Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

"Maybe he didn't like the band at Dreamland. Maybe he got spooked at Omega and dropped it. Or maybe there's no pattern. Except that, as I read it, he never repeats a disguise at a particular club."

"Yeah, that's his point, that's what he can't afford to do on nights when he meets his victim. But there's got to be a pattern. This is a pattern guy. I know it's there, if I could only-"

The door opened and Guma walked in. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of the two women. "Well, girls," he said, "what are we doing? Playing the pools?"

"No, we're finding your killer," said Marlene. "Come here and look at this."

Marlene quickly filled Guma in on the theory that the man who killed Ellen Wagner was a serial rapist, based on Marlene's case histories and the computer analysis. When she was done, he wrinkled his face into an expression of doubt and said, "I don't know, Marlene. It's fancy, all right, but what does it get us? You know? I go to the cops with this, they'll laugh in my face. The only real connect you got between all these cases is the panty hose on the head. Interesting, but not conclusive. Disguises? In the movies, maybe. Let me see that sheet again."

Guma studied the columns on Caputo's printout for a moment and then flicked the paper with a finger and shook his head. "I see five guys, five joints, random times. It starts every two weeks, fine, but look at March, here. What, the guy took a vacation? He took his panty hose to San Juan?"

He tossed the paper onto his desk and shrugged. "Don't even think cops, kid. Say we finally get a suspect. Think jury. Think reasonable doubt. Imagine convincing twelve people that nine people who ID five different descriptions were raped by the same guy, and that the same guy, who never broke skin on nine, decides to tear number ten to shreds.

"No, we'll get this asshole the usual way. Canvassing the area. Snitches. He'll make a mistake-"

JoAnne Caputo suddenly leapt to her feet and slammed her fist on the desk. "That's it! That's it! I'm so dumb!" She slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand and then retrieved her printout. She sat down again and began scribbling rapidly on it.

"What's going on, JoAnne?" asked Marlene cautiously.

Caputo wrote for a half-minute longer before answering, then threw her pencil down and sat back with an expression of fierce triumph. "There! It's perfect!"

Guma and Marlene moved around the desk to look over her shoulder as she explained. On the paper before her, she had penciled in five additional lines:

Case Club Date Descr.

1 D 12/15 v

2 C 1/03 w

3 A 1/17 x

4 O 2/01 Y

5 T 2/15 z

6 D w

7 C 3/12 x

8 A y

9 O z

10 T 4/25 v

11 D x

12 C 5/24 y

13 A 6/07 z

14 O v

"Mamma mia! There's the pattern," Marlene exclaimed.

"Yeah," said Guma, "the clubs repeat, but what about the X and Y business?"

"That's how he keeps the disguises straight," Caputo explained. "He can't afford to repeat a disguise in a club where he's made a hit. So he runs the disguise sequence out of sync with the club sequence. Look-at number six, the beginning of the second sequence, instead of starting with Mr. V again, he starts with Mr. W. The next sequence starts with Mr. X, and so on. He can keep that going for twenty-five hits. At twice a month, that's a whole year."

Guma knotted his brow. "It's still hard to believe. I mean, there's a zillion clubs. Why does he bother with this?"

"Because it's part of his thrill," Caputo answered with passion. "It's elegant, it's clever, and he figures no one will ever catch on. Also, the guy's a nut. Maybe he feels more in control this way. Maybe he's nervous in a completely strange place. Who the hell cares? We got him."

Marlene was studying the altered chart. "JoAnne, what's number fourteen? Why did you add one at the end?"

"For Wagner. I bet if you check at the Omega Club you're gonna find that the third weekend in June she was talking to a guy five-foot-ten, short blond hair, blue eyes, in white jeans and a windbreaker."

"I'll get the cops moving on it," said Guma, showing real excitement at last. "This, they can understand."

"What can I do for you, Butch?" asked Chief of Detectives Denton. The receiver of the phone was uncomfortably warm and slick against Karp's ear. He thought, what you can do for me is to get me out of this goddamn situation, say it never happened, say Clay Fulton is back among the decent living souls instead of wherever he is, say that the line between the good guys and the bad is still bright and shiny.

What Karp actually said was, "I got a call from Manning. You know, the cop on Bloom's task force?"

A pause. Then, "Yeah?"

"Yeah. He was full of news. It seems somebody tried to assassinate Tecumseh Booth at his mother's apartment house."

"I thought Booth was in custody," said Denton.

"Sprung on a technicality."

"Couldn't you stop that?"

"I wasn't sure I wanted to. I figured Booth in play on the street was a better bet than Booth with his lip buttoned in the cells. Not to mention that Rikers is not the safest place in the world if somebody wants to do you. And I was right, as it happened. It brought them out."

"Did anyone see the hit man?"

"Yes, well, as a matter of fact, Manning said the shooter was identified leaving the scene. According to the cops there, who happened to be his own men, it was Clay Fulton himself. Speaking of whom, when your detectives pressed upon Mr. Booth the basically unsafe nature of his position, and that if he wanted police protection he was going to have to come up with some names, the name Mr. Booth came up with was Clay Fulton."

An expletive that Chief Denton did not ordinarily use hissed over the line. "I agree," said Karp, "but what are we going to do about it?"

"Do about it? Not a damn thing. So some mutt named him. We know it's not him, and who can figure what a mutt is going to say? I could give a rat's ass. As for the other thing-hanging out near the shooting-it's part of the plan. Fulton can handle himself."

Karp took a deep breath, waited, and said, "Yeah, I guess. Look, Chief, you remember a couple of years back we had a bunch of Cubans running around killing people? I recall these guys got their start infiltrating terrorist groups for the feds, and in order to, like, prove they were the real goods, they would pop a couple of people, show their good intentions. Now, do you think it's in the realm of possibility that Clay is doing the same thing? Showing he's a friend by wasting this mutt?"

A silence on the line. Then, "I'll check it out."

"Please," said Karp. "And for the record, Chief-if that's the game plan, official or unofficial, I'm gone. I'm off the court. It's wide open, no deal, whatever falls out. Sorry, but-"

"I understand," said Denton curtly, and hung up. "How was your day?" asked Marlene. They were in a cab, traveling north toward Karp's aunt's apartment.

"Hell on earth," replied Karp in a tone that did not encourage exploration. "How was yours?"

Marlene shrugged. "Nothing much. Putting asses in jail."

"Where did you run off to in such a hurry?"

"Oh, just had to see somebody I forgot about. Nothing special."

She was disinclined to share with Karp the revelations of that afternoon concerning the panty-hose rapist-or the panty-hose killer, as he now was. Karp was being withdrawn and sullen. She could play that game too, although she knew it was stupid and infantile to play back to him what he was putting out. Why should she always be the one to jolly him back to humanity? She was running a major jollying deficit herself, which she did not intend to keep doing into the indefinite future.

Nor did she quite trust him to share her enthusiasm on this case. It wasn't Karp's kind of case, and he would be annoyed to see her plunging into something new when he expected her to be leaving the D.A. in a few weeks. She would drop it in his lap only when it was good and ripe, when they had the guy, and the loose ends were sewn up.