“Snitches get paid.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
She located a twenty in her purse and handed it to him. When he balked, she asked him to name a price. He took a moment to consider. “A hundred?” She brought forth two fifties and added it to the twenty. He in turn jotted down a list of names. There were several characters who fit the bill. One of these was Dr. Harriet Plummer, Dean Plummer of the University of Philadelphia.
The sight of this name hit Jessica like a freight train. She knew now that she must look a great deal closer at Dr. Harriet Plummer.
James Parry produced a janitor in the last building where a victim had died; the superintendent's assistant, as he called himself, had been persuaded to come forward to ID someone leaving the crime scene. The description was of a young man, not a woman—a young man perhaps in his mid to early twenties, ordinary looking, the sort no one would pay the least attention to. The artist sketch that was ordered resulted in a likeness so generic as to be useless. This did not strengthen the case against either Locke or Leare, who, whatever one might say about them, were not ordinary looking.
Meanwhile, Jessica pursued information about Harriet Plummer, all to a dead end, but she did learn that Plummer held Locke in great esteem, and that the poet had not, until recently, produced any significant new work in years. Plummer and Locke had an ongoing affair, much of which was devoted to her efforts to bolster his ego. Locke and his wife were estranged, although he continued to live with her and the children. He and Plummer maintained an apartment on Second Street. Again the PPD brass sent undercover teams into every pub and coffeehouse in the area, flooded already by people who'd read about the murders and wanted a glimpse of the grisly “scene” from which so many had “disappeared.” Jessica found this morbid curiosity ironic and yet typical of human beings. Open-mike night brought everyone out, and it brought on as well a party atmosphere as one by one the young performers stood up, pranced to the stage, and raised their arms in the gesture of a winner even before they began to read their poems. Some used well-placed mirrors to read the poems on their bodies, while others relied on their sponsor poet. Often the performer was the actual poet.
To the last, every poem depicted a dismal future for mankind, and their utter grimness and grayness felt disturbing. None of them were as good as those on the backs of the murder victims; none were so well conceived or executed as the killer's, and none so hopeful. For the killer's words spoke of a new beginning for the deceased. In the coffeehouse poems, many of the lines were bursting with violent words. Some sounded like rip-offs of Clive Barker and Stephen King themes, what with devils roaming the earth in search of just the right woman to spawn a son, while others, far more personal, were geared to push all the right buttons on a listener who was undergoing teen angst at age twenty-seven.
Most of the night's poets had used erasable Magic Marker on their backs, but some had had the words cut into their flesh. These, Jessica had been told by those in the know, were the true artists.
Jessica had informed everyone to be on the lookout for anyone with a camera, anyone overly interested in photographing the poets on display or the other patrons. “Detain for questioning anyone doing so,” came the order. Meanwhile, they looked high and low for George Gordonn, the photographer they'd met the last time they'd come down to the Second Street coffeehouses and bars, the young man who'd been hired to film the night's activities, but he was nowhere to be found.
While the other investigators listened, trying to distinguish the truly disturbed from the merely troubled, Jessica kept vigilant for any photographer/poet matching the general description given them by their lone, admittedly weak witness.
Jessica realized now that their killer could be someone behind the counter at the Brick Teacup, where she and Kim had wound up this night. Kim agreed, saying, “Someone in a position to see these poetry shows each night, and to learn the likes and dislikes of the poets, down to finding out where they lived, down to weaseling into their homes, seeing the layout, and continuing to weasel into their lives until the young people felt at ease with the wolf at the threshold.”
“They paid in the end with their lives.” Jessica sipped at her coffee, trying to stay awake.
After an hour of listening to what amounted to, in her estimation, drivel and brain snot purporting to be art, Jessica wanted to run out screaming; she felt absolutely certain that she could easily kill a few so-called poets herself.
To add insult to injury, the few people detained by the police tonight, from bars up and down the Second Street area, netted them nothing new. In fact, now that Leare was in custody, the police presence had slackened considerably, and the reasons for arrests were far more mundane than seeking out a serial killer.
The following day, Jessica and Kim again canvassed the pubs and coffeehouses along Second Street, and Jessica, knowing now of Locke's apartment in the vicinity, felt an eerie sensation of being watched from the many windows that looked down on the strip.
In each closed business establishment they badgered their way into, the women asked after anyone coming in to do photo shoots of patrons, or attempting to lure people away with promises of a professional photo shoot. Most of the leads turned out to be “photo-shoot Casanovas,” but not a one of them could be linked to the killings. The day's work then led to several weak leads and zero arrests, and Jessica knew that the longer Leare remained in lockup, and the longer the killer remained silent, the stronger Leanne Sturtevante's conviction that her former live-in lover—as Leare turned out to be—was guilty of premeditated murder by poisoning.
“Whoever the guy is, he must blend into the walls. No one knows anything; no one has seen anything,” Jessica told Kim as they once again pored over the files on each victim. “Frustrated at every turn,” she added from her seat at the desk they shared. “I'm at my wit's end.”
