“Closer to fourteen.”
“And there’s obviously a lot of personal support for the list, off-Web contacts that can’t be traced. All the Web site says is, Here’s the guy’s name and where he lives; here’s what he’s accused of; let him know how you feel. Nothing about murdering him or hounding him to suicide. I personally can’t see that there’s anything illegal about it. What’s the precedent, anyway? Can you get a restraining order against a Web site?” Hawkin wondered.
“Unless there’s a really clear link between a violent act and a Web site’s ranting, it’s hard to shut it down,” Kate reminded him. Al no doubt knew this, but he tended to push the electronic world as far away from his life as he could.
Their food arrived, hot and beautifully greasy, and they turned their attention to it. In a short time Kate was contemplating a few limp and lonely french fries and thinking that the hamburger really hadn’t been as large as it looked. The waitress, standing by the table as if summoned, asked if they wanted something else.
“Actually,” Kate told her, “I’d like the same again.”
“For me, too,” said Al. “And another couple of beers.”
The two partners sat without speaking, suspended between the points of work and companionship, hunger and satiation. When the second half of their meal came they ate and drank with an almost ritual slowness, and both sighed at the end.
“I didn’t realize I was so hungry,” Al said, sounding amused.
“What’s that phrase? My sides were clapping together like an empty portmanteau.” Kate belched demurely and pushed away the plate, leaving the trimmings of lettuce and orange slice. “Whatever a portmanteau is. So, Al. What do we do? Are these about to become the feds’ completely, or still ours, or what?”
“They’re still ours until they kick us off. The hit list is their business—we just uncovered it. You did. Though I wouldn’t wait for any more thanks than you’ve got.”
“I won’t. So it’s back to our very own trio of abusers.”
“And possibly what’s-his-name, Goff, in Sacramento.”
“Be nice to find out if anyone in the city has regular contact with Ms. DeVries and her list. You suppose the FBI will tell us?”
“I don’t think we should wait for that either.”
It was frustrating not knowing what information would come from the federal investigation-and frustrating to know that the feds might well solve all three murders in one day, by working them from the opposite direction.
“We go on as before?” Kate asked.
“Who knows? We might even get there first.”
“I suppose,” Kate said thoughtfully, “it doesn’t really matter where the killer—or killers—found out about their victims. I mean, they could have gotten the names out of newspapers and court reports, inside contacts in the hospitals and shelters, even just word of mouth. Man beats wife, the neighbors know. That seems to be the way the Ladies find their victims. Berry Doyle and the rest of the LOPD victims aren’t on the Web site.”
“But, who would respond to stranger’s troubles by killing the stranger’s abuser, or rapist? A lot of people might want to , but wanting is a long way from doing. Strangling an unconscious stranger isn’t a thing just anybody can do. Assuming, as we have been, that they are strangers.”
“I agree,” she said. “It takes someone with a major load of resentment and anger. Cold rage.” The word brought to Kate’s mind the troubling title she’d seen on Roz’s desk. “You know, Roz Hall’s Ph.D. thesis is on ‘women’s rage’ and something about violent goddesses. Maybe I should take a closer look at it.”
Hawkin cocked his head at the tone of her voice. “And at her?”
Kate rubbed her face tiredly. “I’ve been turning that over in my mind a lot, and I just can’t say what I think. She’s an obvious candidate, because she’s so involved in the movement here, but you know, I can’t see it, can’t see her working herself up to that kind of hatred. Still, God knows she’s a woman with a lot of sides to her. I think it may be time to ask some hard questions about her alibis for the nights involved.”
“Probably better if I do it. I’m not a friend.”
“Let me start, see what I come up with. I’ll hand it over to you if there’s not a conclusive negative.”
“Who else, other than her?”
Kate gazed off into the night street outside the diner, assembling her thoughts. “We tend to think of anger as a sudden thing, an eruption into violence that fades and is over, either permanently or until the next time.” Most of the homicides they dealt with were this way, either in the home fueled by alcohol and stress or on the street corner fueled by drugs, territoriality, and young male hormones. Hawkin nodded, and Kate went on. “Serial killers are something else, of course. They work either on voices in their heads or sexual impulses. Anger feeds into it, but it’s secondary.” Again Hawkin nodded, and Kate sat forward, laying her forearms out on the worn Formica table.
“Then there are the terrorists, mass or serial killers who tie their anger in with their intellect.” God, she thought uneasily; could I describe Roz Hall any more clearly? “For them, rage is channeled through political action; their personal resentments and injuries, all their personal histories are given meaning by what they do. Revenge is taken not on the individual soldier who beat you up or the guy from the other side who blew up your little sister with a pipe bomb, but on all of ‘them,” the whole group that soldier or the bomb-thrower represent.“
“Sounds like you’ve talked this over with Lee,” Al commented.
“No.” He looked up at the tight, brief negative, and she had to explain. “I can’t go into this without making Roz a part of it, and Lee and Roz are close. They were lovers, a long time ago, and Roz has done an enormous amount in bringing Lee back to life. We owe her a lot. I owe her. They’re family.”
“I don’t know that Roz has anything to do with these murders—like I said, I can’t believe she does. But I think she has either knowledge or at least her suspicions. She talked about the inviolability of confession in a way that sounded… potential. As if nobody had come to her yet to confess, but she thought they might. And the subject matter of her thesis shows she’s been thinking about the idea of women’s anger for a while.”
“Terrorism, like Peter Mehta said. Against abusers.” Hawkin sounded more thoughtful than dubious.
“Selective terrorism. Although if they could come up with a way to eliminate large numbers of abusers at one throw, I doubt that they’d hesitate.” Kate thought of the flyer advocating poison pills for male babies, triggered at the first sign that the boy was becoming abusive.
“Terrorists generally go for publicity,” Al objected. “Why haven’t they sent in a manifesto to Channel Five or the
“Maybe they thought they’d see how many they could get away with before it came out and the abusers started to watch their backs.”
Hawkin took a thoughtful bite of his elderly orange slice. “So, not one vigilante, but ‘they.” How many do you see here?“
“I suppose it could be one person.”
“Male or female?”
Kate started to answer, then closed her mouth and thought for a minute. “You know, we’ve been thinking of this as a woman’s thing, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a man. Someone who lost a sister, maybe, or whose daughter was raped. God,” she said with a laugh, “wouldn’t that be ironic? Woman’s revenge carried out by a man.”
“Sensitive New Age guy goes overboard.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Now you’re writing newspaper headlines?”
“I may need a second job to support the new kid. But you were saying it could be one, or—?”
“If it’s a single individual, a woman, she’s got to be strong enough physically to handle a man the size of James Larsen, and with an immensely strong personality that could plan and carry out a series of methodical murders without falling apart.”
“Either that or she’s nuts.”
“Either that or she’s nuts,” Kate agreed. “But even that is a form of strength. If it’s a group, on the other hand, I’d say it has to be a small one, probably no more than two or three. Like you said, finding a person who could help you commit murder in cold blood wouldn’t be that easy. Anything but a very tight group, you’d have someone who talked or bragged or fell to pieces with remorse.”
“I agree. But finding them through the Web site is no longer our business. Unless, of course, we happen across the bigger picture in our own investigation.” Hawkin scratched his bristly jaw and shoved back his chair. “Time to go home, Martinelli. Get your beauty sleep, give Lee a back rub, sing Gilbert and Sullivan karaoke with
