Ten Plus One

5

On Monday, April 30, five days after the first murder had been committed, Cynthia Forrest came to see Steve Carella. She walked up the low, flat steps at the front of the gray precinct building, past the green globes lettered with the white numerals 87, and then into the muster room where a sign told her she must state her business at the desk. She told Sergeant Murchison she wanted to talk to Detective Carella, and Murchison asked her her name, and she said, “Cynthia Forrest,” and he rang Carella upstairs, and then told her to go on up. She followed the white sign that read detective division and climbed the iron-runged steps to the second floor of the building, coming out onto a narrow corridor. She followed the corridor past a man in a purple sports shirt who was handcuffed to a bench, and then paused at the slatted wood railing, standing on tiptoes, searching. When she spotted Carella rising from his desk to come to her, she impulsively raised her arm and waved at him.

“Hello, Miss Forrest,” he said, smiling. “Come on in.” He held open the gate in the railing, and then led her to his desk. She was wearing a white sweater and a dark-gray skirt. Her hair was hemp-colored, long, pulled to the back of her head in a ponytail. She was carrying a notebook and some texts, and she put these on his desk, sat, crossed her legs, and pulled her skirt down over her knees.

“Would you like some coffee?” Carella asked.

“Is there some?”

“Sure. Miscolo!” he yelled. “Can we get two cups of joe?”

From the depths of the clerical office in the corridor, Miscolo’s voice bellowed, “Coming!”

Carella smiled at the girl and said, “What can I do for you, Miss Forrest?”

“Most everyone calls me Cindy,” she said.

“All right. Cindy.”

“So this is where you work.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

Carella looked around the room as if discovering it for the first time. He shrugged. “The office, or what I do?” he asked.

“Both.”

“The office…” He shrugged again. “I guess it’s a rat trap, but I’m used to it. The work? Yes, I enjoy it, or I wouldn’t do it.”

“One of my psych instructors said that men who choose violent professions are usually men of violence.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” Cindy said. She smiled faintly, as though enjoying a secret joke. “You don’t look very violent.”

“I’m not. I’m a very gentle soul.”

“Then my psych instructor is wrong.”

“I may be the exception that proves the rule.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you a psych major?” Carella asked.

“No. I’m studying to be a teacher. But I’m taking general psych and abnormal psych. And then later, I’ll have to take all the educational psychology courses, ed psych one and two and…”

“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” Carella said.

“I suppose so.”

“What do you want to teach?”

“English.”

“College?”

“High school.”

Miscolo came in from the clerical office and placed two cups of coffee on Carella’s desk. “I put sugar and milk in both of them, is that all right?” he asked.

“Cindy?”

“That’s fine.” She smiled graciously at Miscolo. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, miss,” Miscolo said, and went back to his office.

“He seems very sweet,” Cindy said.

Carella shook his head. “A violent man. Terrible temper.”

Cindy laughed, picked up her coffee cup, and sipped at it. She put the cup down, reached into her handbag for a package of cigarettes, was about to put one in her mouth, when she stopped and asked, “Is it all right to smoke?”

“Sure,” Carella said. He struck a match for her, and held it to the cigarette.

“Thank you.” She took several drags, sipped more coffee, looked around the room a little, and then turned back toward Carella, smiling. “I like your office,” she said.

“Well, good. I’m glad.” He paused, and then asked, “What did you have on your mind, Cindy?”

“Well…” She dragged on the cigarette again, smoking the way a very young girl smokes, a little too feverishly, with too much obvious enjoyment, and yet at the same time with too much casualness. “They buried Daddy on Saturday, you know.”

“I know.”

“And I read in the newspapers that another man was killed.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you think the same person did it?”

“We don’t know.”

“Do you have any ideas yet?”

“Well, we’re working on it,” Carella said.

“I asked my abnormal-psych instructor what he knew about snipers,” Cindy said, and paused. “This is a sniper, isn’t it?”

“Possibly. What did your instructor say?”

“He said he hadn’t read very much about them, and didn’t even know whether or not any studies had been done. But he had some ideas.”

“Yes? Like what?”

“He felt that the sniper was very much like the peeper. The Peeping Tom, do you know?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. He thought the dynamic was essentially the same.”

