We finished our sandwiches in silence. Or rather, I should say, I half-finished my sandwich, and Leo took one bite of his and put it back on the plate.
“Are you ready to look at the letters?” I asked.
He nodded. “How many altogether?”
“Twenty-six responses all told: fifteen email printouts, eleven letters.”
“Let’s look at the emails first. They’re not going to yield up any physical evidence but the letters might.”
We moved over to the table.
All the emails had been sent within the first week after the news broke in the media in April. Four were supportive, “good for you” sort of messages, and all of those senders identified themselves as part of the Deaf Culture. There was a sweet one from a woman who said she knew how difficult it must have been for Deidre when she discovered her child was deaf, she herself was hard of hearing now, and she wished her well. She seemed to have completely missed the point that Deidre had engineered the child’s deafness. The remaining ten responses all expressed disapproval ranging from relatively mild to strongly worded anger and disgust at what she had done. Half of those had come from women and three-quarters claimed they were writing from Christian convictions. Two were foul and used explicit sexual language but neither of these used their names.
“We can get Ray to follow up on those email addresses,” I said.
Leo was looking more and more haggard. “Why didn’t she tell me this was happening? We could have put blocks on her computer.”
“That would have been difficult. They were all going to the work address.”
“Did her supervisor know about this?”
“I’m not sure. She knew that Deidre had caused quite a stir, as she put it, and she did say there were a few phone calls, but Deidre’s friend Jessica works the reception desk so she could have fielded things for her. She said she wanted Deidre to get rid of the letters but she refused.”
I could see Leo’s jaw clench. “Why would she wallow in shit like that?”
I had no answer to that and it wasn’t really a question.
“Ready for the letters?”
“I suppose so.”
We both put on the sterile gloves and I removed the letters from the plastic bag. There were eleven altogether, and according to the dates, as with the emails, five of them were written soon after the news broke. All had been mailed locally.
“These five I put together because they were sent within a week of the news story.” Leo nodded. He knew what I was getting at. Typically people respond to the news quickly or the impulse fades. “The remaining six were mailed at regular intervals of a month apart, the most recent being October 11. I’d say they are all from the same person who also sent one in that first week. Whoever wrote them is persistent and that as we know can indicate obsession.”
“Let’s look at the first batch.” He examined the envelopes. “All of them were mailed to the OHHA.”
We went on.
Two actually had letterhead and full signatures; both expressed disapproval but were quite polite in tone. A third was supportive. “Go stick it to them, Dee,” signed Mags on pretty beige paper with flowers along the edge.
“Anybody you know?” I asked Leo.
“No.”
Of the remaining two in this initial bunch, one was typed with no signature, short and to the point. WHY? The last one was handwritten and had the c-word repeated in clumsy letters across the page.
“Obscene but typically unimaginative, wouldn’t you say?” remarked Leo.
People in the news who were in any way controversial received this kind of thing all the time. They might be boring and unimaginative to us, but to the recipient, they were often disturbing. A psychic spit in the face.
Leo put this pile to one side. “So let’s have a study of our obsessive.”
I’d arranged the letters with the earlier one on the top. It was handwritten, no signature. The lettering was in block capitals, the paper, yellow lined notepaper. The post office stamp revealed it had been mailed three days after Deidre had appeared on television.
“Hold on.”
Leo went back to the kitchen and returned with a calendar.
“The first one was mailed on April 12, which was a Monday, three days after the television interview, which was on a Friday, and six days after the newspaper article, which was Tuesday, April 6.”
This could mean the sender had been watching TV rather than reading the newspaper, but it wasn’t conclusive obviously and in itself mightn’t mean anything. However, when trying to draw up a criminal profile, these small details could add up to something significant.
The message was on an entire sheet of paper but the writer had used only the top section, double-spaced and kept within the lines.
HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A SIN. YOU AND YOUR OFFSPRING DESERVE TO D BURN IN HELL. I HOPE YOU DO.
“Anything obvious you see right off the bat?” Leo asked.
“There’s a slightly unusual construction in ‘do such a sin.’ A more likely usage would be ‘commit such a sin.’ There is no question mark. The ‘d’ is stroked out; they could have been going to say ‘die.’ The tone is religious: ‘sin,’ ‘hell.’ ‘Offspring’ also isn’t typical. It’s an old-fashioned word. ‘Child’ or ‘daughter’ would be more common.”
Leo tapped the next envelope. “This was written a month later almost to the day. May 10, which was a Monday.”
“They’re spreading out on the page and the writing isn’t as tidy. Could be getting more agitated.”
YOU ARE SCUM OF EARTH. WHY ARE YOU HERE. I HOPE YOU GO TO HELL WHERE YOU CAN NO LONGER TORMENT OTHERS.
