Peregrine

by William Bayer

  Now he was furious. He could feel his anger grow, so fast he could not contain it, faster even than the beating of his wings. Now he was half man, half bird. He fought the transformation by squeezing shut his eyes. He tried to fly again, leave the earth, find the warm air currents, seek the sun. But she would not let him. He could feel the vibrations of her fear. She struggled to get away. He held her, released her mouth, grasped both hands tight around her throat. She tried to scream. He squeezed harder, could feel his nails cut into the softness of her flesh. She choked, and then she was silent. It was a long time before he let her go.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Janek didn’t like the morgue, but he knew detectives who did. He warned Marchetti while they were waiting for the elevator. “Spare me, Sal. No sex and corpse jokes today.”

  Marchetti grinned. He liked to tell how he had vomited over his first stiff.

  “But you get used to it; you even get to like it after a while,” he liked to say. It was a line like that, spoken with a straight-on gaze and a tone of mystery, that signaled that a locker-room bull session was at its end. The cops would strap on their holsters, lift their feet to the benches to retie their shoes; then they’d file out, giving quick glances at themselves in the rusted mirror beside the door.

  The young assistant medical examiner who escorted them wore steel-rimmed glasses and affected an aloof professional air. Working with dead tissue, slitting chests, sawing open skulls—it was hard for Janek to imagine a boy deciding to be a forensic pathologist when he grew up. But they were detectives, he knew, no more or less than himself. It was just that the particular nature of their work spoke not merely of the mortality of man but also of the inescapable fact that, when you took him apart, there was less there than you would have liked to think.

  “… contusions and cuts,” said the assistant medical examiner. “There’ll be cells beneath the killer’s fingernails …. We got his semen …. Enormous strength …. Attempts to puncture and to rip ….”

  Janek nodded wearily. He was impatient for the bottom line. “What time?”

  “Huh?”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Wednesday night. Probably very late. Interesting paraphernalia, they tell me, though I haven’t seen the thing myself.”

  Janek had seen it, the “mask.” He nodded to the doctor, motioned to Marchetti that it was time to go. “Got a project for you, Sal,” he said as they walked back to the car.

  “Trace the mask?”

  Janek nodded. “But it’s not a mask, Sal. It’s a hood, a falconry hood.”

  They drove back to the precinct in silence. It had taken twenty-four hours for word of the murder to reach him; too long, he thought, much too long.

  He’d complained to Wilson. Wilson called homicide, spoke to Thompson, who said he hadn’t thought it connected up. “An imitative crime,” Thompson said. “We get them all the time. We informed Janek as a courtesy. He’s got a goddamn nerve bitching now.”

  Thompson was wrong, of course. He’d been taken in by the “Peregrine fever” theme pushed by Channel 8. He thought the “mask” found at the scene was just part of the fad of dressing up like falcons and going around in T-shirts and masks. He couldn’t put it together because he didn’t understand the sequence: the falconer had promised a kill to Pam; he’d tried and failed with the bird; he had to deliver on his promise and so had gone out and murdered himself.

  Now that Janek had seen the girl, he knew that he was right. She was the same type as the others, short and thin, long brown hair, attractive, pretty face. A call girl hooded like a bird and then attacked as if by a bird.

  Though it didn’t fit the pattern of the falconer, Janek could sense the same level of madness, the same intensity. And Thompson had missed the whole point when he’d called the hood a mask, as if it were some ordinary S&M job, the sort they sold down at Village sex boutiques with a couple of plumes stuck in the top to pretty it up.

  When they got back to the precinct, he and Sal went through falconry books looking at prototypes of hoods.

  “Look,” Sal said. “There’re these different kinds. Rufter, Arab, Indian, Anglo-Indian, Dutch. It looks like the Dutch style, doesn’t it, Frank?” He passed the book to Janek. “What do you think?”

  Janek looked at the pictures. “I think two things. He either had it made up specially, in which case you may luck out. Or he made it up himself, in which case we’re screwed again.”

