The Recruiter

by Dan Ames

  Samuel leans over the headless corpse of Peter Forbes and scoops it up into his arms. He lifts it, water dripping, and sets it down on the area rug.

  He arranges Peter’s body into a fetal position and wraps the area rug around it.

  A corpse burrito.

  Samuel carries the rug and its contents to the back of the Explorer. He sets it inside with the edges of the rug on the bottom, holding the contents inside. He shrugs off his shirt and pants, and tosses them in the trunk, and then shuts the Explorer’s rear door.

  Samuel hurries back into his apartment. He checks the clock. He must do this quickly.

  He puts on black jeans, a black turtleneck, and a gray windbreaker. From his closet, he also retrieves a hunter-green baseball cap. He locks up the apartment.

  Behind the wheel of the Explorer, he familiarizes himself with the dashboard. He doesn’t want to make a stupid driving mistake on the freeway and attract the attention of the cops.

  He pulls out, hops on the freeway toward the airport. It’s late, and the freeways are empty. Ordinarily, he would be happy, but tonight, he’s worried that it makes him stick out. Oh well. Too late to worry about that now.

  He’s halfway to the airport when he sees what he’s looking for. A twenty-four-hour fast food joint. Samuel exits and takes the service drive toward the golden arches. A block from the restaurant, he stops and retrieves one of the garbage bags. At this point, it doesn’t matter to him which bag it is.

  He reaches into the pocket of his jacket and retrieves a pair of sunglasses and slides them onto his face. The bag shifts on his lap. The feel of the objects inside tell him it’s the bag with the hands—and he pulls around to the dumpster behind the McDonald’s. He can see the dumpster’s lids folded back. Without slowing down, from his high perch in the Explorer, he is able to toss the bag directly into the dumpster. As he turns, he scans the top of the building and the fence.

  No video cameras.

  He repeats the process several miles down the road with the bag containing the head.

  Samuel waits until he’s nearly at the airport before detouring into a forlorn community directly in the path of approaching jets. It’s partially rural, partially urban decay. On the outskirts of town, Samuel spies an irrigation ditch. He stops and dumps the body with a splash.

  He drives back into the small town, and finds what he’s looking for: a Salvation Army, complete with a dumpster out front. He rolls up the area rug and drops it in.

  Samuel goes onto the airport where he parks the Explorer in long-term parking, then takes a cab back to his apartment.

  Samuel pours bleach into the tub and scrubs it with an abrasive pad, then does the same to the floor and the kitchen sink.

  When that’s done, he carefully dries everything and goes back to the bathroom and showers, scrubbing his hands and arms again, vigorously rubbing shampoo into his scalp.

  It’s time for him to go to work.

  Chapter 76

  Samuel’s eyeballs are on fire. Red-rimmed and scratchy. A lack of sleep, a lack of food, and the fumes from the bleach he’d used to scrub the bathtub and bathroom floor have exhausted him.

  His overall state of mind isn’t in great shape either. He’s fatigued to the point of collapse. His neck and shoulders are so tense they feel like the consistency of granite.

  At his desk, the phone silent by his side, the computer’s blank screen awaiting his instructions, and a few sheets of paper on his desk, he has a moment’s peace. He’s scared to shut his eyes for fear he’ll simply fall asleep.

  But no one is bothering him. Giacalone is in her office with the door closed. Paul Rodgers working the phones. When Rodgers is not receiving calls, he’s making them, paying no attention to Samuel. And foot traffic is nonexistent.

  Samuel takes a pen and pretends to scribble a note on the top sheet of paper in front of him. But his mind is racing back to his apartment, going over things, trying to figure out if he’s forgotten anything.

  He knows that if crime scene technicians scoured his apartment, he’d be a dead man. There’s no way he can completely eliminate all traces of Peter Forbes. He’d have to burn down the whole fucking building, and even then, he’s not sure every trace of evidence would be destroyed.

  The key is to avoid being targeted by the police in the first place.

