Anatomy of Fear

19

Terri left the meeting with Dugan, Perez, O’Connell, and a headache. The bulk of the agenda had been how to manage the media. According to Denton, by way of the mayor, by way of the FBI, they still wanted a total blackout. No serial killer. No racial angle. Any crime that had to do with race, even hinted at being a hate crime, was incendiary. But trying to keep a story like this out of the press these days?

As if, thought Terri.

The work was to remain divided between the three precincts, each assigned to handle one of the three murders, thereby dispelling the notion that they were in any way related, though in actuality they would be tripling efforts and pooling information.

To Terri’s mind this baroque process would undoubtedly slow down the investigation. She had worked enough cases to know that the number of bodies working on it did not necessarily mean success, particularly if the bodies would be working out of different precincts and under separate commands. It seemed to her a guarantee for confusion, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her crew was on the Harrison Stone murder, the black man shot in Brooklyn, which was further complicated by the fact that the Brooklyn division still had official jurisdiction, another way to allay suspicion that the cases were connected. She wasn’t sure why the feds had not completely taken over, her best guess being they were short on manpower and wanted the NYPD to do the legwork.

Collins and her field officers had arrived late and tried to act like they knew nothing and everything all at once. Terri could see they were fishing but not sharing.

For now, she was just happy to be out of the meeting. She leaned toward one of her detectives. “You’re related to Cole in the Twenty-third, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s married to my sister, a good guy,” said O’Connell. “You want me to keep up with what they’re getting on the Acosta case, that it?”

“We’re supposed to share information, right?”

“I hear you.”

“You can tell Cole we’ll share too.”

“So what did you make of Lewinsky?” asked Dugan.

“Who?”

“The case agent, Monica, as in…‘Lewinsky.’”

Terri cracked up. She needed the laugh and appreciated it. “Nice,” she said. “It’s Lewinsky from now on.”

“What do you say we chip in and buy her a blue dress?” O’Connell said.

“With a big fat stain on it,” Perez added.

All three men laughed and Terri joined them, enjoying the joke at Collins’s expense. A rarity. The men working under Terri had rarely shared anything with her except their resentment.

Nothing like a common enemy, she thought.

“The G has more than they’re letting on, but that’s nothing new.” She dropped her voice to a whisper so her men had to move in close. “But so do we, and let’s keep that between us.”

Terri had asked me to join her crew after their meeting with the feds. We were on the third floor of Midtown North, a conference room between Terri’s office and Department Command. It had a view looking west over Fifty-fourth Street with a quarter inch of the Hudson River visible between a couple of high-rise buildings. I was feeling a little uncomfortable, Dugan and Perez eyeing me, their faces saying: What the fuck is he doing here? Perez, in particular, maybe because he was Puerto Rican and saw me as some sort of competition for the Latino seat, which was absurd, but what could I say? O’Connell was friendly, but he seemed a little drunk. When Terri had finished her recap of the meeting with the FBI, Perez finally came out and said it: “So what’s Rodriguez doing?”

“Making a sketch,” she said.

“How can he make a sketch if we don’t got any witnesses?”

“Some of the witnesses saw more than they think. Rodriguez is trying to piece something together.” She looked over, gave me a slight smile, and I returned it.

The detectives were all on last-name or nickname basis. Dugan was alternately “Duggie” or “Howser,” Perez was “Pretzel,” and O’Connell was “Prince.” I had no idea why they called him that. Maybe he was a fan of the Purple Rain pop star. None of the guys had a nickname for Russo. She was just Russo, though they probably had plenty behind her back. I could only imagine what they were calling me.

Terri reviewed the cases, stopping to ask her men for their opinions, a smart move. I’d seen enough to know that guys on the force didn’t much like taking orders from a woman, particularly one younger than they. She had this way of tilting her head and squinting when any of her men were talking, as if she was really listening. It could have been an act, but I didn’t think so. I was really starting to like her; respect her too. And there was another factor: She was sexy as hell in her tight black jeans and white blouse open at the neck, thin gold chain resting against her olive skin. I thought about doing some sketches of her while she walked back and forth, but was afraid I’d start imagining her naked and the way my drawings had been spontaneously creating themselves these days, I couldn’t chance it.

“Is there anything you’d like to add?”

