Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  Royce thanked him. He seemed embarrassed. “No way to tell exactly what she had eaten,” the man added. Boldt feared a lecture was forthcoming. “Too much decomposition. But we’re fairly sure of the time.”

  Boldt nodded, thankful the man had not gone into detail. Boldt didn’t like the work of the Medical Examiner’s office.

  “That help you out any?” Royce asked Boldt hopefully.

  “Everything helps at this point,” Boldt admitted.

  Royce nodded and shut the door, leaving the two alone. Dixon was working on the nail of his little finger.

  ***

  On his way back to the office Boldt tried again to reconstruct the various possibilities. Had Cheryl Croy occasionally left the bedroom curtains parted while she changed? Had a voyeur spotted her, crawled in the open downstairs window, and then followed her upstairs after her cookie run? Or had she been spotted through the curtainless kitchen window while getting her midnight snack? That would have given her enough time to eat her cookie and climb back into bed before the killer caught up to her. Had he entered through the window and not the front door, and if so, why was a single red silk fiber found on the front steps? Did the killer know she ate a snack every night? Had he established her routine well enough to plan the kill? Had the other victims had similar routines that Boldt and his detectives had failed to uncover? Was there a common link they had missed?

  Or had Craig Marquette killed Croy? Due to the discovery of the red silk fiber, Boldt knew this was improbable unless Marquette was the Cross Killer and had murdered his own girlfriend in an effort to hide himself from the police. It wouldn’t be the first time such a ploy had been used. It was well documented that some psychopaths tried to get as close to the police investigation as possible, following the progress in the newspapers, often returning to the crime scene while the police were investigating. For many, the public notoriety and the “game” of the chase were as important as the killing itself.

  Around and around he went, painfully aware that the killer’s clock had started again. Except for the September hiatus following Jergensen’s death, no more than a few weeks had passed between each of the previous killings. No apparent schedule to it. Somewhere out there the killer, still at large, was susceptible to an unknown psychological stimulus that would trigger another murder. He would select his prey somehow, stalk her, and then kill her.

  Like any homicide detective, Boldt usually worked well under pressure. But he was unaccustomed to the worry he now carried with him. How soon until his phone rang announcing the discovery of another victim? The photographic images of the “crossed” victims flashed across his eyes. His heartbeat increased. How many more? If he had been a drinker, perhaps he could have drunk his worry away. But he was not. His father had died drunk. Boldt avoided liquor at every turn. He found himself wanting the investigation to move more quickly. It felt like slow motion at times—like a nightmare where his legs weighed a thousand pounds. Did he really have anything more to go on than a vague psychological sketch and a few red fibers? Not enough, he thought. Not nearly enough.

  ***

  John LaMoia worked a plainclothes beat and wore his dark, curly hair long. He had a matching mustache, a square chin, and chocolate eyes. At thirty-three he was young for Homicide. Boldt had used him ten months earlier on a homicide case, borrowing him from Vice where his talents had been overlooked. He had helped Boldt break that case, and had been working Homicide ever since. Tall, strong, and fit, proud of his Italian heritage, he was in the habit of treating every woman in the office like a current or former lover. He came across as cocky and sure of himself, and he was.

  The two men met in Boldt’s partitioned office area, two stalls down from Kramer’s. Boldt handed LaMoia a photocopy of the small cash-register receipt. “I want you to find out what store this came from. I.D. pulled a good thumbprint from it. I wrote down the title of the paperback alongside of it there. Any questions?”

  “You want me to chase this down? Listen, we’ve just brought on a couple skirts from Special Assaults. Why not put one of them on this? Me and Tommy are still working Croy’s neighborhood. That’s a lot more import—”

  “Any other questions,” Boldt asked.

  “A paperback? You know how many stores could have sold that?”

  “We have the receipt. We know where she lived. Get a list from the publisher of the wholesalers who distribute it. Find out from them what stores they distributed to. It’s a best-seller so there are bound to be a couple dozen at least—”

  “Couple hundred is more like it.”

