Without Remorse

'Let me worry about that. We'll take care of her. We'll come up with something.'

'Okay, Sandy... Sandy?'

'What, John?'

'Thanks. ' The line clicked off.

You'rewelcome, she thought, hanging up. What a strange man. He was killing people, ending the lives of fellow human beings, doing it with an utter ruthlessness that she hadn't seen - had no desire to see - but which his voice proclaimed in its emotionless speech. But he'd taken the time and endangered himself to rescue Doris. She still didn't understand, Sandy told herself, dialing the phone again.

Dr Sidney Farber looked exactly as Emmet Ryan expected: forty or so, small, bearded, Jewish, pipe-smoker. He didn't rise as the detective came in, merely motioning his guest to a chair with a wave of the hand. Ryan had messengered extracts from the case files to the psychiatrist before lunch, and clearly the doctor had read them. All of them were laid open on the desk, arrayed in two rows.

'I know your partner, Tom Douglas,' Farber said, puffing on his pipe.

'Yes, sir. He said your work on the Gooding case was very helpful.'

'A very sick man, Mr Gooding. I hope he'll get the treatment he needs.'

'How sick is this one?' Lieutenant Ryan asked.

Farber looked up. 'He's as healthy as we are - rather healthier, physically speaking. But that's not the important part. What you just said. "This one." You're assuming one murderer for all these incidents. Tell me why.' The psychiatrist leaned back in his chair.

'I didn't think so at first. Tom saw it before I did. It's the craftsmanship.'

'Correct.'

'Are we dealing with a psychopath?'

Farber shook his head. 'No. The true psychopath is a person unable to deal with life. He sees reality in a very individual and eccentric way, generally a way that is very different from the rest of us. In nearly all cases the disorder is manifested in very open and easily recognized ways.'

'But Gooding -'

'Mr Gooding is what we - there's a new term, "organized psychopath."'

'Okay, fine, but he wasn't obvious to his neighbors.'

'That's true, but Mr Gooding's disorder manifested itself in the gruesome way he killed his victims. But with these killings, there's no ritual aspect to them. No mutilation. No sexual drive to them - that's usually indicated by cuts on the neck, as you know. No.' Farber shook his head again. 'This fellow is all business. He's not getting any emotional release at all. He's just killing people and he's doing it for a reason that is probably rational, at least to him.'

'Why, then?'

'Obviously it's not robbery. It's something else. He's a very angry man, but I've met people like this before.'

'Where?' Ryan asked. Farber pointed to the opposite wall. In an oaken frame was a piece of red velvet on which were pinned a combat infantryman's badge, jump wings, and a ranger flash. The detective was surprised enough to let it show.

"Pretty stupid, really,' Farber explained with a deprecating gesture. 'Little Jewish boy wants to show how tough he is. Well' - Farber smiled - 'I guess I did.'

'I didn't like Europe all that much myself, but I didn't see the nice parts.'

'What outfit?'

'East Company, Second of the Five-Oh-Sixth.'

'Airborne. One-Oh-One, right?'

'All the way, doc,' the detective said, confirming that he too had once been young and foolish, and remembering how skinny he'd been, leaping out the cargo doors of C-47s. 'I jumped into Normandy and Eindhoven.'

'And Bastogne?'

Ryan nodded. 'That really wasn't fun, but at least we went in by truck.'

'Well, that's what you're up against, Lieutenant Ryan.'

'Explain?'

'Here's the key to it.' Farber held up the transcribed interview with Mrs Charles. 'The disguise. Has to be a disguise. It takes a strong arm to slam a knife into the back of the skull. That wasn't any alcoholic. They have all sorts of physical problems.'

'But that one doesn't fit the pattern at all,' Ryan objected.

'I think it does, but it's not obvious. Turn the clock back. You're in the Army, you're an elite member of an elite unit. You take the time to recon your objective, right?'

'Always,' the detective confirmed.

'Apply that to a city: How do you do that? You camouflage yourself. So our friend decides to disguise himself as a wino. How many of those people on the street? Dirty, smelly, but pretty harmless except to one another. They're invisible and you just filter them out. Everyone does.'

'You still didn't - '

'But how does he get in and out? You think he takes a bus - a taxi?'

'Car.'

'A disguise is something you put on and take off.' Farber held up the photo of the Charles murder scene. 'He makes his double-kill two blocks away, he clears the area, and comes here - why do you suppose?' And there it was, right on the photo, a gap between two parked cars.

'Holy shit!' The humiliation Ryan felt was noteworthy. 'What else did I miss, Doctor Farber?'

'Call me Sid. Not much else. This individual is very clever, changing his methods, and this is the only case where he displayed his anger. That's it, do you see? This is the only crime with rage in it - except maybe for the one this morning, but we'll set that aside for the moment. Here we see rage. First he cripples the victim, then he kills him in a particularly difficult way. Why?' Farber paused for a few contemplative puffs, 'He was angry, but why was he angry? It had to have been an unplanned act. He wouldn't have planned something with Mrs Charles there. For some reason he had to do something that he hadn't expected to do, and that made him angry. Also, he let her go - knowing that she saw him.'

'You still haven't told me -'

'He's a combat veteran. He's very, very fit. That means he's younger than we are and highly trained. Ranger, Green Beret, somebody like that'

'Why is he out there?'

'I don't know. You're going to have to ask him. But what you have is somebody who takes his time. He's watching his victims. He's picking the same time of day - when they're tired, when street traffic is low, to reduce the chance of being spotted. He's not robbing them. He may take the money, but that's not the same thing. Now tell me about this morning's kill,' Farber commanded in a gentle but explicit way.

'You have the photo. There was a whole lot of cash in a bag upstairs. We haven't counted it yet, but at least fifty thousand dollars.'

'Drug money?'

'We think so.'

'There were other people there? He kidnapped them?'

'Two, we think. A man definitely, and probably a woman, too.'

Farber nodded and puffed away for a few seconds. 'One of two things. Either that's the person he was after all along, or he's just one more step towards something else.'

'So all the pushers he killed were just camouflage.'

'The first two, the ones he wired up -'

'Interrogated them.' Ryan grimaced. 'We should have figured this out. They were the only ones who weren't killed in the open. He did it that way to have more time.'

'Hindsight is always easy,' Farber pointed out. 'Don't feel too bad. That one really did look like a robbery, and you had nothing else to go on. By the time you came here, there was a lot more information to look at.' The psychiatrist leaned back and smiled at the ceiling. He loved playing detective. 'Until this one' - he tapped the photos from the newest scene with his pipe - 'you didn't really have much. This is the one that makes everything else clear. Your suspect knows weapons. He knows tactics. He's very patient. He stalks his victims like a hunter after a deer. He's changing his methodology to throw you off, but today he made a mistake. He showed a little rage this time, too, because he used a knife deliberately, and he showed the kind of training he had by cleaning the weapon right away.'

'But he's not crazy, you say.'

'No, I doubt he's disturbed in a clinical sense at all, but sure as hell he's motivated by something. People like this are highly disciplined, just like you and I were. Discipline shows in how he operates - but his anger also shows in why he operates. Something made this man start to do this.'