Текст книги "The Butcher's Theatre"

Автор книги: Jonathan Kellerman

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Juliet Haddad ("They call me Petite Julie"), born in Tripoli, a professional whore. Twenty-seven years old, dark and pretty, with a baby face that made her appear ten years younger.

The illusion of youth ended below the slashed neck-what remained of her body was flabby, mottled, the thighs lumpy and scarred with old cigarette burns. The uterus was gone, severed and lifted out like some bloody treasure, according to Dr. Levi's report, but tissue analyses of the other organs revealed evidence of gonorrhea and primary syphilis, successfully treated. Like Fatma, she'd been sedated with heroin, but for her it was no maiden voyage: scores of sooty, fibrosed needle marks surrounded the pair of fresh ones. Additional marks in the bend of her knees.

"She was washed as clean as the other," Dr. Levi told Daniel. "But physiologically speaking, she was far from spotless-a damaged young woman, probably abused for years.

There were hairline fractures all over the skull-like spider-webbing. Some evidence of minor damage to the dura of the occipital and frontal lobes of the brain."

"Would that have affected her intelligence?"

"Hard to say. The cerebral cortex is too complex to assess retroactively. Loss of function in one area can be compensated for by another."

"How about an educated guess?"

"Not if you'll hold me to it."

"Off the record."

"Off the record, she may have had visual problems-distortions, blurring-and a dulling of emotional responses, like the patients the Russians do psychosurgery on. On the other hand, she may have functioned perfectly-there's no way to tell. I've examined brains that have necrosed to nothing-you'd bet the owner was a vegetable. Then you talk to the family and find out the guy played chess and solved complex math problems up until the day he died. And others that look picture-perfect and the owners were morons. You want to know how smart she was, find someone who knew her when she was alive."

"Any theories about the uterus?"

"What did the psychiatrists say?"

"I haven't spoken to any of them yet."

"Well," said Levi, "I suppose I can guess as well as they can. Hatred of women, destruction of femininity-removal of the root of femininity."

"Why take this one and not Fatma's?"

"Maniacs change, Dani, just like anyone else. Besides, Fatma's uterus was virtually obliterated, so in some sense he was destroying her womanhood, too. Maybe he removed this one in order to take his time with it, do God-knows-what. Maybe he's decided to start a collection-didn't Jack the Ripper start off by carving, then progress to removing organs? One of the kidneys, if I remember correctly, wasn't it? Sent a chunk to the police, claimed to have eaten the rest of it."

"Yes," said Daniel, thinking: butchery, cannibalism. Until Gray Man, such horrors had been pure theory, cases in the homicide textbook. The kind of thing he never thought he'd need to know about.

Levi must have read his mind.

"No sense escaping it, Dani," said the pathologist. "That's what you've got here-another Jack. Better bone up on maniacs. He who forgets history is condemned and all that."

According to Northern District, Juliet had claimed to be a Christian, a political refugee from East Beirut, wounded in the invasion and fleeing the Sh?tes and the PLO. Asked how she'd gotten into the country, she'd told a story of hitching a ride with an Israeli tank unit, which seemed far-fetched. But she'd showed the interrogators a recent head wound and a Kupat Holim registration card from Rambam Hospital to back the story up, along with a Haifa address and temporary-resident ID, and the police, busy with more serious matters than another small-change street-walker, had accepted her story and let her go with a warning.

Which was unfortunate, because just a cursory investigation revealed that the story was a sham. Immigration had no record of her, the Haifa address was an abandoned building, and a visit by Schmeltzer and Avi Cohen to Rambam Hospital revealed that she'd been treated in the emergency room– for epilepsy, not a wound.

The doctor who'd seen her was gone, on a fellowship in the States. But his handwriting was clear and Shmeltzer read aloud from his discharge notes:

Treated successfully with phenobarbitol and Dilantin, full abatement of overt seizure activity. The patient claims these seizures were her first, and stuck to this, despite my explicit skepticism. I wrote a prescription for a month's worth of medication which was provided to her by the hospital pharmacy, gave her Arabic-language brochures on epilepsy and admitted her for observation, including comprehensive neurologic and radiographic studies. The following morning, her bed was empty and she was nowhere to be found. She has not recontacted this institution. Diagnosis: Grand mal epilepsy. Status: Self-Discharged, Against Medical Advice.

"Translation," said Shmeltzer, "she was a little liar, conned them into free medication."

