Free Miami, It's Murder by Edna Buchanan

edged her voice, but I sensed less hostility.
    â€œI guessed,” I lied, protecting my source. “It’s only logical that you would have them by now.”
    â€œThen guess the rest. If I cut that information loose, it would compromise the integrity of our investigation. Everybody would know, including the bad guy. He’d change his habits, his appearance, he might move—”
    â€œEven if he tries, he can’t change who and what he is. He’s been hitting every two weeks.” I lowered my voice. “How many more women will you let this happen to, to preserve the integrity of your investigation?” Leaning forward, I met her steely gaze. “Is it more important to stop him or to hope for an arrest, someday, on your terms?”
    She tossed her head back and stared at me, chewing her upper lip and fiddling with a metal paperweight in the shape of a hand grenade.
    I flipped open my notebook, took out my pen, and looked up expectantly.
    She sighed, placing both hands on the desk blotter in front of her. She considered her fingernails, short and unpolished, without adornment. “We believe he’s Cuban,” she said. “He may have served time in prison there.” Her expression remained unchanged as she removed a file from the squat metal cabinet behind her chair and opened it. The face in a composite drawing stared up at her.
    She slid it across the desk. High cheekbones, cleanshaven, wavy hair, prominent nose, eyes close together.
    â€œLean and muscular build, a skinny little son of a bitch, but he’s strong. Mid to late thirties, five-eight or five-nine, approximately a hundred and sixty-five pounds, nice even teeth, hairless chest. Probably started stealing panties from clotheslines or laundry rooms and worked his way up. Probably has a record for minor sex crimes, like wienie waving. He’s still escalating. He didn’t hurt anybody more than he had to, at the beginning. Now he’s deliberately frightening his victims more. He’s pricking them with the knife. Their fear and humiliation excites him. He’s becoming more dangerous. He could be working up to murder.”
    She paused, as though lost in thought. “All but one has happened before four in the afternoon. He may be fitting this in with his own schedule. He could be a maintenance man who starts somewhere at four and likes to go to work happy.
    â€œThe first was only an attempt, because he couldn’t get an erection. Now he makes the victims perform oral sex so he can. Then he does it from the back, seems to have trouble having sex from the front. Can’t maintain his erection.”
    â€œWhy do you think that is?” I asked, scribbling furiously.
    She paused, toying again with the paperweight. “I don’t know how much of this you can put in the newspaper. He probably does it from the rear because he won’t see the victim as a person if he’s not looking at her face. When he tries from the front, nothing.”
    â€œHe’s got problems.”
    â€œTell me about it.”
    â€œWhat about lab work on him?”
    â€œHe’s a secretor.”
    Eighty percent of us secrete our blood type into our body fluids, our tears, sweat, mucus, semen, vaginal secretions, and saliva. Sometimes a suspect can be typed off a cigarette butt. The best legal proof of sex between two people is a used condom with the man’s semen inside and the woman’s vaginal secretions on the outside. “Good, what type is he?”
    â€œO positive, the universal donor.” She smiled sardonically. “You wouldn’t want to get too close to this guy.”
    I put on my curious face, not wanting to let on that Harry had told me. “Does he have AIDS?”
    â€œNope, gonorrhea, the bad one, penicillin resistant.”
    â€œThink he knows it?”
    She shrugged. “Do me a favor. If you do mention that, don’t be specific. Just say that he has something