Bad to the Bone (14 page)

Let’s back up a little. Let’s back up all the way to my innocent youth. I’m twenty-two years old and a college student. Even though I’m attending City University and the tuition is negligible, my mother has been institutionalized for several years and I have to support myself. With no skills and no ability to work for someone else, I begin doing burglaries on Long Island.

Late at night (I don’t sleep much, don’t feel the need for it) I get into my little black Comet and drive out through the Midtown Tunnel and onto the Long Island Expressway. I watch the names of the towns. Roslyn. Glen Cove. Smiditown. I find one that appeals to me and glide off the highway.

The middle-class neighborhoods I haunt are incredibly quiet in the early morning. Thirty miles east of Manhattan, nothing moves after midnight. Apparently, the good burghers need to rest their shoulders before reapplying them to the wheel.

I search for empty houses. Look for the signs. In certain neighborhoods, the garbage men come in the early morning. I cruise at night. Which house doesn’t have trash cans in front? Has the lawn been cut recently? Are there newspapers piled up on the porch? Excess mail?

I find several potential targets and note which windows are lit. Several days later, I return. Each target is carefully reviewed. Are the same windows lit? Vacationing families always leave a few lights on. The lights are supposed to frighten the burglars, but at three o’clock in the morning, a well-lit house might as well have an
EMPTY
sign tacked to the aluminum siding.

For six months, it all works according to plan. Breaking into empty homes thrills me in unexpected ways. I feel as if I control the lives of the families I hit. Of course, I take only cash, jewelry and the odd mink. No television or stereos; I’m a student, not a junkie. In fact, I sometimes leave with nothing.

One cold February night, the inevitable happens. I’m in the dining room and I’ve found a treasure. An old collection of sterling silverware. Solid, not plated, and worth at least a grand, even to a fence.

I make a noise, a thin cry of pleasure.

“Is anybody there?” A woman’s voice. Unsure. Hoping against hope for a bad dream.

I conceal myself alongside the doorway and she pads into the room. For a moment, the light from a full winter moon streams through her nightgown. Then she flips the lightswitch and I take her down from behind. My arm goes around her throat, choking off her scream.

My own fear is indescribable. I tighten my hold reflexively as I listen for the sounds of a husband or children. By the time I realize no one else is in the house, the woman is nearly unconscious. Still without a coherent plan, I release her.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she sobs. “I’ll do what you want.”

Pardon me? Have I uncovered the archetypal rape fantasy? Pick a hole, any hole?

I look into her dark blue eyes and see no emotion beyond terror. My choke hold, inadvertently extended, has convinced her that her life is in danger. She hopes only for survival.

I force her into the bedroom. By now I know what I’m going to do. She has a large bed with brass foot and headboards. I tie her with strips of sheet.

As I stroke her body, I watch fear, hatred and loathing flick across her eyes. She has not been gagged, but makes no effort to scream. I take her breasts in my hand. Squeeze them hard. Tears begin to flow from the corners of her eyes.

“Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”

Here, Poochie. Heeeeere, Poochie.

The sex, when I finally get around to it, seems an afterthought. As if sex was never the point. I have not hurt her (not physically), but I have been thrilled beyond my understanding. The affair, which began as an accident, seems part of my destiny. I have recognized a reality that was always present: the boogeyman in the closet come out to play.

Obsession follows. I go into homes looking for women. I begin to carry weapons: a knife, chemical mace, a blackjack. I create a disguise, a black silk hood with eyeholes, and cinch it around my neck with a red bandana. The disguise becomes my trademark and the cops dub me ‘The Executioner Rapist.’

After a dozen adventures, outwitting the police becomes as important as subduing the husband and humping the wife. Though I know nothing about the men who hunt me, I give them comic book names: Dick Tracy, Dirty Harry, Charlie Chan. What will they do next? Where will they concentrate their undercover operations ? Beef up ordinary patrols?

I’ve always worn surgical gloves, but now I use stolen license plates. I take a different route each time I visit a given community. I extend my field of activities to include Westchester County and northern New Jersey.

