They overslept Monday morning, woke languorously like lovers on a holiday, and then, as they were sipping coffee, Janek suddenly remembered that he had a case. He moved too fast then, shaved too quickly, and cut the underside of his jaw. He held a tissue to the wound but could not stanch the flow. Caroline inspected it, cleaned it for him, then pressed on it like a sorceress until, miraculously, it closed.
When he was dressed she handed him his thirty-eight and watched keenly as he strapped it on. "They say you can tell a lot about a cop by the way he handles his weapon," she said. "But I think it's the putting on and taking off that really says the most. I like watching you do it. In the morning when you arm yourself you show me your competence and power. At night when you put it down gently on the bedside table you show me that you're vulnerable and that you don't have to prove you aren't."
Driving her to Long Island City, he thought about what she'd said. It was fantastic the way she observed him, read the details of his life.
On his way back to Manhattan, coming off the Queensboro Bridge, he got stuck in traffic—people fuming, honking, while a rookie cop on the ramp tried helplessly to undo the snarl. He looked at two men in the next car and tried to imagine that their heads were switched. There were two women in the car on the other side and he played the same game with them. He looked rapidly from one to the other, switching their heads in his mind. He put the traffic rookie's head on one of the women and then switched the heads in the car stalled in front. The more times he tried it, the easier it became. Back and forth, on and off, try his on her and hers on him—a strange disquieting exercise. He wondered what it would be like to go around the city for weeks working himself into that. Could get to you, catch you up, make you crazy, he thought. Start thinking like that, he thought, and it could lead to something very bad.
It was nearly ten when he reached the precinct house, late for a special squad commander starting his second week on a priority double homicide. He took the steps two at a time, hearing trouble even before he reached the door.
Sal and Stanger were standing at opposite ends of the squad room gesturing angrily while containers of coffee grew tepid on their desks. A full-scale shootout: Sal was giving it to Stanger for not checking Amanda's roof, and Stanger was lashing back as best he could.
"What the fuck kind of detective are you? What kind of asshole investigation's that?"
"Fuck you, Marchetti—you've been bugging me from the start. You're such a hotshot, what have you come up with? A big fat zero. Shit."
Janek told them to shut up. Silence. Scowling. Then some cautious circling around. "This coffee's crap," snorted Sal. Stanger laughed. He announced that he was going to start checking on Amanda's dog-walk routine if that was okay with the lieutenant, and that his victim profile book on Amanda was waiting on the lieutenant's desk.
Janek leafed through the loose-leaf notebook. "Looks like you got her down fairly well," he said. After Stanger left he spoke without looking up. "Really think it helps to crush his ego, Sal?"
Sal apologized. "But just thinking about it yesterday pissed me off. Suppose there'd been something up there. Gone now, swept away, or washed away by the rain. He says he checked out the super, but how do we know? Can we trust him or do we have to double-check everything he does?"
Sal left for an interview with an assistant DA about disputed evidence in another case. When Janek was alone he went to the wall and stood again before the photographs. Caroline had said the victim shots looked arranged. Now, when he studied them fresh, he saw what she meant.
The phone rang. It was Sweeney. Hart wanted to see Janek at two o'clock. Back to the wall. "Arrange things for his pleasure, to please his eye," Caroline had said. Dr. Yosiro had spoken of a man who had presumed to create new human beings. So, someone artistic, creative, a creative killer. Someone who could turn a double murder into a puzzle, a design.
Aaron came in. "Scratch Hazel Carter, Frank. But you were right about her social life. She and little Miss Tuttle make whoopie-do together in a high-rise off Gracie Square. Unfortunately it happens they spent that weekend at a friend's place in Dutchess County, which still leaves the gym as a possible starting point."
"Well, I'm not scratching her yet, not before you check out the alibi. Talk to the 'friend.' Look at her hard. Be sure she's telling the truth."
He told Aaron then about Caroline's analysis of the photographs and about his Saturday night walkthrough with Sal.
"Sounds like you walked through a little fast," Aaron said. "You did the whole thing in an hour and a half, but she says it could have taken an hour at each end to fix things up. You know, there's something very relaxed about that. Certain and very confident."
