The Program

by James Swain

  The interstate was jammed with rush-hour traffic. He inched along, thinking dark thoughts. It had been a brutal day. He’d fantasized killing Crutch in the chapel, imagined seeing Crutch electrocuted at the restaurant, and had visualized Crutch trying to kill his own family at the FBI office in Jax. Evil thoughts had invaded his mind, and would not go away. Kessler had warned him about this, but Linderman hadn’t understood the danger.

  Traffic started to move. Soon the city’s gray buildings were behind him, and he was traveling through the hilly suburbs. He had programmed the GPS system so the voice would have a female British accent. It was a nice change, and he let the voice guide him to the Crutchfield home on Morningside Drive in Oakmont.

  It was dark when his headlights found the mailbox with the address. It was a remote area with no streetlights, the land heavily forested. He got out of his car to make sure he had the right place. Printed on the side of the mailbox in faint letters was the word CRUTCHFIELD.

  He inched his rental down the gravel driveway past a stand of trees. Almost immediately he had to stop. A fallen oak tree lay in his path. He tried to drive around it, only to find there was no room on either side.

  He climbed out and tried to move the tree. He managed to get it an inch off the ground, nothing more.

  “Damn it.”

  He hadn’t come all this way to be stopped by a lousy tree. He opened the trunk and got the flashlight from his garment bag, and checked it to make sure the batteries still worked. They did, and he headed down the driveway by foot.

  The walk lifted his spirits. The air was cooler than back home, and there was a refreshing chill in the air. He hadn’t appreciated the cold until he’d moved to Florida to hunt for Danni. Now, the cold was something he dreamed of going back to.

  A tall wooden fence greeted him at the driveway’s end. A painted sign had been nailed to the fence. The sign read No Trespassing — This Means You!

  He tried to open the gate, and found that it was locked. On either side of the gate was a fence topped with metal spikes. It was growing dark and he probably should have gone back to his car and waited until tomorrow but instead he grabbed the top of the gate with his hand and pulled himself up so he was looking over it.

  That was when he saw the house.

  It was an old Victorian three-story with a gabled roof and a wraparound front porch with a metal swing. The swing moved eerily back and forth despite there not being a hint of breeze. The front door had criss-crossing boards nailed over it, and pieces of plywood covered the windows. Shingles were missing from the roof and the paint was peeling in large chunks off the front and sides. Not a soul had lived here for years.

  He wanted to see more.

  It was a bad idea. He didn’t have a search warrant, and would be breaking the law should he step onto the property without one. He believed in the law, and what it stood for. He had never broken the law for the sake of speeding up an investigation.

  Until now.

  He pulled his head up a few more inches, then threw his leg over the top of the gate. It was a struggle. When the leg did go over, the rest of the body went as well.

  He landed on in a heap on the other side. His forty-eight-year-old body had its share of aches and pains, and he spent a moment making sure he hadn’t broken anything. Rising, he dusted himself off, then checked the flashlight. It still worked.

  He let the flashlight’s beam guide him toward the house. The state of disrepair grew more evident the closer he got. Stopping on the front path, he shone his light up and down the structure and spotted several birdnests in the rain gutters.

  The swing continued its ghostly movement. . With his free hand he grabbed one of the metal chains from which it hung. Only then did it stop.

  He cautiously sat down on the swing. To his relief, it did not come crashing down. Shutting off his light, he stared at the encroaching darkness. His friend Jack Carpenter talked about light and darkness as if they were opposing forces, one put on this earth to inspire hope and inspiration, the other an instrument of fear, and death.

  A noise snapped his head. It was a woman’s voice, and was high-pitched. He rose from the swing and tried to determine where it had come from.

  Then he heard it again. A cry for help, coming from inside the house. There was a boarded window behind the swing. He placed his ear to it, listening.

  “Jason, no!” the woman shrieked.

  “Shut up, mother!” came the voice of Crutch.

  “Oh, my God, Jason, please don’t kill them,” the woman said. “Please.”

  “But they’re already dead, mother!”

  “You killed my babies! You fucking little bastard.”

  “You’re next, mother!”

  Linderman pulled his ear away from the plywood. He knew what he was hearing wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real — Crutch was in prison, and not inside the house. Yet it sounded as real as his footsteps on the porch.

  He was losing his mind.

  He retreated off the porch. His heart was pounding out of control and he was experiencing tunnel vision. He needed to get back to the car and calm down.

  He heard a thundering noise and shone his flashlight at the house. The criss-crossing boards were no longer across the front door, and the paint on the house looked fresh and new. The front door banged open, and Crutch emerged with the body of a woman slung over his shoulder.

  “Stop!” Linderman said without thinking.

