Night vision

CHAPTER 9

Charlie Riggs dipped a hand into an old coffee can and came up with a half-dozen night crawlers. Juicy ones, brown and black, round and squirmy.

"If you were a bass, would you chomp one of these?" he asked.

"If I were a bass, I'd want to be a tarpon," I said.

Charlie grumbled something unintelligible and speared a fat worm with his hook. He swung his cane pole-no graphite rods and championship tackle for him-into the canal and waited. On the marshy bank, a great white heron peg-legged along, a full five feet tall on those matchstick legs.

Charlie's line drifted with the almost imperceptible current, the moon tugging the endless waters from the ocean to the straits to the bay to the great slough of the Everglades. "Can't eat the bass anymore," Charlie said. "Mercury poisoning."

I had seen the Journal headline: chemical threatens glades. Two inches of type, tops. A Florida panther dead, its liver laced with mercury. Nearby, a mess of bass floating belly up. I imagined an innocuous headline dated December 1, 1941: Japanese flotilla steams southeast.

In the whirl and buzz of today's world, the men and women stuck in traffic jams cannot see the fouled streams, the poisoned pastures, the sea creatures strangled in plastic nets. Between punching in and punching out, getting ahead and stashing away their IRA, they have no time to consider the invisible menace. Meanwhile, in well-lighted conference rooms, finely groomed men in charcoal suits coolly discuss their budgets for R amp;D, SG amp;A, and the profit ratio of malignant poisons that coat the vegetables and artificial hormones that lace the beef.

Their computer models tell them how many tankers will cruise the Gulf before one strikes a reef and the appropriate tonnage that will ooze into the precious estuaries. Mathematically, they can figure when the waters of the Everglades will become as deadly as a toxic dump, when the song of a million birds will be stilled. No problem. The boys in insurance gotcha covered. Five million primary for the basic risk, fifty million excess reinsured with Lloyd's to protect the company's net worth and their own pensions. The public-relations folks-experts at damage control-are ready to fax prepackaged news releases that explain the company's profound concern at this unanticipated and unfortunate incident.

Just that morning Charlie and I heard thunder roll in the distance to the west. Not from the sky, but from underground explosions set by an oil company searching for a fortune beneath the river of grass. At dawn we watched their trucks, obscenely white, roll along the old levee, seismic sensors protruding like the antennae of steel-jacketed insects. Exploratory only, the company says, for it has no drilling permit. Just wait. After lobbyists pay their nighttime visits, it will only be a matter of time. The drilling will start, and some dark lonely night, through human error or computer breakdown or metal fatigue, the black gunk will belch into the marshy hammocks and over the sawgrass and through the canals. The crude will pour into the aquifer that supplies our fresh water. A bad enough spill and Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami will go bone dry. The roaches will inherit the concrete shells of forsaken condos, which in the end might be what was intended all along.

"Itemize it for me," Charlie Riggs ordered, as if I were a fuzzy-cheeked intern.

We were sitting on the wooden dock behind his cabin on an Everglades canal. Charlie wore hiking boots and khaki shorts that were stained with fish guts or worse. I wore gray practice shorts and an old tear-away jersey, number fifty-eight, which the Dolphins somehow managed not to retire. In the glare of the late-afternoon sun, I tried to talk and pull the porcelain stopper on a sixteen-ounce Grolsch at the same time.

"Two young women who live alone are strangled a week apart. They have no known enemies, no common friends. Neither was robbed. The first may have had sex shortly before death, though it could have been a solo flight. The second victim clearly had sex in close proximity to death. Seminal fluid revealed an assailant or lover with blood type A, according to young Dr. Whitson."

"Assailant or lover?"

"No sign of a struggle," I said. "Other than the injury to the neck, no contusions. Also no skin under the fingernails and no torn clothing. It appears consensual."

"Unless it was postmortem."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Well do, and please continue."

Charlie gets ornery if you overlook anything.

I said, "A message at the first scene echoed Jack the Ripper and taunted us. A message at the second scene reflected animosity toward women. Other than that, there is no apparent connection between the two murders, except…"

Charlie yanked on the cane pole and came up with a palm frond.

"Except," I continued, "both victims belonged to a sex-talk club. Both were frequent fliers on the computer wooing circuit, including the night each was killed."

"Anything else?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the rippling canal.

"Victim one was having a fling with the politically ambitious state attorney. Didn't seem too serious on either side. What the kids call a sport fuck."

Charlie scowled and flipped his sunglasses down from the bill of his cap like a shortstop under a pop-up. "Our language," he moaned, "In partibus infidelium. 'In the hands of infidels.'"

