Distemper (10 page)

W
E DIDN’T RUN THE LETTER THE NEXT DAY
. A
WEEK WENT
by, then another, and the copies still sat in a heap on Marilyn’s desk. It wasn’t that she was knuckling under to the cops—she’d
“sooner chop off a tit,” as she so eloquently put it—but because she had her own kind of qualms. Our fearless leader has never
been one to do things by committee, but this time she decided to keep us informed. She’d read the letter a hundred times,
and it bugged her too. Yes, it was properly twisted, but it was all too general; there were no details, nothing in there that
some wacko couldn’t have written just by reading the paper. And, she told us, she was damned if her newspaper was going to
turn into a playpen for every sicko with a typewriter. “Except,” she added, “you guys.”

Then the next one came. It was addressed to me, which did not enhance my personal calm. I’d gotten a number of threatening
letters the year before when we were investigating Adam’s murder, and although this one came to the paper rather than my house
it brought back nasty memories.
I told myself he’d probably picked my name because at that point I was the only female reporter under sixty-five working on
the city desk. Or maybe because I’d found the second body. Or maybe because he liked my movie column. I’m still not sure which
was the least comforting.

The second letter was as neat as the first, and as soon as I realized what it was I didn’t touch it with my fingers. I nudged
it the rest of the way out of the envelope with the eraser end of a pencil, just like the cops do on
Law & Order
, and laid it flat on my desk.

You are weak so you do not understand. I have sent you my words and you will bring them to the world. You cannot eclipse my
destiny. I will take lives when and how and as I see fit. I will act in the darkness and though they may struggle in the end
they will yield.

Read my words carefully or you will pay the price. I have the power over life and death. The world has seen me use my power
and I will use it again soon. The master in his dark force can show mercy. But only if those who serve him do obey.

You will hear my words with fear and humility. These words must be put forth for all the people to read. If they are not put
into print one week hence I will act. I will take another life and another and another. You have no power and you must obey.

My next sacrifice may be any one of the weak.

It may be you.

“Yo, Alex, whatcha reading?”

In the midst of the love letter from Charles Manson, Mad’s big baritone scared the bejeezus out of me. I jumped up and knocked
over my can of Diet Pepsi, which proceeded to coat everything on the desk in a fizzy brown pool. “Mad, oh,
shit
. Help! Go get some paper towels or napkins or something.” I picked up the letter by the corner. It was so wet it was translucent,
and a little fountain of soda dripped from it onto the desk. Mad came back with a wad of white cotton and started swabbing.
“Careful, you’re ripping stuff. What the hell are you using?”

“The men’s room was out of paper towels. Ditto the ladies’. I found these under the counter.”

I picked up one of the sopping rectangles from the desk. Even under the circumstances, I had to crack up. “Mad, these are
Kotex.”

“Huh?”

“Sanitary napkins. The kind you use with pins and a belt. Like from 1960.”

“Oh, Christ,” he said, and dropped the wet wad into the garbage. “There are some things a man wasn’t meant to know.”

I finished cleaning up the mess while he stood around looking scared somebody was going to lop off his member. I threw away
a stack of mushy press releases I should have tossed months ago and inspected the letter I’d laid on Junior’s old desk. It
was still in one piece and legible, but the fingerprint situation wasn’t promising. I had no
idea what I was going to say to Marilyn, much less Detective Cody. I crawled into her office and confessed, and an hour later
we were sequestered there with the cops.

“You people are unbelievable.” This from Chief Hill. And I thought he liked me.

“I’m sorry,” I squeaked out, wishing Mad hadn’t left me to take the heat alone. “It was an accident.”

“Accident, my keister. If you worked for me you’d get the sack.”

“You still have the contents of the letter,” Marilyn said. “The only thing you’ve lost is any fingerprints that might have
been on there, and you know damn well there weren’t any.”

“We have no way of knowing…”

“Come on, Chief, did you find any prints on that first letter besides ours?” He didn’t say anything. “I didn’t think so.”

