straight.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. It was none of my business,” said Preduski.
“But it occurred to me that in her line of work there would be a lot of
temptation for a girl who needed money.”
“She made eight hundred a week stripping and hustling drinks,” Sarah
said. “She only spent money on her books and apartment. She was
socking it in the bank. She didn’t need more.”
Preduski was somber. “But you see why I had to ask?
If she opened the door to the killer, he must have been someone she
knew, however briefly. That’s what puzzles me most about this whole
case. How does the Butcher get them to open the door?”
Graham had never thought about that. The dead women were all young, but
they were from varied backgrounds. One was a housewife.
One was a lawyer. Two were school-teachers. Three secretaries, one
model, one sales clerk…. How did the Butcher get so many different
women to open their doors to him late at night?
The kitchen table was littered with the remains of a hastily prepared
and hastily eaten meal. Bits of bread. The dried edge of a slice of
bologna. Smears of mustard and mayonnaise. Two apple cores.
A can of cling peaches empty of everything except an inch of packing
syrup. A drumstick gnawed to the bone. Half a doughnut.
Three crushed beer cans. The Butcher had been ravenous and sloppy.
“Ten murders,” Preduski said, “and he always goes to the kitchen for a
snack afterward.”
Stifled by the psychic atmosphere of the kitchen, by the incredibly
strong, lingering presence of the killer which was nearly as heavy here
as it had been in the dead woman’s bedroom, Graham could only nod. The
mess on the table, in contrast with the otherwise tidy kitchen,
disturbed him deeply. The peach can and the beer can were covered with
reddish-brown stains; the killer had eaten while wearing his bloody
gloves.
Preduski shuffled forlornly to the window by the sink. He stared at the
neighboring apartment house. “I’ve talked to a few psychiatrists about
these feasts he has when he’s done the dirty work.
As I understand it, there are two basic ways a psychopath will act when
he’s finished with his victim. Number one, there’s Mr. Meek. The
killing is everything for him, his whole reason for living, the only
color and desire in his life. When he’s done killing, there’s nothing,
he’s nothing. He goes home and watches television.
Sleeps a lot. He sinks into a deep pit of boredom until the pressures
build up and he kills again. Number two, there’s the man who gets
psyched up by the murder. His real excitement comes not during the
killing but after it. He’ll go straight from the scene of the crime to
a bar and drink everyone under the table. His adrenaline is up. His
heartbeat is up. He eats like a lumberjack and sometimes picks up
whores by the six-pack. Apparently, our man is number two.
Except .
“Except what?” Graham asked.
Turning away from the window, Preduski said, “Seven times he’s eaten a
big meal in the dead women’s own homes. But the other three times, he’s
taken the food out of the refrigerator and faked a big meal.”
“Faked it? What do you mean?”
“The fifth murder, the Liedstrom woman,” Preduski said. He closed his
eyes and grimaced as if he could still see her body and blood. “We were
aware of his style by then. We checked the kitchen right away.
There was an empty pear can on the table, an empty cottage cheese
container, the remains of an apple and several other items. But there
wasn’t a mess. The first four times, he’d been sloppy-like he was
tonight. But in the Liedstrom kitchen, he hadn’t left a lot of crumbs.
No smears of butter or mustard or mayonnaise or ketchup. No bloodstains
on the beer cans.”
He opened his eyes and walked to the table. “We’d I found well-gnawed
apple cores in two of the first four kitchens.” He pointed at an apple
core on the table in front of him. “Like that one.
The lab had even studied the teeth marks on them. But in the Liedstrom