Silent terror, p.20
Silent Terror, page 20
It felt good, and I was pleased to know that I could still bench-press two hundred and fifty pounds twenty times. I moved from machine to machine, experiencing pleasant aches, getting in sync with the jar of metal, the hiss of pulleys, the smell of my own sweat. The room started filling up, and soon there were lines forming in front of the various contraptions. Bluff-hearty macho men were offering encouragement to pushing, pulling, squatting and lifting macho women all around me, and I felt like a visitor from another planet observing quaint earthling mating rituals. Then I saw THEM, eased my shoulder-press load down and said to myself, “Dead.”
They were obviously brother and sister. Both clad in purple satin instructor’s uniforms, both blond and superbly shapely in classic male/female modes, both slightly more than vacuously pretty, they breathed a long history of familial intimacy. Watching them explain the benching machine to a skinny teenage bey, I saw how their gestures accommodated each other. When he used a chopped hand for emphasis, she repeated the motion, only gently. When he brought flat palms up to show how the pulleys worked, she did it just a little bit slower. Staring hard at them, I knew that they had performed incest early on, and that it was the one thing they never talked about.
I dismounted from the shoulder-press machine and walked to the locker room. Sweating from exhilaration now, I discarded my gym outfit and put on my street clothes, then strode back through the workout area. The siblings were explaining muscle development to a group by the jogging treadmill, pointing out laterals and pectorals on each other, letting their fingers touch the places. Touching the same parts of myself, I felt my sore muscles throb, then beat to the word “Dead.” At the front of the area I noticed a picture roster of the club’s instructors. George Kurzinski and Paula Kurzinski smiled side by side at the top. I dated their death warrant nine months in the future — June 5, 1982, fourteen years to the day since I saw my first couple make love. Leaving the Co-Ed Connection, I turned on my mental stopwatch. Pleased with the sound of its spring-loaded movement, I let it run continually while I activated my plan one step at a time.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.
September, 1981:
Learning that the Kurzinskis live together, sleep in separate bedrooms and visit their widowed mother at the sanitarium every Sunday. Tick tick tick tick.
November, 1981:
Surveillance reveals that Paula Kurzinski sleeps over at her boyfriend’s house on Wednesday and Saturday rights; George Kurzinski’s girl friend sleeps with him, at the siblings’ apartment, on those nights. Tick tick tick tick tick.
January, 1982:
Securing the floor plan of the Kurzinskis’ apartment from the Sharon Office of City Planning. Tick tick tick tick tick tick.
February, 1982:
Becoming expert at picking locks identical to the lackluster “Security King” on the Kurzinskis’ front door. Tick tick tick tick.
April, 1982:
Disguise, drugs and weaponry procured; escape route and four alternates mapped out. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.
May 15, 1982:
Run-through of the Kurzinskis’ apartment successfully executed; auxiliary blades stashed under bedroom and living-room carpets; loaded .25-caliber Beretta found in Paula’s top dresser drawer; loaded .32 S. & W. revolver found under George’s mattress. Tick tick tick tick tick.
May 28, 1982:
Second run-through of Kurzinskis’ apartment; blank cartridges placed in both weapons; as added precaution both hammers bent ⅛" to the side to ensure misfire.
Tick
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Tick
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Tick........
From Law Enforcement Journal, May 30, 1982, Issue:
FEDERAL TASK FORCE “ATTACKING” SERIAL KILLERS WITH DIVERSIFIED APPROACH STRATEGY
Quantico, Virginia, May 15:
Criminal phenomena, however long-standing, are not really certified until they are given a title. “Mass Murderer” and “Thrill Killer” are old staples of public and law-enforcement jargon, used to designate, respectively, people who murder more than one person in a one-time-only fit of rage, and people (almost always men) who kill for no apparent reason. Recent revelations, primarily the Ted Bundy case (See LEJ 10/9/81), have spawned a new title, a “buzzword” that seems certain to capture the public’s imagination. The F.B.I., cognizant of the phenomenon for some time, will be the likely instrument of popularizing the title, for they are the first American law enforcement agency to concertedly “attack” the type of criminal the title designates — the Serial Killer.