Kim didn't answer. In her hands, she held a crystal wrapped in tight brilliant wire, the wire twisted into knots about the blue stone and attached to a keychain, a possession of one of the victims. Kim had gone into a trance while holding on to the item that had come out of a box taken from the evidence room, a box labeled victim #3321—micellina petryna. Jessica watched as Kim writhed in something other than agony, something that appeared more than pleasant; indeed, the sounds coming out of her mouth were those of a person at the peak of ecstasy. Then in a blink, it was over, and Kim looked as if she'd been shocked into consciousness, her color returning, her eyes no longer glazed or shadowed. “I think I got something, a hit that may mean something, Jess.”
“What is it?”
“Earlier, in the earliest reading, I kept seeing the crime scene, but in a blindingly bright light that eventually coalesced into letters, spelling out the single word rampage. This alongside the number nineteen, sometimes transposed as ninety-one. I just saw another flashing, blinding light that not only spelled out rampage, but the other words I've been getting, too. Remember I saw the word quark and pre/light?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Add to them the word output. It wasn't outing, but output coming through.”
“Is that it? Any additional words that cropped up around your reading?”
“None... that's it.”
“Could these words have something to do with poetry?”
“More likely quantum mechanics,” Kim replied, her shoulders heaving.
“What about photography?” Jessica considered this possibility and balling up her fists, she added, “Imagine... if they have something to do with photography?” She grabbed the phone and dialed Marc Tamburino at Darkest Expectations.
“Who're you calling?” asked Kim.
Jessica put up a hand to her and said into the phone, “Mr. Tamburino? This is Dr. Coran. I have a quick question for you; do you mind?”
Kim heard a raspy, static-charged reply from the phone, the bookstore owner saying, “Sure thing, but whatever it is, it'll cost you more.”
“Whatever you like, but can you tell me if the numbers nineteen and/or ninety-one have any special significance in photography?”
“No, none that I know of.”
“In the world of words, poetry?”
“Again, doesn't ring any bells, not like you know, sixty-nine or nine-nine-nine or six-six-six.”
“What about the word rampage?”
“Rampage?”
“Has it anything to do with photography?”
“Yeah, sorta... it has to do with photo finishing; it's a machine. 317 I “And what about quark and preflight and output?”
“Yeah, all terms in the business, but some of that... well, that's pretty high-quality, resolution-specialty programming shit in film developing. I don't know a whole hell of a lot about that particular specialty, but I'm sure some of the photog profs at the university could tell you. They have classes on everything to do with photography over there.”
“Just tell me what you know about these terms.”
“I'd be blowing smoke up your... skirt. Look, I suggest you speak to the geniuses over to the colleges about these things.”
“Who, Marc? Who do I call?”
“The university has a specialist in film and photography, I'm sure. Why don't you talk to him or her? And by the way, when's my poetry going to appear in the Philly Inquirer? And when do I get it back?”
Jessica hung up to Tamburino's chorus of, “When do I see the bread? When, when?”
NINETEEN
He then believed the world to be governed by a Malignant Spirit, and at one time conceived himself... a fallen angel, though he was half-ashamed of the idea, and grew cunning and mysterious about it after I seemed to detect it.-Lady Byron's statement to a doctor on the supposed insanity of her husband
Professor Leonard Throckmorton greeted Jessica and Kim in a stern, cool manner. A small man, he looked dwarfed by his desk, but his manners were impeccable. Hadn't their only witness said something about the politeness of the young man he'd seen leaving the crime scene? Throckmorton appeared to be in his late twenties, but in a dark corridor he could easily pass for a younger man. Something diffident in his manner made him seem feminine. Jessica realized that since he was chairman of the department at such a young age, his rise must have been nothing short of meteoric, but some probing told her and Kim that the man answered to Dr. Harriet Plummer, who appeared to like her department heads and colleagues on the youthful side.
“When I called Dr. Plummer to ask whom to speak to in the photography department, she instantly told me that you, sir, were the man to see if I wanted an expert in all facets of photography.”
“She does flatter me.”
“I told her I needed to know some details about film processing.” kim added, “And she instantly recommended you. Professor Throckmorton.”
He remained seated behind the desk, using it as a kind of barrier. “So, how can I help you, ladies... ah, Doctors?”
Kim told him of her psychometric hits. She finished with the list of words that had insinuated themselves into her mind, adding, “Each word gets more forceful as time goes on, as if each has a life of its own.”
Throckmorton chewed on his lower lip.
Jessica asked, “Do these words have any significance for you, sir?”
“They carry great meaning, yes.” Throckmorton informed them, “The list of words Detective Desinor is referring to all have to do with the job of a specialist in film.”
“And that specialty would be?”
“Film output, a film output specialist.”
“And this specialist... he does what, exactly?”
“Processes on a Quark system. You preflight film, trap the image you want, then you print it—that would be output—on a Rampage.”
“Rampage?”
“That is an NT system.”
“A computer photoshop processor?”
“Not unlike the sort you have yourself used at your local Kmart, but this is with film, video equivalents, and the job is done by a technician, a specialist, not a machine.”
