Dream of The Broken Horses, The Read online

  We sit still in the car. To break the silence, I point out the windows of room 201 where the killings took place.

  "If the blinds were open," Pam observes, "someone sitting down here could see inside."

  "Only at night. Anyhow, I'm sure they kept the blinds closed while they made love. Or partially closed so the shadows would stripe their bodies."

  "Still, from here, the shooter could see them arrive, park, go up to the room. Then he could sit here and make his plan, wait for the right moment when no one was coming or going so he wouldn't be seen. Maybe wait till the pool area cleared, then coolly get out, walk across the courtyard, mount the stairs, smash his way into the room."

  "He didn't have to smash his way in. They left the door unlocked. All he had to do was fling it open and fire."

  "The gun — how did he hide it?"

  "Beneath a dark raincoat."

  "I thought you said it was a sweltering afternoon."

  "It was, yes, but then there was a summer storm. It rained hard earlier. Would you take any notice if you saw a man coming up the stairs wearing a raincoat? You'd just give him a glance then turn away."

  Pam scans the motel walls. "Everything must look different here in daylight."

  "You don't notice the neon piping on the roof. The pastel colors leap out. Surfaces are bright, shadows deep. The pool area smells of chorine."

  "Seems to me whoever was on duty in the office would have seen him when he came in."

  "Unless the desk clerk was waiting on a client or watching a baseball game on the lobby TV."

  "He must have heard the shots?"

  "He thought he heard a motorcycle backfiring."

  "Weren't there other witnesses?"

  "Several. But they didn't see much. Just a guy in a dark raincoat with a dark hat pulled down to his eyes, rushing down the stairs, crossing the street, then jumping into a dark car and taking off."

  "I think you're right about it not feeling like a jealous lover's hit," she says. "From what you tell me about Cody, he sounds like the kind who'd take on something like that himself. To vent his anger, get it out of his system. What would be the point of hiring someone else to take them down?"

  "And how would killing her teach her a lesson? Beat her up, throw acid at her, gouge her face — but kill her because she's two-timing you? Doesn't make sense."

  "Still his alibi sounds awfully pat."

  "Unless he made a practice of lunching with judges. The guy was connected, not just to the mob but also to the local political establishment."

  "So if Cody wasn't behind it, who was?"

  "Other people might have wanted her dead."

  "Or Jessup."

  "Or both of them."

  Maybe it was a mistake. The shooter mistook them for another couple."

  I tell her I hadn't thought of that.

  "I want to see the room," she says.

  "We'll come back sometime and have a look."

  "Not now?"

  "I'd rather not, Pam. I was in there last week. Anyhow, it's getting late."

  "You think I want to make love to you up there?"

  "Do you?"

  "I'm not that kinky!" She cuddles against me. "This is so interesting. How're you going to develop new information after so many years?"

  "I probably won't. Anyway, what I find out doesn't have to be new. I just want to get it right, feel it the way it happened. Otherwise it's just an exercise."

  "Feeling it — that's how you do your drawings, isn't it? Get into peoples' heads, then draw what they've seen."

  * * * * *

  On the drive back downtown, she asks me about the Zigzag Killer. She's familiar with some of the tabloid details: that the press called him that because of the zigzag knifework pattern he left on his victims' torsos. Also that he attacked men in the gay enclaves of San Francisco, and that unlike most serial killers, who murder at an increased rate of frequency, he struck only rarely and sporadically over a period of years.

  "The knifework was curious. Lots of speculation about it, that it carried a cryptic meaning, that he was trying to cut lightning bolts, leaving a calling card, trying to obliterate his victims, sending the police some kind of message. None of that concerned me. My job was to draw his face. Only two people were known to have seen him — a middle-aged female resident apartment house manager, who spotted him briefly as he left her building after killing one of the tenants, and a guy who saw the killer leave a gay bar with another victim two years later. Both had worked with good police artists, yet the resulting pictures had nothing in common. In fact, they were so different they canceled each other out. Other artists were brought in to try and reconcile the descriptions. When they couldn't do it, the cops began to think at least one of their witnesses wasn't reliable."

  "So then they brought in the great David Weiss."

  "Who hadn't yet been deemed ‘great’."

  "But who became ‘great’ when he managed to reconcile the two irreconcilable witness descriptions."

  As we speed up Dawson Drive, the skyline of Calista comes into view. The city shows a strong signature at night — a cluster of variegated buildings dominated by Lindstrom's spectacular twin towers, lights on inside for the night cleaning crews, poised against the moonlit sky. The heart of the city casts a light gray glow that surrounds it like a nimbus. Calista seems almost heroic tonight, with a hard, urban beauty rarely noticeable when walking its streets during the day.

  Yes, I tell her, my Zigzag Killer drawing made my name. I spent hours with the two witnesses, trying to exact details each had forgotten, acting always as if I believed everything they told me even while trying to determine whether one or the other had fantasized what each claimed to have seen.

