Grimoire Diabolique

by Edward Lee

  “It’s a way of increasing the identifiability of the event to a mass readership, because it helps sell papers. But I might remind you, Captain—before you flick more ashes on my floor—that I’m one journalist who’s never used that tagline and has never criticized the police in their efforts to catch the killer.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I like you.”

  By the way, the so-called “Handyman” Case involved a fairly recent sequence of murders in the downtown area. Three women so far: two known street prostitutes and one homeless woman. All three had been found strangled to death, their bodies carefully hidden along the Jackson Street corridor. And all three had been found with both of their hands missing. Cut off with an ax or a hatchet.

  “And don’t worry about your floor,” he went on. “What? Your big paper can’t afford janitors?”

  “Captain Jameson, for a man coming in here asking for help, you might need to learn a few lessons in sincerity.”

  “Oh, fuck that shit. Don’t be a creamcake. The only good journalism about this case that I’ve seen has been written by you. I want to make a deal.”

  “A deal? For what?”

  “There’ve been more than three girls. That info’s gonna get leaked eventually. I want you to break it first. I’ll tell you everything about the case the press hasn’t heard. You’ll look good.”

  “Yes sir, I guess I would,” I realized. “But what’s the catch?”

  “You make me look good along the way. You write for the most respectable paper in the city. All I’m asking is for some slack. I give you the goods, but when you write it, you say my unit’s doing its best. And when we catch this fuck-up…you put in a good word for me. Deal?”

  “No deal,” I said. “You’re bribing me. You’ve got balls coming in here telling me this. I’m a newspaper reporter for God’s sake!”

  “I wouldn’t call it bribery.” Jameson showed a big toothy grin, then flicked more ashes on the floor. “That descrambler you got? Sounds smalltime, but did you know it’s now an FCC first-degree misdemeanor? A federal crime? Get’cha a year in jail and a five-grand fine for starters. Then let’s talk about your Schedule C deductions. Newspaper writers with freelance gigs on the side? You pay Miscellaneous income tax, right? Those pseudonymous articles you wrote for The Stranger, The Rocket, and Mansplat?”

  You son of a bitch, I thought.

  “Can we talk?” Jameson asked.

  ««—»»

  Seattle’s never been a city known for its crime rate. Thirty-six murders last year in the entire Seattle-Metro area. Compare that to L.A., New York, Washington D.C. and at least a dozen others tipping a thousand. What we’re known for instead is the Space Needle, the Monorail, and the largest fish depot in the hemisphere. Microsoft and Boeing. Happy times and happy people. Low unemployment, and no state income tax. No partisan politics and no potholes. And more NEA and college grants per-capita than any major metropolis in the country.

  A good place to live.

  But then there’s the downside that no one sees. Higher temperatures in the winter and wide-open welfare policies wag false promises to the destitute—it’s a magnet to the hopeless. They come here looking for the yellow-brick road but all they get is another bridge to sleep under, another dumpster to eat out of. Just take a walk around Third and James, Yesler Street, the trolley bridge on Jackson. You’ll see them trudging back and forth on their journey to nowhere. Stick-figures in rags, ghosts not quite incorporeal yet. Their dead eyes sunk into wax faces and bloodless lips asking for change or promising anything you want for twenty dollars. There are so many of them here, so many of these non-people with no names, no backgrounds, no lives.

  The perfect grist of a psycho-killer.

  “Our total’s sixteen so far,” Jameson admitted. “But that’s not even the worst consideration—”

  “God knows how many others are out there you haven’t found,” I said.

  “You got it.”

  Jameson had brought me to his office at the city district headquarters. A large tack-board hung on the wall with sixteen pieces of paper pinned to it. Each piece of paper showed a victim’s name, or in several cases just the letters No ID and a recovery date.

  “How’d you manage to keep it quiet for so long?” I asked.

