Police Commissioner Moran sat back in his chair, putting his finger-tips together, as was his habit, and continued to suck on the pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth.
"All right," he said, "now tell me about the third rape victim. Her name was…" he consulted the file on his desk "… Miss Louise Archer."
Jocelyn giggled, and because it was the first time I can remember her ever having done so, it only made matters worse. "Lou," she said.
Commissioner Moran frowned. "Lou?"
"That's quite enough!" I cut in, directing my annoyance at Jocelyn.
Her giggle broke into a laugh.
"Would one of you two please have the decency to lei me in on the joke. I enjoy laughter as well as the next person."
"It's no joking matter, Spens…" I began.
"I'll say it wasn't," Jocelyn offered, barely smothering her laughter long enough to get the words out. "I thought she was going to pull his pants down and fuck him right there for the quadcorder to tape. What an interesting report that would have made!"
"Jocelyn!"
"Well, it's true," she insisted.
"Will someone please…" Commissioner Moran rocked forward, pulling the pipe from his lips. He pointed the stem at Jocelyn. "You explain…"
"But Spens…"
"And you," he said, training the lethal stem at me now, "keep quiet. When I want your observations, I'll ask for them. It seems clear to me that this involves you and another young woman. I'd hardly consider your version of what happened unprejudiced." He dismissed me with a flip of his pipe. "Now, Miss Wolfe, what happened? And from the top."
"We stopped at Miss Archer's apartment quite late," Jocelyn began, "and apparently she was getting ready for bed, because she came to the door wearing hardly nothing. Just a flimsy, and quite transparent, negligee. Take my word for it, Commissioner, Miss Archer had nothing to hide…"
"I get the point, Miss Wolfe. See whether you can continue without leering."
She straightened out the smile that was curling up the comers of her lips. "Yes sir, I'll try," she said. "Anyhow, Miss Archer was glad to let us in – I say 'us' only because I was there as well. But if it were up to her, she and Mal were quite alone in the room."
I glared at Jocelyn, muttering under my breath. "Well, you've got to admit that she did all the talking to you, didn't she?"
"Spens, are you going to…?"
"Mal," he warned.
"Miss Archer, who by the way, wanted Mal to call her Lou instead of Louise or Miss Archer, went over the details of her particular attack in considerable and quite graphic detail. She left nothing to the imagination, telling Mal how it felt, how wet it made her, how horny – everything. And all the while she was leaning all over him, nudging him with her pert little tittles…"
"Now you've gone too far!" I cried, standing up.
"Well, it's true!" Jocelyn retorted.
"Malachi Browne," cried Commissioner Moran, "sit down! And not another word from you until this is finished. Do you understand?"
I sat down. "Yes… sir."
Jocelyn continued: "It seems the rapist's means of getting into her apartment was the same as it had been for the other two victims: a call from the lobby of her building for a package that wasn't there. When she returned to her apartment, he was waiting for her."
"Did he go through the same kind of procedure with her as he did with the others?"
"Essentially the same, with a slight variation, as there had been with the others. He forced her to strip, and then he made her make several 'obscene' calls over the wall screen to men at random. All the while she spoke to these various men, the rapist stood out of direct line with the screen, so identification that way is out."
"Obscene calls?"
"The rapist forced Miss Archer," Jocelyn continued, "although I hardly doubt he had much difficulty, to make sexual advances to these men while in full view of the screen. Remember, she was naked. She was forced to talk obscenely to the men while she masturbated and fondled herself. According to Miss Archer, one of the men actually became so aroused by her he pulled out his cock and jerked off. He came quite copiously, too, she said. All over his wall screen."
"Hum… that's novel, at least. Anything else, Miss Wolfe?"
"There is a lot more detail," she said, "but I don't think it's necessary to go over it now. Its all down in the transcript of the quadcorder tape. I have the tape as well, if you'd like to view it."
"That won't be necessary. The transcript is good enough. Continue, please."
