Wallflower (11 page)

Hansen's face fell. He stared at Janek with unconcealed hurt, then dodged into a nearby office to use the phone. Janek watched from the corridor as, once connected, Hansen cupped his hand over the receiver.

"
Probably telling Sullivan what uncouth louts we are," Aaron said.

Janek shook his head. He didn't like the setup. The tour had been laid on to intimidate. Sullivan wanted to soften them
up
,
make them feel outclassed.

"All righty, Lieutenant," Hansen said, rejoining them in the corridor. "We're to go straight up to room two-oh-one."

Another march along endless windowed corridors, then up a stairs, around a corner, past hundreds of doors leading into hundreds of little offices until, finally, they reached the briefing room.

Sullivan was waiting for them. He was a stocky man about Janek's age, with an affable smile, beautifully coiffed iron gray hair, pink, well-shaven cheeks, and tiny, twinkling ice blue eyes. Though he spoke slowly with a slight drawl, this was no Ray Boyce. His gestures were sharp, his little eyes were quick, and he came off as shrewd and savvy.

But there was a cockiness about him that inspired in Janek a nearly instant dislike. He hadn't wanted to detest Sullivan. He'd come with the expectation that they would treat each other with respect. But the way the man stood, his back just a little too straight, his head angled upward, his chin stuck out just a little more than necessary, reminded Janek of a prison warden trying unsuccessfully to conceal his swagger.

He only hoped this first impression would be belied.

The briefing room was state-of-the-art with the latest in audiovisual aids. There was a polished white marble conference table with glasses, water pitcher, yellow legal pads, and sharpened pencils arranged like place settings for a banquet. Two tabbed briefing books, with Janek's and Aaron's names embossed on the covers, were centered perfectly before two deep upholstered swivel chairs with electronic gear built into the armrests. When Janek sat in his, he felt like a millionaire ready to deep-sea fish off the back of a yacht.

"Gentlemen," Sullivan announced, in a sonorous airline pilot's voice, "I thought the best approach would be to have members of my staff brief you on particular aspects of HF. Then, when you've got a handle on the cases, I'll rejoin you for the overview."

"HF—can you believe they call it that?" Aaron whispered.

Janek believed. The FBI was notorious for its abbreviations and acronyms. But he preferred HF to Happy Families, which smacked of a headline in one of the national tabloids:
HAPPY FAMILIES KILLER STRIKES AGAIN
.

The briefing that commenced, part lecture, part slide show, consisted of a procession of crisp, well-rehearsed young forensic analysts, each with his own area of expertise, doing his stint with pointer and easel, then yielding to the next.

They were shown detailed color slides of the five Happy Families crime scenes. People with stiffened limbs and ice picks protruding from their ears, eyes, and throats lay at odd angles in domestic settings. All were naked from the waist down, having been stripped in order to be glued. Janek found himself turning his head, then looking at the pictures obliquely with only one eye. He wasn't certain why he did this; it was a habit he'd acquired over the years. Perhaps, he thought, if only one eye were exposed, the gruesome images would be less deeply etched into his memory.

The agents used staccato tones to describe each set of victims along with details of the abuses each had suffered:

Miss Bertha Parce,
an elderly retired schoolteacher, found murdered in her bed in a single-room-occupancy hotel in Miami Beach, Florida;

Cynthia Morse,
a wealthy divorcée, killed over Memorial Day weekend, with her two visiting grown daughters, in her luxury condominium in Seattle, Washington;

James and Stuart MacDonald,
two aging playboy-type brothers, slain in their shared weekend house in Kent, Connecticut;

The Robert Wexier family (husband, wife, three children)
killed in their suburban ranch-style home in Fort Worth, Texas;

The Anthony Scotto family (husband, wife, and two teen
age sons)
slaughtered in their Cape Cod-style home just outside Providence, Rhode Island.

There was also a homeless man who didn't seem to fit the pattern, though he, too, had been stabbed and glued, then left in an alley in the Alphabet City section of Manhattan.

The presentation notably did not include anything about Jess. Janek wondered whether this was because the team was being considerate of his feelings or because it simply hadn't worked up that part of the briefing yet.

At exactly twelve-thirty a break was called, and Janek and Aaron were invited to join the analysts for a working lunch in the staff cafeteria. But as it turned out, the conversation there had little to do with the case. Rather, the agents solicited war stories from New York, for which they exchanged no personal revelations, only other war stories they'd heard from other visiting investigators.

Later, in the men's room, Aaron asked Janek what he thought was going on.

"They're looking to see if we're team players. Teamwork's what the FBI's all about."

Aaron laughed. "We're hotshots, ain't we, Frank?" Then, more seriously:
 
"I feel out of place. Maybe it's the clothes. They all dress so nice. Even some of the ladies wear ties."

The afternoon session concluded the presentation of cases, after which their tour guide, Hansen, reappeared with another muscle-bound assistant to demonstrate the stabbing method. The men acted it out several times at normal speed and then in slow motion: a violent thrust with an ice pick from under the chin through the roof of the mouth, the ear hole, or the eye socket and then into the brain. The fact that the pick was always left embedded was, according to Hansen,
"
classic commando technique."

The star speaker of the afternoon was Dr. David Chun, brought in to explicate the killer profile. Janek had heard of him. The brilliant young Asian-American was not an FBI employee but a forensic psychiatrist on the faculty at Harvard Law School, who had testified at numerous high-profile criminal trials around the country. From the flattering way Sullivan introduced him, it was clear he considered Chun a major asset.

