STENCH

by Jim Doherty

“Four seven three Lincoln queen ocean.”

I was driving down a residential street in Berkeley , left hand on the steering wheel, right holding the cassette recorder.

“Two eight five x-ray yellow November.”

To most people it would have sounded like gibberish but to whoever played this back it'd sound like license plates.

“One six Henry George Frank Charlie.”

The trick was to keep a normal rate of speed. If I went too slow it would be clear I wasn't just out for a drive. If I went too fast I risked missing one of the plates on the parked cars.

“Oregon plate Adam Mary one two zero seven.”

When I was done recording the north side of the street as I drove west, I'd turn around and record the south side while I headed east.

“Boy David four eight nine three.”

Unlikely as it seems, I was hot on the trail of a serial rapist.

*

They called him “Stench.”

That was the monicker that caught on. Several other nicknames the Bay Area media had tried, like the “Night Prowler” or the “Ice-Pick Invader,” had failed to stick

But one enterprising reporter who'd sought out and interviewed most of the rapist's victims (this despite the fact that the victims' names hadn't been released) discovered something that, up ‘til then, only the police had known. Several of them reported that their attacker had an obnoxious odor. One described it as “a terrible stench.” Those three words became the title of the feature article that appeared in the following Sunday's Oakland Tribune , and within days Berkeley's serial rapist had been christened.

*

He was a master burglar, frighteningly adept at breaking into homes undetected.

But it wasn't property he was after.

*

Each of his victims lived alone.

Sometime between eleven PM and three AM, he'd silently break into his target's home, make his way to her bedroom. Then he roughly clamp his hand over her mouth and press an ice-pick against her throat.

“Be quiet!” he'd hiss.

To make his point more forcefully, he'd prick a hole, not deep, just enough to draw a little blood. He made a second puncture just to be sure she got the message.

“See how easy it is,” he'd say. “We're going to be together for a little while. If you want to be alive when I leave you'll do exactly as I say.” If there were children in the house he'd threaten them, as well.

Using a roll of duct tape, he'd seal her mouth, then her eyes, then bind her spread-eagled on the bed.

When she was secured to his satisfaction, he'd brutally rape her.

*

It took awhile for Berkeley PD to catch onto the fact that a serial rapist was operating in its jurisdiction. It wasn't really anybody's fault. A series of bureaucratic mix-ups and coincidences combined to keep us from seeing the pattern.

First of all, there wasn't much about the cases that was particularly unique. Lots of sexual predators break into their victims' homes, and a fair number use ice-picks as weapons. Still, it might seem odd that no connection was made unless you knew about the upheaval in the Sex Crimes Detail at that time.

During the four weeks between the first attack and the second, two promotions and a transfer resulted in the detail's complete turnover. The replacements failed to notice the similarities between the first crime, which had occurred prior to their new assignment, and the second.

Six weeks passed between the second and third attacks.

Meanwhile, two more promotions and a resignation caused a second complete turnover in Sex Crimes.

There was a six month gap between rapes three and four. Meanwhile, rapes one, two, and three had been placed in the cold case file as new sex crimes, committed by different predators, demanded the detail's attention. With no new crimes in the series, the fact that there was a series continued to go unnoticed.

*

Contrary to what you're probably thinking by now, the Berkeley Police is not staffed by a bunch of incompetents. In fact, despite the Sex Crimes Detail's lack of stability, relatively few cases were going unsolved. Which meant that the similarities between the first three rapes had a better chance of getting noticed now that they were all filed together in the comparatively small cold case folder.

And it wasn't long after the fourth case that Detective Sandy Weldon made a tentative connection. The fourth victim commented on her attacker's body odor, which rang a bell in Officer Weldon's memory. There'd been a victim some months earlier who'd also made a point of mentioning her attacker's bad smell. She went through the cold cases until she found the one she was looking for. She also found the other two cases. Neither of those victims had mentioned any particular smell, but both rapes had been committed in roughly the same neighborhood as the two in which a body odor had been remarked on.

All four cases occurred in the victim's home after the victim had retired for the night, and in all four cases the responsible had been armed with an ice pick.

Somehow, in all the reshuffling of staff that had occurred during the preceding year, the first three cases had slipped through the cracks.

*

The fifth victim was a TV reporter named Karen Kowerd, who decided to go public when she found out that hers had been the latest in a series of sexual attacks.

Chief of Police Sylvester Nolan responded to the flurry of unfavorable publicity in the traditional manner adopted by law enforcement administrators in such circumstances. He appointed a task force. It consisted of Detective Sergeant Oliver Bryant, relieved of his regular duty as the commander of Sex Crimes, and Detective Weldon who'd discovered the connection between the attacks.

The formation of the new detail was timely. Over the next two months there were eight more attacks. That brought his total up to thirteen, all in the same neighborhood. There was no predictability to the crimes. They occurred on different nights of the week. During a given week he might attack once, or he might attack twice and skip the following week altogether.

Then he stopped again for four months.

