If I Should Die Before I Die (19 page)

“Let me ask you this,” Intaglio said when she'd finished. “Do you think he's capable of murder?”

“I can only answer that very subjectively,” she said.

“And …?”

“Putting it another way, the phenomenon of transference is a two-way street. What goes on in the therapist's mind is called countertransference.”

“I understand that,” Intaglio said. “But you still haven't answered my question.”

She hesitated, unusual for her, and when she spoke it was in a surprisingly thin voice:

“All I can tell you is that I feel very vulnerable.”

“Do you mean you're afraid of him?”

She clearly didn't want to answer. Then:

“If you insist,” she said.

Intaglio asked to see the letter. She produced it, and opening it, he flattened it on the table between him and Walters, using the side of his palm to smooth it out. I noticed an exchange of glances between them.

“We'd like to take this with us,” Intaglio said.

“What's so significant about it?” the Counselor put in.

“Well,” Intaglio said. Then he looked at Anne Garvey and she gave him a brief nod. “Actually, there are aspects to the case we haven't let out so far, that not even the media know about.”

“Such as this piece of paper?” the Counselor persisted. “I don't get it.”

Intaglio glanced at Anne Garvey again.

“Well, Mr. Camelot,” he said, “the perpetrator … if he's the one who writes them … well, we've got a regular pen pal on our hands. I mean, your wife isn't the only one who's gotten one of these.”

“Who else has gotten them?”

“I'm afraid that's official business.”

“But private citizens like Nora?”

“Wait a minute,” the Counselor's Wife intervened. She leaned forward intently. “Let me try to guess. How about Brenda Simpson for one?”

Brenda Simpson co-hosted one of the network morning shows.

I saw the surprise on Intaglio's face.

“How did you know that?” he asked her.

“We saw the tapes,” she said, looking at me for corroboration. “Brenda was one of the ones Phil and I saw on tape when we were in Carter's apartment.”

“What tapes?” Intaglio asked, looking at me.

“The night before last,” I said. “Dr. Saroff and I found videotapes of her television shows. Some other shows too. Brenda Simpson was one of them.”

“Why in hell didn't you tell us about that yesterday?”

“I didn't know it was important yesterday,” I said, which wasn't altogether true. “How come you didn't tell me about the letters?”

Intaglio glowered at me, started to say something, then thought better of it.

“They're not there now, Andy,” Walters put in. “At least they weren't mentioned in the report.”

“When were you up there?” I asked him.

“I wasn't myself, but we had a search warrant. It must have been late afternoon or in the evening.”

“Then look in the garbage,” I told him, remembering what Bobby Derr had said. “They cleaned the place up yesterday. I bet they threw them out.”

“Who, McCloy?”

“McCloy or, more likely, one of his friends. Derr was there in the afternoon. He said he helped them carry stuff down to the basement.”

I told them then what had happened to Bobby last night. Walters scribbled notes on a foldover spiral, and he asked me if Derr would press charges. I said that would be up to Bobby but that he was in no condition, right then, to press anything.

Then Intaglio asked for Dr. Saroff's records and audio-tapes pertaining to her sessions with McCloy.

The Counselor refused. Of course, he said, that was his wife's decision, but at least until she was served with a subpoena, he would have to advise her against it. They skirmished over that one until the Counselor's Wife offered to let Intaglio listen to the tapes in her office.

And that was about the size of it, or would have been had not Anne Garvey decided to give us her prepared speech, the five-minute version, the gist of which was that private citizens have no business meddling in police work and that this situation, involving McCloy, Dr. Saroff and yours truly, was as good an illustration of it as she'd ever run into. Because if McCloy was in fact the Pillow Killer, and if Dr. Saroff had gone to the police with what she suspected when she first suspected it, then one, possibly two lives might have been saved.

I didn't think it was called for at all, and Assistant DA Anne Garvey isn't the kind, I'd have to say, who could inspire me with guilt over my civic responsibility. Or lack of. But I saw the Counselor's Wife bite into her lower lip.

