by James Swain
“This is Mary Ann Crawford, originally from Philadelphia, most recently Atlantic City,” Fuller said. “Twenty-two years old, trained as a beautician. Moved to Atlantic City six weeks ago, lived by herself. She was found in a hotel room on the beach, cause of death starvation. The hippie clothes are her killer’s calling card.”
Fuller pressed the clicker, and a second slide filled the screen. It was similar to the first: A photo of a smiling brunette on the left, the same woman hanging from her wrists on the right, dressed in a flowing Woodstock dress and love beads.
“Melissa Edwards, twenty-two, part-time actress and model, a recent transplant from the Baltimore area. Cause of death was also starvation. Same deal with the clothes. She was also found in a motel room hanging by her wrists.”
He hit the clicker a third time, and the roomful of cops stared at the photos of the most recent victim. “Connie Howard, twenty-four, aspiring actress, originally from New York, lived in Atlantic City a few months, reduced to skin and bones and hippie clothes. She was found hanging by her wrists in an abandoned warehouse last week.”
The screen went blank. Fuller stuck his hand in his pocket, and the scowl on his face grew. “This killer — who we call the Dresser — is on a spree. We believe he’s suppressed his murderous urges for a long time. Now, he’s erupted. Why, we have no idea. But we are reasonably certain he’s going to strike again, and probably soon.
“There’s a great deal we don’t know about our killer. We don’t know his name, or what he looks like. However, there are certain things we do know. Our profilers have determined that he’s a white male, between the ages of thirty and forty-five, who lives alone and has few friends. His taste in women runs to attractive brunettes between five-four and five-six, with green eyes. He’s methodical, and of above-average intelligence. We also think he’s an Atlantic City native, since he seems to know where to dump these bodies without getting caught.
“My partner and I are asking for your cooperation in helping us track this guy down. We need you to put the word out on the street, and talk to everyone you know. Our guess is, other women have been approached by the Dresser, and might remember him. With a little prodding, perhaps we can get a solid lead on who he is. I’m leaving a stack of sheets with the killer’s profile for you to distribute. Before we go, my partner would like to say a few words.”
Fuller stepped aside, and Romero took his spot. He was over six feet tall, and built like a linebacker. For a big guy, his voice was unusually soft, and every cop in the room leaned forward to hear what he had to say.
“These women were all starved to death,” Romero said, his hands stuck in his pockets. “As some of you might know, starvation can take five or even six days, sometimes longer. These young women all died painfully. We’re dealing with one sick bastard here, and we’re hoping you can help us catch this guy. Thank you.”
Romero relinquished the floor to Banko. The chief asked if anyone had questions. He got no takers, and escorted the FBI agents from the room.
The cops began filing out, with no one saying a word. Soon the room was empty, save for Valentine and his partner. Doyle rose from his chair while Valentine remained seated, staring at the blank movie screen.
“Give me a minute,” Valentine said.
“Something wrong?
“I'm not sure.”
Valentine shut his eyes and focused on the darkness. It made him relax, and he felt his body melt into the chair. It was like being in a trance, and something he’d been doing since he was a kid. Doyle’s brother, a priest, called them epiphanies. All Valentine knew was that when he had them, the world always seemed a little clearer.
A minute later Valentine opened his eyes. Doyle was still there waiting for him. He stared at the blank movie screen, still seeing the faces of the three victims. He ticked off their names in his head: Mary Ann Crawford, Melissa Edwards, Connie Howard. It was an old trick a homicide cop had taught him. Remember their names, and you’ll always remember their faces.
“You going to tell me what’s wrong?” his partner asked.
“The FBI has got this case all wrong,” Valentine said.
“How the heck do you know that?”
“Because I saw this guy on a surveillance tape. He was in the casino, hunting a victim.”
“When was this?”
“Back when Higgins was in town.”
“Why is the FBI wrong? What did they miss?”
The FBI knew a lot about serial killers, but they didn’t know much about Atlantic City. Valentine had begged Banko to put him on the case a few weeks ago. Now, Banko was going to wish he had.
“He’s picking up his victims inside the casino,” Valentine explained. “We’re probably seeing him on the surveillance cameras, and not realizing it.”
“How can you be certain of that, Tony?” Doyle asked him. “Maybe he picked up one victim inside a casino, and met another in a bar, or the grocery store.”
Valentine shook his head. Doyle had missed it, and so had every other cop sitting in the room. He pushed himself out of his chair, and walked out of the room with his partner. “I need to talk to these FBI agents before they leave.”