Though driven by desire (how I love to see their faces, the husband angry
and
aroused, the woman’s flesh jerking in spasms at the touch of my fingers), I practice the art of patience. I reject one target after another. This one is too close to a neighbor’s house. That one has older children. Or a large dog or an alarm system or…

By my twenty-third birthday, I’ve claimed more than thirty victims. I’m still at City College and doing quite well, financially as well as academically. For some utterly mysterious reason, in addition to the required science courses surrounding my chemistry major, I elect to take abnormal psychology. It’s in this class that I come face to face with myself.

The instructor, a young woman named Roberts, is taking her Ph.D. The topic of her thesis is serial criminals, their motivations and potential treatment. “Although we ordinarily talk about serial
killers
,” she carefully explains, “there are other criminal activities (especially
rape
) that also fit this category.” Then she enumerates the characteristics of serial crimes:

The same crime (except for location) is committed in the same way, again and again.

The crime is committed more and more frequently as time goes on.

The crime becomes more and more violent as time goes on.

The crime does not, primarily, involve economic gain.

The criminal personifies the men who pursue him.

The criminal takes trophies.

The criminal tortures (not always physically) the victim.

The criminal feels increased by the crime, perhaps even to the point of grandeur.

The criminal believes he can never be caught. The criminal cannot stop committing the crime.

Taken all together, Ms. Roberts calls these characteristics, “The Presence of Ritual.” It is the name she will give to her doctoral thesis. And the book that follows.

In any event, the topic fascinates the entire class and we carefully dissect the psyches of various serial luminaries.

One point Ms. Roberts makes (and which, of course, fascinates yours truly) concerns the apprehension of the serial criminal. She begins by denying the old cliché: serial criminals do
not
want to be caught. In fact, the most notorious serial criminals (the ones who’ve been studied) took great pains to conceal their crimes. Even those who send letters to the police or to reporters.

Serial killers are caught because they commit the same crime in the same way over and over again. Eventually, the possibility of apprehension becomes statistically probable. Then inevitable. Incarceration can only be prevented by death or disabling injury or complete psychological breakdown.

I raise my hand innocently. “Are there no cases in which a serial criminal simply stopped through an act of will?” I was carefully imagining what she’d look like as I lifted her skirt with the point of my knife.

“Serial criminals are entirely compulsive, though rarely delusional. The inability to stop is what separates the serial criminal from the garden-variety psychopath.”

Thus ended the career of ‘The Executioner Rapist.’ I never went back out. I needed to prove something to myself. Was I, in fact, a serial criminal? Or was I a mere garden-variety psychopath? Call me Cabbage.

Nothing proceeds in a straight line. The certainty of change applies to quality as well as quantity. I had vainly boasted that, given two hundred poochies, I would rule the world. But, in fact, the poochie business is self-limiting. The bigger it grows, the more attention it draws. First the media, then the cops, then the politicians. A parade of pigs worthy of a midwestern county fair.

I needed (I concluded)
a new line of work
.

I decided to abandon the poochie business within five years. Without knowing where I would go, I decided to exploit Hanoverian therapy for all it was (economically) worth and to use the capital thus accrued for some new endeavor.

But first, of course, I had to straighten out the Grand Poochie Rebellion.

In accordance with my short-term ambitions vis-à-vis Hanover House, I devised a decidedly short-term solution. I took the
least
aggressive poochies and created a special cadre. I called them Therapists. The rest, the rebellious ones, became Counselors.

I then armed the Therapists. I also gave them better food, better housing and their choice of sexual partners. Most of all, I fed their poochie fears by insisting that they
deserved
their status. As the living embodiment of Hanoverian therapy, they were the hope of the world. The aggressive poochies were (what else?) trying to destroy everything we had built. We were, therefore, justified in doing
anything
to them.

Poochies who wished to leave were encouraged to get out. Without their children and with a deep appreciation of the three taboos: lawyers, reporters and cops. Many of them, to my relief, did so.

There remained one further impediment to the successful resolution of the Great Poochie Rebellion and that, of course, was dear Marilyn.