“The message is different in this one,” I continued. “Another religious reference but look at ‘ you can no longer torment others.’ It suggests that Deidre’s act has been weighing on the writer’s mind, or that they see Joy as being the one who is tormented, presumably by being born deaf…”
“Next is June 14, also a Monday.”
“This one is taking up most of the page and the letters are not keeping to the lines anymore.”
“Increasing disturbance?”
“Could be.”
YOU DESERVE NO SYMPATHY ONLY PUNISHMENT FOR SIN. HEDE MY WORDS. GOD WILL SMITE YOU IN HIS JUSTICE. HE LOVES ONLY THE PURE AND THAT IS NOT YOU AS WE ALL KNOW.
“‘Hede’ is misspelt, although that could be deliberate. But it’s an unusual word, old-fashioned, too. A more threatening tone. Notice the writer reverts to the plural in ‘we.’ Previously they’ve used ‘I.’ Could be a dissociation taking place, a withdrawal from committing to the first person ‘I.’”
“Number four is stamped, July 12. Monday. There was nothing in August. Five is a Wednesday, September 15, which breaks the pattern. The last one, number six, is October 11. A Monday again.”
I studied the letters. “Number four is back to being neat, all the writing kept between the lines.”
GOD SEES EVERYTHING AND YOUR SINS ARE HATEFUL TO HIM. YOU EXPECT TO BE PUNISHED.
“What do you make of that last sentence? Is it a Freudian slip, do you think?” I asked Leo.
“Could be. Is the writer unconsciously revealing that they expect to be punished or are they projecting something onto Deidre?” He shook his head. “Something that may unfortunately be true about her. She was always getting into trouble when she was in school. Negative attention is better than no attention.” He looked up at me. “I wasn’t the best father in the world, Chris. I took it personally when she lashed out at me and I withdrew from her. By the time I’d faced the truth and tried to make it up to her, it was too late. She was too bitter.”
“What about her mother?”
“Loretta was worse and I mean that in all objectivity. She would disappear for weeks, sometimes months at a time on one of her special missions, but on more than one occasion she had to come back because Deidre was in trouble. Usually she was very resentful but at least whatever it was the girl had done, it brought her mother home.” He rubbed his hand through his hair. “When Dee went to university, she seemed to have outgrown all of that hellraising and she settled down and got some good marks. I wasn’t really aware of how militant she had become until she moved back to Orillia. The pregnancy was a smack in the eye for both Loretta and me. There’s no doubt she was getting back at us. Who knows if this second pregnancy was the same deal?” For a moment, he looked devastated. “It’s a moot point now, isn’t it?”
I wondered if all psychiatrists considered that everything people did was in reaction to something else. Perhaps Deidre had strong convictions all on her own but who was I to say? Leo could be right. It had been pointed out to me by a therapist I had some sessions with that some of my own decisions were made on an unconscious level as reactions to my mother, including to some extent joining the police force. According to him, I felt a compulsive need to establish order and punish the disorderly. Hey, that’s one explanation but it sort of left out believing in justice and protection of the vulnerable from the bully boys.
“Christine…?”
I returned to the letters, trying to sink into them, trying to get a feeling for the psyche of the writer. Think of it as the language whisperer.
The fifth and sixth letter were similar in tone and content.
YOU ARE A SINFUL DAUGHTER OF EVE. YOU SHOULD NOT BRETHE THE SAME AIR AS YOUR BETTERS. YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE HIS JUST RETRIBUTION.
THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE. DO NOT TAUNT ME WHORE OF BABYLON. GOD SEES AND HIS VENGEANCE IS SWIFT.
“What’d you think? What are we dealing with?” Leo asked, a touch of impatience in his voice.
“The gender is ambiguous. On the whole, the tone sounds more like it’s coming from a woman: ‘you should not breath the same air as your betters,’ for instance. That suggests an identification with the female, as does ‘he loves only the pure and that is not you.’ On the other hand, ‘do not taunt me, whore of Babylon,’ is more male-sounding…”
“You’re hedging your bets,” interrupted Leo. “Give me something definite.”
Threat assessment isn’t a science. I understood his frustration, but you can’t scan the letter into the computer and get a readout on a graph. The letters were ambiguous, which in itself said something about the writer. We could be dealing with some poor repressed woman who has spent her life being self-righteously nasty to others in the name of God but who would faint at the first sight of blood, or we could have a man who was shifting from the fantasy life to the real and was working himself up to murder.
“What is definite, obviously, is the religious language. It is constant throughout. I’d say this person is middle-aged, deeply involved with the church, comes from a strict fundamentalist upbringing perhaps with physical punishment, certainly imbued with the credo of sexuality as wicked. I’d say, they’re probably unmarried and live alone or with an elderly parent or older sibling with whom there is no communication but a deep tie of unconscious anger and dependency.”