“If you’ll permit me, Chief, I think we have something more serious to talk about,” Cody said from the corner of the room,
where he’d been watching the two bicker with what I could have sworn was the hint of a grin. “This second letter is obviously
a threat. I think we have no choice but to consider it in that light.”

“Go on,” Marilyn said.

“Let me ask you an honest question, and I’ll expect an honest answer. We all know you could have run that first letter. Why
didn’t you?”

Marilyn stared at him with that assessing look of hers. I bet it was the same one she used on Oliver North when she was covering
Iran-Contra for the AP. “Damn thing didn’t sit right.”

“Why not? No offense, but you’ve run more with less.”

“I damn well do take offense. Despite what you seem to think, Detective, we aren’t in this business just to sell papers. There’s
such a thing called journalistic ethics. And we have no obligation to give equal time to all crackpots.”

“And you think your letter writer is a crackpot?”

“I’ve done my research. I know which papers went for this kind of thing and why. And even if this
is
the real thing, I have no intention of dragging my newspaper through another Son of Sam catastrophe.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Christ Jesus,” the chief said. “What does the Son of Sam have to do with this?”

“Nothing,” Marilyn said, with a wistful look at her punching bag. “But maybe everything, damn it all.”

The chief was starting to look annoyed. “I can skip the mystery. Just tell me what you’re up to.”

“The Son of Sam,” Cody said. “David Berkowitz. Originally known as the 44-caliber Killer, for his gun.”

“I can also skip the history lesson,” the chief said. “What’s your point?”

Marilyn picked the Thurmon Munson baseball off her desk and rolled it around in her hands as she spoke. It had taken me a
while to realize that her collection of sports memorabilia didn’t include anyone who made it to a normal life span. “Toward
the end of the Son of Sam case, Berkowitz sent a letter to Jimmy Breslin at the
Daily News
. You gotta remember what it was like down there back in ‘77. New York was paralyzed, and it’s a pretty tough town. This was
before local TV news amounted to much, no Internet or CNN, and the papers were falling all over each other covering the story.
Cops wanted the city
to see they were working their asses off looking for the guy, so they let reporters swarm all over the place. We’re talking
cameras in the squad room.”

The chief looked vaguely horrified. “Lady, if you think your reporters are getting within a hundred yards of my…”

“Like I was saying,” she cut him off, “first Berkowitz leaves this rambling note next to two of his vies. The cops release
it eventually, but not the whole thing, and I guess that pisses him off. He sends his next letter straight to Breslin, and
based on the first one the cops verify it’s for real. The
News
teases it for a couple of days to build things up, then they print the letter and wham, the first edition sells out in an
hour. The paper isn’t stupid. They couch the whole thing as a plea for the killer to turn himself in. But three weeks later
Berkowitz shoots somebody else.”

“That’s it?”

“No. A month later it’s the anniversary of his first kill, and Breslin writes a column practically daring him to make a move.
Two days later he shoots a couple of kids. Lots of people thought Breslin had goaded him into it, practically accused the
paper of being an accomplice to murder just to up circulation. The shrinks weren’t so sure, but either way it wasn’t what
you’d call our finest hour. Sold a lot of papers, though.”

“How do you know so much about it?” the chief asked. “What’d you do, teach a course on this crap?”

Marilyn shrugged. “How do you know all the dirt on Rodney King? It’s not likely to happen here, but you gotta keep your eye
on the pitfalls.”

Cody spoke up. “And you’re saying you don’t want the
Monitor
in that kind of mess.”

“Right. And there’s another thing. With the Son of Sam, there was enough in the letters to prove the writer was who he said
he was. Same goes for the Unabomber.”

“But not this one?” Cody asked.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Detective, and I won’t insult yours. Maybe the nut who wrote these is your guy. But like I
said, he could just as well be some copycat crank.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t kill people.”

“That’s true, too.”

“Then the question is, where does it leave us?” He held up photocopies of both letters. “We’ve gotten his message now, and
it’s loud and clear. He says that if you don’t print his letters within a week, there’s going to be another murder. What do
you intend to do about it?”