  “He may have spotted her there, okay? He may even work behind the counter. This has to be handled just right or we could scare him off. I chose you for a reason, John. I don’t want you asking any questions of the store personnel. I want you to play it like a customer. Mark all the stores on a map and work your way out from her house. Find out from our boys what kind of registers make this kind of receipt. That’ll save you a lot of time. If the store has this kind of register, then buy something cheap and get a receipt. See how closely they match the one we’ve found. We should be able to knock this thing down to a fairly small list of stores with a little leg work. You see what I’m after?”

  “I just don’t see why me.”

  “Don’t give me any trouble on this, John. We have to determine how he spots his victims. They all lived in roughly the same neighborhood. They may have shopped the same stores. The paperback is where we start.”

  LaMoia nodded. “Can I take one of the skirts along for company?”

  Boldt shook his head. “No. Do it alone. It’s got to look perfectly normal. I want you to keep an eye out for anyone who fits the profile. Okay?”

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  “Put Browning on the families and friends of the victims. Make sure they each get a copy of the list you compile of the possible stores. I want to know if any of the victims shopped any of the same stores. You follow?”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “Good. Sorry to do this to you, John, but it’s got to be done right. This could be the connection we’ve been looking for. Check out all the angles. This is the kind of thing you’re good at. He spots them somehow, okay? So where? How?”

  “You don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look so good, Sergeant.”

  “I do mind,” barked Boldt.

  I ought to start a club, he thought.

  7

  By night, Seventy-fourth Street was quiet. The overhead wires formed a net of glittering black threads. The streetlamps disturbed the darkness, glaring down onto the puddle-stained pavement. Boldt entered Croy’s house through the back door. In darkness it seemed even more empty. For Lou Boldt the peacefulness of the silence was a lie. He was still out there somewhere, unchecked and out of control.

  He tested a variety of combinations of house lights. He switched on lights in the kitchen, the living room, the second-floor hallway, her bedroom, and her bath. He went outside again and circled the house slowly from a variety of distances, patiently studying each and every view of the residence. He concluded that it would have been easy to see her going after a snack in the kitchen. Had she worn a robe that night, or had she forgotten to, wearing only a skimpy nightgown instead, her lithe body silhouetted by the refrigerator’s bright interior light? Boldt didn’t put himself into the mind of the killer. He couldn’t do that. He simply approached it from the logistics of a killer. How would a person have entered the home without Croy’s knowledge? Where might the killer have spotted her from? It seemed the front of the house offered many less opportunities for a voyeur.

  Had the killer simply selected Croy at random? Earlier in the investigation he might have believed this, but he no longer could. Each of the victims was a single woman, dissimilar in appearance but similar in age; each had a boyfriend or lover who occasionally spent the night at the victim’s house or apartment. Yet each woman was attacked while alone. So the killer apparently planned his kills. He placed his vic
tims under surveillance, formulated a plan, and then carried it out.

  This was the fine line the killer crossed between psychotic and psychopath. Although his killings showed signs of violent, eruptive, psychotic spontaneity, the method of selection seemed to indicate premeditation and extensive planning, behavior attributed more to the psychopath. This combination of personalities made him more formidable, more unpredictable.

  Boldt returned to his car, climbed inside, and switched on the interior light. He reread the reports collected by his various detectives. None of the neighbors recalled seeing any regular deliveries at Croy’s house. No laundry services. No pizza delivery. Nothing to draw attention to the house on the night of the murder or any other night. He grabbed a pair of low-power binoculars from the glove box and shut off the light and went back to walking the neighborhood, looking back repeatedly toward her house. He walked up the hill hoping it might provide an unusual vantage point. Behind him he heard the faint offerings of an Oscar Peterson cut that made him think of his earlier years spent in piano bars working the ivories for fifty bucks and tips. He wondered what his life might be like now had he stayed with that occupation. There existed a serenity and simplicity to the life of a musician. The work was ethereal, lasting only as long as the notes resounded in the room. Variations on a theme. For years he had managed to keep it up as a hobby, yet now he couldn’t remember the last time he had played. Too long. He stood on the sidewalk, Oscar vamping behind him, the familiar whine of tires in the distance, the regimented uniformity of homes tucked neatly along Seventy-fourth Street, and he returned to the work at hand. As he walked on, the piano music faded slowly behind him, and to him it seemed both symbolic and disturbing.

