Night vision

CHAPTER 4

They had already zipped the body into a plastic bag when I made a final pass through the living room. The assistant ME had packed his bag and capped his camera. The cops were growing bored and filing out; there were other bodies in other apartments and the night was young. Charlie Riggs was on the staircase outside with Pamela Maxson, reminiscing about murders most foul. I looked around and struggled to remember everything the old canoe maker had taught me.

Be alert to every detail. I tried to memorize everything in the room. The computer was an IBM clone, the desk white oak, the telephone a new Panasonic. Marsha Diamond had been sitting at the computer when she was killed. I looked closer at the phone. Two lines, a bunch of buttons. One button was for making conference calls, another put you on hold, a third activated the speaker phone.

Then the last one. "Redial."

I congratulated myself on how smart I was. Half a dozen cops and nobody thought about it-maybe the last person Marsha Diamond spoke to just a dial tone away. And maybe with some luck, that last person was the guy who squeezed the life out of her. Don't you dare come over here, Harry, we're through!

Then again, it could be the weather number, a wrong number, or the public library. Only one way to find out. I picked up the receiver and hit the button. Seven electronic notes played do-re-mi in my ear.

A click and then the whir of a woman's recorded voice. "Welcome to Compu-Mate, where the person of your dreams awaits you. Dial ROMANCE, 766-2623, on your modem, and we'll put you in touch. Why not let Compu-Mate find your life mate?"

"Or your death mate," I answered the mechanical voice, "as the case may be."

I put the top down on my ancient Olds 442 convertible, deposited Charlie Riggs in the back and Pamela Maxson in the passenger bucket seat. It's the Turbo 400, yellow body, black canvas top, black interior, Rallye wheels, four-speed stick. An overgrown kid's toy.

"No sign of a break-in, nothing missing from the apartment," Charlie yelled over the roar of three hundred sixty-five horsepower. "No apparent motive."

It was a cloudy June night; the air was humid with a hint of salt. We were approaching the Miami Journal, just on the Miami side of the MacArthur Causeway. The boxy building sat there, lights twinkling against the blackness of the bay, taunting me.

"An organized crime scene," Pamela Maxson added.

Above us, on the superstructure, yellow lights flashed and we came to a stop at the drawbridge. When the lights turned red, the traffic gate lowered into place, the tender yanked on a long steel lever, and the bridge started clanking skyward. Below us, a nighttime sailor aimed a sleek Hinckley with a towering mast through the opening.

"Based on a cursory review," she continued, "I would say you're looking for a white male in his late twenties or early thirties, probably firstborn, height and weight within norms, higher-than-average intelligence, though an underachiever in school. He probably knew the victim or at least had seen her and followed her. His socioeconomic background is at least average, and he probably had a two-parent household, but he never formed a stable relationship with his father."

"I suppose the family dog got run over by a truck when he was going through puberty," I said, with just a hint of sarcasm.

The psychiatrist stared at my profile. The sight did not weaken her knees. "Actually, he probably tortured and killed pets. Slicing open a cat's belly and pulling out the intestines would be typical."

That muzzled me for a moment. The bridge dropped back into place, the gate lifted, and we were moving again. I swung onto the I-95 connector and headed south, tires singing on the concrete thirty feet above the mean streets of Overtown. Then I said, "I'm not sure that shrinks have all the answers they think they do."

"Don't sell forensic psychiatry short," Charlie Riggs shouted from the backseat.

"I don't. But the data doesn't do any good. We can't haul in all the firstborn sons in town."

"No," Pamela Maxson said, "but we can predict this killer's future behavior based on studies of past serial killers. He has fulfilled the fantasy of murder. He will repeat it, and will add to it his other fantasies he has so far repressed."

"You're assuming it's a motiveless crime. Not a jealous boyfriend or a bumbling robber."

"Unless you discover a pecuniary motive or an emotional one, you will find the murder quite motiveless, except in the deranged mind of the psychopath who committed it."

It's hard to argue with someone so obviously used to being right. We rode in silence as I pulled off the interstate and onto the Rickenbacker Causeway. The moon was coming up over Key Biscayne, spreading a creamy glow across the water. I pulled up in front of Tugboat Willie's. On the front porch a couple of old salts were debating the merits of rubber jigs-the Zara Spook versus the MirrOlure-for catching crevalle jack. Charlie got out and came around to the driver's side.

