Postmortem(106)

“We’ve got a bigger problem, all right?” Wesley snapped.

“Well, what?” Marino asked.

So we told him.

We told him about my telephone conversation with Cecile Tyler’s sister.

He listened, the anger in his eyes retreating. He looked baffled.

We told him all five women definitely had one thing in common. Their voices.

I reminded him of Matt Petersen’s interview. “As I recall, he said something about the first time he met Lori. At a party, I believe. He talked about her voice. He said she had the sort of voice that caught people’s attention, a very pleasant contralto voice. What we’re considering is the link connecting these five murders is voice. Perhaps the killer didn’t see them. He heard them.”

“It never occurred to us,” Wesley added. “When we think of stalkers, we think of psychopaths who see the victim at some point. In a shopping mall, out jogging, or through a window in the apartment or house. As a rule, the telephone, if it figures in at all, comes after the initial contact. He sees her. Maybe he calls her later, just dials her number to hear her voice so he can fantasize. What we’re considering now is far more frightening, Pete. This killer may have some occupation that involves his calling women he doesn’t know. He has access to their numbers and addresses. He calls. If her voice sets him off, he selects her.”

“Like this really narrows it down,” Marino complained. “Now we got to find out if all these women was listed in the city directory. Next we got to consider occupation possibilities. I mean, not a week goes by the missus don’t get a call. Some drone selling brooms, light bulbs, condos. Then there’s the pollsters. The letme-ask-you-fifty-questions type. They want to know if you’re married, single, how much money you earn. Whether you put your pants on one leg at a time and floss after brushing.”

“You’re getting the picture,” Wesley muttered. Marino went on without pause, “So you got some guy who’s into rape and murder. He could get paid eight bucks an hour to sit on his ass at home and run through the phone book or city directory. Some woman tells him she’s single, earns twenty g’s a year. A week later,” this to me, “she’s coming through your joint. So I ask you. How the hell we going to find him?”

We didn’t know.

The possible voice connection didn’t narrow it down. Marino was right. In fact, it made our job more difficult instead of easier. We might be able to determine who a victim saw on any given day. But it was unlikely we could find every person she talked to on the phone. The victim might not even know, were she alive to tell. Telephone solicitors, pollsters and people who dial wrong numbers rarely identify themselves.

All of us get multiple calls day and night we neither process nor remember.

I said, “The pattern of when he hits makes me wonder if he has a job outside of the home, if he goes to work somewhere Monday through Friday. Throughout the week his stress builds. Late Friday night or after midnight, he hits. If he’s using a borax soap twenty times a day, then it isn’t likely this is something he has in his household bathroom. Hand soaps you buy at your local grocery store don’t contain borax, to my knowledge. If he’s washing up with borax soap, I suspect he’s doing so at work.”

“We’re sure it’s borax?” Wesley asked.

“The labs determined it through ion chromatography. The glittery residue we’ve been finding on the bodies contains borax. Definitely.”

Wesley considered this for a moment. “If he’s using borax soap on the job and gets home at five, it’s not likely he’d have such a buildup of this glittery residue at one o’clock in the morning. He may work an evening shift. There’s borax soap in the men’s room. He gets off sometime before midnight, one A.M., and goes straight to the victim’s residence.”

The scenario was more than plausible, I explained. If the killer worked at night, this gave him ample opportunity during the day while the rest of the world was at work to cruise through the neighborhood of his next victim and look over the area. He could drive by again late, maybe after midnight, to take another look. The victims were either out or asleep, as were most of their neighbors. He wasn’t going to be seen.

What night jobs involve the telephone?

We batted that around for a while.

“Most telephone solicitors call right in the middle of the dinner hour,” Wesley said. “It seems to me it’s unusual for them to call much later than nine.”

We agreed.

“Pizza deliverers,” Marino proposed. “They’re out all hours. Could be it’s the drone who takes the call. You dial up and the first thing the operator asks is your phone number. If you’ve ever called before, your address pops up on the computer screen. Thirty minutes later some squirrel’s at your door with a pepperoni-hold-the-onions. It could be the delivery guy who figures out in a hurry he’s got some woman who lives alone. Maybe it’s the operator. He likes her voice, knows her address.”