“That doesn’t matter,” Graham said. “In a sense, I’ve already had a firsthand look at her.”
“Of course you have,” Preduski said. “I saw you on the Prine show earlier.”
“Her eyes were green, weren’t they?”
“Just as you said.”
“She was found nude?”
“Yes.”
“Stabbed many times?”
“Yes.”
“With a particularly brutal wound in the throat?”
“That’s right.”
“He mutilated her, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Awful thing,” Preduski said. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you. Nobody should have to hear it.” Preduski seemed about to wring his hands. “He cut a plug of flesh out of her stomach. It’s almost like a cork, with her navel in the center of it. Terrible.”
Graham closed his eyes and shuddered. “This ... cork...” He was beginning to perspire. He felt ill. He wasn’t receiving a vision, just a strong sense of what had happened, a hunch that was difficult to ignore. “He put this cork... in her right hand and closed her fingers around it. That’s where you found it.”
“Yes.”
The coroner turned away from the blood-spattered wall and stared curiously at Graham.
Don’t look at me that way, Graham thought. I don’t want to know these things.
He would have been delighted if his clairvoyance had allowed him to predict sharp rises in the stock market rather than isolated pockets of maniacal violence. He would have preferred to see the names of winning horses in races not yet run rather than the names of victims in murders he’d never seen committed.
If he could have wished away his powers, he would have done that long ago. But because that was impossible, he felt as if he had a responsibility to develop and interpret his psychic talent. He believed, perhaps irrationally, that by doing so he was compensating, at least in part, for the cowardice that had overwhelmed him these past five years.
“What do you make of the message he left us?” Preduski asked.
On the wall beside the vanity bench there were lines of poetry printed in blood.
Rintah roars and shakes his fires in the burden’d air
;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep
“Have any idea what it means?” Preduski asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Recognize the poet?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.” Preduski shook his head sorrowfully. “I’m not very well educated. I only had one year of college. Couldn’t afford it. I read a lot, but there’s so much to read. If I were educated, maybe I’d know whose poetry that is. I should know. If the Butcher takes the time to write it down, it’s something important to him. It’s a lead. What kind of detective am I if I can’t follow up a lead as plain as that?” He shook his head again, clearly disgusted with himself. “Not a good one. Not a very good one.”
“Maybe it’s his own poetry,” Graham said.
“The Butcher’s?”
“Maybe.”
“A murderous poet? T.S. Eliot with a homicidal urge?”
Graham shrugged.
“No,” Preduski said. “A man usually commits this sort of crime because it’s the only way he can express the rage inside him. Slaughter releases pressures that have built in him. But a poet can express his feelings with words. No. If it were doggerel, perhaps it could be the Butcher’s own verse. But this is too smooth, too sensitive, too good. Anyway, it rings a bell. Way back in this thick head of mine, it rings a bell.” Preduski studied the bloody message for a moment, then turned and went to the bedroom door. It was standing open
;
he closed it. “Then there’s this one.”
On the back of the door, five words were printed in the dead woman’s blood.
a rope over an abyss
“Has he ever left anything like this before?” Graham asked.
“No. I would have told you if he had. But it’s not unusual in this sort of crime. Certain types of psychopaths like to communicate with whoever finds the corpse. Jack the Ripper wrote notes to the police. The Manson family used blood to scrawl one-word messages on the walls. ‘A rope over an abyss.’ What is he trying to tell us?”
“Is it from the same poem as the other?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Preduski sighed, thrust his hands into his pockets. He looked dejected. “I’m beginning to wonder if I’m
ever
going to catch him.”
The living room of Edna Mowry’s apartment was small but not mean. Indirect lighting bathed everything in a relaxing amber glow. Gold velvet drapes.
Textured light tan burlap-pattern wallpaper. Plush brown carpet. A beige velour sofa and two matching armchairs. A heavy glass coffee table with brass legs. Chrome and glass shelves full of books and statuary. Limited editions of prints by some fine contemporary artists. It was tasteful, cozy and expensive.
