The Program

by James Swain

  “You have no right to be here,” Maldonado protested.

  Linderman saw another door at the hallway’s end. Danni was on the other side of that door. Maldonado was going to shoot her, just like the waitress in Caracas.

  “I order you to leave,” Maldonado said.

  “She’s my daughter,” Linderman said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The girl you’re holding prisoner is my daughter.”

  “Get out of my house!”

  “Admit what you did.”

  Maldonado grabbed the door knob. The bullet hit him in the stomach. He staggered backward, then slid to the floor and lay on his back.

  “You shot me,” he gasped.

  Linderman kicked his gun away, then stood over the man who’d robbed him of his daughter’s laughter for six years. Hanging around Maldonado’s neck was a small key. Linderman knew what the key was for, and ripped it from his neck.

  The dog had planted himself at Maldonado’s side. It seemed fitting that a dog would usher Maldonado into the next life, and Linderman left him to die.

  He entered a small room with white walls and iron bars on the windows. An island in the room’s center was covered with trays of cookies about to be put in the oven. Each cookie had a small square of Tom’s Toffee on top.

  The island divided the room into two distinct spaces. One half was a kitchen, with a stove, a sink, and a range, with a variety of pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. The other half was a living area, with a cot, a comfortable chair, and a pile of paperback books stacked on the floor.

  “Hello?” Linderman said.

  He could hear another person’s breathing. Walking around the island, he came upon a young woman sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, clutching a small paring knife in her hands.

  “Get away from me!” she screamed.

  His heart nearly split in two. It was not his daughter. Or at least not the daughter he remembered. Her hair was cropped short, and had been dyed a horrible black, her once lovely face robbed of its youth and so many unfulfilled dreams.

  “I said, get away from me!” she said.

  He looked into her eyes. His little girl was still there, hiding behind the wall of captivity and suffering. It was all he could do not to break out in tears.

  “Hi, Danni,” he said.

  “I’ll cut your fucking heart out,” she threatened.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I’ll kill you!”

  He laid his Glock on the island, then removed his baseball cap and placed it down as well. He took a step toward her, his arms spread out in greeting.

  “It’s me. Your father.”

  She blinked, and then she blinked again.

  “Daddy? Daddy!”

  His daughter jumped off the floor. Encircling her ankles were a pair of leg irons, which were chained to the wall. He used the key to free her, than gathered her in his arms.

  “You’re safe, honey,” he said.

  “Did you shoot them?” she cried.

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Oh, Daddy, I knew you’d come someday.”

  Hugging his daughter, he felt her heart pound against his rib cage. And with that sensation, the dark cloud that had enveloped him went away, and the world became normal again, the sunlight streaming through the windows so bright that it hurt his eyes, the anger and frustration and rage bottled up inside of him evaporating like a puff of smoke. Never again would the desire to kill another human being overwhelm him; never again would the black angel in his soul seek revenge. Those emotions were dead, and only his love for his daughter and everything she represented in his life remained.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Thinking it was Carpenter or Vick or one of the other FBI agents involved in the rescue, he took it out, and stared at its face.

  He was wrong. It wasn’t them at all.

  He handed the phone to his daughter.

  “Say hello to your mother,” he said.

  Epilogue

  Two guards came for Crutch early one morning.

  “Moving day,” one of the guards announced.

  “Where are we going?” Crutch asked.

  “You’re being transferred to a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Seems you left some unfinished business up there.”

  They helped him dress. Muzzle, handcuffs, a thick leather belt locked around his waist with a chain locking it to the handcuffs. A real fashion statement.

  He was marched across the yard. Life was defined by moments. Some came by accident, and forever changed the course of one’s existence. Others were the products of design, and were the results of careful planning, and patience.

  This was one of those moments, he thought.

  They came to the building where Crutch had lived for ten years. Going inside, he was led to his corner cell, and his handcuffs removed. A cardboard box sat on his bed.

  “Don’t take more than can fit in the box,” the same guard explained. “And don’t take off your muzzle.”

  “No, sir,” Crutch replied.

