“Six years ago, after he raped Wendy Polan. We screwed up the investigation, but he was as dirty then as he was when he got off for doing the same thing to Ginny Davis two years before that in North Adams.
“I’d been on the force just four years. I was still in uniform but being groomed for plainclothes. I worked with the detectives a lot, so I was involved in the Polan case from the start.” His voice darkened slightly. “In fact, I was the one who discovered her. Her neighbors heard her screaming and called us. We found her strapped to the bed, beaten and bloody, half out of her mind, his come dried on her face-like a piece of meat. It broke her. She was completely changed after that. ’Course, our fucking the case up didn’t help-we told her that helping us would put this scumbag behind bars. So she did. She spilled her guts to us, she picked him out of a lineup, let herself be humiliated by the DA and the defense attorney. She put herself through hell, and none of it even got to court.”
We all glanced at one another in uneasy silence. His intensity told me Catone wasn’t a man I’d ever want working for me, but listening to him convinced me that he was just the historian we were after. I finally asked, “You knew Polan from before?”
He looked up, his expression softening a bit. “She went to the same high school I did-a few grades behind me. She was a pretty girl-popular, fun to be with. I never got to know her that well, but she sort of stood out in a crowd. You couldn’t help noticing her.”
“Our records are pretty slim still-we’re having Massachusetts send up their files. She was single, right? Living alone?”
He nodded. “Yeah-bottom apartment in a three-story building-an old converted family home.”
“How did Vogel gain entry?”
“He broke a back window-just enough to reach the door lock.”
“She didn’t hear anything?”
“He used a glass cutter. Besides, she was asleep, and the bedroom was on the other side of the house.”
“Had he cased the apartment beforehand?”
Catone shrugged. “I don’t know. We never really got to talk to him, at least not without his lawyer there. We thought he must’ve. I mean, he had to have staked the place out to know she lived alone, and to pick a time when the upstairs neighbors were gone on vacation.”
“We were told Vogel and Polan didn’t know each other.”
“Right-she’d never set eyes on him before that night.”
“During the rape, he told her to keep her eyes shut?”
He smiled for the first time. “Yeah-of course she peeked. A rocket scientist he ain’t. Even with Katherine Rawlins, the third woman he raped, he messed that part up, wrapping her head in her nightgown and not noticing when it slipped.”
“Can you outline his approach?” I asked. “What were the common denominators between the two rapes you investigated?”
“I can do you one better-I researched the one he did in North Adams, too. All three were single women-”
“Prominent?” Brandt suddenly asked. “You mentioned that Wendy really stood out in a crowd. Were all three distinguishable that way, either through their looks or what they did for a living?”
Catone looked stumped for a bit. “Wendy was the prettiest. I only saw a photograph of Ginny Davis-the North Adams girl-she was the youngest, and sort of plain. She worked as a store clerk. I don’t remember anything about her that stood out.”
“How ’bout age?” I asked.
“Each one was a little older than the next. How ’bout yours?”
For a split second, I considered how we were referring to these women. Catone had begun by talking about Wendy Polan in almost reverential tones-now all four of Vogel’s victims were beginning to sound like car wrecks. “Mid-forties,” I answered.
He pursed his lips. “That’s a bit of a jump, but it fits. Ginny was eighteen, Wendy twenty-three, Katherine Rawlins twenty-nine. Rawlins was a lawyer and had been quoted in the paper off and on. I suppose that makes her small-time famous, if you stretch it a bit.”
“Let’s get back to his general approach,” I prompted.
Catone nodded. “All three happened in the middle of the night, all were illegal entry-once by unlocked door, twice by window, although Rawlins’s was half open because of the weather. All were done on the victims’ beds, and all of them lasted from two to four hours. The last two involved bondage, the first was forcible restraint. All three involved a knife-”
“Only used the last time?” Brandt interrupted again.
“Right. We already talked about the blindfold angle. Let’s see… ”
“Did he trash the bedrooms?”
Catone’s eyes widened. “Yeah-totally. It depended on how close the neighbors were, but if he could get away with it, he busted televisions, lights, pictures, you name it.”
“Any ritualistic displays of the victims’ underwear?” Lefevre spoke up for the first time.
“The last time-he draped Rawlins’s all over the lamp shade.”
“And she was also the only one he used his knife on, is that correct?” Todd pursued.
“Right. Cut her nipples.”
“And broke her jaw.” Todd consulted some notes he’d written to himself. “What was the sequence of all that?”
Catone’s expression had changed subtly during Todd’s questioning, recognizing as we all did the growing similarities between his cases and ours. His eyes seemed to take on an extra glow, and an enthusiastic flush colored his cheeks. It made me think of a basketball fan in the last quarter.
“He tied ’em down first-all except the first one-and then he threatened them with the knife to get ’em to cooperate.”
“Did he speak in a whisper?”
“Yeah, he did-the last time. Rawlins described it as ‘stage sexy,’ like Vogel was trying to win her over. We thought that’s why he got so violent with her, because she didn’t buy the act and told him to fuck himself.” He glanced at Harriet suddenly, who’d taken no notice. “Sorry-her words-not mine. That’s when he broke her jaw.”
Todd held up his hand. “Hold it. Let me back up a bit. The whisper wasn’t to disguise his voice?”
Catone looked blank for a moment. “She didn’t know him-why bother? He was just doing a Latin-lover routine.”
Lefevre paused to write something on his note pad. The rest of us were interested enough in his line of questioning that we waited patiently for him to resume. “How about gloves? Was he wearing any?”
Again, Catone smiled. “He probably wished he had. When he broke her jaw, he also dislocated his little finger. That’s one of the things that helped nail him. Rawlins heard him scream with the pain, and when we picked him up, he was wearing a splint.”
“So, presumably, breaking her jaw came at the end of the attack.”
“Yeah. He split right after.”
Todd made another notation. I spoke up during the pause. “You mentioned he was violent with the others, too. Aside from the rape itself, what did he do?”
“After he’d finished with them and trashed their stuff, he beat ’em up.”
“He hit them all in the face, or just Katherine?” Todd asked quickly.
“Just Rawlins. He punched the others in the stomach and breasts-Rawlins got it there, too-the face was an extra, probably because of what she said to him.”
“Was he naked during the attacks?” I asked.
He hesitated, thinking back. “I’m not sure exactly-it wasn’t something we focused on. He had his shirt off with Rawlins-she commented on his chest hair-but he kept his pants on. I don’t know about Ginny Davis. Wendy mentioned a T-shirt, but I don’t know about the pants.”
“The files we’re expecting might have that,” Todd muttered.
I reached back to early in the conversation. “You mentioned Wendy had seminal fluid on her, indicating Vogel ejaculated during the rape. Did he ejaculate with all three women?”
“He couldn’t get hard with Ginny, but he came with both Wendy and Rawlins.”
“Several times? You mentioned he spent several hours with each of them.”
He nodded. “Twice each with Rawlins and Wendy. Vaginally and orally with Wendy-vaginally only with Rawlins, I guess because of the nightgown around her head.”