  “Kind of funny that he left it for us,” Marchetti said. “Guess he was in a hurry. Maybe he got scared and ran.”

  “Well-spoken, Sal,” Janek said, though he wasn’t sure that he agreed.

  There was more to it: This was a clever man; he didn’t make mistakes; maybe he wanted them to find the hood and run it down—a diversion, a waste of time, another dead end, another chuckled taunt.

  “Let’s assume for now he ordered it. Say he had it made to fit a small female head. Get in touch with the falcon-hood makers. There’re about three of them in the country, so that won’t take too long. And when they don’t know anything, and they won’t, start in on the leathersmiths, the ones who specialize in kinky stuff. You know the sort I mean. They advertise in sex magazines.”

  Sal lit up. “Come on, Frank—you mean I got to read all that perverted stuff?”

  “You’ll get used to it after a while, Sal. You’ll even begin to like it— you’ll see.”

  Two hours later he was sitting in Hart’s office. Thompson from homicide was there, too, watching him cagily.

  “You got a hunch, that’s all you got, Frank,” said Thompson. “We’ll give priority to this and keep you informed.”

  “Not good enough,” Janek said.

  “Oh, hell, Frank, what the fuck do you want?”

  “I want Sasha West joined to my case so I can tell your guys what to do.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me?”

  “Because with you I got to ‘suggest.’”

  “My guys aren’t children, Frank. You don’t push them around.” Thompson looked at Hart. So far the chief of detectives hadn’t said a word. “What would you tell them, anyway? Come on.” Thompson was goading him. “I want to hear your big ideas. I’ve only been in this business thirty years.”

  Janek smiled—a bureaucratic dispute. He had to play it straight against Thompson if he was going to win with Hart. “First I’d find out if she ever spoke about a John who dressed her up like a bird.”

  “We can do that.”

  “But you haven’t.”

  “I will, Frank. Now that I’ve talked to the Big Brain, I’ll be sure and pass the word.”

  Janek turned to Hart. “I may be wrong, Chief, but I don’t think sarcasm’s going to solve the case.”

  “What else, huh? Come on, Frank— tell me what else I ought to do.”

  “Appointment books. Coded notes on her clients.”

  “It’s routine to look for stuff like that.”

  “Maybe she placed ads, or had a box somewhere. He might have written her. She might have kept the letters.”

  “Pretty farfetched if you ask me.”

  Janek turned to Hart. “If I come in with something that connects this to Peregrine do I get the case or not?”

  Thompson looked at him carefully; maybe he realized he’d overstepped.

  Janek felt his question was perfectly timed, that Hart was finally ready to decide.

  “Come in with a hard link,” Hart said, “and you get Sasha West. Satisfied?” Janek nodded. “Good, because I got a meeting down the hall and this kind of rinky-dink jurisdictional crap makes me want to puke.”

  They shook hands. Thompson went downstairs with him. “Drop you off, Frank?”

  “Sure, Harry.” They sat together, silent, in the back of Thompson’s car.

  “You think you’re going to get something, don’t you?” Janek nodded.

  Thompson shook his head. “Bastard. You’re a real bastard, Frank. And your case isn’t as big as you think. E
veryone’s bored with it. The bird hasn’t killed in three and a half weeks. It’s just another stinking case.”

  “They’re all stinking cases, Harry.”

  Thompson smiled. “Yeah. And the city stinks, too.” He looked out the window. “Maggie ran into Sarah couple weeks back. At the hairdresser’s or the supermarket or someplace. She said Sarah looked pretty grim.” Janek was silent. “They started talking, you know. Sarah asked about you. She’d seen you on TV or something. She asked Maggie how you were.”

  Janek looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah what, Frank?”

  “So what did Maggie say?”

  “Don’t know. She probably didn’t say anything. She hasn’t seen you in a long time and neither have I, so she wouldn’t know what to say.”

  They rode in silence. The kid who was driving them was deft in traffic, a much better driver than Sal. When they got to the precinct, Janek turned to Thompson. “What was that all about?”

  “What?”