  "It had been six years since the woman saw the guy. Four for the man. The sightings were brief, yet each claimed the guy's face was clearly etched. There was just something about him, both said, that made him unforgettable — a look in his eyes, a confidence, possibly even a smirk... though neither of them ever used that word.

  "My approach is different from most forensic artists. They ask questions about the shape of the suspect's face, hair, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and ears. I do it another way. I want to know how they felt when they saw him, their angle of vision, even the cast of the light. Most important, the set of his face, his expression, because for me that's what best conveys character."

  "I took the male witness back to the bar where he made the sighting. We found the very bar stool where he'd sat. We got the positions right, then reenacted the scene."

  "Seems he was cruising the victim, then was disconcerted when he realized the victim was interested in someone else. So he viewed this other man as a rival. Right away that told me a lot about his mindset."

  "We talked the whole thing through, or rather I let him talk, because what I do best is get a witness going then listen closely to what he says. We narrowed down his viewing time. Turned out he got his only clear look when he checked the guy out in the mirror behind the bar. Then he remembered there was something unattractive about him — an asymmetry in his face. Seems the killer looked quite different in the mirror than when my witness observed him straight on."

  "We were getting somewhere. We went back to his place and I started to draw. I had him sit beside me. Together we shaped the picture. Within an hour we came up with three different views."

  "Next I went to work with the woman. Again we reenacted the scene. The way the cops reconstructed it, he'd just finished his kill. She got a good look at his profile for about a second and a half and from a very narrow angle of view. She'd been sitting in her apartment with the door partially open. He was sort of ‘sliding’ his way out, she said, and his face was set into a rather memorable grimace. When he realized someone was watching, he glanced her way. When he did that, she responded the way most people would — she looked away."

  "At once I understood what was wrong with the other artists' drawings. They'd taken her description then tried
to extrapolate a frontal view. I stayed with the profile. We worked on that, trying to get the grimace and set of the eye on the left side of his face as she'd remembered it. When we were done, I showed her the drawings I'd made with the other witness. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘That's him, that's the guy.’ And the male witness said the same thing when I showed him the drawings I made with her."

  We're off Dawson now, driving on city streets. There's a loneliness to downtown Calista at this hour. The business district's deserted, and the night wind, funneled through the valley, is transformed by the spaces between buildings into whirlpools, miniature tornadoes, that lift and whirl scraps of paper and debris.

  "Sot that's how you came to draw that famous triple view."

  "Turned out to be my trifecta."

  "I remember how when they caught him everyone was so amazed. He had the same weird lopsided face you'd drawn. When I saw live shots of him as the cops hurried him along, he wore the same gloating expression."

  "The best part," I tell her, "was that my drawings led directly to his arrest. That rarely happens. He was arrested twenty-four hours after my sketches appeared on the front page of The Examiner. Soon as they were published, people recognized him and started calling in."

  I pull up in front of The Townsend, turn my car over to the car valet.

  "Have you thought of trying to work with the Flamingo witnesses?"

  "I've thought about it. That's why I've asked to see the file. But it's been twenty-six years. I've never heard of a case where an artist worked with witnesses on something so far back."

  In the lobby, Pam pauses outside the glass doors to Waldo's. "Nightcap?" she asks.

  The bar's half filled. Spencer Deval is mesmerizing Cynthia Liu, my dear friend from the gym, doubtless with one of his well-worn high society sagas. Raucous laughter issues from a corner table where six cameramen trade journalists' war stories. Tony the barman stands straight in his characteristic pose wearing his best world-weary expression.

  We take a pair of stools before him, order cognacs.

  "You look especially pale tonight, Tony," Pam says.

  "Pale as death," Tony agrees.

  "What'd you think about as you stand here?"

  "This ‘n’ that. Also about him."

  Tony nods at the opposite wall. Pam and I turn. The eyes of Waldo Channing gaze back at us out of the portrait.

  "He looks very ‘period,’" Pam says.

  "Oh, he was," Tony agrees.

  She's too young to have firsthand memories of columnists like Channing, but I recall the man quite well. He was a type; most big cities possessed one — a local writer celebrated because he wrote about local celebrities. Such men seemed actually to rule the societies about which they wrote. They inhabited their cities' upper crusts but were capable too of writing about the common folk. A sentimental vignette about a humble laundress might be juxtaposed with scathing notes about a nouveau riche couple on the make. Each strove to glamorize his town, waxing poetic about it even when the place was ugly. They were social arbiters, insiders, walkers, party animals, name-droppers, star-fuckers who would gush like schoolgirls over visiting celebrity singers, actors, entertainers. But if the celebrity wouldn't kiss butt, they'd get him/her really good — belittle her singing, mock his performance in order to proclaim that even us ‘rubes out here in the sticks’ knew the difference between ‘class and trash’. And if you inhabited one of the great cities of the American plain, you dared not cross the one who ruled your town lest you earn his enmity and ever after suffer the poisonous bite of his pen.

  When Tony leaves us to fill drink orders, I tell Pam I didn't like Waldo Channing much.

  "He was small time and a snob. I also think he was anti-Semitic. He wrote some mean things about my dad before and after my parents broke up."