  Beth is his alibi. He was with her most of the night; he can fudge the hours a little bit. When he’d arrived to work this morning, he’d been the first one in. This was good: he could fudge that time to the cops as well. Beth is the key.

  The phone rings and he picks it up, ready to launch into his recruiting spiel. It will be good to get out of the office and meet a potential recruit. Maybe he can wrap it up quickly and find a park for a quick nap. He’s supposed to go to Julie’s tonight after work. He’s guessing he won’t get much sleep there either.

  He snatches up the phone and instantly freezes.

  The voice on the other end is not a recruit.

  It belongs to a policeman.

  A Detective Ray Mitchell.

  Chapter 77

  Samuel is lightheaded and disoriented. Killing somebody, chopping up their body, and discarding their remains into local dumpsters tends to leave one unsettled, and Samuel is no exception.

  The cop had wanted to meet him at the recruiting office but Samuel had said he was at a coffee shop just down the street. Samuel didn’t want Giacalone seeing him talking to a detective.

  Samuel pulls the Taurus into the coffee shop’s parking lot, shuts the car off, locks the doors, and walks inside.

  Samuel scans the people inside but sees no one who resembles a cop. He’s just finished thinking how important it is to avoid the attention of the cops, and then a homicide cop is on the phone, wanting to talk. How could he say no?

  Just play it cool, have some lunch, and get the hell out of here.

  “Samuel Ackerman?” a voice from behind says.

  Samuel jumps slightly, startled. He turns and sees an olive-skinned man with jet-black hair slicked back wearing a suit with a white shirt and horrible striped tie. The eyes are big and brown. Almost doe-like if it weren’t for the quick intelligence lurking in their depths.

  Samuel recovers and offers the cop his hand. They shake, and each gets a coffee and they go to a table.

  “Thanks for meeting with me,” Mitchell says.

  “No problem.”

  Mitchell looks directly at Samuel.

  “Let’s chat about Peter Forbes.”

  Chapter 78

  Julie Giacalone lets her hand trail on Samuel’s flat stomach, drawing light patterns on the washboard muscles, stroking the thick hair on his chest.

  “Samuel, do you know what a beat sheet is?” she says.

  “No, but I’m game for anything,” he says.

  She forces a smile. “No, I’m talking about the one- or two-page description of a sailor’s career to date. You know, the high points.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “A lot of administrators do it as a shortcut. If there’s ever a promotion or a transfer, it speeds the process. You have to wade through twenty pages of paperwork to find out about a new sailor in his command.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  “I always try to keep up-to-date beat sheets for all of my team. That way, I’m not under the gun if someone leaves. It’s already done for the most part.”

  “Uh-huh,” Samuel says.

  Whether it’s from the sex, the excitement of him being so near, or the subject she’s about to bring up, she doesn’t know. But her heart is threatening to pound its way right out of her chest.

  “I worked on yours today.”

  “Must’ve been pretty boring.”

  “Actually, I found something very interesting. I wondered if you were even aware of it.”

  “What’s that?”

  The fan over Julie’s bed is on the lowest setting, and the slight breeze it creates cools the now thin line of sweat along her
forehead. She even feels a thin sheen of sweat on her palms. Why is she so nervous?

  “Do you remember a Larry Nevens?”

  Samuel’s hand, playfully drawing circles around her breasts, doesn’t falter for a moment.

  “The BUD/S instructor?”

  She nods in the darkness. She’s about to speak, thinking he didn’t see her, but he responds.

  “I remember him. As much as I can. I was in a daze for most of it. Sleep deprivation. Shock from the cold. Total fatigue.” He pauses then asks, “Why?”

  “Someone murdered him.”

  “You’re kidding. Nevens? Impossible. He seemed like a tough bastard. He had to be.”

  “It happened on a deserted stretch of beach early in the morning.”

  There’s a brief silence in the room, disturbed only by the faint mechanism of the ceiling fan.

  “What’s that got to do with my beat sheet?”

