The Devil's Menagerie

by Louis Charbonneau

  We’re not immune, he thought. None of us are.

  Not anymore.

  Eleven

  LEONARD “BUDDY” COCHRANE was a legend in the FBI, one of the pioneers of the Behavioral Science Unit in the 1970s and 80s, of the growing art-cum-science of criminal profiling, of VICAP, the Bureau’s Violent Crime Analysis Program, and of its parent National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. In large part through Cochrane’s efforts VICAP’s capability of matching data from one violent crime to another, in order to establish links or patterns at the earliest stage, was now on-line to police agencies in a majority of the fifty states.

  Cochrane was past the Bureau’s fifty-five-year retirement age but had been retained at the NVAVC simply because his superiors at Quantico were reluctant to let him go. He was a handsome man with patrician features, piercing blue eyes, a full head of pure white hair and, at sixty, the body of a forty-year-old aerobics instructor. This Tuesday morning, however, after a long weekend consulting on a particularly gruesome series of mutilation killings in the vicinity of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he wondered if it wasn’t time to go fishing. He was drained, physically and emotionally. His ulcer was acting up again, and a weekend falling off the coffee wagon hadn’t helped. He felt old and worn out. Retirement had the glow not of sunset but of a beacon.

  A knock on the solid mahogany door of his office dissipated the glow. The office was at the end of a long, carpeted corridor in the basement complex housing the offices and laboratories of the BSU and its logical offshoot, the Investigative Support Unit. Special Agent Karen Younger peered around the door.

  “Come in,” Cochrane growled, his tone hiding the pleasure he invariably felt upon seeing her.

  “Good morning, sir. You wanted to see me?”

  Cochrane grunted, waving her toward a chair beside his desk. He didn’t like to talk across the desk or across the room to agents or visitors. Up close and personal was his style. It was also his way of penetrating a visitor’s defenses. With Special Agent Younger the habit carried a bonus, he thought, detecting a faint trace of White Shoulders perfume. Identifying scents was one of his arcane specialties. He had a dog’s nose, he said, and at least one famous serial murder case had turned on Buddy Cochrane’s recognition of a particular men’s cologne on a victim’s clothing.

  Karen Younger was pretty enough, with even features, a wide mouth, intelligent gray eyes with flecks of blue in them and hair the color of autumn leaves turned dark gold. But what struck Cochrane about her was the sense of bedrock honesty and integrity she projected. She walked straight, sat straight, looked you straight in the eye. There was never any dissembling or posing. She wore little makeup, but a flawless complexion made it seem unnecessary. Special Agent Younger, according to her personnel jacket, was actually thirty-two, with degrees in business law and psychology. She was five feet seven and weighed a hundred and twenty-seven pounds. A nice armful, Cochrane thought, who sniffed at the notion that undernourished meant beautiful. At sixty, with a wife, three children and seven grandchildren, and an impeccable reputation for propriety, he was not immune.

  A hint of color in her cheeks, Agent Younger said, “Is it about the Tuscaloosa killings?”

  “No … no, we’ve got the killer, I have no doubt of it. It’s in the prosecutor’s hands now. But something else has come up—something I want you to look at.”

  He tapped a file on his desk, fingering a corner absently as he watched the interest flare in her eyes. “Read that,” he said without preamble, pushing the folder toward her. “See if you see what I do. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, I would, but I can’t have it, of course.”

  He buzzed his secretary and asked for a glass of milk. When she brought it Cochrane tipped his leather swivel chair back and sipped the cold milk slowly, watching Karen Younger as she read, searching for any reaction. He wondered, again, if he was making a mistake. No, dammit! Her instincts were too good to remain cooped up in a basement cubicle for the next twenty years.

  He had groomed her for fieldwork in the VICAP program, but an extensive part of her experience had been with the Criminal Personality Research Project, or CPRP, interviewing and profiling convicted violent criminals. Although she was a trained psychologist with special emphasis on criminology, and, in spite of her relative youth, had had field experience both in the U.S. and Germany, the face-to-face interviews with a series of the most monstrous criminals in the national’s penal institutions had proved devastating. Severe stress reactions among investigators in the program were commonplace. They suffered such symptoms as rapid weight loss, heart attacks, ulcers, severe anxiety attacks simulating heart problems, gastrointestinal disorders, insomnia and nightmares. Karen Younger had developed an ulcer at the age of twenty-nine. She lost weight, going down to a hundred and ten pounds. She experienced chronic sleeplessness. Finally she came to Cochrane, her boss, and told him she had to leave the CPRP program, even if it meant resigning from the Bureau.

  Cochrane wouldn’t have it, of course. She was a fine profiler, in part because she connected so fiercely with the criminals she worked with. What was destroying her was the same sensitivity to evil that made her invaluable. Cochrane brought her out of the cold, assigned her to the ISU’s internal staff, where her insightful analyses were everything he could have asked for … but less than he wanted from her. With the expansion of VICAP’s liaison program with law enforcement agencies throughout the country, Special Agent Younger, in her boss’s view, belonged in the field.