  “About Maggie running into Sarah.”

  “Oh—that wasn’t about anything, Frank.”

  “Then why did you mention it.”

  “I don’t know. To pass the time, make conversation, I guess. Listen— you got any ideas on this Sasha West thing, just pass them on and I’ll shuttle them down to the boys.”

  “Right Harry—you’ll shuttle them down.” He closed the car door softly.

  “Fuck you, Harry,” he said.

  Pam Barrett was waiting in his office, holding court beside his desk.

  Three detectives surrounded her, men whom Janek had overhead discussing her tits while watching her on TV. When he walked in they dispersed; without her audience she looked lost.

  “I got another letter.”

  He nodded. “Says he killed again.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can read your mind.”

  “Very funny, Janek.”

  He sat down, reached out for the letter. “Let’s see what you got.”

  She handed it to him, and as she did, he noticed a trembling in her hand.

  This Peregrine thing was getting her down. She ought to get out of it, but she won’t, he thought.

  HUNGRY THE OTHER NIGHT. THOUGHT OF YOU, PAMBIRD, THOUGHT OF YOUR SOFT SOFT THROAT.

  ALAS, NO GIRLS LIKE YOU IN THE MOVIE LINE SO I WAS NOT INCLINED TO KILL, BUT MY FALCONER WAS, AND HE FOUND HIMSELF A MOST IGNOBLE FEAST ….

  There it was, almost a confession, as hard a link to the Sasha West killing as he could hope to find. The rest of the note was the usual taunting stuff:

  … YOU AND I WILL BE MEETING SOON, AND WHEN WE DO, I PROMISE YOU A SURPRISE. PEREGRINE

  He looked at Pam. “Upset? Don’t blame you. So am I.”

  “I don’t know what it means. Is he saying he ate somebody, or what?”

  Janek shrugged. He didn’t want to tell her about Sasha. They were supposed to share information, but as yet they hadn’t shared a thing. “How’s it going?”

  “Slow,” she said. “Nothing yet that I can use.”

  The way she answered made him think she was on to something. “Well, thanks for bringing in the note.”

  “Of course. It’s evidence.” She smiled. Did she have something? She was a clever girl; he liked her, but he couldn’t read her yet.

  “You know, Pam, we’re both professionals. We have different outlooks, that’s all. If you have something that could help me out, it’s not right to hold it back.”

  She hesitated. She did have something—he could sense that she did and that she wasn’t going to talk. It probably wasn’t much, but he was annoyed she wasn’t coming clean. He guessed it was his fault—he’d rubbed her hard a couple of times. He hadn’t even thanked her properly on Saturday when she’d come in with the “I must shed blood” note from her home mailbox.

  “Did it ever occur to you you might be in danger?”

  She stared at him. “Do you think I am?”

  “Well, he writes to you. And he’s got this big thing about your throat. You’ve certainly got a relationship going. He’s a psycho. So …” He shrugged.

  She winced. “What do you mean—relationship? I certainly don’t know the man.”

  “But he knows you. He sees you on the tube every night. You speak to him. He’s got something going with you. All this begging him to stop—he probably feels you’re his friend.”

  “I beg him to stop as a public service.”

  “Sure. Sure you do. But it turns him on.”

  “You think I’m irresponsible.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “If it wasn’t you it would be somebody else. I just wish you didn’t act so riled up. I think he likes the disturbed way you act. Now he’s got this fetish about your throat. We could put someone with you if you’re really feeling scared.”

  She hesitated. He could see that she was tempted and then that she was having second thoughts.

  “Put someone with me—you mean a bodyguard?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  She laughed. “Well, then you’d know everything I was doing, Janek. You’d know who all my sources are. That’s the idea, right?”

  He smiled. She thought she’d outsmarted him. He felt sorry for her; she was in way over her head. The falconer was threatening her and she didn’t understand. “Okay, Pam, you got me on that one. A bodyguard’s a two-way street.”

  After she left he called Harry Thompson, read him the letter, asked him to hand over Sasha West.