  “Well, as weird as Nevens’ murder is, it gets even stranger. A guy in Pensacola…Wilkins was his name—”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that. He got crushed in some sort of accident. A chain broke?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Suddenly, Samuel turns on his side and faces Julie. “Are you trying to tell me that you think I had something to do with—”

  “No, no, no.”

  Samuel lays his head down next to Julie’s shoulder. She can feel the soft, warm breath on her shoulder.

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I just thought it was disturbing. It’s like death is following you around. Should I be worried?” she asks. “According to your beat sheet, I would be the next one to die. You’re like the archaeologists who discovered the tomb of King Tut and supposedly brought its curse upon themselves. They all died of mysterious circumstances a little later. Is there a curse on you?”

  “Not that I know of. Someone might have a voodoo doll of me. Poke needles into my ass now and then just to make me jump.”

  She smiles again and starts to reconsider her suspicions. He just seems so calm. Maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the deaths.

  Has she been a fool? Too many crime novels, an imagination spurred on by boredom and too much time alone?

  Samuel is stroking her hair and she closes her eyes, totally relaxed, for the first time in days. She feels sleepy. The possibility that she was wrong, that she imagined—

  Samuel’s hands free themselves from her hair. She feels something tickle her neck, the slight feel of leather.

  He’s getting kinky.

  Just as a low, savage snarl sounds from Samuel’s throat, she feels something tight around her neck. She opens her eyes and sees Samuel staring at her. She gags. Samuel’s teeth are bared.

  Julie jerks upright, but the thing around her neck is too tight. She tries to raise her arms, but Samuel is on top of her and his knees pin her arms down just above the elbow. She thrashes, lights exploding in her head. It all becomes too clear to her. The deaths. The BUD/S instructor, murdered. Wilkins, murdered. By Samuel.

  The look on his face. I was right, she thinks as blackness lowers itself over her mind. She was right. And he’s going to kill again. What was that girl’s name? The one he’s almost got recruited?

  Beth something.

  The darkness swallows her up, as one last thought confirms itself in her mind.

  Goddamnit.

  I was right.

  Chapter 79

  The coffee burns in Ray Mitchell’s belly. The early morning bellyache is as much a part of his routine as tying his shoes and taking a shit.

  He’s tried everything. Changing what he eats for breakfast—it used to be a bowl of oatmeal, then it was cereal, then it was toast, now he’s back to oatmeal. He’s eaten earlier. He’s eaten later. He’s added a big glass of skim milk.

  But all to no avail. His wife and daughters were still asleep this morning, so there was no one to police his coffee intake.

  Of course, the one thing he’s never tried—and never will try, God rest his soul—is to give up his coffee. He simply cannot function without it. And because of that, he imagines a big hole in the pit of his stomach; or maybe a bunch of them, like it was poked with the red-hot end of a cigar. And as the coffee goes through his stomach like a sieve, he can feel the heat and turmoil rising in giant, nauseous waves.

  He sighs and, like a prisoner being led back to his cell, gulps the rest of the coffee.

  The squad room is less talking, but more coffee guzzling as the cops and detectives prepare for another day.

  Mitchell has an especially full day ahead of him. Case in point: Alonzo Wolfen, boyfriend of Desiree Jobs, claims he has no idea how their two-year-old son wound up in a shoe store’s trash compactor. So far, the beat cops haven’t been able to find any witnesses to put Alonzo at the scene, but all signs, including battery charges on Desiree, point to Alonzo.

  Additionally, a fifteen-year-old gangbanger known on the streets as T-Roc was gunned down late last night. No witnesses. No leads. Another murder no one knows anything about, soon to be followed by another one of the same kind, a retaliation by the people who will look Mitchell in the eye and tell him they know absolutely nothing.

  In the meantime, both cases are on Mitchell’s desk. He stares at the blue folders, at each of their plastic tabs containing the name of the file.

  Another day, he thinks. He’s been a homicide cop for nearly ten years and now he’s on loan to Silver Lake due to budget cuts. It’s a bit refreshing.

