I had other questions-mostly technical ones-which I thought would be better answered by the dry, emotionless paperwork already headed our way. As helpful as Jim Catone had been, I didn’t want to rely too much on him-or be influenced by his blatant prejudice.
Ron did have a question, however. “You said Vogel trashed the bedrooms of these women. What about the rest of the house?”
“He left them alone, except where he’d broken a window or lock to get in.”
“That reminds me,” Brandt said, “in trying to figure out if he cased the victims’ homes, did you ever find out if he got jobs in the area, or pretended to sell door-to-door?”
Catone shrugged. “We checked on that but came up empty. We never figured out why he chose the women he did. They were of different ages, backgrounds, appearance. Something about each of them caught his eye. We all had our theories, but nothing really made sense.”
“You’re absolutely sure he did them all?” I asked quietly.
I’d been saving this question for last, figuring it might stimulate more than a simple yes or no. We’d all had cases go sour, or stolen from us in court, but I’d rarely met anyone so emotionally hooked on a case. You learned to live with your losses in this business, and you trained yourself to stay as coolheaded as possible.
His reaction didn’t disappoint me. He leaned forward, fixing me with his dark, impassioned eyes. “You’re damned right I am. That son of a bitch is dirty as hell, even if he did beat the system two out of three times.” He held up his hand and began counting off on his fingers. “First time-the victim ID’s him right off the bat. Says she scratched him, and he’s got the marks to prove it. He’s got no alibi and his prints are all over her place. That one got to court, but the jury deadlocked, the judge threw it out, and the DA didn’t have the balls to try it again.”
“Why the deadlock?” I asked.
He sat back suddenly, disgusted. “Defense argued it was a consensual deal gone bad-that the girl changed her mind and screamed rape.”
“They bought that?” Ron blurted.
“Only because Vogel’s lawyer twisted it around. She showered after the assault, took a long time reporting it, messed up her story-she did everything you’re not supposed to do. In a nutshell, the jury didn’t like her, and maybe didn’t trust her, and the lawyer played on that. But there was no doubt about Vogel’s involvement. But the judge bought it, said that considering some of the sexual positions she described, she had to have been a willing participant, since a simple twitch of the hips would’ve ended it. I mean, Jesus, they didn’t even focus on the knife, or the fact she was scared shitless. The DA fucked up, if you ask me.”
Brandt interrupted gently. “And with Wendy Polan?”
Catone held up a second finger. “I know you’re not supposed to blame a fellow officer, but that fiasco rests entirely with Walter Huss. The bastard was hitting the bottle-got the wrong address on the search warrant of Vogel’s apartment, lost the chain-of-custody paperwork, and then made up a phony story to cover his ass… ” He slammed the tabletop with his hand. “But Vogel was dirty then, too. We just couldn’t do anything about it. If you people nail this creep, you’ll make a lot of people real happy. I came up here so you’d understand that-and so you’d know that if you need any help south of the border, don’t hesitate to call.”
Brandt and I exchanged glances. It was obvious things would have to get pretty desperate before either one of us took him up on that. Nevertheless, he had brought the similarities between our case and Vogel’s MO into sharp focus. I no longer had much doubt that we were on the right track.
I got to my feet and extended my hand, making it clear the interview was over. “Jim, we appreciate your making the trip up here. It’s helped a lot. And I promise we’ll keep you posted.”
As further niceties followed from the others around the table, Harriet closed her pad and gracefully escorted our guest back outside.
There was a long pause following his departure. Tony finally looked over at Todd Lefevre and asked, “Well?”
Todd smiled and confirmed my own thoughts. “Well, I don’t think we’d ever want to use him in court, but I do think he’s confirmed we’ve got a hot one.”
“With a few discrepancies,” I added.
Brandt nodded. “Like the gloves and the lack of ejaculate?”
“Yeah, and the fact that he kept some of his clothes on in the past.
Also, he never got a job in the victim’s neighborhood before, to scope the place out.”
Todd waved his hand in disagreement. “But his MO’s evolved from crime to crime. From tape to slipknots, from nightgown to pillowcase, from showing a knife to using it. He’s refined his style. So now he takes all his clothes off, puts on gloves to protect his hands, makes a display of the woman’s underwear, even gets a job to stake the target out. If you look at them all as a progression, including Gail, I don’t see much that doesn’t fit. I’d bet Dunn would have a field day painting exactly that picture to a jury-and making it stick.”
Since I happened to agree with him, I didn’t argue the point. I stood up and stretched instead, suddenly feeling the previous night’s lack of sleep. “Well, let’s not forget how Greenfield dropped the ball on victim number two. I’d just as soon go slow, take the heat, and get it right.”
“Amen,” Brandt said quietly. “Where’re you off to now?”
I paused halfway out the door. I kept forgetting my agreement not to move around independently. “I thought I’d see a man about some garbage.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Oh-right. Let me know what you find.”
I walked down the hallway to a set of stairs that was awkwardly located in the middle of the floor, opposite the detective squad’s front door. Earlier, returning from Vogel’s trailer, I’d asked Harriet to locate J.P. and have him dissect the garbage bag I’d swiped. Having seen him do similar operations before, I knew where I’d find him.
The Municipal Building’s basement is a wondrous throwback to a previous century-and to childhood nightmares. It is high-ceilinged and gloomy, strung along a twisting central corridor lined with mysterious blank doors and wired-off alcoves, complete with the distant rumbling of unexplained machinery and the sense-at all times-that one is never alone.
The police department had reserved several of those mysterious rooms for its own use, including a small gym and shower area, and it was to one of the least used of these that Tyler had retreated.
As I opened the door and crossed the threshold, I both blessed his consideration and cursed having set him to work. “Jesus Christ.”
He looked up from his hunched-over position in the midst of a putrid, rotting semicircle of refuse spread out over a large plastic sheet. He had Vicks Vaporub smeared under his nostrils and was wearing latex gloves.
“You get used to it eventually.” He dug the Vicks from out of his apron pocket and tossed it over to me. A box of gloves lay just shy of the plastic sheet.
“What’ve you found?” I asked, decorating my upper lip.
“So far? That this guy has one of the worst eating habits I’ve ever seen. His two major food groups seem to be Spam and peanut butter-I guess potato chips are considered roughage. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t eat anything that doesn’t come in a package. None of it even needs heating up, much less cooking. And he seems to have a fondness for cake icing, straight out of the can.”
I pulled on a pair of gloves and got down next to him. The sickly sweet odor that rose in waves from this glistening, mold-crusted mess made me slightly dizzy. “Anything else?”
He pointed to a segregated corner of neatly piled but slimy documents. “Third-class mail, mostly-same as we all get. The envelopes are all unopened.” He suddenly extricated a small piece of paper from inside a half-finished can of marshmallow fluff. “Grocery-store receipt.” He carefully placed it with a soggy pile of others like it. “It’s amazing to me how little paperwork people like this collect. Besides a single electricity bill, I haven’t found anything that links this guy to the outside world-no phone bills, letters, magazines, newspapers-nothing except lousy food, lots of cigarettes, and empty beer bottles.”