The Stranger You Seek

8





I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep when my cell phone sounded. White Trash was lying on my chest. I generally didn’t mind, but lately she’d taken to pointing herself in the wrong direction, so that when I woke, I had the distinct pleasure of looking directly at her butt. Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” blasted out of my phone, the ringtone I’d assigned to Rauser. I wasn’t sure he would fully appreciate the humor in this, so I kept it to myself.

“You okay?” I asked, looking at my bedside clock. Three a.m.

“I got another letter. Guy’s a total whack job, Keye.”

I was silent.

“Keye? You back asleep?”

“Yes,” I lied. I honestly was not sure if I wanted to rush in to help or slam down the phone. I had tried in the past and without much success to establish boundaries around his work and my life and where it’s okay and not okay that the two meet, but I’d given mixed signals, I knew. Cop work pulled at me like a drug, like warm lemon vodka, and I had both loved and hated this thing I’d spent my life learning.

“I’m faxing it to you, okay? Just please look at it. I won’t ask you again, but I need your brain tonight. He gave us a timeline. Three days until he kills again.”

I let that fresh horror sink in for a second, then sat up in my bed and thought back to the murder scene photos, to Lei Koto on her kitchen floor, and Bob Shelby and Elicia Richardson, and Anne Chambers brutalized in a dorm room. I thought again about their blood, their final horror. I’d sensed it when I looked at those pictures. Three days.

In an old pair of Dan’s boxer shorts and a T-shirt, I made my way to the kitchen. My blood sugar was about ankle high. I found a bottle of grape juice and thought about those first days in rehab while they were detoxing me. They supplied plenty of replacements, phenobarb and grape juice to name just two. A nurse told me grape juice would slam into my system the way the cognac used to and trick me. She was right. On day four they started removing the crutches. The phenobarbital was first. Day five, they came for my grape juice. I’m still kind of pissed about that. My first trip to the market when I was released, I stocked up. Rauser pours three fingers of it in a whiskey glass for me when I go to his house, and fills his own with cheap bourbon, and we clink our glasses together and pile up in front of the TV in summer to watch the Braves.

I thought about Rauser and sighed, leaned against the kitchen counter with my grape juice, felt the guilt seeping into me. Guilt, another gift from my days as a practicing drunk. Was I really being that selfish? Rauser had available to him great investigative minds if he would just tap them, but he wouldn’t trust easily. He hadn’t been exactly thrilled with the psychological sketch he had received from the Bureau. He’d be protective of his territory, reluctant to open the door any further to an outside agency, and the truth is, local cops solve local problems better than anyone else.

From the living room, I heard the whine of my fax machine. White Trash bumped my ankles, waiting for the splash of half-and-half she’d grown accustomed to in the morning. That we were up four hours early seemed to make no difference at all to her begging schedule and her relentless pursuit of dairy. I put a little cream into a saucer for her and walked into the living room.

What was I so afraid of? I asked myself. Was I afraid I couldn’t do it without drinking? That I couldn’t let my mind run in that savage terrain without it? Had alcohol made me a better profiler? I was certainly more attuned to unleashed destructive power back then, but unfortunately a lot of that destructive power was my own. Perhaps it was learning that dark craft in the first place that had pushed me into something my genes had been poised and eager to receive already. Might it push me there again? I never wanted to go back there. Not ever. And I wanted a drink every day, which is the torment of addiction, the constant tug, tug, tugging of rival desires. It was pulling at me now as I took two neatly typed, double-spaced pages from the fax machine. I felt the familiar quickening in my pulse, a ticking in my temple. No, this wasn’t dread or fear, this was something else—exhilaration.

I switched on a floor lamp and sank onto my couch with the letter.

Lieutenant Aaron Rauser



Atlanta Police Department



Homicide Unit, City Hall East



It wasn’t planned. I wasn’t there for him. Providence intervened. You want to understand, don’t you, Lieutenant? You want me to explain the selection process.



“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it …?” Melville wanted to know, just as you do now. The WHY of all this must drive you mad.



It was an elevator, an innocent encounter, him smoothing his black hair, performing, and me so close I could smell his aftershave. His self-importance made me want to laugh, and then it made me physically ill. His need was suffocating.



