Janek was waiting for the beat. Sooner or later it would come, he knew—the beat that would establish the tempo of the investigation, tell him how long it would last and how hard the work would be. There were wonderful cases, quick cases where the information streamed in and a detective could become heady on the rush. Switched Heads (officially the case was Ireland/ Beard) was not showing signs of being one of those.
The phone rang on Saturday morning. Janek glanced at his watch—nine A.M. Sal answered. "It's Aaron," he said. Janek punched his button and picked up. He had the feeling Aaron wasn't coming in and was calling now with an excuse.
"You know those address books, Frank?"
"The girls' address books?"
"Yeah. Took them home last night. Got a match."
"Great! Where the hell are you, anyway?" He could hear a strange sound in the background, a blend of music and verbal commands.
"I'm at the point of intersection, Frank. We may be onto something here."
Sal was gazing at his face, excited, alert. Three and a half days and nothing but theories. Maybe the case was finally going to jell.
"Going to tell me about it?"
"Give me a chance, for Christ's sake. I'm surrounded by distractions. This is a very peculiar place."
He'd found the same number in both women's address books, but listed under different names. Under "Hazel Carter" in Amanda's book; under "X" in Brenda Beard's.
"X? What the hell is X?"
"I got excited about that myself. You know—like 'Mr. X' or 'extra' or 'extraordinary' or something, except it's none of those things. It's 'X' for 'exercise.' Hazel Carter is the name of this woman who runs a place where girls go to stay in shape. That's where I am now. I think you ought to join me. This is a very distinguished situation here. Lots of attractive broads, everyone suited up, faint tang of sweat in the air but nothing offensive. Better leave Sal behind. He could get excited, his being so young and all."
Janek drove up alone. The gym was near Second Avenue on Eighty-sixth, a short walk from Amanda's place. There was an Indian restaurant at street level, and huge white-brick apartment houses on either side. Doormen in red tailcoats. Matching buildings named "Versailles" and "Fontainebleau." Marble and grandeur in the lobbies, low-ceilinged apartments upstairs. Pretentious and high-rent, Janek thought. Studios that cost a grand a month.
The small commercial building which housed the Hazel Carter Fitness Salon was squeezed between these monoliths. It looked like a situation where the landlord had tried to hold up the developers, the developers had said "Screw" and erected their towers on either side. Now the tenants could gaze at one another across twenty-five feet of chasm, and the air rights to the little building were worthless, the plot too small to justify a tower.
Aaron was waiting at the head of the stairs. Janek could hear band music as he mounted. Aaron was leering and nodding his head to the rhythm. There was a WOMEN ONLY sign posted on the door.
"This is not your typical unisex gym, Frank. But seeing as how we're NYPD they're making an exception and letting us in."
He held the door. Janek walked into the reception space. Maybe Aaron had been right about leaving Sal behind. That "faint tang of sweat" reminded him of Caroline, clean, sweet and potent, heady stuff so early in the day.
The girl behind the desk was red-haired, freckled and very young. She wore a tailored ivory warm-up with a black T-shirt showing underneath.
Aaron made the introductions. The receptionist's name was Cynthia Tuttle.
"I told Miss Carter you were coming over," she said. "She's still in class."
"No big deal," Aaron said. "You keep records of all the women who work out?"
"Sure. We operate by appointment. We don't take people off the street. Miss Carter's classes are in great demand. We train some of the top models in New York." She mentioned a few names, Candy something, Cheryl this and Bunny that. The names didn't mean anything to Janek, but he nodded anyway. The place couldn't be all that exclusive, he thought, if they took a hooker like Brenda Beard.
Aaron guided him toward the exercise room. They stopped a few feet from the open door. The room was large, the width of the building. Light poured in through the windows facing Eighty-sixth. White walls glittered. Mirrors and a ballet bar were built in along the back. Music blared from a stereo as a dozen girls dressed in leotards moved in perfect cadence to the commands of their instructress, who wore white bloomers and a sleeveless black T-shirt with the words "Hazel Carter" emblazoned across the chest.
Watching these women bend and sway, perform jumping jacks, then reach and stretch, Janek found himself transfixed.
Young bodies straining for perfection in a huge, white, dazzling light-filled room—he didn't want to turn away. He could see this was a tough class. One would have to be young and limber to keep up. And the girls were working. Their leotards were soaked. An hour of this three times a week and their conditioning would be superb.
Aaron was chatting up Miss Tuttle. "You have to be a model to get in?"
"If you're willing to work, then Miss Carter is pleased to have you. She doesn't care who you are so long as you don't slack off. Everyone's treated the same. Model, socialite or secretary. Everyone wears the same uniform, too—we supply everything except shoes."
The music stopped. The class started breaking up. Some of the girls flung themselves down on mats. Hazel Carter strode out. She walked proudly, a lean, handsome, perspiring woman about forty-five years old with short-cut graying hair.
