The Strangler

11

The murder books. In each there was a photo of the victim as she had looked around the time of her murder. There was more, of course. A murder book was the repository of every scrap of paper the police had compiled about a homicide, and Michael dutifully slogged through all thirteen of the Strangler books-detectives’ reports, witness statements, field interrogation reports, autopsy and crime-lab reports, mug shots. But it was the snapshots of the victims’ faces that gave him a frisson of mortality. They were such ordinary women, stern-looking old ladies with outdated names, Eva, Helena, Lillian, Margaret, and smiling pretty young girls named Beverly and Judy and Patty.

In the murder-scene photos Michael searched for those same faces, as if the reality in the earlier photograph would continue until canceled; only a photograph could disprove another photograph. But he could not recognize the women’s faces on their dead bodies. In the wide shots, of bodies outstretched, or trussed, or tossed like rag dolls, the victims seemed to have no faces at all. A smudge, a stain, that was all he could make out. Even in the remorseless granular close-ups of the victims’ heads, he could not find the living women’s faces.

Soon, too soon, he decided he could not stare at the pictures anymore. Enough. It was morbid. The cycle of emotions stirred by violent images was similar to that stirred by pornographic ones: shock, fascination, monotony, finally revulsion. Worse, mortal questions-what did it mean, exactly, to die?-were yawning before him. He slipped the pictures back into their manila envelopes. Decided he would maintain from the outset a greater emotional distance from the whole business. He would reduce these thirteen murders to data. He would organize the essential facts of each case, chart it all in columns labeled Date, Location, V’s Age, Details of Attack, Other Evidence, Witnesses, Suspects. Patterns would naturally emerge.

“6/14/62…Back Bay…56…no semen…blood in vagina indicates rape with object…blood in right ear…laceration at rear scalp…neck scratched and bruised…contusion on chin…strangled with cord of light blue housecoat; cord found still tied around neck, in bow…no sign of struggle…Arthur Nast…” “6/20/62…Brighton…68…external genitalia lacerated…blood and mucus in vagina…blood in both ears…open wine bottle on kitchen counter…”

An image lit up in Michael’s mind, briefly, a strobe flash: a woman thrashing, arms flailing-shrieking, NO! -her face, grimaced, teeth clenched-dark hair-a scream-furniture clattering.

And then it was gone. He blinked away the memory of it. He had only the papers on his desk. And the clock ticking.

“8/19/62…Lawrence…53 y. o… supine on bed, R leg dangling, naked except for open blouse…3 ligatures on neck (2 stockings, 1 leg of brown leotard)…external vagina bruised, bloody…2 half-moon contusions below R nipple, 2 abrasions above and L of it…R thigh contused…raped…V a devout churchgoer…” “8/21/62…Columbia Rd., Dorchester…67…no forced entry to apt… blood on floors in kitchen, hall…bra on bathroom floor…V found in bathtub, on her knees, face down in 6 inches water, feet over back of tub, butt up in air…underpants tugged down but no trauma to vagina or anus…blood on R of scalp…two stockings around neck…R hyoid bone fractured…pocketbook open…”

The investigators had only Before and After. The living woman and the broken body. Not the moment of horror. Not the dying. The reality of murder had been excised, like an obscenity. But Michael’s imagination insistently re-created it. A woman thrashed before him. Her hands shoving-he felt it on his skin. Her scream vibrated his ear.

“12/5/62…Huntington Ave… 20, college student, Negro, engaged…wearing housecoat, menstrual harness, sanitary napkin…mouth gagged…no external injury to genitalia…no head trauma…no blood or menstrual discharge in vagina or rectum…strangulation by ligature…Salem cigarette in toilet…semen stain on rug near body…itinerant seen in stairwell…” “3/9/63…Lawrence…68, white…beaten, stabbed, strangled…cause of death: blunt force trauma…sperm in vagina: raped…body naked on floor, girdle pulled down to left foot…clothes still on, pulled over head…throat badly contused…head and surrounding floor covered with blood…knife or fork stuck in left breast to handle…” “5/7/63…Cambridge…26, nurse at Boston State Hospital, a mental facility…stabbed 17 times around left breast…2 parallel horizontal incisions on each side of throat…nude but no evid of rape or sex assault…no injuries to genitalia, no sperm in vagina, rectum or mouth…body supine on bed, hands tied behind her back with scarf…stockings and blouse around neck but no ligature marks…” “9/8/63…Salem…23…found on bed, lying on back, right arm under body, left leg dangling, torso covered with bedspread…bloodstain on bed under head…2 stockings tied around neck…panties on floor with lipstick stain above crotch (used as gag?)…sperm in V’s mouth…crumpled tissues on floor smeared with semen, lipstick…” “11/22/63…Grove St., West End…63…blood…blood covers entire head, face and ears…slight injuries to external genitalia…no sperm in vagina…manual and ligature strangulation…classical LP (Sibelius) still turning…tied spread-eagle to chair…posed, facing door…”

Already Michael knew he did not have the stomach for this sort of work. He could not live with months of that shrieking woman in his mind’s eye. It had been a mistake to let Byron and Wamsley talk him into this.

He slipped the photos of the last victim out of their envelope. The old woman in the West End, the Sibelius fan. My God, what did you go through?

Somewhere there was a murder book for Michael’s father, too. Buried in a file at BPD Homicide. No doubt it contained the same sort of photographs, of Joe Daley, Sr., lying dead. It was a scene Michael had imagined a thousand times. He had created for himself a still life, a formal composition of a few elements arranged in a painterly way: body, scally cap, pavement. But had he got it right? The body-had the old man sprawled, or curled, or crumpled? Michael pictured him lying stiff as a fallen tree, a carryover of the distinctive toy-soldier posture Joe Senior had had in life. There would be a tight shot of the face, too, to document the victim’s identity. What had his expression been? Grimaced or peaceful? One cheek on the pavement, or looking straight up to the sky?

In his fingers, Michael adjusted the photo of the murdered old woman in the West End. My God, what did you go through?

He wanted out. He’d tell Wamsley, maybe tomorrow, but soon. He just wasn’t cut out for this work. He’d had enough of murder books.