Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re old enough that I don’t have to screw around with you.” He had decided some quasi-adult vocabulary might help loosen up the boy. “A guy has killed several women. Cheryl Croy was one of them.” The boy flinched and switched his books to his other arm. “My job is to find him and stop him before he does it again. This isn’t TV, Justin. I think you know that. In real life, eighty percent of all homicides go unsolved. This kind is the worst kind because the guy keeps doing it over and over. He frightens the public. He frightens the police—”

  “Are you scared?” the boy asked somewhat incredulously, and in a tone of voice that implied he was also unnerved.

  “You bet I am. It’s us against one guy—only he knows we’re looking for him, and we have very few clues to tell us who he is. One guy, you understand? It’s exactly like a big puzzle—a jigsaw puzzle—only most of the pieces are missing. On television, everything fits together within an hour and the killer is in custody—arrested. In real life I’ve been working on this case since last April and I have very few pieces of the puzzle. The guy is still out there somewhere and for all I know he may try and kill another woman soon. I have to live with that. Do you understand?”

  The boy nodded. “I already told you I didn’t see anyone on the pole.”

  “I’m going to be straight with you, Justin, because I think it’s the best way—I think you can handle it.” Boldt paused to let the boy think about this. “The other night, when I came by your house, before I got there I was stopped by a patrol car because someone had called the police and told them I was walking around the neighborhood in a rainstorm. It was smart thinking to call the police. Why the hell should someone be walking around in a rainstorm?” The boy blushed. He shook his head and the red hair above his ears ruffled in the wind. “The person called our emergency 911 number.” He paused again. “Part of police procedure is to tape-record all 911 calls.” Boldt waited and then withdrew the cassette tape. “The voice on this tape is yours, Justin, and you describe in detail what I’m wearing.” The boy shook his head again. “I was on Seventy-fourth Street at the time the report came in. I know that because I keep a log—like a diary—” he explained, “of where I am at what time, and what I’m doing. My boss requires it. It just so happens that I was at Cheryl Croy’s—the house of the woman who was killed—at the time the 911 call came in. It’s also the only possible place you could have seen me, even with a telescope. The houses across the street block your line of sight on the rest of Seventy-fourth. So you see, I know you have a telescope, and I know you’ve been using it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Keeping watch on the neighborhood is a good idea. But there is something wrong about lying. Especially to the police.”

  The boy nodded, unwilling to look Boldt in the eye.

  Boldt gave him a moment to think, then he asked, “Do your parents know about the cable hookup?”

  Justin Levitt blushed and looked away. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’d rather work with you, Justin. I’d rather work with you than against you. Help me. Please.”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “We pulled a palm print about your size from the metal rungs on the pole. If you want us to print you, we can.”

  “Oh shit,” the boy said. He dragged the toes of his shoes nervously across the cement. “My mother will kill me.”

  Boldt found the expression sadly ironic. “The telescope.”

  “I’m a member of the Neighborhood Watch program. Anonmous,” he said, mispronouncing the word. “I reported that car accident a couple of weeks ago. That was me,” he said, as if Boldt would know which accident.

  “We appreciate that,” Boldt indulged him. “But at the moment I’m interested in Cheryl Croy. Did you ever check out her place?”

  “Maybe a few times…”

  Boldt could feel his chance now and he was nearly lightheaded with elation. The boy did know something! “How about the night of her murder?”

  The boy blushed again.

  “Justin—”

  “I didn’t see anything,” the boy shouted.

  “Justin?”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t see anything! Oh shit. Now I’m cooked. She hates it when I keep her waiting.” He was staring off toward the road and when Boldt turned around he saw Mrs. Levitt approaching quickly, her red, fiery hair leaping with the wind.

  Boldt prepared himself. “I can handle it,” he said, wondering if he could.

  “Just what is going on here?” she asked, still several yards away. “Lieutenant,” she hollered angrily, “what is the meaning of this?” She stopped and faced Boldt, eyes squinting. “Justin,” she scolded without taking her eyes off of Boldt, “go to the car.” Justin glanced at Boldt, shook his head where his mother couldn’t see, mouthing, “Don’t tell her,” and then hurried off. She waited until her son was out of earshot and bitched loudly, “Since when do the police have the right to question a thirteen-year-old boy without his parents’ consent?”

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Levitt.”

  She looked toward the road, her boy now well away from them. “Don’t hand me that B.S., Lieutenant! You have no right to be questioning my boy.”

  “I’m afraid I do, Mrs. Levitt.”

  “Not without my permission, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I do. I’m conducting a murder investigation. I think your son may be able to help me.”

  She turned scarlet. “The department will hear about this. You can bet your badge the department will be hearing from my husband on this!” She hurried away, turning around at the last second. “Don’t you ever try this again!” She moved like a machine, with none of the grace of a woman. She glanced over her shoulder several times, past her fiery red hair, to make sure he wasn’t following.

  Boldt noticed that the schoolyard had quickly emptied. The last yellow bus pulled from the parking lot. A crosswalk attendant, a woman with blue-white hair wearing a fluorescent orange vest, stood on one leg, a bird at rest, a hand-held stop sign dangling by her knee. Traffic moved past slowly.

