Mary, Mary, Shut the Door

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “Once you uncover the board, you have to guess the puzzle. That’s hard. I have a good memory, but my mom gets the puzzles right. That’s how she wins. She’s really smart. She’s a lawyer.”

  “I’m sure she is, Justin. Since this is just practice, I’m going to look at the puzzle. Maybe I can show you some tricks. Help you beat your mom.”

  “Cool,” he said and clapped his hands.

  I pulled the backing up and looked at it. “You know, Justin, if your memory is good, you might try to uncover the corners first. That puts a frame on the puzzle. It’s a lot easier to figure out from the edges in instead of the middle out.”

  A chill went down my back and out my arms as the picture in my head disappeared and a great white shape rushed to breach into recognition on the vast empty sea of my mind.

  I stood up, handed Justin the board, and hurried back to the office. Sliding into the chair, I pulled an empty legal pad in front of me and stared at the pictures.

  “Aren’t we going to play anymore?” Justin asked forlornly, from the doorway.

  I looked over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Justin. This is very important. I’ll play with you when I’m done. I promise. Okay?”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes. I promise, Justin.”

  He stood there trying to decide the worth of my word, weighing it against the collection of promises he already held. He turned and walked away. I heard the shingles spill onto the wooden floor.

  His mother appeared in the doorway. “What happened? He just ran into his room. Dinner’s on.”

  “I’m sorry. I was playing with him when I got this idea about Munsey and the murders. I bolted over here to try it out and I told him I couldn’t play with him now. I’ll just scoop this stuff up and take it back to my place. Let you and him get on with dinner.”

  She came towards me. “Do you have something?”

  “No, no. I have an idea. I need to try it out. It’s probably nothing. I really need to get on it while it’s fresh, before I lose it.” I started to take the pictures down.

  “No, no,” she said, palms up in retreat. “Stay here. I’ll close the door. We’ll be quiet. Do what you have to. We don’t have any time to spare. If you’ve got an idea, run with it. Do you want any food?”

  “No, thank you. How about a cup of coffee? You might want to put on a pot. This could take awhile.”

  “Sure. Coming right up.” She shook her fists in excitement and disappeared.

  I wondered if this scene had been played out before, with her husband. The disappointed child, the abandoned dinner, work demands taking priority. Eventually sliding from a separation that was impromptu and random to one that was formalized and permanent.

  I didn’t need food. I was burning up excitement as fuel, the same excitement I felt every time I had panned golden nuggets of meaning out of the onrushing blur of life. So far, that had turned out to be the one enduring passion of my life.

  I drew diagrams and schematics, scribbled translations and made lists and erased them all. The hours wore on. The refills of coffee told me so. The trash can filled, then overflowed. I kept drawing and writing. Eventually, the tide of erasures receded and I was left with a single page of work. The clock said two a.m. when Monica knocked on the doorframe.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Gone as far as I can. I’m done.”

  “Want something to eat?”

  “No, thanks. I’m caffeinated to the eyeballs. I can’t eat when I’m wired like this.”

  She slid down along the wall until she sat cross-legged on the floor. She sipped from a steamy mug. “So?” she said, dipping her head in anticipation, her eyes as somber as her son’s had been.

  I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes for a minute, put the glasses back on, and turned to the pictures.

  “I was playing that game with Justin and telling him how frames help solve puzzles, when it occurred to me. There were frames on these murder scenes. See here.” I pointed to the bloodstains around each body. “They aren’t from the victims. Ermentraut’s notes say that, or I think they do. They’re unnecessary to the scene. There’s plenty of blood all over the place from the head injuries. Why the frame? What does a frame do?”

  Monica shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never actually been at a crime scene.”

  “A frame tells you what the field of information is. What’s inside is important, what’s outside is not. Serial killers don’t frame their work. They know what’s important. They arrange it just so. They remove what’s irrelevant. When it’s just right, when it’s satisfying, they stop. That’s the ‘art,’ if you want, in the composition.

