At Rope's End

by Edward Kay

  CHAPTER 10

  Verraday entered the Trabant Café and reflexively checked the clock above the cash register by the front door. Ten o’clock sharp, just as they had arranged. Verraday was precise about being punctual and, without even consciously doing so, took one last look to make sure he wasn’t late. He didn’t demand such a level of fastidiousness from anyone else. It was, he knew, one of his quirks, probably something pounded into him by a grade school teacher whose face he couldn’t even visualize any more, but whose quirk had become his quirk.

  He glanced around the room and saw that Maclean was already there. She had taken up a position at a table at the very back, in an alcove beneath the stairway to the mezzanine. It was, he noted, a strategic location where she could watch without being watched and speak without being overheard. Maclean had suggested this café. It was just north of the University of Washington campus, near the Neptune Theatre, and was popular with students and artsy types.

  Verraday noted that she was already halfway through the mug of coffee sitting on the table in front of her. He’d had an uneasy night. He had awakened twice, haunted by his thoughts and the images from the files, and had had difficulty dozing off again. He noticed that Maclean looked a little weary too, though she managed a smile that seemed genuinely warm.

  “How you doing?” she asked. “You sleep okay?”

  “Sure, fine,” he lied, stifling a yawn. “How about you?”

  “Oh, you know . . .” she replied.

  “Yeah, me too,” he said at last, appreciating her candor.

  He felt disheveled and marveled at the way Maclean managed to look well put together despite what seemed to be routine twelve-hour days.

  “This is an unusual choice of meeting place for a police officer,” said Verraday. “It’s pretty bohemian.”

  “I wasn’t always a cop,” Maclean replied. “I did my undergrad social work studies at U Dub Seattle. I used to get caffeinated here when I was pulling all-nighters.”

  “When were you there?”

  “From 2002 to 2006.”

  “I must have just missed you,” said Verraday, wondering what it would have been like to meet this attractive but somewhat world-weary woman when she was a fresh-faced and probably very idealistic social work student.

  She signaled to the waitress, then they settled down to business.

  “So now that you’ve had some time with the photos and reports, what do you think?” asked Maclean.

  “Well, first of all, that your instincts about Fowler’s suspect were right. Peter Cray didn’t murder Alana Carmichael. I read his rap sheet and the court records on his convictions for rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. They were all committed with about as much forethought as you or I would devote to ordering a pizza. I mean, you wouldn’t want Cray to take your favorite granny to a picnic in a secluded spot, or leave him alone with small children or pets. But in my opinion, your assessment is correct. He didn’t kill Alana Carmichael.”

  “What about the semen stain on her underwear? Fowler is pinning his case on it.”

  “The stain—” he began to reply, then abruptly stopped speaking as, in his peripheral vision, he noticed the waitress coming to take his order. She was in her midtwenties, had a rolling gait, wore heavy kohl eyeliner, and had a Celtic knot tattoo around her left wrist. She looked at him with a flirtatious grin that he would have responded to with more than a polite smile had he not been sitting with another woman and had he not stayed up late the previous evening evaluating crime scene photos of brutally murdered young women who looked very much like this waitress. He ordered a green tea and fell silent until she was out of earshot.

  “The semen stain doesn’t mean that Cray killed her. It just means he had sex with her at some point in the night and was sloppy. Cray is a habitually disorganized criminal, not the sort of person to mastermind a murder. At least not one that he’d get away with.”

  Maclean pursed her lips as she considered the point.

  “But as Lao Tzu said, ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ No?”

  “True,” replied Verraday. “But if Cray did do this, it would have been an extremely rapid progression in his skill level. Like a chimp suddenly learning how to do your tax return. Not that I’d have any objection to that. Cray plays checkers, not chess. The sex assaults he committed were targets of opportunity, people in vulnerable situations that he thought he could take advantage of. Same with his robberies. No planning or due diligence. Ditto the beatings. They were spontaneous and over trivial things—petty drug deals gone bad, perceived slights from acquaintances and strangers. With him, it’s all about impulses. That’s why he gets caught so often. Even the sex with Alana Carmichael shows his lack of self-control.”

  “How so?”

  “The fact that semen was found on her underwear and skin, but not in her vagina is a clear indication. He ejaculated so prematurely that he probably never even penetrated her. As the report says, there was a Handi Wipe with his semen on it found in her apartment. She probably used it to clean herself and missed a few spots. Just like Rachel Friesen, she doesn’t have any defensive wounds. And Cray didn’t have any scratches or cuts on him either. If Cray was stupid enough to leave traces of his semen on someone he was planning to murder, how was he smart enough to manipulate his victim into a bondage situation where she voluntarily gave up her means of defending herself? Plus Alana Carmichael’s body was found in a dumpster five miles from Cray’s home. But he always commits his crimes within blocks of where he lives. It doesn’t add up. He was probably just the last client Alana Carmichael had before she encountered her killer. The Carmichael and Friesen killings were meticulously planned. The perpetrator was an organized offender who didn’t leave any clues. In fact, the only clue he allowed to remain behind was a false clue, to pin it on somebody else.”