“I see... I think.”
Kim asked, “Would this involve photo-processing toxins, say like selenium?”
“Indeed it would.”
“How many such specialists work in the city, Dr. Throckmorton?”
“Oh, I'd say you're looking at between twenty and thirty people. It's a highly skilled task when done the old-fashioned way. In a self-contained computerized system like you find at Wal-Mart, all the ingredients for processing are never touched by the operator. The specialist, on the other hand, gets his hands dirty— chemically speaking, of course—as he is required to do all the mixing and processing work by hand.”
The detectives stared at one another and Jessica said, “Then we have a poet and a photography specialist who is something of a chemist as well.”
“That does narrow the field,” Kim agreed, a slight smile of satisfaction curling her lips.
Jessica again turned to Throckmorton, who worked to light a pipe he'd pulled from a rack. She asked, “What sort of companies use such specialists?”
“Oh, production companies.”
“As in movies?”
“Movies, ads, business tapes, anything to do with video production. The key word for the film output specialist is video. He works with video.”
“Most major companies, including ad agencies, hire their work out, right?” Jessica wanted Throckmorton to give her every shred of information she could get. The man seemed to play the role of expert only reluctantly.
“You got it. The number of such companies is on the decline, and the call for a specialist in this area is rare nowadays, but I saw an ad in the paper just the other day for one.”
“Really?”
“Yes, which likely means—”
“That some poor slob lost his job not long ago?”
“Could be our man,” suggested Kim. “Serial killing is often triggered by a dramatic or traumatic event.”
“As in locating a lost memory?” asked Throckmorton. “I've read a number of true-crime books, and I follow The Edge series on TV,” he explained in an apologetic voice. Say as in a threat to one's life, and losing a job for most ranks right up there with the biggies in the trauma department,” Jessica replied.
“Look, do you recall the ad and the paper you saw it in?” Kim tapped her knuckles on the desk.
“Wrapped some tools in it at home. But it was two days ago, deep in the Philadelphia Inquirer want ads, so... no promises.”
“How was it listed?”
“Under 'Film Output Specialist.' “
“We'll find it, and thanks.”
A check of the Philadelphia Yellow Pages turned up eighteen local production companies, and after phone calls, Kim and Jessica narrowed these down to eleven that did their own Rampage/NT work on the premises via computer-driven machinery, which meant they would have no need of a film output specialist.
The detectives narrowed the field further by learning of the three companies that had had recent openings in this field. Only two of these had recently fired someone from the position, a man named Stuart David Andrews from McReel Industries, and another named George Linden Gordonn from Record-Time Custom Photo & Video.
“George Gordonn,” said Jessica, “the name rings a bell...”
“I requested and finally received a patient list from Dr. Vladoc. He sent two lists, the cop list and the civilian list,” said Kim.
“He maintains a civilian practice as well?”
“Yes, out of his apartment on Second Street. Anyway, our boy George was on that list. Along with another surprise. Let me find it. Here... here is his name. He has been Vladoc's patient for the past year.” You don't suppose he's... yes, he's got to be our George from the Teacup, or was it another joint—you remember... the night we talked to the guy who was doing the video work.”
“Has to be one and the same. He said his name was George Gordonn, didn't
he?” Jessica was pacing now as she thought. “It's too much of a coincidence to ignore. He was filming the poet performers, in a place Vladoc no doubt frequents.”
“What do you mean, Jess?”
“Remember the bartender, the one who said he'd had to throw out an older guy who was extremely short?”
“Are you saying that Vladoc was bounced, or that Vladoc might be in on the hunt and possibly the kill? That he's a predator?”
“I don't know, but I think we have to be cautious. Look further down the list.”
“Jesus—I see Garrison Burrwith's name.”
“The one Dean Plummer is convinced is the killer. Maybe she knew he was seeing a shrink, fueling her fears? And look. Locke is on the list as well.”
Kim asked, “Do you think it's significant that Vladoc is treating Gordonn, Locke, and Burrwith?”
“I can't say, but why didn't Vladoc come forward with these facts early in the investigation?”
“He didn't know we ever considered Burrwith a viable suspect. Because we didn't. And as for Gordonn, it's quite likely that no one asked Vladoc about him.”
Jessica felt a wave of incredulity wash over her. “So Vladoc had said nothing about working with Locke. He doesn't think that relevant to the case?”
“You are making it sound like Vladoc's part of the killings, or at the very least that he closed his eyes to it. Don't forget, Jessica, that he must work under a strict code of confidentiality.”
Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“You asked him for a patient list, and he complied, but he still cannot give up patient secrets, their absolute right to privacy.”
“He ought to've found a way to... to leak this information to us.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Only in the event that a patient confesses to a crime or displays incriminating evidence is the doctor required by law to turn over his notes. Only then does the privilege issue take a backseat. Vladoc has likely done what any self-respecting psychiatrist would have done.”
“He might have saved a life had he spoken up.”
Bitter Instinct Page 29