“Do you really think Carter's the killer?” she asked, looking from Garvey to Intaglio and back.

“We don't know,” Garvey answered.

“I know you don't know. But what do you
think?
”

Garvey deferred to Intaglio, saying she wasn't a member of the Task Force, that (glancing at the Counselor) she'd only come to the meeting as an accommodation.

“Frankly we've been up too many dead-end streets to think anything,” Intaglio said. “We know we're looking for a young man, white, physically strong. That's all. As for McCloy, we're investigating some of the statements he's made to us, and you've given us some new leads we've got to follow up on.”

This didn't seem to satisfy the Counselor's Wife.

“Maybe I'm missing something,” she said, “but where's the connection? Haven't all the Killer's victims been anonymous, at least so far? And then you've got somebody—maybe it
is
Carter—writing threatening letters to women who are more or less celebrities. Maybe there's a crime in and of itself … I imagine it is … but it's not murder, is it?”

“No, it isn't.”

“Well, where's the connection?”

“There may not be one,” Intaglio said, “unless it's you.” Then he caught himself and, sighing tiredly, added: “I don't mean to frighten you unnecessarily, Dr. Saroff. But the fact is that we've gotten letters from him too. After every murder, to congratulate us on our efforts to find him. The same typewriter. But we can't prove that it's the Killer who's writing them either.”

The Counselor's Wife took that in, protruding her lower lip. It struck me as weird that, having just admitted she was afraid of McCloy, she now felt compelled to defend him. But maybe it wasn't weird, for a shrink. As for Intaglio, frayed and tired as he must have been, you had to admire his cool. Because what he said next proved, once you stopped to think about it, that the Task Force was grasping at straws.

He waited for Garvey to stand up. Then he stood and, turning to the Counselor, said:

“I'd like to take Revere here with us, Mr. Camelot. I think he might be able to help.”

For a split-second I swear I could see the meter running inside the Counselor's head. I was, don't forget, still on his payroll. But then he smiled at me, for inscrutable reasons, and said:

“That's up to you, Phil.”

A few hours later, Carter McCloy was back on the street. No charge, no arraignment, no nothing.

Here's how it happened.

They'd had McCloy in a small interrogation room downtown, one that was wired for sound, and it had one of those one-way mirror jobs, long and narrow, which must have been some kind of engraving of the Brooklyn Bridge from the inside. You could see the outline of the bridge etched in the glass when you looked through.

I watched McCloy for a while, Intaglio by my side, and I remember I kept talking in low tones even though, Intaglio told me, there was no way McCloy could hear us. Then Intaglio went back out into the corridor and I saw him enter the room from the far side and change places with one of the other interrogators.

From the look of it, you'd have to say Carter was way ahead in chips and there was no way anybody was going to get even unless they could raise the stakes in a hurry. Which clearly wasn't happening. Even after the better part of a day and night with the Task Force, much of which had been spent answering questions, he looked laid-back. Literally. He was sprawled in a wooden armchair, arms hanging over the sides and legs stretched out, maybe a little tired around the eyes but generally none the worse for wear. He had on his usual costume, white button-down shirt open at the neck, blue blazer with the collar turned up and, sure enough, that same long white scarf draped around his neck. By contrast, his interrogators, even though they got to take turns, looked like losers in the all-night game, pale and unshaven and trying to keep the play going on coffee and cigarettes.

“He's night people,” I'd said to Intaglio. “Besides, you'll never wear him down if you give him Dewars.”

Strange to say, there was a bottle of Dewars on a table, next to a plastic ice bucket. McCloy, according to Intaglio, had insisted on it. To judge, he'd drunk about two-thirds of it. But for Carter McCloy, that was pretty moderate going.

The Task Force knew they wouldn't be able to hold him much longer. For one thing, the alibis he'd given them pertaining to the two most recent murders appeared to be checking out, including the one in his own neighborhood the night, according to Bobby Derr, when he'd stormed out of Melchiorre's alone. According to McCloy, he'd been drinking in another bar in the fork of time during which the crime had been committed, and he'd given the Task Force a witness to confirm it.