*

With no new leads, the lieutenant in charge of the Detective Bureau was considering breaking the Task Force apart and returning responsibility for the investigation back to the regular Sex Crimes Detail, but before he could talk the chief into this course of action, Stench broke his cold streak.

“STENCH IS BACK!” trumpeted the front page of UC's student newspaper, the Daily Californian . Breaking up the task force now would be political suicide. Instead, the chief added two more officers to the staff and publicly announced that the Task Force had been doubled. That calmed the media, but not the women Stench preyed on.

*

It was inevitable that he'd eventually attack a victim who became panic-stricken instead of quietly terrified and acquiescent. Panic is apparently what led to the death of victim fifteen, Elizabeth Hennessy. Stench entered her apartment after she retired, just as he'd entered the homes of his first fourteen victims, and snuck into her bedroom, but things took a different turn after that.

When he clapped his hand over her mouth and made the first puncture with the ice-pick, Ms. Hennessy didn't stiffen with fright as his earlier victims had. She twisted and turned and fought and tried to scream, and when Stench managed to pin her back to the bed and placed the pick against her throat for the second puncture, she twisted and fought harder, and, apparently, twisted right into the ice-pick. What would've been a shallow hole just breaking the skin instead became a deep, fatal wound in her carotid artery.

Stench evidently hadn't planned to kill her. The crime scene, when we finally found it several days later, actually indicated that he'd tried to stop the bleeding. When she died on him, he simply left. Apparently, necrophilia wasn't on his list of kinks.

“STENCH KILLS!” trumpeted the Daily Cal , and the larger, more mainstream news outlets quickly followed suit. And before the chief could even start to respond to the growing outcry, a second murder victim turned up.

*

Leona Custis sweated when she was scared. And Stench's invasion scared her more than she'd ever been before.

The perspiration caused the adhesive on her duct tape gag and blindfold to loosen and fall off. Stench improvised by stuffing a wadded-up fragment of a bedsheet into her mouth to stifle her screams, but, presumably, she'd already seen his face, so, after completing his business, he strangled her.

The chief, feeling the heat, announced that he was tripling the number of officers assigned to the Task Force.

That's where I came in.

*

I'm a reserve police officer, a part-time cop roughly analogous to a volunteer fireman or a “one-weekend-a-month” military reservist. And, like the other hundred-odd members of BPD's reserve contingent, I don't (aside from the occasional special detail) get paid for it. So asking eight of us if we were willing to volunteer for Task Force duty was a cheap way to triple its manpower.

Despite the lack of pay, there was no difficulty getting volunteers. Reserve cops tend to fall into one of two groups. Guys like me who are hoping to use it as a stepping stone to a full-time career in law enforcement (I'm an undergraduate at Cal, and the Police Reserves seemed like a good way to gain experience while I was working on my degree), or hobbyists who find that being a part-time cop is a more interesting form of community service than, say, running a Boy Scout troop or serving on the Chamber of Commerce.

The careerists jumped at the chance because Task Force duty was a great resume item, and the hobbyists because it gave them an opportunity to be involved in a case that was drawing national attention.

*

“So far,” said Sergeant Bryant, “he's never hit anyone south of University, north of Cedar, west of Sacramento, or east of Shattuck. That's roughly a fifty-block area.”

We were all in the Hall of Justice classroom where Bryant was addressing the eight reserve cops who'd been selected for the Task Force.

“He uses a condom, and, apparently, he shaves his crotch area to avoid leaving any pubic hairs. Before he leaves, he wipes his victims down with alcohol. The chances of getting a DNA sample from the saliva he leaves on their bodies are very slight, but he's not taking any risks.”

I raised my hand.

“Yeah, Sullivan,” he said.

“Is there anything connecting the victims besides the neighborhood they live in?”

“They're female and they live alone. Otherwise, they cross racial, ethnic, and age lines.”

One of the other reservists raised his hand.

“What are we going to be doing?”

“Basically, developing raw data for possible later investigation. Specifically, we want two of you to patrol the area between the hours of 2300 and 0300, in plain clothes and unmarked cars. One of you'll take the north/south streets, the other the east/west streets. You'll be provided with a cassette player for recording the license plates of every car parked in that neighborhood. If an attack's reported, we'll re-record all the plates in the area. Any car that's on the first list, but not on the second, will be thoroughly checked. While you're trying to identify Stench's vehicle, the regular officers are going to be looking into the two breaks in activity, the first for six months, and the second for four. Those breaks suggest anything to you?”

“County time,” I suggested.

“That's what we're thinking,” said Bryant. “The problem is that the Sheriff's Office can't give us the exact information we need. If we give them a specific name, they can tell us if they had him in custody between the relevant dates, but they haven't got a computer program that can name everyone who was jugged at a given time, so the records have to be checked by hand. Once we have a list we'll start checking each inmate individually. Any other questions?”

“Do you want us to FI any suspicious persons we see,” asked my fellow Cal student, Bob Bower.

“Negative. We don't want him to make you as cops. If you do see anybody like that, have Control send a beat car to conduct the field interrogation. You shouldn't break cover except in emergencies.”

