A Killer in Time

by Jim Laughter

  “I think it’s time you two come clean with us,” Toolie said.

  He’d been listening to the conversation between Jake and Benjamin and it didn’t sound like they were talking about the same thing.

  “You’re not here about the hookers in the agent’s rooms, are you?”

  Benjamin shook his head no. The time had come to lay their cards on the table.

  “Do you remember the prostitute they found murdered in the basement garage of the Luxury Suites Hotel in Houston just after the President’s visit a few weeks ago?”

  Both Toolie and Jake said they did.

  “We have strong circumstantial evidence that Doctor John Williams, the President’s personal physician, killed that woman as well as a number of other prostitutes across the country while on presidential visits.”

  “That’s the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard,” Toolie said.

  “We believe he uses the Town Car to pick up hookers on the street, kills them, and stashes his murder weapon in the car,” George continued, undaunted by Toolie’s words.

  “Leaving the car parked with the presidential motorcade affords it perfect protection from investigation. That’s why we need to see inside it before we get to DC and he has a chance to remove any evidence.”

  “Are you saying you think Doc Williams is a serial killer?” Toolie asked. “That he kills people while traveling with the President?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  “That’s exactly what we think.”

  “I don’t believe this shit,” Toolie said.

  “You haven’t seen the news today, have you Toolie?” Cooper asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Because another prostitute was murdered in Sacramento last night while we were there,” Benjamin answered before Cooper could say anything. “We think it was Doctor Williams and the evidence is fifty feet away from us in that Town Car.”

  George spent the next several minutes outlining the prostitute murders to Jake and Toolie without actually mentioning Jack the Ripper. He figured that would be too much information for them to handle.

  Jake turned to Toolie sitting in the seat beside him.

  “You reckon we can get these two characters into the Doc’s car?”

  “Do you mean without getting our asses shot or arrested?”

  Benjamin smiled. This turn of events may not work out as poorly as he’d first suspected. With any luck they’d come out of this alive and with their serial killer. He reached for his cell phone. He had to call Keller.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Keller’s cell phone rang just as she was reaching for her jacket to go home for the evening. It was late and she was tired.

  Her head spun from the events of the day. Morris had been on her all afternoon to get more information about the most recent prostitute killed in Sacramento even though the local police there hadn’t released their official report yet. He’d been trying to find out about Alice McKenzie, the working girl killed in DC before Benjamin and Cooper’s departure for the west coast. He’d left for the medical examiner’s office hours ago and she hadn’t heard from him since. She figured he was probably having about as much luck as she was.

  Keller dug her phone out of her purse and looked at the screen where she saw Benjamin’s name. She moved the screen slider with her thumb then activated the speaker.

  “George?”

  “It’s me, LK,” George’s voice sounded from her phone.

  “Is something wrong? Why are you calling?”

  An uncomfortable aura filled the room. She was certain George was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he answered. “We’ve had a development.”

  Now she was certain she didn’t want to hear George’s next words. Where the hell was Morris when she needed him?

  “What kind of development?”

  More silence.

  “George?”

  “I’m afraid our cover is blown,” George said.

  “What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean your cover is blown?”

  George’s mind filled with regret while he looked from Cooper to Toolie to Jake. He and Cooper had been so careful to conceal their identities while on this mission. Now in only a matter of a few hours everything had been exposed and their mission could crumble before their eyes. What kind of assignments would Morris and Keller trust them with in the future if they couldn’t handle this one detail?

  Then again, did he and Cooper have a future with the agency, or had they blown their one good chance of proving they could handle an awkward situation?

  “We’ve had to take a couple of people into our confidence.”

  The Facetime indicator on Keller’s phone signaled that Benjamin had activated his. She pressed the accept button, there to see George’s face on her screen. The background noise and movement of the picture indicated they were still on an aircraft.

  “Where are you, George?”

  “We’re about an hour outside of DC.”

  “You’re still on the transport aircraft?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “You’re calling from the aircraft?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  I don’t believe this, Keller thought. He’s calling from inside an aircraft that is loaded with surveillance equipment. He might as well hang his ass out the window with a sign on it that says, ‘Shoot me here.’

  Cooper’s smiling face filled her screen as he reached over and turned George’s phone toward himself.

  “Hey, LK! Hell of a day, huh?”

  Keller returned her jacket to the coat rack and headed back toward her desk. She had a feeling this was going to be a long night.

  “What the hell is going on, George?”

  George turned the phone so Keller could see Jake and Toolie and they could see her. The old white man looked like he’d seen better days while the black man looked confused and disoriented. She didn’t know how much information George had divulged to them but she was certain they were in over their heads.

  “I’d like you to meet Mr. Toolie and Jake,” George said. “Mr. Toolie is the motorcade supervisor. Jake drives the Suburban we rode in and is a Secret Service agent.”

  “How the hell…” Jake started to say then realized he’d inadvertently admitted to being an agent during the course of their conversation about the prostitutes. He had no idea George had seen the outline of his shoulder holster under his jacket their first day in the Suburban.