"After Miss Archer made three calls, our man moved in to do his work. From here on it's the same as the others: he put a blindfold over her head, sprayed her with that substance, whatever it was, and when she woke up she was raped. Apparently, she'd faired better than the other two women because she suffered no blood loss. But her cunt was quite bruised and battered. I saw her physician's report, a copy is included in her file, and the results are quite brutal. She was attacked, make no mistake about that."
Commissioner Moran sucked on his pipe. "Hum… what about identification? Did she know him? Does she have any ideas?"
"Negative, sir. Just like all the others."
"Was there any mention of a weapon?" he asked. "A blaster, in particular."
"No, there wasn't. I'll attribute that, and that incredible piece of dialogue she reported the rapist to have said to Mrs. Hudson's obvious lurid imagination."
"I agree," Commissioner Moran said. "What do you say, Mal?"
"Yes. Clearly the woman watches too much wall screen; too many old neo-renaissance films." Commissioner Moran nodded, pressing his finger-tips together again. His chin was resting on his chest, and he was looking at me over the top of his glasses. "Now," he said, sucking on his pipe, "will someone please explain to me what any of this evidence has to do with Plain-clothes Detective Malachi Browne?"
Jocelyn began to giggle again, but I glared her down crossly.
"Our Miss Archer," she said, "was one hot-blooded woman. After the rape she was so bruised she couldn't have any sex. And I mean no sex. She couldn't even masturbate, so you can imagine, how horny she was. Well, all it took was for her to get one long look at Mal's cock, and she got an immediate case of the hots for him. Miss Archer was climbing all over him, touching him, caressing him, telling him how she hadn't been fucked in weeks…"
"Thank you, Miss Wolfe. I think I have the picture." He looked at me, arched one eyebrow, then sucked on his pipe. "All right, now where do we stand?"
"We know all three rapes were committed by the same man," I said. I realized how insignificant this piece of evidence was when weighed against the mountain of evidence it would require to track the rapist down. Still, it was one of the only hard facts we had about this case. I said: "Not only is his M.O. the same in all three attacks, but Crime Lab had established conclusively that all three women were penetrated by the same brutally large cock. The probability percentage of it not being the same man in all three cases is so small that the computer reads it out as insignificant. So, for what it's worth, we're only looking for one man."
"And thank God for that," Commissioner Moran agreed. "All that's needed to make this case any more complicated is for us to find out there are two rapists. No thank you, one is more than enough. What else do we have?"
"We know the rapist was someone who knew the routine of the three women," Jocelyn said. "In every case they were alone when he attacked them."
"What does that tell us?" Commissioner Moran asked.
"It tells us that the rapist was someone who could find that kind of information out about people, or it says he had that kind of information available to him."
"What type of person does that suggest?"
"I've all ready put it through the computer. It's sorting them out now. We'll have someone tracking down any possible leads we turn up, first thing in the morning."
"Good," he said, nodding with approval at Jocelyn. "What else do we have?"
"Lists have been taken from all three women," I said, "of their friends and relatives: husbands, boy friends, lovers, bosses, and anyone else who might possibly have a grudge against them. The whole mass of data has been fed into the computer, and has been checked, rechecked, cross-checked, even randomly-checked. Nothing. No leads, no results, nothing. Not even for Mrs. Hudson, and believe me, she does have a lot of enemies. But everything checks out. And, worst of all: no possible connection exists between the three victims. In short, they were all strangers to each other."
Commissioner Moran frowned. He pulled the pipe from his lips, tamped down the tobacco with a stick match, then struck the match and lit his pipe. He puffed out some smoke.
"Summarize what we have," he said.
"Conclusion: we're dealing with one man," Jocelyn said. "One man whose identity we do not yet know."
Something in my unconscious mind reached out and stung me. "What did you say? Say that again?"
Jocelyn looked surprised. "All I said was that we were dealing with one man…"
"That's it: one man!"
Now Jocelyn looked confused. "I don't…?"
