Switch

by William Bayer

  Some of the women who'd been in the last class were starting to drift out. Janek noticed one carrying a huge, black leather portfolio, the sort that models haul around midtown. The girls that passed glowed with good health. Miss Carter paused to compliment them and she patted the model on her cheek. Janek had a sudden insight into Hazel Carter. He whispered to Aaron, "Show her Brenda soon as she turns back."

  "What about her?" Aaron asked, offering the second photograph.

  Hazel Carter stared. Janek watched her carefully, but her hand stayed at her side. "Don't know. Familiar. But not a regular, for sure. I may have seen her. Can't be certain. Cynthia?"

  Cynthia Tuttle nodded. "Yes, she's been in, but not as a regular. I don't recall her name."

  "Maybe Beard. Maybe Thatcher. First name's Brenda," Aaron said.

  Cynthia looked through her book. "Okay, we've had a Brenda Beard. Scattered classes, which means she took cancellations. Noon on July third. Two P.M. May fourteenth."

  She found a few more listings, a total of six. Brenda had always paid in cash. None of her classes was also attended by Amanda, but the girls' lives had intersected, more or less.

  A true intersection or a coincidence? People's lives crossed in Manhattan all the time. Outside the fitness center Janek paused, then led Aaron across the street. They stood there for a while watching the entrance. The last girls in the previous class drifted out, and new ones, for the next class, started coming in.

  "That doorman on the left," said Aaron. "He's interested. He's enjoying the parade."

  "Looks out of place in that stupid coat."

  "For a guy who likes girls he's got himself a terrific job. Gets to look at what comes in and out next door, all day long, six days a week."

  Yes, it could have been the doorman, or someone else who lived near the gym, who'd seen Amanda and Brenda enter or leave and decided to trail them separately.

  "Kind of a weird setup, Frank. This Hazel Carter place squeezed between those towers. Models coming and going all the time visible to hundreds of upscale residents and who knows how many assorted domestic help. Then you got Hindus downstairs working in that restaurant, and people like us lingering around, and ones who live behind here, too. I wonder why the hell they put French names on those apartment houses, then dress up the doormen like Englishmen."

  Janek smiled. Only a detective would ask a question like that. "You got any feelings about that Carter woman?"

  They walked to his car, then drove back to the precinct; Aaron had come to the gym by subway from his home.

  "I saw that move to the throat, if that's what you mean. She didn't make it the second time."

  "Lot of people react like that. It's a fairly ordinary gesture of shock. By itself it doesn't mean too much, but I picked up on several other things."

  "Like that Hazel's probably gay."

  "That's part of it. I'm sure she is. But more interesting—a strong disciplinary streak. She went on too long about how stern she is. She called herself a 'task mistress' and ran that class like a military drill. Women-only place, a perfect setup for someone who likes beautiful girls. Then the whole relationship with Cynthia, sort of mistress/slave it seemed to me."

  "Yeah. I picked up on that."

  "So put it all together."

  "It's the one place we know where the victims' paths crossed."

  "And gay fits in with no semen in their bodies." Janek glanced at Aaron. "Say the girls didn't know each other, but they went to the same gym. So we look to the gym to see who knew them. Who do we find? A tough lesbian disciplinarian. Question: Is Hazel Carter capable of having perpetrated Switched Heads? She's certainly got the physical strength for it, but does she have that kind of mind?"

  "Want me to check her out?"

  Janek nodded. "And talk to Cynthia Tuttle again. Maybe you better try and catch her one evening at home. She didn't stall on Brenda, went right to it, found her name pretty fast in that book. As for Hazel, I can see one thing in her favor. She didn't move her hand to her throat when you showed her Brenda, which suggests she didn't know that Brenda was murdered, since we didn't tell her and there wasn't anything in the papers. On the other hand, she could be a very cool lady. You may want to ask her point-blank just where she was last Saturday night.”