  “Luck, mostly,” Jameson grumbled. “Until recently, we’d find one here, one there. Isolated incidents, the victims were all nobodies: hookers, street trash. And we have our ways of keeping stuff away from the press.”

  “So you knew about this all along,” I said, not asked.

  “Yeah, for over three years.” He was standing by the window, staring out as he talked. “Every single police department in the area is still the laughing stock over the Green River thing. What could we do? Have another one of those?”

  “That’s not the point, is it?”

  He turned, a tight sarcastic smile on his face like a razor slash. “You fuckin’ press guys. My job’s to protect the residents of this city. It’s not gonna do me or them any good if they find out this shit’s been going on for years.”

  “And the victims?”

  “So what? I don’t give a shit about a bunch of whores and crackheads. I don’t work for them—I work for the real people. And it sure as shit doesn’t help when you press guys bend over backwards to trash the police. If you’re not complaining about increased burglary rates you’re complaining about kids buying cigarettes. It’s all our fault, huh? The police aren’t doing enough.”

  I almost laughed at his insolence.

  Jameson winced. “I’m just generalizing so don’t be an asshole. Fuck, I’m forty-nine years old, been breaking my ass out there since I was a nineteen-year-old cadet. I’m a shoe-in for deputy chief, then all of a sudden a couple of dead junkies make the papers, and there goes my promotion.”

  “So this is all about you,” I said. “You’re just worried that this case will queer your promotion.”

  “I don’t deserve the shit, that’s all I’m saying.”

  That may have been true, at least in a sense. Eventually, I found out that Jameson had the highest conviction rate of any homicide investigator in the state. A lot of promotions, commendations, and even a valor medal. But now, after so many years on the department, his bitterness was draining like an abscess.

  “You’ve covered this up for three years,” I pointed out. “How’d the papers get wind of these last three?”

  He sputtered smoke in disgust. “One of the construction crews building the new stadium found two in one day, and one of the workmen’s wives writes for Post-Intelligencer. So we were fucked. Then a couple days later some egghead from UW’s botany department finds the third body stuffed into a hole in one of the original drain outlets to the Sound. That fuckin’ outlet had been out of service for seventy years, but this guy’s in there with hipwaders collecting samples of fuckin’ kelp and sea-mold. Then we were really burned. Three bodies with the same m.o., in less than a week? Next thing I know, me and the rest of my squad are getting pig-fucked by the press.”

  “Your compassion for the victims is heart-rending, captain,” I said.

  “Let me tell you something about these ‘victims,’” Jameson shot back. “They’re crack-whores. They’re street junkies. They steal, they rip people off, they spread AIDS and other diseases. If it weren’t for all this walking garbage that this candyass liberal state welcomes with open arms, then we wouldn’t have a fuckin’ drug epidemic. Shit, Health and Human Services pays these fuckin’ people with our tax dollars! They sell their goddamn food stamps for a quarter on the dollar to buy crack. The city spends a couple hundred grand a year of our money giving these animals brand-new needles every day, and then millions more in hospital fees when they OD. Sooner or later society’s gonna get fed up…but probably not in my fuckin’ lifetime.”

  “That’s quite a social thesis, captain. Should I start my next article with that quote?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But you’ll have to have it trans
cribed.”

  “Transcribed?” I asked.

  “They won’t let you have a computer or typewriter in prison. Between the FCC violations and the tax-evasion, they’ll probably give you five years, but don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll parole you after, say, a year and a half.”

  Okay, so maybe I’ve cut a few corners on my taxes, and I almost never use that descrambler…but I didn’t know if he was kidding about this stuff or not. And Jameson didn’t look like the kind of guy to kid about anything.

  “Now that we’ve got that settled—come on. I need a drink.”

  ««—»»

  Jameson wasn’t kidding about that either, about needing a drink. He slammed back three beers—tall boys—in about ten minutes while I sipped a Coke. Of all places, he’d taken me to The Friendly Tavern at James Street and Yesler, what most people would call a “bum” bar. It was on the same block as the city’s most notorious subsidized housing complex, a couple of liquor stores and two bail bondsman’s. Right across the street was the county courthouse.