I watched him and I listened. I know the type. There’s a stack of bodies buried under the ladder he’s climbed. Eighty hours a week at the office and he still finds time to cheat on his wife. He has to have it, that extramarital thrill. He uses sex to fill in the vacancies. And there are so many vacancies. He says he loves his wife and children, but he hasn’t the capacity. He’s pretending, just as I am. What are the profilers calling it these days? A successful social veneer? Smiling, exchanging small talk with coworkers and neighbors, resting a chummy hand on their shoulder. Would it surprise you to know I have developed friendships? Nothing honest, of course, no deeply shared intimacy or any other disposition that defines friendship, merely the appearance thereof. And I’m so good at it. People like me, Lieutenant. Is that why they open the door?



Shall I toss you a tidbit? Here’s something your analysts will want to know: When I am with them, when they beg me to stop, when they tell me I’m hurting them, when they ask why, I ask back, “How does it feel? What does it feel like inside?” They never know what to say. They don’t even understand what I’m asking. I dig deeper. I press on. I don’t let them rest. I want to know. How Does It F*cking Feel? At least I give them something tangible to grieve, some pain that can be pinpointed, heroically endured. People forgive you for pain. Sometimes it’s good to have an ache you can really sink your teeth into. This is why people cut themselves, I now understand. We are practically bleeding all over everything most of the time anyway. Might as well see the goddamn trail of arterial spray we leave behind.



No empathy, you decide. Totally egocentric. But how would I know how to hurt them if I did not myself have a comprehensive understanding of pain and degradation? One must have a non-egocentric viewpoint in order to enjoy the true pleasures of egocentricity. Sick, sick, sick, you say. Don’t judge me by your own values. It won’t help you to find me. We merely employ a different set of ideals, you and I. Someone so terribly ill would have trouble, wouldn’t they, avoiding detection for so long? And I have been at it longer than you think, Lieutenant.



I said hello to him on that elevator morning and we shook hands. Did your heart jump at reading that? A public setting, witnesses, video cameras. Oh, how that must intrigue you. What building and what elevator? Had we met before? He gave me his wolf smile and I knew at that instant he was every bit as much of a predator as I am.



Shall I give you a clue to make that hopeful heart of yours skip a beat?



David, black hair, expensive suits, up and coming.



Three days, Lieutenant. Tick-tock.



The light from Peachtree Street casts a stained glow over my loft at night and I love the warmth of it and the marquee at the Fox across the street outlined in fat, round bulbs. But tonight my home seemed eerily dark and silent as I sat with notebook and pen and this uninvited guest, another letter from a murderer.

When I answered my phone an hour later, Rauser said, “You speaking to me? I’ll make the coffee if you’ll let me come up.”

He had called from the lobby and appeared two minutes later in Levis and a royal blue T-shirt with APD embroidered on the left sleeve in bright yellow, looking like he needed a nap and a shave. He went straight to the kitchen and dumped espresso beans in the coffee grinder. He knew where to find things here. We’d both spent a lot of time in the other’s home.

“Coffee,” he said, and put our cups down on the coffee table, sat, turned toward me, and put his hand on mine. “Thanks, Street. I just need to talk this through with somebody who understands this shit.”

I nodded. What else could I have possibly said to that?

He crossed an ankle over his knee and slurped the coffee he’d loaded with cream and sugar. “I don’t think this guy’d be letting off warning shots if there was time to find David,” he said flatly. “But we’re sure as hell gonna try. I don’t care if we have to look at every tape from every building in this city, we’re gonna catch this bastard.”

We were quiet for a moment. I thought about what that arduous process would be, about the time and resources it would gobble up, about some unlucky cop from each shift sitting for hours watching surveillance tapes, grainy and indistinct. And what exactly would they look for? Someone shaking hands on an elevator, walking the halls and talking? And then what? Spending hours, perhaps days, running down the names of those individuals, getting statements? The killer was putting out just enough information to keep APD chasing their tails.

Three days, Lieutenant. Tick-tock.