"Superbly planned."
"Maybe perfectly planned."
"He knew what he was going to do before he started. But do you think all that multiple stabbing was relaxed?"
"That's what doesn't fit, that violent stabbing and then the precise and careful work afterward with the heads."
"Two signatures. Two weapons. What about two people? Or one person with two personalities? My photographer friend said she felt he handled the victims 'lovingly.'"
"Sure, kill them violently, then gently love them up. Once they stop moving you can do what you want with them. Mold them to your will."
"But they're still warm and bleeding. You'd have to be a freak to be able to play with them and stay detached."
"For Christ's sake, Frank, we know we're dealing with a freak."
"An artistic freak."
"Sure. A very artistic kind of freak."
In the subway on his way downtown Janek played switched-heads with the other passengers. Crushed together on the seat, their heads at nearly the same level, it was even easier than in the car. Two high school girls side by side. Bang! Switch them. Then switch them back. If he shifted his eyes fast enough he could do it almost instantaneously. The process reminded him of police artists calling up features onto computer screens. A way to design people, or to redesign them. Police artists. Someone artistic. A painter, sculptor or photographer. After his frenzy the killer was relaxed.... But there was still something gnawing away at the back part of Janek's brain. Forget it. Let it simmer. The thing now, he knew, was to improvise a theory he could use to dazzle Hart.
He switched more heads as he crossed Police Plaza, and some more in the elevator on his way to Hart's floor. He switched a pair of secretaries walking toward him down the hall, but knew that the difference between imagining it and doing it was as great as the difference between fantasizing making love to them and raping them in a parking lot.
"Anyone look at that engine yet, Lieutenant?" Sergeant Sweeney grinned at him from behind his well-ordered desk.
"What?"
"Your car. Remember—I drove your car."
"Yeah." Janek nodded. "Didn't you mention a garage?"
Sweeney snatched a card out of a drawer, scribbled "20% Discount" on it, stamped it with an NYPD seal, then initialed the back. Janek didn't like Sweeney and for a moment he thought about tearing the card in two and dropping the pieces on the desk. But then there was a buzz, Sweeney picked up his phone, listened, nodded and, in the special tone of an usher on intimate terms with power, whispered, "CD will see you now, Lieutenant," while he drew a neat line through Janek's name on his appointment list.
Hart was pale. Like most of the chiefs he spent too much time indoors. Janek recognized the pallor, flesh cooked sallow by fluorescent lamps. And, as always, he was struck by Hart's eyes, cold lifeless glowing little stars.
"So, how's it going, Frank? Things okay? That DiMona woman settling down?"
"Looked in on her yesterday. She's doing about as well as you'd expect."
"Good." Hart sounded pleased. "Better keep an eye on her anyway. I thought she looked pretty raw. Any clue yet what was going on with DiMona the last few weeks?"
Janek shook his head.
"Burnout, I guess. Post-retirement kind. Department commissioned a study some years back. We wanted to know the danger signs so we could put the wives on alert. If that wife of his had gotten the word she might have saved herself a lot of grief. So..." Suddenly Hart beamed. "How goes Ireland/ Beard?"
Janek shrugged. "Still not coming clear."
"It will. It will. You must have some kind of theory. I know you're not sitting on your can."
"Got some theories, sure."
"Like what?"
"Walked through it Saturday night. Was struck by how thrilling it must have been."
"A real thriller. Yeah. Looked into voodoo? I was thinking about voodoo the other day."
"Doesn't check out."
"Try some of our black detectives. Lots of experience there. Great resource waiting to be tapped. Sex?"
"No semen."
"So he wore a rubber. I never heard of a whore who didn't have semen in her ears."
"Doesn't smell like sex to me."
"Then what does it smell like?" Hart was getting irritable. Janek spoke softly. "I'd say some very special kind of thrill."
"You keep talking about thrills. You mean the switch?"
"The whole ritual. The switch would have been part of it," Janek agreed.
Hart scratched the side of his face. Janek could hear his nails scrape his cheek. "Sorry, Frank, you're losing me. Just what are you trying to say?"