  A few more houses up the street he lost sight of her house, just as he had earlier in the day. He cut across to Seventy-third and worked his way back down its hill, unable to catch even a glimpse of the back of Croy’s house until down on the flats, where, between houses, he caught a good view of her bedroom window. But as before, the low angle allowed him only a view of the ceiling’s light fixture. Still, from here the killer could have seen the bedroom light go off. He could have cut through the adjacent backyard, vaulted a low fence and been in Croy’s backyard. Boldt would return and check this route by daylight.

  The patrol car caught him by surprise. It pulled up behind him before he realized it was even there. Someone had alerted the police to Boldt’s presence. He cleared it up quickly and the patrol car moved along. Boldt had heard about the renewed enthusiasm in the Neighborhood Watch program. His being stopped was proof, as were recently released crime statistics. Robbery, citywide, was down a whopping eleven percent in the last two months, attributed solely to police-assistance programs.

  As difficult as it was for him to accept, he knew there existed a greater chance the public would catch the killer than he and his men. Perhaps he was out there right now. And perhaps a watchful eye had just fallen upon him….

  His lap around the block completed, Boldt reentered the house. He sat down at the kitchen table and imagined the scantily clad Cheryl Croy opening the refrigerator, pouring herself a glass of milk, taking a cookie from the cupboard, and heading upstairs. He followed her, shutting the lights off behind himself as she would have. He climbed the stairs, the same stair singing out under his weight. He moved down the hall and switched off the light. The sight of the bloodstained bed stopped him momentarily, but he followed through with this exercise, pretending to place the milk down on the end table, and actually climbing up onto the mattress, avoiding the bloodstains and chalk, and leaning back against the wicker headboard.

  Had the paperback been on the end table? Had the killer caught up to her here, surprising her, or had he caught her downstairs? Boldt sat up, noticing for the first time that the small front panel of the television was open. He jumped off the bed and hurried over to the TV. He looked back and forth between the pillows and the television. There was fingerprint powder on the set. Something wasn’t right, and it took Boldt a few seconds to realize this was a remote-controlled TV without a remote-control device. He searched the end table, and the floor behind it. He searched under the bed. He carefully patted the stained sheets, hoping to feel the small box, but didn’t. He looked around the television itself, checking behind the VCR and the set, on the floor, against the wall. No sign of the device. Perhaps this explained why the front flap was left open. She had lost or damaged the control and this was her only way to operate the set: manually from the front panel.

  Again he knelt in front of the set, and again he began his search, methodically repeating each step. When he reached the end table, he eyed it from all angles, and then his focus shifted and he spotted the black edge of the control box where it was lodged between the mattress and headboard. He took a pen and a comb from his pockets and climbed up onto the mattress, moving the pillows out of the way. Without touching the device, and using his pen and comb as tools, he fished it from between the crack and placed it on the sheet. Like other detectives, Boldt always carried a handful of paper evidence bags in his coat pocket. He removed one and bagged the remote control.

  As he was closing the bag, he glanced up momentarily and looked out her window. There, between a gap left by two houses on Seventy-third Street, illuminated in the ambient flood of a streetlamp, stood a solitary electrical pole, like the highest mast of a tall ship, its pinnacle overlooking Croy’s house as a crow’s nest towers above the giant swells of the ocean. A vantage point!

  A minute later he was walking briskly up the hill, anxious to cross over to Seventy-third and locate the pole.