Cynthia introduced them.
"Just how can I help you, Lieutenant?"
Aaron pulled out his victim photographs, not the crime-scene shots but stills found in the apartments of the murdered girls. He showed Amanda first.
"That's Mandy Ireland," Cynthia said. She gulped. "At least I think."
Hazel Carter struck her hand against her throat. "That poor dear who was killed. Oh my God!"
"She came here regularly?"
"At least once a week." Cynthia was already flipping the pages of her appointment book. "Terrible. Such a ghastly thing. And only a few blocks away." Hazel shook her head. "Friday afternoons," said Cynthia. "She had a standing appointment for our class at four P.M. Let's see, she goes back to April, March, February, but not January. I think she started this past winter, but I can check last year's book and make sure."
"Do you remember her?" Janek asked.
Hazel Carter nodded. "To me there are only two kinds, serious and frivolous. I tell the frivolous ones not to bother to come back. Mandy was serious. She didn't just go through the motions. She wasn't in a holding pattern trying to keep her figure trim. She was willing to reach deep into herself for that extra effort. That's what I look for and that's what I expect. I'm a demanding task mistress, Lieutenant. I ask a lot, everything a girl has. Anything less is not satisfactory, and when I'm dissatisfied I make my feelings clear."
Some of the women who'd been in the last class were starting to drift out. Janek noticed one carrying a huge, black leather portfolio, the sort that models haul around midtown. The girls that passed glowed with good health. Miss Carter paused to compliment them and she patted the model on her cheek. Janek had a sudden insight into Hazel Carter. He whispered to Aaron, "Show her Brenda soon as she turns back."
"What about her?" Aaron asked, offering the second photograph.
Hazel Carter stared. Janek watched her carefully, but her hand stayed at her side. "Don't know. Familiar. But not a regular, for sure. I may have seen her. Can't be certain. Cynthia?"
Cynthia Tuttle nodded. "Yes, she's been in, but not as a regular. I don't recall her name."
"Maybe Beard. Maybe Thatcher. First name's Brenda," Aaron said.
Cynthia looked through her book. "Okay, we've had a Brenda Beard. Scattered classes, which means she took cancellations. Noon on July third. Two P.M. May fourteenth."
She found a few more listings, a total of six. Brenda had always paid in cash. None of her classes was also attended by Amanda, but the girls' lives had intersected, more or less.
A true intersection or a coincidence? People's lives crossed in Manhattan all the time. Outside the fitness center Janek paused, then led Aaron across the street. They stood there for a while watching the entrance. The last girls in the previous class drifted out, and new ones, for the next class, started coming in.
"That doorman on the left," said Aaron. "He's interested. He's enjoying the parade."
"Looks out of place in that stupid coat."
"For a guy who likes girls he's got himself a terrific job. Gets to look at what comes in and out next door, all day long, six days a week."
Yes, it could have been the doorman, or someone else who lived near the gym, who'd seen Amanda and Brenda enter or leave and decided to trail them separately.
"Kind of a weird setup, Frank. This Hazel Carter place squeezed between those towers. Models coming and going all the time visible to hundreds of upscale residents and who knows how many assorted domestic help. Then you got Hindus downstairs working in that restaurant, and people like us lingering around, and ones who live behind here, too. I wonder why the hell they put French names on those apartment houses, then dress up the doormen like Englishmen."
Janek smiled. Only a detective would ask a question like that. "You got any feelings about that Carter woman?"
They walked to his car, then drove back to the precinct; Aaron had come to the gym by subway from his home.
"I saw that move to the throat, if that's what you mean. She didn't make it the second time."
"Lot of people react like that. It's a fairly ordinary gesture of shock. By itself it doesn't mean too much, but I picked up on several other things."
"Like that Hazel's probably gay."
"That's part of it. I'm sure she is. But more interesting—a strong disciplinary streak. She went on too long about how stern she is. She called herself a 'task mistress' and ran that class like a military drill. Women-only place, a perfect setup for someone who likes beautiful girls. Then the whole relationship with Cynthia, sort of mistress/slave it seemed to me."
"Yeah. I picked up on that."
"So put it all together."
"It's the one place we know where the victims' paths crossed."
"And gay fits in with no semen in their bodies." Janek glanced at Aaron. "Say the girls didn't know each other, but they went to the same gym. So we look to the gym to see who knew them. Who do we find? A tough lesbian disciplinarian. Question: Is Hazel Carter capable of having perpetrated Switched Heads? She's certainly got the physical strength for it, but does she have that kind of mind?"
"Want me to check her out?"
Janek nodded. "And talk to Cynthia Tuttle again. Maybe you better try and catch her one evening at home. She didn't stall on Brenda, went right to it, found her name pretty fast in that book. As for Hazel, I can see one thing in her favor. She didn't move her hand to her throat when you showed her Brenda, which suggests she didn't know that Brenda was murdered, since we didn't tell her and there wasn't anything in the papers. On the other hand, she could be a very cool lady. You may want to ask her point-blank just where she was last Saturday night.”