Janek stood up, picked a speck out of his eye, walked over to the window, peered down at Police Plaza, at the hundreds of people crossing the square, so rapidly, like ants. He turned. "There's only one connection we can find between the victims, and that looks like a typical New York coincidence."
"There's got to be a connection."
"Sure. But it's not like the whore was taking French lessons in the morning and the French teacher was whoring after work. The connection's in the killer's mind. It's like you told me in the car. A psychological crime. The killer's fantasy. His stunt. His private little treat."
Hart held his face as if struck by a migraine. His cold little eyes were sparkling now with pain. "You're still being enigmatic, Frank."
Janek turned back to the window, looked down again at the figures scurrying below and practiced switching a couple of their heads. "When someone's dead," he said, "and you do something to his body, you're not doing anything to him—you're making a display. Like in war when the enemy kills one of your guys and they strip him and set him up in the forest with his genitals cut off and stuck into his mouth. They haven't done anything sadistic to him, because he was already dead before the mutilation was carried out. They've done it for your benefit, the guy who finds him later, and, on a deeper level, they've done it for themselves. The ostensible purpose is to demoralize you. A display like that fills the viewer with anger and despair. It works subconsciously—breaks down the spirit, replacing the cool skill it takes to fight with a hot and clumsy debilitating rage." He turned back to Hart. Not a bad improvisation; he wondered if the Chief was dazzled.
"So if that's the ostensible purpose, what's the real one?"
"The underlying benefit is for the displayers themselves, a way of acting out their anger coolly without having to worry about the person fighting back. Or squirming, or screaming, arousing their pity or making them afraid. A dead guy's just so much meat, so you can treat him like meat. Maybe you kill him in anger so you can cut him up afterward with an almost kindly feeling in your heart."
Hart was slowly nodding his head. "I think I see what you mean."
Janek didn't understand how that was possible, since he couldn't see it himself. "Anyway," he said, "here's the bottom line. Whoever did this gave himself a lot of satisfaction, a good part of which could have been the effect it would have on us. The business with the heads is so implausible it makes me wonder if that may have been his point. To add a complication which would be even more disturbing than the homicides. A way to almost beautify his crime, turn his maniacal rage into a twisted kind of art."
Hart sucked in his lips. "That's one weird theory, Frank."
"This is one weird case."
"What you're telling me sounds very strange."
"I know. Deep waters. Limitless depths."
"More like you're setting up to dump this one in the files. Because if you're saying what I think you're saying, you're telling me you may never run it down."
Janek shook his head. "All I'm telling you is I don't think I'm going to solve it by turning up some overlooked piece of physical evidence, or, excuse the expression, by good old-fashioned detective work."
Hart leaned back disgusted. He didn't like the reference to his own frequent exhortations to "wear down shoe leather" and "in my experience it's the tedious routine work that breaks the case." He examined Janek skeptically. "So how are you going to solve it?"
"Maybe by inspiration," Janek said.
Hart snorted his amusement. His little eyes glinted now with mirth. "Grand. That's grand, Frank. Well, you just go back uptown and get yourself inspired. And if anything hits you and it happens to work out, please be sure and let me know."
At the precinct house that afternoon, a carnival atmosphere: Howell and his promised roundup of Upper West Side whores. Other detectives assigned to the Sixth came in to help keep order and watch the fun: an endless stream of squealing, chattering, hooting ladies of the night.
Formal interviews: "Now, in regard to your clients, Ms. Fernandez . . ." Snappy retorts: "Head freaks? Johns into heads?Honey, they're all into heads. I mean head is where it's at..."
Janek enjoyed the parade, a respite from the frustrations of the case, and he could see that Howell reveled in it. Howell would make a great Vice Squad detective, he thought; he took the proper corrupting pleasure in depravity.
While Janek watched he practiced switching heads. He tried out a bleached blonde's on a black girl, and then the reverse. But by seven o'clock things started growing tense. Howell was cutting into working hours, the humor was wearing thin, and none of the women had even heard of Brenda Beard. Janek finally shooed them out; Howell could finish with them downstairs. When, finally, the squad room was cleared, he and Aaron were left alone. Aaron studied the victim profile books. Janek, sensing a glimmer of a notion, went again to the wall and stood before the crime-scene photographs.
