But no mother.
The lack of the facilitation of a nurturing touch…
My name’s Matt Hauge; I’m a crime reporter for the Seattle Times. The other papers were calling the killer the “Handyman,” and I guess that’s why Captain Jay Jameson had come to me in the first place. A couple weeks ago, he walked right into my office and said, “I need your help.”
This was a cop, one of the bigwigs—a captain up for deputy chief. Cops generally hated press people but here’s this tall, imposing guy flashing his shield in my face and asking me for help.
“This Handyman shit—that’s my case,” he said..
“It’s my case too,” I countered.
“Yeah. That’s why I’m here.” He sat down, pulled out a cigarette, asked if I minded if he smoked, then lit up before I could answer. Now that I think back, I should’ve known even then. This guy looked like a perv. He had lines down his face like a James Street speed freak. One eye looked a teeny bit higher than the other. And he had this weird dirty blond hair spiked with grey and a tan, roughened complexion like a waterman. He didn’t look like a cop. He looked like a killer.
“I know it’s your case,” he said. “You think I’m here for shits and giggles?”
“Pardon me, Captain?” I said.
“Every newspaper in the goddamn state is printing all this tabloid shit about the case. They’re making me look like the most incompetent cop in the history of the department. And this ‘Handyman’ tagline they’re pushing? It sounds ridiculous, and it makes me look ridiculous.” Jameson got up, closed my office door, then returned to his seat. Plumes of cigarette smoke seemed to follow him around like lingering spirits. “What is it with press people anyway?” he said next. Then the son of a bitch tapped an ash on my carpet. “The first thing you do is accuse the police of inefficiency, and then you gotta slap these horror-movie taglines onto any repeat crime you can get your hands on.”
“It’s a way of increasing the identifiability of the event to a mass readership, because it helps sell papers. But I might remind you, Captain—before you flick more ashes on my floor—that I’m one journalist who’s never used that tagline and has never criticized the police in their efforts to catch the killer.”
“Yeah. That’s why I like you.”
By the way, the so-called “Handyman” Case involved a fairly recent sequence of murders in the downtown area. Three women so far: two known street prostitutes and one homeless woman. All three had been found strangled to death, their bodies carefully hidden along the Jackson Street corridor. And all three had been found with both of their hands missing. Cut off with an ax or a hatchet.
“And don’t worry about your floor,” he went on. “What? Your big paper can’t afford janitors?”
“Captain Jameson, for a man coming in here asking for help, you might need to learn a few lessons in sincerity.”
“Oh, fuck that shit. Don’t be a creamcake. The only good journalism about this case that I’ve seen has been written by you. I want to make a deal.”
“A deal? For what?”
“There’ve been more than three girls. That info’s gonna get leaked eventually. I want you to break it first. I’ll tell you everything about the case the press hasn’t heard. You’ll look good.”
“Yes sir, I guess I would,” I realized. “But what’s the catch?”
“You make me look good along the way. You write for the most respectable paper in the city. All I’m asking is for some slack. I give you the goods, but when you write it, you say my unit’s doing its best. And when we catch this fuck-up… you put in a good word for me. Deal?”
“No deal,” I said. “You’re bribing me. You’ve got balls coming in here telling me this. I’m a newspaper reporter for God’s sake!”
“I wouldn’t call it bribery.” Jameson showed a big toothy grin, then flicked more ashes on the floor. “That descrambler you got? Sounds smalltime, but did you know it’s now an FCC first-degree misdemeanor? A federal crime? Get’cha a year in jail and a five-grand fine for starters. Then let’s talk about your Schedule C deductions. Newspaper writers with freelance gigs on the side? You pay Miscellaneous income tax, right? Those pseudonymous articles you wrote for The Stranger, The Rocket, and Mansplat?”
You son of a bitch, I thought.
“Can we talk?” Jameson asked.
Seattle’s never been a city known for its crime rate. Thirty-six murders last year in the entire Seattle-Metro area. Compare that to L.A., New York, Washington D.C. and at least a dozen others tipping a thousand. What we’re known for instead is the Space Needle, the Monorail, and the largest fish depot in the hemisphere. Microsoft and Boeing. Happy times and happy people. Low unemployment, and no state income tax. No partisan politics and no potholes. And more NEA and college grants per-capita than any major metropolis in the country.
A good place to live.
But then there’s the downside that no one sees. Higher temperatures in the winter and wide-open welfare policies wag false promises to the destitute—it’s a magnet to the hopeless. They come here looking for the yellow-brick road but all they get is another bridge to sleep under, another dumpster to eat out of. Just take a walk around Third and James, Yesler Street, the trolley bridge on Jackson. You’ll see them trudging back and forth on their journey to nowhere. Stick-figures in rags, ghosts not quite incorporeal yet. Their dead eyes sunk into wax faces and bloodless lips asking for change or promising anything you want for twenty dollars. There are so many of them here, so many of these non-people with no names, no backgrounds, no lives.
The perfect grist of a psycho-killer.
“Our total’s sixteen so far,” Jameson admitted. “But that’s not even the worst consideration—”
“God knows how many others are out there you haven’t found,” I said.
“You got it.”
Jameson had brought me to his office at the city district headquarters. A large tack-board hung on the wall with sixteen pieces of paper pinned to it. Each piece of paper showed a victim’s name, or in several cases just the letters No ID and a recovery date.
“How’d you manage to keep it quiet for so long?” I asked.
“Luck, mostly,” Jameson grumbled. “Until recently, we’d find one here, one there. Isolated incidents, the victims were all nobodies: hookers, street trash. And we have our ways of keeping stuff away from the press.”
“So you knew about this all along,” I said, not asked.
“Yeah, for over three years.” He was standing by the window, staring out as he talked. “Every single police department in the area is still the laughing stock over the Green River thing. What could we do? Have another one of those?”
“That’s not the point, is it?”
He turned, a tight sarcastic smile on his face like a razor slash. “You fuckin’ press guys. My job’s to protect the residents of this city. It’s not gonna do me or them any good if they find out this shit’s been going on for years.”
“And the victims?”
“So what? I don’t give a shit about a bunch of whores and crackheads. I don’t work for them—I work for the real people. And it sure as shit doesn’t help when you press guys bend over backwards to trash the police. If you’re not complaining about increased burglary rates you’re complaining about kids buying cigarettes. It’s all our fault, huh? The police aren’t doing enough.”