“Maybe the entire scenario is bullshit and he’s just playing us. The bullshit factor’s high with these guys.” Rauser was making notes on his own copy of the letter, chewing on his pen. “That’s the problem with killers. They’re all a bunch of goddamn liars. Maybe there’s an elevator and maybe not. Maybe there’s a David, maybe not. We have to run it down, though, every bit of it.” Rauser had already pulled together more investigators than had ever been assigned to a task force in Atlanta, something the mayor had announced proudly and the media had criticized as excessive spending. Rauser had also set up twenty-four-hour tip lines. The most expensive task force ever wasn’t getting results, or so the reports claimed.

“Something to think about,” I said carefully. “He may have a good understanding of what this means in terms of manpower.” My heart rate spiked a little. Was the person killing and bragging about it in letters to Rauser familiar with law enforcement? And if so, how familiar?

Rauser looked at me, then shot me with his forefinger and thumb. “Good point,” he said, and called one of his detectives. “Williams, you and Bevins start checking out every denied application for the police academy in the last fifteen years,” he said into the phone. “Run ’em down. All of them. Cop wannabes on file, CSI freaks, find them too and check their alibis. And I want you to personally and very quietly, please, get a list of everybody we’ve had disciplined because of excessive force, sexual harassment issues, abusive language or sexual assaults, anyone on probation or paid leave with that kind of stuff pending, I want their files on my desk by noon.”

Rauser took the crime scene photos from his case and spread them around my coffee table. “Guy’s obviously intelligent,” he said, arranging them in groups from first to last murder—Anne Chambers, Bob Shelby, Elicia Richardson, Lei Koto. “FBI talked about him being a frustrated underachiever. Is that what you see?”

“No,” I answered. “I see a perfectionist. Someone careful and focused who wants to appear brilliant, who wants to impress others. The two letters tell us that. I don’t see some guy who still lives in his mama’s basement.”

Rauser nodded his agreement. “So I’ve got a potential victim named David and a goddamn elevator, that’s what I got from this shit.” He thumped the letter with his forefinger.

“Well, there are a couple other things to get from it. For one, this person would be extremely controlling in life,” I said. “Family members, lovers, coworkers, would have experienced this on some level. Also, the sadistic behaviors probably need acting out with sexual partners even in the cooling-off periods. He probably pays for this or finds them in S/M communities where there’s curiosity play with pain and bondage, but he wouldn’t like his partners having boundaries or using safe words. People like this get bad reputations in communities where it’s controlled. I’d start asking questions there. He’s probably also looking at websites that help him fuel the domination fantasy. He’s careful, though. The whole social veneer idea, it’s really true, Rauser. On the surface, I think he is what he says he is. Extremely good at the game.”

“All the other victims were fairly easy access, but if David has a family and wears expensive suits, it’ll be different. He’ll have a security system, maybe a nanny or a stay-at-home wife, a dog or two.”

“Elicia Richardson had a security system,” I said, and picked up a picture of her lying facedown with her legs spread, bruised and bitten. Dark-stained oak floors surrounded the Chinese rug where she’d been left like an abandoned rag doll. Savage bite marks covered her shoulders and inner thighs, stab wounds on the thighs and buttocks, on her sides and lower back. I imagined him walking into her home. Had she been expecting him? I closed my eyes and tried to be there, see Elicia in life, through his eyes. I ring the bell and wait. She’s pretty. She smiles. Does she know me? She wants me here. Why? I step into her home. I’m nervous, but then my lungs fill with the air she’s breathing and I feel the power. I know I own her now just like I own the doorway I’ve stepped through and the air we’re sharing and the rug under my feet. All I can think about is when, when will I hit her that first time? I like the blitz. I like the surprise. I like seeing her plead while I get out my wire and my knife.

“Yeah, but the security system wasn’t activated,” Rauser objected. “Because she opened the door for the creepy sonofabitch just like the other three. She lived alone, though. David doesn’t.”

“He won’t take David at home. He’s stepping out of that box, which makes him even more dangerous.”

“We’re looking into the bisexual thing. But, truth is, it’s the most closeted community out there. Lot of guys might want it, but they don’t necessarily advertise that. We’re hoping David does or the killer does. We’re canvassing bars—straight, gay, S/M—questioning hustlers, male and female.”

“This is not about sexual preference or sexual attraction,” I said, and thought about all the violent serial cases I’d worked with the Bureau. “It’s about power.”

“How do I find him?” Rauser asked. “How do we get to David in time?”

“Release the letter,” I answered.