Brazen Virtue

doesn’t go any further. What makes this guy different?”
    “He’s not a watcher. He participates. These women have spoken with him. There’s not the same distance, actual or emotional, as there is with someone who uses binoculars to spy into an apartment across the street or peep into a window. There’s not the same kind of anonymity as a random call. He knows these women. Not Kathleen and Mary, but Desiree and Roxanne. I once had a patient who was involved in a date rape.”

    “Unfortunately, the victim’s viewpoint doesn’t apply, Dr. Court,” Harris put in.
    “I treated the rapist, not the victim.” Tess took off her glasses to run the stem through her fingers. “He didn’t force sex on this girl only for himself. He initiated, persisted, then insisted because he thought she expected it of him. He’d convinced himself that his date wanted him to take the responsibility, and that if he backed off, she’d have thought him weak. Unmanly. In forcing her, he not only received sexual release, but a sense of power. He’d called the shots. In my opinion, the man you’re looking for enjoys that same sense of power. He kills these women not so they can’t identify him, but because murder is the ultimate power. It’s likely he comes from a background where he wasn’t able to wield power, where the authority figures in his life were, or are, very strong. He’s been sexually repressed, now he’s experimenting.”
    She opened the folders again. “His victims were very different types of women, not only in the personalities of their alter egos, but physically. That could have been a coincidence, of course, but it’s more likely it was deliberate. The only things these women had in common were sex and the phone. He used both against them in the most violent and most final of ways. His next choice will probably be someone with a totally different style.”
    “I’d prefer it if we didn’t have the opportunity to test that particular theory out.” Harris snuck another corner from the raisin bun. “Could he stop? Stop cold?”

    “I don’t think so.” Tess closed the folders again and set them on his desk. “There’s no remorse here, no anguish. The message of the florist card wasn’t ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Forgive me,’ but ‘I won’t forget.’ His movements are carefully planned out. He’s not grabbing a woman off the street and dragging her into an alley or a car. Again, you must understand, he knows them, or believes he knows them, and he’s taking what he feels he deserves. He’s very much a product of today’s society, where you can pick up the phone and order anything. From pizza to pornography, you only have to push a button and it becomes yours, something you’re entitled to. You have a mixture here of the convenience of technology and sociopathic tendencies. It’s all very logical to him.”
    “Excuse me.” Lowenstein popped her head in the door. “We’ve just finished the cross-checks on the credit cards.” At Harris’s nod, she handed the printouts to Ed. “Not one match.”
    “None?” Ben stood to look over Ed’s shoulder.
    “Zero. We looked for matches in the numbers, in the names, addresses, possible aliases or dupes. Nothing.”
    “Different styles,” Ed murmured and he began to think it through.
    “So, we’re back to square one.” Ben took the sheets Ed passed him.
    “Maybe not. We tracked down the flowers. It was a phone order to Bloom Town. MasterCard number belongs to a Patrick R. Morgan. Here’s the address.”
    “He show up on either of these?” Ed asked, still studying the printouts.
    “Nope. We’re still checking the other lists.”
    “Let’s go pay him a visit.” Ben checked his watch. “You got a work address?”
    “Yeah, Capitol Hill. Morgan’s a congressman.”
    T HE REPRESENTATIVE COULD BE found at home that day in his refurbished Georgetown town house. The woman who answered the door looked sour and impatient and carried a mountain of file folders. “Yes?” was all she said.
    “We’d like to see Congressman Morgan.” Ed had already looked beyond her and zeroed in on the mahogany paneling in the hall. The real stuff.

    “I’m sorry, the congressman isn’t available. If you’d like an appointment, call his office.”
    Ben dug out his shield. “Police business, ma’am.”
    “I don’t care if you’re God Himself,” she said with hardly a glance at his ID. “He’s not available. Try his office, next week.”
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