'Do a full Battaglia,' I said. On dozens of occasions, I had gone in with Mike and Mercer to brief the district attorney on every aspect and detail of an investigation. Before I could pause for breath, Paul Battaglia would cross-examine us about factors we had never considered. 'Think of all the questions the best reporters will ask and arm him with the answers before he gets on the platform.'
'Where and how have serial killers hit in this city before? Is there anything useful in the facts of those cases to help us put this one together?' Mercer asked. 'Give Scully some ready answers. Separate facts from fairy tales.'
Dickie grabbed the bag of chips and sat across from me. Mike's chair was at the far end, and he leaned it back and put his feet up on the table.
'Son of Sam,' Mike said. 'In this town, it all starts with David Berkowitz, 1976.'
'No disrespect to Ted Bundy,' Dickie said. 'Ted just never got to Gotham, but his numbers make Berkowitz look like a piker. He put up some numbers, that Bundy kid.'
'We're not talking NFL stats,' Mike said. 'Son of Sam.'
'Your father work the case?' Mercer asked.
'The great Joe Borelli ran the show. Sure, my dad and every cop they could mobilize. One pathetic whack job and it took the department more than a year and two hundred detectives to bring Son of Sam down,' Mike said. 'You taking notes, Coop? Operation Omega, that's what they called it. Scully needs to give this task force a name. Something strong. That always placates people.'
The Son of Sam story was a law enforcement legend. Berkowitz had been a quiet misfit who stalked and shot his victims, some on city streets and some in parked cars, killing six and wounding many others. Most were young women, either alone or caught in compromising positions on isolated lovers' lanes.
'Everybody knows the expression
Like many cops, Mike and Dickie knew the details of department cases as if they had worked the jobs themselves.
'Berkowitz had a neighbor with a black lab named Sam. Claimed it was a devil dog, possessed by Satan. When Sam howled,' Mike said, 'it was a message to Berkowitz to go out and kill women. All a bullshit story he admitted making up so he could use an insanity defense if he got caught.'
'But they weren't sexual crimes, were they?' I asked. I didn't think Berkowitz had ever molested the women he killed.
'He didn't rape them, if that's what you mean. He and Ted Bundy were the first two serial killers ever interviewed by the FBI. Berkowitz claimed he became aroused by the act of stalking women. After he shot them, he'd often go back to the scene and masturbate. Tried to find his victims' graves for the same reason. That's got sexual sadist stamped all over it.'
Dysfunction was a problem for many assailants attempting to rape or sodomize. If our killer hadn't consummated any sexual acts with our victims, the lack of DNA might be explained by his physical inability to complete the assault.
'Any other sexual history?'
'Best the shrinks could tell, Berkowitz had sex one time in his life. Got a venereal disease from a prostitute his first time out, when he was in the army.'
'He had a military record?' I recalled the letters he'd written to the press, taunting them to capture him. Berkowitz had called himself 'Beelzebub, the chubby behemoth.'
'He didn't look the type.'
'Three years. Tell Scully to keep that in mind. That flabby lunatic Berkowitz-nothing personal, Dickie-didn't fit the physical stereotype. And yes, he learned all he needed to know about guns in the army.'
'You believe in the MacDonald triad?' Dickie asked Mike.
'MacDonald-the researcher who says there are three traits that are childhood predictors of a serial?'
'Pyromaniac, zoosadism, bedwetting beyond an appropriate age.'
'Berkowitz set fires in the hood all the time when he was growing up.' Mike and Dickie were in their own killer zone, trading perpetrator pedigree information like most boys would banter baseball batting averages. 'Cruelty to animals? All his life. He even shot Sam, the dog. And bedwetting? It's still a problem for him in state prison. There's a helpful hint. Check Herb Ackerman, Coop. Maybe that's what the diapers are about.'
'How'd they finally catch him, guys?' I asked. 'That's the detail we need.'
'Dumb luck. They had the task force working round the clock for a year, going nowhere. Then the schmuck ends up getting a parking ticket when he steps out of his car to murder somebody,' Mike said. 'Put a star next to that one. Our guy has to have a car or a van to move these bodies. We need scrips of vehicles, checks of E-ZPass before and after the girls were found in Queens and upstate, and parking violations. Check it all out.'
'Give me another one, Chapman,' Dickie said. The crumbs from the bag of chips were scattered on his tie and the shelf created by his stomach when he sat. 'Who else you got?'
'The Zodiac.'
'Very good, Mikey. Eddie Seda, 1989. I worked that one myself. Seven years till we got the bastard.'
'I thought the Zodiac was a serial killer on the West Coast, in the Bay Area,' I said.
'That's the original Zodiac,' Dickie said. 'Never caught that one. Brooklyn, we had the copycat. East New York, Highland Park. Ambidextrous, he was.'
'Ambidextrous?'
'Whatever they call it. Killed men, killed women. I think he had some sexual identity problems. Sent a letter to the cops with all the zodiac symbols and a note-'Orion is the one who can stop Zodiac.' Mailed it with one of those LOVE stamps. Then began belting out bodies like clockwork. Libra, Taurus, Virgo, like that.'
'Did you nail him, Dickie?'
'Eddie shot his sister in the ass with a zip gun 'cause he could hear her making love in the next room. Dumb luck again. Precinct guys show up at the house, take him in for questioning. While they're talking to him about the domestic, his palm prints match up to some of the case evidence. He killed more people than Berkowitz,' Dickie said, licking the salt off his fingertips. 'I did Rifkin, too.'
'Who?' I asked.
'Joel Rifkin, 1989 to 1993. Another outer boroughs boy. Eighteen murders. Picked up his girls in the city but dumped them out by us. Hookers, mostly. Had sex with them, then strangled them to death. This one's your classic-not guns like the other two. He was the Ted Bundy kind-real hands-on stuff, strangulation, not shooting. And by the way, always after he had sex with them.'
'There's the prostitute angle again,' Mercer said.
'That might work for Amber Bristol, but not for the others,' Mike said. 'Elise Huff and Connie Wade weren't pros.'
'Rifkin liked to snap their necks, those hookers,' Dickie said, brushing the crumbs off his tie.
It was a sickening thought. 'Why?'
Dickie looked at me as though I had two heads. 'Why? I told you why. He just liked doing it, I guess. Liked the noise it made. How the hell do I know? He said he liked it.'
'Your squad make the arrest?' I asked.
'State troopers.'
'Now that's the last thing Scully wants to hear,' Mercer said. 'Troopers getting credit for the collar. The press'll jump all over that one.'
'Once again, dumb luck. Routine traffic stop. Rifkin didn't have a front plate on his van. Troopers chased him and he crashed into a lamppost,' Dickie said, taking a swig of his soda. 'There's your sexual sadist, Alex. That's the kind of creep you're looking for.'
'Kenneth Kimes. Sante Kimes,' Mike said, trying to play perp catch-up with Dickie. 'Manhattan, 1998.'
'Mother-son grifter team. Doesn't count, Mikey. Yeah, they killed people from California to the Big Apple, but it was all about larceny. They were poking each other, that sick broad and her mama's boy. They weren't interested in sex with anybody else, just each other. Like you can't count your mutt drug dealers and your gang shoot-'em- ups. They're not serials. You got your Malvo-Muhammad nuts, too. Beltway snipers. They're spree killers, not serials. You got your mass murderers-'
'We're looking for a type like James Jones,' Mercer said. 'I worked that one.'
