by Dean Koontz
“Maybe it’s his own poetry,” Graham said.
“The Butcher’s?”
“Maybe.”
“A murderous poet? T.S. Eliot with a homicidal urge?”
Graham shrugged.
“No,” Preduski said. “A man usually commits this sort of crime because it’s the only way he can express the rage inside him. Slaughter releases pressures that have built in him. But a poet can express his feelings with words. No. If it were doggerel, perhaps it could be the Butcher’s own verse. But this is too smooth, too sensitive, too good. Anyway, it rings a bell. Way back in this thick head of mine, it rings a bell.” Preduski studied the bloody message for a moment, then turned and went to the bedroom door. It was standing open; he closed it. “Then there’s this one.”
On the back of the door, five words were printed in the dead woman’s blood.
“No. I would have told you if he had. But it’s not unusual in this sort of crime. Certain types of psychopaths like to communicate with whoever finds the corpse. Jack the Ripper wrote notes to the police. The Manson family used blood to scrawl one-word messages on the walls. ‘A rope over an abyss.’ What is he trying to tell us?”
“Is it from the same poem as the other?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Preduski sighed, thrust his hands into his pockets. He looked dejected. “I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to catch him.”
Textured light tan burlap-pattern wallpaper. Plush brown carpet. A beige velour sofa and two matching armchairs. A heavy glass coffee table with brass legs. Chrome and glass shelves full of books and statuary. Limited editions of prints by some fine contemporary artists. It was tasteful, cozy and expensive.
At Preduski’s request, Graham settled down in one of the armchairs.
Sarah Piper was sitting on one end of the sofa. She looked as expensive as the room. She was wearing a knitted pantsuit—dark blue with Kelly green piping—gold earrings and an elegant watch as thin as a half dollar. She was no older than twenty-five, a strikingly lovely, well-built blonde, marked by experience.
Earlier she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and red. She was in control of herself now.
“We’ve been through this before,” she said.
Preduski was beside her on the couch. “I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. Truly sorry. It’s terribly late, too late for this. But there is something to be gained by asking the same questions two and even three times. You think you’ve told me all the pertinent facts. But it’s possible you overlooked something. God knows, I’m forever overlooking things. This questioning may seem redundant to you, but it’s the way I work. I have to go over things again and again to make sure I’ve done them right. I’m not proud of it. That’s just the way I am. Some other detective might get everything he needs the first time he speaks to you. Not me, I’m afraid. It was your misfortune that the call came in while I was on duty. Bear with me. I’ll be able to let you go home before much longer. I promise.”
The woman glanced at Graham and cocked her head as if to say, Is this guy for real?
Graham smiled.
“How long had you known—the deceased?” Preduski asked.
She said, “About a year.”
“How well did you know her?”
“She was my best friend.”
“Do you think that in her eyes you were her best friend?”
“Sure. I was her only friend.”
Preduski raised his eyebrows. “People didn’t like her? ”
“Of course they liked her,” Sarah Piper said. “What wasn’t to like? She just didn’t make friends easily. She was a quiet girl. She kept mostly to herself.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“At work.”
“Where is work?”
“You know that. The Rhinestone Palace.”
“And what did she do there?”
“You know that too.”
Nodding, patting her knee in a strictly fatherly manner, the detective said, “That’s correct. I know it. But, you see, Mr. Harris doesn’t know it. I neglected to fill him in. My fault. I’m sorry. Would you tell him?”
She turned to Graham. “Edna was a stripper. Just like me.”
“I know the Rhinestone Palace,” Graham said.
“You’ve been there?” Preduski asked.
“No. But I know it’s fairly high class, not like most striptease clubs.”
For a moment Preduski’s watery brown eyes seemed less out of focus than usual. He stared intently at Graham. “Edna Mowry was a stripper. How about that?”
He knew precisely what the detective was thinking. On the Prine show he had said that the victim’s name might be Edna Dancer. He had not been right—but he had not been altogether wrong either; for although her name was Mowry, she earned her living as a dancer.
According to Sarah Piper, Edna had reported for work at five o’clock the previous evening. She performed a ten-minute act twice every hour for the next seven hours, peeling out of a variety of costumes until she was entirely nude. Between acts, dressed in a black cocktail dress, sans bra, she mixed with the customers—mostly men, alone and in groups—hustling drinks in a cautious, demure and stylish way that skipped successfully along the edge of the state’s B-girl laws. She had finished her last performance at twenty minutes of twelve and left the Rhinestone Palace no more than five minutes after that.
“You think she came straight home?” Preduski asked.
“She always did,” Sarah said. “She never wanted to go out and have fun. The Rhinestone Palace was all the night life she could stomach. Who could blame her?”
Her voice wavered, as if she might begin to cry again.
Preduski took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
She let him hold it, and that appeared to give him an innocent pleasure. “Did you dance last evening?”
“Yeah. Till midnight.”
“When did you come here?”
“A quarter of three.”
“Why would you be visiting at that hour?”