And then there was the little matter of
habeas corpus
.

Don't ask me to say which system is better. In most countries, the authorities have the right to hold you on reasonable suspicion for just about as long as they want to, and “reasonable suspicion” itself, in some places, is pretty loosely interpreted. But in the U.S., they've got to convince a judge. It wasn't either that McCloy had demanded a lawyer. He'd been given ample opportunity to make phone calls but had opted for Dewars instead. When the lawyer did show up—and I'll give you two guesses who it was—it wasn't because Carter wanted it but because somebody had called his stepfather.

When Intaglio took over, it was to focus on the “pen pal” and celebrity connections, and the dialogue went something like this:

Intaglio: “How well do you know Dr. Nora Saroff, Carter?”

McCloy: “Dr. Nora Saroff Carter? Only joking. In fact, I know a Dr. Nora Saroff pretty well. She's my shrink, you know? But what's she got to do with this?”

Intaglio: “Is she still your shrink?”

McCloy: “Actually I haven't been there in a while. But yeah, she's still my shrink.”

Intaglio: “Why'd you go to her in the first place?”

McCloy: “I had problems. Don't we all have problems?”

Intaglio: “What kind of problems, Carter?”

McCloy (with a chuckle): “I'd say that's getting pretty heavy, you know? Like maybe it's none of your business. Something tells me I'm not going to elaborate on that particular point, you know? What's it got to do with the murders anyway?”

Intaglio walked over to a long counter and sifted through some documents, adding one from his own pocket. Then he came back toward McCloy.

Intaglio: “Why'd you stop going to her, Carter?”

McCloy: “Did I say I'd stopped? I don't know. Maybe my head has shrunk enough, you know?”

Intaglio: “Is that the only reason?”

McCloy: “I don't know. Isn't it a good enough reason?” Intaglio selected one of the documents and put it on the table in front of McCloy. McCloy leaned forward to look at it.

Intaglio: “Have you ever seen this before?”

McCloy: “No. What is it, some kind of joke?”

Intaglio: “Dr. Saroff got this one, Carter. Somebody stuck it under the door to her office. But you didn't put it there, did you?”

McCloy: “Hell, no.”

Intaglio: “And what about these?”

Intaglio put several more documents in front of McCloy, one after the other. McCloy, I noticed, didn't touch them, but he looked.

McCloy: “I've never seen these either.”

Intaglio: “You didn't write them, did you?”

McCloy: “Of course not.”

Intaglio: “Do you own a Canon Typestar?”

McCloy: “What's that, some kind of typewriter?”

Intaglio: “That's right, some kind of typewriter. Do you own one?”

McCloy: “No.”

Intaglio: “But you're very interested in Dr. Saroff, aren't you?”

McCloy: “I don't know what you mean by that. But hey, like nothing's happened to her, has it?”

Intaglio: “Interested enough to tape her shows?”

McCloy: “Tape her shows? Well, sure, I might have taped some of her shows. I tape a lot of stuff, you know?”

Intaglio: “But you particularly like to tape Dr. Saroff, don't you?”

McCloy: “I don't know particularly, but I like her show. And she's my shrink.”

Intaglio: “So you're very interested in her after all?”

McCloy: “Well, in that sense, yes, you know?”

Intaglio: “Well, what about in other senses? Would you like to shack up with her?”

McCloy (chuckling): “Hey, is that what she said?”

Intaglio: “Just answer the question. Would you like to shack up with her?”

McCloy: “Well, like if you mean did the idea ever strike me, the answer is: sure. They say everybody falls in love with his shrink sometime. At least when it's opposite sexes.”

Intaglio: “Are you in love with her now? Enough to tape her shows and write her letters like this?”

McCloy: “Hey, what's …?”

Intaglio: “And what about these other women, Carter? The ones on television, the ones who got these same letters? Did you tape their shows too?”

McCloy: “Hey, what're you trying to pull? Is there a law against VCR's? I told you, I tape a lot of stuff. Say, how do I know you guys didn't write these letters yourselves and are trying to frame me?”