“Who was that?” Sara asked.
“Robert Swinster,” Max replied, “a handwriting analyst. He was rechecking Bruce Grey’s note.”
“Did he find anything?”
The phone on the desk buzzed. Max put up a finger to signal for her to wait and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Daily News on line five again. ABC-TV on line eight.”
“I’m not talking to the press right now,” he snapped. He slammed the receiver back into the cradle. “Damn reporters,” he muttered. “Enough to drive a man crazy.”
“Temper, temper.”
“Everyone keeps screaming how we’re not doing our job. How the hell are we supposed to get anything done with the press breathing down our necks all the time? Bunch of vultures—present company excluded, of course. You know something? I think the media hopes the psycho will strike again, the sick bastards.”
“Comes with the territory,” Sara replied.
“I know,” Max said, “but the pressure on this one is unbelievable. At the press conference the other day I felt like fresh meat in front of starving Dobermans. And that’s not the half of it. The mayor’s demanding answers in that holier-than-thou way of his. Every gay activist is coming out of the woodwork accusing the fascist police department of discriminating against homosexuals. I’ve had a dozen phony confessions today alone. Everyone suddenly wants to be the Gay Slasher.” He took a deep breath. “Ah, screw it. So how’s Michael?”
“Feeling better. His teammates are visiting him now.”
“Good. I needed to talk this over with you right away.”
“Bouncing time, eh?”
Max nodded and smiled wearily. Several years ago Sara had been instrumental in helping Max find a cop killer who had randomly gunned down four of Max’s fellow officers in one week. Max had learned from that experience that he liked bouncing ideas off an intelligent listener, and Sara was about as sharp a listener as there was. Very often they said some crazy things to each other, came up with some crazy hypotheses, even called each other crazy, but eventually the irrational statements began to mesh with the more rational facts, often forming solid solutions.
“Is this case harder for you than most?” she asked.
“Meaning?”
“You know what I mean.”
He smiled nervously, checking to make sure that no one was within earshot. “It’d make an interesting news angle, huh? The fag detective in charge of finding the Gay Slasher?”
She said nothing.
“Sara, you’re still the only one who knows—aside from Lenny and my mother.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple visibly sliding up and down. “I wish I could say something, but do you know what would happen to me if the force found out?”
“I can imagine.”
“I’d lose everything. I’d be lucky if they let me work as a meter maid.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Max.”
He nodded, his eyes lowered to the floor. “By the way, Lenny says hello.”
“How is he?”
He shrugged. “He’s a nag, but I love him.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“You sound like my mother. Can we get back to the case now?”
“Okay,” Sara said, “what have you got so far?”
“Not much. We got a wino who saw Bradley’s body being dumped behind the Black Magic early in the a.m. We also located the car the killer was driving at the time. That’s about it.”
“Go on.”
“It seems the wino, a Mr. Louis Bluwell, was sleeping off a couple of bottles of gin under some garbage bags when he heard the car and saw a man he described as ‘a big monster’ get out of the car and dump the body amongst the garbage bags. Mr. Bluwell said the car was a beat-up green Chevy. We found a car matching that description abandoned on Riverside Drive around One Hundred Forty-fifth Street. There was a fair amount—make that gallons—of the victim’s blood splashed all over the floor of the trunk. The car had been stolen the previous evening.”
“Did the lab find anything else in the car?”
“One set of fingerprints—the victim’s. A few hairs—all belonging to the victim.”
“Figures,” Sara said. “Anything else?”
“According to Mr. Bluwell, the man in the car was big—a mountain-sized guy with dark hair. No noticeable features.”
“So what do you make of it?”
Bernstein leaned back, placing his hands together, the fingertips of his index fingers resting against his nose. He put his feet on his desk. “I find it all interesting,” he remarked.
“How so?” Sara asked.
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Okay, help me here, Sara. What do we know so far? First, all three victims were homosexuals. Second, all three victims were being treated at the same AIDS clinic. Third, all three died of stab wounds within the past three weeks.”
“So?”
“So take a look at the cases one by one for a second.” Max sat up quickly, opened up his pocket pad, and read. “Victim one: Mr. Scott Trian. Trian had been found tied spread-eagle to his bed in apartment 8G at 27 Christopher Street. The corpse was found with twenty-seven stab wounds. The murderer sliced off Trian’s left ear, both thumbs, and left nipple—while he was still alive, we think. He also castrated Trian.”
“Unbelievable,” Sara whispered.
Max nodded. “Even more unbelievable is that we’ve managed to keep the mutilation and torture away from the media.”
“Won’t last,” Sara added. “Someone will open his mouth.”
“True enough, but until then I can use it to cut through all these phony confessors. When pressed for details about the killings, none of the confessing Gay Slashers knew about the mutilation or torture. They only knew what they had read in the papers. But we’re getting off the subject. Let’s move on to the second victim.”
“Okay.”
Bernstein wet his index finger and turned a few pages. “Victim number two: Mr. William Whitherson. Mr. Whitherson’s boyfriend, a Stuart Lebrinski, stepped out of their co-op on the Upper West Side to pick up some groceries. When he came back an hour later, Whitherson was dead. Twenty-three stab wounds. There was no mutilation or signs of torture.”