by Robb T White
He gave her rental a disparaging look. ‘I’ve got company wheels,’ he said and pointed to a gleaming black SUV Navigator. ‘Got all the fun stuff and hi-tech goodies.’
‘You talked me into it,’ Jade said.
‘This blistering heat,’ Pete said. ‘It’s like a desert sandstorm. It’ll burn the lacquer off the paint to a nice uniform chrome.’
It wasn’t much of a place from the outside, but he was right about the food. She surprised herself by finishing everything on her plate. Willpower and power yoga kept her lithe and her waistline unchanged, but time was against her. She felt better than she had all day.
Pete was a good conversationalist and he listened. She ended one relationship before it started when her date pulled out a cell phone without her permission and began texting.
They exchanged the obligatory personal stories of growing up in different places and the inevitable ‘What led you to a career in the Bureau?’ Pete was a graduate of the USD Law in San Diego.
‘A long way from Baton Rouge,’ she said and raised an eyebrow.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I usually make up a lie when I’m asked this. I say “the weather out there, what else?” and mostly people buy it. The truth is I clerked for a judge who went there and he had an FBI career investigating white supremacy groups like the Posse Comitatus and some whackjob militias out in Idaho. I thought I’d follow in his footsteps. It sounded like fun. More fun than the options a lawyer had, I thought at the time—and still do.’
‘Ruby Ridge,’ she remembered, ‘was well before your time, so is that what you did—chased militiamen through the piney woods?’
‘Not even close.’ Pete laughed. ‘I wound up with fraud cases. I almost quit.’
‘Let me guess. You asked for a transfer and they gave you Albuquerque.’
‘Close. South Dakota. Let me tell you,’ Pete said, more serious now. ‘I had a resignation letter in my pocket just waiting for the right moment.’ He grew suddenly quiet as if a shadow passed had over him.
‘What is it?’
‘Pine Ridge,’ he said. ‘It was like a third-world country.’
‘It got to you,’ she said.
‘For a long time,’ he said. ‘But it helped me. I mean, I realized what I wanted to be in my career. It was a kick to the backside to my complacency. That sounds pompous. I wanted my life to mean something.’
She liked him. They talked about the case and agreed to meet in the conference room later.
‘I’ll write up my report and tag along with you, if you don’t mind,’ she said.
‘I’d appreciate the help. I’ve got a pile of 209s to write up first.’
He drove her back to her car. Stepping out, she felt as if she’d been on a date. She was used to being alone since her marriage had imploded, and all the road time pretty much precluded much social life. She didn’t know what to make of the wedding ring he wore. If he was on the make, he didn’t bother putting it in his pocket.
Back in the motel, she stripped and shut off the air-conditioning. For an hour, she did some stretching and bending exercises; the sweat poured down her back and dripped from her head. She took alternating hot and cold showers. She stood in front of the mirror and appraised herself with ruthless honesty. They say mirrors don’t lie, but in fact they do: it takes a nanosecond for the light rays to bounce back and reflect one’s image.
‘I’m looking at my past,’ Jade said to her reflection.
Jade was certain the killer had deliberately put himself in harm’s way. For how long, it wasn’t possible to know. The slew of killers named for highways and interstates like the I-75 and I-35 killers were the garden-variety psychopath who trolled for victims, often prostitutes, or who shot randomly at passing cars. They were no different from the urban males who used to throw rocks off pedestrian bridges over freeways at the cars below. Sick, disturbed, antisocial misfits but not the equal of this killer.
She wondered what kind of slingshot he used. Peaspanen couldn’t say. She googled some models that ranged from the African-style forked wooden slingshot through the over-the-top Spanish style to the modern hunting styles that used tubular rubber for the bands and often had Y-shaped steel catapults with a snake or dragon head design. They were invariably cheap; you could buy one for less than $20. Not as effective as a Glaser slug, but if you wanted to transfer a fatal amount of energy into a human brain, they would do.
