It turned out that Melinda had worked for a Westchester party planner, doing theme parties for children in which she dressed up as Snow White, Princess Jasmine, Wonder Woman, or whoever was the favorite female children’s character of the moment. Her employer reported that she liked the job because it allowed her to conceal her facial disfigurement behind the masks that she wore. He also reported that she had a wonderful way with children. He said she hadn’t shown up for work in two weeks. He was glad that the police had called. He’d been getting worried, but hadn’t known what action to take, if any. She was a reliable young woman for whom it was out of character not to show up for work without calling in.
After speaking with Melinda’s employer, they then checked the bulletins on unidentified bodies that had come in on the Teletype from other police departments. They didn’t have to look far: Jerry handed Charlotte the third one in his pile. It was for body parts belonging to an unidentified Caucasian woman of between twenty-five and thirty years of age and standing about five feet six inches tall. The body parts had washed ashore three days before on the west bank of the Hudson in Alpine, New Jersey.
“I guess we know what happened to Melinda,” Jerry said as Charlotte read the Teletype bulletin. Then he leaned back in his chair, let out a deep sigh, and raised a hand over his lowered brow.
14
If the murderer held true to form, he would be depositing the skull within the next twenty-four hours. In every case, the skull had been found within twenty-four hours of the purchase of the flowers. This time, the police would be better prepared. In the case of Doreen Mileski, they had staked out only the cemeteries in the immediate area, and had been outwitted by a murderer who had deposited the skull in the undercroft instead. This time, they planned to stake out every cemetery and religious institution on the east bank of the Hudson from Yonkers to Peekskill, with the exception of family plots and small churchyard cemeteries. The category of religious institutions was bigger than one would have thought: many of the old mansions along the Hudson were now used for religious retreats, or as residences for the Catholic orders. Though many of these former monasteries had been turned into condos as the number of men taking the tonsure diminished, there was still an order of Benedictine monks in the area, as well as two Catholic colleges with their respective chapels. Any of these institutions might have ended up as the repository for Melinda Myer’s skull.
Given the murderer’s penchant for cemeteries, however, their main efforts would be concentrated on the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and the adjoining Old Dutch Burying Ground, two miles to the south on the Albany Post Road, which was the only cemetery in the immediate area that the murderer hadn’t yet hit. As the cemetery that had been immortalized in Washington Irving’s famous story of the headless horseman, the Old Dutch Burying Ground also seemed a particularly apt place to deposit a skull. Nearly fifty police officers from the Zion Hill and county police departments would be posted at nineteen different sites.
Charlotte had stayed around for the initial discussions of the stakeout operation, but had finally decided to go home; she was only getting in the way. Jerry filled her in by telephone later that evening, after he had returned from a canvass of the cemeteries. He also regaled her with the names of fellow celebrities whose final resting places were in Westchester County. There was Jimmy Cagney and Babe Ruth at Gate of Heaven; Tommy Dorsey and Lou Gehrig at Kensington; and Judy Garland, Basil Rathbone, Joan Crawford, and Ed Sullivan at Ferncliff Mausoleum. There were even celebrity pets buried in the pet cemetery in Hartsdale, including John Barrymore’s cat and Kate Smith’s dog.
All of which made Charlotte wonder where it was that she would eventually end up, a thought that she put immediately out of her mind.
That night, she dreamed of Chinese vases. There were vases with white glazes, vases with yellow glazes, vases with burgundy glazes. There were vases with handles, and vases without handles. There were vases with round shapes and cylindrical shapes, and the double gourd shape that was the Daoist symbol of wishes that were magically fulfilled. There were simple celadon vases from the ancient Sung Dynasty and there were ornate polychrome vases from the nineteenth-century Manchu Dynasty. Except that instead of being displayed two or three at a time according to their dynastic period in the display cases on the balcony of the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the vases in her dream were evenly aligned on shelves, each with an identifying marker. There were hundreds of them, displayed on long tiers of shelves. It was odd how these shelves were arranged: not in a straight line, but in angled sections. Nor were the vases large and small, but rather all about a foot high. Then, the dream took a peculiar turn: the vases started sprouting teeth, and developing eye sockets and mandibles and chins. Which was to say, the vases turned into skulls. Row upon row of eerie, grinning skulls.
Disturbed by the dream, Charlotte found herself sitting upright in bed. As she stared out at the streetlight whose yellow glow illuminated her bedroom, she realized where the dream had taken place. It wasn’t at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but at another museum altogether. Then she realized who the murderer was! She checked the clock on her bedside table. It was almost three. She picked up the phone and dialed Jerry.
The phone rang four or five times before he picked it up. “It’s Charlotte,” she said.
“Jesus, Graham,” he said. His voice was husky, probably from all the talking he had done to his troops. “It’s the middle of the night,” he said. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Three o’clock,” she said. “I’m sorry to wake you up. But it’s important.”
“I only just went to bed. What is it?”
“Describe to me again the psychological characteristics of the type of person who would commit a series of murders like this: a person who would kill and dismember his victims.”
