by John Flynn
Kate shifted her position on the bed, and reached up to adjust the lamp sitting on the table next to her. She felt as if she had been reading for a long while, but she did not feel tired despite the lateness of the hour. She found the material enlightening, but she still didn’t feel as if she had a handle on Monroe yet. He definitely fit the role of the dominant male, but there was a power there, a lifeforce that commanded respect, that was still beyond her grasp. She turned to the next page, and continued reading:
In addition to the deep level of trust that develops in BDSM relationships, the capacity for extreme emotional attachment is also much stronger and deeper. This emotional attachment between the Dom and the sub occurs because of the complete lack of barriers, both physical and mental. The two individuals share a bond that transcends most conventional relationships due, in large part, to the level of emotion that seems to go so much deeper. Both share a heightened sense of empathy for the other, and he or she can sense when the other partner is experiencing sadness or pain that is totally unrelated to the relationship.
This emotional link deepens the sense of attachment. They form an extreme bond that defines their relationship in extreme terms. Their relationship with the outside world creates an “us versus them” dynamic which, in turn, reinforces the emotional need to stay together. In certain instances, partners in very stable and healthy relationships may go to extremes to protect their partner if they fear their relationship is threatened in any way.
Kate continued to absorb everything that she was reading, as she continued turning the pages. She kept wondering what was there about John Monroe that made him somehow different from other men. She just could not figure it out, and hoped she would find her answer . . .
In spite of the social taboos often associated with the lifestyle, engaging in some form of BDSM does not suggest psychological or emotional problems. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, better known as the DSM-IV, considers only sadomasochism as a paraphilia, but the manual as published by the American Psychiatric Association has long been out of date and needing serious revision. As long as the adults are consenting, acting out fetishes remains a normal response to sexual desire.
People who are involved in the BDSM lifestyle are normal people from many walks of life. They include college students and teachers, doctors, attorneys, systems analysts, artists, administrative assistants, firemen, bankers, politicians, tax collectors and police detectives. Not only are BDSM lifestylers from all walks of life, but also from all geographic locations, from New York to San Francisco and from Miami to Seattle. They are drawn to the lifestyle for many different reasons, but all would agree that BDSM is more than just a hobby or diversion. To them, BDSM is a way of life.
After she finished reading the last page, she closed the book, and placed it on her nightstand. The photograph of John P. Monroe on the back cover seemed to sneer at her with the same look that he had given her in the adult bookstore. A look that seemed to haunt her very soul. She could not help but feel that there was something in his face that troubled her. Perhaps his face was the face of their killer? She had hoped the book would provide her with answers to the thousands of questions that she had about him, but instead it had only served to torment her with dozens of other questions . . . questions without clear-cut answers.
She reached for her cordless telephone, and dialed her partner’s number.
“Miller, I’m sorry for waking you,” she said into the receiver, “but I’ve just read something that may break this case wide open.”
“Goddammit!” he shouted in her ear. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Kate glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. Monroe’s book was obscuring the last two digits. “About 3:20 to 3:25.”
“Try 3:55.”
“I’m really sorry, Frank,” she said. “I’ve been up all night reading. I just lost track of time.”
Miller was silent on the other end of the line.
“Do you remember that guy at the first bookstore?”
“Who? Carl? That guy behind the counter?” he replied, in a scratchy voice.
“No,” Kate corrected him. “You know, the one I told you about.”
“Not exactly, but if it will help you get to your point . . .”
“Monroe,” she repeated into the phone, cutting her partner off. Kate took a couple of deep breaths, then continued, “His name is John Monroe. He was the guy I met in the bookstore today. Our good buddy Carl pretended not to recognize him, or maybe he was just too stoned out of his head to see him. But he was the guy all right. He wrote this book about S&M.”
“All right, Kate. I know who you’re talking about.”
“Well, I’ve been reading his book, and damned if he doesn’t describe the details of our last crime scene as if he had been there.”
“How did you get a copy of his book?” he asked flatly.
Now she was the silent one as she knew how he was going to respond to her answer even before she said it. Finally, she replied, “He dropped off a copy at my apartment earlier this evening.”
“Dawson . . .”
“I know how this sounds, Frank.”
At first, he didn’t say anything. Then, with a sigh, he asked, “What do you know about him?”
“Not much.” She pulled the book from her nightstand, and thumbed to the last page. “According to the author’s biography at the back of the book, Monroe was born in Chicago in 1966, which makes him about forty-four years old. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Berkeley in 1989 with an MA in English and a Ph.D. in Psychology. And now, he teaches courses in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of San Francisco.”
“C’mon, Kate. He’s no serial killer. Just some guy fuckin’ with your head.”
“No, really. He’s the one,” she insisted. “In his book, Monroe writes about this one scenario in which a female victim is shackled, gagged and then beaten with a whip until she’s nearly dead.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Miller said. “We already know these people do really freaky stuff.”
“But what if there’s a motive?”