He looked, stared, peered, walked away, strode back and squinted again, bringing his face up close. Yes, there was something. He tried it again. Yes. Feeling a small rush of triumph, he called Aaron to the wall.
"Remember how we stood here the first day? The way we paced back and forth studying the shots?"
"Sure. Something bugged us."
"Remember what you said?"
"I said 'too perfect,'" Aaron paused. "Didn't I?"
"You also said 'contrived.'"
"Yeah. I remember now. That's sort of like your lady friend's 'arranged.'"
"You said, 'Something that hits you until you look too hard and then you don't see it anymore.'"
Aaron agreed that that was what he'd said.
"Okay. I want you to try something."
Janek unpinned two of the photographs, one from each side, shots taken of each victim from approximately the same angle directly above their beds. He pinned them back onto the cork beside each other in an empty space.
"Now what I want you to do is shift your eyes back and forth and try and switch the heads in your mind. What happens is you hold the image of one and superimpose it for a split second on the other. You may have to practice. I've been doing it all day. Took me a while to get the knack."
Aaron tried it. Then he stood back and blinked. "They keep slipping back to where they belong."
"The idea is to carry a face a little to the side. Try moving one. Move Amanda right to left. Leave Brenda where she is."
"Okay."
"Now move Brenda."
"This is tough work, Frank. All I'm getting is a kind of flash."
"A flash is good. A flash is all you need."
"Strange—I mean what I'm doing here is putting them back together the way they were."
"Right. You're putting them back together. So keep on doing it awhile."
"It's coming now. You're right. It does get easier."
"Keep going."
"What am I looking for?"
Janek was silent.
"Wow. This could get to be a nasty habit."
Janek stood back; he didn't want to lead Aaron on. "Hmmm. 'Something that hits you until you look too hard and then you don't see it anymore.'"
Silence.
"Now I'm getting confused."
"How?"
"Getting them mixed up."
"Go on."
"They seem almost..."
"What?"
"I don't know—interchangeable?"
Janek exhaled. "That's it."
Aaron shut his eyes tight to clear away the images. He turned from the wall. "You mean that they fit each other so well?"
"You got it. I think that's what we saw before. And it goes with something else that's strange about this case, something we've never talked about. Remember how the people who first found the bodies weren't sure what they'd seen. Pierson didn't notice that it wasn't Amanda. He took one quick look, then turned away. It didn't register on the super either. And Bitong said he thought something was wrong but he didn't know exactly what. When you think about it, that was pretty strange, and that it took the Medical Examiner to discover there'd been a switch. Look at their faces again. They're similar, not identical, not like twins or even sisters, but close enough so you could get confused. Same features, roughly the same-shaped eyes and chins, same hair color, similar haircut, same age and size. If you squint—well, on a quick-glance basis they look more or less the same."
Aaron studied the photographs. "I think that's true. Funny it didn't register."
"You explained it yourself. If you look hard you don't see it anymore. The resemblance is superficial. When you look for it, it disappears. I think, too, if we'd seen the bodies it would have been clearer than it is in photographs."
Aaron grinned. "That's fantastic, Frank. You're good. I'm sure you're right. But—" he looked at Janek evenly—"okay, you got something. So now tell me what it means."
Janek smiled, walked back to his swivel chair, sat down and stretched his legs. He waited while Aaron poised himself on the rear ledge of his desk.
"Suppose the resemblance is the connection we've been looking for. Quite a different thing than mounting a blonde's head on a brunette. Seems to me if you wanted to make these women look different you wouldn't choose this particular pair."
"So?"
"So, suppose you don't want them to look different. Suppose you want to keep them looking pretty much the same."
"Why?"
"To change them in a certain way, but keep the illusion going that you haven't. Take Amanda: so distant, self-contained, inaccessible. Stick the head of a whore who sort of looks like her on her and you give her a whore's personality. Better still, stick her head on the body of a whore and you get an Amanda who's basically a slut."