At dawn, she woke from a nightmare. She lay sunning herself on a beach blanket—but instead of the familiar ocean or lakes of her past, she found herself on a riverbank where the pungent smell of mud and overwhelming heat was oppressive. A man in camo came out of the tall switch grass and bore down on her. He made no sound except for the grass whispering against his pant legs. His shadow fell over her. He was going to kill her. She turned to defend herself against the knife or gun—‘attack the attacker, not the knife,’ the ex-Marine Corps instructor bellowed during hand-to-hand at Quantico.
No gun or knife. Just the glint of light off the tiny steel ball in the leather pouch about to be launched, drawn to tautness, aimed at her forehead before she can raise a defensive arm … the man’s face hidden in a black mask decorated with tiny yellow smiley faces. He is savoring the moment, the look in her eyes as she knows …
‘Stupid,’ she told herself, coming full awake in bed.
Stopping dangerous men in a violent country was all she ever wanted to do. Now, this, a bête noire from her subconscious. It made her disgusted.
At the end of the course, her instructor pulled her aside and said, ‘You’re a little thing, but you have the heart of a lion.’ She treasured those words, her personal mantra when courage failed.
She traced the Chinese symbol for courage tattooed on her left calf and thought about the slingshot man. What are you up to now?
Chapter 8
WÖISSELL WAS FEELING BETTER with each mile separating him from that river in Arkansas. It seemed a long time ago, not just days. He had surfed the web from the public library yesterday and found a couple of paragraphs on the Yahoo newsfeed devoted to it. No mention of the wife or money, which was good. He blamed himself for running too low on clonidine patches.
Wöissell was in a race with a bigger clock than the one that compelled him back and forth across the nation’s highways. His attacks were growing worse, more unpredictable, and he feared the day that he would no longer get by on clonidine alone. Standing in a grocery store checkout line, he stood behind a man in the throes of Parkinson’s. His gyrations were so exhausting and flamboyant with his whirling, twisting torso that he could look at Wöissell behind him. Wöissell remembered the look in the man’s tormented face, his hopeless eyes.
Wöissell studied his family’s paternal line and learned that Parkinson’s was a scourge in his ancestors back to the eighteenth century, only they didn’t have a name for it then. They don’t have a cure for it, either, and his father upstairs was a constant reminder of what happens when neurons are lost in the midbrain and you start to shake. One day he would be unable to walk up a flight of stairs. Dementia in the final stages. Wöissell learned everything he could about multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal degeneration, and dementia with Lewy bodies. It made his decision to quit school that much easier.
When time permitted, he would mess with the crime scene. He had a bag of garbage he never tossed out; in it were soda cans, used Kleenex, hairs, fibers mixed in with his items that could easily be explained away. He might leave a strand of hair at one place, a clump of soil picked up in his travels at another, cigarette butts were a useful decoy—basically anything that didn’t decompose in his private ‘compost can.’
When sleep eluded him, or his brain teemed with the doomsday clock inside him, he used to walk miles at night. It helped him think but nothing was better than mindless driving at night. Tonight, he felt like walking.
The black youth dogging him a block from the motel didn’t worry him. He’d been robbed befo
re, and he always gave it up, as the robber suggested. He never let himself be hurt, but these episodes weren’t worthy of his time to fret over—occupational hazards, if anything.
Charley thought he had given up, if he had robbery on his mind, when he left the pizza place and didn’t see him. Halfway down the block, however, he popped up again, and Charley figured he was building up the courage to make the move. When he stopped in front of a storefront window, he could see him halt, too, and pretend to tie his shoe. Amateur hour, Charley thought. He always figured that, if he ever drew law enforcement’s notice, it wouldn’t be a SWAT team or the FBI kicking in his door; it would be some bored traffic cop or state trooper whose instinct told him something about Charley was off. He was superstitious enough to fear a hypersensitive who might pick up his aura. He wished the kid would hurry up and close the distance; he’d hand over the money and they could both go their ways.
‘Give it up, motherfucker!’
‘Sure,’ Charley said. ‘I’m going to reach in my pocket for my wallet. Don’t shoot me.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ the youth said. He was hunched in a gray hoodie with Pittsburgh Penguins scrolled across the chest.
