The second one-'
'How was she dressed?' Mike asked.
'The nurse? I don't know. You can look through the police reports for a description. The second one was a grad student who worked evenings as a security guard at a mall. Not armed or anything. Just sitting there making sure no one came out of the dressing room with stolen clothes stuffed in her shopping bag.'
'But in uniform?' Mike interrupted Kallin again and she seemed annoyed.
'I don't remember. The third one was a stewardess, on her way home from Newark after a flight from Spain.'
Three for three possibly in some kind of uniformed dress.
'The crimes, Miss Kallin,' I said. 'Can you tell us what Rasheed did to these women?'
'Would any of you like a drink?'
'No, thanks.'
She walked to her refrigerator and opened it, removing a half-full bottle of white wine. She took a glass from a cabinet above the sink and uncorked the bottle.
'I had to look at him almost every day,' she said. 'I had to be civil to this animal, knowing what he'd done. Hard to believe it wasn't enough to keep him away from society for the rest of his life.'
'His m.o., Ms. Kallin,' I said. 'It's important for us to know.'
She poured the wine to the rim of the glass and sipped at it before she returned to the table. 'Troy had been doing burglaries in the area. Out of work, breaking into apartments to steal stuff that he could sell. Electronic equipment, jewelry, silverware-whatever he could get his hands on. The first girl in this pattern-those initials on his left arm? Her name is Jocelyn. She said she was tired after a long evening at work. Got out of her car and was walking to her condo, oblivious to everything because she was home. Know what I mean? You get that safe feeling that you've got the day behind you when you've reached familiar territory?'
'Exactly.' We'd each heard it from scores of victims.
'Jocelyn saw Troy get out of the van and walk toward her building. Calm, easy, not in a hurry. She could see his face in the streetlight overhead. He nodded and gave her a big smile. She gave one right back at him,' Kallin said, pausing to look at Mercer before she went on. 'Said there weren't a lot of blacks living in her complex, so she had a moment of concern, but chastised herself for having such a racist thought once he smiled at her.'
I knew that reaction wasn't a first for Mercer, either.
'He got behind her and in a flash had his arm around her neck and a knife to her ear. Told her he'd kill her if she screamed, that he just wanted her cash and her jewelry. Dragged her out of the light to his van. The rear door was open-just waiting for her-and he pushed her down inside, banging her head against the floor of it to stun her.' That gave him time, no doubt, to get in and close the door. 'Troy must have had a sock in the van, ready to gag her. That's what he used in his first couple of cases, too-the ones he got away with. Jocelyn said he shoved the sock in her mouth, while he straddled her. Then he put the knife down so that he could bind her hands together.'
'Bound her with what?' Mike asked.
'Duct tape. Also in the van, like he'd done this before. She testified that he was swift and sure about what he was doing. Tied her feet with rope, too. Then he drove off.'
'Where to?'
'Jocelyn testified that she didn't have any idea. A wooded area, dark and isolated. There's miles of it all along the Palisades. He pulled over and climbed into the back with her. That's when the torture began.'
Nelly Kallin lit another cigarette and swallowed her wine like it was water.
'What did Troy do to her?'
'First he played with the knife, Ms. Cooper. He traced the tip of it around her eyes and down the side of her nose. He scraped the surface of her face until she bled at the corner of her lips, so that she could taste the blood as it ran into her mouth and was absorbed by the cotton sock. Then he used it to cut her clothing off, ripping her skin as he did. Nothing life-threatening, not stabbing her, but leaving lacerations the length of her body. He cut the rope off her ankles so that he could penetrate. You can read the rest if you can't figure it out,' she said, pat ting the thick folder that held the detailed police reports.
'And that's where he dumped her?' Mike asked.
'No, no. He abused Jocelyn for hours, for most of the night. Then he retied her legs, drove away, and left her just before dawn at another point off the highway. Threw the handbag out, too. Never bothered to take her money. That's how the cops got his fingerprints.'
'Who found her?'
'A sanitation worker. The patent leather from her pocketbook reflected the sun's rays. The guy walked a few feet into the woods to explore it.'
'Was the body wrapped-I mean, was Jocelyn naked when he left her there?'
Nelly Kallin licked her thumb and paged through the file. 'I don't think she was. I'm pretty sure each of the women was covered up with something. Here it is. Old blankets, the same kind in each case.'
'Green,' Mike said. 'Drab olive green, I'm betting. The scumbag must have cornered the market in those.'
She handed him the report that confirmed what we already knew. 'In each of these instances, Ms. Kallin,' I asked, 'did Rasheed ejaculate?'
'Yes. Those were the semen samples that ultimately led to the postconviction DNA match. But you won't be so lucky.'
'What do you mean?'
'You haven't got DNA in any of these cases, have you?'
Another fact that hadn't been made public by the commissioner. I shouldn't have answered her question but I was fascinated that she was so confident.
'No, no, we don't.'
'Troy Rasheed has been chemically castrated.'
'Jesus,' Mike said, as always put off more by sexually explicit conversation than by the cold clinical facts of murder. 'You could do that in New Jersey? By the boa constrictor on his penis or by the docs?'
'He volunteered for it, Mr. Chapman. He was smart enough to think it would make it easier for him to get out of prison. They didn't chop it off, you know. He just took ten months' worth of injections of a drug called Depo- Provera.'
'So what are you saying, ma'am? That Troy Rasheed couldn't be a sexual predator? On the one hand, you're telling us he's our man, and on the other hand, you're saying he's been castrated.'
Nelly Kallin's impatience with Mike was growing. 'You think these crimes are only about sex? You don't think binding and torturing women has something to do with power and physical domination?' And anger and lust, and sometimes pure pleasure.
'So we've got a serial killer who's impotent.'
'It's not these bastards' gonads that drive them to assault their victims, Detective. It's their twisted heads.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Well, then, Nelly,' Mike said, one arm on the kitchen table and the other brushing back his hair, trying to work his charm on her. 'Why don't you take us inside Troy Rasheed's head?'
Mercer was on the phone to Lieutenant Peterson suggesting an allpoints bulletin for the released prisoner. He was reading a date of birth from the prison records and the inmate number so that New Jersey's Department of Corrections could e-mail a copy of the photograph to go out on the wire services
He was paroled in July, Loo. We can always pick him up on a violation.'
Kallin turned to look at Mercer and wagged a finger at him. 'That's wrong. There's no parole hold. You can't get him for that.'
Mercer put his hand over the receiver. 'What do you mean?'
