The Last Blue Plate Special

by Abigail Padgett

I noticed that her eyelids kept slipping downward, but she didn’t go back to bed.

  “I’m outta here,” Rox said, taking a lidded car-cup of coffee with her. “You’ll have your stuff to me by ten-thirty?”

  “No problem.”

  The second Roxie’s car started, Brontë stood and trotted straight back to bed. I wished I could, too.

  Three hours later I still wished I could. Entering the texts of fifty-three newspaper article headers into my computer had given me a headache. But it had to be done manually since the little clips had been pasted all over the page in every direction and the computer program wouldn’t be able to read the words from a scanned image.

  What I found was nothing.

  Sword of Heaven had no preference for any particular word or phrase in the article headers pasted on the letter. Certain verbs did show up forty-eight percent more often than would occur in the normal speech of a native American-English speaker with a high school education. But these were the “elocutionary” verbs journalists use to describe the speech of politicians. In newspapers public servants never “say” anything, but rather urge, call, issue, demand, and weigh. In dicey situations they may also answer, evade, dodge, or deny. I had just spent hours proving the existence of a linguistic usage pattern everybody knows and accepts without thinking about it. Only its absence would get attention. Something like, “Republican Leaders Clutch Funding Opportunity.” Everybody knows the right word is “seize.”

  Sword, it seemed, had just cut out article headers randomly and stuck them on a page. Except, as every social psychologist will tell you, the behavior of an individual cannot be random. Never. Randomness is a mathematical concept, not a human one. People are programmed by species evolution and their own experiences to perform every act as a result of acts which have gone before it. Put simply, if there is no causal history to a behavior, if we haven’t inherited it or learned how it’s done, we can’t perform the behavior because we can’t think it. If we perform a behavior, it has an evolutionary or acquired cause. It is the result of something and is therefore not random.

  After feeding Brontë I successfully negotiated the sock-and-shoe sequence and then took her out for a run. The desert was in morning neutral, nothing much going on. Instead of heading toward Coyote Creek I went south through Henderson Canyon toward the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. The terrain in that direction is monotonous, just an expanse of snakeweed and creosote bushes. I didn’t want to be distracted.

  “The choices of clippings made by the author of this letter cannot be random,” I lectured Brontë, who was watching a quail as it dashed between two rocks. “They look random, but they’re not. What is it that I’m missing?”

  The quail reappeared above the second rock and said, “Chicago,” which is the only thing California quails say. There’s another species, the scaled quail, that lives in states east of here and says “Pecos.” I wondered why the calls of both species of quail should seem to replicate American place names. I don’t believe in coincidence. Neither do I believe in attaching too much significance to these things.

  “Chicago!” called the quail again, its black-feather topknot looking oddly Mayan against the pale blue sky.

  I wondered what possible evolutionary function was served by quails’ topknots. They seemed merely decorative, like plumes on hats Dorothy Parker might have worn to lunch at the Algonquin in 1926. That’s when it hit me.

  “Mary Harriet Grossinger and Dixie Ross were women!” I yelled to Brontë. “Come on, we’re going back!”

  It was the quail’s topknot and the notion of hats, of fashion, that did it. Women politicians are subject to a type of scrutiny by the media that would be ludicrous if applied to their male counterparts. Imagine an article headed, “Port Commissioner Brad Thompson Opts for Black Velvet Cummerbund at Gala.”

  Back at my computer I went to the San Diego Union-Tribunearchives, which are complete for the previous year. The analysis had to be e-mailed to Rox in two hours. I had no time to read all hundred and seventy-three article headers referencing Mary Harriet Grossinger or Dixie Ross. This is where the concept of statistical randomness becomes useful. A random sampling of data makes it possible to draw conclusions about that data based on a very small number. I wanted to know about the article headers Sword hadn’t selected to paste on the letter, and about the likelihood of those chosen being chosen by chance rather than design.

