Silent Terror

Where are you, Shifter?

I’ve directed a team of Denver agents to go to Aspen and turn the place upside down until they find out who called in the Shifter info, and a team out of the Philly office is going to Sharon tomorrow to do backup interviews. On Doc’s advice, I’ve requested information on unsolved homicides in California immediately before the first Shifter probable in 12/74. If Aspen doesn’t yield a name within a week or so, I’ll go there myself. You want your huge ego rubbed, Shifter? Turn yourself in to Uncle Tom, he’ll make you a star.

Doc’s been doing the bulk of the theorizing on Shifter, but I’ve been doing my own share on the link-links I now call “Blond-Brunette.” It’s heavily suppositional, theoretical and circumstantial, but I trust the overall feel.

One, I now buy a policeman killer for all seven victims. Checking through the case files, I saw that all of the blond four had been recently arrested for prostitution, making them particularly easy marks for police or pseudo-police intimidation, which would account for why such streetwise ladies let strange men into their apartments. Two, I don’t buy Saul Malvin as the Brunette Killer. I buy him as a suicide (the report filed by the officer who found his car and later his body was a model of cop smarts and clarity, if a little overboard on his own theorizing) — but O+ blood is very common, and I made some discreet calls to the Chicago S.A.C., who learned that Malvin had a thing going with a friend of his wife, and the friend was demanding a commitment. Suicide territory for a certain kind of man.

Three, a big jump, and a mind-boggling one that really feels right: the Wisconsin State Police and the two municipal P.D.’s aiding them in the brunette-killing investigations cannot find their files on the three homicides, which is one of the most incredible things I have heard in my twenty-two years as an invest gator Nine recent case files — vanished.

I think we’ve got a Wisconsin-based policeman-killer as the perpetrator of all seven blond-brunette homicides, and I think he destroyed the three brunette files to avoid a connection being made, most likely one based on identical physical evidence. And with physical evidence links destroyed from a legal standpoint (some Wisconsin M.E. or pathologist probably remembers blade specifications, etc., which wouldn’t hold up in court), all I’ve got left is opportunity.

So, any Southern Wisconsin cop missing from his assignment solely on the dates of the four blond homicides is my killer. I’ve already put in sub rosa queries with the Internal Affairs Department of the Wisconsin State Police, and the Milwaukee S.A.C. is doing the same with the personnel directors of the Janesville and Beloit P.D.’s. All I can do now is wait. Jack Mulhearn thinks my theory sucks — he thinks some cop sold the files to the media or a crime writer. We’ve got a hundred-dollar bet riding on the outcome of my queries. I can’t afford to lose — Mark and Susan’s fall tuition kick-out is coming up, but I feel solid on this one. It’s 11:23. Where are you, Carol?