  He had called a meeting for noon at the precinct, before they broke for the weekend. Everyone was exhausted. Sal hadn't come up with anything. Taxi drivers, bus drivers, doormen, patrolmen on the beat—the killer hadn't attracted any notice on his shuttles back and forth. Stanger and Howell's "books" on the victims were getting thicker, but Amanda still looked like Little Miss Perfect and Brenda like a skillful professional whore. Friends had turned up with details which fit these acknowledged patterns. There was more work to be done, many more interviews to be conducted, but nothing new was coming in.

  Janek analyzed the Hazel Carter connection, and then the possibility the girls had been trailed. "We got two very attractive young women who took gym class at the same place. Suppose our killer was hanging around. He sees Brenda and trails her. He sees Amanda and trails her. Why these two out of all the rest? Maybe he trailed others before he settled on them. Okay, say he picks them up there and finds out where they live and he follows them around and gets a certain impression of their lives. Then he gets this obsessive idea that their heads should be switched around. He doesn't want to kill them to have sex. He just wants to correct this problem with their heads. He has to make the switch, can't rest until this problem of two women walking around with the wrong heads is straightened out. His obsession builds and builds. He has to set it right. He plans it carefully, figures out when to do it, then takes the plunge and brings it off. It has to be a desperate act. He has to feel totally compelled. He gets the heads the way he wants them, and then he's exhilarated—the thing that was bothering him is now set right. He watches the papers. Nothing. His brilliant deed is not proclaimed. So, what's he thinking? Maybe that we're covering up. Maybe he's frustrated by that, or maybe he doesn't give a damn. The point I'm making has to do with motive. There's no motive to kill these women except to switch their heads. They weren't his enemies. He wasn't after them for money or sex. He had no particular relationship with either of them, and there was no old score he had to settle. He just had this thing about their heads. Now, what good does that line do us, supposing that I'm right? Not much good, because about all it tells us is that the motive is inside our killer's mind. There are no extrinsic facts that can lead us to him. It's a one hundred percent psycho crime. Aaron has checked to see if there was ever another crime like it, anytime, anywhere, and apparently there's never been. Lots of dismemberments. Plenty of decapitations. But this is the first switch we know about, and now it's been a week."

  They all knew the odds; there were cops who taught them at the Police Academy. Seventy-two hours after a homicide with a cold trail you were talking one in ten. A week and still cold and you were probably talking less.

  "Maybe he'll do it again," said Sal. "That would give us another trail."

  "We could stake out the gym. See if anyone hangs around," said Stanger.

  "That's a possibility. I'd have to go to Hart for extra men."

  "Maybe he'll come in on his own," said Howell.

  "I've been praying for that since I got this case."

  "Any way to bait him?" asked Aaron.

  "I've been thinking about that. I can't see any way."

  "You could plant a story. Put some pressure on his pride."

  "Yeah, go public with the switch, get publicity, which could push him to write a letter. Then we'd have handwriting and spittle to work with, but of course we could get a thousand letters, too. And maybe if the papers built it up big enough we'd start getting imitations, other switches perpetrated by other weirdoes in other boroughs—this is the sort of thing that could feed upon itself."

  He shook his head. "No weapon signature. No eyewitnesses. No connection except the gym. The only thing we got is a very peculiar message
. What I want to know is: What was the killer trying to say? I've been over it and over it and I can't come up with anything except this notion that he wants the whore's head on the Madonna schoolteacher, and the other way around. Slut and nun. Switch them. Okay, that's a concept, but then the circle's closed. It doesn't take us outside his mind, doesn't lead us to a person. It doesn't lead us anywhere, in fact, except round and round and round." He looked at them. "The only thing I can see to do is to keep talking, keep widening the circle. You stalk somebody, maybe the person notices, feels it, or feels uneasy, or is scared in a generalized sort of way. Maybe Amanda or Brenda told someone she was scared. So far the primary contacts say no. Maybe she mentioned it casually to someone else. We got to keep looking. Now, maybe I'm missing something. If anyone's got ideas, this is the time to speak."

  Stanger suggested they follow up on Amanda's dog. She walked her regularly, took a regular route. People might have noticed her and maybe noticed someone trailing behind.

  Sure. A possibility. Go ahead, Stanger—check it out.