Instead of becoming the Queen of Hanover House, she fought me every step of the way. I tried to reason with her, but the stupid bitch really believed in Hanoverian therapy. She thought she was forging links to a better, brighter future for all human beings.

Finally, she became repulsive to me. I loathed her for her stupidity. Her ultimate essential poochiality. And I decided to make her pay.

I took out the black silk hood (holding onto potentially incriminating evidence was another characteristic of serial criminals) and the red bandana.

Marilyn had never lived at Hanover House. She had a cheap, rent-stabilized apartment on West End Avenue and she was too greedy to give it up. I had a key to this apartment. One night, when I knew her to be occupied, I secreted myself in one of dear Marilyn’s spare bedrooms. When I heard her key in the door, I slid the hood over my face and tied it down.

I soon discovered that I’d lost none of my technique. I hit Marilyn extremely hard, disabling her completely for a moment. By the time she reoriented herself, she was gagged and cuffed. Staring into her eyes, wondering if she’d know me, I found only the requisite fear. Fear which increased to terror when I opened the knife.

I began to cut Marilyn out of her clothes. It was old hat to me (especially as I had no sexual interest in Marilyn), but it held her attention nicely. Of course, she begged for mercy. With my ear close to her mouth, I understood every word.

(I’d been hoping, by the way, that being a renowned psychologist, she’d come up with something unique, but it was the usual blabber: “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. No, no, no, no.”)

When I cut through the center of her bra, she grunted as if I’d turned the blade inward. When I did her panties (when she felt the cool steel against the lips of her sex), she passed out.

I tied her down, then patiently waited for her to revive. When she was fully awake, I removed the hood.

Her eyes bugged out of her head. It was funny enough to laugh at, but I kept a straight face. I flicked the tip of the knife across her belly. Just deep enough to draw a single drop of blood. She began to beg again, but I continued on. A dozen flicks that would be no more than scratches within a few minutes. Then I laid the knife blade against her breast and left it there until I saw death in her eyes. Not physical death, but a bitter and absolute and irrevocable loss of will.

I untied and uncuffed her. She removed the gag from her mouth, but said nothing. While she watched, I burned the hood in a metal waste-basket.

If she chose to make a complaint, the ashes would, of course, be evidence. But she wouldn’t. She would (and did) separate herself from Hanover House. She would (and did) stop seeing her old patients. She would (and did) accept a job in a public hospital. She would (and did) keep her little poochie nose out of my fucking business.

(Incidentally, I never intended to kill Marilyn. Her body would have drawn the messiest of messy investigations. From the beginning, I merely intended to exploit those qualities which made dear Marilyn so endearing.)

Heeeeeeere, Poochie.

S
TANLEY MOODROW HAD A
number of excellent reasons for being on foot. In the first place, his newly purchased, barely used, eighty-thousand-mile Mercury wouldn’t start. Not even with the help of jumper cables, a five-dollar bill and a passing cabbie. In the second place, it was a beautiful day. A night of rain and a brisk northerly wind had rid the Manhattan air of its customary soot and small sunny clouds were dodging behind the sharp peaks of the skyscrapers like street criminals avoiding a patrol car. In New York, never noted for its climate, days like these are rare enough to draw attention and Moodrow, if he’d bothered to lift his head, might have taken a deep breath and enjoyed his stroll.

But Moodrow, stepping out of his new digs, kept his eyes on the pavement. He was on his way to interview Davis Craddock at Craddock’s Hanover House office. Under normal conditions, Moodrow would have been looking forward to this initial contact with his ‘prime suspect,’ but an eight o’clock phone conversation with Connie Alamare had soured his morning considerably.

Her attitude was not entirely unexpected, of course, but it had come so early as to be disconcerting. Sure, later on, if the investigation stalled…Crime victims and/or the families of crime victims, as Moodrow knew from his years as a precinct detective, sometimes become frustrated and take it out on the investigators. But this was only the first week,
and
he was making progress. He had found someone to stand up and say she’d seen Florence and Michael Alamare inside Hanover House within the last nine months.