“A white male,” he replied. “Of above average intelligence. Middle-class to upper middle-class background. Comes from a dysfunctional family, although it may very well be an intact family.”
“That describes a lot of people,” she said.
“Sexually backward,” he continued. “Usually, they’ve never had a normal consensual relationship with a woman.” He went on with his recitation: “Heavily into fantasy: they get off on fantasizing about the murder.”
“They might, for instance, become obsessive about a body part?”
“More than that, but I don’t want to get graphic. It’s called fetishism. Often they take a body part as a souvenir, such as a skull, for instance.” He went on: “They have the ability to compartmentalize.”
“Compartmentalize?”
“Yeah. To keep their criminal activity separate from their day-to-day life. What’s this about?” he asked grumpily. “I want to go back to bed.”
“Wait,” she said. “You mentioned something else before. About hanging around on the fringes of the investigation.”
“That’s not always true. But it often is. Like the firebug who turns up to watch the fire. We had a guy once who wanted to help pass out flyers about the missing murder victims. He turned out to be the murderer.”
“Do you realize who you could be describing?”
“What do you mean?”
“A white male with an obsession for a particular body part, namely the skull. A man who clearly derives pleasure from feeling a skull: the smoothness of the bone, the contours of the shape.” She remembered the way his fingers had caressed the bone, almost as if it were flesh.
“Jack Lister,” he said
Charlotte continued: “A man who isn’t just close to the investigation, but at the very heart of it. Remember how interested he was in whether or not you had made an arrest?”
Jerry picked up the ball and ran with it: “Also, a man who lives right down the road from the summer house and immediately adjacent to the Zion Hill Cemetery. But how would he have known about the Lily look-alikes?”
“I don’t know. That’s one piece I’m missing. But I do have another piece
: if he was working on the angel statues, he would have been a familiar figure around the church, and might even have had his own set of keys.”
“At the least, he would have known that he could find a key to the undercroft in the key cabinet,” Jerry said.
“He wouldn’t have had access to the meat cleaver, but maybe we’re placing too much emphasis on that,” she said. “Isn’t it the kind of implement that can readily be purchased anywhere?”
“Yeah, it is,” Jerry agreed.
“I had written him off as a harmless eccentric with a skull fetish, but I should have known better,” Charlotte said. “The only groups I know of that share his obsession with skulls are the Hell’s Angels and the Nazis.”
“And phrenologists,” Jerry added. “And deadheads.”
“Deadheads?” Charlotte asked.
“Followers of the Grateful Dead,” he explained, naming the well-known rock group. “One of my daughters happens to be one.” Then he continued: “But what would his motive have been?”
“He wasn’t just obsessed with skulls, he was obsessed with a particular skull. He said it himself: two generations of Listers have been obsessed with the same face, and by extension, the skull.”
“‘All my life I have dreamt one dream alone,’” Jerry said, quoting Lister, who had in turn been quoting Rossetti.
“Exactly,” she said. “He’s been sculpting that face his entire life. By killing the Lily look-alikes, he could add four skulls of the face he prized above all others to his collection.”
“Numbers 503 through 506 in his Phrenological Cabinet,” Jerry said. “And he would have had the added thrill of doing the soft tissue reconstructions. The recomposer of the decomposed.”
“Decomposed by him,” Charlotte said.
“But if the skulls of Lily’s look-alikes were the prizes of his collection, why dispose of them in the cemeteries?”
“To show off,” she said. “To taunt the police. Look what I’ve done. Nah nah. Besides, he didn’t need to hoard the skulls. He knew you’d be bringing them back, and that he’d be making casts of them.”
“I always thought he was out there.”
“Out there is right. Like on Alpha Centauri. What about his fascination with the skull of the doctor who dismembered his wife? Besides, he looks the part,” she said, remembering what he had said about anatomy being destiny.
“Aren’t you pushing it a bit?” Jerry said. “If all murderers looked like murderers, I wouldn’t be in business.”
“Okay,” she conceded. “But what about all the vases of lilies of the valley in his living room? Another taunt. Isn’t it typical that they become emboldened the longer they go without getting caught?”
For a moment there was silence on the phone as Jerry considered what Charlotte was telling him.
“Has he ever had a normal consensual relationship with a woman?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him with a woman, or heard him speak about a woman.” Then he said: “I don’t think we can arrest him. We’ve made that mistake already. But we can keep a close eye on him.”
“I think that would be a good idea,” Charlotte said. Then she wished him a good night’s sleep and said goodbye.
After breakfast the next morning, Charlotte got ready to head back up the Saw Mill River Parkway to Zion Hill. She was like a theatergoer at a Shakespearian tragedy who has sat patiently through the first four acts: she was damned if she was going to miss out on the climax now, even if it did mean spending a day hanging around the police station. Maybe Jerry could post her at a little graveyard somewhere to keep her busy. As she got dressed, she wondered if anything had happened since her middle-of-the-night telephone call to Jerry. She thought of giving him a call, and then decided against it. She would find out soon enough. Besides, he would have called her if they had caught the perpetrator in the act of depositing the skull.