  Howell wanted to round up whores. They liked to gossip about johns, he said. Maybe one of them had a head freak, a guy who'd mentioned casually or otherwise that so-and-so's body would look terrific with so-and-so's head attached.

  Sure. Try it. You like the whores. Go ahead, Howell—round them up.

  When the meeting broke up, Janek called Sal aside, asked him if he had a date. Sal said yes, but he was willing to cancel. They made arrangements to meet at an uptown coffee shop that evening at eight o'clock.

  Rainstorm

  Hard light, hard, hot afternoon light, broke through the slats of the Venetian blinds and fell upon the loft in bars. It striped them as they made love, turned the perspiration on their bodies into pearls.

  Caroline's ceiling fan revolved, wobbling slightly in its socket. Her walls, high and white, were a glittering background for her photographs. The railings of her brass bed glowed, felt warm to Janek's touch. Caroline had tilted the big mirror above her dressing table so they could watch themselves in profile. Every so often as they stroked and kissed Janek looked at their reflection. The play of light, the stripes cast by the blinds, seemed to bind them to each other like bonds or straps.

  A clatter somewhere in the building, as if the artist next door had dropped a pail of paint. A cat shrieked out on the stairs. In another loft a stereo was blasting; the vibrations reached them through the pillars. Sweat ran down their bodies. The beads merged into rivulets. Janek glanced at the mirror. Caroline's brown hair swung back and forth as she swayed upon him. Her eyes were shut; her mouth was half open as she gulped the humid air. She must have sensed his examination, because she opened her eyes—he could seeher inspecting his thighs and legs clasped about her, his thumbs resting beneath her breasts and his fingers pressing lightly against her sides.

  Outside a motorcycle coughed. The air hung steamy, almost tropical. Drops ran down between her breasts, fell upon his stomach. She twisted her fingers in the damp hair beneath his arms, raised and lowered herself seeking slow exquisite bliss.

  The stripes upon them faded suddenly. Brilliant a moment before, they disappeared as the sky turned dark. Now they were barely visible in the mirror, and the loft seemed filled with dusk. Janek couldn't understand it. Was there a solar eclipse he hadn't read about? A lightning bolt. He arched up, thrust at her while it flashed to them through the slats. A crack of thunder—she moaned and shook. As the summer storm cloud burst she lowered herself upon him. They held each other, wrapped each other as they listened to the slashing rain and laughed.

  Water beat against the windows of the loft. Janek could hear a hollow sound as rain battered the tops of cars out on the street. A hornet buzzed across the room. A faint smell of wet leaves and sex. Kissing and laughing, they pulled apart, carefully breaking the seal between their bodies. They lay on their backs, moist chests exposed to the fan. He put his arm around her, held her to him. After a while the sun turned bright and bars leaped again across the loft, striping them light-dark, light-dark, light-dark.

  "What made you decide to become a cop?"

  He looked at her. She was gazing up at the fan. "You mean what's a nice guy like me doing in a lousy racket like this?"

  "Oh, Janek." She turned to him and smiled.

  "You ask a tough question." She waited for his answer. "Well, whatever it was, it had nothing to do with why I stayed. Ask an old priest why he went into the priest business, or a whore why she started peddling her ass. They can hardly remember. They just fell into it. They were different people then. I was different. I thought a cop was something I'd like to be because it was exciting, paid a decent wage and there was a certain honor to the work. You know—a cop defended the Right against the Wrong. He Protected and he Upheld. If you were a cop you were maybe a little better than other people. You could be counted on. You were the guy they called when trouble hit."

  "You don't believe that anymore."

  He shook his head. "I've been around too long. Anyway, it doesn't relate to what I do. I became a detective, and a detective is different from a cop. We investigate. We prowl around in people's lives. When we're good we make cases. I like that: get a case, get to the bottom of it, close it out, go on to the next. I like confessions too, like to watch and listen while a person unburdens himself, tells me what he's done. I can feel his need for me, feel I'm of use. And then there's the endless fascination of that thing I'm always looking for."

  "What's that?"