Avi Cohen nodded and watched the older man flip through the pages of the medical chart.

"Well, well, take a look at this, boychik. Under Nearest Relative or Admitting Party, there's a little army stamp."

Cohen leaned over, pretending he could make sense of it.

"Yalom, Zvi," read Shmeltzer. "Captain Zvi Yalom, Tank Corps-goddamned army captain checked her in. She was levelling about the tank unit." He shook his head. "The little slut had an official military escort."

To listen to Yalom, he'd acted solely out of compassion.

"Listen, you were there-you know how it was: the Good Border and all that. We fed hundreds of them, gave them free medical care."

"Those were political refugees," said Avi Cohen. "Christians. And all of them went back."

"She was Christian too."

"Got to know her pretty well, didn't you?"

Yalom shrugged and took a drink of orange soda. He was a handsome, somewhat coarse-looking man in his late twenties, blond, ruddy, and broad-shouldered, with immaculately manicured hands. In civilian life, a diamond cutter at the Tel Aviv Exchange. His home address in Netanya had been traced quickly through army records, and Avi had invited him for lunch at a sidewalk cafe near the beach.

A beautiful Monday morning. The sky was as blue as the sapphire in Yalom's ring; the sand, granulated sugar. But Netanya had changed, Avi decided. A lot different from the days when his family used to summer there-a suite at the Four Seasons, calls to room service for hamburgers and Cokes with maraschino cherries, all of them staying too long in the sun, getting burned pepper-red. After-dinner strolls, his father pointing out the gangsters sitting at cafe tables. Exchanging greetings with some of them.

Now, the buildings seemed shabbier, the streets more crowded, thick with traffic and exhaust fumes, like a miniature Tel Aviv. Just a block away he could see black people sitting on the front stoop of a decrepit-looking apartment building. Ethiopians-the government had settled hundreds of them here. The men wore kipol; the women covered their hair, too. Religious types, but in blackface. Strange.

"You going to get me into trouble?" asked Yalom.

Avi smiled noncommittally. He liked this, enjoyed the feeling of authority. Sharavi had made good on his word, kept him away from reading, given him a real assignment.

He's a Lebanon vet. You should be able to relate to him.

Thank you, Pakad.

Doing your job well will be sufficient thanks.

"It could really fuck me up, Avi," said Yalom.

Overly familiar, thought Avi, using my first name like that. But some military officers had an attitude problem, thought of the police as second-class soldiers.

"Speaking of fucking," he said, "is that how you met her?"

Yalom squinted with anger. He kept a smile on his lips and drummed his perfect fingertips on the table. "You a virgin, kid?"

"How about," said Avi, starting to stand, "we continue this conversation at National Headquarters."

"Wait," said Yalom. "Sorry. It's just that I'm nervous. The tape recorder bothers me."

Avi sat down again. Moved the recorder closer to Yalom.

"You've got good reason to be nervous."

Yalom nodded, reached him into his shirt pocket, and offered a pack of Rothmans to Avi.

"No, thanks, but suit yourself."

The diamond cutter lit up, turning his head so that the smoke blew in the direction of the beach, the sea breeze catching it, thinning it to wispy ribbons. Avi looked over his shoulder, saw girls in bikinis carrying towels and beach baskets. Watched the little dimples in their backs, just above the ass-slit, and longed, for a moment, to be with them.

"She was scared," said Yalom. "The place she worked was on the Christian side of Beirut, private club, members only. She was afraid the Sh?tes would come and get her after we left."

"What kinds of members?" asked Avi, remembering what Sharavi had told him about the skull fractures, the cigarette burns.

"Foreigners. Diplomats, businessmen, professors from the American University. The place was too expensive for the locals, which was one of the reasons she wanted to get out-some fundamentalists had threatened to bomb the building, slapped up a poster calling it a receptacle for the semen of infidels, or something like that."

"You see the poster yourself?"

"No," said Yalom quickly. "I was never there. This was all from her."

"Where'd you meet her, then?"

"We were pulling out of the city. She was standing in the middle of the road, near the barriers between East and West. Waving her hands and crying. She refused to move and I couldn't just squash her, so I got out, checked for snipers, talked to her, felt sorry for her, and gave her a lift. She was supposed to go as far as Bin Jbeil, but then she started having seizures and I decided to take her all the way."

"Considerate of you."

Yalom grimaced. "All right, looking back it was stupid. But I felt sorry for her-it was no felony."