  “If Schuster’s right, then this is Earl Munsey’s ritual reenactment of his shame, changed to include his fantasized torture and rape and revenge. Very satisfying. This is a scene by Earl for Earl. There’s no need for a frame. Suppose, just suppose, this isn’t a construction for the killer’s own use, own pleasure. Who is it for? It’s a construction. There’s no question about that. He brought the bodies, the weapons, the blood, the props. Who’s going to see this? The police. It’s a message to them. They need a frame. They have ignorant eyes. They don’t know what to attend to, what to ignore. He’s helping us poor dumb bastards along. He’s jumping up and down, waving his arms, saying Here I am, here I am.”

  “Did you figure out the messages?” A tentative, hopeful smile emerged across her narrow oval face.

  “I think so.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Bear with me. I have to explain this step by step. The logic seemed inescapable to me when I was doing it. But delusions can be quite logical, too. You have to understand it and believe it. If I can’t convince you, you can’t convince anyone else.

  “The typical way of interpreting a crime scene for clues to the killer’s personality is actuarial and symbolic. What do most serial killers have in common? What are the significant correlates? What needs do certain acts satisfy? For example, why mutilate the face? Why take souvenirs? And so on. We’re talking about translating their hidden, obscure inner language because they’re talking to themselves, not us.

  “Suppose this guy is talking to us. He speaks our language. How do we read? Left to right. Top to bottom. So I looked at what was inside the frames. Here is Joleen Pennybacker.”

  I picked up the photo and used my hands to frame her body. “Left to right: furs, body, potpourri. Top to bottom: perfume, bloody stick. Gibberish, right? That’s what I’ve been doing all night. Trying every different category that might describe each element, trying to make sentences out of them.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do they say?”

  “First, there are rules to the messages. All languages have grammar and syntax. Ignore the bodies. They’re irrelevant, zeros, place-holders. Without them there is no crime scene. No crime. He killed these women as bait. To draw us in as an audience. That’s why there’s no penetration. His driving need isn’t sexual, it’s narcissism. He demonstrates his power by leaving an abundance of clues that nobody gets. He’s diddling us, not them. He’s been laughing at us for two years now.”

  “Those poor women. You’re saying he killed them just to show us how smart he is, that he could get away with it. This is incredible.” She shuddered.

  “Don’t say that. It has to be credible. Otherwise Earl Munsey fries for this. His eyes explode, his blood boils, his hair bursts into flame. And this bastard laughs all the way to hell.

  “This is Joleen Pennybacker. Furs; thyme, not potpourri. It was all dried thyme; scents, not perfumes. The murder weapon, a blood-covered stick, a red stick. Furs, thyme, scents, red stick. First time since Red-stick. He’s announcing his appearance. He’s telling us where he came from. I did this one and I said, Triplett, you’re crazy. You’ve tortured the data beyond recognition. You’re the infinite number of monkeys. Voila! Random hammering on the keys and we get Hamlet. Once, perhaps. What if they’re all meanin
gful and related? God couldn’t make enough monkeys to pull that off.”

  I picked up the next picture. “This is Martha Dombrowski. Remember, ignore her body. Left to right: can, not food, not beans; look at the T-shirt: University of California, U C is visible, the rest needs a magnifying glass; and meat. Then: a donut and a gun. Can UC meat. Donut a gun. Can you see me? Done it again. Again. Number two. It only makes sense as the second of a series. They either both make sense or neither of them does.”

  I exchanged photos. “Here’s Eleanor Gelman. These coins, I counted them. All pennies. Copper. Coppers. The shirt: University of Richmond, same maker. UR, then a dumbbell. The twenty, that stumped me. Money, greenbacks, dollars, currency, a bill, Bill, his name? It’s Jackson’s face on the bill. See how her thumb is pressed over it. Then her ankles. Tied? Knot? Tube? Hose? Bound.” I stopped to see if she was convinced. She looked like she was trying to suppress a grimace. Her plum-colored lips darkened.

  “Cops, you are dumbbells, Jackson bound. He’s going to Jackson. That’s where his next victims will be found. Some town named Jackson.”

