by Wayne Zurl
“Sam, I’ve done what I can. After a few more tests, I’ll be finished, and you’ll have my reports. In the meantime, you might want to run your thoughts past a forensic psychologist.”
I shrugged again. “Couldn’t hurt. Know anyone that’s good with abnormal criminal psychology?”
Like a Brooklyn yenta, Morris said, “Ah, boychek, have I got a girl for you.”
On the road back to Prospect PD, I stopped to see Chastity Puryear.
This time, I found her sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of Greek yogurt topped with chunky tropical fruit.
“Hello, darlin’,” she said. “Want some o’ this?”
“I have no manly opposition to yogurt, but my lunchtime desires tend more toward stick-to-the-ribs food. I’ll pass.”
She shook her head and let out something between a sniff and a snort. “Men. You want somethin’ ta drink?”
“A beer would be nice.”
On the way to the fridge, she kissed my forehead. “Sam Adams suit ya?”
“Sure, I’m patriotic as well as thirsty.”
“And you’re one of the most clever smartasses I know.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She popped the cap and held up the bottle for me to see. “Want a glass?”
“Of course. I’m patriotic and civilized.”
Chastity placed both on the table in front of me and sat behind the wheel of her yogurt bowl. Today she wore khaki shorts and a red tank top. Underwear still seemed to be an option she didn’t choose.
“Red is a good color for you.”
“Nice o’ you ta say so, sweetheart, but if you’re gonna make it a habit o’ stoppin’ ta see me, ya gonna have ta call first. Least I got my makeup on t’day, but I’d rather not let ya see me lookin’ like some common housewife on a day she wasn’t expectin’ the pool boy.”
I laughed. “I’ve met plenty of nice housewives.”
She frowned. “I’ll bet you have. Whatchew want, sugar?” She didn’t sound overly patient.
“Aren’t we testy today?”
“I am not. I just…Oh, never mind.”
“You look great. No need to change…or fish for compliments.”
She finally broke a smile. “I do believe we could be quite happy together.”
“Every time I see you, Chassy, I think—if only another time, another place.”
“Y’all are such a liar.” She ate the last spoonful of her yogurt/fruit concoction.
It was time to focus on po-leece business. “I spoke to Farley.”
“And?”
After a sip of Sam Adams Summer Lager, I laid my cards on the table. “The night Rosanna Wakefield disappeared and presumably was murdered, Farley spotted a big black SUV—a stretch Yukon or Chevy Suburban, in your lot. Yet he didn’t connect the vehicle with a customer. Thanks to Hollywood, SUVs like that have gotten to be the current vehicles-of-choice with some high-ranking cops. Was there someone in that category here on that night? Someone Farley might not have seen?”
“Sam, honey, I wish you didn’t ask questions like that. Two reasons. I hate ta talk about our clients, and it wasn’t just yesterday. How’m I s’pposed ta remember?”
“You’re not only beautiful, but you’re intelligent. You’d remember. And forget about not giving up your clients. It comes with the job when your buddy asks.”
“You think I know what kinda cars these people drive?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, good Lord have mercy. I do not know why I do as you ask, Sam Jenkins.”
I blinked a few times and tried to look irresistible.
“Oh, well,” she said. “There was an important police officer here that night. Are you acquainted with Archie Faber?”
“Not intimately, but I know he’s the sheriff’s assistant chief deputy of patrol.”
“That’s him.”
“And he drives a big black SUV?”
“You’ll have ta ask him, Mr. Po-leece Chief.”
When I walked into the office, Bettye was typing away on her computer, John was missing, and when I hung my sport jacket on the back of the door to my room, I found Lonnie Ray Wilson clicking away on the keys of Toby Bowman’s laptop.
“How are you making out with those email addresses?” I asked.
“So far, a piece of cake. Far as I can tell, these are just a bunch of promiscuous guys. I’m guessing some of them are married switch hitters who should have done more to remain anonymous, but even if they opened clandestine email accounts, they’re all mainstream freebies—Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s just gonna take time.”
“At seventy-five an hour?”
“That’s me, boss.”
“That old email from Andy is important. Anything on that yet?”
“Haven’t gotten around to Andy yet, but I’ll work up all the angles on him.”
“Okay, good. Now I need an educated opinion. John Gallagher heard that the task force is looking at two cops as suspects for the Strangler murders.”
Lonnie Ray raised his eyebrows.
“This is all based on the legendary detective using a computer program to focus on the theoretic possibility of someone in law enforcement being connected. He’s using a computer to profile local cops and match their activities to facts in evidence. Possible? Reliable?”
He took a long moment, then shrugged before answering. “Sure, it’s possible. But I’d call it little more than a shot in the dark. Reliable? You’d only know after you made a good arrest. That stuff is for mathematicians. It’s all got to do with algorithms and probability and statistics. If you believe it’s reliable, ask yourself why aren’t the guys with these programs picking winners in every horse race or cleaning up with sports betting. Isn’t this what profilers do? You take a bunch of statistics known to be true and come up with common factors, then make assumptions and guesses that your guy fits the overall average. How often are they on target?”