  “You sure know how to pick the posh spots,” I said.

  “Aw, fuck all those ritzy socialist asshole pinkie-in-the-air places up town,” Jameson replied. “I want to drink, I don’t want to listen to some bald lesbian read poetry. I don’t want to listen to a bunch of fruitcake men with fingernail polish and black lipstick talk about art. I’ll tell ya, one day Russia and the Red Chinese are gonna invade us, and this’ll probably be the first city they take. When they get a load of the art-fag freak show we’ve got going on here, they’ll just say fuck it and nuke us. All this fuckin’ tattoo homo Goth shit, women in combat boots, guys with Kool-Aid-colored Mohawks swapping tongues in public and girls sticking their hands down each other’s pants while they’re walking down fuckin’ Fifth Avenue. Everybody wearing black, of course—’cos it’s chic, it’s sophisticated. Everybody with all this ridiculous metal shit in their face, fuckin’ rings in their nose and lips, rivets in their tongues. Nobody gives a shit about global terrorism or the trade-deficit—all they care about is getting their dicks pierced and picking up the next Maryland Mansion album.”

  “I think that’s Marilyn Manson,” I said, “and, boy, you’re packing a whole lot of hatred, Captain.”

  “I wouldn’t call it hatred.”

  “Oh? You consider the homeless, the drug-addicted, and destitute to be, and I quote ‘walking garbage’ and you’ve just railed against alternative lifestyles with more invective than a right-wing militia newsletter. If that’s not hatred, what is it?”

  “Focused animosity.”

  “Ah, thanks for the clarification,” I said, amazed at this guy.

  “The world doesn’t ask much, you know? Work a job and obey the law—that’s all anyone needs to do to be okay in my book.” He slugged more beer, then glanced around in loathe. “The art-faggots, the dykes and the pinkos? I guess I can put up with them—most of ’em got jobs and they tend to stay out of the per-capita crime percentages. I’m just sick of seeing it, you know? Fuckin’ pinkos.”

  “Didn’t that term die out in the ’70s?” I speculated. “Like when All In The Family went off the air?”

  Jameson didn’t hear me. He took another slug of beer, another loathsome glance around at the bar’s patronage. “But this shit here? The rummies, the winos? They’re the ones that get my goat. Ever notice how shit-hole bars like this are always full the first week of the month?”

  I squinted at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s ’cos on the first of the month, they all get their four-hundred-dollar SSI checks. Then they come here and sit around like a bunch of waste-products and drink till the money’s gone. Then the rest of the month they pan-handle or mug people for booze money.”

  I had to protest. “Come on, Captain. I read the crime indexes. Incidences of the homeless mugging citizens are almost non-existent. They pan-handle because there’s nothing else they can do. And they drink because they’re genetically dependent on alcohol. They can’t help it.”

  “Gimme a break,” he said. “I’m not surprised at something like that from lib journalist. Jesus Christ. Everything’s a disease today. If you’re a lazy piece of shit, you’ve got affect disorder. If you’re a fat fuck, it’s an inherited glandular imbalance. If your kid’s a wise-ass, smart-ass punk fucking up in school, it’s amotivational syndrome or attention-deficit disorder. What they all really need is a good old fashioned ass-kicking. Crack ’em in the head with a two by four enough times and they’ll get the message that they gotta pull their own weight in this world. And these fuckin’ rummies and crackheads? Oh, boo-hoo, poor them. It’s not their fault that they’re dope addicts and drunks, it’s this disease they have. It’s this thing in their genes that makes them be useless stinking fuck-ups on two legs. Put all that liberal shit in a box and mail it to someone who cares. I’ll bet you give money to the ACLU and ACORN. If they had it their way, we’d all be paying seventy-percent taxes so these fucking bums could drink all day long and piss and shit in the street whenever they want.”