“And what was that? The dynamic?”

“A response to infantile glimpses of the primal scene,” Cindy said.

“The primal scene?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the primal scene?” Carella asked innocently.

Unflinchingly Cindy replied, “The parents having intercourse.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“My instructor said that every child watches and attempts to pretend he is not watching. The sniper comes equipped with an obvious symbol, the rifle, and usually makes use of a telescopic sight, repeating the furtive way things are carried out in childhood, the looking and not being seen, the doing and not being caught.”

“I see,” Carella said.

“Essentially, my instructor said, sniping is a sexually aggressive act. Witnessing of the primal scene can manifest itself neurotically either through peeping—the voyeur—or through the reverse of peeping, in effect a fear of being peeped at. But the dynamic remains essentially the same with both the peeper and the sniper. Both are hidden, furtive, surreptitious. Both find sexual stimulation, and often gratification, in the act.” Cindy put out her cigarette, stared at Carella with wide, young, innocent blue eyes and said, “What do you think?”

“Well—I don’t know,” Carella said.

“Doesn’t the department have a psychologist?” Cindy asked.

“Yes, it does.”

“Why don’t you ask him what he thinks?”

“They only do that on television,” Carella said.

“Isn’t it important for you to know what’s motivating the killer?”

“Yes, certainly. But motives are often very complex things. Your abnormal-psychology instructor may be absolutely correct about an individual sniper, or maybe even ten thousand snipers, but it’s possible we’ll run into ten thousand others who never witnessed the—primal scene, did you call it?—and who…”

“Yes, primal scene. But isn’t that unlikely?”

“Nothing’s unlikely in murder,” Carella said.

Cindy raised her eyebrows dubiously. “That doesn’t sound very scientific, you know.”

“It isn’t.” He ended the sentence there with no intention of being rude, and then suddenly realized he had sounded rather abrupt.

“I didn’t mean to take up your time,” Cindy said, rising, her manner decidedly cool now. “I simply thought you might like to know…”

“You haven’t finished your coffee,” Carella said.

“Thank you, but it’s very bad coffee,” she answered, and she stood and looked down at him with her shoulders back and her eyes blazing a challenge.

“That’s right,” Carella said. “It’s very bad coffee.”

“I’m glad we agree on something.”

“I wasn’t aware we had disagreed on anything.”

“I was only trying to help, you know.”

“I appreciate that.”

“But I suppose I had the mistaken notion that modern police departments might want to know about the psychological forces at work in the criminal mind. My fantasy…”

“Come on,” Carella said. “You’re too nice and too young to be getting sore at a dumb flatfoot.”

“I’m not nice, and I’m not young, and you’re not dumb!” Cindy said.

“You’re nineteen.”

“I’ll be twenty in June.”

“Why do you say you’re not nice?”

“Because I’ve seen too much and heard too much.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing!” she snapped.

“I’m interested, Cindy.”

Cindy picked up her books and held them clasped to her breast. “Mr. Carella, this isn’t the Victorian age. Just remember that.”

“I’ll try to. But suppose you tell me what you mean.”

“I mean that most seventeen-year-olds today have seen and heard everything there is to see or hear.”

“How dull that must be,” Carella said. “What do you do when you’re eighteen? Or nineteen?”

“When you’re nineteen,” Cindy said in an icy voice, “you go looking for the cop who first told you your father was dead. You go looking for him in the hope you can tell him something he might not know, something to help him. And then, the way it always is with so-called adults, you’re completely disappointed when you discover he won’t even listen.”

“Sit down, Cindy. What did you want to tell me about our sniper? If he is a sniper, to begin with.”

“A man who shoots at someone from a rooftop is certainly…”

“Not necessarily.”

“He killed two men in the same way!”

“If he’s the one who killed both men.”

“The newspaper said the same make and caliber of cartridge….”

“That could mean a lot, or it could mean nothing.”

“You’re not seriously telling me you think it was a coincidence?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, except that we’re considering every possibility. Sit down, will you? You make me nervous.”

Cindy sat down abruptly and plunked her books on the desktop. For a nineteen-year-old who had seen and heard all there was to see and hear, she looked very much like a nine-year-old at that moment.