*

So that was why I was slowly driving up and down these streets reciting license numbers, as I'd been doing three times a week for the last month. Stench had apparently gone into another period of hibernation.

So far, several hundred man hours had been spent on what was beginning to seem more and more like a will-o'-the-wisp hope of developing a lead.

I mean, where was it written that Stench had to be driving to this area? Maybe he already lived here. Maybe he took public transportation. Maybe he walked. Was it worth the expenditure of time, money, and manpower to gather all this data on the mere chance that he had his own ride?

The painstaking check of inmate records at the sheriff's correctional facilities seemed just as hopeless. Sure, the times of the two lay-offs roughly correlated to a stint at the county slam, but it also might have meant a hospital stay, or an extended trip out of town, or just an unexpected surge of self-control on Stench's part.

Even if he had been doing time, why did it have to be in Alameda County? Why not across the Bay in San Francisco, or over the Berkeley Hills in Contra Costa, or in the jails of any of the other six Bay Area counties?

Still, this kind of slogging, basic police work solves as many serial cases as the inspired deductions of criminal profilers. The Son of Sam, for example, wasn't nailed by an amazingly prescient personality description, but by a routine check of parking tickets that had been issued in the area of one of his murders. Maybe all this tedious detail-gathering would prove worthwhile.

Nor was the Task Force putting all its eggs into the basket of routine checks. An FBI-trained profiler from the state Department of Justice was working with the unit, and two computer experts, one from Cal and the other from Golden Gate University in the City, were working on programs that would analyze the statistical data to try to predict when Stench was next most likely to hit.

It was just that my part in the investigation had become so deadly dull.

*

It was 0300 hours when I signed out. A half-hour later, I entered Roylmann Hall, the student-owned cooperative boarding house a few short blocks north of campus, where I had a room.

I expected the other fifty-one students who lived there to be asleep, but at least one, Stephanie Yee, was still up. When I walked in, she was popping a cassette into the VHS player in the living room.

“What are you doing up so late?” I asked.

“Homework,” she answered. “How about you?”

I took off my jacket, and saw her notice, and wince a little, at the nine-millimeter snugged into my shoulder holster.

“Duty,” I said.

“Undercover?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“You usually go to work in uniform. Is it that special Stench squad?”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “But I'm not really supposed to talk about it. Fact is, nobody's supposed to know outside of the Department.”

“Well, everybody's been noticing that you go somewhere two or three nights a week, and a few of us have seen you getting in really late. With the Stench case getting so much publicity, there's been a lot of speculation about you being involved.”

“I still shouldn't be talking about it,” I said. “It's not like I'm doing anything particularly useful anyway. What kind of homework's got you up this time of night?”

“I'm watching a vampire movie for my Gothic Images in Literature and Film class.”

“Which one?”

"Nosferatu .”

“Silent or sound?”

“Silent. I recorded it off of CFN's Tuesday Night Terrors earlier tonight. I had a paper due in another class tomorrow, so I saved the movie for dessert.”

CFN was the Classic Film Network, a new, comparatively small cable channel, trying hard to carve a niche for itself out of the market already catered to by older, better-established outfits like American Movie Classics or Turner Classic Movies. One way it had done this was by acquiring a larger selection of old horror movies than its competitors and showing them a lot more often. Tuesday Night Terrors , Friday Night Frights , and Saturday Night Shockers were all regular weekly events, and, according to ratings services, were particularly popular among college students.

“I've made popcorn,” said Steph. “Want to watch?”

“I'm tempted,” I admitted. “But, I'm just too damned tired. Save the tape and I'll catch it another time.”

“Don't leave it too long. I'll need the tape in a few days. More homework.”

*

“Dan, what's the matter?” said Steph. “You look white as a sheet!”

It was about 4:30 AM. I'd gone upstairs to the dining room after awakening, and headed for the refrigerator marked “La Cantina.” Steph was already there, buying herself a decaf Diet Coke.

“Movie over?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Tell me what's wrong. You look as though you just found out a loved one died.”

“Bad dream.”

I dropped some money into a jar in the fridge and took a bottle of Henry Weinhard's from one of the shelves.

“Who?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “Nobody really died. It was just a nightmare.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Might help.”

“I dreamt that I raped and murdered a girl. Probably the reason we haven't caught the scumbag! I'm subconsciously rooting for him.”

“I doubt it's as simple as that,” she said. “How do you really feel about rape? I mean I know you're against it, but how do you feel about rape compared to other crimes?”

I thought a second, then said, “Guilty, I suppose.”

“Why?”

“Most violent crimes are committed by men, but they're not inherently masculine. And the victims aren't inherently female. There've been female cop killers, for example, murdering male police officers, and female armed bandits robbing male bankers. But rape, by definition, is committed by men against women. I can't help feeling a little responsible.”

“Mistakenly responsible,” she corrected. “Honestly, you Catholics! You're probably just frustrated that you haven't gotten any results from all this work you're doing. When you came home tonight, you said something about all the hours you were putting in not doing any good. What exactly are you doing?”