According to F.B.I. Inspector Thomas Dusenberry, the serial killer is defined as: “A perpetrator who kills repeatedly, one victim or set of victims at a time. Our statistical prototype serial killer is a white male of above average to high intelligence, twenty-five to forty-five years old. That is a constant, while everything else regarding this type of perpetrator isn’t, which is what makes them so difficult to apprehend.
“For one thing, serial killers often alter their M.O. to suit their victim of the moment. They may kill one person for sexual gratification, one for money. They may strangle one person, shoot another. Serial killers have been known to rape a half-dozen women victims, then sexually ignore a half-dozen others.
“Also, these men tend to travel and tend to dispose of their victims so that their bodies cannot be found. Aside from the complex serial-killer psyche and M.O. patterns, it is their often transient life-style that adds to their elusiveness — they play on the inadequacy of American police communication systems.
“There are fifty states in this country, served by untold thousands of police agencies. Agency-to-agency communication within individual states has been adequate at the identification level for years, but state-to-state communication of information is a joke, and is the number-one impeding factor in the investigation of possibly related homicides and disappearances.”
How, then, does the F.B.I.’s Serial Killer Task Force intend to address this problem?
Inspector Dusenberry: “Once a killer crosses a state line after committing a murder, he’s a federal offender. So what we’ll be doing is cross-checking computer statistics on unsolved homicides and disappearances from all fifty states, going back ten years. If state-to-state links are made, we will be requesting the complete case files from the applicable agencies, and we will be communicating by telephone with the investigating officers. We will have M.O. cross-checking logs, and logs for physical evidence, circumstantial probability and a half-dozen logs compiled from reports made by the forensic psychologists attached to the Task Force. Patterns are likely to emerge from all this information, and we will hypothesize from that information, then initiate follow-up investigations staffed with experienced Criminal Division agents.”
An entire wing of a building on the grounds of the F.B.I. Academy at Quantico has been taken over by the Task Force. The offices are packed with reams of blank paper, desks and computer terminals, along with a giant computer with fifty-state police feed-in. Known to Task Force agents as “Serial Sally,” this brain device will be the starting point of all possible investigations. Already programmed with data on twenty-seven resolved serial killer cases, “Serial Sally” will be assisted by a half-dozen crack forensic psychologists with extensive field experience, three forensic pathologists specializing in homicide evidence, and four criminal division agents, men with fifteen years and up with the Bureau — the “Paperwork Jockeys” who will be trawling for links, connections and clues.
“I’m anxious to get started,” Inspector Dusenberry, 47, the Task Force’s Agent in Charge, told L.E.J. “I’ve already read up a storm on the subject. It’s depressing stuff, and the numbers are staggering. A man in Alabama killed twenty-nine women in two years; Gacy in Chicago killed thirty-three. There’s our friend Ted Bundy, of course, and then we’ve got the stats on missing and presumed-murdered children. They’re more than staggering. The police in Anchorage, Alaska, have a suspect that they make for sixty-one killings, perpetrated within eighteen months. The pain behind all of it is staggering, and I think the serial killer problem is America’s number-one law-enforcement priority.”
Inspector Dusenberry, who joined the Bureau in 1961, is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School and has sixteen years of Criminal Division experience, mostly in supervising bank robbery investigations. Married and with a college-age son and daughter, he is grateful that the Task Force assignment came at a time when his children are grown and his wife is back in college getting an advanced degree in Art History. “It’s going to be a long load of long hours,” he told L.EJ. “My kids and wile in school, and the desk nature of the job will make it a whole lot easier to apply myself. If I was spending this kind of time on the street doing robbery investigations, I’d be worried about them worrying about me.”
VII
Implosion
21
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Stop-time.
12:16 A.M., June 5, 1982.