It took me a second to realize Terri was talking to me. I cleared my throat and reiterated what I thought was a major point. “You’ve got a killer who’s making portraits of his victims, so it’s obvious he stalked them and chose them for a reason.”

Perez looked up at me with a sneer. “Yeah, I think we know the reason-the racial angle we’re not allowed to talk about because it upsets people.”

“There’s that,” I said. “But I was thinking more about the stalking angle-that the guy had to have watched his victims for some time to be able to draw them.”

“How about telling us something we don’t know?” said Perez. “You spent, what, three days on the street? Too tough for you out there?”

There were smiles teasing O’Connell’s and Dugan’s lips.

Their resentment didn’t surprise me.

“Six months,” I said. “And you’re right, I don’t have the street experience, and I’m not going to pretend I do. But I went through the academy, just like you, Perez. And I spent some time in Washington.”

“Ooh, Washington.” Perez shook his hand like I was hot stuff, and I let him have his fun. For a minute.

“I’ve put seven years into the job. How long have you been on the force?” I asked the question knowing the answer: he’d only been working five years.

“What’s that got to do with the fucking price of tea in China?”

Terri laid her hand on his arm. “This isn’t productive.”

“Productive, my ass.”

“Exactly,” said Terri. “So just make nice, okay?”

Perez opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but stopped.

I could have said more too, but Terri was right, it wasn’t productive. Still, I wasn’t going to apologize for my lack of street creds. I’d made hundreds of drawings and probably interviewed as many witnesses as he had.

“The unsub’s drawings are obviously his signature,” I said. “And he takes his time.” I was reminded of what had just happened between me and Beverly Majors. “Could be that in the act of drawing his victims the unsub is creating some sort of bond with them.”

“Not that they know of,” said Perez.

“No. Of course not. But that doesn’t matter. Not to him. The relationship is in his mind. It’s the way visual people think, in pictures. It’s a way to see the world and make sense of it.”

“Visual people? You mean crazy people,” said O’Connell.

“In this case, yes.”

“So, you’re suggesting he draws the vics to make a bond with them; but why?” asked Terri.

“Could be his way to see them more clearly, to remember them and chart them. He must see the couples out in public and become fixated on them, the way these guys often do; then he draws them.”

“Why not take their picture?” asked Dugan.

“Because when he draws them he can put them into the poses and positions he wants, imagine them the way he wants to see them-dead. Drawing them is all about his vision of them.”

O’Connell and Dugan nodded. Perez didn’t, but I could see he was listening to what I said.

We kicked that around a few minutes, and the guys seemed to forget I was an outsider, and I had a chance to observe them the way I had Russo.

O’Connell’s face was puffy but slack, probably a result of his constantly hitting a thermos of coffee laced with booze, a tried-and-true muscle relaxant. Perez was the opposite-face taut, upper lip frozen into a permanent sneer. I’d heard he was divorced with two small girls he never saw, which might have accounted for part of the anger. Dugan’s face, drooping upper eyelids and a slightly down-turned mouth, suggested sadness. They were wearing the job on their faces. I looked back at Russo. Her face was all about worry-eyes fixed, brow wrinkled. It reminded me of the way my mother looked whenever my father was late coming home.

“So why kill Rice and not his black girlfriend?” Dugan asked.

“Right,” said O’Connell. “If he’s motivated by race, wouldn’t killing the black girl make more sense?”

“Maybe he doesn’t kill girls,” said Terri. “Maybe he’s got some sort of standard, like it’s not right to kill women and children.”

“A killer with moral standards?” said Dugan.

“They’re all governed by something,” said Terri.

“Still, seems to me that if he was trying to make a point, it’d be easier to either kill the black girl or just choose another black or Spanish guy,” said Perez.

“But that’s because you’re trying to make sense of it,” I said. “We don’t know what making sense means to this guy. David Berkowitz was taking orders from a dog.”

“Ahhooo!” O’Connell put down his thermos and howled.

We all laughed a minute, then Terri got quiet. “I’ve spoken to Monteverdi in Hate Crimes. They’re going through all the active files, see if they can come up with someone who has any art or design background.”

“I thought this wasn’t a hate crime,” said Perez.

“Well, not publicly,” said Terri.