James Hall - Body Language

But Alex didn’t buy the profile. As usual, the media jocks assumed everyone else wanted what they themselves hungered so deeply for: publicity, high ratings. But this guy didn’t strike her that way at all. No headline hound. His whole scenario was too intense, too private for that. To Alex, that blood seemed fiercely primal, like the spoor of some fatally wounded animal, a beast too blinded by its hurt to care about the trail it was leaving.

Higher up the wooden railing was another bloody handprint. Alexandra got an establishing shot from five feet away, then two close-in shots. Good clear prints. She moved slowly, warily, eyes roaming in precise concentric circles, five feet out, ten feet, farther. As she’d been trained to look. Second nature now.

Down the hallway, Dan Romano was smoking a cigarette, gazing out at the night sky. Heavy guy with white hair swept back. Thirty years on the force. Homicide lieutenant who was running the Bloody Rapist investigation. Dan was due to retire any day now. Getting philosophical these last few months on the job, bugging everyone with big unanswerable questions. Why is the sky blue? Why does the ivy twine?

‘Place is pretty quiet,’ she said. ‘You run everybody off, Dan? Your charisma on the fritz again?’

Dan flicked his cigarette out into the night, turned to look at her.

‘ME’s getting his pants on; everybody else is rolling. Be here momentarily.’

‘What do we have?’

Dan gave her a wan smile.

‘Your guy’s been naughty again.’

Alexandra shook her head.

‘You can drop that crap. It’s not funny anymore.’

‘Hey, I’m not the only one to notice. Folks are starting to talk.’

‘He’s not mine any more than he’s yours or anybody else’s, so cut the shit.’

Alexandra checked the settings on the Minolta.

‘Like right now, Alex. How tightened up you are. Stiff-jointed. That thing happening with your eye.’

She stared at him.

‘Yeah? And what thing is that?’

‘That twitch, right there in the corner of your left eye. I’m not the only one to notice it. You got a reaction going on, Alex. This guy’s hit a nerve.’

‘I was winking at you, Dan. Flirting. You couldn’t tell?’

He gazed at her for a few seconds and his voice softened.

‘I don’t think so, Alex. I think this is getting to you. I think you need to talk about this to somebody with some training.’

She shook her head, lowered her camera.

‘Come on, Dan. All the shit we wade through every day, I guess I’m entitled to a goddamn eye twitch now and then, don’t you think?’

He kept staring at her for a moment or two; then he sighed and his eyes drifted off to the horizon. He lit another cigarette, took a hungry pull.

She said, ‘I’m finished shooting out here. You want to show me around inside? Or just do it on my own?’

Dan blew out a cloud of smoke and didn’t move. His eyes were scanning the dark heavens.

‘Tell me something, Alex. I been meaning to ask you.’ His voice with that dreamy edge.

‘Oh, brother, here it comes.’

He drew in another hit and let the smoke drift out with his words.

‘Why do you do this shit? You’re a smart, good-looking woman. You got skills, a college diploma; you could do anything. What the hell motivates you?’

He brought his eyes back from the dark and peered at her.

‘It was either this or a nunnery.’ She gave him a light smile, but he didn’t notice.

‘I’d hate to see you wind up like me. Because you know what I’m starting to think, Alex? I’m starting to think I fucking wasted my life. That’s where I am these days. Standing here, on the goddamn threshold of my golden years, I been running these same laps three decades now, and I ask myself what it’s all added up to. And the answer keeps coming up the same. Not a hill of shit.’

‘What do you want, Dan? Want me to try to cheer you up?’

He looked down at the sprinkle of blood near his feet.

‘It won’t work. I’m inconsolable.’ He cocked his head and smiled. ‘I pronounce that right? Inconsolable?’

‘Sounded right to me.’

‘I’m working on my vocabulary. One of my new hobbies, getting ready for retirement. Hell, I never needed a fucking vocabulary on this job.’

‘Well,’ Alex said. ‘Inconsolable seems like a pretty good place to start.’

Dan tilted his head back, stared up at the sky, getting that look again.

Alexandra stepped into the apartment.

The sectional couch was shaped into a U and took up most of the room. It was a green-and-white tropical print. On the glass coffee table was the same bottle of Lucere, a Napa Valley chardonnay that had been at all the other scenes. A high-end grocery store wine, but not rare enough to be helpful.

Sprawled on the beige rug in the center of the U was a pretty woman in her late twenties with short black hair. She was naked and her slender body had been rearranged. The killer had laid her out flat on her back with her arms hugging her belly as if she’d been kicked in the gut and was fighting for air.

‘Same as number one,’ Dan said from the door. ‘Like maybe he’s run out of poses and he’s starting the cycle again.’

‘Maybe.’

There was a deep cut at her throat, like the others. She was slender and her eyes were open – dark and disconnected.

‘Landlord found her. A week late on her rent. He knocked, walked in. I’m guessing she’s been dead more than twenty-four, less than thirty-six.’

‘Seems about right,’ Alex said.

The other four women had been naked, as well. All the bodies were laid out in different positions, each one portraying another violent drama. The homicide guys had given each a name. Number one, like this one, was known as ‘Gasper.’ Number two was found lying on her side bent at the waist with her hands covering her ears as if she were trying to shut out some gruesome noise. ‘Hear No Evil’ the detectives called her. Number three had given the namers the most trouble. Like two, she’d been placed on her left side with her legs forward, but this one’s arms had been extended in front of her, one at chest level, one arm stretching out from beneath her head, a flailing motion as if she were trying to fight off a swarm of bees. They called her ‘The Swatter.’ And then about a month ago, they’d found the fourth victim badly decomposed in her Little Havana apartment. Her nude body was lying face up with arms and legs spread as if she were floating tranquilly on the quiet surface of a lake. So ‘Floater’ it was.

The FBI examined the photos and found no matches with any other signature killings around the country in the last ten years. Their profilers theorized the Bloody Rapist was creating particular scenarios from his past, trying to reconstruct moments of abuse he’d witnessed as a child – probably acts of violence against his mother he was helpless to prevent.

But that was far too neat an explanation for Alexandra, too off-the-rack. Just as likely the killer had repositioned the women according to the twisted commandments of some crazed inner voice. But these days everyone wanted a formula, a nifty explanation for guys like this. As if his actions might make a kind of sense, raping women, slashing their throats, repositioning them, then leaving a trail of blood leading away from the scene. Like sure, of course, he must have seen his father beat his mother, then leave her in these exact positions on the living room floor, and he’d walked away bleeding from the scratch marks she’d given him, so now the grown-up boy, that poor, twisted son of a bitch, is compelled to re-enact endlessly those traumatic episodes, laying the dead women out like sacrificial offerings to his past.