I hesitated, then shrugged and described the license plate assignment, and the reasons I doubted its effectiveness.

“What really bugs me,” I said, “is that he could be in one of those homes, raping some woman, or even killing her, and I could be driving right by at that exact moment, not doing her one damn bit of good. All I'd be doing, if I'm lucky, is getting the maggot's license plate.”

“Well, that explains the dream,” she said. “It's not that you really want to be Stench. But you've already got all these latent guilt feelings about the whole concept of rape. Added to that, you feel like you're just doing a lot of wheel-spinning. So, subconsciously, you believe you're a party to his crimes. To the point that, in your dream you start to see yourself as a rapist and a killer.”

It sounded like she was lecturing, or maybe repeating a lecture she'd heard. But, Steph's an undergrad, and undergrads are permitted the occasional lapse into pedantry.

I shrugged, said something about her maybe being right, finished my beer, and went back to bed.

*

Two nights later, at 2200 hours, I signed in on the duty roster at the Reserve Office and was informed by Bob Bower, my partner on the detail, that the thing I'd feared had happened. Stench had hit sometime late Tuesday night. And on one of the streets I'd been recording.

But maybe this time he'd left a clue.

“Well, did it work?” I asked Bob.

“Did what work?”

“This detail. Did we get a license plate that the regulars could develop into a lead?”

“I don't think so. The victim didn't report the rape until late Wednesday morning. By then, the parked cars had already rotated so much, you know, residents leaving for work and like that, I don't think the area was re-recorded.”

God damn it! All those hours of effort, and when there was finally an opportunity to put this license plate theory to the test, they didn't even bother to try!

“Shit!” I said. “That's just swell! Do they even want us to bother with this detail anymore?”

“Absolutely,” said Bob. “I made a point of asking them yesterday. They want us to continue until further notice.”

*

There being no further notice, we continued.

*

I wasn't on duty the next night, Friday, so I decided to join Steph while she watched another vampire flick for her Gothic Lit class.

“You'll probably like this one,” she said. “It's a TV-movie from the early ‘70s called The Night Stalker .”

“CFN is so hard up they're calling made-for-TV flicks ‘classic films?'”

“It's a cult classic,” she said. “When it was first run, it was the top-rated TV-movie ever broadcast. It even won a couple of awards.”

Notwithstanding its small-screen origins, I have to admit that The Night Stalker was pretty damn good. Darren McGavin, chewing the scenery in his own inimitable style, played Carl Kolchak, a down-at-the-heels reporter working the story of a serial killer plaguing Las Vegas. Each victim (a gorgeous babe, naturally) is found completely drained of blood. As the body count mounts, the forensic evidence indicates that the killer's following the tradition of Bram Stoker.

About halfway through the film, McGavin has a marvelous scene in which he rails and raves at an assembly of high-ranking law enforcement officials who refuse to see what he, and the audience, believe is obvious.

“This nut,” he screams at the cops, “ thinks he's a vampire!” And, he insists, if they expect to catch him they're going to have to treat him as though he is.

Of course, this being a horror movie, the villain doesn't just think he's a vampire. He actually is one.

In real life there are no such things as vampires.

*

“You can't be serious,” said Steph. “You don't really think Stench is a vampire.”

“Course not. But I'll bet he fantasizes about being one. I don't know why it didn't occur to anybody before. I never understood why he made two punctures on the victims' necks. If he meant to frighten them, one'd do the trick. Two was overkill. Unless it fueled his fantasy. And what fantasy involves two punctures on the neck? Vampirism!”

“Why does he use an ice-pick, instead of biting them?”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Steph! Because he's not really a vampire! He's got teeth, not fangs. He couldn't make the perfect puncture wounds that an ice-pick would. Besides, he's been very careful not to leave any trace evidence. Bite marks are as identifiable as fingerprints.”

“Well, even if you're right, so what?”

“What do you mean?”

“According to you, he thinks he's a vampire, not a werewolf. It's not like he strikes on the night of the full moon. If he has got some kind of Dracula fetish, it still doesn't make predicting his next crime any easier.”

Damned if she didn't have a point.

*

His next attack was occurring at approximately the same time Steph and I were talking. The victim, 27-year-old Nancy Coburn, had looked reality square in the face and realized that, as a single woman living alone in the area Stench prowled, she fit the victim profile. She decided to prepare herself in case she was attacked.

She'd bought a can of pepper spray and kept it on her nightstand ready for use if Berkeley's own Night Stalker put in an appearance.

Late Friday night, Stench did just that. As he clapped his hand over her mouth, she reached for the weapon. With one hand holding his ice-pick and the other suppressing her screams, Stench was unable to prevent her from bringing the spray can to bear. She got off at least one squirt. Apparently, it didn't hit Stench full in the face, or his ski mask absorbed most of it, or he was one of those rare folks who aren't that susceptible to the effects of pulverized cayenne peppers in the eye. In any case, it didn't disable him. It just made him mad.