“Edna liked to sit and read all night. She never went to bed until eight or nine in the morning. I told her I’d stop around for breakfast and gossip. I often did.”
“You’ve probably already told me ...” Preduski made a face: embarrassment, apology, frustration. “I’m sorry. This mind of mine—like a sieve. Did you tell me why you didn’t come here at midnight, when you got off work?”
“I had a date,” she said.
Graham could tell from her expression and from the tone of her voice that the “date” had been a paying customer. That saddened him a bit. He liked her already. He couldn’t help but like her. He was receiving low-key waves, threshold psychic vibrations from her; they were very positive, mellow and warm vibrations. She was a damned nice person. He knew. And he wanted only pleasant things to happen to her.
“Did Edna have a date tonight?” Preduski asked.
“No. I told you. She came right home.”
“Maybe her boyfriend was waiting for her.”
“She was between boyfriends.”
“Maybe an old boyfriend stopped in to talk.”
“No. When Edna dropped a guy, he stayed dropped.”
Preduski sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head sadly. “I hate to have to ask this.... You were her best friend. But what I’m going to say—please understand I don’t mean to put her down. Life is tough. We all have to do things we’d rather not do. I’m not proud of every day of my life. God knows. Don’t judge. That’s my motto. There’s only one crime I can’t rationalize away. Murder. I really hate to ask this.... Well, was she... do you think she ever...”
“Was she a prostitute?” Sarah asked for him.
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way! That’s such an awful... I really meant ...”
“Don’t worry,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “I’m not offended.”
Graham was amused to see her squeeze the detective’s hand. Now she was comf
orting Preduski.
“I do some light hooking myself,” Sarah said. “Not much. Once a week, maybe. I’ve got to like the guy, and he’s got to have two hundred bucks to spare. It’s all the same as stripping to me, really. But it wouldn’t have been something Edna could do. She was surprisingly straight.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. It was none of my business,” said Preduski. “But it occurred to me that in her line of work there would be a lot of temptation for a girl who needed money.”
“She made eight hundred a week stripping and hustling drinks,” Sarah said. “She only spent money on her books and apartment. She was socking it in the bank. She didn’t need more.”
Preduski was somber. “But you see why I had to ask? If she opened the door to the killer, he must have been someone she knew, however briefly. That’s what puzzles me most about this whole case. How does the Butcher get them to open the door?”
Graham had never thought about that. The dead women were all young, but they were from varied backgrounds. One was a housewife. One was a lawyer. Two were school-teachers. Three secretaries, one model, one sales clerk.... How did the Butcher get so many different women to open their doors to him late at night?
“Ten murders,” Preduski said, “and he always goes to the kitchen for a snack afterward.”
Stifled by the psychic atmosphere of the kitchen, by the incredibly strong, lingering presence of the killer which was nearly as heavy here as it had been in the dead woman’s bedroom, Graham could only nod. The mess on the table, in contrast with the otherwise tidy kitchen, disturbed him deeply. The peach can and the beer can were covered with reddish-brown stains; the killer had eaten while wearing his bloody gloves.
Preduski shuffled forlornly to the window by the sink. He stared at the neighboring apartment house. “I’ve talked to a few psychiatrists about these feasts he has when he’s done the dirty work. As I understand it, there are two basic ways a psychopath will act when he’s finished with his victim. Number one, there’s Mr. Meek. The killing is everything for him, his whole reason for living, the only color and desire in his life. When he’s done killing, there’s nothing, he’s nothing. He goes home and watches television. Sleeps a lot. He sinks into a deep pit of boredom until the pressures build up and he kills again. Number two, there’s the man who gets psyched up by the murder. His real excitement comes not during the killing but after it. He’ll go straight from the scene of the crime to a bar and drink everyone under the table. His adrenaline is up. His heartbeat is up. He eats like a lumberjack and sometimes picks up whores by the six-pack. Apparently, our man is number two. Except...”
“Except what?” Graham asked.
Turning away from the window, Preduski said, “Seven times he’s eaten a big meal in the dead women’s own homes. But the other three times, he’s taken the food out of the refrigerator and faked a big meal.”
“Faked it? What do you mean?”
“The fifth murder, the Liedstrom woman,” Preduski said. He closed his eyes and grimaced as if he could still see her body and blood.“We were aware of his style by then. We checked the kitchen right away. There was an empty pear can on the table, an empty cottage cheese container, the remains of an apple and several other items. But there wasn’t a mess. The first four times, he’d been sloppy—like he was tonight. But in the Liedstrom kitchen, he hadn’t left a lot of crumbs.
No smears of butter or mustard or mayonnaise or ketchup. No bloodstains on the beer cans.”