Avi sipped his beer.

"How many of you banged her?" he asked.

Yalom was silent. The hand holding his cigarette began tc shake. Bad trait for someone in his line of work, thought Avi. He sipped and waited.

Yalom looked around at the adjoining tables, moved closer and lowered his voice.

"How the hell was I supposed to know she was going to get carved up?" he said. Avi saw that there were tears in his eyes, the tough-guy posture all gone. "I just got married a couple of months ago, Samal Cohen. It's my wife I'm more worried about than the army."

"Then why don't you just tell me the truth and I'll do my best to keep your name out of the papers."

"All right, all right. What I told you about picking her up out of sympathy is right-I was trying to be human. Look where it got me-when we let the Arabs massacre each other we're fucked and when we try to be human, the same damned thing. No way to win."

"You picked her up out of sympathy," said Avi, prompting. "But…"

"But a bunch of us had her, okay? She offered it for free, she was cute-looking, and we'd just been through two months of hell-the snipers, two of my best drivers were blown up by mines… For God's sake, you know what it was like."

Avi thought of his own tour in Lebanon. Hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Beirut, routing the PLO, putting his own ass on the line in order not to shoot the women and children-the human shields those bastards used habitually. Then, a month of guard duty at Ansar Prison, feeling out of control as he stood watch over sulking hordes of PLO captives wearing the blue jogging suits the army issued them. Unable to stop the tough guys from bullying the weaker ones, unable to prevent them from building homemade spears and daggers. Hugging his Uzi like a lover as he watched the tough ones circle the flock, picking off the effeminate ones. Choosing the softest boys to be brides at mock weddings. Dressing them up like girls, painting their faces and plucking their eyebrows and beating them when they cried.

Gang-fucks when the lights went out. Avi and the other soldiers trying to shut out the screams that rose, like bloody clouds, above the grunts and heavy breathing. The "brides" who survived were treated the next morning for shock and torn anuses.

"I know," said Avi, meaning it. "I know."

"Three fucking years," said Yalom, "and for what? We've replaced the PLO with Sh?tes and now they're shooting Katyushas at us. You going to blame us for having a free taste? We didn't know if we were going to get out of there alive, so we had her, had a few giggles-it was temporary relief. I'd do it all over again-" He stopped himself. "Maybe I wouldn't. I don't know."

"What else did she say about her clients?" asked Avi, following the outline the Yemenite had suggested to him.

"They went in for rough stuff," said Yalom. "The brothel was designed to accommodate that type. Professors, educated types, you'd be surprised at the things that turned them on. I asked her how she could stand it. She said it was okay, pain was okay."

"As if she liked it?"

Yalom shook his head. "As if she didn't care. I know it sounds strange, but she was strange-kind of dull, half asleep."

"Like a defective?"

"Just dull, as if she'd been knocked around so much nothing mattered to her anymore."

"When she begged you to take her with you it mattered."

Yalom's face registered self-disgust. "She conned me. I'm a fool, okay?"

"You saw the needle marks on her arms, right?"

Yalom sighed. "Yes."

"She mention any friends or suppliers?"

"No."

"Anything about her past that could connect her to anyone? Maybe one of the educated ones?"

"No. We were in back of the halftrack, riding south in the dark. There wasn't much conversation."

"Nothing about the seizures?"

"No, that took me by surprise. All of a sudden she's all rigid, moving back and forth, teeth chattering, frothing at the mouth-I thought she was dying. You ever see that kind of thing?"

Avi remembered the epileptic kids in the Special Class. Retards and spastics, shaking and drooling. He'd felt like a freak being with them, cried hysterically until his mother had pulled him out.

"Never," he said. "What was she doing when it started to happen?"

"Sleeping."

"Lucky, huh?"

Yalom looked at the detective, puzzled.

"Lucky," said Avi, smiling, "that she wasn't going down on you when she started to shake. Hell of a way to pick up a war wound."

There was no record of Juliet's whereabouts during the four months following her release by Northern District. No pimp or whore or drug dealer admitted to knowing her; no substation had booked her. She hadn't applied for welfare or any other kind of public assistance, nor had she worked in a legitimate job and gotten on the tax rolls.

It was as if she'd gone underground, thought Daniel, like some kind of burrowing animal, surfacing only to be torn apart by a waiting predator.