He knocked the pepper spray out of her hand, but this required him to turn loose of her mouth. She let out a loud scream. Enraged, or frightened, or both, he drove the ice-pick into her chest five times to silence her, and rushed out of her apartment. Still conscious, she was able to make it to the phone and dial 911. So had several of her neighbors. A half-dozen police units, including the two reservists on license plate detail, and an ambulance from the Berkeley Fire Department, arrived within minutes.

In the ambulance, Ms. Coburn was able to describe the incident briefly to an officer who rode along. She didn't have time to go into a lot of detail. She died en route to Alta Bates Hospital.

*

The following night, Saturday, was one of my three regularly assigned tours of Task Force duty, and I got the details on the Coburn case when I signed in.

Her attack brought the total number of victims to eighteen. Her death brought the body count to three.

A four-week lay-off, then two attacks in one week. Was there a pattern that we were all failing to see? Was there a factor, or factors, we weren't aware of?

*

Steph was still up when I got back to Roylmann.

“Late news said there was a third murder last night.”

I nodded.

“It's weird for someone I know to be trying to track down a serial killer. As though I'm a minor character in a Thomas Harris novel.”

“I don't know if ‘serial killer' is precisely accurate,” I said.

“He's killed three women. How many does he have to kill before it is accurate?”

“Oh, he's certainly a multiple murderer,” I said. “So were Bonnie and Clyde, but you wouldn't call them serial killers. None of the three Stench victims who died were killed in any kind of ritualistic fashion. They weren't even killed similarly. One looks like an accident. Another he strangled because she apparently got a look at him. The one last night he stabbed in a rage when she fought back. He's not going into these attacks with the intention of killing his victims. Remember, he's raped fifteen other women without killing them.”

“Yeah, he's one of nature's noblemen, all right. Sure, he's a vicious sexual predator, but he goes to such lengths to leaves his victims alive. Or tries to.”

“I'm not saying that and you know it. I just think that leaving a live victim is part of his fantasy. He wants the night each woman was attacked to be the most memorable of their lives. And they can't remember it if they're dead. He only kills when he's screwed up. Still, I have to admit, calling him a serial killer will sound a hell of a lot more impressive on my resume.”

To change the subject, I asked, “What was on Saturday Night Shocker ?”

“Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein .”

“No vampires, then?”

“Only Bela Lugosi as Dracula. His swan song in the part.”

“I'd forgotten that. Did you watch it for your class?”

“No. But I recorded it.”

Again, I was tempted, but again, sleep was closing in.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

*

I got up too late to get breakfast, but I wasn't that hungry anyway. Only a few people, including Steph, were still eating when I came upstairs late that morning. I poured myself a glass of OJ and toasted a bagel, sat down across from her, and started checking out the Sunday paper when I was called to the phone. It was Bob Bower.

When I returned to the dining room, Steph looked up from the book she was reading.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Stench attacked another woman last night. Three incidents in one week, two while I was patrolling that very neighborhood. Exactly what I was afraid of.”

“Has he ever hit that many times in a single week before?”

“No, I don't think he has.”

“What do you suppose triggered it?”

“If I could figure that out, I'd be halfway to nailing him.”

She was went back to her book for a few minutes, then looked up again. “Were you serious about that vampire theory the other night?”

“I was then. Probably just influenced by that damn movie. It sounds kind of silly in the light of day.”

“Stench doesn't operate in the light of day,” she said, “and neither do vampires. I did a little research on serial killers after we talked. Did you know there are several historical examples of murderers with vampire fixations?”

“Yeah, I suppose I've heard that somewhere. But like you said, so what? The trick isn't figuring out why he does it, but when he's going to do it.”

“Well, maybe the key lies in this last week. Assume you're right, and Stench has a Dracula fetish. He committed three separate crimes in the last week. What else happened three different times during the week that has something to do with vampires?”

I reached for the paper's weekly television schedule.

*

By 1100 hours the next day I was in the newspaper room at the Berkeley Public Library checking back issues of the Oakland Sunday Tribune . About forty-five minutes earlier, I'd been sitting across from Sergeant Bryant in his office.

“I'll give you five to one that Stench isn't going to hit this week,” I'd said.

“You're probably right,” he answered. “He'll probably want to lay off for awhile after being so active.”

“That's not what I mean. I think he won't hit this week, and I think his decision has nothing to do with what he did last week.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Let me ask you something first. Has he ever hit three times in one week before?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, now I'll give you ten to one.”

“What exactly are you basing that on?”

“Radioactive ants, re-animated mummies, and giant Japanese lizards.”

“You've lost me.”

“I noticed something last week. It's oddball, but it might be a decent lead. I'd like to follow it up. I need a list of the dates of each of the attacks and a few hours at the library. If I'm right, it shouldn't take me any longer than that to confirm it.”

Armed with the requested information and Bryant's permission to test my theory, I'd been checking back issues of the Tribune 's weekly television guide. My idea was panning out.

So far there'd been a one hundred per cent correlation.

*

Bryant had a hard time buying the idea that Stench had a vampire fixation. But when I told him how I thought Stench was deciding which nights to prowl, he instantly went from agnostic to committed atheist.