  Crutch came down the stairs and hurried across the lawn, the look in his eyes pure savagery. He walked right past Linderman and made his way toward the barn on the other side of the property. Linderman got a look at the woman he was carrying. She was dead, her face bashed in beyond recognition.

  “I said stop!” Linderman shouted.

  Crutch picked up speed, and disappeared inside the barn. Linderman ran after him, knowing that he was chasing something that was not real.

  He halted at the barn’s entranceway. The interior was dark and had a rancid smell. He shone his light inside and saw a center aisle flanked by horse stalls. He entered cautiously and heard a rustling sound from above. He found the rafters with his flashlight and imprisoned several nests of birds in its beam. The mother birds chattered down at him, angry for the intrusion.

  He let out a sneeze. A thick veil of dust covered everything inside the barn. It gave him an idea, and he shone his flashlight at the ground. No footprints. It had all been a trick of his imagination, yet he could not shake how real it had seemed.

  He walked down the aisle and shone his flashlight into the different stalls. The boards on the walls were falling off, and the stalls looked old and uncared for. No one had been here in a long time.

  At the end of the aisle was a wash rack for horses. The floors inside the wash rack were made of concrete, and there were drains to let the water escape. A sheeted object sat in the center of this area. The object was rectangular, and appeared to be some type of furniture. Placing the flashlight in his mouth, he grabbed the sheet and gently pulled it away, causing dust to rise lazily into the air.

  The object was a wooden table with four chairs. As if by magic, four women had appeared in the chairs, and were happily chatting away. Crutch stood at the head of the table with a baseball bat in his hand, and raised it over his head.

  Linderman dropped the sheet and ran.

  Chapter 40

  “Keep reading,” Vick said.

  “My eyes are tired.”

  “Come on — how many pages are left?”

  DuCharme flipped through her thesis on Son of Sam. “Two.”

  “So finish it.”

  “You folks want some more coffee?”

  The waitress hovered next to their table with a fresh pot of joe. It was nearing midnight, and the IHOP was empty save for their table, the employees standing by the swinging door to the kitchen, eyeing their watches. The waitress didn’t care; she knew a decent tip when she saw one.

  “Sure. Fill ’er up,” DuCharme said. />
  Vick declined. She was floating on coffee. DuCharme loaded his cup with cream and several packets of white sugar. He ate too much, smoked too much, and had an insatiable sweet tooth. A walking time bomb, she thought.

  The coffee brought him around. He picked up the thesis and resumed.

  “Here we go. Since his incarceration in Attica State Prison in New York, Son of Sam has proven to be one of the FBI’s best sources for understanding serial killers. Time and again, Son of Sam has allowed FBI profilers to interview him. He has spoken candidly about his upbringing, and the things which led him to kill. Rarely has he held back when discussing his crimes.

  “Perhaps Son of Sam’s most interesting revelation came during an interview with FBI profiler Robert Kessler. Kessler interviewed Son of Sam in Attica on three different occasions, and developed a bond with him.

  “During one of their sessions, Kessler discovered a scrapbook in Son of Sam’s cell, and asked if he could look through it. Son of Sam happily obliged.

  “The scrapbook was filled with grisly news reports of Son of Sam’s crimes. The New York Tabloids were consumed by the Son of Sam killings during the summer of 1978, which became known as the Summer of Sam, and there were hundreds of such articles.

  “Kessler flipped through the scrapbook while watching Son of Sam out of the corner of his eye. He’d seen a glean that hadn’t been there before, and frankly asked the serial killer if rereading the articles was a turn-on.

  “Kessler was surprised by the answer he received. Son of Sam admitted that on the nights when he couldn’t find a victim, he would drive back to the scenes of his earlier crimes and fantasize over the shooting. Looking at blood stains on the ground was an erotic experience, and he often sat in his car and masturbated. Wow — what a creep.”

  “Keep reading,” Vick said.

  “In that candid moment, Son of Sam gave law enforcement a valuable tool in understanding and capturing serial killers. Serial killers did indeed return to the scenes of their crimes. Not because of guilt, as writers such as Dostoevsky would have us believe, but because of the sexual nature of the murder. Returning to the scene was a pleasurable experience, and often fulfilled a killer’s cravings for bloodshed.”

  “That’s it,” Vick said.

  DuCharme put down the thesis. “It is?”

  Vick nodded, furious with herself for not seeing it sooner.

  She stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. DuCharme came out with the thesis tucked under his arm and a sheepish look on his face that said he didn’t understand.

  “Mr. Clean is just like Son of Sam,” she explained. “He’s returning to the scene of his crimes, and fantasizing over the corpses. That’s why he’s putting the bodies in places where they can be found. It lets him return to the scene and relive the experience.”

  “What is he — a cop?”