  When she finished reading, Karen Younger closed the file and placed it carefully on Cochrane’s desk, as if it burned her fingers. Cochrane read her reaction in her body language as well as the tighter set of her mouth and a bleakness in her eyes.

  “It’s not possible,” she whispered. “It’s been …”

  “Eight years,” said Cochrane.

  “It’s coincidence.”

  The file had come in late on Monday, shortly after Cochrane’s return flight from Alabama. He had taken it home with him along with an armful of other files to read.

  VICAP had made an immediate linkage between a new case report from California and an eight-year-old murder that took place not in the United States but in Germany. Karen Younger, a fledgling agent on her first field assignment, had been stationed at Wiesbaden, Germany, as liaison between the large U.S. Air Force base near Wiesbaden and German police agencies. The murder, the first Younger had been involved with, had left a profound mark. It had encouraged the interest in criminal psychosis that led her eventually to the ISU. It had also given her nightmares that resurfaced years later when she became involved with the criminal profiling program.

  The new case file had originated in San Carlos, California, a small college town outside of Los Angeles. The murder victim in the case was a nineteen-year-old college student, attractive, blond, apparently sexually active. She had been kidnapped and repeatedly raped both before and possibly after she was beaten to death. The killer then carved her first initial on her abdomen, using a relatively dull knife.

  “She was even dumped under a bridge,” Cochrane pointed out—an unusual detail calling to mind the circumstances of the incident in Germany.

  Younger shook her head as if to deny the similarities. “This man, according to the report, wore smooth gloves and possibly brass knuckles.”

  “Or he was holding weights in his right hand when he hit her. And your man in Germany didn’t. He used his bare fists and left skin and blood samples. But eight years ago he may have acted on impulse. Presumably that was his first. This time he was more prepared.”

  “Why?” Karen Younger cried with a kind of desperation. “Why now, after eight years? It makes no sense!”

  “In one respect it makes a great deal of sense. You always suspected the murderer was a soldier stationed in Germany. He may have been there all this time. That wouldn’t be unusual for a career soldier. And now …”

  Cochrane knew
that what he was suggesting was Karen Younger’s worst nightmare.

  “He’s come home,” she whispered.

  “I think so. It’s your case, Karen.”

  “No … no, sir.” She could not remember Cochrane ever calling her by her surname before. Her eyes darted around the windowless office, not meeting his, as if she were a trapped animal. “I can’t.”

  “I believe you can. Sooner or later you have to find out. There’s no question this is the time. You’ve been close to this man once. No one else has. And since then you’ve had a great deal of experience getting inside minds like this one. You’re our best chance to get to him before he strikes again.”

  The words shocked her. She stared at Cochrane as if realizing for the first time what he was implying. “You think he’s a true serial killer? But … eight years …”

  “He’s kept it bottled up for all that time, if it’s the same man. Now it’s out of the bottle. Do you honestly think he can stop now?”

  Special Agent Younger stared at him helplessly. She was paler than when she had cheerfully entered Cochrane’s office less than thirty minutes ago. Her face was drawn. No flawless skin ad now, Cochrane thought dispassionately.

  “If it’s him … no,” she said. “He won’t stop.”

  “I’m not asking you to catch him yourself—this isn’t a novel or a movie. Your job will be to assist the police in every way you can. You can assess the crime scene, make suggestions, offer immediate access to our laboratory facilities, even do a personality profile of the killer.”

  “Who has the case—the San Carlos police?”

  “The county sheriff’s department is involved—we have a VICAP liaison there—but the principal investigator in charge of the case is a San Carlos detective, formerly with the LAPD. I see it as a multijurisdictional, cooperative investigation.”

  “What are you not telling me?” The question confirmed Buddy Cochrane’s estimate of Agent Younger’s acuity.

  “I think you’ll understand when you read the background material I’ve had put together.”

  Younger appeared puzzled. She stared at the thick manila envelope Cochrane added to the original case file she had read, but she didn’t press him.

  “You can read the rest of the material on the plane. I’ve booked you to Los Angeles on an afternoon flight out of Dulles. You just about have time to pack.” The white-haired man rose, extending his hand. He wasn’t going to give her a chance to say no. “Good luck, Agent Younger.”

  He did not add the words that immediately sprang to his mind: You’re going to need it.

  Twelve

  EDITH FOSTER’S MEMORIAL service was held at noon on Tuesday in the campus chapel. She was not present. The body of the deceased, not yet released by the coroner, would be flown to her home in Minneapolis for a more formal funeral ceremony.

  Detective Braden did not expect the girl’s murderer to show up for the service, although conventional wisdom said he might. Nevertheless, he had two detectives in an unmarked Chevrolet parked with a view of anyone attending the service, one of them armed with a video camera—today’s weapon of choice.

  Most of those who came were college students, a preponderance of young women, along with a sprinkling of adults Braden assumed were teachers and other officials from the college community. He recognized the plump, motherly den mother he had met at Foster’s dormitory, and her roommate, Sheri Kuttner, who had identified the victim’s photograph Sunday night and confirmed the identification Monday morning at the county morgue. On both occasions she had been too disturbed to be questioned at length.