I nodded. “Thanks. Good to hear an expert agrees with me.”
I sat down at Gallagher’s desk and interrupted Bettye. “John on the road?”
She nodded. “Chasin’ down a few people he and Stanley didn’t see last night.”
“I’ve got a few calls to make before I know what else I’ll be doing.”
Bettye gave me her okey dokey, and I called a friend at the DA’s office.
“Clete, can you do me a favor on the QT?”
“I really hate it when you start a conversation like that.”
Cletus Dunn was the senior investigator for the District Attorney General in Blount County.
“I’d say that you probably don’t want to know why I’m asking, but if you did, you couldn’t resist getting the scoop.”
“Man, this is goin’ from bad ta worse, but you’re right. Tell me.”
I gave him a quick story about the big unattributed black, dark green or navy blue SUV.
“You’re lookin’ at one o’ the bosses at the sheriff’s office as bein’ the serial killer?”
“Not yet and not exactly. There’s no doubt that one of the bosses was at Frenchman’s Holler that night doing some socializing. My problem comes from the SUV being unaccounted for. The bouncer doesn’t put Archie Faber as the driver of that vehicle.”
“You caught Archie gettin’ his ashes hauled?”
“Hard to imagine that he spent his time there playing Chinese checkers.”
“I hear that. Faber is a pretty decent guy.”
“Lots of decent guys go looking for a harem outside the house. I’m not his problem, but he’d better keep his wife from finding out. If he was driving the SUV that night and he was otherwise occupied inside the club, I’ve got to look elsewhere.”
“Exactly what do you need?”
“Find out what Archie drives as a company car. Also, who at the sheriff’s office drives one of those big SUVs. My other questions go beyond easy. Like how many cops
in the area drive similar vehicles.”
“You ain’t lookin’ for much.” He took a moment to sigh. “Okay, I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks, partner.”
I hoped that Clete Dunn got as lucky as I did with my next phone call. Mo Rappaport’s psychologist friend, Dr. Sharon Rubenstein, received an appointment cancellation earlier in the day and could see me at four p.m.
At 3:30, John Gallagher came trotting in, pleased with himself for finishing all the pending interviews on his list and asking if we had been listening to the radio or television.
“We’re working, John,” I said. “You’re the one who integrates radio and TV into your police business.”
He shook his head and tried to look offended. “This is police business, Boss. Well, maybe not our business, but it’s interesting. How about this? Last night some mope broke into Ryan Leary’s SUV and took a duffle bag which just happened to hold his Glock and some other stuff.”
“He left a gun in his car?”
“Seems so. But it didn’t take a couple of patrolmen long to track down a local burglar and recover the bag. Ever hear of a skell named Farris Tingle?”
I shook my head. “Nice name. Never heard of him. Where’s he from?”
“The news guy gave an address on the north end of Maryville. Must have been looking for houses to creep if he was in Leary’s neighborhood.”
“You know that name, Betts?” I asked.
“I’d remember that one. No, sorry.”
John continued. “The news guy showed a film clip from when this Tingle was arraigned. He looked like he fell down Mount Le Conte. I guess either the cops or the dick who caught the case tuned him up.”
“With two CID guys permanently on the Strangler task force, the only dicks catching squeals are Hugh Bledsoe, the sergeant, and Bo Stallins. Neither of them are knuckle men.”
“Yeah, but it looks like somebody really cleaned this mook’s clock.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Leary himself. Just to satisfy my prurient curiosity, make a call, and see who’s handling the case.”
“Okay, Boss. If somebody stole my gun, I’d want to lump him up a bit, but I wouldn’t want some lawyer to make my defendant the poster boy for police brutality.”
“You probably wouldn’t leave your gun in the car overnight. I wonder what else was in that bag and why didn’t he take it into his house?”
Doctor Sharon Rubenstein hung her shingle outside one of the offices at Foothills Cooperative Counseling on High Street in Maryville. It took me less than fifteen minutes to drive there.
I waited in a cozy anteroom in a big, converted Victorian house only two blocks from the former county courthouse.
At five after four, a heavyset woman that I guessed to be in her late fifties walked out. She tried her best not to make eye contact with me, perhaps thinking I was there to sell timeshares. Or maybe she was Archie Faber’s wife.
Less than two minutes later a woman in her early fifties sauntered into the waiting room. She smiled and tilted her head. “Chief Jenkins?”
I stood and returned the smile. “I am he.”
She extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Sharon Rubenstein. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. Thanks for making time for me.”
“Not a problem. Please come through.”
She led me to an office in the back corner of the building. The furniture complimented the architecture—Victorian-style upholstered chairs, oak lamp tables, a long oak sideboard and a roll top desk against the wall.
“This is a lovely office,” I said. “You’ve been busy antique shopping.”
She smiled like a mother just told her child was beautiful.
“I love antiques, but sometimes wonder if any of the people I see recognize or appreciate them.”
“If I were your client, I’d be able to relax in this room…and tell you all my innermost secrets.”
She laughed. “Are they exciting?”
