cavanaugh eyed her. The squad room quieted as the two detectives took each other’s measure, like
dogs deciding whether to get into it or just piss and move on.

  Cavanaugh turned back to me. I guessed that meant Grimaldi had won that round. “When those arty snoots started that committee about ‘Tabor’s a great artist, he has to get out so he can paint us more paintings,’ it burned my butt. I sent money to the Don’t Free Sam Tabor Committee. You probably didn’t hear about that. It wasn’t big shots like on the other side. Just Amy Evans’s family, her friends and neighbors. Entire neighborhood signs petitions against that sicko, some bleeding-heart judge lets him out anyway. I guess regular people don’t count anymore.”

  “You came all the way in from Queens when you heard I was coming here,” I said. “Why?”

  “You were the PI helped that bastard get off the first time.”

  “Off? He was sentenced to fifteen-to-life.”

  “He shoulda got life plus ninety-nine. Then he couldn’t of been out after five. Grimaldi here”—Cavanaugh jerked his thumb at the other detective—“yesterday she calls to tell me he wants to turn himself in but she won’t take him up. Today she calls to say he hired you. So I guess he changed his mind. Fucking little worm wants to squirm off this hook, too. So I came to say this in person, so nobody makes a mistake: there’s a deep, deep pile of shit waiting for anyone who gets him off again.”

  I met his stare. Then I turned to Grimaldi. “You were going to xerox something for me?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Her cheeks were flaming but her voice was cold. “But Ike? It might interest you to know, Tabor didn’t hire Smith to prove he didn’t do it. He hired him to prove he did. Now, move. You’re in my way.”

  5

  I called Sam from the street when I left the 19th. I got voice mail and left a message, wondering if he was sitting huddled over himself in his empty-walled apartment, listening to his cell phone ring. Or if he wasn’t there at all but in his Manhattan studio, brushes in hand, lost to everything else.

  I found a diner, had a cup of coffee, and read the police reports on the murdered women. I didn’t learn anything Grimaldi hadn’t told me, except some background facts: where they’d lived, their next of kin. Where they were from. What they’d done for a living. Who they were, before their metamorphosis into crime victims, public property, chapters in their killer’s story.

  Annika Hausman and Tiffany Traynor, hip young women with favored careers. Tiffany a photo stylist, Annika in the M&A department at Chase. Both bar-and-club types, knew what to wear, where to go, and, according to their friends, what type of man to go home with. That either would have let Sam Tabor so much as buy her a Stoli struck me as dubious, the way it had Grimaldi, as did the idea of Sam getting past the velvet rope in the first place. I supposed it was possible he’d spotted them, waited somewhere, and followed them, but if he’d been so drunk he didn’t remember, he would have been drunk enough to shake off. Unless Annika and Tiffany were even more smashed. Not out of the question, but not likely, either.

  Unless Sam wasn’t drunk, he was in some kind of fugue state, and in that state, more—Grimaldi’s word—organized than anyone thought possible.

  Maybe Sam, out of his mind, made a habit of this. Maybe he lurked outside clubs and followed women all the time. Maybe he’d tried to bundle women off into the park before, and Tiffany and Annika were the only ones who’d gone. Because after a stress trigger event, he was—what? More determined? Better at it?

  Or maybe he’d been successful before, just not in a way that matched these. Other places, other weapons. I called Grimaldi.

  “How’s your buddy Cavanaugh?”

  “Jerk. But it’s good you called, because I want to say something. Cavanaugh’s a shoe-leather, by-the-book guy. He starts with a theory and looks for evidence. You learn that at the academy. That’s fine, but me, I see things and put them together in different ways until they click. Cavanaugh thinks what he does is police work and what I do is some women’s intuition bullshit. I generally don’t give a shit, but I want to make sure you know if I say it’s your boy in the end, or I say it isn’t, it’s based on evidence, not sniffing the fucking air.”

  I almost laughed. “Detective, I have a female partner. If I ever accused her of using ‘women’s intuition’ instead of doing actual investigative work, she’d shoot me.”

  “Good for her. And something else. Cavanaugh’s an asshole, but this thing he has about Tabor, any cop might have it. Some cases eat at your gut, you know? Maybe you don’t know.”

  “I do. It’s not so different, what I do. Sam’s unfinished business for me, too.”

  “Yeah, well, speaking of business, I’m kind of working here. You call for a reason?”

  “I was wondering: You have other unsolved homicides in the time since Sam got out?”

  “Not like these.”

