The Program (Jack Carpenter series)

by James Swain

  “So what are we looking for?” DuCharme asked.

  “The truth.”

  The door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman reeking of booze. Hopelessly frail, she had a weather-beaten face and bloodshot eyes, and could barely stand up. A tabby cat slipped between her legs, escaping outside.

  “Who are you?” she slurred, clearly drunk.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ladd,” DuCharme said, turning on the charm. “This is Special Agent Vick with the FBI. We’d like to speak with you. May we come in?”

  “You were here yesterday,” she said to DuCharme.

  “That’s correct,” the detective replied.

  “Is this about my baby?”

  “Yes, it is,” DuCharme said.

  Her voice rose. “You found him, didn’t you? Wayne’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “No, ma’am…”

  Jewel Ladd’s face cracked, and she began to sob. DuCharme looked at Vick as if to say Now what? Vick felt like she’d been set up, and that DuCharme had known how this would play out well before she’d knocked on the door.

  “Deal with her,” Vick said.

  Being small had its advantages. Vick glided around Jewel Ladd and went inside. She entered the living room and took stock of the interior. Jewel had done a good job of blocking out the sunlight, and a TV flickered in the corner like a campfire. Vick found a hallway leading to the back of the house, and headed down it.

  Vick wasn’t sure what she was looking for. She knew little about Wayne Ladd except for his crimes. That had jaded her into thinking he was simply another adolescent monster. Her talk with Amber had changed that perception. Amber had said Wayne was gentle and kind, qualities that violent boys rarely exhibited. It had made Vick wonder if really she knew anything about him.

  She came to a pair of doors at the hallway’s end. Taped to one was a photograph of a blond-haired, dimple-faced young man wearing an Army uniform. Vick guessed this was the bedroom of the older brother, Adam, who’d died in Iraq.

  The second doorway had a splashy poster from the movie Wayne’s World. She didn’t have to guess whose room this was.

  She stuck her head into the second bedroom. Tiny, with a desk and a bed shoved into opposite corners. The walls were black, the ceiling white, with plenty of streaks where the colors came together. A Megan Fox bikini-poster hung over the bed. No one should have a body that gorgeous.

  She cased the room. A pile of text books sat on the desk. She glanced over the titles. Advanced Algebra, Biology, English lit, third year Spanish, and a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions. The kid wasn’t stupid.

  She found Wayne’s notebooks beneath the pile. She thumbed through them, hoping to find some personal notes or drawings that might give some insight to Wayne’s psyche. Instead, she found page after page of school notes.

  The closet was next. Wayne’s wardrobe consisted of baggy jeans, chinos, and Nike sneakers. An electric guitar sat in the corner wired to a speaker. Behind it, a shelving unit containing song books and a shoe box filled with letters.

  She went through the shoe box. The letters had been sent from Adam Ladd when he was stationed in Baghdad. In chilling detail, Adam had described life in a war zone, and the numbing effect it was having on him, and the other soldiers in his platoon. She put the letters away thinking the two brothers had been close.

  The last place she looked was under the bed. That was where boys usually stored things. She found a thin cardboard box filled with photos of Wayne taken in elementary school. He’d been a handsome kid even back then.

  Vick dusted herself off. Something wasn’t right here. It took a minute, but she finally put her finger on it. The room was too normal. She’d expected to find a collection of hunting knives, or an illegal handgun, or a diary filled with rants against his teachers and classmates with some graphic drawings thrown in. These were the things that indicated deep-rooted anger in teenage boys. So where were they?

  She had a thought. Perhaps Jewel had gone through her son’s room after his arrest, and thrown out the bad things. That was the natural thing for a mother to do. She decided to ask her, and returned to the front of the house.

  Jewel lay on her back on the couch, passed out. DuCharme stood beside her, shaking his head.

  “She kept crying until she fell asleep,” he said. “She’s really looped.”

  “I need to ask her some questions,” Vick said.

  “Good luck.”

  “You’re not going to help me wake her up?”

  “What do you want me to do — sing to her?”

  Vick knelt down beside the couch and gently shook Jewel’s shoulder. “Mrs. Ladd? Please wake up. I need to speak with you.”

  Jewel muttered under her breath but did not come to. Vick hoped a strong cup of coffee would bring her around, and stood up.

  “I’m going to brew some coffee. Stay here and watch her.”

  “Get me a cup,” DuCharme said. “Sugar, no cream.”

  “In your dreams.”

  The kitchen was like the rest of the house — dark and depressing. Vick found the coffee maker on the counter. Beside it sat a fifth of vodka in a brown paper bag. She pulled the bottle out of the bag to see that three quarters was already gone. She fished out the sales receipt. Jewel had bought the bottle from a liquor store that morning.