  “What’s he like, the real killer?”

  “Probably white male. He’s got that much in common with Cray. Sex killers are usually attracted to members of their own race. It’s not written in stone, but it’s almost always how it is. This guy’s probably not much older than his victims, or he’s a somewhat older person who is into alternative culture and hangs out with people who are mostly younger than he is. The killer probably saw Rachel Friesen and Alana Carmichael while he was cruising those websites. Reading the comments from the ‘fans,’ seeing that other men were turned on by Rachel and Alana, made them more attractive to him as well.”

  “If he’s so attracted to them, then why does he want to kill them?”

  “Because they make him feel inadequate. They’d probably reject him if he wasn’t paying for them. Something in his past makes him feel he’s not good enough. Luring them, taking away their power, makes him feel superior to them. This guy wants to feel cool, but he’s deeply insecure.”

  “What’s his temperament?”

  “He’s filled with rage. Explosive rage. He feels emasculated on some level and sexually inadequate. Serial killers are usually socially stunted. As children, their family situations are unsocial and unstable. Eventually it becomes self-fulfilling. They never learn how to have real relationships, so their lives are mostly fantasy. Fantasies of control over people that they can’t have in real life. And when they can’t control even themselves any more, they act out those fantasies. He’s a fuckup. But that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. The fact that Cray’s DNA was all over Alana Carmichael was a perfect cover for the real killer. I think our perpetrator is highly technical in his approach. For example, he must have had a UV light to check for semen phosphorescence. When he found traces of semen on Alana Carmichael, he left them there so it would throw an investigator, at least a second-rate investigator like Fowler, off the trail.”

  “But how could he know that she would have semen on her?”

  “He couldn’t. Not entirely. But it’s a reasonable assumption if you’re having sex with someone who does it for a living that they might have DNA from other johns on t
hem. From the time of death of both victims—late at night—it wouldn’t even surprise me if the killer purposely arranged to be their last customer of the day so there would be a better chance that there would be DNA contamination on them from other people.”

  “Seems like a long way to go for someone in a rage.”

  “The rage is what drives him, but he controls it until the last moment. He plans these murders like they’re a moon launch. The smart killers always do. The Unabomber collected pubic hairs from public washroom urinals and planted them in his bomb packages to throw off investigators and lead them to other suspects.”

  “I guess it just goes to show that being smart doesn’t mean you can’t be crazy too. What else do we know about the killer?”

  “The Cupid’s arrow that Alana Carmichael wore in the missing persons photo is absent in the postmortem pictures. Plus she had a pierced navel, but there was no jewelry in that location on the body. Same thing with Rachel Friesen. The dream catcher she wore was missing.”

  “Maybe they just got tired of those pieces and took them out in between when the first photos were taken and when they were murdered.”

  “It’s a possibility. But Alana Carmichael liked to make an impression. She hadn’t changed her style of hair, makeup, or clothing, so it’s unlikely that she would suddenly stop wearing jewelry, especially something really attention getting like that arrow. Same with Rachel’s dream catcher. She had only recently gotten it too, so there was probably still a lot of novelty value in it for her. She wouldn’t have wanted to stop wearing it yet. And serial killers almost always take souvenirs from their victim’s bodies. Not only would the Cupid’s arrow have drawn his attention by being the largest item of jewelry on her, but think about the symbolism. What does it say?”

  “It implies that the wearer has some special romantic or sexual power?”

  “Exactly. Just the kind of symbol and statement that would antagonize someone who wanted power, wanted to dominate and subjugate another human. So the killer would have gotten particular satisfaction from taking it from his victim, the same way a scalper gets pleasure from taking a bloody prize from an opponent they’ve defeated in combat. Rachel’s dream catcher was eye catching, and like the arrow, it also implied a certain kind of power.”

  “The power to stop nightmares.”

  “That’s right. If the killer understood its meaning, it would have given him an extra thrill to exert his dominance over it, defying its power and actually becoming the nightmare that Rachel couldn’t control.”

  “What else do the photos tell you?”

  Verraday began to pull a couple of photos out of his briefcase then stopped when he noticed the waitress approaching with his green tea. He noticed her noticing him doing it. He knew that she couldn’t possibly have overheard him. He had been too careful for that. But he realized she was able to intuit that he was pausing because of her, hiding something from her, and it caused her to visibly cool toward him.

  “There you go,” she said, placing his tea on the table, her flirty grin now gone. “I’ll bring the check whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thanks,” Verraday replied awkwardly, marveling at how some people, like this waitress, had invisible social antennae that caused them to read meaning into the smallest gestures, even if they were wrong about it. Hypervigilant, he guessed. Probably the result of an unstable home life with emotionally volatile parents who could explode in anger without warning. Children who grew up in such homes, he had observed, developed amazing abilities to detect nuances of voice and expression, even posture, as survival mechanisms around unpredictable and potentially abusive parents.

