Survival Of The Fittest

behind their own inflated self-images.

Leading to dissonance. Tension.

The need for release: the ultimate control.

I thought of a killer I'd met in graduate school. A strangler, as it happened, locked in a back ward of County General Hospital, waiting for the court system to evaluate his sanity. A professor who earned extra money as an expert witness had taken us to the killer's cell.

A gaunt, almost skeletal man in his thirties, with sunken cheeks and wispy black hair, the strangler lay on a cot, restrained by wide leather straps.

One of my classmates asked him what it felt like to kill. The gaunt man ignored the question at first, then a slow smile spread across his lips and they darkened, like paper held to a flame. His victim had been a prostitute whom he hadn't wanted to pay. He'd never known her name.

What it feels like? he finally said, in a disturbingly pleasant voice. It feels like nothing, it's no big fucking deal, you stupid asshole. It's not actually doing it, anyway, it's being able to do it, asshole.

The power…

Opportunistic or premeditated.

Had Irit's killer known about the annual field trip in advance or was he just aware that the park was frequented by schoolkids?

Were the Carmelis right about Irit's victimization being one of those wrong-time/wrong-place horrors of chance that give atheists fuel?

Predator leering as the school bus unloads.

Feeling sweet contentment the way a fox might as it views chicklets hatching.

Every parent's nightmare.

Picking a weak one out of the herd- but why Irit?

Special Agent Gorman had suggested the girl's disabilities, but Irit's problems weren't obvious to the casual observer. On the contrary, she'd been an attractive child. No shortage of other kids with more conspicuous handicaps.

Was that the cue? The fact that she looked normal?

Then I remembered the hearing aid on the ground.

Despite all the care taken to arrange the body.

Not an accident. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became.

Leaving the pink disc behind- a message?

Communicating what?

I grabbed up the M.O. file again, looked for crimes committed against deaf people. Nothing.

Had the hearing aid told him Irit was the easiest target of all- less likely to be aware as he came up behind her, less likely to scream?

She wasn't mute, but maybe he'd assumed she was.

Gentle strangulation.

The phrase disgusted me…

Care and time taken to avoid degradation of the body… No sex at the scene but perhaps he'd gone elsewhere to get off, masturbating to memories, as sex killers usually do.

But sex killers often used trophies to trigger memories: clothing, jewelry. Body parts; the breasts were a favorite.

Irit's body had been left pristine, nothing taken. Posed- almost primly. Expressly unsexual.

As if the killer wanted the world to know she hadn't been touched.

That he was different?

Or maybe he had taken something- something unobtrusive, undetectable- a few strands of hair.

Or had the souvenirs been the images themselves?

Photos, snapped at the scene and pocketed for later.

I pictured him, faceless, standing over her, tumescent with power, arranging- posing, snap, snap.

Creating a tableau, a hideous art form.

Polaroids. Or a private darkroom where he could modulate optical nuance.

A self-styled artiste?

Taking Irit far enough from the path so no one would hear the click, see the flash.

Cleaning up… obsessive but not psychotic.

You have many madmen in America!

I reread S.A. Gorman's letter, everything else in the box.

For all the hundreds of pages, something was missing.

The Carmelis' friends and neighbors hadn't been interviewed. Neither had Mrs. Carmeli, and her husband had been contacted only twice, both times briefly.

Respect for the grieving or soft-glove treatment for a diplomat?

Now, months later, a dead end.

My head hurt and my lungs burned. I'd been at it for nearly three hours.

As I got up to make coffee, the phone rang.

The operator at my service said, “A Ms. Dahl is on the line, Doctor.”

“I'll take it, thanks.”

“Dr. Delaware? It's Helena. I just got my on-call schedule for the week so I thought I'd try for an appointment. Do you have anything in two days? Maybe around ten in the morning?”

I checked. Several court reports were due. “How about eleven?”

“Eleven would be fine. Thank you.”

“How's everything going, Helena?”

“Oh… about as well as can be expected… I guess I'm going through a point where I really miss him- more than I did… right after. Anyway, thanks for seeing me. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I wrote down the appointment. So much for clinical predictions.

What was the chance I could do better for a dead girl?

7

“How far'd you get?” Milo asked the next morning. It was 9:00 A.M. and we were drinking orange juice in my office.

“All of it.” I lifted the offender printout. “New system?”

“Funded by Sacramento in response to the victims' rights movement. Great idea but so far reporting procedures are sloppy and lots of cities- L.A. included- don't have a system in place. Also, most cops are scared of computers so the best way to get info is still the horn and teletypes. What'd you think of the FBI letter?”

“Nothing I disagree with but Agent Gorman's careful not to commit herself.”

“So what else is new.”

I told him my conception of the murderer. The possibility that photos had been taken.

“Polaroids or a darkroom?” he said. “A professional photographer?”

“Or a serious amateur. Someone with artistic pretensions- there's something pretentious about the crime, Milo. Fussy. Arranging the body, sweeping up. A psychopath who wants to believe