It neglected to mention that when I smiled, my cheeks dimpled sweetly.
The press never gets it right.
Wayne Cosgrove called to see if there was anything I knew that I hadn't told the beat man at the news conference. I said no. He said would I lie to him. I said yes. And we hung up. I turned to the sports page and read 'Tank Macnamara,' and was checking the 'Transactions' listing when Quirk came in. He was carrying an easel and a chalkboard, and a large paper bag. I said, 'Are you going to brief me?'
Quirk set up the easel, put the chalkboard on it, and took a new package of yellow chalk out of his coat pocket and set it on my desk. He took two napkins out of the bag and put them on my desk. Then he got two paper cups of coffee out, and two corn muffins. He put one muffin carefully on each napkin, and sat down in my client chair.
'How's Susan?' he said.
'The usual,' I said, 'glamorous, smart, hot for me.'
Quirk bent the plastic lid of his coffee cup carefully up on one side and twisted out a neat triangle, leaving the rest of the lid in place.
'Hard to understand how someone could be all three,' Quirk said.
'You're just sulky because they ran my picture in the Globe today and not yours,' I said.
Quirk drank a little coffee. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Let's go over this Red Rose thing.'
'Sure,' I said.
Quirk stood and walked to the chalkboard.
'If you don't mind, I'm going to want to leave this set up here,' he said.
'Fine,' I said.
Quirk began to write on the board.
Killer 1. Probably white
2. Blood type C 3. No vasectomy
4. Secretes PGM I 5. Ejaculates at scene
6. Victims black a. Hooker b. Waitress c. Exotic dancer d. Singer
'What else do we know about him?' Quirk said.
'Victims are black,' I said. 'Scene of crime is white, or mostly white.'
'See 1 above,' Quirk said.
'What about the victims?' I said. 'Pattern?'
'Like from hooker to singer?' Quirk said.
'Might be a kind of progression up the social scale,' I said.
'If he thinks like that,' Quirk said.
'You got a profile of him from the forensic shrinks yet?' I said.
Quirk shrugged, 'Yeah, but what? Rage against women, or rage against blacks, or both. Powerfully repressed sexuality, manifested through the gun; the semen traces may be masturbation, or they may be involuntary ejaculation. Like when he shoots her.'
'Jesus Christ,' I said.
'Um,' Quirk said. 'You talk with Susan about this?'
'Yeah.'
'What's she got to say?'
'Same sort of stuff. One thing she said is to remember that psychopaths have their own symbolic system and it may not be like other people's.'
'So it doesn't necessarily mean that because he kills black women he hates black women,' Quirk said.
'Yes, he only hates, or fears, or something, what the black women symbolize.'
'She have any thoughts about what it would be?' Quirk said.
'I asked her that,' I said. 'She gave me the shrink look and said, 'Zee muzzer, vee often look to zee muzzer.'
'
'Her too,' Quirk said.
'So we should be looking for a cop had trouble with his mom,' Quirk said.
'Maybe,' I said.
'On a force that's eighty percent Irish,' Quirk said.
'Okay,' I said, 'let's take another approach. Is he really a cop?'
'Why say so if he's not?' Quirk said.
'Why say so if he is?'