  Crutch began to pack. He took his time, weighing which items to take, and which to leave behind, never taking his eye off the guards a few feet away.

  Soon his moment came. Another guard entered the cellblock, and engaged his two handlers in conversation. Crutch picked up a rubber band from the bookcase, and slipped it around his wrist. He snapped it loudly. The guards paid the noise no attention.

  He knelt down beside his bed, his back to the three men. Lifting the bed’s hollow leg, he unscrewed the bottom, and withdrew the metal shiv and the memory stick hidden inside. He slipped the shiv up his sleeve, using the rubber band to hold it secure. The memory stick he tossed into the box.

  Rising to his feet, he went to the cell door. The guards were engaged in a serious conversation about college football, and had seen nothing.

  “Ready when you are,” he announced.

  His traveling restraints were reinstated. Soon he was walking across the yard with the guards, holding his box. He inquired about the weather in Pennsylvania.

  “It’s colder than a witch’s tit,” the guard said. “You’re going to freeze your ass off.”

  It was a delicious image, one that he would savor whenever he thought of this day. He had already decided that he was not going to Pennsylvania. Once outside these walls, he would be taking a journey to somewhere else. Where, he was not sure.

  He passed through a gate into a small yard. A school bus with blacked-out windows sat with its engine running.

  “Have a nice trip,” the guard said.

  Crutch climbed inside. Two armed guards and a driver were waiting for him. Looking around, he counted five other inmates taking the trip with him. His new best friends.

  One of the armed guards escorted Crutch to a middle seat, and had him sit down. The guard took his box, and placed it on a rack above his head.

  “Don’t move, and keep your mouth shut,” the armed guard said.

  “Are we going on a plane? I hate planes. They make me sick,” Crutch said.

  “I told you to shut up.”

  Another inmate howled. He was a skinhead, and covered in carnival-like tattoos.

  “What’s so funny?” the guard asked.

  “He’s wearing a muzzle,” the skinhead said.

  Soon they were on the road. The skinhead made barnyard noises under his breath, trying to draw Crutch’s ire. Crutch sat with his head bowed, saying nothing. He imagined the trees passing by their blackened windows and the smell of leaves and all the things he’d been deprived of inside prison. After a few miles, he locked eyes with the skinhead.

  “Look at what I have,” he whispered.

  Twisting his handcuffs, he stuck his fingers up his sleeve, and drew out the shiv an inch at a time. The skinhead’s face became a thundercloud.

  “You gonna make a run for it?” the skinhead whispered.

  “Yes. Care to join me?”

/>   “Yeah. I’m doing life.”

  “How about the others?”

  The skinhead made eye contact with the other inmates on the bus. Silent communication, honed by years behind bars, far more efficient than words.

  “We’re in,” the skinhead told him.

  “All of you?”

  “Yeah. What’s the plan?”

  Crutch directed his attention to the front of the bus. The two armed guards stood in the aisle, pretending to be watching them. In reality, they were both day-dreaming, their thoughts light years away. The driver was not much better, whistling under his breath as he handled the wheel, a cup of coffee splashing in a cup holder. Crutch imagined biting each one of them in the neck, their warm blood racing down his throat.

  Kill them all, said the voice inside his head.

  “Kill them all,” Crutch whispered.

  “Then what?” asked the skinhead.

  Author’s note:

  John Brennan Crutchley was a real-life human vampire who has been linked to over thirty murders in the eastern United States. He died in a Florida prison in 2002.

  Acknowledgment:

  The following work proved invaluable in the research and writing of this novel. Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert Kessler, Mind Hunter by John Douglas, Linkage analysis: modus operandi, ritual, and signature in serial sexual crime by Robert R. Hazelwood & Janet I. Warren, Serial Murder, Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators published by the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Robert J. Morton, Editor, Mark J. Hilts, Co-Editor, plus a number of unpublished works on serial killers presented at the 2009 International Homicide Investigators Association. Above all, a special thanks to Andrew Vita, Team Adam Consultant for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and former Associate Director/Enforcement for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, whose help made this book possible.