‘I’m hoping you’ll be reasonable, that’s all.’
‘You fuckin’ high? I ain’t got all fuckin’ night. I’ll shoot your white ass right here!’
Wöissell relaxed a bit. He sounded nervous, not vicious. The hood-rat lingo sounded no more menacing than a rap tune. They were a block from the McKees Rocks Bridge where traffic went past under street lights. This area was more blighted than he’d first realized when he left the pizza parlor. The Italian names and Czech or Hungarian names and ethnic faces had disappeared blocks behind him as if a giant hand had come down from the sky and said, ‘No Caucasians past this point.’
‘Here, take it, please, and let me go,’ Charley said. He manufactured a quaver of fear to go with his plea.
The boy extracted the bills, tore out the photos and emptied the contents on the sidewalk, threw the wallet at Wöissell’s chest.
‘Where’s the rest, motherfucker?’
‘Fifty dollars, that’s all I have,’ Wöissell said. Something in the boy’s voice alerted him, demanded a reassessment. He could be trouble. ‘I’m not well off,’ Charley pleaded. ‘I hurt my back in an accident—’
‘Don’t bullshit me, white boy,’ he said.
Wasting time, acting big, but he’s more dangerous than I thought …
‘Just let me go, please,’ Wöissell said. ‘You have my money.’
Charley felt it coming on. No, not now, Goddamn it …
Squeaks, whistles from his throat. Uncontrollable.
The boy jumped back. ‘What the fuck?’
Wöissell saw the gun leveling, the tiniest flinch in the mugger’s eyes. Charley had dealt so much death he knew this foolish youth was going to shoot him, kill him over fifty bucks. House lights on both sides of the street, traffic a block over, ceilings glowing from television sets visible from the sidewalk, and this idiot intended to kill him right here.
‘It’s just my condition,’ Wöissell pleaded, keeping his voice calm. ‘Tourette’s syndrome. It happens when I’m off my meds—’
‘You fuckin’ freak,’ the boy said and aimed for Charley’s chest.
No more playing victim. Destroy him. That feeling of control returned, flooded back in a rush like dopamine released from the back brain in a drug fix.
Wöissell shifted his feet while keeping his eyes fixed on the youth, not the gun.
Charley stepped into the attacker’s zone, and swept his gun arm to the side with his forearm. The blow he delivered to the boy’s nose smashed cartilage and blinded him. He crumpled to the sidewalk and his head smacked the sidewalk. Wöissell knew he was out of danger. He could easily walk away, it had taken a split-second. The boy would be found by a passerby or noticed by a passing vehicle and a 911 on somebody’s cell would bring a cop, even if one wasn’t cruising the area.
Why he hadn’t fled the scene haunted him minutes later in his motel room. He didn’t need to do what he did.
He bagged up his clothes including shoes and socks and put everything in a garbage bag. In the morning, he’d take it out to the truck and put it in a compartment beside the fryolator. He had built extra shelving where objects wouldn’t be seen by a casual search. He showered again, cursing himself for his stupidity, and called the front desk for a wake-up call at five in the morning. He’d be a long way from Pennsylvania before the chalk outline on the sidewalk and the blood was washed off by the fire department.
The final thing he did before turning in was take the eyeball out of his pocket and dangle it over the toilet while the water swirled in the bowl. He dropped it into the swirling vortex, flushed the tank, and watched it disappear.
So much for a quiet night-time walk. Sometimes the gods Charley refused to believe in reminded him they could exert control anytime, anywhere, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Chapter 9
THE CONFERENCE ROOM WAS half the size of the muster room at the police station. Pete was friendly, no different from yesterday. He was smooth-shaven, not opting for the manicured mustache that some agents felt compelled to wear as token resistance to their cookie-cutter appearance. His blue pin-striped shirt was tailored and designed for cufflinks. It suggested two traits to her, one being vanity and the other, careful with details.
‘You look as if you didn’t get much sleep last night,’ he said to her over coffee.