  "Anti-Semitic stuff?"

  "He couldn't get away with that, though genteel anti-Semitism was an unspoken given in his set. No, he ran a gratuitous item about ‘a well-known local shrink’ whose marriage was ‘on the rocks.’ And just weeks before the killings, he ran a blind item implying my dad was having a closer than professional relationship with Barbara Fulraine. He didn't name names, didn't have to. If you were in the know, it was obvious whom he meant. I wish he were still alive. I'd ask him about that item, whether Barbara planted it. They were great pals. I'm sure he knew all about her affairs."

  "But why would she plant something mean about your dad?"

  "Maybe to divert attention from her affair with Jessup. Jack Cody wasn't stupid. He had to know something was going on."

  "Why didn't she just break it off with Cody?"

  "She was afraid of him. At least that's what she said."

  "Seems to me that if he was that dangerous, it was riskier to have an affair behind his back than to break it off."

  "He had some kind of hold over her."

  "The kidnapped child? If she was so smart why didn't she see through that game?"

  "Maybe it wasn't a game. Maybe he was on to something. If the au pair did turn the kid over to her pornographer friends, Cody had the resources to track those people down."

  "But surely the kid was dead."

  "Yes, according to the odds. But a grieving mom will hold on to even the slenderest of threads."

  * * * * *

  Since I revealed myself to her two nights ago, I've been itching to spill the rest — my strange ambiguous intersection with the Fulraine kidnapping that filled me with guilt through my youth.

  Back up in her room, Pam turns to me: "If you're obsessed with the Flamingo case, David — and I believe you are — there must be more to it than that you knew the teacher, went to school with the Fulraine kids, caught occasional glimpses of their mom. You told me about your dad's connection, but I still have a feeling that you left something out."

  She's shrewd, I'll give her that. She's also gotten to me in a way I hadn't expected. But then, I wonder, what did I expect? A simple location affair? That we'd each serve the other as bedmate without complications for the duration of the trial?

  That kind of shallow relationship usually suits my nature. But I'm really starting to like this girl. She turned out to be a lot more than a routinely ambitious reporter. I view her now as both generous and compassionate.

  "Come on, David. Let me help you."

  "I told you, I do better on my own."

  "I don't mean as co-investigator. I mean as your friend. Talk to me. You'll feel better if you do."

  Which is what I myself often tell eyewitnesses when they start to close down on me during an interview. But confession comes hard for me. Tonight, I decide, will not be the night.

  7

  7:00 p.m.

  I'm sitting in a conference room at the Calista County Sheriff's Department just down the hall from Mace Bartel's office. The setting sun paints the opposite wall, covered by framed photos of former sheriffs, with sumptuous light. The result is a reddening of the images, a bloodying. An appropriate effect, I think, considering the material heaped on the conference table in front of me.

  A two-foot-high stack of file folders constitutes the entire written record of the Flamingo Court killings investigation. Three additional boxes contain physical evidence taken from the crime scene. An Aladdin's Cave of treasure for the true crime connoisseur; for me, in a way I've yet fully to comprehend, these are ‘the family jewels.’

  I spend an hour working to gain an overview. Mace, thorough police professional that he is, has attached a detailed index to the documents. The first one I examine is the write-up of interviews conducted by a Detective Joe Burns with Dad. My heart speeds up as I read:

  DR. THOMAS RUBIN

  First interview, 8/24, phone:

  Witness states he treated victim Fulraine for depression over past five months. Witness, citing doctor-patient confidentiality, states he's reluctant to supply information about therapy sessions. Witness states that much as he'd like to assist, he must refer matter to his personal attorney.


  Second interview, 8/26, witness' office:

  Witness states that having consulted attorney he is now prepared to answer questions about victim's psychotherapy in limited way. Witness states he was shocked by victim's death. Witness states he was ‘personally greatly saddened’ as he was ‘very fond’ of victim and felt ‘great empathy’ for her sons, who will now most likely go to live with their father who has been seeking custody.

  Witness states he has no idea who might want to kill victim. Witness states it is common knowledge that victim was involved in long-term love affair with Mr. Jack Cody, and that in therapy she occasionally spoke of her fear Cody might lose control if he discovered she was having ‘a fling’ with co-victim Jessup. Witness states victim was not specific about this nor was it clear to him what she meant. Witness states victim's greatest fear centered around possibility her ex-husband would find out about her love life and use said information to gain custody of sons. Witness states that victim, having already lost one child to kidnappers, had long been obsessed by fears of losing other children as well.

  Witness states he has no specific knowledge of victim's love-life habits and practices. Witness states his sessions with victim dealt with her ‘precarious emotional state, occasionally debilitating depression, and fear that bordered on terror aroused by a haunting recurrent dream.’ Witness refuses to divulge the contents of dream, again citing doctor-patient confidentiality. Witness adds that in any case, dream is not relevant to homicide investigation. Witness states that if he can think of anything helpful he will immediately pass said information on. Meantime he will review all notes on victim's sessions to make certain he has not forgotten anything relevant.