Just then, the phone rang.
But it wasn’t Jerry with news that Jack Lister was under arrest. It was her old friend Kitty Saunders, who was not to be diverted from her goal of improving upon Charlotte’s appearance. She was calling from her home in Maine with yet another make-over scheme, her previous one having been defeated if not by Charlotte’s own reluctance, then by Dr. Louria’s suicide.
Specifically, she was calling to tell Charlotte about a Chinese acupuncturist who did face-lifts through acupuncture. “The theory is that you develop wrinkles because you habitually tense your muscles in a particular way,” she chirruped. “By relaxing the muscles through acupuncture, the wrinkles relax too. It’s not as good as a real face-lift, but it’s the next best thing.”
It was tempting. “How long does this take?” Charlotte asked.
“Typically, twenty or thirty treatments. The treatments are twice a week, so it ends up taking ten to fifteen weeks.”
Charlotte considered Kitty’s suggestion for a moment, and then said: “Kitty, I don’t have wrinkles, I have subsidence.”
“What’s that?” asked Kitty.
“It’s what happens in those Pennsylvania coal mining towns when the ground caves in over an old mine,” she said. “In short, sagging flesh. No amount of acupuncture is going to correct that.”
Kitty thought for a moment, and then said: “Maybe you’re right.”
“Thanks anyway,” Charlotte said. “Besides, except for my neck, I look fine. I’d rather wear scarves and turtlenecks than go through all that.”
“Yes,” Kitty conceded. “You do look pretty good.” Then she switched the subject. “How’s the investigation going?” she asked. “If you’re free, why don’t you come up to Maine? Stan and I would love to see you.”
“It’s almost over,” Charlotte said, more confidently than she felt. “I’d like to come up soon,” she said, thinking fondly of her summer cottage. “I’ll call you in a few weeks,” she added as she rang off.
She didn’t feel up to telling Kitty that Dr. Louria was dead.
Before she left, she glanced in the mirror to check her makeup. What she saw was the face of a seventy-two-year-old woman who looked twenty years younger. She had a bit of a jowl; she had a bit of a chicken neck. But so what. She should never have let Kitty get under her skin—so to speak. She didn’t need a face-lift. Besides, she had spent a lifetime worrying about her looks: makeup, camera angle, lighting. It was time to stop worrying. She resolved that she was going to continue doing what she always had. Which was to enjoy her meals, enjoy her Manhattans, and enjoy life.
On the drive up to Zion Hill, Charlotte found herself considering the man whom she believed to be the murderer. Or rather, the monster whom she believed to be the murderer. He had probably come from a dysfunctional family, Jerry had said. To her, a dysfunctional family meant a mother who drank too much, a father with a penchant for gambling, a brother with a drug problem. In short, a family with the kinds of problems that almost every American family seemed to have to some degree nowadays. She had once seen someone wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a huge auditorium on the front, above which were written the words: “Conference of Adult Children of Normal Families.” The auditorium had held only three conference-goers. If almost all seemingly normal people came from families that were dysfunctional to some degree, then what kind of dysfunction did it take to turn a child into this kind of monster? She couldn’t imagine that every murderer’s parents had been monsters as well. Or was it preordained, somehow? Was there a monster gene that became activated when exposed to family dysfunction the way a cancer gene becomes activated when exposed to a carcinogen? She knew the monster element manifested early in life: the children who turned into murderers as adults were also the ones who were torturing cats when they were five. Had Lister been one of those? And if he had harbored this predilection for murder since his youth, what was it that had removed his murderous inclinations from the realm of fantasy and deposited them in the realm of reality?
Or could it be, as many believed—Swedenborgians among them—that murderers o
f this nature were possessed by evil spirits that robbed them of their humanity? The black globules of coal-fire, Peter had called them, who get into your brain, and don’t shut up, who know your weak spots, and keep at you until you break. Until you commit murder, and commit it again and again.
Ten minutes later, she was sitting in Jerry’s office, waiting for him to get off the phone. The office had taken on the atmosphere of a command post for a military campaign: a map pinpointing the sites where the murderer might deposit the skull hung on the wall, and charts had been set up showing who was staking out which site at what time. Jerry himself was smoking a big cigar. He might have been Churchill in his wartime bunker.
He was talking with someone about travel schedules of some sort. Finally, he hung the phone up with a heavy clunk. He looked grim: his eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were pressed together in disgust. Or maybe it was frustration. “We were wrong,” he said.
“About what?” she asked.
“Lister has alibis for the dates of the disappearances of the first three victims. The only one he was around for was this last one.”
“Are they solid?” she asked.
“As the Rock of Gibraltar. He travels around the country helping police departments with unidentified persons cases. He’s got police in three states saying he was with them on the dates of the disappearances.”
“Damn,” she said. Just when she thought the strands were starting to form into a braid. Now they would have to start over with the tangled skein. “It’s gallant of you not to say I was wrong,” she said as she sat down.
Murder Among the Angels Page 24