Hope’s mouth was slightly open in disbelief.
“Lordy,” said Powell, “is that what you think?” Amused, sincere. He’s good, Van Heerden thought, and wondered whether they had sent a black man so that he could be more or less invisible here. With that accent?
“Yes, sir, that would be my best shot.”
“Wait till I tell the wife about that one, Mr. van Hieden. Nope, I’m a pretty ordinary minor government official doing a pretty ordinary job. I guess you-all shouldn’t believe all that stuff on television. Lordy, is that really what you think?”
He saw Hope hanging on the man’s words, ready to believe.
“Seeing that you’re so honest with us, Mr. Powell, I’ll level with you, too. The funny thing about this case is that we had almost nothing to go on. And I mean really nothing. Just a tiny piece of paper that Forensics believed was used years ago to wrap dollars. And a huge walk-in safe and a false identity document and a man starting a business years ago with more cash than can be explained. And that was it.”
Powell nodded, listening intently.
“We were at a dead end. There was nowhere to go. So we asked the press for help and built a story that was nothing more than conjecture, fiction if you want, loosely based on one of quite a few possibilities.”
“Is that right?”
“And you know what happened? All hell broke loose. We had calls from all over the country, we’ve had the most interesting people walking in, and suddenly more pieces of the puzzle than we could’ve hoped for fell into our laps. If you’ll pardon the expression, it was like opening a can of worms.”
“Well, there you go,” said Powell, still the minor government official.
“And, I must add, forty-eight hours ago I thought this case couldn’t be solved. Hell, six hours ago I thought it was dead as a doornail. But now, Mr. Powell, the case has blown wide open. It seems to me that not only will we solve it, but a great many people will be embarrassed by it.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, sir, it sure is,” said Van Heerden, a slight American accent creeping into his voice. He couldn’t help it; he remembered the time in Quantico, the overwhelming, contagious accents. “And now you have to ask yourself, do you and those who employ you want to be embarrassed as well?”
Powell took a deep breath, the smile intact, calm, unworried. “Well, sir, I’m grateful to you for sharing that with me, but I’m just…”
“A minor government official?”
“Absolutely.” The smile still broad and open.
“But should you care to share what you know, the damage could be minimized, of course. Contained, I believe, would be the right word.”
“Mr. van Hieden, sir, let me say that if I’m ever in the position to supply you with any information whatsoever, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to share it with you.” Powell put a hand in his jacket pocket, took out a card. “Unfortunately, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. But should you change your mind about my employment and need information, be sure to call me.” He put the card down in front of Van Heerden and stood up. “It’s been a pleasure, sir, madam.”
And when they had shaken hands and Powell had closed the door behind him, Hope Beneke slowly blew out her breath and said, “Fuck it!” and amazement spread across her face at the feat of saying the word.
“Is that right?” said Van Heerden in a broad American accent, and they laughed, deep and relieved, a moment of calm in a stormy sea.
The phone rang.
∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧
32
Among the heartbreaking reports of killings from virtually all over the country, I found the trail of the Masking Tape Murderer.
Not immediately, but slowly, with orderly hard work, lists and flow charts and notes and graphs and a total, overruling obsession.
The documents arrived one after another, from detectives in cities, from small towns in the country, all with precisely the same theme: a yearning to catch the sick soul, to trap the perpetrator of abhorrent crimes, the same mandate to empower, the same unconditional offer of assistance to solve and close the dormant, dust-gathering files.
In those weeks I discovered the soul of a policeman, the hunting instinct, the personal involvement of a hunter with his prey. Because each file spoke of dedication, of passion, every packet had a letter enclosed in which I was begged to use the new criminological knowledge, to share, so that they could still the pain of an unsolved murder, the gnawing realization that he was still out there, carrying out his deadly calling.
It was in those weeks that I discovered my true vocation, experienced my initiation into the brotherhood, alone in an office in the maze of the university’s corridors. In those weeks I lost Wendy and found myself: I truly smelled blood for the first time and could not resist the odor.
Of the unbelievable eighty-seven responses that I received from all over the country, only nine were indisputably applicable, with another four or five possibilities. The rest were the crimes of other serial killers who had plagued our country for the past twenty years.
Naturally there was the temptation to establish a sort of national register of mass murder (how far ahead of my time I would’ve been!) but my obsession was too overwhelming, my debt of honor to Baby Marnewick too heavy a yoke.
And when all the information had been processed onto a huge chart that covered one wall of my office, the murder route of Masking Tape had been mapped. It was a chronicle, a casebook study of the rise, apprenticeship, and eventual coming-of-age of a serial killer who had drawn his trail of bloody destruction across the South African landscape.
And he was a miner.
His journey started in 1974 in the Free State gold-mining town of Virginia, with the assault and rape of a fourteen-year-old black schoolgirl who survived the knife wounds in her breasts by sheer willpower after she had been found with her hands tied behind her back with masking tape in an open stretch of veld. His first initiatory deed? Or were there others before that – clumsy, unreported attempts? Or was that the first time he used masking tape? The dossier mentioned that the victim could give no description of the rapist. Didn’t want to?
In the same year, a fifteen-year-old white schoolgirl, again from Virginia, was found next to the road, hands bound with masking tape, seventeen knife wounds in her breasts, with one nipple cut off. The police combed the black township and the black mine-workers’ compound, interrogated any number of black suspects, the connection between the two victims clear. No arrests were made.
Blyvooruitzicht on the West Rand, 1975: A twenty-two-year-old secretary at a legal firm, slight and pretty, finished her work and went home. No one ever saw her alive again. The following afternoon at 12:22 they kicked in the door of her small flat because they were suspicious. They found her in the only bedroom, hands and feet bound with masking tape, multiple stab wounds in the breasts, both nipples clumsily removed, a teddy bear on her face. (That, said the Quantico model, was a sign that the murderer was ashamed of his deed, that he didn’t want to see her eyes.)
December 16, 1975: Carletonville. A black farmhand discovered the naked body of a twenty-one-year-old waitress at 6:30 in the morning at the side of the tarred road to Rysmierbult. Masking tape, stab wounds in the chest, nipples removed. Where had she been murdered? There were no signs of a struggle where she was found, no trail of blood. No arrests.
March 9, 1976: A thirty-four-year-old prostitute was found in her flat in Welkom. The amount of blood in the room was frightening – one of the knife wounds had sliced through her aorta, which spouted a fountain of blood against the walls, over the furniture and the floor, flushing out her life. She had struggled: there was skin under her nails and she had bruises on her face. She was probably dead before he could use the masking tape, but it was found where it had rolled under a coffee table. Nipples sliced, knife wounds, and, for the first time, horrifying postmortem mutilation of the vagina.