  In the back of Blalock’s Social Statistics are tables of random numbers. I picked a set of twenty-five and assigned them to the hundred and seventy-three articles, got twenty-five randomly, then fed the data into the same word-frequency program I’d used earlier. In minutes I knew that roughly fourteen percent of the articles printed last year about these two women politicians referenced clothing, hairstyles, and personal domestic routines. My favorite was “Senator Grossinger Changes Diaper on Road,” an article about Grossinger having taken a grandchild with her on a trip to inspect irrigation ditches.

  If Sword were choosing headers randomly from all available articles, then fourteen percent would involve references to traditional female interests because fourteen percent of all the articles did so. Fashion, cooking, cleaning, babies. Another analysis of the letter revealed no such references. None. This could not happen by chance, so I assumed the traditional female stuff had been excluded deliberately. Sword had told us that these women had to die because they were trying to be like men, and then pasted examples of their authoritarian pronouncements all over the letter in case somebody missed the point. Changing diapers was okay. Women were supposed to do that. But heading land use committees wasn’t. Women who did that had to die.

  I was running out of time, and had yet to address the big question. Was Sword more likely to be male or female? I was leaning toward male, but a mistake at this juncture would mislead the whole investigation. Sword might be a rotten speller, but he or she wasn’t stupid. If things were as bad as they seemed to be, Sword had already managed to kill two people and endanger a third without leaving a trace. If the killing were to stop now, the odds against apprehension would be very high. But Sword wasn’t going to stop now. I didn’t need a computer program to tell me that.

  “Women are more likely to poison than men,” I told Brontë. “But men are much more likely than women to demand acknowledgment for their accomplishments, including murder.”

  With her nose my dog nudged a yellow rubber ball toward my feet and smiled. I kicked it across the carpet with my foot and watched her run into a wall chasing it. Brontë has never grasped the constraints involved in chasing balls indoors. So I took the ball outdoors and threw it as far as I could fifteen times, making my Dobie’s day. While throwing, I pondered the gender issue.

  Social psychologists are supposed to be able to determine gender on the basis of very little data, but I didn’t feel comfortable assigning sex to Sword. Not yet. Anybody intelligent enough to pull off the crimes suggested in the letter to the police and the Bugs Bunny tape might be intelligent enough to be misleading as to his/her sex. Already there were confusing markers. An “internal” kill method suggesting a female killer, and demands for attention suggesting a male.

  Inside again, I looked at Rathbone’s fax of the Bugs Bunny tape text. More biblical-sounding language. “Abomination.” “Cast her down and killed her.” There wasn’t time to run more linguistic analyses, and they wouldn’t have told me anything dad already hadn’t. Sword was no stranger to violent and judgmental passages in the Bible and identified with them. Moreover, he or she was troubled by women in positions of authority, but not women in traditional roles.

  Sword’s choice of pseudonym was clearly phallic, which could be misleading. Research into the psychology of aliases and pseudonyms suggests that people often choose names reflecting qualities they lack or dimensions of themselves they believe others do not see. It is telling that the most common surname alias used by English-speaking prostitutes is “White.” Sword could be a man conflicted about what a man is
supposed to be, or a woman who sees herself as more like a man.

  I documented my conclusions, arguing that Sword’s gender would have to remain open pending further information. “The subject is most likely to be a white male between twenty-five and forty,” I wrote, “based on the pattern of killing or claiming credit for killing female Caucasian victims who do not conform to typical profiles for victims of female killers. That is, the victims are not children nor are they elderly or in any way disabled. However, the subject is intelligent and resourceful, perhaps sufficiently so that s/he is able to mask gender. Subject’s need for attention from police and media, as suggested by the letter and tape, also suggest that subject is male. On the other hand, the presumed method of killing (introducing substance into body of victim) is typically female.

  “My preliminary assessment is that the subject is either deliberately masking psychological features reflecting gender or is deeply conflicted personally over gender issues. In either sex, look for overcompensating behaviors. In both look for extreme and punitive religious beliefs. Suspect either is or has been associated with a religious context which stresses rigid sex roles and violent punishment.”