"She may have been poking into Fox's war record."

"I assume you haven't queried Fox whether she asked him about Vietnam."

I took a hit on the cold Grolsch. "Right. Too early. I try not to cross-examine a witness until I know at least as much as he does."

Charlie smiled. He had burned me from the witness stand more than once when my eagerness exceeded my experience.

"No one knows what Marsha was up to," I said. "The news director says she was working some investigation on her own, doesn't know what. She wouldn't tell him anything about it except she had a confidential source. He didn't take it too seriously. Didn't take Marsha too seriously, for that matter."

"Uh-huh," Charlie said. I thought the old wizard had come up with some revelation, but he was just pulling in a small blue-striped fish.

"Looks like a bream," I said.

"No. A damn tilapia. Belongs in somebody's den in an aquarium. Folks started dumping their exotic fish out here, now they've taken over the bedding areas. No wonder you can't find bluegill."

Charlie tossed the fish back, chose another night crawler, and baited his hook. "Maybe Nick Fox didn't take her seriously either. Maybe she was just a sport-I can't say it-to him until he found out she was onto something."

"But then there's Mary Rosedahl," I said.

"Yes, and unless you're willing to believe that Fox killed a second time to cover up the motive for the first…"

"Hold on, Charlie. We have no proof Fox had anything to do with the first. You can't take this kind of speculation to a grand jury."

Charlie smiled and scratched his beard. "Easy, Jake. We're just postulating. Covering all the possibilities. Stop thinking about probable cause and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Be a scientist for a moment. Consider every happenstance, no matter how remote. When a person is killed, always ask, cui bono? 'Who stands to gain?'"

I drained the beer. It didn't help my powers of concentration. "That assumes a rational motive and not a crazed psychopath."

"And you assume we're dealing with a psychopath."

"Guys who leave nutty notes at murder scenes don't usually have rational motives, right?"

Charlie watched his line as little water bugs skittered across the surface. "Unless the messages are purposeful distractions…"

"That's what Pam Maxson said about the Ripper note."

"Or they could be the product of an irresistible urge to scorn, to goad the authorities."

I nodded. "Pamela Maxson said serial killers sometimes do that. They need thrills or something."

"Excitement," Charlie said. "Some psychopaths seek a whirlwind of excitement. Rather than seeking security, they crave risk."

I opened another beer. Before I could take a drink, Charlie chuckled and said, "You've been quoting Dr. Maxson a lot lately. What should I read into that?"

"My admiration for her…credentials."

"No doubt."

I allowed myself a long, cool swallow. I started drinking two a day when I learned the brew might be good for fighting cholesterol. At the same time I cut back to only an occasional bacon cheeseburger and chocolate shake. Now I only eat red meat when doubling the ration of beer. Somehow I've convinced myself the arterial arithmetic works out.

I tried thinking it through, but my head was spinning and not from the beer. "Charlie, best I can figure, we may have a crazed killer or a sane one, or two crazed killers or two sane ones, or one of each. And the Compu-Mate connection either ties the two killings together or not, depending on whether we're dealing with one nut or two, or two non-nuts, or one of each."

"Verus," Charlie agreed. "Anything is possible, but since the computer club is the only apparent connection, I suggest you pursue the computer business."

"Rodriguez is checking out each woman's calls," I said.

"You got the list?"

"From A to Z, or Android to Zorro, as the case may be. You wouldn't believe some of their handles."

I pulled out two lists that had been personally delivered to my office by Bobbie Blinderman the day before.

She had stopped traffic along the law-office corridors. Ushering the tall, sleek one into my office, Cindy had raised her eyebrows and said, "Love your shoes, honey."

It's hard to notice shoes when the red leather skirt stops a foot above the knees, but once you do, it's just as hard not to stare. The plastic see-through heels were filled with water and a goldfish swam in each one. The SPCA know about this?" I asked.

"It's a performing art," Bobbie Blinderman said. The fish only last a little while. Then they go limp and die." She paused long enough to smirk. "Just like most men."

"So you keep casting for bigger fish."

"Maybe I found one," she said, laughing, and running a hand through her dark, layered hair. She tossed an envelope onto my desk. "Here's the printout of callers to Miss Diamond." Then she flipped a second one at me. "And here's one for Miss Rosedahl."

I must have looked like a mule kicked me. "I read about it in the paper," she said quickly. "Some fucking maniac, huh?"

There was no mention of either one belonging to Compu-Mate. That's under wraps."

"I recognized Rosedahl's name. One of our regulars. Went by the handle 'Flying Bird.'"

"You're under no obligation to produce her calls," I said, sounding very much like the uptight lawyer who lurked deep inside.