  With the waitress out of earshot, he handed two of the crime scene photos to Maclean, one from Alana Carmichael, the other from Rachel Friesen.

  “Take a look. They have identical marks on their lower backs, right along the spine. That’s a no-go zone even for people who like it rough. And there are no defensive wounds on the victims. No cuts on the hands, no scrapes on the knuckles. Not so much as a broken fingernail.”

  “Indicating they were both willing participants?” asked Maclean.

  “Exactly. To a point. BDSM is all about trust, and even in a sex-trade transaction, it’s the submissive partner who’s controlling the action, saying how far things can go.”

  “But you lose the ability to enforce those limits once you’re tied up,” said Maclean. “I’d have to really trust someone to let them make me that vulnerable.”

  “So would I. It’s a social contract between participants. In a sex-trade context though, there’s an additional assumption that if all goes well, there will be lots more work like this for the sub, because the dominant party needs to play out the same scenario every time in order to experience arousal. So quite understandably, Alana Carmichael and Rachel Friesen were expecting that the sex play would only go so far.”

  “A bait-and-switch situation?”

  “That’s right. The killer was particularly insidious, because judging by the absence of marks on the wrists and ankles, he used something comfortable or even sensual like silk to restrain them. The tactile pleasure of the restraints probably lulled the victims into a false sense of security, into thinking that this guy wasn’t a threat, that he was gentler than someone who was into handcuffs, for example. For this guy, it’s all part of a buildup.”

  “Sounds like deception is his foreplay.”

  “Nicely put, Detective. That’s very perceptive of you.”

  “When you’re a woman, you get to know these things. The guy with the wedding band in his wallet or the girlfriend he somehow forgot to mention. Fortunately, not everyone of the male persuasion is like that.”

  “Or the female persuasion,” added Verraday. “But as for our killer, there are very few ways in which he doesn’t deceive his victims. This guy is either wealthy enough to hire high-end escorts and dangle out the possibility of a long-term client relationship with them, or he’s able to create the illusion that he’s got the money. His aura of wealth and status would play on a woman’s instinctive desire to find a partner who can provide her with financial security.”

  “Wait, are you saying that all women are looking for a man to make them financially secure?”

  “No, not all women, of course. But our victims were both in situations that made them financially dependent, so it would have exaggerated that innate behavior.”

  “‘Innate behavior?’ Look, lots of women earn their own money, and they’re not going to throw themselves on some guy just for a little financial security.”

  “With all due respect, they still do. Have you ever heard of the study done at Syracuse University?” asked Verraday.

  “No, what was it?”

  “They showed two groups of high-status women—women who had made their own money—pictures of the same man. In one picture he’s wearing an expensive suit and a Rolex. In another the same guy is wearing a Burger King uniform. Guess which version of the same man the women rated as more attractive and desirable?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” retorted Maclean, “and all I have to say is that instead of dressing the guy up in something polyester that smells like a grease trap, maybe he should have worn a UPS summer-issue delivery uniform instead. You know, the one with those little shorts?”

  Verraday smiled. “Point taken. But the fact remains that the women consistently chose the photo of the high-status male over the low-status male as potential partner material.”

  “Yes,” Maclean shot back, “because it was a photo. The women were only allowed to make their decision based on visual appearances. Let me guess. The person who created the study was a man?”

  Verraday nodded.

  “Want to know how I knew?” Maclean asked.

  “I’d very much like to hear it.”

  “Because a woman would never create a study of sexual attractiveness based only on visual appearance. Visuals are totally a guy thing. If a woman had made that study, the choices would have been bet
ween a man who comes home and asks you what the best and worst parts of your day were, versus some self-absorbed asshole in Armani who flops down on the sofa in front of the game and forgets that you even exist.”

  “And this guy who asks you about your day—ideally, would he be wearing the UPS summer uniform with the short-shorts?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I’m getting the feeling this is an argument that I can’t win,” said Verraday.

  “Well, that’s very perceptive of you, Professor.”

  He could tell from Maclean’s faint smile that she wasn’t genuinely angry, but neither would she ever back down without a fight.

  “You’re right about men being more visual,” said Verraday, “I hadn’t considered that. I’ll have to rethink that study.”

  Maclean smiled. “Thank you.”

  “All I was trying to say about our killer,” continued Verraday, “is that he plays on his victims’ needs. Even if he doesn’t know their backstories, he can sense their wants, their insecurities. And he would play to those needs. And the more it worked for him, the more excited he would become. He would have gotten more and more aroused as he duped his victims into putting themselves in a vulnerable situation where he could then totally dominate them. That sense of fooling them would have continued even as he began to flail them with the belt. The early stages wouldn’t have alarmed the victims. They likely even moaned with pleasure, or pretended to, when he was hitting them relatively lightly. That would have aroused him even more, knowing they had no idea what was coming next. Then when it got to be too rough, they would have begun to protest. That’s the part that would really get him off. That they’d tell him to stop, but he could ignore them. He would have savored beating them and humiliating them, showing his power over them.”