embarrassment, apology, frustration. "I'm sorry. This mind of
mine-like a sieve. Did you tell me why you didn't come here at
midnight, when you got off work?
"I had a date," she said.
Graham could tell from her expression and from the tone of her voice
that the "date" had been a paying customer. That saddened him a bit. He
liked her already. He couldn't help but like her. He was receiving
low-key waves, threshold psychic vibrations from her; they were very
positive, mellow and warm vibrations. She was a damned nice person. He
knew. And he wanted only pleasant things to happen to her.
"Did Edna have a date tonight?" Preduski asked.
"No. I told you. She came right home."
"Maybe her boyfriend was waiting for her."
"She was between boyfriends."
"Maybe an old boyfriend stopped in to talk."
"No. When Edna dropped a guy, he stayed dropped."
Preduski sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head sadly.
"I hate to have to ask this....
You were her best friend. But what I'm going to say please understand I
don't mean to put her down. Life is tough. We all have to do things
we'd rather not do. I'm not proud of every day of my life.
God knows. Don't judge. That's my motto. There's only one crime I
can't rationalize away. Murder. I really hate to ask this.... Well,
was she ... do you think she ever .
"Was she a prostitute?" Sarah asked for him.
"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way! That's such an awful ... I really
meant ..."
"Don't worry," she said. She smiled sweetly. "I'm not offended."
Graham was amused to see her squeeze the detective's hand. Now she was
comforting Preduski.
"I do some light hooking myself " Sarah said. "Not much. Once a week,
maybe. I've got to like the guy, and he's got to have two hundred bucks
to spare. It's all the same as stripping to me, really.
But it wouldn't have been something Edna could do. She was surprisingly
straight."
"I shouldn't have asked. It was none of my business," said Preduski.
"But it occurred to me that in her line of work there would be a lot of
temptation for a girl who needed money."
"She made eight hundred a week stripping and hustling drinks," Sarah
said. "She only spent money on her books and apartment. She was
socking it in the bank. She didn't need more."
Preduski was somber. "But you see why I had to ask?
If she opened the door to the killer, he must have been someone she
knew, however briefly. That's what puzzles me most about this whole
case. How does the Butcher get them to open the door?"
Graham had never thought about that. The dead women were all young, but
they were from varied backgrounds. One was a housewife.
One was a lawyer. Two were school-teachers. Three secretaries, one
model, one sales clerk.... How did the Butcher get so many different
women to open their doors to him late at night?
The kitchen table was littered with the remains of a hastily prepared
and hastily eaten meal. Bits of bread. The dried edge of a slice of
bologna. Smears of mustard and mayonnaise. Two apple cores.
A can of cling peaches empty of everything except an inch of packing
syrup. A drumstick gnawed to the bone. Half a doughnut.
Three crushed beer cans. The Butcher had been ravenous and sloppy.
"Ten murders," Preduski said, "and he always goes to the kitchen for a
snack afterward."
Stifled by the psychic atmosphere of the kitchen, by the incredibly
strong, lingering presence of the killer which was nearly as heavy here
as it had been in the dead woman's bedroom, Graham could only nod. The
mess on the table, in contrast with the otherwise tidy kitchen,
disturbed him deeply. The peach can and the beer can were covered with
reddish-brown stains; the killer had eaten while wearing his bloody
gloves.
Preduski shuffled forlornly to the window by the sink. He stared at the
neighboring apartment house. "I've talked to a few psychiatrists about
these feasts he has when he's done the dirty work.
As I understand it, there are two basic ways a psychopath will act when
he's finished with his victim. Number one, there's Mr. Meek. The
killing is everything for him, his whole reason for living, the only
color and desire in his life. When he's done killing, there's nothing,
he's nothing. He goes home and watches television.
Sleeps a lot. He sinks into a deep pit of boredom until the pressures
build up and he kills again. Number two, there's the man who gets
psyched up by the murder. His real excitement comes not during the
killing but after it. He'll go straight from the scene of the crime to
a bar and drink everyone under the table. His adrenaline is up. His
heartbeat is up. He eats like a lumberjack and sometimes picks up
whores by the six-pack. Apparently, our man is number two.
Except .
"Except what?" Graham asked.
Turning away from the window, Preduski said, "Seven times he's eaten a
big meal in the dead women's own homes. But the other three times, he's
taken the food out of the refrigerator and faked a big meal."
"Faked it? What do you mean?"
"The fifth murder, the Liedstrom woman," Preduski said. He closed his
eyes and grimaced as if he could still see her body and blood. "We were
aware of his style by then. We checked the kitchen right away.
There was an empty pear can on the table, an empty cottage cheese
container, the remains of an apple and several other items. But there
wasn't a mess. The first four times, he'd been sloppy-like he was
tonight. But in the Liedstrom kitchen, he hadn't left a lot of crumbs.
No smears of butter or mustard or mayonnaise or ketchup. No bloodstains
on the beer cans."
He opened his eyes and walked to the table. "We'd I found well-gnawed
apple cores in two of the first four kitchens." He pointed at an apple
core on the table in front of him. "Like that one.
The lab had even studied the teeth marks on them. But in the Liedstrom
kitchen he peeled the apple and removed the center with a corer. The
skins and the core were piled neatly on one corner of his dinner plate.
That was a change from what we'd seen previously, and it got me
thinking. Why had he eaten like a Neanderthal the first four times-and
like a gentleman the fifth? I had the forensic boys open the plumbing
under the sink and take out the garbage disposal unit. They ran tests
on it and found that each of the eight kinds of food on the table had
been put through the disposal within the past few hours. In short, the
Butcher hadn't taken a bite of anything in the Liedstrom kitchen. He
got the food from the refrigerator and tossed it down the drain. Then
he set the table so it would look as if he'd had a big meal. He did the
same thing at the scene of murders seven and eight.
That sort of behavior struck Graham as particularly eerie. The air in
the room seemed suddenly more moist and oppressive than before.
"You said his eating after a murder was part of a psychotic compulsion."
"Yes."
"If for some reason he didn't feel that compulsion at the Liedstrom
house, why would he bother to fake it?"
"I don't know," Preduski said. He wiped one slender hand across his
face as if he were trying to pull off his weariness. "It's too much for
me. It really is. Much too much. If he's crazy, why isn't he crazy in
the same way all of the time?"
Graham hesitated. Then: "I don't think any court appointed psychiatrist
would find him insane."
"Say again?"
"In fact, I think even the best psychiatrist, if not informed of the
murders, would find this man saner and more reasonable than he would