At Preduski’s request, Graham settled down in one of the armchairs.
Sarah Piper was sitting on one end of the sofa. She looked as expensive as the room. She was wearing a knitted pantsuit—dark blue with Kelly green piping—gold earrings and an elegant watch as thin as a half dollar. She was no older than twenty-five, a strikingly lovely, well-built blonde, marked by experience.
Earlier she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and red. She was in control of herself now.
“We’ve been through this before,” she said.
Preduski was beside her on the couch. “I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. Truly sorry. It’s terribly late, too late for this. But there is something to be gained by asking the same questions two and even three times. You think you’ve told me all the pertinent facts. But it’s possible you overlooked something. God knows,
I’m
forever overlooking things. This questioning may seem redundant to you, but it’s the way I work. I have to go over things again and again to make sure I’ve done them right. I’m not proud of it. That’s just the way I am. Some other detective might get everything he needs the first time he speaks to you. Not me, I’m afraid. It was your misfortune that the call came in while I was on duty. Bear with me. I’ll be able to let you go home before much longer. I promise.”
The woman glanced at Graham and cocked her head as if to say,
Is this guy for real?
Graham smiled.
“How long had you known—the deceased?” Preduski asked.
She said, “About a year.”
“How well did you know her?”
“She was my best friend.”
“Do you think that in her eyes you were her best friend?”
“Sure. I was her only friend.”
Preduski raised his eyebrows. “People didn’t like her? ”
“Of course they liked her,” Sarah Piper said. “What wasn’t to like? She just didn’t make friends easily. She was a quiet girl. She kept mostly to herself.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“At work.”
“Where is work?”
“You know that. The Rhinestone Palace.”
“And what did she do there?”
“You know that too.”
Nodding, patting her knee in a strictly fatherly manner, the detective said, “That’s correct. I know it. But, you see, Mr. Harris doesn’t know it. I neglected to fill him in. My fault. I’m sorry. Would you tell him?”
She turned to Graham. “Edna was a stripper. Just like me.”
“I know the Rhinestone Palace,” Graham said.
“You’ve been there?” Preduski asked.
“No. But I know it’s fairly high class, not like most striptease clubs.”
For a moment Preduski’s watery brown eyes seemed less out of focus than usual. He stared intently at Graham. “Edna Mowry was a stripper. How about that?”
He knew precisely what the detective was thinking. On the Prine show he had said that the victim’s name might be Edna Dancer. He had not been right—but he had not been altogether wrong either
;
for although her name was Mowry,
she earned her living as a dancer.
According to Sarah Piper, Edna had reported for work at five o’clock the previous evening. She performed a ten-minute act twice every hour for the next seven hours, peeling out of a variety of costumes until she was entirely nude. Between acts, dressed in a black cocktail dress, sans bra, she mixed with the customers—mostly men, alone and in groups—hustling drinks in a cautious, demure and stylish way that skipped successfully along the edge of the state’s B-girl laws. She had finished her last performance at twenty minutes of twelve and left the Rhinestone Palace no more than five minutes after that.
“You think she came straight home?” Preduski asked.
“She always did,” Sarah said. “She never wanted to go out and have fun. The Rhinestone Palace was all the night life she could stomach. Who could blame her?”
Her voice wavered, as if she might begin to cry again.
Preduski took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
She let him hold it, and that appeared to give him an innocent pleasure. “Did you dance last evening?”
“Yeah. Till midnight.”
“When did you come here?”
“A quarter of three.”
“Why would you be visiting at that hour?”
“Edna liked to sit and read all night. She never went to bed until eight or nine in the morning. I told her I’d stop around for breakfast and gossip. I often did.”
“You’ve probably already told me ...” Preduski made a face: embarrassment, apology, frustration. “I’m sorry. This mind of mine—like a sieve. Did you tell me why you didn’t come here at midnight, when you got off work?”
“I had a date,” she said.
