The Murder Channel (6 page)

“It was in the van that crashed,” I said.

“Your head was bleeding. It’s not anymore.”

I touched the abrasion on my forehead. “They were transporting me to a court hearing and the van overturned.”

“I’m not strong enough to make you leave. My name is Sable.”

“Felix.”

“Like the cat. Why did you come here?”

“I was cold. I saw the light from the fish tank. I thought this was a pet store.”

She glanced at the aquarium. “It is pretty, but it’s not the same as having a black, furry cat. I can’t have a cat here, so they gave me fish. Fish need someone to care for them too. I have to remember to feed them. That’s how I remember to take my medication. I was going to make soup. Will you let me do that? Would you like some? It’s chicken noodle.”

I looked at the door.

“No one comes here,” she said. “Is that what you want to know? I probably shouldn’t tell you that, should I? Day hospital was canceled today because of the storm. That’s why I’m not there. No one is.”

“I’d like some soup,” I said.

“The bathroom is at the end of the hall. You can wash there. If you promise not to shoot me, I won’t try to run away. I seldom meet anyone new, and I never have anyone to talk to.”

The woman, Sable, was drab, gray, and plain. She wore a paint-spattered work shirt, and dark jeans. Her hair was black, trimmed close like a boy. She stood motionless in the doorway, waiting for my assurance that I would not kill her.

“I promise I won’t shoot you,” I said.

Sable disappeared through the arch. I followed her, found the hallway, then the small, L-shaped bathroom. There was another door opposite the kitchen.

“Where does this go?” I asked.

“The cellar. We’re supposed to put our trash out there. Cockroaches come in under the door at night. There’s a clanky furnace, a long hallway that connects all the buildings …. I don’t know. I don’t like to go out there. I can’t read Stephen King, either. Too scary.”

I ducked under heat pipes and stood at the bathroom mirror to examine the gash on my head. I heard Sable bang cabinets, cans, and pots.

“Alcohol and cotton balls are in the cabinet,” she called. “I think they are.”

I leaned the Mossberg against the wall, found the first aid supplies, and cleaned my wound. Then I applied gauze and adhesive tape.

Sable was like the young women in the general population at the criminal psych unit. She was buzzed out, probably on Prolixin or some other mind-numbing drug that creates the zombies who walk the back-ward shuffle. Like most of them, she was straightforward, perhaps too honest for her own good.

I felt a weight in my pocket and pulled out the deputy’s compact but powerful nine-millimeter handgun.

Sable stood in the doorway. “The soup is ready. When are you going to shoot someone?”

I looked at her dark, vacant eyes, then at the black and silver weapon in my hand. I considered avoiding the truth, but saw no point in that.

“I already did,” I said.

She gazed into the hallway, scratched her head with her right hand while biting her left index finger. Finally she said, “I made two cans. I hope you’re hungry. They’re both chicken, but one has rice and the other has noodles.”

I followed her into the small kitchen.

“I gave you the big bowl,” she said. “There are crackers, and there’s some cheese, but I don’t know how good it is.”

Sable shrugged. “My milk soured, so there’s only water.”

I sat opposite her at the small, Formica-topped table.

“Did you kill a nice person?”

“What difference would that make?”

She shrugged. “None, I guess. Now they must want you. They must be looking for you.”

We ate in silence for several moments, then Sable said, “Do you think you’re crazy? When I first knew I was crazy, it was a relief. I run away from them all the time in my head, so I know how to do it.”

“Them?”

“My mother, my doctor, the social workers, my counselor.”

She put down her spoon. “Felix, what is it like to kill a person? It doesn’t seem real to talk to someone who killed a person, but then it does, like it’s what the world has always been about. Someone dies, and someone is the killer.” She stared at me, waiting for my answer.

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” I told her. “It just is.”

Sable considered that. “Are you going to kill other people?”

“Yes,” I said. “Eat your soup. What will be, will be.”

She smiled. “I got that in a fortune cookie one time,” she said. “I think it means that events determine themselves, and I don’t believe that.”

“I read it on a tea box,” I told her. “Each of us decides what will be.”

“You just got free and you’ve already decided to kill more people.”

“I made that decision a long time ago,” I said. “This soup is good. Have some crackers.”

She stared at the box of Triscuits. “Funny. They don’t put fortunes on cracker boxes.”

BOLTON AND I MOVED THE TABLE TO ACCOM
modate two chairs.

I opened beers; he peeled back aluminum foil to expose still-steaming sauerbraten and potato salad from Jacob Wirth’s. The cavernous German restaurant on Stuart Street was a favorite of mine from my college days. The nineteenth-century creaky floors, the sauerbraten and dark beer—an evening at “Jake’s” was as close to Munich as I could get without a plane ticket.

“Do you have any feel for Zrbny?” Bolton asked.

“Where’s the bread?”

“In the other bag.”

I found the dark German rye. “Severance was certain that Zrbny experienced auditory hallucinations.”

“Voices telling him what to do.”

I shook my head, savoring the flavor of the beef. “More like a companion and, from what Severance was able to determine, female. Zrbny’s mother died
when he was ten. His sister Levana disappeared two years later.”