“Sure. Just do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t say anything to these guys you’ll later regret.”
Valentine slapped his partner on the shoulder. Doyle knew him too well.
“I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Chapter 10
Valentine searched the station house for Fuller and Romero. The cafeteria was empty, and so were the other areas where cops hung out. Finally he asked Joe at the front desk, who was still reading his paper.
“They walked out the front door five minutes ago,” the desk sergeant said.
Valentine found the agents in the visitor’s section of the parking lot, sitting in a blue Chevy with government-issued plates. They were having a conversation, and he hesitated before going to the driver’s window, and tapping the glass with his wedding ring. The window lowered, and Fuller stuck his head out.
“What can I do for you?” Fuller said.
“We need to talk about the Dresser,” Valentine said.
The agents followed him back inside. Valentine wasn’t sure what the protocol was when dealing with FBI agents, so he got Banko to join him in the meeting room. Fuller and Romero sat in the front row with their overcoats draped over their laps. Neither man had uttered a word since getting out of the Chevy, and stared at him with blank faces.
“I hope you guys aren’t easily offended,” Valentine said.
“Depends whose doing the offending,” Fuller said.
“Your victims are all hookers,” Valentine said. “These girls came here because the casino is drawing hookers from all over the northeast. The Dresser is after hookers.”
For a long moment, neither agent acknowledged him.
“How can you know that?” Romero asked.
“All three victims recently moved here,” Valentine said. “ I’m assuming you got their occupations from their parents. Well, they lied to their parents. Atlantic City has a thirty percent unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. There are no jobs for models or beauticians. The only jobs are in the casinos, or working the street.”
“That’s a pretty big leap,” Fuller said.
Valentine hesitated, then told them what he was really thinking. “I think I saw the Dresser pick up a hooker.”
The agents practically jumped out of their chairs. Valentine held up his hands like he was stopping traffic. “Let me explain. Last week, an agent of the Nevada Gaming Control Board was here talking to us about casino cheating. While we were watching a surveillance tape, I saw a strange thing. A john standing behind the table was negotiating with a Puerto Rican hooker I recognized. It felt contrived.”
“How so?” Fuller asked.
“As a rule, johns don’t come into Resorts to pick up hookers. They pick them up on the street. Hookers inside the casin
o charge more than street walkers. They do it because the guys have gambling money they’re willing to burn.”
“You’re saying the john on the tape came inside Resorts specifically to pick up a hooker?”
“Yes. There was something else. As they started to leave, the john fumbled with a flask in his back pocket. I thought it was liquor, and he was going to take a pull to get his courage up. But now I think it was something else.”
The agents waited expectantly. So did Banko, who leaned against the wall.
“I think it was chloroform,” Valentine said.
Fuller and Romero exchanged long glances. They appeared to be communicating by telepathy, their eyes doing all the talking. Fuller looked at Valentine again.
“We think that’s how he’s knocking them out,” the agent said.
“So I’m right.”
“Perhaps. You said there was a surveillance tape,” Fuller said.
“Mickey Wright has it. He runs Resorts’ surveillance department.”
Fuller rose from his chair. “I’d like to see him immediately,” he told Banko. He approached Valentine, and stuck his hand out.
“You’re a hell of a detective,” the FBI agent said.
Valentine shook his hand while looking at Banko. His superior snarled at him before leaving the room.
Valentine started to leave the station house, then realized he hadn’t picked up his messages in several days. He went to his desk, and found a message from Bill Higgins thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. Bill had left his home number, said it was urgent. He checked the time. It was nearly ten, which made it seven in Las Vegas. He picked up the phone, and punched in the number. A man that was not Bill answered.
“This is Tony Valentine. Is Bill around?”
The man put the phone down. When Higgins came on, he was out of breath.
“I was in the garage working out. I wanted to alert you to a gang of blackjack cheaters that are ripping off your casino.”
Valentine grabbed a pen and pad off the desk. “I’m all ears.”
“We have a wiretap on a group of cheaters working the Sands. We caught a conversation that leads us to believe half the gang is working here, the other half in Atlantic City.”
“Any idea what they’re doing?”
“Yeah, and it’s pretty clever. They’ve constructed beer cans to hold mirrors in the base. If a player sits at one end of the table and puts his can down, he can glimpse the dealer’s hole card during the deal. He signals the card to another player at the table, the BP. The BP then plays his hand accordingly.”
BP was casino slang for Big Player. Hustlers had learned that casinos were more inclined to pay off a BP than an average player. And, BPs got complimentary suites and free meals and a lot of other free stuff. They lived large, and when they were part of a gang of cheaters, they lived even larger.