Graham could tell from her expression and from the tone of her voice that the “date” had been a paying customer. That saddened him a bit. He liked her already. He couldn’t help but like her. He was receiving low-key waves, threshold psychic vibrations from her
;
they were very positive, mellow and warm vibrations. She was a damned nice person. He
knew.
And he wanted only pleasant things to happen to her.
“Did Edna have a date tonight?” Preduski asked.
“No. I told you. She came right home.”
“Maybe her boyfriend was waiting for her.”
“She was between boyfriends.”
“Maybe an old boyfriend stopped in to talk.”
“No. When Edna dropped a guy, he
stayed
dropped.”
Preduski sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head sadly. “I hate to have to ask this.... You were her best friend. But what I’m going to say—please understand I don’t mean to put her down. Life is tough. We all have to do things we’d rather not do. I’m not proud of every day of my life. God knows. Don’t judge. That’s my motto. There’s only one crime I can’t rationalize away. Murder. I really hate to ask this.... Well, was she... do you think she ever...”
“Was she a prostitute?” Sarah asked for him.
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way! That’s such an awful... I really meant ...”
“Don’t worry,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “I’m not offended.”
Graham was amused to see her squeeze the detective’s hand. Now
she
was comforting
Preduski.
“I do some light hooking myself,” Sarah said. “Not much. Once a week, maybe. I’ve got to like the guy, and he’s got to have two hundred bucks to spare. It’s all the same as stripping to me, really. But it wouldn’t have been something Edna could do. She was surprisingly straight.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. It was none of my business,” said Preduski. “But it occurred to me that in her line of work there would be a lot of temptation for a girl who needed money.”
“She made eight hundred a week stripping and hustling drinks,” Sarah said. “She only spent money on her books and apartment. She was socking it in the bank. She didn’t need more.”
Preduski was somber. “But you see why I had to ask? If she opened the door to the killer, he must have been someone she knew, however briefly. That’s what puzzles me most about this whole case. How does the Butcher get them to open the door?”
Graham had never thought about that. The dead women were all young, but they were from varied backgrounds. One was a housewife. One was a lawyer. Two were school-teachers. Three secretaries, one model, one sales clerk.... How
did
the Butcher get so many different women to open their doors to him late at night?
The kitchen table was littered with the remains of a hastily prepared and hastily eaten meal. Bits of bread. The dried edge of a slice of bologna. Smears of mustard and mayonnaise. Two apple cores. A can of cling peaches empty of everything except an inch of packing syrup. A drumstick gnawed to the bone. Half a doughnut. Three crushed beer cans. The Butcher had been ravenous and sloppy.
“Ten murders,” Preduski said, “and he always goes to the kitchen for a snack afterward.”
Stifled by the psychic atmosphere of the kitchen, by the incredibly strong, lingering presence of the killer which was nearly as heavy here as it had been in the dead woman’s bedroom, Graham could only nod. The mess on the table, in contrast with the otherwise tidy kitchen, disturbed him deeply. The peach can and the beer can were covered with reddish-brown stains
;
the killer had eaten while wearing his bloody gloves.
Preduski shuffled forlornly to the window by the sink. He stared at the neighboring apartment house. “I’ve talked to a few psychiatrists about these feasts he has when he’s done the dirty work. As I understand it, there are two basic ways a psychopath will act when he’s finished with his victim. Number one, there’s Mr. Meek. The killing is everything for him, his whole reason for living, the only color and desire in his life. When he’s done killing, there’s nothing, he’s nothing. He goes home and watches television. Sleeps a lot. He sinks into a deep pit of boredom until the pressures build up and he kills again. Number two, there’s the man who gets psyched up by the murder. His real excitement comes not during the killing but after it. He’ll go straight from the scene of the crime to a bar and drink everyone under the table. His adrenaline is up. His heartbeat is up. He eats like a lumberjack and sometimes picks up whores by the six-pack. Apparently, our man is number two. Except...”