I stuck my breaker pick in the keyhole of the Kurzinskis’ apartment door. There was a slight give, and I pushed the door inward, to a point just short of where I knew the inside chain would stop it. There was a snap/clink noise as the chain rattled, and I pulled the door toward me for slack, then popped the chain off with the handle of my pick gouger. The loose end hit the doorjamb, and I heard an unmistakable sound register in George Kurzinski’s bedroom: the hammer of his .32 being pulled back.
I eased the door shut and padded through the dark living room, then flattened myself into the far wall, by the hallway, and the light switch. Unclipping the ax that hung from my web belt, I waited for footsteps to creak in my direction. When the first one hit my ears, I tingled. It was exactly nine paces from George Kurzinski’s bedroom to here; his life would consist of that many more seconds.
The creaking drew nearer, and at the ninth footfall I flicked on the light switch and swung my ax blind into the hallway. Impact and blood spray told me I had hit on-target before I even saw the dead man. Stepping forward, I heard liquid gurgles and felt a strong hand yank the blade free. When I looked into the hall, George Kurzinski was up against the wall, trying to form a one-hand tourniquet to stop the gushing from his side-to-side neck wound. He was trying to shout at the same time, but his severed larynx made the task impossible.
Blood spattered off my black plastic jump suit; a little jet hit my face, and I licked at the trickle that reached my lips. George slid to the floor, raised his gun and shot me six times. At the click of the last misfire, I heard a faint, “Georgie? Georgie?” from Paula’s bedroom, then the sound of her groping through the dresser for her Beretta. Leaving George in the hallway to die, I walked toward the lovely metallic echo of a blank round being slid into a chamber, never to connect with a firing pin.
Paula greeted me from the bed, pride and fire in her eyes as she spat out a T.V.-movie warning: “Freeze, sucker.” Disobeying, I walked slowly toward her, baring my fangs like Shroud Shifter and Lucretia out for fuel. She pulled the trigger; nothing happened; she worked the slide and fired again, getting another click. Watching her throat muscles for the scream that had to be coming, I said, “I’m invulnerable,” and jumped on her.
She fought hard, all elbows and knees, but I got my hands around her throat just as she finally expelled the first syllable of “Mother.” Squeezing full force, I saw colors; biting full force at her neck, I came. When she went limp, I picked her up by one ankle and twirled her around and around and around the room in perfect circles, never letting her limbs touch the four walls. Arranging her limp form on the bed, I felt my indignities move to her body, one-two-three, as businesslike as a handshake.
Setting my brain watch at 3:00, I cook the airline and rock posters from the inner compartment of my jump suit and looked at myself in the wall mirror. Shroud Shifter’s stern, hawklike features stared back. My makeup artistry was superb, and accomplished without “Cougarman Comix” as a visual aid. Self-transformed, blood-validated, at last the only alter ego that counted, I found tacks in the kitchen and fixed the posters to the living room walls, then dipped my surgical-rubber hands in George Kurzinski’s blood and wrote “Shroud Shifter Prevails” on the wall above his body. Entering the apartment ten minutes before, I had been a thirty-four-year-old boy-man hoping to resolve an identity crisis; leaving it, I was a terrorist.