  “We’ve had to confide in them our suspicions about Dr. Williams,” George continued. “They’re going to try to get us access to the doctor’s car before we reach DC.”

  “The car is on the aircraft with you now?”

  “It’s not fifty feet from me,” Benjamin answered. “With any luck, we’ll find the murder weapon from Sacramento.”

  “You’re going to search his car without a warrant?”

  “Well I…”

  “Damn it, George!” Keller said. “You know better than that! Any evidence you find would be inadmissible in court.”

  “But LK.…”

  “You just get your ass back to DC and bring that smiling red-headed doofus with you. I’ll work on getting a warrant for after the aircraft is unloaded at Andrews.”

  “LK, there’s been one other little complication.”

  He started to tell Keller about the prostitutes and the Secret Service agents on the President’s security detail but Toolie laid his hand on George’s arm, shook his head.

  “Not on the phone,” he whispered.”

  Dear God in heaven, Keller thought.

  “What is it now, George?”

  “It can wait,” he answered. “It’s…it’s complicated.”

  “It always is with you, George.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve got to run this whole damn thing past Morris, Truck, and Wheeling or there will be hell to pay,” Keller said, certain that whatever new wrinkle George was
going to mix into the pot couldn’t be any worse than the situation they were in now.

  “You and Cooper get back to the office quick as you can.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “You know Morris is going to shit a brick, don’t you?”

  She didn’t wait for Benjamin to answer. Instead, she hung up and dialed Morris’ cell phone number, not looking forward to the hell he was going to raise when he learned this latest news.

  Her worst fears about this case were coming true and unraveling right in front of her. Now it would be a matter of how quickly they could act on this new information and if they could attain a warrant for a search of the doctor’s car. And if that search turned up incriminating evidence against the doctor, would they be able to proceed without creating a shit storm of political controversy?

  Was the President or other members of his senior staff involved? Would they be able to contain their investigation to the doctor, or was it going to leak over into cracks and crevices she didn’t even know existed? However it turned out, she could envision Morris’ reaction and his bull-headed desire to storm the White House to arrest the Jack the Ripper serial killer regardless the office he occupied.

  God, I need a glass of wine, she thought when she heard Morris’ cell phone ring.

  ∞∞∞∞

  Air Force One cruised at 30,000 feet. Doctor John Williams slept fitfully in his seat away from all of the other passengers, White House staff, and the press corps. Images of shadows creeping down dark alleyways and the smell of urine and feces filled his senses. Voices he didn’t recognize and yet knew echoed in his mind—a public house, a doorway, a staircase, a horse and carriage, a knife, an archaic hospital. The sounds of laughter and curses emitting from open windows assaulted his hearing, tearing at the very fiber of his being.

  He knew he’d never been to any of these places and yet they were all so familiar to him. It was as if something inside of him was speaking to him from a different time. Images of prostitutes he knew he’d never seen before flashed before his eyes—butchered women he knew he hadn’t killed, yet knew he had.

  The darkened face of a sinister man hidden behind the upturned collar of a cape and buried beneath a top hat, screamed at him from behind veiled eyes, begging for release, to be set free from the torment that drove him to kill.

  ∞∞∞∞

  The C-17 Globemaster III settled down on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base just outside of Washington, DC and jolted to a halt. There was no stopping the dread Benjamin felt as he and Cooper exited the plane and stood with Toolie and Jake near the hanger designated as the motorcade marshaling zone. They watched the motorcade vehicles being unloaded from the transport, the black Lincoln Town Car among them.

  Was it possible the weapon used to kill a woman in Sacramento less than 24-hours ago was stashed away in that vehicle? Were they going to miss the opportunity to find it based on a possible technicality? Would the man that killed only God knew how many women all across America land in Air Force One in less than an hour then drive the vehicle away and dispose of the evidence before they had a chance to search it?

  Justice can’t be that blind, George thought. Surely our laws can’t be so slanted toward protecting one guilty individual to the exclusion of the rights of countless innocent others. Could it?

  The agent behind the wheel of the sedan parked it in the hanger, locked the doors, and returned to the aircraft to assist in unloading the rest of the presidential travel team. Benjamin stared at the Town Car with every fiber in his being pulling at him to run across the hanger and smash the glass out of a door. It would only take a minute and no one could stop him. He could be in and out of the car in no time, murder weapon in hand, and to hell with the consequences.

  “George?” Cooper said.

  He didn’t answer. Cooper followed Benjamin’s gaze across the hanger. He knew without asking what his friend was considering. He leaned in close to Benjamin so Toolie and Jake couldn’t hear.

  “You do it and break the chain of evidence, Morris will have both our asses,” he whispered. Still no answer, only George’s blank stare at the Town Car.

  “He’ll pack my ass back to Nashville on the next available wagon train and yours back to Oklahoma,” Cooper said. “And truth be told, I ain’t interested in chasing Elvis sightings no more. So can we just get back to headquarters so we take our ass-chewing like grown men?”

