by James Swain
“My daughter was abducted six years ago by Simon Skell. Crutch knows what happened to her. He offered to give me the information at a later date if I backed off.”
“I didn’t know that about your daughter. I’m sorry. What did you tell him?”
Linderman stopped and gave Jenkins a look that left no doubt in the warden’s mind what his response had been.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Jenkins said.
They walked to the visitor’s parking lot. The sun was blinding, and Linderman squinted to find his rental among the vast landscape of cars.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to nail the bastard,” Linderman said.
“How? You said he hadn’t broken any laws.”
“There are twenty-four murders that the FBI believes Crutch is responsible for. I should be able to link at least one of them to him. Once I do, I’ll come back here, and put the screws to him. That should make him talk.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Jenkins asked.
The offer was sincere. Linderman didn’t believe what Crutch had said about Jenkins not having a spine. If anything, Jenkins had impressed him as someone who followed the law, no matter where it took him.
“Yes, there is. You can make Crutch’s life living hell. If he starts feeling the pressure, he might start talking.”
“How would you suggest I do that?” Jenkins asked.
“Ostracize him. Let the other inmates know what kind of animal he is. That sort of thing.”
“I can do that,” Jenkins said.
They shook hands. Linderman had a feeling he’d be seeing Jenkins soon.
Linderman drove into the town of Starke. He turned on the radio, and listened to country music while replaying what had happened in the chaplain’s study.
He hadn’t blacked out or fainted. He’d had an episode in which his imagination had eclipsed the rational part of his brain. His fantasy of killing Crutch had seemed real because to his brain it was real.
Murderous fantasies were a topic that he was familiar with. They were what drove serial killers to seek out their victims, and snuff out their lives. They started when a serial killer was young, and grew as the killer’s anger with society grew. At some point during the process, the fantasy became more real than reality.
He thought of Ed Kemper, a highly intelligent giant who’d killed his grandparents when he was fourteen, then killed eight more women after being released from prison. He’d once interviewed Kemper in a room filled with guards, knowing Kemper’s stated desire to screw the head off an FBI agent, and leave it on a table.
“Tell me about your fantasies,” he’d said.
“I sorry to sound so cold about this,” Kemper had apologized, “but what I needed to have was a particular experience with a person, and to possess them in a way that I wanted to. I had to evict them from their human bodies.”
“Could the fantasy have worked without evicting them?” he’d asked.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Kemper had stated.
Linderman thought back to his own murderous fantasy. Strangling Crutch had been the starting point, not the end. He’d needed to evict Crutch from his body before his fantasy of smashing his head against the desk could begin. It disturbed him to think that his fantasy had matched someone like Kemper.
Linderman knew what he had to do. Check himself into a hospital and get help. He was a danger to himself and the people around him. His mind was poisoned.
Only going into a hospital would mean quitting the case, and he wasn’t going to do that. People were depending on him, and he could not let them down. He owed it to them, and to himself, to see the case through.
He made a promise to himself. He would seek medical treatment once the investigation was finished. By staying focused on his work, he could get through this. His dedication to his job had saved him from going crazy during the past six years, and it would save him now.
Soon he was sitting in the restaurant where he’d eaten breakfast. His table was near the electric chair behind the velvet cord. A little boy was getting his picture taken in the chair, his father snapping endless photos. It seemed ghoulish, and he reminded himself that the chair was a spare from the prison, and had never been used.
A big-haired waitress swooped down on his table. He let himself be talked into the lunch special. When she was gone, he booted up his laptop, and opened a folder containing Crutch’s index cards. He found the card devoted to Killer X, and studied it.
He had to give Crutch credit. He’d figured out who Killer X was by studying his crimes, besting the profilers at Quantico. He needed to fix that. If Crutch could figure out the puzzle, so could he.
He started by copying what Crutch had written on a separate sheet of paper. It was an unusual exercise, designed to make the writer feel the words as they came off the pen. He wrote slowly, pausing to stare after each line .
Name: Killer X
Age:40-50
Characteristics:Handsome, soft-spoken, a person women
are not initially afraid of.
Resides: South Florida
# of years killing:25+
Upbringing:Did not know father, barely knew mother.
Raised by sibling or grandparent. May have
done time in prison at a young age, which led
to a lifelong fear of being incarcerated.
Fetishes:Bodybuilding, nice clothes, grooming
products (aftershave, cologne, cleansers)
Type of victim:Female prostitutes
Victims’ characteristics:Street walker (no call services)
20-30 years old
No kids or family (not missed)
Raped
Throat slit
Last seen at night
Black or Hispanic, but will kill a
white girl in a pinch.