  He had been close. Justin had been on the verge of telling him something. Can it be that the key to this case lies inside the mind of a thirteen-year-old boy? Is there any way to get it out of him? Months of painstaking work had led him to this point, and yet he seemed as far away now as he had ever been. It was as if the closer he came, the further it moved from him, like chasing a ball you keep inadvertently kicking away.

  I’ll arrest him if I have to, he thought. I’ll arrest the boy and turn him over to juvenile, if they leave me no choice. Or better yet, he reconsidered, I’ll arrest the mother. He smiled at the thought.

  ***

  Shoswitz scratched his head and some dandruff cascaded to his shoulders. “I tried to set her straight on this. She doesn’t seem like the easiest woman in the world to deal with. Right?”

  Boldt said, “I think the kid knows something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe he was peeping at her through his telescope and he’s afraid to admit it. Every time I mention her murder he blushes. Daphne says if he did see something he may not be able to face it. We have to go gently with him or we could lose him. His mother could screw it all up for us.”

  “It’s a long shot though.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he knows something. I think we have a witness. Maybe I should turn the boy over to Daphne.”

  “No. That’s a lousy idea. That gets us into some gray areas I would just as soon avoid. It’s one thing to have a Homicide detective talking to the boy. Right? It’s another thing entirely if it’s our staff shrink.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’ll be the cutoff man, as far as the mother’s concerned. We’re within our rights if we suspect the boy is a material witness. We can always use the phone pole if we need it. How about the husband? Will he help us out?”

  “He might.”

  “You
handle it. If you can communicate with the kid, you can try my teenager next.”

  10

  The tenth body was discovered deep within a copse of trees Saturday morning by two teenage boys taking a shortcut to Green Lake. Boldt, who had arrived to work early, was the fifth person to appear on the scene, after the two boys and the two responding patrolmen. He immediately established a large crime scene, including the six residential houses nearest to the body. The entire area was roped off with fluorescent police tape. All the neighbors cooperated. It kept the curious well away from the death scene, and secured any and all possible entry points to the site, including the wooded area to the south. Detectives began house-to-house interviews immediately, before people got away on Saturday outings and became difficult, if not impossible, to locate.

  The victim was naked, and was lying face up with lengths of nylon rope tied to her ankles and wrists. Boldt felt a tremendous wave of grief flood through him, a familiar reaction to an all-too-familiar sight. Unlike single-victim murder investigations, the inability on the part of the police to solve these crimes came at the ultimate expense of others: their death.

  In May this assignment had seemed like a big step forward. Selected from a dozen sergeants available, Boldt felt this promised a certain degree of upward mobility. Prior to this case he had been fortunate to have an enviable record among homicide detectives—he had the single highest percentage of solved cases among all the force. Twice he had been part of special task forces—once on a Special Assaults case, a serial-rape case that he and Doc Dixon were able to solve within twenty-four hours; once, earlier in his career, as part of Vice sweep of downtown illegal drug merchants that received national press. It only made sense—even to him—that he should be part of the Cross Killer investigation. At that time he had hoped for an early solution and subsequent promotion to lieutenant. A promotion would mean a better office area and higher salary, perhaps closing the gap between his level of success and that of his wife.

  He had hoped, in fact, that the assignment would be a remedy for many of his then-problems. He had hoped a promotion would give him more time to spend with Elizabeth, more control over his schedule, and a chance to piece back together a relationship that was troubled. His marriage had not endured the demands of two careers. In late June he had decided to keep a record of the hours he shared with his wife. For three weeks running he was unable to tally more than a single hour a day of waking time spent together. She was traveling more and more, staying at the office late, and leaving early. He was working seventy-hour weeks. He gave up trying to keep track. Lately she had been arguing that with her salary they could now afford a better house. Boldt wondered what they needed a house for at all—neither was ever home. He didn’t like the idea, in part because he knew it would be his final surrender to her controlling the family finances—he could not budget his half of the mortgage payments on his sergeant’s salary and she damn well knew it. He would end up “in debt” to her, and his ego couldn’t stand that. He had no doubt that a move to a new house would be the end of them.

  He kept everyone back, away from the site, even his own people, allowing only Doc Dixon to join him.

  “A new twist,” the pathologist said as he appeared through the closely grown trees. “Haven’t had one outside yet.” He was dressed in khakis and a thin white shirt stretched at the buttons. His undershirt showed through; Boldt didn’t know anyone else who still wore undershirts. The sight of the body didn’t seem to affect Dixon in the least. Boldt wondered how a person could grow accustomed to such things.

  “I want to take it carefully,” Boldt explained. “We’ve established a huge crime scene. That’s something new for us, something in our favor.”

  “Agreed.” The pathologist placed two cases by the corpse and, opening one of them, prepared his camera.

  “She fell down,” Boldt observed.

  “Hmm?” replied Dixon.

  Boldt pointed out the deep impression in the mud next to the body. “She fell down there, face first. He rolled her over. She had to be running hard to land like that.” Boldt looked back in the direction from where she had come.

