Authors: Lawrence Light,Meredith Anthony
Going through the crisis center’s client files was a tedious process.
Dave had decided to limit their inspection to active clients over the
past half year.
Megan hoisted another pile of file folders onto the already
crowded conference table where Nita and Dave sat. Since returning to
the crisis center, she had said little.
“You want to see the files on the staff too?” Megan asked.
“I’d like to take a look at them,” Dave answered absently.
“I’ll bring them up from Dr. Solomon’s office.”
“Thanks, Megan.” He looked up and smiled at her and watched
her leave the room.When he turned back to the conference table, he
saw Nita regarding him with an ironic, tight-lipped expression.
“She interests you, detective?” Nita asked.
Dave found himself flustered at the question. He could understand the power Nita exercised over Megan and the others at the
crisis center. “Megan’s, uh, very nice.”
“She’s got the makings of a fine sociologist: intelligent, perceptive, intuitive,
dedicated
. Or aren’t you interested in her professional
qualifications, detective?”
“I’m interested in catching a serial killer, Ms. Bergstrom,” he said
with as much coolness as he could muster. “That’s what
I’m
professionally qualified to do.” He grabbed a yellow legal pad. “Let’s get a
system set up, shall we?”
He whipped out his pen and made neat columns on the legal pad,
adding headings above them.
Megan returned with another stack of file folders. She put them
down beside Dave and edged away. “The staff,” she said.
“Thanks,” Dave said. Without permission, he slapped the legal
pad onto the photocopy machine and ran off a batch of reproductions.
He gave a handful of them to each woman. “What we’re after are patients who fit the profile of serial murderer.”
“Clients,” said Megan, exchanging a look with Nita. “We call
them clients.”
“Clients. It’s not necessary that they were clients of Reuben Silver’s.The killer, if he was indeed a client here, may have met Reuben
simply in passing.”
“The profile of a serial murderer,” Nita said, rolling the words
slowly and mockingly off her tongue. “And what, would you say, is
that profile, detective?”
“Serial murderers tend to be in their twenties and thirties. Many
had head injuries as small children or at birth. They are loners. Their
parents abused them.They display symptoms of violence toward other
people or animals. Sexual deviance, suicidal tendencies, and alcohol
and drug problems are often present.”
“Well, that certainly narrows the field,” Nita said with a wry
smile and selected a file from the pile closest to her.
They read for several minutes in silence. Dave noticed he was
making faster progress than the two social workers. “The files aren’t
very conclusive about their identities, are they?” he said at last. “A lot
don’t give their proper names or even list addresses. This one says
his name is the Cookie Monster, and that he lives ‘around the corner.’
Lotus, from the Lower East Side. Juke,Times Square. How many Fast
Eddies are there, anyhow?”
“If they were willing to give us their names, and if they had addresses to give, they probably wouldn’t be coming here, detective,”
Nita said. “Still, I’m sure the police are adept at finding people they
want to.We have faith in your department’s competence, detective.”
“The people who come here trust us,” Megan said simply, hoping
Dave hadn’t registered Nita’s mocking tone.
“Do you know how many of these people have a sheet at headquarters?” Dave said.
“We aren’t concerned with their criminal history,” Nita said.
“We’re concerned with their future.”
“I’m interested in the future, too. The future that five people already won’t have.”
“We can’t exactly press for ID,” Megan said, trying to be conciliatory. “If we press too hard for information, they just stop showing up.
Then, we can’t help them at all.”
“Although that’s not always possible,” Nita said. “Some people
simply can’t be helped.”
“I’d say that, when someone has killed five times, he probably fits
into that category,” Dave said nastily.Two could play this game.
“I wasn’t particularly thinking about the killer,” Nita replied.
Dave opened another folder.
Nita said without glancing up. “Say, here’s one. White male. Age
29. Occupation: wino. Hobbies: Serial killing.”
Dave kept reading and making notations, ignoring her. Megan
glanced nervously at Dave, then at Nita, fascinated by the strange
dynamics. She had the weird sense that they were fighting over her.
She shook her head to clear it of the bizarre notion.
Nita selected another file and opened it. “Listen to this one.
Schizophrenic. Age 25.Talks to angels and shoots people in the head.”
Megan leaned over her shoulder and pretended to read. “Oops.
No. Read the addendum. Kills only small children. For food.”
Both women laughed. Megan’s laugh failed to thrill Dave this
time.
Dave didn’t look up, but he stopped writing and spoke calmly. “I
suppose you think I’m going to tell you this is not a game. That you
haven’t had to see them, lying on the ground, outlined in chalk, half
their heads blown off.” He put the folder down. “That there’s a killer
on the loose who won’t stop until we stop him. And that until we do,
nobody’s safe.”