“That wasn’t my case, but I remember it. The kid was graduating high school, already accepted at college. Missing Persons wrote it off as a runaway. I figured she was abducted and murdered, but we had nothing to go on.”

“So what was Zrbny’s perception?” I asked rhetorically. “All the women in his world abandoned him. He was left with a depressed butcher-father who didn’t know he had a son. Zrbny retreated inside his head and got his solace from his fantasies and his voices.”

“Until something set him in motion.”

“Consider the three killings,” I said, warming to my subject. “According to the reports, Zrbny watched Shannon Waycross from his kitchen window. What did he see?”

“Shannon was a beautiful young woman … long black hair, olive complexion, a dancer’s physique.”

“She was catching the sun in the privacy of her backyard. The temptation is to consider Zrbny’s behavior sexually motivated. That’s what the textbooks say. I don’t think so.”

“What then?”

“You gonna eat that sauerkraut?”

Bolton pushed the container to me.

“That’s one of the questions we have to answer. The second victim was Gina Radshaw. Her photograph
was on the front page of the newspapers Zrbny delivered that morning. They attended the same school. She was a lifeguard at the community swimming pool in his neighborhood.”

“He had plenty of opportunity to see her.”

“Same with Florence Dayle. He delivered her newspaper. Her backyard was also visible from Zrbny’s kitchen window. These three women—one in her twenties, one in her teens, one in her forties—were visually available to him.”

“Knockwurst?” Bolton asked.

“Did you get mustard?”

“Horseradish. It’s in the bag.”

I grabbed two slices of rye, split the sausage, and slathered it with horseradish mustard.

“Do you realize we’re having sauerbraten and knockwurst?” Bolton asked.

“I bought stock in a cardiology practice,” I said.

“What Zrbny sees doesn’t fire up sexual fantasies,” Bolton said.

“The projective testing, the clinical notes, the reports, the behavioral history … nothing hints at sexual pathology. The victims’ visual availability triggered something, but what?”

“He had contact with Florence Dayle. He collected the newspaper money every week.”

“Waycross didn’t take the paper. Radshaw didn’t live in Ravenwood. It’s something in Zrbny’s head. We need to know what it is and what it means. For fifteen years he played games with the shrinks.
Only Severance had a notion about what makes Zrbny tick. What was he like when you brought him in?”

Bolton leaned away from the table. “I stayed with him until Social Services arrived. We sat in a small area off the cafeteria. He was shivering. I asked him if he wanted a blanket. He said he did, so I grabbed a shock blanket from the emergency locker and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then he told me his name. He was polite, spoke softly. The blood all over him was the only indication that he’d just killed three people. I had twenty minutes with him. I wouldn’t call it conversation. It was more like him talking to himself, mostly about his sister.”

“You said he’s talked to Wendy Pouldice.”

“Hospital records show that she visited on nine occasions in the last year and a half. There were also phone calls. We don’t know how many.”

“Why Pouldice?”

Bolton shrugged. “He wants to tell his story. She wants to broadcast it. I had hoped you could talk with Ross Kelly, the psychologist who’s been seeing Zrbny for the last three years. Kelly’s stuck in D.C. The Northeast Corridor is under a white blanket.”

“I skimmed Kelly’s report.”

“Kelly says that Zrbny knows the difference between right and wrong, but makes decisions based on his own thinking, regardless of the law.”

“I agree. He also doesn’t experience emotion as we know it.” I got up and started pacing the room.

“He doesn’t laugh, or cry, or get angry?” Bolton asked.

“No, and he doesn’t know fear.”

“So there’s no reason for him to not do whatever he wants,” he said, then realized what his observation meant. “He has no controls.”

“No one knows what sets him in motion,” I said. “When he acts, he has no concern about the impact of his behavior. He said he was interrupted fifteen years ago. I’m convinced that if Waycross hadn’t stumbled onto him, others would have died. We don’t know who. We do know he doesn’t like to be interrupted.”

“We have a unit sitting in Ravenwood,” Bolton said. “He doesn’t know the city anymore. The last time he was on the streets, he was fourteen years old. Maybe he’ll go back to what was familiar.”

“Needle in a haystack,” I said. “We are fortunate that he’s an unusually large needle with a distinctive appearance who is running around the city carrying a three-foot-long shotgun. Ray, I want to see Zrbny’s house.”

Conference rooms filled with self-styled sleuths do not catch killers. The senior sleuth—or presenter—elicits comments from her or his minions. These observations must coincide with the super-sleuth’s view of the crime, or the contributor
receives no nod of approval. Participants depart with the illusion of consensus, then wait for a traffic cop to nail their serial killer for a taillight violation.

If you expect to catch the bastard, you must carve out a space for him in your mind. Then allow that compartment to fill with him—his words, his smell, the residue of his actions. Get off your ass and climb into his world. When you can see his existence through his mind filters, you might have a 10 percent chance of getting to him.

I had to feel and think like Felix Zrbny. Bolton would contend with Vigil.

“We have to go through his father’s estate to get into the house,” Bolton said. “Couple of downtown lawyers.”

“Keep your patrol unit away from the house for a couple of hours,” I said.

“Lucas …”

“Same rules as always. If I get nailed, I take the fall.”

Bolton leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.