  "The shadow. The side that's dark. The place where all the hurt and evil is. The shadow's there, in all of us, sometimes gray and faint, other times very deep and black. I'm attracted to it, and filled with pity on account of it, for all of us for having it within us, for myself too, perhaps, most of all. My wife used to mock me for saying that. 'Isn't it just too heavy to bear, Frank, that gloomy load of pity you carry around?' But she was wrong. It's not too heavy. I like the feeling. I think it's the thing I like most about my life."

  He stopped talking and after a while, when he'd almost forgotten what he'd said, he heard her say, "It's the thing I love most about you, too."

  Reconstruction

  He met Sal at a coffee shop called Aspen. Darkness was settling upon the city, and the streets were still slick from the rainstorm that afternoon. Aspen smelled like a McDonald's, but there were copper pots hanging from the walls, the waitresses all spoke as if they'd gone to Finch, and the six-dollar burgers were accompanied by bean sprouts instead of fries.

  They didn't talk much. Janek was Sal Marchetti's rabbi, and looking at the younger man he vowed Sal would never be awakened by a Sunday-morning call telling him his old mentor had eaten his thirty-eight.

  Sal checked his watch. "In about ten minutes she starts to walk her dog."

  "Okay, let's get over there."

  Janek left money on the table and they walked out to Madison, deserted the starry weekend night. In other neighborhoods, poorer ones, the heat of summer lured people into the streets, but on the Upper East Side over Labor Day weekend the streets were almost empty, everyone was at the Hamptons and the old apartment houses were locked up tight like silent brooding banks.

  They got into Janek's car, drove down to Lexington, found a parking space between Eightieth and Eighty-first. There were five or six other spaces open on the block. No need to use the meter—it was night.

  "Let's say he parks around here, waits till he sees her coming down Eightieth with the dog. He waits till she passes the car, then he knows he's got maybe twenty minutes to get inside."

  They got out, walked up toward the brownstone. They passed only one large apartment house. The doorman didn't turn.

  "Was on last weekend," Sal said. "Didn't see a thing. Doesn't even recognize me now. Quiet around here, Frank."

  "Saturday night was a good night to do it."

  Sal glanced at him; they walked on.

  There was a short, narrow passageway beside Amanda's building, with a spring-locked grill-cage
door. Behind the grill a row of trashcans. It took Janek eleven seconds to slip the catch. A minute later they had scaled a low wall and were in the garden behind the brownstone, beside the bottom of the fire escape.

  "Don't like it, Sal. Too many windows in that big building on the corner. All it takes is one person looking out. And on his way up the ladder he's got to pass three apartments very close. Too risky. He didn't do it this way. Let's see if he came down from the roof."

  They went back out through the passageway, then around to the front of the brownstone. Six seconds to open up that door. They crept up the carpeted stairs. Two apartments to a floor, eight doors to pass. At the top Sal unbolted the fire door and they stepped onto the roof.

  It was a typical flat asphalt roof sprouting chimneys and ventilator exhausts. The asphalt was still wet. There was a breeze. Janek was breathing hard from the climb; his shirt felt wet against his back.

  Sal found the ladder, the built-in kind, rods sunk into the concrete. It led over the back wall of the roof and down the rear of the building to the fire-escape balcony just outside the windows of Amanda's studio. So it was easy, incredibly easy: slip the front-door lock with a plastic credit card, climb up to the roof, then lower yourself and climb on in.

  "That fucking Stanger," whispered Sal.

  Janek had to agree. It was basic work on a robbery to figure out how an intruder had gotten in. This was a double homicide. It was inexcusable that Stanger hadn't checked the roof. Now they began to check it themselves, using flashlights they'd brought along. They didn't find anything except some old cigarette butts disintegrating in a puddle of rain.

  "If this was a police procedural," Sal said, "we'd find a half-eaten eggroll tossed into the corner. We'd trace it back to a carry-out joint on Third Avenue on account of how they always cut their bean curd at an angle of thirty-two degrees. We'd question the help. No one would remember anything—they sell so much eggroll, you know. But then this old mamasan would come out. She'd remember. When the guy paid for his eggrolls she saw this Jap sword strapped on beneath his coat..."