Footsteps of the Hawk

'So Morales flaked a bad guy, so what? He's not the first, won't be the last. It don't make him— '

'Just listen to yourself,' Belinda said. 'You know McGowan how many years? A dozen? Twenty? Whatever, a long time, right? You ever know him to flake a perp? Even a live one? No. No you don't. 'Cause he never did it. But Morales, for him, that's a day at the office.'

I knew that was true. I even heard Morales once threaten a pimp, telling the pimp that's what he was going to do if he didn't give up some information. That's what I was after too, so I told her, 'I still don't get it,' wanting to listen, not talk.

'The way I heard it, Remington had his hands up in the air,' Belinda said, standing up and raising her own hands high enough to show me she wasn't wearing anything under the T–shirt. 'Morales just walked up and smoked him. Cold–blooded murder. He put McGowan in a cross. The old man did the right thing— but Morales knows he made his own partner retire, and it's eating him up inside. He was always ready to go over the line— now he lives there.'

Where I live too, I thought. 'It doesn't add up,' I said aloud. 'Morales, he's a law– and–order freak, right enough— I can see him cutting some corners to make a case. But you got him doing the crimes without a— '

'Burke, I'm telling you, he's out of control. He's fucking nuts . That's why he's working solo now— nobody'll partner him. And I've got proof….'

'What proof?'

'After the shooting, he saw a shrink. A Department shrink. You have to— that's the rule. They call it a trauma screen— it's just to see if you're dealing with it okay. The shrink made a report. And I got a copy.'

'How?'

Belinda ran her tongue over her lips— doing it slow, watching me from under her long eyelashes. Working undercover as a whore must have been a piece of cake for her.

'This report, it says he's the killer?' I asked her. 'Is that what you're trying to tell me?'

'Read it for yourself,' she said, getting up and walking over to a blue gym bag in the corner. She bent from the waist, held the unnecessary pose an extra beat, letting the T–shirt ride high, still working undercover, until she finally fished out a few sheets of paper. She straightened up and walked back over to me, holding the papers in her hands.

'Here,' she said. 'Take your time— I've got another copy.'

I stuffed the papers in my jacket without looking at them. 'I want to talk to him,' I said.

'Morales?'

'No. Piersall. I want to talk to him.'

'We can do that,' she said quickly. 'I'm going down to see him on— '

'You, me, and this reporter I know,' I told her.

'I don't know. I— '

'There's no 'I don't know' in this,' I said. 'Either I talk to him— my way, the way I said— or I'll work out the week and keep the cash. You want more, you re gonna have to go the extra mile.'

'Let me think about it,' she said, calm now. 'Can you call me on— ?'

'You know where to find me,' I told her. 'And it's your call. But the clock's running.'

The psych report. Rigid, obsessive–compulsive. Superstitious. Guilt–ridden. All black and white, no gray areas. Unmarried. No significant peer relationships.

Q: What if you lost your job?

A: I'd eat my fucking gun.

Calvinistic. Angry. Feels he must keep tight hold on his emotions or he'll crack. Doesn't smoke, drink.

I returned Belinda's call, standing on the corner of Van Dam so I'd see if she went into action right after. She grabbed it on the first ring.

'Hi,' is all she said, as if she could see through the telephone.

'You called me,' I said.

'It's…okay. For the visit, I mean. The way you want it. I don't have a car. I usually rent one to go down there, but— '

'You don't need to do that,' I told her. 'Just give me your address and we'll pick you up.'

'Ah…no, that wouldn't work. I'm working a split shift. And Tuesdays are the best for visits— it's not so crowded then. You know the Zero One? On West Broadway, just this side of— '

'I know it,' I said. I never heard of anyone calling the First Precinct the Zero One before— something about this woman, always about a half–note off.

'Can you make it around ten in the morning?' she asked. 'From there, it's only a little jump into the Tunnel and we can— '

'I'll be there,' I said, cutting the connection.

I waited almost two hours— she didn't come out.

'I can drive,' Hauser told me. 'It would be better, anyway— I got a lot of stuff I use in there, and— '

'I'll meet you on West Fourth. You know, where the basketball court— '

'What time?' he asked.

'Say about nine–forty–five? Tuesday morning. Okay?'

'Yeah. You found out anything yet?'

'Not yet,' I lied. 'See you then.'

Doc scanned the psych report quickly, not even wasting a minute to comment on the blackout surgery I'd performed to convert every mention of Morales' name to a blank space. He snapped a gooseneck lamp into life and held the report in his lap. Doc never looked up. He grunted once in a while, checked off a couple of spots on the paper with a red marker. I blew smoke rings at the ceiling, not interrupting.

'Okay, hoss,' he finally said, looking up. 'What do you want to know?'

'Could this guy be a sex killer?' I asked.

Doc rubbed the back of his head, his mouth twisted into a grimace. 'That's too big a question,' he said. 'Bottom line? If psychiatry could predict human behavior, the Parole Board wouldn't make so many mistakes.'

'Come on,' I said. 'Don't you guys do that all the time? What's the standard for locking somebody up in Bellevue? Dangerous to self or others, right? How could that be anything but a guess?'

'Sure,' he said. 'That's the standard. But it's way too broad for what you're asking. You just want to know if this guy's dangerous, that's an easy one. Yes. Hell yes! He's as tight as a stretched strand of piano wire. He sees the world real clear— black and white, no grays. Violence is part of his personality. It's almost his only means of self–expression, the way an artist paints or a musician plays. He seems to process information differently too.'

'What's that mean?'

'The brain's a computer,' Doc said. 'Data comes in, it gets analyzed— much faster than this,' snapping his fingers, 'messages go to the body, the body reacts. That's all processing is. This guy,' he said, indicating the papers in his lap, 'he gets the same data as everybody else, but he comes to different conclusions.'

'Meaning he's crazy?'

'Not at all,' Doc said, deciding to answer more than I asked, as usual. 'Trauma of any kind can cause a processing change, especially if it's early enough. Or severe enough. There's this guy, Bruce Perry, he's down at Baylor, in Texas. He's just starting to publish now, so I can't evaluate his stuff completely yet. But it looks like he can actually document past trauma in current brain patterns… and in a sleep–state, no less. That would revolutionize every treatment modality in the world— there's nothing cultural about brain waves. He pulls that one off— and from what I've seen so far, I'm betting he does— he wins the Nobel Prize, no contest.'

'So, what this guy Perry does, it's like a lie detector?' I asked.