She could have plied her profession independently, he knew, pulling tricks on side streets in out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Or taken an unregistered side job-as a charwoman or fruit picker. In neither case were they likely to find out about it. An employer would be less than enthusiastic about admitting he'd hired her illegally, and those who'd purchased her favors were sure to keep silent.

The strongest thing they had going for them was the epilepsy angle and the best way to work that was footwork: a canvass of doctors, hospitals, Kupat Holim clinics, and pharmacists. The medication she'd received at Rambam had run out some time ago, which meant she'd have gotten a refill somewhere.

They started, all of them, checking out neurologists and neurological clinics; when none of that bore fruit, moved on to general practitioners and emergency rooms. Showing Juliet's picture to busy people in white uniforms, searching for her name in patient rosters and charts. Eye-straining work, reeking of tedium. Avi Cohen was less than useless for most of it, so Daniel had him handle the telephones, cataloging crank calls and following the false leads and compulsive confessions that the newspaper articles had started to bring in.

By the end of the week they'd learned nothing and Daniel knew that the whole endeavor was questionable. If Juliet had been streetwise enough to get her hands on fake ID within days of coming across the border, she probably had multiples, with false names and birth dates. Her baby face would have allowed her to claim anything from seventeen to thirty. How could you trace someone like that?

Even if they managed to connect her to some doctor or druggist, what good would it do? This was no crime of passion, the victim's destiny interlaced with that of the killer. She'd been slain because of a chance meeting with a monster. Persuasive words, the exchange of money, perhaps. Then a rendezvous in some secret, dark place, the expectation of hurried sex, a recreational shot of dope. Blackness. Surgery.

He hoped neither she nor Fatma had ever known what was happening to them.

Surgery. He'd started thinking of it in medical terms, because of the anesthesia, the washing, the removal of the uterus, though Levi assured him that no special medical knowledge had been necessary to perform the extraction.

Simple stuff, Dani. A butcher orshohet or nurse or medical corpsman could have done it without special training. If I gave you an anatomy book you could do it yourself. Anyone could. Whenever something like this happens people always start looking for a doctor. It's nonsense.

The pathologist had sounded defensive, protective of his profession, but Daniel had no reason to doubt what he was saying.

Anyone.

But here they were, talking to doctors.

Hospitals.

Right after Fatma's murder, he'd thought about the Amelia Catherine, the proximity of the hospital to the dumping ground, how easy it would have been to hide the body in a big, empty building like that, sneak out at the right time during Schlesinger's shift in order to dump it. But apart from a rumor that Dr. Walid Darousha was homosexual, the Amelia Catherine people had turned up clean on every record check. And the trail he'd followed up through Silwan had made him forget about the U.N. hospital.

Did U.N. clinics, he wondered, see epilepsy patients? He was almost certain they had to-the disorder was common. Those files would be off-limits to his men. Unless he wanted to make a stink about it, get embroiled with Sorrel Baldwin and others like him. All that U.N. bureaucracy.

Baldwin-now there was something interesting. Before coming to Jerusalem, the American had lived in Beirut, Juliet's former home base. He'd earned a degree from the American University-sociology; Daniel remembered the diploma. According to the tank captain Cohen had interviewed, Juliet's brothel had catered to foreigners. American University personnel-Yalom had mentioned that specifically. A coincidence? Probably. The university was a breeding ground for Arabists; lots of them ended up working for the U.N. Still, it would have been interesting to talk to Baldwin in depth. Impossible without going through the brass.

Evidence, Laufer would bark at him. What evidence do you have for me to get my hands dirty, Sharavi? Challenging their diplomatic immunity? Stick with the case and don't run off on another tangent, Sharavi.

Since the discovery of Juliet's body, the deputy commander was in foul spirits. Pickled by his own press release, fermenting in ruined optimism. Firing off memos that inquired shrilly about progress. Or the lack of it.

Evidence. Daniel knew he had none. There was nothing to tie Juliet in with Baldwin or anyone else at the Amelia Catherine. Her body had been dumped clear across town, in the pine forest near Ein Qerem, on the southwest side of town. About as far from Scopus as you could get.

A Jewish National Fund forest, financed by the penny-in-a-blue-box donations of schoolchildren. The corpse wrapped in white sheeting, just like Fatma's. Discovered by a pair of early morning hikers, teenage boys, who'd run from the sight, goggle-eyed with fear. The Russian nuns who lived nearby at the Ein Qerem Convent had seen and heard nothing.