Sharon Rubenstein had short red hair, which could really be called orange, a prominent nose, full lips and high Slavic cheekbones. Her knee-length black skirt, white blouse and gray cardigan fit her well, and I guessed she might visit a gym three times a week. I wouldn’t have called her classically pretty, but any middle-aged guy would have found her attractive.
“I’m a small town cop. How exciting could I be?”
“I think a man in Tennessee with a downstate New York accent might have had a former life that isn’t as quiet as he’d like me to believe he’s now living.”
“You’re pretty sharp for a small town shrink.”
She laughed again. “Who’s originally from Brooklyn.”
We devoted a few more minutes to discussing that before getting down to business.
“Do you want me to act like a traditional profiler and give you a best guess of parameters that might fit your killer or get specific about what’s probably going on inside his head?” she asked.
“I’ve already gotten a lecture about the evils of probability and statistics. Let’s go with the mental mechanics of this lunatic.”
I peeked at a Regulator wall clock, saw that time was moving along briskly, but still spent time covering the basics of what Sharon wouldn’t have known from media coverage.
“Let’s narrow the field by fifty percent,” she said. “You’re looking for a man. If there are two participants acting in concert, one might be a woman, but your lead killer is male.
“And he’s a very troubled man—troubled in a way you don’t cure yourself or with daily medication. Based on what he’s done locally, I wouldn’t be surprised if you learned that he’s done the same or worse elsewhere.”
I raised my eyebrows and let out a volume of air.
“Think about it,” she said. “We assume he’s a local resident. With that comes the possibility of capture because of proximity. If he ever travelled, he’d be a new face in town and after he left that place, only a shadow. Since he knows how to cover his tracks well enough, he may never be associated with his deeds in other locales.”
“Wow. I wanted a solution. You complicated my life.”
She smiled. “If you ever locate this person, you might want to find out where he vacations or visits and check with the police there for similar unsolved murders.”
“That’s an obvious, but unlikable idea.”
She half shrugged. “How much effort is put into finding the killers of one or two prostitutes in big cities?” she asked. “This man is smart. He knows that he might well be able to feed his addiction in an efficient way, should time and circumstances permit.”
I shook my head.
“He probably started with an addiction to pornography. After enough time looking at porn and masturbating, it becomes less and less satisfying. Think of it like a combination of physically and psychologically addictive drugs. The more your tolerance builds the more volume you need to feel that kick you crave. So it is with porn.”
“Addiction?” I sounded beyond disgusted.
She flipped her hands up and to the sides. “Yes, addiction. Addicted to sex and murder. For some, the act of killing is orgasmic. If he figuratively rapes them first—they’re prostitutes, but in his mind it might be rape—then killing them is a bonus. He leaves a happy man. Of course, the interim between killings may be saturated with self-loathing, but nonetheless, he returns to what he needs most.”
“I’d rather admit to gasping for a drink.”
“Most of us would. But I’m sure this man progressed from simple porn to sado-masochistic porn and even to snuff porn. Once he watched enough snuff films, I’m guessing he wanted to try it himself.”
“What about a second killer or an accomplice?”
“That’s very possible. Generally speaking, people tend to associate with likeminded individuals. Thankfully, this trait usually manifests itself with more socially acceptable pastimes. But with two sexual deviants? Why not? It’s happened before.”
“Yikes.”
She chuckled. “Yikes, indeed. Now, I’m anticipating your next question. How do you recruit an assistant for something like this or how do two weirdoes meet and strike up a partnership?”
“Is weirdo an acceptable psychological term?”
“For me it is. Look, who knows how a pair of—what shall we call them—homicidal bi-sexual pedophiles meet? Your imagination is the limit. But don’t let anyone tell you that some strange cosmic force doesn’t allow them to recognize each other. I’ve run across that many, many times. People say opposites attract, but let me tell you, those outside the mainstream with a commonality attract like moths to a flame. Somehow, they recognize each other. Believe that.”
“So, theoretically,” I said, “they meet somewhere, somehow and engage in a conversation that leads them to this common ground. Somehow they grow closer and venture out together to patronize young male or female prostitutes, possibly for threesomes. Then somewhere along the line, one of the partners explains that “snuff sex” provides the ultimate orgasm. And off they go?”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Quite possibly.”
I threw my hands up about shoulder high. “Well hell. That makes my life easy.”
Her eyes lit up, and her smile widened. “You get what you pay for.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I appreciate your help. No one ever said a cop was put on earth to live a carefree life.”
“That’s a stoic and healthy way to look at it. Do you have any more questions?”
I sighed. “Sure. Why do people get meaningless tattoos, and why does my neighbor need nine cats?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Tough questions. I’m still trying to figure out why my young niece dyed her hair blue.”
“Okay, I know when I’m beat.”
She stood up and smoothed down her skirt. “While I’d love to sit here and explore the universe of mental disorders with you, I do have a five o’clock customer.”
“I understand. Schedules are schedules. But I’ve always wanted to subscribe to Dial-A-Shrink. If I need more meaningful help, are you game?”