HEADLINES:
From the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 7, 1982:
BROTHER AND SISTER BRUTALLY SLAIN IN SHARON APARTMENT
From the Sharon News-Register, June 7, 1982:
BRUTAL DUAL SLAYING ROCKS TOWN! FRIENDS AND FAMILY MOURN
From the Philadelphia Post, June 10, 1982:
NO LEADS IN BRUTAL SHARON KILLINGS: POLICE WITHHOLDING “BLOOD MESSAGE” AS “MYSTERY CLUE”
From the Sharon News-Register, June 13, 1982:
KURZINSKIS’ FUNERAL DRAWS HUGE CROWD; LOCAL HEALTH CLUBS CLOSE
From the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 17, 1982:
STILL NO LEADS IN SHARON SLAYINGS; STEEL TOWN LIVES FEAR, OUTRAGE
From the Philadelphia Post, June 19, 1982:
MOTIVE FOR KURZINSKI SLAYINGS BAFFLES POLICE; FALSE CONFESSORS POURING IN
From the Sharon News-Register, July 14, 1982:
VIGILANTE GROUPS FARMING TO HUNT FOR KURZINSKI KILLER
From the Sharon News-Register, August 1, 1982:
KURZINSKI MURDERS TRIGGER PANIC BACKLASH — WIFE SHOOTS HUSBAND BY MISTAKE
From the Sharon News-Register, December 8, 1982:
STILL NO CLUES IN KURZINSKI MURDERS
From the Sharon News-Register, January 6, 1983:
KURZINSKI CASE CONTINUES TO BAFFLE LOCAL POLICE
From the Sharon News-Register, March 11, 1983:
NINE MONTHS AFTER: KURZINSKI CASE STILL “OPEN,” SHARON STILL MOURNS
From the Sharon News-Register, May 14, 1983:
TRAIL ON KURZINSKI CASE “DEAD COLD,” CHIEF ADMITS
From the Sharon News-Register, May 20, 1983:
POLICE WILL NOT REVEAL “BLOOD CLUE” IN KURZINSKI CASE — STILL “HOPING AGAINST HOPE,” CHIEF SAYS
From the diary of Inspector Thomas Dusenberry, F.B.I. Serial Killer Task Force:
5/22/83
True to form, I’m running about a year behind in starting this diary. If Carol weren’t out studying those ornate Renaissance guys with college kids less than half her age, she’d be looking over my shoulder at what I’m writing. She’d note the statement that begins the diary, and she’d say, “As in all things in your personal life, dear.” True to form, I wouldn’t know if it was a dig or an expression of love, because Carol is a tad smarter than I am, and a big tad better than me at everything except chasing felony offenders and earning money. And if she’d ever get off her (still curvaceous at 44) ass and take the real estate brokers’ board, she’d beat me at the latter. And if Mark and Susan decided to quit school and become felons, forget it.
Backtracking, about ten years ago, right after Hoover died, every agent in captivity started writing his memoirs. Some actually got published. All were self-serving, full of fantasy and hearsay anecdotes about the Big Man. I was envious of the guys who got published, but enraged that they portrayed themselves as such sensitive liberals, when in fact most of them were to the right of your typical banana republic dictator shouting anti-commie slogans and pushing cocaine on the side. I looked at them ($10,000-$20,000 publishers’ advances, royalties, movie options and glory for doing something I always figured I’d be pretty good at), and I looked at me — living above my means as a sop to my family for always moving them around the country with my assignments, telling Carol “Don’t get a job, baby, I’ll teach another night-school class,” and I thought, “Shit, I’ve been taking out bank robbers for years; I’ll write a book, and I won’t even mention J. Edgar.”
But the truth is — bank robbery is a bore, unless you take personal satisfaction from removing bank robbers from the streets. I do, and that’s the rub. Either the bastards get caught right off the bat by municipal P.D.’s and we take over the legal end after they plead, or, predictable creatures with well-established criminal patterns that they are, they go where we know they will, and we find them. Personally satisfying, occasionally exciting, but most of the time my job was to read reports in my office and figure out where the dummies would go if they were suddenly rich. So scratch one best-seller about a hotshot Fed robbery investigator. Joe Blow over in Fraud Division — you deal with a higher class of criminal — you write the book.
I thought that working the Task Force would make this diary (book later?) easy. It hasn’t, and the Force is a year old already. I thought that Carol would be supportive and help me with editing, but she’s engrossed in her studies, and every time I mention possible chains of missing children, she freezes up and we don’t make love for a week. When I try to get intellectual and relate some of the monsters that come out of Serial Sally to van Gogh (poor bastard) or Hieronymous Bosch, she freezes me out with gooey landscapes from her texts. The hidden truth: she regrets never having a career, and envies my dedication to mine. She’s also pushed Susan and Mark in the direct ion of the arts, which should keep me on Broke Street and teaching classes until they’re 30 and Ph.D.’s. And that’s fine — although I suspect Mark would be happier as a carpenter or contractor and Susan happier as a wife and art-dabbler.