  He leans forward and suddenly remembers that he had wanted to call Ackerman’s supervisor. Mitchell searches his desk for the phone number of the recruiting office. As he looks under thick files and coffee-stained magazines, he thinks of Ackerman. The guy had come across as honest, sincere, and helpful. But Mitchell could sense that, underneath it, there was something else.

  What, he wasn’t sure.

  But the guy had a weird light in his eyes. A glint of something. For some reason, Mitchell finds himself wanting to take one more little peek under Samuel Ackerman.

  He fishes out the number and punches it in.

  Mitchell looks into the bottom of his cup. Disgusting. The dark-brown rim at the bottom looks like filthy river water. He brings the cup to his mouth and drains it just as a voice says hello on the other end of the phone.

  “This is Detective Mitchell.” He searches for the proper military terminology. “Could I speak to the commanding officer?”

  There’s a pause. “She’s not in yet. Can I take a message?”

  “What time does she usually come in?” Mitchell asks. He glances at the clock. It’s just past eight thirty.

  “I don’t know,” the voice says. “She’s always in by now. This is the first time in five years I beat her into work.”

  Mitchell is about to say he’ll call back, then write the whole thing off as a waste of time, but the gears are turning.

  The day after he speaks to Ackerman, Ackerman’s supervisor is late for the first time in five years?

  “May I have your name, please?” Mitchell asks. He writes down the name “Paul Rodgers.” He then asks for the name of the superior officer. “Julie Giacalone.”

  On a sudden flash of curiosity, he says, “Is Samuel Ackerman there?”

  “Sure, let me transfer—”

  “No, that’s all right,” Mitchell says quickly. He gets the phone number for Giacalone, says goodbye to Paul Rodgers, then calls her.

  He gets voicemail.

  Mitchell snatches up the latest two case files, and heads for the door.

  Cops have to become psychologists; it’s an occupational necessity. As difficult as human nature is to pin down, there is constant exposure to the harsh realities of what people will do to each other when true emotions are unleashed.

  Cops by default see human beings as they really are. So when a cop meets someone, subconsciously they often wonder to themselves, what is this person capable of? And how easily can that person be motivated to
do such a thing?

  The hell with nurture over nature, Mitchell thinks. Like most cops, he doesn’t believe in the theory that environment creates monsters. It certainly doesn’t help, but he’s seen middle-class kids who would slit an old woman’s throat. And he’s seen kids in the ghetto with drug addicts as parents who have hearts of gold. You never know.

  The mid-morning traffic isn’t bad at all. Mitchell glances down at the address and commits it to memory. He recognizes the street name and a few minutes after exiting the freeway, he’s rolling up in front of the small Cape Cod that is home to Julie Giacalone.

  He parks the car in front of the small walk leading to the front steps. The wind has backed off, leaving just a slight chill and gray sky. Mitchell takes in the house. It looks well kept and neat. Evergreen shrubs line the front of the house with a small porch complete with porch swing. Definitely the kind of place a successful military career woman would choose to live.

  A quick glance around the neighboring homes confirms his perception. Most of the cars parked in the driveways are newer Hondas and Toyotas, with the occasional Volkswagen thrown in.

  Mitchell walks up the front walk, then mounts the porch, and stands at the front door. He presses the doorbell and waits but hears nothing inside.

  He takes a few steps to the right and glances in the living room window. Nothing but a couch and recliner surrounding a coffee table piled high with magazines.

  Mitchell checks his watch. It’s nearly eleven. He’d called the recruiting office ten minutes ago and spoke to Paul Rodgers again. No sign of Julie Giacalone. And she hadn’t answered her phone.

  He walks back down the front steps and turns left, heading up the driveway. As he walks past the side of the house, he tries to peek in the dining room windows but only sees the table and chairs. He gets to the garage and looks inside. Her car is there, matching the information he’d gotten, right down to her license plate number.

  Now Mitchell’s worried. It could just be she’s in the shower—but for several hours? Maybe she overslept. He goes to the back door and tries it, but it’s locked. He looks through the window and sees a narrow hallway leading from the kitchen into the living room.