  ***

  Something drew him to the pole as he approached. It rose on the far side of the street from a hill that briefly leveled out before climbing again. It stood separate from the others, and taller by a good two or three feet. A dozen wires ran from its cross, half of them feeding houses on the other side of the street. Metal climbing grips protruded from its sides, like the short legs of a centipede. Just as Boldt began to cross the street, a glint of white light winked from a second-story window in the house behind the pole. The spark caught his attention, and he backed up to see what had caused it. Again, the small oval orb of light appeared in the window, and for a moment he thought it might be from a flashlight. He looked more closely but could not see clearly. The streetlight reflected off the window as well. He moved nearer the house. It wasn’t a flashlight; it appeared to be the end of a telescope. He glanced quickly in the direction the telescope was aimed. A one-story house blocked his view of Seventy-fourth Street. But the telescope was on the second floor. His heart beat more quickly. He ran to a gap between the houses, looking first toward Seventy-fourth Street, then back at the telescope. He hurried to the end of this driveway and into a backyard. Across a fence and slightly below him—directly in the line of sight of the telescope—was the home of Cheryl Croy.

  He rushed back to the street. The light pole showed evidence of a recent climb. The treated poles tended to weather into a dark brown; but this pole showed long scratches of ocher on the sides leading to the first hand grips. There was no doubt in his mind that the pole had been climbed recently, and from up there a man would have a clear view of Cheryl Croy’s bedroom. Boldt smiled with a certain degree of self-satisfaction as he stared up the tall pole. We all make mistakes eventually, he thought. So few of us are able to do anything perfectly.

  He felt tempted to wrap his arms around the pole and hug it to his chest. He bounded up the steps and rapped loudly on the front door. A curtain parted to his left. The worried expression of a man’s face filled the quickly fogging glass. A moment later the chained front door opened a crack and the same partial face appeared.

  “What is it?” the man inquired.

  Boldt introduced himself showing his shield, and asked to use the phone.

  The man demanded to see Boldt’s identification more closely, asked for the phone number of the police department, and then shut and locked the door, leaving Boldt outsid
e. Several minutes passed before the door reopened and the man admitted him, apologizing and excusing his precaution. Boldt congratulated him on his thoroughness.

  He placed a call downtown and requested an I.D. technician meet him. The man he spoke with was not thrilled with the idea of attempting to lift prints from the rungs of a wet phone pole at nine o’clock at night and told Boldt so in blunt language. But Boldt was equally blunt—causing the housewife to blush. The I.D. man acquiesced.

  Boldt was offered a seat in the modest living room. Mrs. Levitt, a prim woman in her middle-to-late forties, switched off the television and joined her husband and Boldt. They discussed the fear the murder had instilled in the neighborhood, and when Boldt had finally established a degree of rapport he asked about the pole. Had they seen anyone working there recently? Anyone from City Light or the cable companies? Anyone out of the ordinary? Any unusual noises heard on the night of the murder? To each question they shook their heads nearly in unison.

  Boldt reminded himself that nothing is easy. Nothing is handed to you in this line of work.

  She was a curious woman. She wore her vivid red hair long for her age, and despite her good looks, she exuded irritation and animosity. An unhappy woman, she was tight and tense and concentrated heavily on every word her husband uttered, which were few. Boldt was clearly unwelcome. She wanted nothing to do with the police. She feared “becoming involved,” and even said so. She wanted the door locked and chained and the television set back on.

  “Our son’s room faces the street,” Mr. Levitt said. “Maybe he can help out.”

  Mrs. Levitt bristled at the suggestion, her spine suddenly stiff as her fingers bit into the sofa’s cushions. “Doug, I hardly think that appropriate!” she argued.

  The two of them went at it for a moment, both displaying hot tempers, and when all was said and done, Douglas Levitt had won out. He sent his wife upstairs to retrieve Justin and she did so with utmost unwillingness. Boldt fully expected her not to return at all—certainly without the boy who would be conveniently “asleep.” Much to his surprise she reappeared quite promptly with the young man in tow.