The women had stopped laughing. Nita patted Megan’s arm and
glared at Dave.
“Tell me, detective,” Nita said, her voice cold. “Aren’t you afraid
that this so-called Ladykiller is too smart for you?”
“A pattern exists, Ms. Bergstrom. We’ll find it. Serial killers
eventually get caught.They make mistakes.We outsmart them.”
“Do you now? This city is a crucible of the unexpected.”
“Is that what your studies have taught you, Ms. Bergstrom?”
“My studies have taught me that limited thinking cannot deal
with this city and its problems, detective.”
There was a silence and Megan winced inwardly at the level of
dislike that sparked between the social worker and the detective.
“Let’s get back to work, why don’t we,” Dave said.
They slogged through the files in silence. When they finished,
Nita stood up and left without a word. Megan sat for a few seconds,
then followed her.
Dave riffled through the notes. The two women had done a
thorough job listing several who fit the profile. As he scanned the lists,
though, none seemed quite right. The violence in their pasts — bar
fights, wife beating, child molesting — was almost always an unpremeditated eruption of rage, provoked by another’s behavior. An
insult here, a petty jealousy there. Not one had been arrested for an
offense worse than assault and battery. The element of planning was
missing. The smooth-clicking intellect of a master killer. And none
showed any experience with firearms.
Then Dave got to the end of Nita’s list.
The last name was Thomas Cronen. He once had been arrested in
the armed robbery of a New Jersey convenience store. And he came
from a dysfunctional family. His mother was a hooker, and he’d had a
history of mental disturbance. Dave eagerly rooted through the pile in
front of Nita’s seat for the Cronen file.
Could this be “Ace” Cronen? The neatly typed reports suggested
it was the same street punk whom Dave knew and loathed. They described a boyhood punctuated with capturing neighborhood dogs and
cats, and torturing them to death.And although his partner in the robbery got convicted for carrying the gun, Ace boasted he actually had
been the gunman and had planted it on the other guy. The reports
were written by Reuben Silver.
Dave called the task force and got Jamie.
“Hey, Dave. How’s your day been?” she asked cheerfully.
“Jamie, you know Ace Cronen. Real first name is Thomas. See
what we have on him.”
Dave closed the folder. “And I wonder if you could do some digging for me,” he added casually. “I’m sure Blake will okay it.”
“Be glad to.What?”
“I’d like you to go into the backgrounds of all the social workers
here at the crisis center. I doubt they’ll have any criminal files, but I
want you to find out about everything you can on them.”
Jamie answered affirmatively but her heart sank. She knew instinctively that he only wanted information on one social worker, and
she knew that his interest wasn’t professional.
•
•
•
Nita stood stonily beside the fish tank and sprinkled food on the glowing water.
“It’s getting dark out,” Megan ventured.
Nita said nothing. The fish swooped on the descending flakes of
food.
Megan gave a small cry. “Oh, God.You scared me.”
A large cop had shambled into the room. His slack face resembled a doltish cartoon dog’s. His waistline threatened to spill over the
confining band of his gunbelt, which was on its last notch.
“Uh, sorry. Officer Sweeney. Detective Dillon assigned me here
nights.”
“Sweeney, is it?” Nita said with suspicious heartiness. “Wonderful
to have you here, Officer Sweeney.Why don’t you treat yourself to a
cup of coffee? Over there.” She pointed to the far end of the room.
Megan sat tentatively on the edge of Nita’s desk. Nita leaned
back in the chair and regarded Megan for a few long moments. Megan
examined the floor. Finally, Nita smiled at her.
“So,” Nita said, “how was it today, playing Nancy Drew with Son
of Sam Spade?”
Relieved, Megan beamed back. “Great. It was great.”
“Got any interesting leads on our Ladykiller?” Nita continued.
“We got nowhere,” Megan said. “We grabbed a quick lunch from
the deli and headed back here. He’s kind of interesting.”
“Our tax dollars at work.” After a few seconds, Nita laughed.
Megan joined in, only a little strained.
“Well,” Megan asked tentatively, “what do you think of him?”
Nita considered for a minute, still smiling. “I think,” she began
slowly, “that policemen are to social workers what garbage men are to
the great French chefs.”
Megan’s smile froze.
“I think,” Nita went on, “that our job is to shape society.Theirs is
to clean up after it.”
“But you said we’d —”
“Oh, we’ll help him with his investigation. But that’s not what’s
important here. He only cares about catching killers. Putting them in
jail. That’s as far as he goes. What’s interesting to us is what these
crimes mean in context.What they’re saying.”