  It made Vick mad. Jewel was getting shit-faced while her son was being held captive by a killer. She poured the rest down the drain, and returned to the living room.

  “No coffee?” DuCharme asked.

  “Lock the door on your way out,” Vick said.

  Popping the trunk of her Audi, Vick fished through the box filled with files of active cases. She found Wayne Ladd’s file, and soon was studying it in her car. DuCharme climbed in and fastened his shoulder harness.

  “Ready when you are,” he said.

  She ignored him, and continued to read. Wayne Ladd had murdered his mother’s boyfriend by sticking a bayonet through his heart. The boyfriend was a bartender with a history of abusing women. When the police had arrived at the boyfriend’s house, Wayne had been standing over him clutching the weapon, his clothes soaked with blood. He had confessed at the scene, and shown no remorse.

  Vick found the description of the bayonet buried in the report. The murder weapon was a Swiss Sig 1957 Pattern Bayonet, made of tempered steel, with a nine and a half inch blade. The detective who’d written the report had checked the bayonet’s history, and discovered that it was a collector’s item, and cost three hundred dollars on the open market.

  Vick closed the report, deep in thought.

  “Find something?” DuCharme asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to arm wrestle you?”

  “Wayne’s bedroom didn’t have a single military item in it, yet the bayonet was a collector’s item. The murder weapon belonged to someone else.”

  “You don’t think Wayne is a killer, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’re pissing in the wind. The kid had a motive, and he confessed. Case closed.”

  Vick slapped the file shut and tossed it into the backseat. DuCharme was right; she was grasping at straws. Only the smug look on the detective’s face was too much to bear. That, and the knowledge that Linderman had moved the investigation forward, and was close to catching their killer, while she had done nothing.

  She fired up her engine and backed down the drive.

  Chapter 21

  The Broward Sheriff’s Office Evidence Unit was situated a block off Sunrise Boulevard inside a soulless industrial park. The size of a small airplane hanger, the warehouse housed over a quarter million pieces of crime-related evidence, and was responsible for maintaining the integrity of evidence before trials.

  The reception desk was empty. Vick and DuCharme scribbled their names on a sign-in sheet and waited for assistance. DuCharme whistled like he was doing bird calls.

  “You are so easily amused,” she sa
id.

  “Two o’clock. Everybody must be on break,” the detective said.

  “Do they all take a break at the same time?”

  “Sure. They’re three-ninety-fives.”

  “Is that their job classification?”

  “Uh-huh. They make nothing, and give nothing in return.”

  Vick tapped her toe impatiently. It was not unusual at police evidence warehouses for things to get misplaced or simply disappear, never to be seen again. She hoped this wasn’t the case with the murder weapon in Wayne Ladd’s case.

  She wanted to see that bayonet. During her training at Quantico, she’d learned a great deal about weaponry. The Swiss made some of the finest weapons in the world, and proudly marked their products with serial numbers. If Wayne’s bayonet contained a serial number, she’d have a good chance of tracking down it’s previous owner.

  An evidence tech appeared behind the desk. Blond and skinny, he didn’t look old enough to be shaving. He grinned at Vick while acting like DuCharme wasn’t there.

  “Afternoon. Can I help you?” the tech said cheerfully.

  Vick and DuCharme both displayed her ID.

  “We need to get a piece of evidence from storage,” Vick explained.

  “Wow. You’re with the FBI. I always wanted to be an FBI agent,” the tech said. “Do you like your job?”

  “The hours are long and the pay stinks,” Vick said. “Otherwise, it’s a great life.”

  The tech laughed under his breath. He slid a request form across the desk.

  “Fill this out, and I’ll go find your evidence myself,” the tech said.

  “Why, thank you.”

  DuCharme filled out the form. Protocol dictated that only a Broward detective could request evidence from the Broward Evidence Unit. Vick made sure that DuCharme wrote the case number in bold letters so the tech didn’t bring them the wrong item. When DuCharme was finished, Vick handed the tech the sheet.

  “Sit tight. I’ll be right back,” the tech said.

  “What a loser,” DuCharme said when the tech was gone.

  “I thought he was kind of cute,” Vick said.

  “Is that the kind of guy you like? Young and stupid?”

  “Yes. The dumber the better.”

  The tech returned with the murder weapon. It was inside a plastic bag and looked like a kid’s toy. Vick removed the bayonet from the bag, and balanced it on her palm.

  It was not a toy. Over a foot long, and heavy. Knives could be used for different things, but a bayonet’s purpose was to take human life. It made her think that whoever had given the bayonet to Wayne had expected him to kill with it.

