"That's the kindest thing you've ever said to me," I said.
Belson stopped for a light near Children's Hospital. The light changed, and we went past Children's Hospital and turned onto the Jamaicaway.
Quirk said, "Besides what I've told you we don't have anything. No other physical evidence. We'll have a lab analysis on the semen, but it won't tell us much. You can't work backwards from it. We got no fingerprints on the first two, and we won't have any when they get through with this one either. Each woman was killed in her home. The first one, the hooker, in the Faneuil Projects over in Brighton, the second one on Ruggles Street near the hospitals."
"Picked them up, went home with them, and did it," I said.
"Or followed them home," Quirk said, "and pulled a gun and forced them inside, and did it."
"You figure he didn't break in at random because the odds are too long that he'd randomly get three black women," I said.
"Ruggles Street you expect to, but the odds aren't so good in Brighton, and they're less good here," Quirk said.
"And he's probably white," I said.
Quirk said, "Yeah, we figured that. He wants black women but he doesn't go to black neighborhoods to find them. Even Ruggles Street at that end is on the white black fringe. Figure he's either scared to go into the black neighborhoods at night, or that he figures he's too noticeable."
Belson turned onto Perkins Street.
"And the letter," I said.
"The lab got shit from the letter," Quirk said, "unless the lab guy doing the testing is the killer."
"You could run it through twice with different technicians," I said.
"And if one of the lab reports turns out to be wrong, we've got a suspect," Quirk said. "I tried it. The tests were the same."
"So the lab knows about the letter," I said.
"Which means the whole department will know in a while. I know. I told them to keep it quiet. But they won't. It'll get out."
"So in a while everyone will know it's a cop, or might be."
"Doesn't do much for morale, but I had to check the letter," Quirk said.
"Anything only you know?" I said.
Belson parked, as before, in front of the house on Sheridan Street.
"No," Quirk said. "The press doesn't know about the semen, but the department does, which means the press will."
"Hard to keep a secret," I said.
"Impossible. Cops go home and tell their wives. They drink beer after a softball game and tell their buddies. Hell, I tell my wife. You'll tell Susan."
"But she won't pass it on," I said.
"Course not," Quirk said. "Neither will my wife, or Belson's or anyone else's. But in a week or so it's in the Globe, and Channel 5 has a film crew out."
"So young and yet so cynical," I said.
Quirk was still staring out the window. "I'm trying to keep hold of this thing," he said. "The guy isn't going to stop and the case will turn into Mardi Gras North. Talk shows, television, newspapers, Time and Newsweek, the mayor, the governor, the city council, the feminists, the racists, the blacks, the FBI, every victim's state rep, and every harebrain east of the Mississippi River will be fucking around with this thing and getting in the way and souping this asshole up to do it again."
"The guy wants you to catch him," I said.
"Maybe, and maybe he doesn't and maybe it's both," Quirk said.
Belson turned in the front seat and leaned his arm across the top of the seat. The narrow cigar had burned halfway down and gone out, but Belson kept it clamped in his teeth.
"Either way we gotta have our own posse," he said. His thin face was blue-tinged along the jaw with the shadow of a heavy beard.
I nodded. "I may use Hawk," I said.
Quirk nearly smiled for a moment. "Think he can keep from blabbing to the press?" he said.
"As long as Barbara Walters doesn't show up," I said. "Hawk gets light-headed whenever he sees her."
"I guess we'll have to chance it," Quirk said. He got out of the car and Belson drove me home.
CHAPTER 2
Susan was wearing black leather pants and low black cowboy boots with blue patterns worked into the leather. She had on a cobalt blouse and some gold chains and two large gold earrings and was sitting in my living room with her feet up on my coffee table, sipping very slowly at champagne with a splash of Midori liqueur. "And what does Quirk want you to do?" she said. The Midori gave the champagne a delicate tint a little greener than chartreuse. Susan spoke with the under rim of the champagne flute resting on her lower lip. Her big dark eyes looked over the top rim.
"He wants me to be someone he can trust," I said. I came around my counter and put a small silver tray on the coffee table in front of her.
There was beluga caviar on the tray and a small spoon and some Bremner wafers and six wedges of lemon.
"Yum yum," Susan said. She moved the champagne glass away from her mouth and tipped her head up at me and I kissed her on the mouth.
"No French-kissing," I said. "It muddles the palate."
Susan sipped another gram of champagne and looked at me without comment.
I went back to the kitchen and began to pound a couple of boneless chicken thighs with a heavy knife.
"Takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," I said.
"Is Quirk making up a kind of special squad of his own?" Susan said.
"Belson called it a posse. Quirk's own posse," I said.
"Because the killer may be someone in his department?"
"And because his department is going to get eaten up by the circus," I said. "Quirk wants an alternative. He wants someone not on the payroll. He wants somebody the mayor can't boss, and the city council can't threaten. Somebody who's not bucking for captain. He wants someplace to go where it's quiet and he can think."
"Will it be that bad?" Susan said.
"Yes, very soon," I said.
"Have you been involved in something like this before?"
"I was around the Strangler case," I said. "We had psychics and movie producers and dancing chickens in every corner."
I sprinkled some rosemary on the flattened chicken thighs and put them in olive oil and lemon juice to marinate.
"Everyone uses it," Susan said.
"Yes," I said. I poured a little of the champagne into my glass. "To get promoted, to get famous, to get rich, to get excited." I drank my champagne and poured some more, and went around the corner to have some caviar.
"How do you afford caviar?" Susan said.
"Low overhead," I said. "I weave my own blackjacks."
"He seems as if he wants to be caught," Susan said.
"The letter. Yeah, probably. But he didn't write it until after the second killing."
"So if he drops clues it may be very slowly," Susan said.
"And a lot of women may die before he drops enough for us to catch him."
I said.
Susan took maybe two sturgeon eggs on the tip of the spoon and ate them slowly.
"While we eat caviar," she said.
"And drink champagne," I said. I poured some for her and added a touch of the Midori.
"Shamelessly," Susan said.
"If we drank Moxie and ate Devil Dogs, they'd still die," I said.
"I know."
We each sipped champagne. The leather pants were smooth over Susan's thighs.
"What we know basically is that it's a white guy killing black women.
Certainly sounds like a racial crime," I said.
"And the semen traces?" Susan said.
"Certainly sounds like a sexual crime," I said.
"A dysfunctional one," Susan said.
"Because there's no penetration," I said.
"Except with a gun," Susan said. "Think how frightened of women he must be, to tie them up and gag them and render them helpless, and still he cannot actually connect. He can only find sexual expression the way he does."
"Expression?"
"In the original sense," Susan said.
I nodded. "Why black women?" I said.