Good Morning, Killer

well — both outsiders, way beyond the norm? Would those civilians in the crowded apartment buildings all around us, spooning mush into the mouths of babies, counting dollars from their minimum wages, ever breathe the pure oxygen of risk, of going over the edge, knowing superhuman power over other human beings, dancing easily across enemy lines because they were smart, smart, smart?

Ray Brennan smiled genuinely back, as if this were true and complete, and we were man and woman of a different race.

Like strangers at a cocktail party, we were lying to each other and ourselves. The difference was that I knew this, and he did not.

“Inadequate personalities,” a New York City police negotiator once told me, “need to be told what to do.”

“Show me the other girl.”

He indicated with the knife that I should go ahead down the hall.

“On the left,” I said for the folks I hoped were listening. “That would be the north side of the house. Is that your studio? I bet I know why. Because of the light. Artists’ studios will generally face north,” I reiterated as clearly as possible, but the babble halted as we entered the studio and my breath caught in my throat: “You’re quite an artist, sir.”

For the next five and a half hours I sat on a metal chair, hands bound behind my back with flex cuffs, in a room white and clean as an operating theater. It was an ordered sanctuary where time made sense because time had been turned into action that was repetitive and understandable; you could contemplate the passing of the weeks in the razor-straight rows and rows of photographs of sexual assaults. The dates were right there, printed with bold precision, in the right lower corner of each shot.

Bridget, the girl from photo day, had apparently fallen off a chair and hit a rack of lights, which crashed while we were in the living room. She had been lying unconscious on her side in a mess of broken glass when we entered. She was still fully dressed, in cowgirl garb identical to her sister’s — denim jacket, tight jeans and red high heels — dark hair half covering her face. She had been bound wrists to ankles and gagged with her own red kerchief. Small rivulets of blood from superficial cuts made by the broken glass crisscrossed her forehead and ran down the side of her nose. A black Stetson hat and a small leopard purse stood on a counter beside a six-pack of Coke. One can had been removed. I saw the cooler Juliana had described on the sanded and finished floor.

Brennan crossed his arms and fingered his elbow skin and gave an appraisal of the quarry: “This one is an eight. Maybe an eight and a half. My preferred type has fuller lips. But she was trusting, the most innocent creature,” he said thoughtfully, gazing down at the sleeping girl.

“I’m concerned about her. Are you?”

“What for?”

“Well, is she all right? She’s bleeding, and she looks like she was drugged.”

“She’s happy.”

“You think she’s happy?”

“Yeah.”

“It makes you happy to look at her like that?”

“Not really.”

“Should we do something to make her look better, sir?”

“I’ll take care of that,” he said.

“You know, if you’re hungry, the folks outside will get you something. Pizza. Anything you want. All you have to do is pick up the phone.”

“That’s okay, I brought my lunch.”

“Is it in the cooler?”

“Yeah.”

And so it went, a hiccupping conversation, alternately dreary, charged, flat and hostile. They talk about “seeing the face of training” during situations of high alert, and I did. I saw the smooth kind face of the singer Harry Belafonte, who resembled our hostage negotiation training officer, whose name I had forgotten, and heard the trainer’s gently ironic voice—“Don’t forget to ask the guy to come out”—and it was a secret refuge to remember the time he admonished our class to set fitness goals: “Here is my challenge to you: If I don’t lose twenty pounds in six months, I’ll shave my head.”

So the face of “Harry” was with me in the photo studio, where the studs had been drywalled and painted over, and on the drywall was pinned Ray Brennan’s collection of photographs, some from magazines, some glossy and fresh, some downloaded from the Internet, of female suffering inflicted by the mutilation of female anatomy or, in close-up, of Brennan himself in the act of anal or vaginal penetration, or demonstrating his famous strangulation techniques. There were rows of chains and belts neatly hung on the same portable rack I had seen in the Bureau darkroom that Hugh Akron used for strips of negatives.

If your hands were tied and you had run out of tactic options, “Be a good witness,” Harry had said.

Two cameras were set on tripods trained on the chair from which Bridget had fallen.

I could not look closely at the pictures because if I had seen what he had done to Juliana (it was documented, on the south wall), I would have gone into my own mindless homicidal rage. I had noticed — and narrated into my purse — that the back entrance to the cottage was barricaded on the inside by a security gate. He had foreseen the possibility of escape. The mission, I repeated to myself, was to keep him calm until SWAT could make the shot.

So I asked endless questions about photography, digging around in the brainpan for scraps of photographic factoids. The name Walker Evans bubbled up. Which did Brennan prefer, digital or film? Film, we agreed, was for the serious professional. Did he know crime scene examiners still went for the old four-by-five-inch cameras? You got the best detail. Brennan’s work, I observed without looking at it, was “Impressive.” “You mean I’m a sick fuck.”

“Is that how you see yourself?”

He scoffed and shook his head. “What would any normal person think?”

“They’d think you care about your collection.”

“You know how much money these shots are worth?”

“You tell me.”

He whistled, as if the sum were too shocking to say. “A lot of sick fucks out there.”

“But this is your stuff. It’s special to you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The next time they call, maybe you should answer the phone.”

“What for?”

“So they don’t bust in here and torch it.”

He considered this, as I considered whipping the remaining rack of hot explosive lights into his smug, clean- shaven face.

“When you shot your boyfriend, Ana, was it a turn-on? Did you get aroused?”

“No.”

“Sure you did. Let’s face it, you’re a little girl. You brought down a buck. Don’t tell me it wasn’t a thrill.”

“It wasn’t a thrill.”

“Can I share something?” Brennan was sitting against the wall again, with the lug soles in my face. “Big hair is out.”

“You think this is big hair? I don’t have big hair, it’s just wavy.”

“I prefer a ponytail, with the ears showing, and tiny studs. What did your boyfriend like?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know! That’s the problem, right there! And you say you two were in looove?” he crooned mockingly, flipping the knife between his legs.

“I cared about him.”

“Of course you did, you’re a good person, you have exuberance for life, I can tell that.”