  “No, like anything.”

  “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “That what we’re seeing as the pattern might be too narrow.” I gave her a thumbnail of my theory.

  “Fugue state? They talked about that at Quantico. But that’s close to MPD. Multiple personality disorder. Last I heard, Tabor doesn’t have that.”

  “No. But whoever killed these women might.”

  “Hey. If you’re trying to help me out, investigate my case for me, you can stop right there. I don’t need you screwing in it, and I don’t need you telling me how to do my job.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “And here I thought you were mostly trying to find Tabor an alibi.”

  “I was just reading through these files, though, and I couldn’t help wondering.”

  Grimaldi was quiet, and then she sighed. “Yeah, well, it’s actually not a bad idea. I’ll check it out. And yeah, since you thought it up, I’ll let you know.”

  I thanked the detective, paid for my coffee, and headed downtown to see what you ate in a restaurant where the cuisine was haute Malaysian.

  * * *

  From way down the block, I could see Lydia lounging at a sidewalk table. I stopped, for just a second, to look at her in the warm spring sunshine. She wore a green sweater and a black leather jacket and looked terrific, but then, to me she always did. I started forward again. She looked up through big round sunglasses that she didn’t take off when I kissed her.

  Things between us had changed since we went to Mississippi a few months earlier, but in some ways they were still the same. The kiss was warm, soft, and—as usual, unless we’re in bed—too short. Lydia wasn’t into public display. And, as before, she set the rules.

  “You can have the shady side,” she offered when I stepped back. “Since your eyes are probably still in shock from seeing the morning.”

  “No, it’s the dazzlement of you.” I settled in and picked up the menu. “What do we eat here?”

  “Everything’s good. But if you order the quail egg shooters, I’m leaving.”

  We chose watermelon pickle with crispy pork, and grilled skate on a banana leaf, both to share. Lydia already had a half-drained Pellegrino. I ordered a Singha lager.

  “So, who’s this client who dares call you before nine A.M.? In fact before eight A.M.?” Lydia asked. “My hat’s off to him.”

  “I told you, I didn’t take the money.”

  “And yet, you said you might need me. So, something’s up.”

  “It’s those astounding powers of deduction that are, um, so astounding. I didn’t take it because I already had a client.”

  “That you got even earlier in the morning? No way.”

  “No, late last night. You remember Sam Tabor?”

  She pondered over her drink. “He’s that painter. He murdered someone years ago but he got parole last fall. It was a big deal. He’s supposed to be a major genius. You worked on the original case, right? Do I have the right guy?”

  “That’s him. He’s been out six months.”

  “He’s in trouble again?”

  “Not exactly.” While we waited for our lunch, I told Lydia what Sam feared, and what he wan
ted.

  “Wow,” she said. “Is he really nuts, do you think?”

  “Yes. But not that way.”

  She raised skeptical eyebrows.

  I said, “Sam’s weird. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with him, but apparently it always has been. He’s had a raft of different diagnoses—OCD, AD/HD, Asperger’s. In his early twenties he had a breakdown and committed himself. He doesn’t look you in the eye, his timing’s off when he talks. He drifts into his own world and has to keep on pulling himself back. And he drinks. The word a lot of people use is ‘creepy.’ ”

  “Does he hear voices? See black helicopters?”

  “No. And he doesn’t get messages through the fillings in his teeth.”

  The waiter interrupted this cheerful discussion with plates of pork and fish and bowls of coconut rice. Lydia rattled around in the jar of chopsticks on the table until she made two matching pairs.

  “He really did kill someone that first time, though, didn’t he?” She handed me a set.

  “But do you remember the whole story?”

  “No, except you thought he got a raw deal.”

  “I didn’t think he should have gone to prison. I know how this sounds, but it wasn’t his fault. He was drugged.”

  “Someone drugged him and made him kill someone?”

  “Might as well have. Sam was a waiter, working at a diner. He was good at his job, careful with the orders. But the people he worked with kept their distance. He didn’t have friends there.”

  “Because he was creepy?”

  I nodded. “Then one night, two waitresses invited him to a party.”

  “Now I remember! There was something in the punch.”

  “PCP. The girls had gotten hold of some and wanted to try it out.”

  “They did a science experiment on their friends?”

  “And on themselves. Two people besides Sam had psychotic breaks. They were hospitalized with hallucinations, paranoia. Sam took Amy Evans down to the basement, screwed her, and killed her.”

  “Didn’t anyone see him? No one stopped him? How did he get her to go down there?”