‘Traveling isn’t my strong suit,’ she said. ‘Motels make me think of an old Twilight Zone episode where this American astronaut is put on display.’
‘I know that one. It’s a Martian zoo,’ Pete said. ‘Let me ask you something.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Why—why do you think people—not cops, now,’ Pete said, ‘are wrapping themselves up in conspiracy theories? Something different in the water?’
She liked it that he wanted her opinion, rather than a report. She remembered a statement Freud made: “In all idealization, there is aggression,” but she didn’t want to sound like a bookworm. His question seemed sincere.
‘I think it has to do with the media landscape and our political climate,’ she began. ‘There’s a meanness out there. Theories have to be more sensational or more shocking than the one before it to gain attention. The public’s attention span is shorter, everything is instant gratification.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Pete said. ‘There’s an appetite for cruelty I’ve never seen before.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I think of girls growing up nowadays,’ Pete said. ‘It scares me to think of what they have to face in life.’
She wondered if Pete was about to say something about his own marriage. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to or not. She opted for a change of tack.
‘The drownings don’t fit a serial killer motive, Pete. The fact that only males are found dead as evidence doesn’t add up. Basic forensics tells us water doesn’t wash away all evidence and there is no evidence of victim trauma.’
‘You’d think cops would be used to the idea that intoxicated men fall into rivers and drown by now,’ Pete agreed.
‘Right after the theory gained traction in the media in Wisconsin where most the drownings first happened, foot patrols in La Crosse stopped over fifty men from approaching the river late at night,’ she said. She was violating a personal rule: never complain about the job to a fellow agent.
But, she had to admit, it felt good to vent into a sympathetic ear. She was sick of this waste of law enforcement energy, time, and money by an uninformed public keeping it alive—even worse, by those unscrupulous, disturbed, or deluded persons capitalizing on it and assuring her time on the carousel would not end soon. She feared another looney, time-wasting assignment would replace it. It wasn’t as though she’d offended her current ADIC; it was an accumulation of innuendo and back-stabbing, some by former agen
ts who resented her head-on style of confrontation, whether at internal bureaucracy or from their bosses in the Justice Department. She’d begged for permission to train for the Hostage Rescue Team and was denied three times; she asked for narcotics surveillance, anywhere, and was kept busy with more report writing than any two of the most lethargic agents in the Bureau.
When an opening appeared for the Behavioral Sciences, thanks to her eclectic educational background, she was given the rare opportunity in the FBI for any agent: she was asked if she wanted the assignment. She declined. ‘Those guys never leave the office,’ she told a friend in San Antonio, where she was stationed at the time, ‘it’s nothing like TV.’ But this—‘this endless report writing the Bureau insisted upon’—she told Pete, who solemnly agreed, was stress on top of stress.
They agreed on a plan. First, they’d re-interview the friends and co-workers of Hugheart and Crawford. Pete agreed with her assessment that these two vics were the killer’s ‘collateral damage.’ His primary target was Burchess, but the fact he took the time and risked exposure by some hiker or fisherman, not to mention alerting Burchess to imminent danger if anything with the other kills had gone wrong, strongly suggested they were part of his design.
‘If he’s a serial, he’s engaging in fantasy reconstruction,’ Pete said. ‘Look how Burchess was stalked and attacked. Plucking out the eyes is his way of posing the victim.’
‘Yes, I’ll agree to that much. Danny Rolling did the same thing,’ referring to the Gainesville Ripper. He put a decapitated head on a mantel for the cops to see when they came through the door.
‘The classic earmarks of a serial killer just aren’t evident—or else, I’m not seeing them,’ she said. ‘You could argue Burchess was displayed for shock value, but I’m not convinced. Charlie Albright did the same thing.’
‘Sorry,’ Pete said. ‘I’m not up on serial killer lore. Who’s Albright?’
‘He removed the eyeballs of three Dallas prostitutes in 1990 with an exacto knife,’ she said. ‘He placed the nude body of his third victim in front of an elementary school. The Bureau’s profile fit him like a glove, except for his age, even ascribed a friendly relationship to law enforcement. Charlie played for a police league softball team.’
