Bolan shook his head.
"Not we, Fran. This is my game. You don't even know the rules."
She bristled at once. She fought to keep her voice down as she answered.
"I'm a police officer. This town is my territory, not yours. Who do you think..."
Bolan cut her off, quietly but firmly.
"You already suspect Fawcett, and if you're right, he couldn't run a scam like this alone. Who do you turn to?"
This time her response was hesitant, halting.
"I have friends on the rape squad..."
"And if there is a cover-up, highly placed, they can't do any more than you can on your own," he finished for her. "Let it go, Fran."
Her face was set in an expression of grim determination.
"No way, buster. I'm not handing this over to you feds on a silver platter. The department can clean its own skirts."
"It's already been handed over," he said with finality. "I'm sorry, Fran, but you're out. Accept it."
Bolan sympathized with the lady, sure, and he let her know it.
"You've been of help," he offered. "Believe it. You can be of more."
"Name it."
"Teach me about rape," he said simply.
She looked at him, making no reply.
"What makes this headcase tick?" he continued. "I need to be inside his head, to see where he lives."
"Careful," she said, her voice softening, "it's dark in there."
"Why does he rape and kill?" Bolan prodded.
"Why not start fires, say, or rob gas stations? Why the sex angle?"
Fran leaned toward him, raising a slim index finger.
"Rape is a crime of violence, not sexuality," she said, secure, on familiar ground now. "Think of it as a personal assault, no different really from a shooting, or a beating."
Bolan nodded his awareness.
"But what comes before the fact?" he asked.
"Maybe rapists are inferiority complex types," she replied, "driven by the need to assert themselves and exercise control over a captive audience.
"That's one theory, anyway. That they perform not sexually, but emotionally. Each attack reaffirms their identity, makes them somebody to be reckoned with. For those few moments, they exist they cannot be ignored."
"Do many rapists kill?"
"No. Maybe one in a thousand will deliberately kill his victim. We're dealing with a special breed of cat."
"A woman hater?"
"Possibly, but not necessarily. He probably hates everybody, and most of all himself. He ambushes women at night because he doesn't have the brains to build bombs or the nerve to climb a tower and shoot it out with the police."
"You read a lot from one sketch," Bolan said.
Fran smiled.
"Don't forget the M.O.," she said. "These crimes are not only identical, they carry the killer's personality. With practice, you can read a crime like a signature."
Bolan nodded. He understood that, sure, from the hard-won experience of his wars overseas and against the domestic Mafia cannibals. They left their marks, all right, like some sort of fingerprint.
"Go on," he urged.
"Okay." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "This freak rapes his victims, and then he kills them with a knife. He mutilates them, but never sexually."
"Explain, Fran."
Another pause, and then she continued.
"Ninety-odd years ago, Jack the Ripper tried to shut down London's red light district single-handed. He never raped his victims, but he indulged in extensive mutilation. More often than not, sex organs were removed, and never found. Now, that is a sex fiend."
"And our headcase is no Ripper?" Bolan asked.
Fran shook her head firmly.
"No way. Oh, superficially there's a similarity, sure. But our man stabs and hacks without any real direction, without any sexual aim. He defaces his victims, diminishes them. And, thereby, he somehow enlarges himself."
"Is he insane?"
She shrugged. "Medically? Of course. Legally, who knows?"
"What happens if he's arrested?"
"That depends. Of course, if there is some kind of plot to cover for him, he could be committed quietly again. And he's already escaped three times."
"What if he goes to trial, Fran?"
"Maybe the same thing. A state hospital instead of some private institution, but those places have revolving doors. He could be 'cured' and released in a few years. Possibly months."
Bolan's voice was cool, determined.
"Okay," he said, "you've helped."
"That's it? End of lesson?"
He smiled. "School's out. And thanks."
"For what?"
"Some insight, some direction," he answered. "I can get inside him now."
When she spoke again, Fran Traynor's voice was almost pleading with him.
"They're not stupid, you know. Psychos, I mean. They get reckless sometimes, but underneath they're frequently as clever as they are vicious."
Bolan nodded. "Okay. I'll be careful."
He didn't need to be told how clever and dangerous a maniac with a self-imposed mission could be.
Bolan rested a warm hand on the lady cop's shoulder for a moment, left some change on the table for their coffees, then left her alone. As he hit the street in his rented sedan, the lady was already out of his mind, crowded from his thoughts by the multitude of things that remained to be done before the curtain could ring down on St. Paul's bloody stage.
First, he needed to touch base with the Politician and see what he had learned about the registration of the two crew wagons. He would have to follow that lead wherever it took him, before he could fit all the pieces together in their final mosaic.
And beyond that?
Somewhere out there, in the large city just stirring into life with the warming rays of the morning sun, there was waiting for him a young man with a blank face and a seriously deranged mind.
That young man, and perhaps several more besides, had an unscheduled appointment with the Executioner.
It was one appointment that Mack Bolan was grimly determined to keep.
10
Mack Bolan had come to St. Paul on what seemed a simple mission.
To help a friend.
To relieve the pain of a suffering comrade-in-arms.
But the nature of the Executioner's mission in the Twin Cities was rapidly shaping up into something else, something vastly different from what he had come to expect. The campaign had all the makings of a unique experience for Bolan in his home-front wars, and the very difference of the mission was what made it so desperate, so dangerous for all concerned.
For openers, Bolan had less solid information about his enemy or enemies than he had ever carried into battle before. In his previous campaigns, whether against the Cong, the Mafia, or the new breed of terrorists that John Phoenix had been resurrected to fight, he had always gone into combat with at least a general understanding of the enemy's number and goals.
He had always known their name and their game, yeah.
But not in St. Paul.
So far, the Executioner knew only that he was searching for one deranged young man who raped and murdered women for reasons best known to himself. An animal who had to be found and very forcefully neutralized.
But along the way, he had already encountered five men who bore all the earmarks of syndicate hardmen, and they seemed to be intent on scuttling any search for the Twin Cities rapist-killer.
That was a new one on Bolan, and he was a long way from having thought it completely through.