“Anything else I should look for?”
“The guy with the beer can signals the BP by blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils,” Higgins said. “One puff means the hole card is a ten. Two puffs, an ace. If he breathes through his mouth, the dealer has a stiff. One more thing. They always use Budweiser cans.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s their favorite drink.”
“I really appreciate your giving me the heads-up,” Valentine said.
“Any time,” Higgins said.
Valentine heard someone cough and glanced up from his writing. Banko was standing a few yards away from his cubicle along with Fuller and Romero. The three men did not look happy.
“I’ve got to beat it. Thanks again.”
He hung up the phone, then looked expectantly into the three men’s faces.
“Mickey Wright erased the tape,” Banko said dejectedly.
Chapter 11
Valentine had inherited two things from his father. The first was his mouth, which had gotten him into more trouble than anything he’d ever done. The second was his photographic memory.
His father’s memory was phenomenal. Dominic Valentine could remember just about anything that had ever been said to him, or anything significant he’d ever seen. It was a gift wasted on a drunk, but that was how life went sometimes. Valentine’s memory was just as good, and it hadn’t gone to waste.
Banko made a phone call. Twenty minutes later, an artist from the Camden Union Register was setting up an easel in Banko’s office. The artist’s name was Ernie Roe, and he had a goatee and wore his stringy blond hair on his shoulders. Valentine knew him from the court house, where Ernie often covered important trials. Ernie removed a charcoal pencil from his breast pocket.
“Ready when you are,” Ernie said.
Valentine leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and described the john he’d seen inside Resorts picking up the beautiful Puerto Rican hooker the week before. He saw the john clearly: Five-eight, one hundred and sixty-pounds, with a paunch, stooped shoulders and thinning hair that he parted on the left side of his head. The face was hard to remember, but that was only because the video tape had been poor. Had he seen the john in person, he was sure he’d remember him perfectly.
Valentine opened his eyes when he was done. Ernie was facing him, and he guessed by the wide motions of Ernie’s hand that he was doing the john’s hair. Finished, Ernie turned the easel around.
“What do you think?”
The face in the drawing looked a lot like the one stored in his memory. The nose, which Valentine had struggled to remember, was thick, the nostrils slightly flared. It wasn’t perfect, but renditions never were.
“That’s him,” Valentine said.
Banko called his secretary into the office, and got her to take the sketch to the Xerox machine downstairs to make copies. While they waited, Romero said, “You said you recognized the Puerto Rican hooker the john picked up. Can you describe her?”
Valentine started to do, then had a thought. Banko had been running sweeps of hookers every week. As a result, hundreds of girls had been booked in the past few months.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said.
He led the FBI agents downstairs to the basement where the records were stored, and had the clerk on duty pull out the files of every hooker that had been arrested on the island in the past two months. There were over two hundred. Each girl’s mug shot was stapled to her record, and Valentine put them on a desk, and began sorting through them. Within minutes he was holding the Puerto Rican hooker’s record in his hand.
“You sure this is her,” Romero said.
“She was hard to forget,” Valentine said.
Her name was Maria Sanchez. Twenty-three, dark brown hair, five-foot five, originally from San Juan, she’d come to the U.S. a few years ago and immediately started turning tricks. Unlike a lot of girls, who looked frightening without a coat of make-up, Maria was a beauty.
Fuller took the file, and Valentine walked the agents outside to their car. What had started out as a pretty morning had turned ominous, and dark, muscular clouds filled the sky. Fuller and Romero shook Valentine’s hand again, then glanced at the sky.
“Think it’s going to snow?”
“Sure feels like it,” Valentine said.
“How come it feels so much colder here?”
“It’s the humidity. It cuts to the bone.”
The agents climbed into the Chevy. Valentine started to walk away, then stopped at the entrance to the station house. Sometimes the most obvious things were the easiest to miss. He caught Fuller as he was backing the car out of its space. The driver’s window came down, and Fuller said, “You think of something else?”
Valentine stuck his hands into his pockets. He’d come out without his coat and was freezing. “The Dresser is picking up hookers inside the casino. That’s his MO. Hookers think he’s a tourist, and they let their guards down.”
“So?”
“Chances are, he picked up all these girls inside the casino.”
He paused, and let Fuller think about it. Romero leaned over
from the passenger side so his face was visible. “You think he might be on another surveillance tape?”
“I’d bet dollars to doughnuts on it,” Valentine said.
“Never thought of that,” Fuller said. “Can we look at those tapes?”