"What about the other way around? Stick Brenda's head on Amanda's body and that way clean up her act."
"Sure. But why bother? I'm betting on Amanda. She's the one you can't get to, the one you'd want to change. She's so good, you know, so clean, the kind you'd want to dirty up. It seems to me that, once you decide on that, it's a relatively simple matter to shop around for a whore who looks the same and, when you find her, start to plan your switch."
"A headhunting expedition. I don't know, Frank. You're in the stratosphere. I mean, if that's what you want to do, why not just mount Amanda's head on the whore and leave it at that?"
"Then what do you do with Brenda's head?"
"What difference does it make? Stash it in the closet. Roll it under the bed."
Janek shook his head. He felt sure Aaron was wrong. "You're neat and orderly. You're an artist constructing a puzzle. You're into symmetry and design. You don't like loose ends, so you've got to replace the head you took."
Aaron gazed at him, then announced that he was going home. He'd participated in some pretty weird brainstorming sessions since he'd been in the division, he said, but tonight's was the weirdest yet. He turned when he reached the door. "This kind of stuff can make you crazy, Frank. I'd come down off of it if I were you. You got a theory, sure, and for all I know you're right. But where does it leave you? How does it help you find the guy?"
Janek wasn't sure where or how, but he felt that it would help, that if he could enter into the madness of this crime the madman would stand revealed. There was always a reason. Killings for gain or revenge were easy, the motives obvious and stark. This was a crime conceived in the shadows and carried out purposefully in the night. There was precision in it and passion. Concentrated rage and a love of order. A need to beautify. Even some strange, unfathomable, as yet uncatalogued species of love.
He sat alone in the squad room after Aaron left. Yes, he was betting on Amanda. He thought of calling Caroline, telling her what he'd discovered, then suggesting he come over and spend the night. He stared at the phone, thinking about that. But in the end he didn't pick it up.
When he left the precinct house he drove downtown, ate dinner at a Greek restaurant on Howard Street, then lingered over his coffee staring into space. When he came out it was nearly ten. He got back into his car, crossed to Brooklyn, followed the expressway to Queens, exited on Greenpoint Avenue, then worked his way to Corona, knowing that though he was pretending to wander the outer boroughs he was heading straight for the block where Al and Lou had built their wood-frame house.
He parked a few doors down and across the street, turned off his ignition and extinguished his lights. Most of the houses were still lit. He could glimpse the glow of TV screens in living rooms, hear the occasional sound of raised voices, of children laughing, a door being slammed, a dog barking from someone's porch.
What was he doing here?
He had no desire now to visit Lou, confront again her confusion and hurt. He had not come to spy on her house, or to imagine Al still alive inside. He felt no particular remorse, did not believe he had let Al down, should have been there, could have been there, might have saved Al if he had. It was something else, something troubling, something he felt but could not confront. He was resisting it just as for days he had resisted seeing the resemblance between Amanda Ireland and Brenda Beard. It eluded him, but, sitting in his car demanding an explanation, he knew finally the reason he was there: he had come to take a measurement.
He drove slowly, fifteen miles an hour, which he guessed was roughly four times the speed of a person moving normally on foot, and made his way bythe most direct route he could to the vicinity of Caroline's tennis club. When he was near, roughly halfway between it and her building, he stopped, checked his watch and speedometer and began to calculate. No matter how he figured it, and he tried it several different ways, it did not seem possible that a sixty-six-year-old man could have walked that distance in less than an hour.
And that was just too long for a man who never walked anywhere, who so hated to walk that he'd take his car out on a sparkling autumn day just to drive three blocks for a pack of cigarettes. Which still didn't rule out other possibilities. Al could have come by bus, except he'd have had to change buses three times, or he could have driven over, parked in the neighborhood, then taken a brief stroll around though there wasn't anything worth strolling by or to. Which didn't make it impossible—in the solitude of his retirement Al might have taken to making unexpected expeditions to nondescript neighborhoods in Queens. Oh yes, there were possibilities, infinite possibilities, but the most likely one of all, Janek knew, and the one that wrenched his heart, was that the encounter of the fallen bicycle had never taken place.