  I typed out another three pages of advice for the police, including warnings that victims were chosen from a population of women in positions of authority. I mentioned that newspaper coverage of these public figures might be a trigger to further attempts. Then I e-mailed my report to Roxie and called her at her office. It was precisely ten-thirty.

  “Just e-mailed it,” I told her. “What have you come up with so far?”

  “Oh, just the obvious. High IQ, poor early schooling or else a learning disorder. Sword speaks well, but can’t spell, may have had some negative experiences as a child due to difficulties with reading and writing skills. Doubt that there was ever a serious psychiatric disorder. This is psychological, not psychiatric. Rigidly controlled personality finally blows. God knows what the trigger was, but the murders were extremely well planned, if indeed they were murders. We still don’t know that, Blue, although it seems likely. There are too many noncoincidental factors.”

  “What did you do about which sex this is?” I had to ask.

  “Look for male, but don’t rule out promising female suspects. Tidy, clean-cut person who’s probably married or living with a mate. Financially secure, drives a fairly new car, is regarded as quiet and personable by neighbors and friends. May have a violent hobby of some kind.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that, too,” I said. “But how do you know about the car ?”

  “It’s in the Holmes typology on ‘organized’ serial killers. I just threw it in.”

  “What did you do with the biblical language factor?”

  “Same stuff your dad came up with, put in psychiatric terms.”

  I sighed. “We really don’t have much, do we?”

  “More than you think,” Roxie answered. “It’s just that there isn’t enough time to use it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I could hear her inhaling deeply and then whistling softly between her teeth.

  “Sword will decompensate now, quickly, begin to fall apart. This person has probably kept a lid on very confused and violent feelings for a long time. Then something triggered those feelings, something intolerable. Sword had to act out and had to advertise the reasoning behind it. But our subject knows right from wrong and the conflict between that knowledge and the need to justify some personal confusion through killing will produce intolerable stress. There may be additional deaths in an attempt to reduce the stress, but they’ll only produce more. The subject may commit suicide as the only way to stop the stress. That could happen at any time, and unless evidence is left behind, nobody will ever know that the subject has killed. I don’t have a good feeling about this thing, Blue. It’s weird.”

  We talked for a while, agreed to meet in town later for dinner, and then I’d watch Rox rehearse her country and western dance team. Brontë and I would sleep at her place. The wages of our deep commitment to nonenmeshment.

  The phone was ringing when I hung up. Rathbone.

  “We need somebody at Emerald’s revival this afternoon,” he said. “Can you do it?”

  “Sure, but what am I there for?” I answered.

  “Just get a feel for the thing. See if this might be where our boy got his Sword of Heaven ideas.”

  “How do you know it’s a boy?” I asked. “Neither Rox nor I are sure about that from the available data.”

  “It’s always a boy,” Rathbone stated flatly. “Women just don’t do this kind of crime.”

  Then I phoned to check on BB, who said the radical preacher had been called to a deathbed, so they’d had to cancel their plans for the gospel concert. He’d be happy to go with me to Ruby Emerald’s revival, he said. He hadn’t been to one since the summers he spent visiting relatives in Mississippi. We agreed to meet in the parking lot of a college stadium Ruby Emerald had leased for her event.

  I went into my bedroom to search for whatever you wear to a revival. With my cropped hair, in sandals, black knit dress, and beige linen jacket, I looked too liberal. Roxie and I would pick me for a jury trying a death penalty case in a minute. The addition of a straw bowler with a flowered scarf tied around the crown helped. Now I looked like a liberal who ties scarves to hats. It would have to do.

  6

  A Green Paper

  I had a few hours before meeting BB, so after I drove over the mountains and down into San Diego I went by Kate Van Der Elst’s campaign headquarters to check in. Pieter Van Der Elst was overseeing four volunteers preparing a mailer as Kate talked on a phone at the back of the room. I noticed that Pieter had moved a Formica-topped desk near the door of the storefront so that anyone entering would immediately be seen by whoever was sitting there. At the moment, he was. And he seemed nervous.