“The pattern?” Megan said.
“The pattern. The police are too stupid to see it. Society is reshaping itself, and this killer, whom your detective is so preoccupied
with, is simply the means.”
Megan listened raptly.
Nita was getting uncharacteristically passionate. “Don’t you see?
We’re the ones who can interpret these events. By watching these
movements in the social fabric, and judiciously helping them along,
we’re sculptors. Artists.We’re the ones who can mold the world.”
Megan nodded, excited.
“We can create it,” Nita said. “Polish it. Make it shine.The detective? He’s a janitor. He’ll sweep up the mess we leave.” And in the
dusk-shrouded streets outside the crisis center, the city’s dark heart
beat on.
Ace had tried everything to get the money he needed to buy Tony Topnut’s damn .45. He loped along the Deuce, asking all the people he
knew.
“You shittin’ me?” Finesse replied with a snort. “Motherfucker
goes around dissin’ me and he wants me to hand him two hundred big
ones.You dumb? Or is you stupid?”
“This is a big deal, Finesse. I’ll make it up to you. Look, I’m putting in a hundred of my own.”
“What you need all this foldin’ green for, my man?”
“Well —”
“You ain’t into the white powder? Just say no, jack.” Finesse chortled wickedly.
“It’s, um, for a woman.”
“Pussy? Listen to me and listen to me good. Ain’t no pussy worth
no motherfuckin’ three hundred dollars. Understand what I’m
sayin’?”
Finesse brushed the lapels of his electric-green suit. “Tell you
what. Give your little Johnson a good handshake and save yourself the
money, my man.”
Billy Ray Battle, who had managed to pony up the ten thousand
bucks for bail to get free pending trial, was no help, either. “You got
shit for brains, boy,” he said, as he sucked on a beer outside the grimy
windowed off-track betting parlor. He wore a gauze pad over the eye
that Dave Dillon had hit. “Why would I give money to a peckerwood
like you?”
“I kind of figured that, since you had so much money to spend on
bail, there’d be more where that came from. Shit, I’ll pay you right
back, Billy Ray.Trust me.”
“Trust you? Fucked, if that don’t beat ass all.” The big man took
another swig of beer. “The reason I got me the money for the bail is
that I don’t throw it away on every peckerwood what says he’ll pay me
right back.”
“I figured you were my friend.”
“I got me three friends in this life, boy. Me, myself, and I.” Billy
Ray took another gulp of beer and belched.
Ace ruled out begging.That earned only a quarter here, a quarter
there. He settled upon a scam that had worked before: pretend to have
been robbed a few minutes before and ask for nine-fifty for bus fare
back home to New Jersey. A figure like that was more convincing than
a round ten bucks.
But as he was going through his spiel for his first set of pigeons, a
fat pair of tourists from the Midwest with Mongoloid-looking eyes, he
attracted more interest than he bargained for.
Martino and her kid sidekick, Blitzer, sidled up. “What’s this
about you got robbed, Ace?” Martino asked.
Ace said nothing, and the tourist couple chimed in with how glad
they were to see police officers and how awful that this poor young
man had been robbed.
“Only thing he’s missing is his brains,” muttered Martino
ominously.
“My mistake,” Ace mumbled, and he shambled off.
Then he spotted Jackie Why chain-smoking his way up the street,
greeting everybody with an upraised palm.
“Two hundred semolians, huh?” Jackie Why said, the cigarette
bobbing in his lips as he spoke.
“Pay you back real quick. No shit. I’m good for it.”
Jackie Why removed his billfold and counted out a wad of cash.
He pulled it back as Ace grabbed for it.
“One little business proviso, Ace-hole,” Jackie Why said. “You
give me back this double by Saturday.That’s four hundred, if you can’t
count.We got ourselves an understanding?”
“Anything you say. Hey, four hundred, no problem.”
“I don’t get that back in my hot hand by Saturday, Mr. Mouth, and
you’re dead meat. Hope I make my meaning clear.”
Ace ran to the Foxy Lady.Tony Topnut made a strange face when
he counted the money.
He disappeared in the back and emerged with a paper bag. Inside
was a heavy object. “Point this in the right direction before you fire,
dickhead,” he said.
The night was warm, and Ace popped a good sweat running to
the West Side Crisis Center.
The street outside lay silent. In Ace’s sweaty grip, the receiver of
the public phone felt slippery.
“Crisis center, can I help you?” came Nita’s voice over the line,
like a song from the starry sky.
He hung up without saying a word. She was there tonight. He
would wait for her.