Commissioner Moran pulled the pipe from his mouth. "Do you have something, Mal!" he asked, sitting forward, placing his elbows on the desk.
"I just realized were making the most fundamental kind of mistake. I'm surprised we didn't see this before. Aren't we making a mistake by limiting our investigation to men only. I realize it sounds farfetched, but think about it: isn't it possible that the three women were not raped by a man, but by a – woman!"
Jocelyn blinked twice, and then, as if the idea were physically repugnant to her, her lips twisted into a sour frown, and she pulled back away from me. "Are you crazy?" she demanded. "That's the most…"
"Shhh! Wait," Commissioner Moran interjected excitedly. He physically silenced Jocelyn with an impatient wave of his hand. "At least hear him out. Make your point, Mal."
I collected my thoughts. "Let's re-establish the facts in light of my hypothesis and see what we come up with. One: All three women were unconscious when the rapes took place; therefore, no one can say without reasonable doubt that they were definitely raped by men. Not even the victims themselves can say that.
"Two: We have assumed all along that the reason for the hooded mask was to keep the victims from identifying the rapist. But what if there was another reason? What if the three women were blindfolded to hide from them the fact that the rapist was a woman?
"Three: The only time the rapist might have been seen was when Mrs. Hudson passed a man on the shafts. But that man was wearing a viewer which hid his head. I submit: couldn't the head inside that viewer have been a woman's head?
"Four: The Gynecological Reports on all three women each say that the victims were attacked by a cock of enormous size and thickness, and used with a vicious brutality. But suppose that wasn't a real cock. Suppose that it was a dildo.
"Five-and-Final: The Gynecological Reports again all state that the rapist deposited no sperm into the bodies of the three women. Again: Could not it have been a dildo and not an actual cock which forced penetration?"
There was a momentary silence, and I used it to study the faces of my two colleagues. Jocelyn was clearly unconvinced, almost violently so, while Commissioner Moran was clearly interested.
"I don't know," he said. "I think maybe the damn idea has possibilities. I think maybe you've hit upon something."
"I'm not saying I think the rapist is a woman," I expounded. "I'm only saying can we overlook the possibility that he might be a woman?"
Commissioner Moran nodded. "You're right, of course, Mal. We have no choice but to investigate that as a possibility. Run everything you have back through the computer for a woman this time and see what kind of results you get. And get new lists from each woman – lists of women who might be suspects."
"There's also the possibility," I saw, "that if the rapist is a woman, the attacks might have been made by a known lesbian. Maybe we've been looking for the wrong kind of deviant all along!"
Jocelyn, who had been sitting by listening with her mouth opening progressively wider with each new step we took, suddenly exploded.
"Have you two lost your senses?" she wanted to know. "That idea is positively stupid, not to mention totally sexist. You're both expressing a typically male prejudice by even suggesting that a woman might have done it. No woman could have done that to another woman. Only a man knows how to hurt that deeply."
Her voice was rising shrilly until it seemed to catch her attention. She stopped to listen to it, and then she stopped altogether. Her eyes fluttered, as if she were looking inwardly at her own pain.
"Or a sick woman," I said softly.
Jocelyn stung back at me. "How about a sick man? And how about the fact that not one of the women even implied that the rapist was anything but a man? And how about the fact that every one of those women distinctly heard a man's voice?"
"Disguising your voice is a relatively easy thing to do," I pointed out. "It could have been done any number of ways. By tape recordings of a man's voice telling each of the women what to do. There are also devices that you can put in your mouth that will make you sound like the Commissioner, and he could be made to sound like you. It can be done."
The weight of evidence, if not reason, must have been frustrating for her. Jocelyn threw up her hands, as if in disgust.
"All right," she conceded. "You stick to your theories, and I'll stick to mine. And mine tell me that the rapist is a man."
I stared back at her a very long time before I answered. "And mine tell me we haven't got enough evidence yet for you to be that sure, this early."