Body found near hwy or public road
Notes:Can’t get enough of his victims. Just like
SOS. Should be easy to find.
Linderman chewed on the end of his pen. The last three lines were already haunting him. What did Crutch mean, can’t get enough of his victims? And who was SOS?
His lunch came. He’d lost his appetite, and pushed the plate aside.
He studied the Crutch’s notes until his eyes turned blurry. The clue to Killer X’s identity was staring him right in the face, yet he couldn’t identify it. Crutch had claimed that he could look at the photograph of a dead person, and know what their killer had been thinking when he’d committed the crime. Perhaps he needed to look at the victims’ autopsy photos, and see if anything popped out.
Then he had a thought. This wasn’t his case, it was Rachel’s. She had made Mr. Clean right from the start, and was tuned into him. Vick needed to have a crack at this, and see what she could come up with. He kicked himself for not thinking of her sooner.
It was not a phone call he wanted to make inside the restaurant. He found his waitress on the other side of the room, and mimed signing a check. She mouthed that she’d be right over.
He leaned back in his chair to wait. The morning’s events had added to his exhaustion, and he rubbed his eyes and smothered a yawn.
His gaze fell on the electric chair. The velvet rope was gone, the chair occupied by a man wearing an orange prison uniform, his arms and legs tied down. It was Crutch. His head had been shaved, and strapped beneath his chin was a leather restraining device to stop him from screaming when the juice was thrown. Behind the chair stood a man with his hand on a switch, his face masked by shadows.
The switch was thrown, and Crutch started to convulse. Smoke came off the top of his head, and blood poured down his nose. The man in the suit lifted the switch, and Crutch fell limp in the chair. He had ridden the lightening into the hereafter.
The executioner stepped out of the shadows. Linderman’s heart skipped a beat. He was looking at himself. He was the executioner.
“Something wro
ng?” the waitress asked, slapping the check down.
He snapped back to reality. The electric chair was empty, the velvet rope back in place. Nothing had happened.
“No,” he managed to say.
“You’re looking mighty pale. The food didn’t upset you, did it?”
“Food was fine.”
“You hardly touched a thing. Sure you don’t want me to send it back? It’s no problem.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Linderman settled his bill and went outside. He sat for a while in his rental, and tried to get his wits about him. Ten minutes later, he called Vick.
Chapter 31
Fucking DuCharme.
He hadn’t been satisfied to appear on local TV, and smear Vick’s reputation. He’d gone the extra mile, and was doing interviews with the talking heads on CNN. Tonight at eight, he’d be chatting with Nancy Grace. He was milking this for all it was worth.
Vick sat in her bathrobe and stared at the TV in her apartment in downtown Miami. Her unit was on the twelfth floor of a towering building built during the real estate craze. Great views, everything brand spanking new, and only a handful of renters. There had been break-ins, with people robbed at gunpoint. She kept a gun in every room.
The commercial break was over, and DuCharme was back. He had to know the world of trouble that Vick was in, yet didn’t seem to care. She’d been placed on paid leave along with the other members of her team from last night’s botched sting. There would be an internal review, plus a hearing where she’d have to face a panel and explain why things had gone so terribly wrong. She’d be lucky to keep her job. Even if she did stay, her career would never be the same.
DuCharme was speaking. She hit the Volume button on the remote.
“The FBI did not handle this right,” the detective said.
“In your opinion, what did the FBI do that was wrong?” the CNN interviewer asked.
“The agent in charge, Rachel Vick, should not have handled the case,” DuCharme replied. “She was infatuated with the kidnaping victim.”
“Did this cloud her judgement?” the interviewer asked.
“Yes, absolutely.”
A photograph of Wayne Ladd appeared on the screen. Wayne was at the beach with his friends, and had his shirt off. He was built like a gymnast, without an ounce of fat, and rock hard abs. It was hard not to be infatuated with him, Vick thought.
DuCharme returned to the screen.
“Will you be taking over the case now that Special Agent Vick has been suspended?” the interviewer asked.
Vick grabbed her slipper off her foot and threw it at the screen. “I wasn’t suspended you fucking morons!”
“Yes,” DuCharme said. “The case is now solely mine.”
“Good luck,” the interviewer said.