  Thompson roared. “You had it all the time, didn’t you, Frank? I should have seen this coming. You set me up, you bastard—you really set me up.”

  An hour later, two homicide detectives presented themselves at Janek’s desk. He looked them over.

  They met his eyes. He smiled. They glanced at each other nonplussed.

  “What’s going on? Is there something you guys want to say?”

  They looked at each other again and then the tall one spoke. “Thompson said you’d try to intimidate us,” he said.

  He chose four of his own men to work with them, then took them all into an interrogation room along with Marchetti, since he was working on the hood.

  “Now suppose we’d already nailed this guy,” he said. “How would the D.A. convict? He’d have to prove he ordered his bird to kill. No way he could prove that. Any Legal Aid hack could get him off. But now he’s made a big mistake. He’s committed a real murder. Get him on that and we’ve got a chance. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  He organized them, put the homicide guys in charge, told them to talk to Sasha’s friends and then to every kinky call girl they could find. “Sal’s bought all the sex papers, so you can get the names from him. Find out if anyone ever had a bird scene with a guy. If so—what did he look like? What exactly did he do? But before you get into that, I want you to go over that apartment again. All six of you. Every bit of it. I don’t care that Crime Scene’s been there—I don’t believe that place is clean. Find me something—a hair, a fingerprint. I got semen, and that’s not enough. Talk to the neighbors. Check the trash barrels. This is a major case, not just a call-girl homicide. If anyone from the press comes around and asks what’s the big deal, don’t say anything about Peregrine. Just tell them we got this girl’s address book and there’re some big political names in there—’names you wouldn’t believe.’”

  They liked that. He had them fired up. And an hour later he could sense a difference in the office—squad morale was on the rise again.

  He ate dinner by himself at a delicatessen. Afterward he got into his car and began to drive around. What was he searching for? A rapist in tandem with a predatory bird? Or, he wondered, was he really seeking something else—salvation, redemption for himself?

  He thought again of Pam and how clear it was that the falconer was heading straight for her. Poor Pam, he thought. Poor poor Pam and her soft soft throat.

  There was something obsessive about that repetition. Not just her so
ft throat, but her soft soft throat. And that’s what she had. She exposed it when she talked on TV. She wore shirts with the top buttons opened and she flung back her hair without thinking when she talked.

  Suddenly Janek was struck by an idea: to leak her the story about Sasha West. She would broadcast it with her usual passion and that would excite the falconer; the falconer would focus even more strongly on her, and then, maybe, she could serve to lure him in.

  He studied the idea as he swung his car around Lower Manhattan onto Lafayette, Grand, Hester, the Bowery, streets where he’d played when he was growing up. It wouldn’t be pretty to use Pam that way. He liked her; she’d be surprised if she knew how much. It wouldn’t be nice to dangle her like bait. But maybe that was the way to break the case.

  He knew that the longer he thought about it, the less repellent the idea would seem. The city was harsh, the streets were mean—a jungle, people said, where everyone was some sort of predator.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It would be no easy task to track Pam Barrett, stalk her through the streets.

  She knew his face, would recognize him instantly if she turned. So Hollander had dreamt of tracking her like a falcon from the sky, perching on the upper floors of buildings, watching her through powerful binoculars as she made her way about the city, through the labyrinth of avenues, building plazas, shops, watching, always watching, until he knew all her habits and her moves.

  It would not be easy. To hunt, to stalk a quarry never was. Prey species knew their enemies by instinct. Even the shadow of a falcon sent tremors through a flock of geese. But it was the predator’s task to stalk and kill despite his quarry’s fear. If a falcon could stay out of sight until he was ready to bind to his prey, then indeed, thought Hollander, I must do the same.

  And so he began to follow her the day after he killed Sasha West, fixed on her now, certain now that he wanted her, that they were destined to meet in a ritual of predation, and that it was up to him to impose the contact point. It was not a question of killing her; she would not be that sort of prey. He had other fantasies: The full design was still unclear, but now he had a vision of a masterpiece of falconry art.