Trial and Terror by ADAM L PENENBERG Page A

memorabilia.
    In an accent spiced with one part Bombay and one part Hollywood action adventure, Mahakavi had eagerly shown Summer display cases crammed with blood-rusted knives, guns, daggers, electric saws, a garbage disposal, garbage bags, ropes, handcuffs, packets of heavy-duty condoms, and other tools of the trade.
    “What do the scratches on the side of the cup signify?” Summer asked.
    “Winston,” Mahakavi said—he called his subjects by their first names—“filed those symbols himself with the same knife used in his crimes. Six marks, six victims.”
    The cup was still rusted with blood, which made it somehow more palatable than fresh kill, Summer thought. “What drives someone to do things like this?”
    “Besides an intense feeling of alienation and grandiosity? It is difficult to generalize. Many of them were abused or abandoned as children, or paranoid, or chemically imbalanced, or brimming with the feeling that they were wronged in some way, either by an individual or individuals or by society. Many slipped through cracks in the system. When one backtracks, one often can see that there were indications all along. For example, when Winston went from sating his thirst for blood by killing rabbits to cats and dogs, his neighbors complained to the police. But they did nothing; and as a consequence, he became emboldened and graduated to Homo sapiens .”
    Mahakavi tapped the top of the case. “From here down to there”—he swept his hand to the right—“are the rank amateurs. Like Winston, they lacked ingenuity. They were impulsive. Over there, if you’re interested, I have some marvelous artifacts from The Horoscope Killer, who stymied police for ten years. I also bought the Bible owned by the Mad Monk. He terrorized religious leaders across the state for two years. And in that display case over there, I have the client list of the prostitute Gwendolyn, one of the few female serial killers.”
    “Do you have any”—she searched for the right word—“collectibles from Sean Strickland?”
    Mahakavi was jittery. At first, Summer thought he was ill, but then realized he was laughing silently. “Sean fits into the amateur category, although he certainly held delusions of being one of the grand men of serial murder. Of course, he did manage to kill four men involved in law enforcement, and that is no easy task, but really, when you get down to it, he lacked imagination.”
    “Why did Strickland kill law enforcement?”
    “Sean believed he was the ultimate law. He felt he had to destroy the law in order to promote his own law.”
    “What law was that?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “What about the marks he left on the victims’ backs?”
    Summer watched Mahakavi’s toes curl in his sandals. “I can see you are a fan of the genre. What was your name again?”
    “Summer.”
    “Ah, yes. At the time, the police were unable to decipher the mark—not marks, which was a popular misconception. When Strickland perished, they simply closed the case. But subsequently I was able to determine its meaning.”
    “And?”
    “ Om .”
    “What?”
    “The lines he drew on his victims’ skin represent the Hindu symbol Om , which is used in chants, particularly in Buddhism. It is a mantra used in contemplating the ultimate reality—oneness with the universe. But Sean didn’t render it correctly. Come with me.”
    Summer moved down the row of cases with Mahakavi, who stopped at a case containing a sheet of paper with two sets of squiggly lines, side by side. “The symbol on the right is a copy of the symbol Strickland drew on his victims. The one on the left is the correct rendition of Om . As you can see, they are identical, except for the line on the bottom right that twists incorrectly.”
    And both, Summer noted, were similar, though not identical, to the mark on Gundy’s back.
    “Strickland was strictly a thug,” Mahakavi said. “Why on earth would you be interested in him?”
    “My father was the