  Following the picture-taking, Dixon slipped on a pair of latex gloves and touched her legs gently. “Will my pictures do, or do you want your people in before I examine her?”

  “Did you get all the angles we’ll need? I’d just as soon not bring anyone else in for a while.”

  “I’ll take a few more and bracket them, just to make sure.”

  “I’ll be right back. Wait for me before you begin, will you please?”

  “Sure.”

  Boldt retraced her path carefully, staying well away from where he guessed she might have run. The nearest building, a locked house, was about a hundred yards through the trees. He already had a man working on getting a court order to allow them entry. He reached the puddle she had run through. A shoe print was filled with muddy water. Boldt studied the print and then looked up and saw the swath of broken vegetation cut through the thicket. He assumed this was the killer’s footprint and that he had chased her from the house.

  He put himself into the role of the victim. He could feel her fright. Something had gone wrong for the killer. She had broken free and even managed to get clear of the house. For some reason—a sudden worthless flash of modesty, or the killer’s sudden appearance—she had fled into the trees rather than into the street. And here he had caught up to her, and here she had died.

  ***

  Boldt was cautious not to leave his own footprints anywhere near the puddle. He stepped lightly and forged his own path through the dense growth reaching the pack of reporters, cops, and eager onlookers a moment later. The press aimed cameras at him and ran off dozens of shots. He disliked his celebrity status, despite the fact that during his early musical career he had once hoped for such notoriety. He spotted LaMoia and signaled him over.

  “I want our boys to drain a puddle over by that house. It’s about ten yards into the woods. I want a plaster cast made of the shoe print left behind, and anything else that shows up once the puddle is drained. I want photographs—whatever you think we need. I don’t want anybody—I mean nobody—to use the route she took from the house. I cut my way out. Use my path, over here, see? In there. You and one other guy. No groups, no gawkers, no screw-ups. Clear enough?”

  LaMoia had quite obviously been asleep when the call had come in. He nodded and finished off a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Same MO?” he asked.

  “It’s him. Let’s not screw it up.”

  When Boldt returned, he found Dixon examining the corpse, the camera equipment all put away. To Boldt it looked the same as all the others: eyes grotesquely taped open, the gaping wound of the cross on her chest. Boldt’s stomach turned. When he heard the roar of the pump, Boldt returned to the puddle to oversee the work being done there.

  The I.D. technician looked up at Boldt. “It’s from an office shoe, Sergeant. A Rockport. Vibram sole,” he said.

  “How clean is it?” Boldt asked.

  “We’ll get a beauty. Got two others as well. Barefoot. Got to be hers. I think I’ll take ’em together. It’ll give us a better picture of weight if they’re lifted in perspective to each other. That okay?” the technician asked. LaMoia saw Boldt’s expression and answered “yes” for him. Boldt went back to Dixon.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Nothing new. She appears to have died of suffocation,” he said, pointing to her throat. “No bruising to indicate rape. I’ll do the usual tests. Couldn’t find any torn hair this time, and though the lacerations appear nearly identical to the others…” he trailed off. He ran a gloved finger over one of the deeper wounds and Boldt felt his stomach twist.

  “What’s bothering you, Dixie?”

  “Look here,” Dixon said, lifting a limp wrist and holding it in his gloved hand. He pushed back the knotted nylon rope. “No bruising. None whatsoever. That’s not right, Lou. If she was tied up while she was still alive we’d see b
ruising here,” he pointed. “And look at this knot. It’s not nearly as tight as those we found on the others. You’re the detective, but if you ask me he tied these on after he killed her.”

  Boldt moved carefully to the far side of the impression in the mud. “No blood,” he noted.

  “No,” Dixon said. “She was stabbed out here. Not enough bleeding on any of these wounds. She escaped uncut. Had to have. He must have caught up to her and finished her out here.”

  “So he’s finally made a mistake,” Boldt stated.

  “Looks like it. This sure didn’t go according to the ritual we’ve seen before. Almost like a different guy did it. He wanted her inside. She got away. Did she already have her clothes off? Did he catch her that way, or did he accomplish that out here? You’ve got a lot of questions to answer on this one, Lou. I can tell you right now that the body isn’t going to answer many of them.”

  “I know that.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Could it be the work of a copycat?”

  Doc Dixon studied the body again, then shook his head. “I don’t see how. No, I doubt it. My guess is that it’s the same guy. You know as well as I do that you can never rule out a copycat completely.” He paused. “I’ll say this much. If it is the work of a copycat, he would have to be close to the investigation. Really close. One of your police colleagues I’d have to think. But let’s not forget, this is the third victim that has struck you and me as being somewhat different. No two kills are ever identical. The detail evidence here matches too closely, Lou. It’s got to be the same guy.”

  Boldt nodded.

  “One thing that might interest you…”

  “What’s that?”

  Dixon pointed. “I found an abrasion on her upper lip. At first glance I thought it had been caused by her fall. But the ground’s too soft, eh? And if you look closely,” he said, forcing Boldt to drop to a knee and look along with him,” you’ll notice missing facial hair and the faint evidence of a gum residue here and here.”