“I agree with you so far. I’m going for a woman. What else?”
“The language is fairly literate, although as I said, English might not be their first language. They have at least high school education. A dropout. People don’t persist in writing hate letters unless they’re disappointed in their own lives.”
“The most recent letter says ‘things are getting worse.’ That could be a warning of increasing psychosis,” muttered Leo.
“It could for sure. Other than that, there is no obvious and clear sign of escalation. The handwriting doesn’t change significantly but the last letter is the worst in terms of the irregularity of the letters and the disregard for the lines.”
“So there may have been a tipping point somewhere between letter five, mailed on September 15, and letter six, mailed one month later.”
“According to the pattern of the other letters, the writer would have sent another letter pretty much to the day Deidre was killed. Except for the September one, they were all mailed on a Monday.”
Leo clenched his fist and pounded once on the table. “Why, damn it? Why the hell are they so regular? Goddamnit Christine, how many times have I sat in meetings dealing with exactly this sort of question? What is the pattern here? It’s felt so obvious before. We’ve all sat around feeling detached and superior. Oh yes, it’s obviously the subvert, travels out of town on a regular basis. All the crimes occur on Saturday or Sunday within easy access of Highway 11. Fuck it. I don’t see a fucking thing here.”
I had never heard Leo swear before. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, so hard I winced.
“Another apology, Christine. I didn’t mean that.”
“About sitting around feeling superior and detached, you mean? Apology accepted. Nobody I know has that attitude, except David maybe, but that’s about his pure lifestyle.”
“God. He’s insufferable. He can live on cucumbers and grass for all I care but don’t force your views on other people.”
I know we were dissing Dave behind his back, but first I felt the same way as Leo and second, at the moment, frankly I was treating him the way I’d treat a nervous witness. Find something in common even if it is a common enemy.
“Maybe a Sunday is the only time our man has to work up his nasty letters?”
“I suppose so.”
“We’ve got some pieces of the jigsaw. We’ll find the right places to make the picture soon.
He looked as if he were about to snap my head off again, then he smiled. A small curl of the lips but still a smile. “You always come up with the nice soothing thing to say, don’t you?”
That sounded vaguely insulting but I decided to let it go for now. I collected the letters and put them back in the plastic envelope.
“There was a DVD in Deidre’s locker. The girls thought it was part of the workbook for the class she teaches, but it’s not labelled so I brought it along just in case. Why don’t we have a look at it?”
“Good idea. My computer’s in my library.” He picked up my plate. “All done with your sandwich?”
I thought even the pigeons would reject the crusts that I’d left but he was trying to make nice.
“It’s back here,” said Leo, and he led the way down the hall, first dumping the plates in the galley kitchen. “I’ve taken over the master bedroom as my library. I figured I spend more time reading and writing than I do in bed asleep so why not use the best room?”
He ushered me into a room at the end of the hall.
He’d used the word library and he wasn’t being pretentious. The room was lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, all crammed with books. Like the living room this one faced out onto the lake and also had its own balcony. Unlike the living room, it wasn’t austere or pristine but comfortably messy, books on the floor beside a large plush armchair, a desk also cluttered, a thick rug, even a fireplace. Bright flames dancing merrily around a log.
Leo saw where I was looking and he waved his hand. “It’s fake, just switches on, but I like it. I grew up with a fireplace and a home doesn’t feel like a home without one.”
Classical music was playing softly from a sound system that even I, non-audiophile that I am, recognized as state of the art. He must have been in here when I arrived and I suspected this was where he spent most of his time.
He booted up his computer and inserted the DVD.
There was no audio or graphics but it was immediately obvious this was no workbook aid. It was a homemade DVD. The date running underneath said September 29. The background was very dark but a light was focused entirely on a pair of hands, long fingers, smooth, young skin. The subject was wearing a long-sleeved black top that disappeared into the background, making the hands seem disembodied. I’d guess male but they were somewhat androgynous.
The index finger of the right hand jabbed out at the camera, then there was a rapid movement of fingers.
“Deidre. They just spelled out her name,” said Leo. “I learned that much.”
There was a flurry of signs from the headless person, eloquent, fast, but it was impossible to determine what the emotion was. Happiness? Anger? I didn’t know and there were no facial expressions to give clues. Then the hands halted for a moment. The jabbing finger again, pointed at the camera. You. Both hands outstretched, palms down then quickly inverted.
“That’s the sign for dead,” cried out Leo. “I remember having to learn it when her damn gerbil died.”
The fingers of the right hand formed a v shape with the thumb in between.
“It’s a k,” said Leo.
The left hand was held straight and the right hand struck against it in a swift downward motion. You didn’t need to understand sign language for that one. It was like seeing somebody pretend to fire a gun.
“I will kill you. The bastard’s saying, I will kill you,” cried Leo.