  She thought back to the botched sting at the RaceTrac. Mr. Clean had vanished from the parking lot without a trace, and as she’d stood in the field and tried to figure out where he’d gone, the solitary wail of a siren had whistled through the still night air.

  “No,” she said. “He drives an ambulance.”

  They sat in Vick’s car and did a search on her laptop of ambulance companies which serviced Broward County. Six popped up. Vick wrote down their names and addresses on a notepad. She knew there might be more — not every company had a website, or could be found on the Internet — but these six were a good place to start.

  She handed the notepad to DuCharme and backed out of her spot.

  “What’s the plan?” the detective asked.

  “We know that Mr. Clean is Cuban, and that he drives an ambulance for a living,” she said. “We’re going to pay these companies a visit, and see if we can track him down. If we do, we’ll call for backup, and arrest him. Look over that list, and tell me which of those companies is closest.”

  DuCharme flipped on the overhead light and went through the list.

  “American Medical Services is on Broward Boulevard a few miles from here,” he said. “I’m familiar with them — they’re the biggest EMR service in the area.”

  “Sounds like a good place to start.”

  American Medical Services was run out of a faceless one-story box in an industrial park. Vick parked in the president’s reserved spot, and they got out and walked up the path. The front door was locked and she hit the buzzer.

  Soon they were standing in the dispatch area. A pair of desks and a switchboard were the room’s only furniture. The air was stifling hot and smelled of failed deodorant. A chain-smoking man with brown teeth ended the call he was on to stare at their credentials. A sign on his desk said Please don’t touch me when I’m talking!

  “What’s your name?” Vick asked.

  “Frank Regli,” the man replied.

  “You the dispatcher?” DuCharme asked.

  “I’m one of them. How can I help you folks?”

  “We need to ask you some questions,” Vick said. “How many ambulance drivers does your company employ?”

  Regli scratched the day-old stubble on his chin. “A lot.”

  “Please be more specific,” Vick said.

  “We have fifty-four drivers the last time I counted. We’re open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and run three eight-hour shifts a day.”

  “How many of your drivers are Cuban males?” Vick asked.

  “Geeze, that’s a good one. At least twenty guys who drive are Cuban.”

  “How many work at night?” DuCharme chimed in.

  “They all do,” Regli said. “We alternate the times that they drive.”

  “I need for you to print up the names of all your drivers,” Vick said.

  “How about if I give you a copy of the payroll sheet. That has the drivers’ names and addressees and social security numbers.”

  “That will work,” Vick said.

  Outside in the car, Vick and DuCharme poured over the AMR payroll sheet. By culling out the non-Latino names, they were left with exactly twenty drivers.

  “This is a lot of names, and it’s only the first ambulance company we’ve called on,” DuCharme said. “What do you want to do?”

  Vick’s first thought was to call the FBI’s communication center in D.C., and have them run the twenty names through their criminal data bases to see if any matches popped up. If that didn’t work, the bureau could also cross-reference the names against other data bases, including gun registration information, protective and restraining orders, commercial licenses, etc.

  It was a good idea, but not thorough enough. The police and FBI had been hunting for Mr. Clean for a quarter century, and been unable to track him down. More than likely, he didn’t have a criminal record.

  But Mr. Clean still might have slipped up. Nearly all criminals did. Vick needed to run the names against the Broward Sheriff’s Department criminal data base, and the Miami/ Dade and Palm Beach police data bases as well. Local police departments did not report misdemeanor arrest information to the FBI, and her gut told her that Mr. Clean had done something that had briefly landed him in hot water.

  “We’ll need to get lists of drivers from all six companies, take them back to police headquarters, and run background checks on them,” Vick said. “We’ll check the names against local police data bases and see what pops up. We can also get photographs from the Department of Motor Vehicles, and compare them to our composite of Mr. Clean.”

  “That could take all night,” DuCharme said.

  “You’ve got something else on your social calendar?”

  They spent the next two hours driving around the county visiting the other five ambulance companies on the list. Each company closely resembled AMR, right down to the smelly offices and chain-smoking dispatchers. Soon the number of names of Cuban ambulance drivers was well over a hundred.

  At a few minutes past midnight, Vick pulled into the parking lot of the last company on the list, Emergency Medical Services. EMS worked o
ut of a storefront on a quiet street in Sunrise, and she could see a man sitting behind a desk inside a shabby office. It had been a long day, and her energy was ebbing away. She smothered a yawn.

  “Why don’t I go in and talk to this guy?” DuCharme suggested. “You look worn out.”

  He has a nice side, Vick thought. What a surprise.

  “That would be great,” she said.

  DuCharme got out of the car and headed up the path. He turned around, and walked around to the driver’s side of the car. Vick lowered her window.