Then there was the matter of Brother Joseph Roselli. Daniel had dropped by Saint Saviour's hours after the discovery of the second body, found the monk on his rooftop, and showed him Juliet's death picture. Roselli had exclaimed: "She could be Fatma's sister!" Then his face had seemed to collapse, features falling, restructuring suddenly in a tight-lipped mask. His demeanor from that point had been hard and cold, taut with outrage. A completely different side of the man. Daniel supposed he couldn't be faulted for his indignation: Men of God weren't accustomed to being considered murder suspects. But the shift was sudden. Strange.

He couldn't shake the feeling that Roselli was harboring some secret, struggling with something… but the resumption of Daoud's nighttime surveillance had turned up nothing so far.

No evidence and two dead girls.

He thought about Fatma and Juliet for a while, tried to establish some kind of connection between the runaway from Silwan and the whore from Beirut, then scolded himself for going off on tangents. Obsessing about the victims instead of trying to understand the killer, because the victims had names, identities, and the killer was an enigma.

Seven days had separated the two murders. Now, a week had passed since Juliet had been found.

Was something happening right now? Another helpless woman seduced into endless sleep?

And if so, what was there to do?

He kept thinking about it-cursing his helplessness-until his belly filled with fire and his head felt ready to burst.

After a Shabbat supper during which he nodded and smiled at Laura and the children, hearing them but not listening, he went into the laundry room that Laura had converted to a studio, carrying an armful of books and monographs checked out of the library at National Headquarters. The room was bright-he'd left the light on before Sabbath, stacked Laura's stretched canvases neatly on the floor. Sitting among rolls of fabrics and tins of wax, jars filled with brushes and paint-encrusted palettes, he began to read.

Case histories of serial killers: Landru; Herman Mudgett; Albert Fish, who murdered and ate little children; Peter Kurten, a nauseating excuse for a human being who had well earned the nickname Dusseldorf Monster. According to one expert, the Germans produced a disproportionate number of sex murders-something to do with an impoverished collective unconscious.

And, of course, Jack the Ripper. Rereading a book on the Ripper case give him pause, because some experts were convinced the scourge of Whitechapel had been a Jew-a shohet whose experience as a ritual slaughterer made him an expert in anatomy. He remembered what Dr. Levi had said, and he thought of the shohtim he knew: Mori Gerafi, a tiny, kind Yemenite who seemed too gentle for the job. Rabbi Landau, who worked out of the Mehane Yehuda market. Learned men, pious and scholarly. The thought of them carving up women was absurd.

He put the Ripper book aside and forged onward.

Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis-people chasing pleasure in hideous ways. Interpol and FBI reports-the German theory notwithstanding, America seemed to have more serial killers than any other country. One estimate said there were forty or forty of them doing their dirty work at any given time, more than five hundred unresolved serial murders. The FBI had begun to program a computer in order to catalog all of it.

Thirty roving monsters. Such cruelty, such evil.

Street-corner Mengeles. Why had God created them?

He finished at two in the morning, dry-mouthed and heavy-lidded, Laura's drawing lamp the sole illumination in the silent, dark apartment.

Was it happening right now? The ritual, the outrage-an inert body laid out for dissection?

Knowing his dreams would be polluted, he went to sleep.

He awoke at dawn, expecting bad news. None came and he faked his way through Shabbat.

At nine on Sunday morning he filled an attache case with papers and went to see Dr. Ben David. The psychologist's main office was at Hebrew University but he kept a suite for private consultations in the front rooms of his flat on Rehov Ramban.

Daniel arrived early and shared the claustrophobic waiting room with a tired-looking woman who hid from eye contact behind the international edition of Time magazine. Ten minutes before the hour, Ben David came out of the treatment room with a skinny, large-eyed boy of about five. The boy looked at Daniel and smiled shyly. The detective smiled back and wondered what could trouble such a young child so deeply that he needed a psychologist.

The woman put the Time into her purse and stood.

"All right," said Ben David heartily, in English. "I'll see Ronny the same time next week."

"Thank you, Doctor." She took her son by the hand and the two of them left quickly.

"Daniel," said Ben David, taking the detective's hand in both of his and shaking it energetically. He was a young man, in his early thirties, medium-sized and heavyset, with bushy black hair, a full dark beard, light-blue eyes that never rested, and a fitful nature that had taken Daniel by surprise the first time they'd met. He'd always thought of psychotherapists as passive, quiet. Listening and nodding, waiting for you to talk so they could pounce with interpretations. The one he'd seen at the rehab center had certainly fit the stereotype.