Vick stormed into her kitchen. Opening the cabinet, she took out a pile of dinner plates, and began throwing them onto the floor. Her chest was heaving and her heart was racing a hundred miles an hour. She didn’t need a crystal ball to see what was going to happen next. DuCharme would royally screw up the investigation, and Wayne Ladd would end up dead, just like Mr. Clean’s previous victims.
The phone rang. She threw last plate onto the floor and answered it.
“Hello,” she said breathlessly.
“Rachel? This is Ken. You okay?”
“Just great. How about you?”
“It’s been a rough morning. I have a new lead on Mr. Clean for you.”
“I’m off the case. Sitting at home watching myself get crucified on TV.”
“Turn off the TV and get back to work,” Linderman said.
“But I’m off the case.”
“No, you’re not. We’re going to crack this, Rachel.”
“We are?”
“Yes. Take this information I’m about to give you, and figure out who Mr. Clean is. Crutch did, and he’s sitting in a prison.”
“But I’m on leave. I could get fired.”
“No one’s going to fire you. I’ll make sure of that. Crack this puzzle, and you’ll be a hero. There are second acts in the FBI.”
Vick crossed the kitchen hearing the broken plates crack beneath her slippers. She sat down at the breakfast nook and ran her hand through her hair. Had Linderman been standing in the kitchen, she would have thrown her arms around him, and kissed him.
“What’s the information?” she asked.
“In Crutch’s cell were index cards he used to profile fifteen active serial killers. One of them was Mr. Clean. At the bottom of the card he wrote. “Can’t get enough of his victims. Just like SOS’. That led Crutch to figuring out who Mr. Clean was, and contacting him.”
“Was SOS in caps?” Vick asked.
“Yes, matter of fact.”
“Son of Sam.”
She heard Linderman’s gasp.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive. David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam, wrote a number of letters to a New York Post columnist named Jimmy Breslin. He signed the later letters SOS. I wrote a paper about Berkowitz as part of my graduate thesis on serial killers.”
“Why would Crutch write “Just like SOS’ on the cards?”
“There could be a number of reasons. Berkowitz was an arsonist, and set over a thousand fires in Brooklyn and the Bronx. He carried on a lengthy correspondence with the media until his arrest. He also believed his dog was the devil, and was telling him to kill people. His dog’s name was Sam, so he called himself Son of Sam. Crutch must have seen something in Mr. Clean’s crimes that was just like Son of Sam.”
“That’s brilliant, Rachel.”
“Thank you. If we can examine Mr. Clean’s crimes, we should be able to find the link to Son of Sam.”
“I’ve already done that. Got a pencil?”
Vick grabbed a pad and pencil from the shelf next to the nook.
“Ready,” she said.
“Mr. Clean’s victims were female prostitutes between the ages of twenty and thirty. They were raped, then had their throats slit. Their bodies were dumped near public roads or highways. Most of them were Latino or black, but a few were white. None used call services. All of the victims were last seen at night.”
Vick wrote in large, block letters on the notepad. Finished, she placed her pencil down, and stared at the list. “Huh,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Linderman asked.
“I’m not seeing any connection to Son of Sam in this list.”
“Go through it with me.”
“All right. Berkowitz killed young couples sitting in cars, not prostitutes. He used a gun, never a knife. He left his victims in their cars, and never attempted to move their bodies. He often returned to the scene of his killings, and masturbated where the cars had been parked. None of those things resemble what you just told me about Mr. Clean.”
There was a pause as Linderman digested what she’d just said.
“There has to be a link,” he said.
Another pause, this time with Vick doing the thinking.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Berkowitz kept a diary which the police discovered after he was arrested. It was filled with information about what he was thinking at the time of his crimes. I have a transcript on my laptop that I referred to while writing my thesis. I’ll reread it, and try to make a connection to Mr. Clean.”
“I’m counting on you, Rachel. We need to crack this,” Linderman said.
“I’ll do my best. Are you coming back to South Florida?”
“Not yet. I’m going to take another stab at getting Crutch to tell me what he knows. I’m going to break this little bastard.”
Linderman’s ability to extract information from witnesses and suspects was extraordinary, and Vick would have liked to have seen him work over Crutch.
“Good luck,” she said.
“Thanks. I’m going to need some.”
She cleaned up the kitchen floor and took a hot shower. She emerged from the bathroom feeling
ready to take on the challenge Linderman had given her.
Every crime had a solution. It came down to knowing what you were looking for, and where to look for it. Vick sat at her dining room table with her laptop and began the tedious process of reading David Berkowitz’s diary.