  I leaned back. Monica looked into her cup. No help there.

  “I know: A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Perhaps, but I know one thing for certain. A demonstrable scientific fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If I’m right, Earl Munsey couldn’t have killed those women.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s dyslexic, and he has a sequencing disorder. He reverses letters and words. He couldn’t put a rebus together.”

  “A rebus?”

  “That’s what I think they are. It’s a kind of puzzle where images stand for the syllables of words.

  “We’re halfway home. If I’m right, then Earl Munsey is indeed innocent. Now we have to prove that I’m right. But that’s for tomorrow,” I looked at the clock, “or later, whichever comes first.”

  “You can crash here if you want. I made up the bed in the guest room.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Besides, wouldn’t that get you in hot water with your ex? Most custody orders forbid overnight guests of the opposite sex.”

  “Yeah, well, John isn’t in any position to dictate terms to me. Not with him out every night being true to his new gay identity. I may have been just a treatment plan for John when we were married, but I’m a whole lot more trouble now.” She nodded, agreeing with herself.

  I remembered why I quit doing custody work and switched to criminal. Too much violence in the custody work.

  “I just think it’d be confusing for Justin to find me here when he wakes up. Tell him I haven’t forgotten my promise. I’ll play with him next time I’m over.” I wondered if she’d remember to do that. If not, I’d call him myself. If you couldn’t keep your word to a child your priorities were in serious disarray.

  I put my work in the file, took my mug to the kitchen pass-through, and wished Monica good night.

  “Thank you for everything. Even if you can’t prove your theory, I appreciate how hard you’ve worked, and I’ll tell Earl you did all you could. But I have faith in you. If it’s there, you’ll find it, that’s what Paul Talaverde said about you.”

  “Yeah, well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I’ll call you when I know something.” I waved and turned down the steps.

  “Good night, Dr. Triplett. And good luck.”

  She was still outlined in the doorway, her head resting against the frame, when I drove away.

  The first thing I did the next day was call Ermentraut. He was in court, so I left a message. Then I tried Bigelow.

  “Homicide, Detective Bigelow.”

  “Detective, this is Dr. Ransom Triplett. I wonder if I could have a couple of minutes of your time.”

  “Couple of minutes, sure. What about?”

  “Earl Munsey.”

  “Oh Christ. Are you one of those bleeding hearts that thinks we shouldn’t execute this bastard? Let me tell you something. I was there. At the scene. At the morgue. I saw what he did. I’ll sleep like a baby the day they serve him up the juice of justice. Goodbye …”

  “Whoa, whoa, just a second, please. This is not about whether he should be executed. I’ve been going over the file as a consultant to his attorney. Personally, I think you guys have the right man.”

  “Damn straight we do. And another thing, that confession was pristine. Clean all through. We never touched him. We read him his rights. What were we supposed to do? Talk him out of it? Oh no, Mr. Munsey, that would be unwise, here, let us call a lawyer for you. Why don’t we just stop trying to catch anybody? He freaking confessed. What do these people want?”

  “Well, detective, I just want to ask you a couple of small questions, so I can explain them to his attorney. It just might put this whole thing to rest.”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “The things that were around the body. That Munsey planted at the scene …”

  “You mean like the gun, the tubing, that stuff?”

  “Yeah. Did any of that lead anywhere?”

  “No. The stuff at the first scene came from the model home. Except the herbs that he spilled. We took his picture to local groceries. Nothing. The food was from the owners. The gun was a Saturday-night special, cold, no serial numbers. We hit all the gun shops, the known dealers. No one could ID Munsey. Same thing for the tubing, the dumbbell. He could have gotten them anywhere. Yard sales—hell, he could have stolen them out of a garage. None of that stuff went anywhere.”

  “Last question. The blood spatters on the floor. Detective Ermentraut’s notes aren’t clear. The blood spatters at the scenes aren’t the victims’. Whose were they?”