  This hypocrisy made me sick. If anyone in this bar were an alcoholic, it was Jameson. “You know something, Captain?” I said. “You’re the most hateful, insensitive asshole I’ve ever met in my life. You’re an ignorant bigot and a police-state fascist. You probably call African-Americans niggers.”

  “Naw, we call ’em boot-lips and porch monkeys. You don’t see white people prancing down the street rubbing their fuckin’ crotches and playing cop-killer rap out of those ghetto blasters, do you? I’se Amf-nee, I’se Tyrome. Kill duh poe-leece.. Kill duh poe-leece.”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “This is incredulous. What the hell am I doing even sitting here with you? What the hell has this got to do with your psycho killer?”

  “Everything,” he said, and ordered his fourth beer. “It doesn’t matter what my views are—you’re a journalist, you’re supposed to report the truth. Even if you hate me…you’re supposed to report the truth, right?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Well none of the other papers are doing that. None of them have even queried my office to ask anything about the status of our investigation. It’s easier just to write these horror-movie articles about the three poor victims who were brutally murdered by this killer, and about how the big bad police aren’t doing anything about it because they don’t care about street whores or the homeless. They want to make this look like Jack the fucking Ripper so they can sell more papers and have something to talk about at their pinko liberal bisexual cocktail parties.”

  I finished my Coke, grabbed my jacket off the next stool. “I’m out of here, Captain. You’ve given me no reason to stay and listen to any more of this bullshit. You want me to write a news article about police diligence regarding this case? That’s a laugh. You haven’t shown me anything. In fact the only thing you’ve shown me is that the captain of the homicide unit is a drunk and a bigot. And go ahead and report me to IRS and FCC. I’ll take my chances.”

  “See? You’re just like the others—you’re a phony.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you haven’t even asked me the most important question. Why? Because you don’t care. All you care about is putting the police on the hot-seat just like all these other non-writing chumps.”

  It was very difficult for me to not walk out right then. But I have to admit, I was piqued by what he’d suggested. “All right. What’s the question I didn’t ask?”

  “Come on, you went to college, didn’t you? You’re a smart guy.” Jameson drained half of the next beer in one chug, then lit another cigarette off the last stub. “When you’ve got a string of related murders, what’s the first thing you’ve got to do?”

  I shrugged. “Establish suspects?”

  “Well, yeah, but before you can do that, you have to verify the common-denominators of the modus. Once you’ve done that, you gotta pursue a workable analysis of the of the motive. Remember, this is a
serial killer we’re talking about, not some meth-head punk knocking over 7-Elevens. Serial killers are calculating, careful. Some guy all fucked up on ice goes out and rapes a girl—that’s easy. I’ll have the fucker in custody in less than forty-eight hours and I’ll send him up for thirty years. But a serial killer?”

  “All right, I don’t know much about this kind of stuff,” I admitted. “After all, this is Seattle, not Detroit.”

  “Good, good,” he said. “So we establish the m.o., and with that we can analyze the motive. Once we’ve analyzed the motive, then we determine a what?”

  “Uhhhh….”

  “A psychological profile of the killer.”

  “Well, that was my next guess,” I said.

  “Only until we’ve established some working psych profile can we then effectively identify suspects.”

  “Okay, I’m following you.”

  Shaking his head, he crushed the next cigarette out in an ashtray that read Yoo-hoo, Mabel? Black Label! along the rim. “And? From the standpoint of a journalist, the most important question in this case is…what?”

  The last guy in the world I wanted to look stupid in front of was Jameson. I was stressed not to say the wrong thing. “Why, uh, why is the killer…cutting off their hands?”

  “Right!” he nearly yelled and cracked his open palm against the bar-top. “Finally, one of you ink-stained liberal press schmucks has got it! The police can’t do squat until they’ve established an index of suspects, and we can’t do that until we’ve derived a profile of the killer. Why is he killing these girls and taking their hands?”