“Look, Detective, I don’t want another body in the woods any more than you do. But my paper is not going to be held hostage.”

“So you’d let a girl die in the name of your so-called ethics?”

“Hold on,” I said. They both looked at me as though they’d forgotten I was there. “Do you think the killer wrote these or
don’t you?”

Cody and the chief glanced at each other, exchanging some sort of cop semaphore. Finally Cody sighed. “This is off the record.”

Marilyn muttered under her breath. “No shit.”

“Normally we wouldn’t tell you this sort of thing. But like it or not, you’re in the loop. Whoever wrote this put you there.
All right, the truth is, we’re not sure whether
this guy is on the up and up. At first glance, I’d kind of doubt it. There’s almost a whiny quality to these letters, like
the writer really has something to prove. And let’s face it: the killer already
has
proven something. He’s proven he can kill people, dump them in the woods, and get away with it, at least for now. Experience
tells us that the vast majority of these maniacs don’t even write letters. For the Ted Bundys of this world, the crime is
its own reward. They’re in it for the kill itself, not to crow about it afterward.”

“So what’s your point?” Marilyn said.

“My point is, conventional wisdom says the letters could very well have come from a crank. But the truth is that there is
no such thing as conventional wisdom when it comes to this kind of killer. Some serial killers do write letters. Just because
my first instinct is that these letters aren’t the genuine article doesn’t mean I’m right. That, we won’t know until we catch
the guy. And if you know about Berkowitz, then you know that the psychologists are split on how much the newspaper coverage
had to do with his crimes. Some think it encouraged him. Others say that if he hadn’t had all the publicity to feed his ego,
he would have killed even more people to get himself good and noticed.”

“But where does that leave us?” I asked. “I mean, what would you have us do?”

“Not that it’s up to you,” Marilyn interjected.

“Look, lady, I could get a court order…” Chief Hill began.

“You damn well could not, and you know it,” she shot back. “Ever heard of the first amendment?”

“Shouldn’t your publisher be in on this?”

“He’s on vacation. Far, far away. I’m all you’ve got.” Thank God for small favors. Chester, our publisher, got where he is
by rising through the ranks of classified advertising. He’s spent about fifteen minutes in a newsroom in his whole miserable
life, unless he’s contemplating redecoration. He’s an idiot, and he also happens to be the owner’s son-in-law—not that his
marital state keeps him from chasing the occasional miniskirted intern.

“Let’s try to keep this civil,” Cody said. Where was all this diplomacy coming from all of a sudden? Did they teach that in
the SEALs, right after how to kill people with your pinkie? “We know you’re not the bad guy. You’re just trying to do your
job like we are. For once, maybe we aren’t on opposing sides. We both want to make sure no one else gets killed.”

“A minute ago you accused me of being willing to let a girl die.”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to imply that. I was just trying to make a point that we have to work together. Now, we know
that you could run those letters or not run them. It’s your newspaper, and the final decision will be up to you. But I hope
we can work together to try and establish the most responsible course of action. We want to catch the killer, and do it before
anyone else gets hurt. If you help us, and we put him away—well, that seems to me to be the most newsworthy story of all.”

Was he really trying to finesse Marilyn? And what’s more, was he getting away with it? This was unprecedented. “Lay out the
options,” she said finally.

“Chief?”

“Go ahead, Cody. You’ve got it on the ball.”

“Okay, I’ll give it to you straight. This may be life-or-
death serious, and there are a hell of a lot of variables. Either this is our guy or it isn’t. Either he’s serious about his
threat or he isn’t. To begin with, let’s say it’s him. If you don’t run it, he could go out and kill someone to teach you
a lesson. If you do run it, he could get an even bigger kick out of his power trip and pursue his career with a vengeance.
Now, if he
isn’t
our guy and you don’t run it, he may crawl back into his hole and we can write him off. Or else he might try to make his
bones so he really can feel like a big man.”

“But what if we do run the letter, and the writer was a fake?” I asked. “Don’t we look like idiots?”

“Maybe. But that might not be the worst part of it.”