  “Uh, let me remember. I think it was victim number one’s blood at the second scene and number two’s at the next one. Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Could you tell me the victims’ blood types?”

  “Yeah, hold on. We pulled that jacket on account of people like you. This one is not gonna get away.”

  I doodled on my pad. Zeros, large ones, small ones. Then I linked them. All the little naughts going nowhere. Earl Munsey was moving slowly, inexorably towards eternity.

  “Okay. Here’s the lab report. You want the DNA markers and everything, or just the type?”

  “Blood type is fine.”

  “Girl number one was O positive. Girl number two was AB. Girl number three was B positive. No, that’s the stains. The girls were AB, B positive, and A.”

  “You ever find the third girl’s blood?”

  “No. He must have stashed it somewhere. We figure he’d have used it at the next scene. But then there wasn’t a next scene.”

  “Thanks, detective.”

  “No problem. Six days and it won’t matter anymore.”

  “Yeah,” I said and hung up. Unless you’re wrong. Then six days from now it’ll matter forever.

  I spent the next two days pursuing my theory without any success, although my geographical knowledge was enormously enriched. I learned that there were eighteen Jacksons in the United States, strung from California to New Jersey and from Minnesota to Louisiana. Almost all were small towns with few homicides and not one that looked at all like my rebus killer.

  Then I tried Red Stick. Make no mistake about it. There is not one Redstick, U.S.A. There are six Red Oaks and five Redwoods and I called them all. No murders at all like mine.

  I sat on the porch, watching one of Earl Munsey’s last four sunsets. A gin and tonic slowly diluted on the table next to me. I had nothing. A theory that tortured me with its plausibility, that I refused to accept as a statistical chimera, a product of just enough monkeys scribbling associations to three pictures. Maybe it was data rape, me forcing myself all over the pictures. They yielded up a facsimile of meaning, enough to get me to roll off, grunting in satisfaction, while they lay there, mute in the darkness, their secrets still unknown.

  Well, it hadn’t been good for me, either. We were running out of time
and I had no ideas, bright or otherwise. The phone rang.

  “Dr. Triplett. This is Monica Chao. I was wondering how you were doing. We’re running out of time.”

  “I know. How am I doing? Not well at all. I’ve called every Jackson, every Redwood, every Red Oak in the country. Nothing. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe it’s all a mirage, an illusion. They aren’t rebuses at all. The fact that I’ve created these sentences is a monument to human inventiveness in the face of complexity and ambiguity. Or I’m right. They are rebuses and I’m just not good enough to translate them correctly. Maybe we need more monkeys. I don’t know. Whoever the killer is, he and I don’t seem to speak the same language.”

  I forgot all about Monica. I felt an avalanche slowing, turning on itself, turning into a kaleidoscope, slowing further, settling, stopping, halted. The pattern blazed through my mind. I began to laugh, a cleansing cackle of satisfaction. Had I seen the truth or only applied even finer filigree to my delusion? One call would tell all. I heard someone calling my name in the distance.

  “Monica, I have to go. I’ll call you right back. I think I’ve solved it. I hope I have.”

  I dialed the operator, got the area code I wanted, and then dialed information for the police department’s central phone number. I was shuttled through departments toward Homicide.

  A voice answered, “Thibault.”

  “Baton Rouge Homicide?” I said, savoring each syllable.

  “Yeah. Who is this?”

  I gave my name. “Detective Thibault, I’m working on a case here in Virginia. A man’s going to be executed in four days for a series of murders up here. Some last-minute evidence has emerged that may link him to murders elsewhere. Baton Rouge in particular. If so, they would have been at least three years ago. Were you in Homicide then?”

  “Doctor, I investigated Cain. I’ve been twenty-seven years in Homicide in this city. There ain’t hardly a murder here I don’t know something about, but they’re also startin’ to run together. I’m due to retire end of the year. I hope this one had a flourish, or four days won’t do it.”

  “Our killer,” I said, glad to relinquish ownership, “had an unusual MO. He only killed women and then he placed the bodies in conspicuous locations, where they were sure to be found.”