“You can't call it a coincidence,” I insisted. “Not with this many matches. It's statistically impossible.”

“But it's nuts!”

“Based on the dates you gave me, he only hits on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.”

“As far as we can tell. We're not absolutely sure about the Hennessy and Custis cases because their bodies weren't found for several days.”

“And the computer guys haven't gotten any farther than that in finding a pattern?”

“No.”

“Okay. CFN runs a horror movie on each of those nights. Every single week. And every single night he's hit, they've run a vampire movie. Eighteen attacks. Eighteen vampire movies. Eighteen! And, except for the two long lay-offs, every single night that there was no reported attack, they've run some other kind of horror movie. That's too high a correlation to be mere chance. Particularly if you consider the vampire-like aspects of the crimes.”

“And what're they running this week?”

“ Them! , The Mummy's Tomb , and Godzilla ,” I answered. “So he'll take the week off. But next Tuesday they're running House of Dark Shadows .”

“And you're suggesting?”

“Blanket the area. Instead of spreading everybody out through the whole week, concentrate the entire Task Force in his patch on Tuesday, stop every male we see who's out and about, and put them through a very thorough FI. That way we've at least got a suspect list to work from. Plus, we might rattle him enough that he passes on visiting whoever he's targeted for that night.”

*

Bryant said he'd meet me halfway. His idea of meeting me halfway was to continue the license plate detail (this despite the fact that no leads had been developed from it since it began), including the night I predicted Stench would strike. On that night, however, he'd put me out there on “observation patrol.” Since the other two officers would be concentrating on reading licenses, I'd be essentially solo. How that added up to “halfway” was beyond me, but math's never been my best subject.

He also decided that, since part of my purpose was to discourage the attack, he wanted me in uniform and in a marked car.

So, on Tuesday of the following week, at 2300 hours, I began an intensive patrol of the fifty-block area that had comprised Stench's hunting grounds. At 0315, long after the two plainclothes reserves had gone off-duty, I was still rolling. I'd filled out field interrogation cards on a few pedestrians earlier in the shift, but, since 0145, had made no contact with anyone except the radio operator at Control.

Traffic was virtually non-existent, and the lack of leads from the plate project seemed to indicate that he was getting into the neighborhood by some other means than a personally owned vehicle. If he'd hit tonight, and he didn't live in the neighborhood himself, he had to be taking public transit. BART, the Bay Area's subway system, stops operating at a little after midnight, so I decided to check out the bus stops around the area's perimeter.

There was a guy sitting at a 51 stop on University a few blocks west of Shattuck. I pulled over and reached for the car mike.

“673 is 11-94” (the code for a pedestrian stop) “at the bus stop on the southeast corner of University and Milvia.”

“10-4 . ”

“Is there a problem?” said the guy as I approached him. He was young, no more than 20, clean-cut, his dark hair cropped close to the scalp in a pretty extreme crew cut. To keep hairs from being found at the scene of his crimes?

“Probably not,” I said. “Do you have any ID?”

He pulled out a plastic laminated card from his wallet and handed it to me. A military ID card. Green, which meant he was on active duty status, though apparently not on the clock since he was in civvies. The photo matched his face. According to the information on the card, his name was Kevin Frederick Hanson, and he was an E-3 in the US Navy. His birthdate and social security number were also given, but no address.

I filled out the information on the FI card, and radioed the RB-1 operator to run him for wants and warrants.

“You're not carrying any guns, knives, hand grenades, anything like that?”

He smiled. “No.”

“You don't mind if I check, then, do you?”

I turned him around, had him put out his arms, and gave him a quick, but thorough, frisk. No ice-pick. No other weapon.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

He gave me the name of a carrier that home-ported at Alameda Naval Air Station. I wrote it down in the address section, but small enough to leave room for additional info.

“You stay on the ship when it's in port?”

“No.”

“BEQ?”

“No.”

“So where do you live?”

He hesitated, then gave me the address of an apartment building near the base. “Me and two other guys rent it together. We're all on different ships, and usually one or two of us are on sea duty, so whichever one of us is on the beach usually's got the place to himself.”

“Sounds like a good deal,” I said, handing his ID back to him. “Reason I stopped you, you've probably heard about that rapist operating here in town?”

“The one they call the Stinker?”

“Stench,” I corrected. “He prowls this neighborhood, so a guy out this time of night bears checking. See what I'm getting at?”

“Sure.”

“So, what are you doing out here.”

“Poker game.”

“Uh-huh. With who?”

“Casual acquaintance. I went to a movie at the UC Theater. Had a bite at a restaurant afterwards. He was eating at the same place, and I guess he thought I looked like a pigeon. He asked me if I was interested in a game. I said sure. We played up at his place for awhile with four or five other guys.”

“Can't count that high?”

“Huh?”

“Was it four or five?”

“Uh, four.”

“When'd the game break up?”

“About an hour ago.”

“What're you still doing here?”

“The buses don't run that often this time of night.”

“Was the guy right?”

“Excuse me?”

“Were you a pigeon.”

“Oh,” he said. “No, not really. I came out about twenty bucks ahead.”