  “Just a small security precaution,” he said, gesturing to the desk with both hands. “I’ve been in contact with Detective Rathbone and I know about the letter threatening Grossinger and Ross. He’s told me that you and Dr. Bouchie are working on some kind of profile for the police. Blue,” he asked, lowering his voice, “do you think Kate is in any danger? If she is I want her to drop out of the campaign immediately. I’m asking for your professional opinion. Is there really a killer stalking these women, or just some sick person trying to make everybody think there is?”

  I’d come to know both Kate and Pieter fairly well while working on her campaign for city council and liked them both. In addition to his European manners, Pieter is a listener. He takes people seriously; he pays attention. I would do him the honor of returning the courtesy.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “There is enough evidence at this point to justify concern.”

  “Tell me more, Blue. What’s going on? We heard that Dixie Ross died of a cerebral hemorrhage as did Senator Grossinger, and that a letter threatening these deaths was sent to the police weeks ago. How could someone commit murder without even being present? Is there some kind of poison that does this? And why ?”

  He was wearing a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a silk tie I knew cost at least as much as the four new radial tires on my truck. Yet he had a saintly aura that always makes me think of monks. It wasn’t just the tonsured look of his prematurely white hair or those powder-blue eyes. It was a sense that it would never occur to Pieter Van Der Elst to hurt anything, that he was incapable of deliberate harm. He could play St. Francis of Assisi without changing clothes and seem completely in character. I wondered about the differences between Pieter and whatever called itself Sword of Heaven.

  “So far the victim profile is women in positions of authority, positions formerly reserved for men,” I told him. “These may be selected from coverage in the newspaper.”

  “Kate’s in the paper all the time,” Pieter said, his eyes scanning the street beyond a plate glass window. “The election is only a few weeks away. Of course the papers are covering all the c
andidates. And more than a fourth of them are women!”

  “There’s no way to tell if the killer regards the city council as a bastion of male power being taken over by women,” I told him. “There’s no way to predict much of anything yet, except, Pieter …” I made a fist and stared at my knuckles before finishing what I’d started to say.

  “Yes?”

  “It isn’t over. There’s very likely to be another … incident.”

  Color was rising in his pale cheeks.

  “Another death, you mean. Blue, how can this be happening? I’m going to ask Kate to withdraw from the race. Dixie Ross died on her way to Kate’s fundraiser, and both of them knew Mary Harriet Grossinger. There are too many connections. It’s not worth the risk.”

  Kate had terminated her phone call and now stood behind her husband.

  “Hello, Blue,” she said, a thoughtful smile emphasizing the attractive contours of her face. “I suppose Pieter has told you he wants me to withdraw from the race two weeks before election day?”

  I never know what to do with declarative statements pronounced as questions, so I merely smiled at a point just behind her head. Kate went on to answer the next question, which nobody had asked.

  “It’s out of the question, of course,” she said. “And I love your outfit, Blue. Where did you find that hat?”

  Real question.

  “At a thrift store in Palm Springs. I’m going to a revival. Undercover, sort of.”

  It was clear that neither Kate nor Pieter had ever met a person who went to revivals. Or else they’d never met anyone who bought hats at thrift stores. Both faces went blank for the same fraction of a second, and then both said, “Really!” in unison. I assumed it was the revival thing that had brought them up short and decided to tell them what Rathbone apparently hadn’t.

  “A revivalist named Ruby Emerald was taken to a hospital with symptoms which might be the result of high blood pressure last night,” I began. “Shortly after the news of her illness was aired on television, an audiotape was delivered to the local CBS affiliate. On the tape was a mechanically altered voice claiming to be the Sword of Heaven and claiming to have killed Emerald because she was an ‘abomination,’ although in fact she didn’t die. I’m going to her revival this afternoon to get a sense of whether she may have any connection to Sword.”