"Why would Nick Fox appoint you to head the investigation? Why not one of his cronies, someone he could control?"

"Says he wants to do the right thing. Not even an appearance of a conflict of interest."

"You believe that?" Charlie asked.

I shrugged. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

"That's what I always say," I said.

Dr. Maxson helped me out. "Loosely translated, 'Beware of an enemy bearing gifts.'"

Charlie nodded, then climbed into his mud-spattered pickup truck for the drive westward to the Glades. Pamela Maxson had taken a cab from her hotel, so I graciously offered to drive her back. Her eyes shot a look toward Charlie's truck, as if to ask if I was trustworthy, but he was gone. Either she decided to risk it, or she couldn't get out of the shoulder harness, because she wordlessly stayed in her seat.

It was a short ride to the Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove, but the doctor made it seem like a transatlantic flight. I mentioned the beauty of the moon and she said, "Umm." I remarked on the nighttime feeding habits of the turkey vultures, gliding above the sewage plant at Virginia Key, and she said, "Umm." When she gave me the same reply to the question of how long she'd be in town, I asked if she was practicing her mantra. That drew only silence, so I slipped a Beach Boys tape into the slot, and keeping time with palm slaps on the steering wheel, provided my own off-key praises to California girls, doubtlessly adding to the doctor's impression of me as a simpleton and rapscallion. To her credit, she never once complained about my singing or the dank evening air. When a few fat drops from a passing shower splattered our windshield, she never once asked me to put up the top. The wind blew her long hair straight back, and like a California girl without the tan-or the smile-she stared ahead into the nighttime breeze.

When I finally pulled under the canopy of the hotel, a teenage valet crept from the darkness and appraised the old yellow chariot.

"No shit, my old man used to talk about his 442," the kid announced, "but I never seen one."

I held him off and asked the doctor if she'd like a drink before retiring.

She studied me. "Whatever for?"

That one stumped me. "To…uh…wet the whistle. To talk."

"Talk? What about?"

"I don't know," I said defensively. "I don't plan that far ahead."

"I can see that. Then why invite me to share spirits?"

I thought of Jack Nicholson telling Shirley MacLaine that a stiff drink "might kill the bug you got up your ass." I thought of John Riggins, the great, wild running back of the Redskins, telling Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at a White House dinner to "loosen up, Sandy baby." But what I said was, "Because we can work together on the Diamond murder."

She paused long enough for me to toss the keys to the valet, and I escorted her to the glitzy bar on the mezzanine. The usual crowd was there; Colombian cowboys, businessmen delaying the inevitable confrontations at home, a collection of upper-middle-class snorters and pretenders driving leased Porsches, leaning close to young women in sequined designer knockoffs.

The lady asked for Pimm's over lemonade, and the barman didn't bat an eye. He poured some red stuff into 7UP, added a slice of cucumber, and Pamela Maxson nodded with appreciation after a dainty sip.

"Dr. Riggs is quite fond of you," the doctor said, as if she couldn't imagine why.

"And I of him."

"He said you used to play…rugby?"

"Football."

"Yes, we have your football on the telly now. Grown men in knickers with all that stuffing inside their clothing. Jumping onto each other with incredible aggression."

I smiled at her imaginative but entirely accurate definition of pro football.

"Freud conceived of aggression as a derivative of the death instinct," she added. "Others debate whether aggression is a primary drive itself or just a reaction to frustration."

"I just liked hitting people. It was fun."

She opened her eyes a little wider. The green shimmered in the muted lighting. She pursed her full lips and thought a private thought. I expected her to start taking notes, maybe send me a bill later.

"Fun?" she pronounced carefully, as if trying out a new word.

"Sure. The hitting, the contact. Tackling is fun, particularly a good, clean hit that knocks the wind out of the runner. The kind that jolts him, makes the crowd go oooh. "

"The sounds of the crowd. Did it represent to you a woman's sighs, her moans of ecstasy?"

I didn't like where this was heading. "I think I can distinguish between the two."

"And this tackling people, did it make you feel bigger, more…manly?"