  Knowing the bayonet had gone straight through a man’s heart gave Vick pause. She spied a serial number printed on the neck in tiny letters. She’d hit pay dirt.

  “I need to examine this,” she said to DuCharme.

  “I’ll sign it out,” the detective replied.

  DuCharme played with the bayonet while Vick drove to police headquarters. He’d already forgotten about the tech, and hummed softly to himself. She wondered if it was his upbringing or lack of education that made him so unbearable to be around. She thought he might cut himself with the blade, but didn’t say anything.

  Back in her temporary office, Vick got on the Internet, and did a Google search for Swiss Sig distributors in the United States. There was only one, located in San Francisco. She went to their web site and scrolled through the pages. There was no phone number, just an email address, and she fired off a letter to the president, asking for his help. In the letter she included the serial number off Wayne’s bayonet, along with her own contact information.

  “You done?” DuCharme asked. He sat on the other side of the desk, rattling his car keys. They hadn’t eaten lunch, and he acted hungry.

  “Not yet,” Vick replied.

  “Soon?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Want to get a bite to eat?”

  Vick’s cell phone rang, saving her. It was Linderman.

  “Hey, Ken,” she answered.

  “The reception issue has been cleared up. The sting is on,” Linderman said. “Crutch will be given a slave phone tonight. If he contacts Mr. Clean, the slave phone will tell us the phone number Mr. Clean is using, and his physical location. I want you to get a team of agents to together, and be ready to run him down.”

  Vick felt her heartbeat quicken. “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t want the Broward cops to know about this. That includes DuCharme.” He paused. “Is he still working with you?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was a monotone.

  “Get rid of him right now. That’s an order.”

  “Will do.”

  “I’m counting on you, Vick. This may be our last chance to catch Mr. Clean.”

  “I won’t let you down.”

  The call ended without Linderman saying goodbye. Vick folded her phone while looking across the desk. DuCharme had a loopy grin on his face. Rising from her chair, she shut the door, then leaned against the desk and faced him.

  “Ready to go?” the detective asked.

  “I’ve got some bad news,” she said. “We’re no longer working together.”

  He frowned. “Is that what that phone call was about? Someone called, and told you to get rid of me?”

  “It’s my decision. I should have told you earlier, at the library. I can’t have you undermining me or questioning my decisions. You’re hurting my investigation.”

  “What? You’re too good to be questioned? Is that it?”

  “I never said that.”

  “We’re supposed to be a team.”

  “This is my investigation, not yours.”

  “That’s not the way it was explained to me.”

  Vick folded her arms. She had said all she was going to say. DuCharme got the hint and abruptly stood up.

  “You know what your problem is, Rachel?” He paused, as if expecting a reply.

  Vick said nothing.

  “You’ve got a crush on Wayne Ladd. He’s young and pretty, and that’s what turns you on. You’ve convinced yourself that he isn’t a killer despite all the evidence, so you’re running around town, trying to prove otherwise. It’s a god damn waste of time.”

  Vick didn’t like his tone, or the way he was looking at her.

  “Please leave,” she said.

  “Are you throwing me out?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got some nerve, little lady.”

  Vick nearly slapped him across the face. Instead, she pushed herself off the desk, and walked around him. She jerked open the door.

  “Get out,” she said.

  DuCharme’s face turned bright red and the veins popped in his neck. His dreams of chatting Vick up over a late lunch had come crashing down on his head. Hustling past her, he walked quickly down the hallway toward the elevators.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said loud enough for her to hear.

  Chapter 22

  At a few minutes before midnight, Linderman drove an unmarked FBI van beneath the wooden arch that greeted visitors to Starke Prison. A thunder storm had settled in, and the van skidded on the rain-slicked highway. Drake emitted a nervous laugh.

  “Just be my luck to get in a wreck,” the prison guard said.

  Linderman glanced at the pair of headlights in his mirror. Wood was following in a second van and had also taken the skid. Wood righted his vehicle and fell in behind him. Up ahead, the lights from the prison blinked like buoys in a turbulent sea.

  “Tell me what I’m supposed to say if Thunder asks about my face,” Drake said.

  “We just talked about this,” Linderman replied.

  “I know, but my memory ain’t for shit. Tell me again.”

  “You’re not high, are you?”

  “Course not.”

  Linderman repeated the story. Drake was a strange bird. His imagination was limited to NASCAR and the sitcoms he watched on TV. John Wayne once said that life was tough,
but it was tougher if you were stupid. Drake lived up to that remark.

  “Got it,” Drake said “Now explain the deal to me again.”

  “We signed papers with your lawyer,” Linderman said. “The deal is done.”