He had called a meeting for noon at the precinct, before they broke for the weekend. Everyone was exhausted. Sal hadn't come up with anything. Taxi drivers, bus drivers, doormen, patrolmen on the beat—the killer hadn't attracted any notice on his shuttles back and forth. Stanger and Howell's "books" on the victims were getting thicker, but Amanda still looked like Little Miss Perfect and Brenda like a skillful professional whore. Friends had turned up with details which fit these acknowledged patterns. There was more work to be done, many more interviews to be conducted, but nothing new was coming in.
Janek analyzed the Hazel Carter connection, and then the possibility the girls had been trailed. "We got two very attractive young women who took gym class at the same place. Suppose our killer was hanging around. He sees Brenda and trails her. He sees Amanda and trails her. Why these two out of all the rest? Maybe he trailed others before he settled on them. Okay, say he picks them up there and finds out where they live and he follows them around and gets a certain impression of their lives. Then he gets this obsessive idea that their heads should be switched around. He doesn't want to kill them to have sex. He just wants to correct this problem with their heads. He has to make the switch, can't rest until this problem of two women walking around with the wrong heads is straightened out. His obsession builds and builds. He has to set it right. He plans it carefully, figures out when to do it, then takes the plunge and brings it off. It has to be a desperate act. He has to feel totally compelled. He gets the heads the way he wants them, and then he's exhilarated—the thing that was bothering him is now set right. He watches the papers. Nothing. His brilliant deed is not proclaimed. So, what's he thinking? Maybe that we're covering up. Maybe he's frustrated by that, or maybe he doesn't give a damn. The point I'm making has to do with motive. There's no motive to kill these women except to switch their heads. They weren't his enemies. He wasn't after them for money or sex. He had no particular relationship with either of them, and there was no old score he had to settle. He just had this thing about their heads. Now, what good does that line do us, supposing that I'm right? Not much good, because about all it tells us is that the motive is inside our killer's mind. There are no extrinsic facts that can lead us to him. It's a one hundred percent psycho crime. Aaron has checked to see if there was ever another crime like it, anytime, anywhere, and apparently there's never been. Lots of dismemberments. Plenty of decapitations. But this is the first switch we know about, and now it's been a week."
They all knew the odds; there were cops who taught them at the Police Academy. Seventy-two hours after a homicide with a cold trail you were talking one in ten. A week and still cold and you were probably talking less.
"Maybe he'll do it again," said Sal. "That would give us another trail."
"We could stake out the gym. See if anyone hangs around," said Stanger.
"That's a possibility. I'd have to go to Hart for extra men."
"Maybe he'll come in on his own," said Howell.
"I've been praying for that since I got this case."
"Any way to bait him?" asked Aaron.
"I've been thinking about that. I can't see any way."
"You could plant a story. Put some pressure on his pride."
"Yeah, go public with the switch, get publicity, which could push him to write a letter. Then we'd have handwriting and spittle to work with, but of course we could get a thousand letters, too. And maybe if the papers built it up big enough we'd start getting imitations, other switches perpetrated by other weirdoes in other boroughs—this is the sort of thing that could feed upon itself."
He shook his head. "No weapon signature. No eyewitnesses. No connection except the gym. The only thing we got is a very peculiar message. What I want to know is: What was the killer trying to say? I've been over it and over it and I can't come up with anything except this notion that he wants the whore's head on the Madonna schoolteacher, and the other way around. Slut and nun. Switch them. Okay, that's a concept, but then the circle's closed. It doesn't take us outside his mind, doesn't lead us to a person. It doesn't lead us anywhere, in fact, except round and round and round." He looked at them. "The only thing I can see to do is to keep talking, keep widening the circle. You stalk somebody, maybe the person notices, feels it, or feels uneasy, or is scared in a generalized sort of way. Maybe Amanda or Brenda told someone she was scared. So far the primary contacts say no. Maybe she mentioned it casually to someone else. We got to keep looking. Now, maybe I'm missing something. If anyone's got ideas, this is the time to speak."
Stanger suggested they follow up on Amanda's dog. She walked her regularly, took a regular route. People might have noticed her and maybe noticed someone trailing behind.
Sure. A possibility. Go ahead, Stanger—check it out.
Howell wanted to round up whores. They liked to gossip about johns, he said. Maybe one of them had a head freak, a guy who'd mentioned casually or otherwise that so-and-so's body would look terrific with so-and-so's head attached.
Sure. Try it. You like the whores. Go ahead, Howell—round them up.
When the meeting broke up, Janek called Sal aside, asked him if he had a date. Sal said yes, but he was willing to cancel. They made arrangements to meet at an uptown coffee shop that evening at eight o'clock.