  Benjamin turned and faced Cooper. He’d barely understood what Cooper had said but he’d heard enough to know any unilateral action wasn’t the correct way to tackle this problem.

  Beside, Cooper was right. If he went off half-cocked now, all of their efforts up to this point would be in vain, and the chances are a killer could walk free due to improper evidentiary process.

  “We both know that son of a bitch is on Air Force One,” Benjamin said.

  Cooper nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  “And if he moves that car, we’ll lose any chance we have of searching it.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So I say we…”

  “He ain’t gonna move that damn car,” a voice said.

  They turned to Jake and Toolie standing beside them, the expression on Jake’s face hard and resolute.

  “Jake?” Cooper said.

  Jake nodded.

  “Doc rides back to the White House in Marine One with the President. His other car is parked there, remember?”

  “Uh-huh,” Cooper answered. “But what if he tries to get inside and remove the evidence? Our hands are tied. We can’t do anything to stop him.”

  “Maybe you boys can’t do nothin' about keepin' him out’ta that car, but we sure as hell can.”

  “Jake?” Benjamin said. “What are you talking about?”

  Now it was Toolie’s turn to say something. “He’s right. That sum'bitch ain’t gettin' in that car.”

  “But how?”

  “I ain’t the motorcade supervisor for nothin',” Toolie said. “Besides, I hate that sum'bitch doctor just for personal reasons. He ain’t gonna get in that car or drive it nowhere. You can trust me on that one.”

  “But how?” Benjamin repeated. “How are you going to stop him?”

  “You just leave that to me and Jake.”

  Toolie pointed at a white Chevrolet pickup truck parked in a spot near the hanger and tossed George a set of keys.

  “Take my truck. You two go on to your office and leave Doctor John Williams and his fancy wheels to us.”

  “You’ll be ok here? You don’t need our help? How will you get back to the White House?”

  “Hell, son, we’ve got more vehicles around here than you can shake a stick at.”

  Jake wrote something on a business card and handed it to Cooper. “Here’s my cell phone number. Call me.”

  Cooper slid the card into his shirt pocket then took Benjamin by his right elbow and guided him toward the pickup truck. It wasn’t going to be easy walking away from this place, especially knowing a serial killer was only a half-hour away. But he also knew it wouldn’t do any good to stay and perhaps tip their hand to the doctor. They had to get back to the headquarters building and brief Keller and Morris and quite possibly Bureau Chief Truck and Director Wheeling.

  Benjamin had no idea what Toolie and Jake had in mind but whatever it was, he was certain Doctor John Williams was going to hate it.

  Chapter Fifty

  Benjamin and Cooper arrived at the headquarters building twenty minutes before Morris returned from the medical examiner’s office. They’d had enough time to brief Keller on their discovery about the pair of identical cars and that Jake and Toolie were going to prevent the doctor from removing anything from the one on the C-17. They’d also briefed her on the scandal involving hookers and the President’s Secret Service security detail. She wasn’t sure how they could proceed with the information but she knew they’d have to broach the subject somehow.

  Morris returned to the office after they’d finished briefing Kel
ler. From the look on his face, the special agent was not happy to see them. Keller had called and told him the two young agent’s cover had been blown and they were on their way back to the office. The pressure he was feeling was nothing to the ass chewing he planned to give the rookies.

  “Couldn’t keep your heads undercover for a whole damn week, huh?” he said when he saw Benjamin and Cooper sitting with Keller at her desk. He’d known from the beginning that the assignment would be dangerous and that the rookies probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off. But not even a week? Not one damn week! How the hell did they expect to survive in the agency if they couldn’t hold their cover for one damn week?

  “I reckon it’s a good thing we didn’t send you two on an important mission, somthin' that required a certain degree of stealth, like greetin' shoppers at Walmart.”

  Keller rose from her chair to protect the young men when Morris threw a file he was carrying onto his desk and turned toward them, a hungry look in his eye like a wolf that had just spotted a lamb separated from the flock. She suspected the file was the autopsy results of Alice McKenzie. He’d been waiting for it all afternoon at the medical examiner’s office and she knew he was frustrated from the miles of red tape he had to unravel to get it.

  “Now Dunc, they got what we sent them for,” Keller said. “There was no need to stay any longer. I told them to come to the office, so you can be mad at me, not them.”

  Morris ignored Keller’s stab at playing mother hen over her brood. He was going to have his say and no damn woman was going to stop him, not even Keller.

  “One damn week and you two knot-heads not only blow your cover, you involve two people who ain’t got no business bein' involved in what’s likely to turn out to be the most important murder case in recent history.”

  “Yes sir, but…” Benjamin began to say but Morris cut him off.

  “Truck is gonna chew my ass like peppermint bubblegum when he finds out about this,” Morris continued. “And Wheeling? Hell, I don’t even wanna talk about Wheeling! He’ll probably bust a gut just before he sends my ass back to Texas.”