“Well,” Cindy said, “if the same man killed my father and that other man, and if he’s a sniper, then I think you ought to consider the possibility that he may be sexually motivated.”

“We will indeed.”

Cindy rose abruptly and began picking up her books. “You’re putting me on, Detective Carella,” she said, angrily, “and I don’t particularly like it!”

“I’m not putting you on! I’m listening to every word you’re saying, but for God’s sake, Cindy, don’t you think we’ve ever dealt with snipers before?”

“What?”

“I said don’t you think the police department has ever handled a case involving—”

“Oh.” Cindy put her books down again, and again she sat in the chair alongside his desk. “I never thought of that. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“I’m truly sorry. Of course. I mean, I suppose you run across all sorts of things. I’m terribly sorry.”

“I’m glad you came up anyway, Cindy.”

“Are you?” Cindy asked suddenly.

“We don’t often get nice bright kids in here,” Carella said. “It’s a refreshing change, believe me.”

“I’m just the all-American girl, huh?” Cindy said with a peculiar smile. Then she rose, shook hands with Carella, thanked him, and left.

The woman walking along Culver Avenue was neither a nice bright kid nor an all-American girl.

She was forty-one years old, and her hair was bleached a bright blonde, and she wore too much lipstick on her mouth and too much rouge on her cheeks. Her skirt was black and tight, and dusted with powder she had spilled on it while making up her face. She wore a high brassiere and a tight, white, soiled sweater, and she carried a black patent-leather handbag, and she looked very much like a prostitute, which is exactly what she was.

In a day and age when prostitutes in any neighborhood look more like high-fashion models than ladies of the trade, the woman’s appearance was startling, if not contradictory. It was almost as if, by so blatantly announcing her calling, she were actually denying it. Her clothes, her posture, her walk, her fixed smile all proclaimed—as effectively as if the words had been lettered on a sandwich board—i am a prostitute. But as the woman walked past, the imaginary back of the sandwich board was revealed, and lettered there in scarlet letters—what else?—were the words: i am dirty! do not touch! The woman had had a rough day. In addition to being a prostitute, or perhaps because she was a prostitute, or perhaps she was a prostitute because of it—God, there are so many psychological complexes to consider these days—the woman was also a drunk. She had awakened at 6:00 a.m. with bats and mice crawling out of the plaster cracks in her cheap furnished room, and she had discovered there was no more booze in the bottle beside her bed, and she had swiftly dressed, swiftly because she rarely wore anything but a bra under her street clothes, and taken to the streets. By 12:00 noon, she had raised the price of a bottle of cheap whiskey, and by 1:00 p.m. she had downed the last drop. She had awakened at 4:00 p.m. to find the bats and mice crawling out of the cracks again and to find, again, that the bottle beside the bed was empty. She had put on her bra and sweater, her black skirt and her high-heeled black pumps; she had dusted her face with powder, smeared lipstick on her mouth and rouge on her cheeks, and now she was walking along a familiar stretch of avenue as dusk settled in the sky to the west.

She generally walked this pavement each night along about dusk, drunk or sober, because there was a factory on Culver and North Fourteenth, and the men from the factory quit at 5:30, and sometimes she was lucky enough to find a quick $4 partner or, if her luck was running exceptionally good, even a partner for the night at $15 in good, hard, American currency.

Tonight she felt lucky.

Tonight, as she saw the men pouring from the factory on the next corner, she felt certain there would be a winner among them. Maybe even someone who would like to do a little honest drinking before they tumbled into the sack. Maybe someone who would fall madly in love with her, the plant superintendent maybe, or even an executive who would love her eyes and her hair and take her home to his large bachelor house in the suburbs of Larksview, where she would have an upstairs maid and a butler and make love only when she felt like it, don’t make me laugh.

Still, she felt lucky.

She was still feeling lucky when the bullet smashed through her upper lip, shattering the gum ridge, careening downward through her windpipe, cracking her upper spine, and blowing a huge hole out of her neck as it left her body.

The bullet spent itself against the brick wall of the building against which she fell dead.

The bullet was a Remington .308.