The poker game story smelled like an unwashed jockstrap, but he'd satisfactorily identified himself, and he wasn't doing anything illegal by being out late, however suspicious I might think it was.

“What movie'd you see before the game?” I asked.

“Streetcar Called Desire ,” he answered without hesitation.

I could read the marquee of the UC Theater from where we stood. The title was actually A Streetcar Named Desire . His eyes hadn't darted toward the marquee when I asked the question, leading me to believe that he'd probably memorized it earlier so he'd have a plausible story in case he was questioned by police. Memorized it badly. One thing was sure. He hadn't seen the movie.

The UC Theater changes its program every night. The titles on the marquee are always switched during the final show. North by Northwest had been the featured film earlier that evening. Streetcar wasn't scheduled ‘til tomorrow. The stink factor in his story was getting worse.

Still it only added up to what the courts call “Reasonable Suspicion.” Enough to hold him temporarily for an investigative stop, but not enough to arrest. To do that I'd need RS's big brother, “Probable Cause.” Unless I could figure out a way to develop some, all I'd get out of this stop would be Hanson's name and address.

RB-1 squelched me a message just then that provided me with some made-to-order PC. Alameda PD had a ninety dollar warrant out for Hanson.

“You ever get a traffic ticket?” I asked Hanson.

“Don't own a car. Don't need a license for ID when I've got the military card, so I never bothered to get one.”

“Ever been arrested?”

“No. Well, yeah, sort of. I got pulled in for being drunk in public a few weeks ago, but they didn't book me or nothing. Just threw me in the drunk tank ‘til I sobered up and released me with a ticket.”

“Did you pay your fine?”

“Sure. I mailed it in the next day.”

“Where was this?”

“Alameda.”

“They never got it. There's a warrant out for you.”

“Bullshit! I sent in a money order.”

Actually, I believed him and, ordinarily, on a warrant for that small an amount, I'd let him go and advise him to get it straightened out before the bail got any bigger. This time I was going to bust him.

“Maybe it got lost in the mail,” I said. “That happens occasionally. Problem is, you've got this warrant, and I've got to take you in. Have you got ninety dollars on you?”

“No, I've only got about twenty,” he said. Since he supposedly wound up twenty dollars ahead, that would mean that he started the poker game broke, an unlikelihood that made the stink on that story register at two unwashed jockstraps.

“Got any plastic?”

“Visa from the base credit union.”

“Okay, you can use that to pay your bail after you're booked, but I'm going to have to pull you in.”

I cuffed him up, locked him in the back seat, and informed Control that I was heading in with one in custody.

*

I felt like I was confronting a Star Chamber, though I guess Star Chambers usually have more than two members.

It was 1400 the following afternoon. I was in the office of Chief Nolan. He was seated behind his desk. To his left sat Sergeant Bryant.

“Well, Officer Sullivan,” said the chief, “we're waiting.”

“For what, sir?”

“Don't get smart with me, son,” he bristled.

Nolan hadn't come up from the ranks. He was an outsider from Southern California whose law enforcement and governmental credentials strongly impressed the City Council when they'd been looking at police chief applicants. The skinny was he didn't like reserve cops, that he strongly disapproved of the level of individual autonomy they had in BPD.

“I'm not trying to be smart, Chief. I honestly don't know what you want me to explain.”

“How did you know there'd be an attack last night?”

Booking Hanson had taken about two hours. Since he'd apparently had no priors, five full sets of prints had to be taken, one for the FBI, one for the state's Identification Bureau, two for the Sheriff's Office, and one for our own files, along with two sets of palm prints that would also go to the Sheriff. He'd had to be strip-searched, photographed, and placed in a cell while the prints were meticulously checked to make sure he hadn't been arrested before in Alameda County. When that'd been confirmed, a new personal file number had been generated for him, and information about his arrest entered into the computerized CORPUS system. Only when all that had been completed had he been allowed to bail himself out. I'd gotten home a little after 0630 and dropped off to sleep almost as soon as I'd crawled into bed.

A little after 0800, I'd been awakened by a persistent pounding on my door, and told I was wanted on the phone by Sergeant Bryant, who'd informed me that Stench had hit the night before, as I'd predicted, and the chief wanted to see me immediately. I'd told him, probably more pointedly than I'd needed to, that I'd be in that afternoon, went back to my room, and caught a few more hours of shuteye before heading down to the station.

I actually arrived at 1130, a few hours ahead of schedule, but I'd stayed in the Reserve Office, where I made some phone calls and confirmed a few things. Before I saw Nolan, I wanted all my ducks in a row.

“I didn't know , Chief. I predicted it based on factors I'm sure Sergeant Bryant has already shared with you.”

“That garbage about his thinking he's a vampire and being set off by movies?”

“I never really said that he believed he was a vampire. I said that I thought he fantasized about being a vampire and that the rapes feed his fantasy. There're all kinds of precedents for that sort of fixation.”

“Where do you get this movie bullshit?”