  Braden sat through the service, moved by the emotional recollections of the dead girl’s friends, made more poignant by the dreadful circumstances of her death.

  Braden caught up with Edith Foster’s roommate outside the chapel. She swung around sharply at his touch. As she recognized Braden she dabbed at swollen eyes with a tissue.

  “Feel like talking now, Sheri?”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “Would you like a Coke or a cup of coffee or something?”

  She shook her head. Youthful grief allowed no room for such mundane pleasures. Braden had grown up in a family where Irish wakes were occasions for boisterous gatherings of family and friends in the home, with enough food and hard liquor to sink a battleship, as his mother used to say.

  Perversely, the sun broke through the clouds as the mourners straggled away from the chapel and fanned out across the campus. Braden walked in silence beside Sheri Kuttner until they came to an empty bench beneath shade trees. “This good enough?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry to be such a baby, Detective.”

  “Don’t apologize. Crying isn’t childish. Sometimes it’s necessary.”

  She glanced up at him, brown eyes curious under thick, damp lashes. For her friend’s memorial service Sheri Kuttner had worn a short pleated blue skirt, mauve knee stockings, a gray cotton turtleneck and a vest that appeared to be made of multicolored ribbons. The outfit was a celebration of color, not darkness, and he guessed that Sheri knew Edie Foster would have preferred it that way. It made Braden wonder about the cost of tuition at San Carlos College. Had Edie been in the habit of carrying around large amounts of money? Wearing conspicuous jewelry?

  “Nice vest,” he said.

  “Thanks. Uh … I made it myself.”

  “You did? How’d you learn to do that?”

  “I took a class … no, not here at college. A sewing class.”

  Braden smiled. “I would’ve thought you had enough classes without going outside school.”

  “I like sewing.” Sheri looked away. “I was making one like this for Edie. She really liked this one.” The tears flowed again. The tissue was a crumpled wet ball. Braden fumbled in his pockets for a clean tissue and came up empty.

  “You weren’t just roommates. You were close friends.”

  Sheri nodded again. The words were lost somewhere inside.

  “You know we want to find out who did that to her. Anything you can tell us that would help …”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Friday night, just before she went out. That was about eight o’clock.”

  “Do you remember what she was wearing?”

  They exchanged glances, the shared knowledge of Edith Foster lying cold and naked under a bridge. Sheri described a white T-shirt with a cat’s face and a denim miniskirt Edie liked because it showed off her legs. “She had great legs,” Sheri said wistfully.

  “Was she wearing any jewelry?”

  “She didn’t wear much jewelry. I think her friend was giving her things, but she just put them away. I mean, she wasn’t wearing anything special that night.”

  “Did she carry much money with her?”

  Sheri laughed briefly. “Her folks sent her money but she always spent it, mostly on clothes she liked. You know, even if it was jeans, Edie wanted designer stuff.”

  “You said you thought she had a date—that she was going to meet someone.”

  “Well, you know, I think she would’ve asked me if she wasn’t meeting someone. She didn’t like to go anywhere alone.”

  “Do you know who she was seeing?”

  “No. She wouldn’t say.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “Well … sometimes. She was popular, she liked going out a lot. Sometimes a bunch of us would go out together, or we’d go shopping, Edie and me. She was someone guys wanted to be with.”

  Sheri Kuttner broke off as a group of students passed by along the walkway, glancing at them curiously. Braden wondered if any of them recognized the Corkscrew Cop. Sheri Kuttner hadn’t said anything to indicate she did.

  “They’re wondering who you are,” Sheri said. “I don’t think any of them would know you were the one on TV.”

  Braden looked at her quickly. “You recognized me?”

  “Uh, no, that is, one of the security officers said
that’s who you were. While I was waiting for you Sunday.”

  “I see.”

  They sat in silence, Braden wondering if his brief moment of fame was always going to get in the way of his doing the job. Oddly, Sheri Kuttner didn’t seem to be bothered.

  “Edie liked older men,” Sheri said, as if the comment were a logical extension of the conversation. “She thought most of the guys in school were, you know, sort of immature.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “She was … sophisticated for her age … and smart, too. Sometimes older men turned her on.”

  Braden gathered between the lines that Sheri Kuttner tried hard but didn’t think she was very smart or sophisticated or popular or beautiful, not the way Edith Foster was. Another thread in the girl’s voice had become sharper and more distinct as she talked. She hadn’t approved of some of Edie’s older friends.

  “These older men … were some of them married? Like professors, maybe?”

  Sheri pursed her lips.

  “Was there a particular one she was seeing lately? Someone you know about?”

  “I … I’m not sure. The younger guys, she would usually say where she was going and who with, but lately, I mean since this fall semester started, she was meeting someone she didn’t want to talk about.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Well, this is only our fourth week of classes, so it’s about a month. We register a week early.”

  “And she never mentioned a name, or a particular class, or anything?”

  “Uh-uh.” Sheri Kuttner seemed about to add something else but changed her mind. Her lips compressed again. She harbored resentment along with her genuine grief, Braden thought.