“Motive?”
“Yeah, just listen to this.” Kate balanced the telephone on her shoulder, while she thumbed back in the book to an early chapter. Once she found the section, she read, “Collared slaves have responsibilities and duties of servitude that vary from the moderate to the most extreme. For those who first surrender their personal autonomy to a ‘master’ or a ‘mistress,’ the exchange of power is just the beginning of a lifelong negotiation of service with the dominant person. The submissive enjoys taking orders, and will endure anything, including extreme pain, humiliation, and degradation in order to satisfy his or her master.”
“If you’re talking about motive, I must have missed something.”
“Miller, you gotta concentrate on what I’m reading,” she said into the receiver. “Some participants may even reject negotiation and eschew the use of safe words in order to enjoy a heightened sense of danger and facilitate a more “natural” interaction. They may risk certain fetish scenarios, including simulated rape and other nonconsensual acts, to create an amazingly powerful experience that only exists in extreme forms of BDSM play. While exceedingly rare and poorly documented, instances of branding, mutilation, dismemberment and near-death represent the pinnacle of the master-slave relationship.”
“Color me stupid, I still don’t get it.”
“He’s pushing his victims right over the edge so that he can reach a kind of high that only more and more extreme acts will satisfy.”
“You’re starting to push me right over the edge with this crazy shit.”
“I know this sounds crazy,” she confessed, “but you’ve got to go with me on this. I just know it’s him.”
After a sh
ort silence, he spoke again. “This guy really got under your skin, didn’t he?”
“You have no idea,” she replied.
“Okay, let’s say you’re right.” Miller’s voice was sounding very tired as he struggled to stay alert for one more minute. “If we mention this at the briefing tomorrow morning, Roberts is going to bounce us right off this case.”
“You’re probably right.”
“So, let’s say we keep this between the two of us until we’ve got more to go on.”
“Thanks, Frank, for believing me,” Kate said.
“You’d better be right, or it’s going to be both our asses,” he cautioned her.
“I know I’m right.”
Chapter Five
THAT NEXT MORNING, Kate and Miller arrived late for work, and had to park several blocks away from the Hall of Justice. Located at 850 Bryant Street, the southern station for the San Francisco Police Department was headquarters for the Personal Crimes Division, which included Homicide. As they approached the front door, Kate was reminded of the first time that she had ever walked into the Hall of Justice. She had half expected to run into the likes of Frank Bullitt, Dirty Harry Callahan, Nash Bridges or Adrian Monk because she had seen the building so many times before on television or at the movies.
Although she would never admit it to anyone, Kate was drawn to a career in police enforcement by shows like The Streets of San Francisco and Ironside, with their romanticized view of crime and punishment. She decided to stay with the SFPD—despite the lack of car chases, stakeouts and preemptive raids—in order to make a difference in people’s lives. She knew that serious crimes, like homicide, rape and robbery needed trained officers to serve in the chief investigative branch who were, at heart, humanists, not cowboys. She might admire figures like Bullitt or Dirty Harry for their hard-nosed determination, but when it came to real-world policing, she preferred her approach.
Kate scrambled up the stairs, right behind her partner who had longer legs and a bigger stride. They moved past the Bureaus for Sexual Assault and Robbery, the Special Investigation Section, and the Homicide Bureau at a fast pace, then headed to the department’s conference room at the end of the hall. As they reached the door, she quietly turned the handle, and realized the briefing had already started. Miller entered swiftly and slipped into a seat next to Lt. Roberts, while she tiptoed to the other side of the room to take the last available seat. She sat down right across from Captain Ruiz Aguilar, who glared at her. Rather than return his look, she glanced down at the papers in front of her, and finally looked around the room.
The entire bureau was assembled around the conference table, including Clark, Jawara, and Ramirez. Dr. Brogan, chief medical examiner, was seated next to an older, white-haired woman. She looked old enough to be his mother, but clearly she was not a relative or part of the police force. Everyone at the table seemed to welcome and accept her as some kind of equal. Copies of emails and phone records were scattered all around the table, as well as several dozen DVR disks.
“. . . and that was about all we could get from the records of his Internet Service Provider,” reported William Clark, reading from his notes. “Our best guess is that Collins must have met her online, perhaps in a chat room or at one of those dating sites.”
“Yeah, Psycho-Match dot com,” Jawara joked, and his clever quip sparked a round of nervous laughter from those gathered in the room.
But the sour expression on Aguilar’s face brought the laughter to an immediate end.
Kate leaned over and whispered to Clark, “You got a suspect?”
Clark shook his head “no,” and looked back at his notes.
“And what about the sender’s IP address?” Roberts asked. “Could we use it to find who sent those emails?”
“Well, as most of you know, IP addresses are like phone numbers, and can be traced back to a point of origin,” Clark replied. “We were able to track the number back to the University of San Francisco.”
Surprise filled Kate. She sat upright in her chair and listened intently to Clark’s report.
