Brazen Virtue

will appreciate it more if I can help.” She took her reading glasses off for a moment to rub her eyes. “I think at this point in the investigation, we can agree that we’re dealing with someone with a capacity for explosive violence, and that the violence is certainly sexually oriented.”
    “Rape usually is,” Ben put in.
    “Rape is not a sexual crime, but a violent one. The fact that the victims were murdered after the assault isn’t unusual. A rapist assaults for a number of reasons: frustration, low self-esteem, a poor opinion of women, anger. Anger is almost always a factor. In the cases where the rapist knows his victim, there is also a need to dominate, to express male superiority and strength, to have what he might believe he deserves, what he thinks has been offered. Often the rapist feels as though his victim is resisting or refusing only to add excitement, and that she actually wants to be taken in a violent way.”

    She put her glasses on again as she sat back. “The violence in both cases was confined to one room, where the victim was found. The same weapon was used, the phone cord. In all probability the telephone is his link with each woman. Through the phone, they promised him something. He came to collect, not through the front door, but by breaking in. To surprise them, perhaps, to add to the arousal. I tend to believe that the first murder was an impulse, a reflex. Kathleen Breezewood fought him, she hurt him, physically, mentally. She wasn’t the woman he’d imagined her to be. Or, in his mind, the woman she’d promised to be. He had a relationship with her. He sent flowers to her funeral, or to Desiree’s. She was Desiree to him. It’s essential to remember he never knew Kathleen Breezewood, only Desiree. He never saw her, even in death, as the person she was, but as the image he’d created.”
    “Then how the hell did he find her?” Ben demanded, not so much of Tess as of himself. “How did he take a voice over the phone and zero in on a house, a woman. The right woman?”
    “I wish I could help you.” She didn’t reach for his hand as she would have if they’d been alone. Here, she knew, there would always be a certain amount of distance between them. “I can only tell you that in my opinion, this man is very clever. He is, in his way, logical. He follows a pattern, step by step.”
    “And his first step is to choose a voice,” Ed murmured. “And create the woman.”
    “I’d say that’s close to the mark. He has a very strong capacity for fantasy. What he imagines, he believes. He left fingerprints at both murder scenes, but not because he’s careless. Because he believes himself to be very clever, to be invulnerable to the realities since he’s living in a world of his own creation. He lives out his fantasies, and very likely those he believes his victims have.”
    “Am I hearing that he rapes and kills women because he thinks they like it?” Ben pulled out a cigarette. Tess watched him light it, recognizing the edge in his voice.

    “In simple terms, yes. According to Markowitz’s recollection of what he heard on the phone during the second attack, the man said, ‘You know you want me to hurt you.’ Rapists often rationalize this way. He bound Mary Grice’s hands, but not Kathleen’s. I think that’s important. From the reports, Kathleen Breezewood offered a more conservative, a more straightforward sexual fantasy than Mary Grice. Bondage and sadism were often included in Mary’s conversations. The killer gave her what he thought she preferred. And he killed her, in all probability, because he’d discovered a dark and psychotic pleasure from the first bonding of sex and death. It’s highly possible he believes his victims received the same pleasure. Kathleen was an impulse, Mary a reconstruction.” She turned to Ben now. He may not have approved, but he was listening. “What do you think about the time of the murders?”
    “What should I think?”
    She smiled at him. He was the one who always accused her of answering a question with a question. “They both occurred fairly early in the evening, a pattern of sorts. It makes me wonder if perhaps he’s married, or lives with someone who expects him to be home by a certain time.”
    Ben studied the end of his cigarette. “Maybe he just likes to turn in early.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Tess.” Ed dunked a tea bag in a cup of hot water. “It’s generally accepted that a voyeur or a crank caller