“Look, chief, all I can tell you is what I already told the sergeant. There's a one hundred per cent correlation between the nights he hits and the nights CFN shows a vampire movie. And except for the two long breaks, there's a one hundred per cent correlation between the nights he doesn't hit and the nights CFN shows a non -vampire movie. That simply can't be a coincidence.”

“Well,” said the chief, “for whatever reason, you apparently were correct. But you didn't manage to prevent that woman's attack last night, did you?”

“I was patrolling for suspects,” I said, “by myself. I suggested a much heavier presence. Sergeant Bryant overruled me.”

Bryant looked uncomfortable. Tough. I didn't do anything to rate this Spanish Inquisition treatment. Let him sweat.

“Did you find any?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I'm almost certain that I've identified Stench.”

*

That silenced both of them, and before they could recover I handed the chief photocopies of the stop card and the Consolidated Arrest Report I'd filled out on Hanson.

He looked up from the paperwork. “You hooked him on a 647f warrant?”

“Yessir.”

“Not 261?”

“There'd been no rape reported at that time.”

“He didn't have enough money to bail himself out?”

“He had a credit card, but he didn't post bail ‘til after he'd been processed.”

“Why not?” Customarily, before being booked, warrant arrestees are either allowed to bail themselves out or given a grace period to make some calls so someone else can go bail for them. It was unusual, if not unheard of, to put Hanson through the entire booking process.

“I wanted his prints and photograph on file,” I said. “Plus I wanted him strip-searched.”

“Why?” said Nolan, though with less hostility than before.

“I mentioned that his head was almost completely shaved?”

“Christ, he's a serviceman, Sullivan,” said Bryant. “A shaved head isn't unusual in the military.”

“Shaved pubic hair is,” I said.

*

That got their interest, all right. A guy with a hairless crotch, out in that neighborhood, at that time of night, when a Stench attack had occurred only a short time earlier, was automatically a prime suspect.

Three more items I'd confirmed prior to the meeting interested them even more.

First, Hanson had a slight case of eczema that sometimes made bathing uncomfortable. It wasn't serious enough to rate a medical discharge, but, in the close quarters of a military vessel, it had led to complaints about his hygiene from several of his shipmates.

Second, at his Oregon high school, Hanson had been noted for his devotion to horror movies, and particularly vampire movies. According to one of his teachers, he'd even gone so far as to submit a film script, telling the story of a vampire who trolled for victims among the co-eds of a West Coast college town, as his term paper for an English class.

“Of course,” the teacher had said, “there was all the preoccupation with sex you'd naturally expect from a teen-aged boy, and not a whole lot of complex character or plot development, but, all in all, it was a surprisingly sophisticated effort.”

Third, Hanson's ship had been cruising during the two long periods of inactivity. The delays hadn't been caused by jail terms, but by sea duty.

The cumulative effect of all this information on Nolan and Bryant was gratifying as hell. I didn't know whether it was enough to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, but it'd convinced both of them.

“Hell of a job, Sullivan,” Nolan told me when I'd finished. Turning to Bryant, he said, “I guess you've got a call to make to the DA.”

*

The DA, however, thought it was all too speculative. Juries, he said, preferred concrete proof. Things like physical evidence, eyewitness identifications, and confessions. Oh, he had no doubt we'd identified the correct suspect, but all this stuff about vampire fixations and TV schedules was too thin to take to trial.

All we had, he said, was a flimsy thread of coincidence.

It was suggested that we turn what we had over to the Navy's JAG office to see if a court-martial of Hanson was possible. But it didn't seem likely that a military lawyer would be willing to prosecute a case that civil authorities had already rejected.

The only other alternative was to wait until CFN scheduled another vampire movie, than try to keep Hanson under surveillance so we could catch him en flagrante . That was risky, particularly to whomever he had earmarked as his next victim, but it was the best anyone could come up with.

The Task Force, however, never got the chance to mount the surveillance. CFN's next vampire film, The Return of Dr. X , wasn't scheduled for three more weeks, and, in the interim, Hanson's carrier was going to sea. Sergeant Bryant had a word with the ship's Master-at-Arms, letting him know, as a professional courtesy, what was suspected about Hanson. The Master-at-Arms informed the captain, who, in turn, informed his XO, who informed the officer in charge of Hanson's section, and so on down the line. Nobody was indiscreet, exactly, and it's unlikely that Hanson himself ever knew he was suspected, but a hell of a lot of other people on board did.

It is, as they say, a small world.

Small enough that, of the thousands of crew members serving on Hanson's ship, one was a senior petty officer who happened to be the big brother of one of Stench's victims.

About five weeks into the carrier's patrol, a “Man Overboard” alarm was sounded. Hanson was the man overboard. He wasn't rescued. His body was never recovered.

There were no more Stench attacks.

Suspicion focused on the petty officer whose sister had been raped, but he protested that he'd had no idea Hanson was a suspect in the Stench case. And, in fact, since he hadn't been among those included in the official informational loop about Hanson, no one could prove he did know. So he was never prosecuted. After all there was no physical evidence, no eyewitnesses, no confessions.

Just a flimsy thread of coincidence.