The moment the doctor began to speak, Janek understood why he was usually so successful with juries. He had the kind of deep, authoritative voice that compels attention and belief. But there was something canny, perhaps even vain in his presentation, that fitted with the subtle swagger Janek had observed in Sullivan and the entire HF team. The way these people behaved spoke of arrogant pride. They saw themselves as the best of the best. And they'd made it clear at lunch that if the two shaggy, scruffily dressed detectives from New York wanted in, they would have to prove they had the stuff.

Dr. Chun stated his belief that the organized crime scenes and ethnic background of the victims indicated a white male killer most likely in his late twenties or early thirties. Further, he believed the neatness of the gluing suggested excellent hand-eye coordination, as well as a certain protective concern for the victims' "bodily integrity."

"Various facts," he continued, "such as the forced entries, clean escapes, and the killer's ability to take on multiple victims, suggest a particularly confident individual, probably one with a high level of martial arts training. The stabbing technique raises the possibility of a military background. The psychopathology is sexual-sadistic; I would surmise that the killer possesses a large collection of sadomasochistic pornography. The gluings and lack of semen at the crime scenes speak of sexual fear indicative of a loner type. But the most striking characteristic is the killer's lack of gender differentiation."

The psychiatrist paused. Though his features remained composed, Janek picked up on something in his eyes.
It's almost as if he's afraid,
he thought as Chun continued in the same authoritative style.

"
He glues up the genitals of men and women with equal thoroughness. Children, too, and, in the case of Fort Worth, even the family dog and cat. But beyond the genitals, all orifices seem to be fair game. With the Miami woman and the brothers in Connecticut we find mouths and anuses glued. In the case of Providence the wife's fingertips were glued together in a praying-type position. In the other cases fingers and toes were glued at random as if to create a webbed hand or foot effect. We call these variations subpatterns. They speak of something beyond conventional catego
ries of sexual assault. In this case concepts such as straight and gay are useless, virtually irrelevant. We appear to be dealing with a man who engages in symbolic negation of any and all forms of human sexuality. One may surmise he has a disturbed relationship with a mother, who is possibly deceased. Finally, the killer is most likely sexually dysfunctional."

This time, when Dr. Chun paused, his breathing quickened, and he screwed up his eyes. When he resumed speaking, Janek was certain
. Something about this definitely frightens him,
he thought.

". . .
there is one very unusual aspect. This killer chooses what we call difficult victims. With the exception of the homeless man and the young woman jogger in New York, the people he chose were not easy to get at, not easy at all. Most serial killers take an easy path, preying on hitchhikers and prostitutes. But not this one. He sets himself extremely tough challenges. From this we must infer intelligence, a capacity for careful planning, and a streak of competitiveness rarely demonstrated in this category of crimes."

After Chun was finished, he stared down at the floor, then raised his head as if he had something to add. He opened his mouth, then abruptly clamped it shut.

"Lieutenant Janek, Sergeant Greenberg—I thank you for your patience." Then he almost seemed to flee the room.

After Chun left, a full minute passed, during which Janek made out a short bit of conversation from the other side of the door. He strained to listen. It was between Sullivan and the psychiatrist. Chun sounded deeply upset:

". . . doesn't fit . . . diabolical . . ."

". . . overworked. Get some rest. We'll talk. . . ."

When Sullivan reentered the room, Janek was impressed by his sangfroid. He picked up the briefing just where Chun had left it off, dealing head-on with the issue of easy versus difficult.

"The homeless man was first and the Foy girl last," Sullivan began. "Both easy prey, both hit-and-run homicides committed outside at night in New York, and both glued quick and sloppy in the crotch. As you've heard, we find much more elaborate gluing when the killings are committed indoors. The killer goes in like
a stabbing machine. But then he's careful, very, very careful with the glue. Squirts it in just right, makes sure everything's sealed up."

Sullivan paused for effect.

"All right, you know all that. We acknowledge the inconsistencies. In our discussions we've theorized a possible second killer, an outdoor killer, who murdered the homeless man and the jogger, as opposed to an indoor killer, who murdered the families. But the theory doesn't hold because there's another aspect to the signature. In all seven cases we find the weed."

Aaron shook his head. "You talking about pot?"

"Not pot, Sergeant. I'm talking about a literal weed. We didn't pick up on it at first. Then our forensic people noticed that there was always some wild plant left at the scene, a dandelion or a dried-up field daisy, a junk flower like you'd find in a vacant lot. This isn't a mystery novel. No rose or carnation or orchid here. Just a weed. A crummy weed." Sullivan turned to Janek. "There was a weed left near your goddaughter's body, too. . . ."

T
hey finally did get to see Hogan's Alley. Sullivan insisted on it. Color-coded students (red T-shirts for FBI; blue for police) ran around what looked like a movie set playing cops and robbers. The inspector watched, extremely proud, but Janek found it tiresome.
These FBI people,
he thought
, live in a world of their own, where technology and profiling and games are ends in themselves.
Meantime, city detectives like Aaron and himself worked sleazy cases out of dirty offices. He had no doubt as to which of them had a better feel for the criminal mind.

Janek arranged to meet Sullivan that night at a D.C. restaurant, then drove Aaron back to National Airport.

"I want to get him alone," Janek explained. "Really piss him off."
 

"I thought we were supposed to make nice."

"You want to work with him?"

"Be pretty tough," Aaron admitted. "But I'll give it a shot if you want me to."

"Maybe it won't be necessary," Janek said.

He dropped Aaron off at the Pan Am Shuttle, then drove into D.C. Though it was only five o'clock, the sky was already darkening. Affluent-looking joggers were running all over the place, and the rush-hour traffic was starting to build. He parked his car in a garage at the Watergate complex, then set out to walk. After a while he felt himself drawn to a center of energy. It was the Vietnam War Memorial. He knew it from pictures but had always wanted to see it for himself.