I laughed and nearly spilled my Grolsch. "Look, if you're going to tell me the NFL is full of closet queens…"

She ran a hand through her thick auburn hair, now tangled from the wind. "Why are you defensive about your masculinity?"

This was getting me nowhere. "Let me tell you a story," I said. "When I was a rookie, there was a big tight end on the Jets who was so tough he made Mike Ditka look like a pussycat. He liked to talk trash at the line. So I come in at outside linebacker late in the game, and my uniform is clean and white, and he's there all muddy and bloody, and yells out, 'Here comes the cherry.' Then the QB is calling signals and all I hear is the tight end saying, 'Hey, cherry, didn't they teach you how to put on your uniform in college? I can see your dick, and it's all shriveled up.' So just like somebody saying your shoes are untied, I look down, the ball is snapped, and the tight end slugs my helmet with a forearm that could ring the bell at Notre Dame."

She considered my story and stirred her red drink. "And do you attempt to compensate for this humiliation?"

I shook my head. "No, I just don't look at my dick unless absolutely necessary."

She tried to see if I was joking, and when she figured I was, gave me a full smile. "Do you really want my help or are you just hoping to charm your way into my room?" she asked.

"I think I have a significantly greater chance at the former."

"Dr. Riggs was right. You are smarter than you look."

That was as close to a compliment as I was going to get. A winsome lass on a sailboard-perhaps overcome by sunstroke-once compared my eyes to the azure waters off Bimini. Later, she tossed me over for a scuba instructor.

Pamela Maxson declined a second drink and we looked at each other a moment, her thoughts imperceptible. She told me she was leaving for New York in the morning, a couple of network appearances, a book signing in the Doubleday store on Fifth Avenue, then back to England. I should call her if I learned anything or if there was another killing.

"Look for messages," she said.

"Besides ones in lipstick?"

"Frankly, I'm puzzled by the reference to Jack the Ripper. Jack was a disorganized murderer, a slasher who was extremely violent and quite messy. He stalked women he did not know and used force, not persuasion, to subdue them."

"So the killer's tossing a curveball?"

"A curve…"

"A red herring, a bum steer."

"Perhaps. But even if the killer is tossing a…bum steer, the message is still meaningful. Whoever wrote it is well read, perhaps an amateur historian, or someone who knows a great deal about classic criminal cases, stories of law enforcement, that sort of thing."

"Like the honorable state attorney," I mused, mostly to myself.

"If that were the case, the crime would not be motiveless, would it? If the Diamond girl was his chippy and he killed her, there would have to be a motive. But if it's a random killing, the work of a serial murderer, you'll know soon enough."

"How?"

"Because there'll be another one presently, won't there?"

I hadn't thought about that before, but now I did. Looking for a little excitement with the gun-and-badge set was one thing, hunting a serial killer was something else again. Serial killers are lifetime obsessions of guys with little offices and big file drawers. It takes forever to nab one. Isn't that what makes them serial killers, unsolved murders over several years? What had I gotten into?

"I don't know how to catch those guys," I admitted.

Dr. Maxson smiled faintly. "Don't feel sorry for yourself, Mr. Lassiter. The police are always complaining that serial killers are so difficult to apprehend because there is no connection between victims and no apparent motives. But they do leave clues, and usually they are quite careless. Often they contact the police or stand in the crowd that gathers at the scene."

"So they want to be caught?"

"No, a common misconception. Part of the thrill is outwitting the police and reliving the crime. There was an ambulance driver who would abduct young women, kill them, call the police, then race back to the hospital so he would get the call to pick up the body."

While I thought that over she smoothed her skirt in a gesture even my non-psychoanalytic mind could understand.

Thank you for the ride and the drink, Mr. Lassiter," she said with British formality, and stood up to leave.

"All my friends call me Jake…Pamela," I said.

She rewarded me with a second smile and then extended a finely tapered white hand. "Good evening, Jake. And good luck."

The hand was cool, the shake firm. She didn't ask me to share the view from her room, so I headed out the front where my 442 was parked in a space of honor next to a Rolls. The hood was still hot, and the gas tank was a nudge lower than an hour earlier.

I looked hard at the valet.

"Your shocks are a little soft on the turns," he said sheepishly.

I gave him five bucks. "You're telling me."