"Hello, Eli. Thank you for seeing me."

"Come in."

Ben David ushered him into the treatment room, a smallish, untidy office lined with bookshelves and furnished with a small desk, three sturdy chairs, and a low circular table upon which sat a dollhouse in the shape of a Swiss chalet, doll furniture, and half a dozen miniature human figurines. Behind the desk was a credenza piled high with papers and toys. Next to the papers were an aluminium coffepot, cups, and a sugar bowl. No couch, no inkblots. A single Renoir print on the wall. The room smelled pleasantly of modeling clay.

Daniel sat on one of the chairs. The psychologist went to the crcdenza.

"Coffee?"

"Please."

Ben David prepared two cups, gave Daniel his, and sat down opposite him, sipping. He was wearing a faded burgundy polo shirt that exposed a hard, protuberant belly, baggy dark-green corduroy trousers, and scuffed loafers without socks. His hair looked disheveled; his beard needed trimming. Casual, careless even, like a graduate student on holiday. Not like a doctor at all, but such were the perquisites of status. Ben David had been an academic prodigy, chief of the army's psychological service at twenty-seven, a full professor two years later. Daniel supposed he could dress any way he pleased.

"So, my friend." The psychologist smiled cursorily, then shifted in the chair, moving his shoulders with almost tic-like abruptness. "I don't know what I can tell you that we haven't covered on Gray Man."

"I'm not sure, myself." Daniel pulled the forensic reports and crime summaries out of his case and handed them over. He drank coffee and waited as the psychologist read.

"Okay," said Ben David, scanning quickly and looking up after a few moments. "What do you want to know, specifically?"

"What do you think about the washing of the bodies? What's the meaning of it?"

Ben David sat back in his chair, flipped one leg over the other, and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Let me start with the same warning I gave you before. Everything I tell you is pure speculation. It could be wrong. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Given that, my best guess is that the pathologist may very well be right-the killer was attempting to avoid leaving physical evidence. Something else to consider-and the two notions aren't "mutually exclusive-would be a power play, playing God by preparing and manipulating the body. Were the corpses positioned in any way? Posed?'

Daniel thought about that.

"They looked as if they were set down neatly," he said. "With care."

"When you saw the first body what was your initial impression?"

"A doll. A damaged doll."

Ben David nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I like that. The victims may very well have been used as dolls."

He turned and pointed to the miniature chalet. "Children engage in doll-play in order to achieve a sense of mastery over their conflicts and fantasies. Artists and writers and composers are driven to produce out of similar motivations. The creative urge-everyone wants to be godlike. Sex killers do it by destroying life. Gray Man tossed his victims aside. This one's more creative."

It sounded blasphemous to Daniel. He said nothing.

"Collecting accurate data on sex killers is difficult, because we have access only to the ones who get caught-which may be a biased sample. And all of them are liars, so their interview data are suspect. Nevertheless, the Americans have done some good research, and a few patterns seem to hold– the things I told you about Gray Man. Your man's an exceptionally immature psychopath. He's grown up with a chronic and overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness-a creative blockage, if you will. He's been constructing power fantasies since early childhood and building his life around them. His family was intact. His family life was a mess but may have appeared outwardly normal to the casual observer. Normal sex doesn't work for him. He needs violence and domination-helplessness of the victim-to get aroused. In the beginning, violent fantasies were enough to satisfy him. Then, while still a child, he moved on to torturing and possibly having sex with animals. As an adolescent, he may have progressed to human rapec. When that no longer fulfilled his power needs, he began killing. Murder serves as a substitute for intercourse: beginning with some sort of subjugation and following in with stabbing and hacking-the exaggerated sexual metaphor, the literal piercing and entry of the body. He chooses women as victims but may be latently homosexual."

Thinking of the rumour about Dr. Darousha, Daniel asked, "What about an active homosexual?"

"No," said Ben David. "The key word is latent. He's fighting to suppress those impulses, may even be hypermasculine-a real law-and-order type. There are homosexual sex killers, of course, but they usually murder men." Ben David thought for a moment. "There are records of a few pansexual murderers-Kurten, the Dusseldorf Monster, did away with men, women, children. But unless you start tuning up male victims, I'd concentrate on latent homosexuals."