She laughed again. "I know, but I was afraid you'd hit me with your big, bad subpoena."

Now I spread the lists on the wooden dock between the old man and the canal. On the night she was killed, Marsha Diamond computer-talked with four men.

BIGGUS DICKUS

BUSH WHACKER

ORAL ROBERT

PASSION PRINCE

Nine names turned up on Mary Rosedahl's list.

BIGGUS DICKUS

HARRY HARDWICK

HORNY TOAD

MUFF DIVER

PASSION PRINCE

ROCK HARD

SLAVE BOY

STUDLY DO-RIGHT

TOM CAT

Charlie tsk-tsked, as was his habit when witnessing the decline of civilization. "Those names. So…

"Sophomoric," I suggested.

"Crude," he said. "What on earth do the men say to the women after introductions like that?"

"Apparently, everything they wouldn't say in person. The impression I get is that your Caspar Milquetoast who wouldn't dream of speaking to a strange woman in a bar loses all inhibitions when he's tapping out messages in the night."

"Did Mrs. Blinderman tell you that?"

"Sort of. She's a little warped herself."

"You've got two matches there, you know."

"Yeah. Biggus Dickus and Passion Prince. They're first on Rodriguez's invitation list for a little chat."

"Good. I've been doing some research for you, too. Lord Tennyson was acutely aware of madness. His father, Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, was clearly manic-depressive."

I gave Charlie my how-do-you-know-that look.

"Relax," he said. "I've been to the library. You should try it sometime. Now, the poet himself was subject to great depression. He would check himself into the 1840s equivalent of a health spa. Unfortunately, these were establishments of intense quackery. He'd subject himself to hydropathy, which is a fancy word for ice-water baths and massages. All day long, freezing baths and rub-downs with wet, cold sheets, followed by meals of bread and cold water."

"Not exactly a weekend at the Fontainebleau."

"The idea was to flush out the poisons, the demons of the mind."

"Okay, what's that have to do with us?"

"Maybe nothing, but best to remember we don't have messages written by the killer. We're dealing with words written by someone who apparently influenced the killer."

"So we should learn as much as we can about that someone."

"Exactly. For what it's worth, Tennyson wrote 'Locksley Hall' after being jilted by a lover."

"Hell hath no fury like the poet scorned. What about the first message-Jack the Ripper?"

"Here, I brought something for you to read." He motioned toward his knapsack. Inside, next to a sandwich of smoked amberjack on sourdough, was an old book. A musty old book with pages that stuck together and a title by someone who never saw a movie marquee. A Detailed History and Critical Analysis of Police Investigatory Techniques During the Whitechapel Murders, August 31 to November 9, 1888.

I thumbed through the book, peeling yellow pages apart. "Somehow, I thought Jack the Ripper had a longer rampage."

"Five killings over seventy days," Charlie said. "All middle-aged prostitutes, all alcoholic, all killed within a one-quarter-square-mile area. He disemboweled them, you know. Removed the uterus from one with some medical skill. With a couple, the police missed him only by a matter of seconds."

"Mary Ann Nicholls," I said, reading from the book. "The first one. 'Warm as a toasted crumpet' when found, it says here. What about the note?"

"There were at least three, actually. Turn to where I've marked it. The first letter was written in red ink and sent to a newspaper after the second murder."

I found the page and read aloud:

"'Dear Boss,

I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work, the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me and my funny little games.

Yours Truly,

Jack the Ripper'"

"Three days later," Charlie said, "a postcard was mailed from the East End. Same handwriting."

I found the page and again read aloud:

"'I was not codding, dear Boss, when I gave you the tip. You'll hear about Saucy Jack's work tomorrow. Double even this time. Number One squealed a bit; couldn't finish straight off. Had no time to get ears for police.

— Jack the Ripper"

I read silently to learn what Charlie already knew. The next morning two bodies were found. Elizabeth Stride's throat had been slashed. The other victim, Catherine Eddowes, was quite a mess. Her abdomen was slashed open, the intestines pulled out and draped over her shoulder. And her left kidney was missing.

"Two weeks after the double homicide," Charlie said, "George Lusk received a cardboard box in the mail. It contained part of a human kidney and a note."

I thumbed a few pages further:

From hell, Mr. Lusk, sir, I send you half the kidney I took from one woman, preserved it for you, tother piece I fried and ate it; was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer. Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.

"Cocky bastard," I said. "Showed no fear at all."

"No reason to," Charlie said, giving up at last and swinging his pole onto the dock. "Why not?"

"They never caught the bloke, did they?" Charlie said, wiping off his hands and picking up his meerschaum pipe.