He opened his eyes and walked to the table. “We’d found well-gnawed apple cores in two of the first four kitchens.” He pointed at an apple core on the table in front of him. “Like that one. The lab had even studied the teeth marks on them. But in the Liedstrom kitchen he peeled the apple and removed the center with a corer. The skins and the core were piled neatly on one corner of his dinner plate. That was a change from what we’d seen previously, and it got me thinking. Why had he eaten like a Neanderthal the first four times—and like a gentleman the fifth? I had the forensic boys open the plumbing under the sink and take out the garbage disposal unit. They ran tests on it and found that each of the eight kinds of food on the table had been put through the disposal within the past few hours. In short, the Butcher hadn’t taken a bite of anything in the Liedstrom kitchen. He got the food from the refrigerator and tossed it down the drain. Then he set the table so it would look as if he’d had a big meal. He did the same thing at the scene of murders seven and eight.”
That sort of behavior struck Graham as particularly eerie. The air in the room seemed suddenly more moist and oppressive than before. “You said his eating after a murder was part of a psychotic compulsion.”
“Yes.”
“If for some reason he didn’t feel that compulsion at the Liedstrom house, why would he bother to fake it?”
“I don’t know,” Preduski said. He wiped one slender hand across his face as if he were trying to pull off his weariness. “It’s too much for me. It really is. Much too much. If he’s crazy, why isn’t he crazy in the same way all of the time?”
Graham hesitated. Then: “I don’t think any court-appointed psychiatrist would find him insane.”
“Say again?”
“In fact, I think even the best psychiatrist, if not informed of the murders, would find this man saner and more reasonable than he would most of us.”
Preduski blinked his watery eyes in surprise. “Well, hell. He carves up ten women and leaves them for garbage, and you don’t think he’s crazy?”
“That’s the same reaction I got from a lady friend when I told her.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“But I’ll stick by it. Maybe he is crazy. But not in any traditional, recognizable way. He’s something altogether new.”
“You sense this?”
“Yes.”
“Psychically?”
“Yes.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Sorry.”
“Sense anything else?”
“Just what you heard on the Prine show.”
“Nothing new since you came here?”
“Nothing.”
“If he’s not insane at all, then there’s a reason behind the killings,” Preduski said thoughtfully. “Somehow they’re connected. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not sure what I mean.”
“I don’t see how they could be connected.”
“Neither do I.”
“I’ve been looking for a connection, really looking. I was hoping you could pick up something here. From the bloody bedclothes. Or from this mess on the table.”
“I’m blank,” Harris said. “That’s why I’m positive that either he is sane, or he is insane in some whole new fashion. Usually, when I study or touch an item intimately connected with the murder, I can pick up on the emotion, the mania, the passion behind the crime. It’s like leaping into a river of violent thoughts, sensations, images.... This time all I get is a feeling of cool, implacable, evil logic. I’ve never had so much trouble drawing a bead on this kind of killer.”
“Me either,” Preduski said. “I never claimed to be Sherlock Holmes. I’m no genius. I work slow. Always have. And I’ve been lucky. God knows. It’s luck more than skill that’s kept my arrest record high. But this time I’m having no luck at all. None at all. Maybe it’s time for me to be put out to pasture.”
The instant he saw her, a brilliant image flashed behind his eyes, intense, breathtaking: Sarah Piper with blood all over her.
He stopped. Shaking. Waiting for more.
Nothing.
He strained. Tried to pluck more pictures from the ether.
Nothing. Just her face. And the blood. Gone now as quickly as it had come to him.
She became aware of him. She turned around and said, “Hi.”
He licked his lips, forced a smile.
“You predicted this?” she asked, waving one hand toward the dead woman’s bedroom.
“I’m afraid so
.”
“That’s spooky.”
“I want to say...”
“Yes?”
“It was nice meeting you.”
She smiled too.
“I wish it could have been under other circumstances,” he said, stalling, wondering how to tell her about the brief vision, wondering whether he should tell her at all.
“Maybe we will,” she said.
“What?”
“Meet under other circumstances.”
“Miss Piper... be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“For the next few days... be especially careful.”
“After what I’ve seen tonight,” she said, no longer smiling, “you can bet on it.”
7
Frank Bollinger’s apartment near the Metropolitan Museum of Art was small and spartan. The bedroom walls were cocoa brown, the wooden floor polished and bare. The only furniture in the room was a queen-size bed, one nightstand and a portable television set. He had built shelves into the closets to hold his clothes. The living room had white walls and the same shining wood floor. The only furniture was a black leather couch, a wicker chair with black cushions, a mirrored coffee table, and shelves full of books. The kitchen held the usual appliances and a small table with two straight-backed chairs. The windows were covered with venetian blinds, no drapes. The apartment was more like a monk’s cell than a home, and that was how he liked it.
At nine o’clock Friday morning he got out of bed, showered, plugged in the telephone, and brewed a pot of coffee.
He had come directly to his apartment from Edna Mowry’s place and had spent the early morning hours drinking Scotch and reading Blake’s poetry. Halfway through the bottle, still not drunk but so happy, very happy, he went to bed and fell asleep reciting lines from The Four Zoas. When he awoke five hours later, he felt new and fresh and pure, as if he had been reborn.