He switched on the printer, and in less than a minute a sheet of paper scrolled into the tray. He picked it up and handed it to me.
I read:
BRILL, Abraham Arden, 1874-1948. Born in Austria, came to United States alone at age 13, resided in New York City. Graduated NYU 1901, MD Columbia University 1903. Studied in Switzerland with Carl Jung, returned to US in 1908. An early and outspoken advocate of psychoanalysis, Brill was one of the first to translate Freud and Jung into English, and did much to make their theories accessible in the United States. He taught for years at NYU and Columbia; publications include Psychoanalysis, Its Theories and Application (1912) and Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis (1921).
"Could be a coincidence," he said.
"No."
"You still see his books on reading lists. That's what rang a bell. Arden, though, that kept the penny from dropping. It's usually A. A. Brill, or Abraham Brill."
He'd dropped the hip-hop speech patterns, and sounded like someone who'd know about Freud and Jung, and Abraham Brill.
I said, "It's not a coincidence."
"It really couldn't be, could it?"
"He picked the name because it meant something to him, and he was confident it wouldn't mean anything to her."
"To Lia, you mean."
"No one else was ever supposed to hear the name. He went to Lia's dorm and killed her to keep her from repeating it. He was too late, but not by much. 'Arden Brill' were two of the last words she ever spoke."
"Good thing you had your machine on."
"If I'd been home to take the call- "
"Good thing you weren't."
"How do you figure that?"
"Because she'd have said she thought of something, that it might be important. And you'd have said, 'No, not over the phone, I'll meet you in twenty minutes at the Salonika.' Only you'd have been waiting a long time at that restaurant, because she'd be floating in the bathtub, and you never would have heard the name Arden Brill."
I thought about it, agreed it was possible.
"Or," he said, "she hears your voice, and she gets flustered and hangs up."
"She could just as easily have hung up on the answering machine."
"But she didn't," he said.
"If I'd questioned her a little more intensively at the Salonika- "
"Maybe she'd have said then and there."
"Maybe."
"And maybe not," he said. "Maybe she'd have clammed up tight, and not made a phone call later, because of how hard you pressed her."
"Maybe."
"And he would have shown up right on schedule," he went on, "and she'd be just as dead as she is now, same as if we never even made the call and went up there yesterday in the first place. This way we got a name, Arden Brill, and otherwise we wouldn't have a thing."
"Arden Brill," I said.
"Figure it's him?"
"It pretty much has to be."
"Yeah," he said. "I guess."
"I suppose," I said, "when you turn around and take a good long look at it, it all becomes very obvious. But I was right in the room with the son of a bitch and it never even occurred to me. For Christ's sake, it was his gun. The son of a bitch used his own gun!"
TWENTY-EIGHT
He sits, watching the lights of the city go on and off, on and off. It's the middle of the afternoon, but on his computer it is forever night, and his screensaver is tireless. Office and apartment lights wink on and wink off, and gradually buildings change their shapes, adding floors, losing floors, becoming wider or narrower. The idea, of course, is that each tiny subsection of the monitor will have its turn to be dark, and thus no single high-traffic spot will burn out ahead of the others.
Is this a real problem? Do computer screens ever burn out? With the relentless march of technology, does anyone actually keep a piece of equipment long enough for wear and tear to affect it?
Probably not. Every year- every six months- the new computers are faster and more powerful, and cost less than the previous generation. Soon he'll replace his own computer. There is nothing wrong with it, it does everything he could possibly require of it, but he'll replace it with one that is newer-better-faster… and he'll dutifully install his screensaver on his new hard drive.
All so he can watch lights wink on and off…
He lowers a finger, touches a key, and the screensaver is gone. He touches more keys, clicks his mouse, and in no time at all (though the next machine will do it even faster) he's on-line.
He checks his e-mail, hurrying through it, deleting the garbage, the junk mail, answering one message that needs to be answered, keeping the rest for later. Pulls down the Favorite Places menu, selects Newsgroups: ACSK.
And his newsgroup comes on-screen, alt.crime.serialkillers. He scrolls down the list of new messages. There are four in the Jason Bierman thread, and he reads them, and there's nothing very interesting. He's seen this happen time and time again in a thread. After a few days the whole point of the topic gets lost, as people post responses to someone else's off-topic meandering, and as others, the Johnny One-Note element, ride their individual hobby horses- for/against capital punishment, say, or warning of government intrusion and the New World Order. There is a way to screen out messages from the most obnoxious members, you add their names to your killfile and their messages never appear on your screen, but he hasn't done that yet. Soon, perhaps.
There's nothing about Lia Parkman.
Well, how could there be? If all has gone well, they think the little darling had too much to drink and forgot you needed gills to breathe underwater. That may not hold up, it depends how good the medical examiner is and what kind of a day he's having. If they're good, if they look closely, they may well guess that she had help.
Eyes staring up through the water…
But even if they work it out, he realizes, they won't know who did it. That's fine, that's the way he wants it, and yet, well, there is a slight downside.
Bierman's not getting credit.
Bierman's going to drop off the edge of the newsgroup's consciousness. He doesn't really belong there, he's barely a mass murderer and by no means a serial killer. He has three victims, all killed the same day, one miles apart from the others, to be sure, but all slain as part of a single extended episode.
So it's quite proper that he fade and be forgotten.
But there's a real serial killer involved, and nobody even knows. Nobody has a clue!
Call him- well, just for now, call him Arden Brill. It was an error, borrowing a name from that musty old Freudian, but let it go. Unless the investigating officer has a side interest in discredited psychoanalytic claptrap, the name will set off no alarms. So why not use it, if only in the privacy of one's own mind?
Arden Brill has killed not three people but five. He killed twice on West Seventy-fourth Street, twice on Coney Island Avenue (at intervals several hours apart, making them, really, two separate incidents), and now he can claim a fifth victim, on Claremont Avenue.
And no one knows!
He scans the computer screen. At the bottom of the newsgroup window is a button that reads New Message. He clicks on it, and there's a new screen, all set up to receive a message for alt.crime. serialkillers.
On the subject line he types: BIERMAN INNOCENT VICTIM.
No, only the worst idiots use all caps like that. It's the newsgroup equivalent of shouting. He deletes it, tries again: Bierman innocent victim.
Better.
He looks at the screen, then begins to type:
Jason Bierman never killed anybody. He was artfully set up to take the rap for a killer none of you know anything about. That man's name is Arden Brill.
He deletes the last sentence and goes on:
… I am that man, and you may call me Arden Brill. I have killed five times. Bierman was my first victim, the Hollanders numbers two and three. Carl Ivanko was fourth. You have credited Jason Bierman with all of these killings, and he never even met or heard of a single one of his purported victims!