“But unfortunately that’s where the trail goes cold,” he continued, his notes standing in for a teleprompter. “Their DHCP server allows all local networks to use the same batch of IP addresses as other networks on campus. We just can’t track it to a specific computer at the university. Could be one of a hundred in the library or some computer lab that gives anybody access to the Internet.”
“Okay, let me get this straight,” Kate said, holding up one of the packets of papers in front of her. “These emails came from a computer at the University of San Francisco?”
“Well, actually, we retrieved them from the recycle bin in Collins’s computer, but they did originate from a computer on campus,” Clark corrected her. “There’s just no way to tell which one.”
“Good police work,” said Lt. Roberts.
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
After a brief hesitation, Dr. Brogan took the lead by introducing their guest. “I’ve asked Dr. Reina Belasco to consult with the department on this. It really isn’t my area of expertise,” the medical examiner said. “Dr. Belasco teaches the psychopathy of criminal behavior at Stanford, and just published The Pathology of Evil: A Study of Psychopaths and Criminal Behavior.”
“Your credentials are quite impressive,” Miller said, “but I would just like to know one thing.”
“What is that, detective?” she asked.
“Do you have any practical experience dealing with the criminal element? In particular, serial killers?”
“I worked as a profiler with the Justice Department for six years,” the white-haired old woman replied, “and the findings of my doctoral dissertation on the Zodiac Killer prompted the Vallejo Police Department to re-open the case after thirty-five years of never finding the killer.”
“Thanks, Doctor,” said Miller.
Lt. Roberts stepped in to take control. “I understand that Dr. Brogan has already briefed you on the basics of our case. We’d like to know what your thoughts are regarding our suspect’s profile based on the emails we pulled from Collins’s computer and anything else that you may deem relevant.”
“It’s really quite simple,” said Dr. Belasco, as if lecturing a seminar of her graduate students. “The woman who wrote these emails likes to be in charge. She is what you’d call, in laymen’s terms, a ‘control freak.’ She needs to feel dominance over every situation and every subject for life to make sense to her. But, of course, this is merely a pretense—a mask, if you will—that hides deep-seated fears and anxieties about being out of control.”
Only Dr. Brogan seemed to understand. Every cop around the conference table listened intently to her analysis, with a blank look on their face that suggested they did not understand fully what she was saying. Kate was still preoccupied with something that had been said earlier.
“Crystal Rose, or whatever her real name is, assumes the role of mistress to provide the stability and order she lacks in her day-to-day existence.”
“So, Doctor, you’re saying our killer is nothing more than a frightened little girl?” asked Miller.
“That’s an oversimplification, detective,” she responded with an admonition. “People with borderline personality disorder often display a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, moods and marked impulsivity that they must hide from others or risk personal humiliation. More often than not, they are forced to create alter egos, like Mistress Rose, to present a single dominant image that is perfect and without flaws of any kind.”
“We talking split personality here? Like Sybil?” asked Jawara. “Sounds like we may need an exorcist instead of a shrink.”
“No, not at all,” the doctor replied. “Dissociative identity disorder is when a person displays two or more distinct personalities, each wit
h its own set of memories, behaviors, thoughts and emotions. I don’t see any evidence of that in these electronic communications.”
Clark smiled. “Could you lay it out simply for us, doc? What kind of person should we be looking for?”
The question did not seem to surprise Dr. Belasco; in fact, she seemed relieved someone had asked it. “I’d be looking for someone with low self-esteem, prone to extreme bouts of anxiety and depression. She would be between eighteen and thirty-five, white or Hispanic, with little to no formal education. She probably works a low-paying service job, such as a cashier at a convenience store. She fades into the background and nobody really sees or notices her. She’s probably never had a long-term relationship with a man. At least nothing that has lasted more than a few weeks, and her violent actions against the three victims may be a manifestation of some real or imagined hurt she suffered at the hands of one man years ago . . .”
“And the name ‘Crystal Rose?’” queried Miller.
“Again, it’s probably an alias that she created for her alter ego. It suggests someone who’s beautiful, transparent and full of thorns.”
Frank nodded. Then, after a long, silent pause, Kate asked, “What if it’s not a woman? What if it’s some man that’s posing as a woman with a woman’s name and a woman’s identity?”
The doctor was matter-of-fact. “Then you’re dealing with someone so confused and full of anxiety that he must sublimate his own gender identity into that of a woman. We are talking about such a deep-seated obsessive hatred of self that it borders on the pathological. He’s most likely a loner, with few if any friends, and his violent actions suggest someone who was teased or tormented as a child.”
“C’mon, Dawson, I done seen that movie Psycho,” Jawara said, “and I’d find it a damn sight easier chasing Sybil than Norman Bates.”
“Detective, we’ve already established that our lead suspect is a woman with the name Crystal Rose,” Aguilar scolded, glaring at Kate. “We are not pursuing any other suspects at this time.”