Annie’s obscure novels and pushed men out of her mind for the two minutes it took her to fall asleep. She wanted escape. She wanted a world where nothing bad happened.
Her office phone rang. It was Glenn Buddy. She listened quietly as he delivered more bad news.
There was a third rape: a woman, alone on the street, surprised by a man who had violently assaulted her, beating her relentlessly as he raped her. She had just left a beauty salon and the first person to see her was a man who didn’t care about all the things she had done to make herself as beautiful as she wanted to be. He had pushed her down onto the ground, and dragged her by the feet into a laneway. He had slammed her up against a dumpster, and her head had banged off it, over and over, and the stench of garbage, and of wet animals, had filled her nostrils. A rat had fallen from the dumpster right by her face, and had run, disappearing under an empty bag of fun-sized chocolate bars. Three of the gold stars that had been glued to her nails had broken off. She noticed that the polish had smudged on one of them, she guessed, when she put her coat on at the salon, even though the girl had helped her with it …
The victim remembered all these details clearly because she would rather watch a rat, and smell a stench, and read the five fun flavors in an empty bag of tiny chocolate bars than focus on what this man on top of her was doing. He was gone, she had figured, he was somewhere else, and she didn’t want to go wherever that was. She wanted to be right there in a filthy alleyway, focusing on everything but an unreality. She knew women could disassociate at a time like this, and she didn’t want to, she was too afraid. There would be too much, already, in the aftermath, too much physically to overcome. She didn’t want to add to that a search for her mind.
He left her a drawing too.
Ren sat at her desk, staring at the new drawing — a cityscape, towering buildings, and lightbulbs scattered across the sky. That a rapist could draw this, with the same hands he had used to restrain these girls, this woman, the same hands that he had pressed over their mouths, the same hands he had used to tear at their clothes, and punch, and choke them, was incredible. That the same mind that had composed the image she was now looking at could create, and make real, his unspeakable fantasies, could violate a human being so thoroughly, was too much to make sense of.
The FBI profiler categorized the rapist as anger-retaliatory: short, impulsive, blitz attack, displaced anger, victim likely to represent someone else/women in general, extreme violence until the anger goes, possibly comes from a broken home, possibly spent time in foster care, socially competent, athletic, not seeking to kill, drug/alcohol abuser, mid to late twenties.
Each rape appeared to be unplanned, which meant that the rapist had not gone to the Kennington party with a victim or even a rape in mind. He had only been there for a short period of time, he had seen Ally Lynch and he had pounced. Ren removed elements of the profile based on Ally Lynch’s account: her rapist was younger than his twenties, which Matt had backed up, the rapist was strong, but he was not athletic, and, at least on the night he had attacked Ally, she said that he had no alcohol on his breath.
Ren picked up the phone and called Matt.
‘Matt, I need some art theory help. I’ve got a drawing here from a crime scene …’
Silence.
Matt decided to go along with Ren in forgetting their last encounter.
‘A drawing?’ said Matt.
‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘A drawing. It was found at a crime scene.’
‘You really are Nancy Drew,’ he said.
‘It’s weird,’ said Ren. ‘It’s like a monkey on a skewer with chains coming out of his hands. On the left, the chain is attached to a bed with a bird on it. On the right-hand side, the chain disappears into some kind of megaphone. And there’s a life-preserver hanging off it.’
‘See-no-evil hear-no-evil?’ said Matt.
‘That’s what one of the detectives said, but I don’t think so.’
‘Can you send me a JPEG?’ said Matt.
‘Sure … burn on reading, OK?’ said Ren.
‘Of course. I’ll call you back.’
Ten minutes later, Matt called back. ‘You have to look with better eyes,’ he said.
She stared at the drawing.
‘First off, it’s not a monkey,’ said Matt. ‘It’s a man’s face or boy’s face split in two — one side looking left, the other looking right. The downturned mouths are joined up — that’s what’s making it look like a monkey. The left side is chained by the wrist to a bed, with a cuckoo on it. That would be the proverbial cuckoo’s nest, I’m guessing-’
‘Really?’ said Ren. ‘Minus the actual nest?’
‘Looks like a hospital kind of bed to me,’ said Matt. ‘And look at the right-hand side of the picture: the shape of the links on the chain is different. The chain looks like it’s made of pills.’
‘Pills are my thing these days,’ said Ren.
‘Crushing them up and snorting them?’ said Matt.
‘Only when I sense a random drug test on the horizon.’
‘See in the picture,’ said Matt, ‘the pills are forming a megaphone …’
‘And look at the bed,’ said Ren. ‘The thing that looks like a medical chart at the end of the bed also looks like a sliding volume control. It’s up to the max.’
‘You’re getting the hang of this,’ said Matt.
‘So … ’ said Ren. ‘In terms of the artwork itself …’
‘It’s very simplistic, but it’s detailed,’ said Matt. ‘And the message isn’t terribly sophisticated-’
‘Thanks for that …’ said Ren.
Matt laughed.
‘So,’ said Ren, ‘this picture was drawn by …’
‘I would say a teenager … a teenage boy.’
Ally Lynch said the rapist was not much older than her.
‘Well, that makes sense,’ said Ren. ‘So what’s he saying? That he’s being restrained by pills and chains and nobody’s listening to him …? Is he a psych patient?’
‘Possibly. But he’s not actually in the bed. If he was, I would venture he would have drawn the monkey-boy in there. Instead, he’s been left hanging. It looks to me like he’s being pulled in two different directions: one toward physical restraint, one toward pharmacological restraint. I’m not sure that’s a word, but you get the gist.’
‘As if a hospital isn’t going to medicate him anyway …’ said Ren.
‘True. But some people really do need meds, Ren.’
Silence.
Matt sighed. ‘I do
‘Well, when the moment arrives when you do mean me, do let me know.’
‘Not-fighting-dot-com,’ said Matt.
‘Not-wanting-to-fight-dot-e-d-u,’ said Ren.
‘E.D.U. — I love it. A higher purpose.’
‘Hey,’ said Ren. ‘Look again on the right … that chain, the one made of pills … it’s going into his head, not onto his wrist like on the other side. Could the pills be making the voices louder?’
‘Maybe,’ said Matt. ‘And … look. The life preserver …’
‘Has a hole,’ said Ren.
‘It’s a sad piece of art,’ said Matt.
‘It is,’ said Ren.
‘I’m taking it the red dots on the picture are not to indicate a sale.’ There was no humor in his tone. ‘What did he do?’
‘He raped a fourteen-year-old girl, and possibly more.’
‘And you’re on the hunt …’ said Matt.
‘Not my case,’ said Ren. ‘But, I’m assisting … hopefully. OK, gotta go.’
