The Program (Jack Carpenter series)

by James Swain

  “Now,” Renaldo demanded. “Use the big key.”

  Wayne scratched the paint around the lock trying to get the key jammed into the lock. His body shook like Jello, his eyelids twittering like a camera shutter.

  Finally he got the key in.

  The trunk flew open, Vick kicking it with her legs. Wayne took a hit in the chest, and let out a groan. Renaldo had wisely kept his distance, both hands on the gun.

  Now he moved quickly, and leaned into the trunk. Vick had managed to bring her tied wrists around from her back to her front, and was using her teeth to gnaw at the knots. In her struggle, she had torn her blouse, and bloodied herself.

  Renaldo aimed the Taurus in her face. Vick froze, her eyes brimming with hatred and fear. Wayne leaned in to watch.

  “Hit her,” Renaldo said.

  Wayne cocked his fist, hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Renaldo asked.

  “I just had sex with her,” the teenager said.

  “So?”

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right.”

  “Do you think this dirty little bitch cares about you? She’s a cheap whore. That’s why she screwed you, and made you think she enjoyed it.”

  Wayne had turned into a statue, his eyes unblinking, his body coiled like a spring. Renaldo watched him out of the corner of his eye. If Wayne didn’t silence the FBI agent, Renaldo would have no choice but to shoot him. He could not have a son who felt compassion for others.

  “Do it,” Renaldo whispered.

  The punch came out of nowhere, and snapped Vick’s head straight back. There was no mistaking its power, or intent. Vick’s eyes closed, and her body went limp.

  Renaldo slipped the Taurus beneath his armpit. He hog-tied Vick’s arms and legs together, slamming the trunk when he was done. Putting his arm around Wayne’s shoulder, he walked the teenager to the passenger door.

  “Still hungry?” Renaldo asked.

  “Starving,” Wayne said.

  Chapter 51

  The Florida heat was a shock to Linderman’s nervous system. Sweat poured down his neck as he hurried across the yard with Jenkins.

  “You’re going to show him cartoons?” the warden asked, puffing hard.

  “That’s right.” Linderman clutched a stack of stiff white composition paper beneath his arm. “I drew them during the flight from Pittsburgh. It’s the best way for Crutch to understand the situation he’s in.”

  “That sounds mighty unorthodox. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I do, warden. Trust me.”

  While in college, Linderman had interned at his uncle’s advertising agency in New York. His uncle, an artist, would take ad copy written by the agency’s copywriters, and draw cartoons that would tell the story. These cartoons were called a story board, and often determined if an advertising campaign got off the ground.

  Linderman had utilized story boards as an FBI profiler. When dealing with a difficult case, he would sketch cartoons depicting how a killer might have murdered and disposed of his victims. The technique had proven helpful in breaking several cases.

  They came to a sun-bleached building with a guard posted at the entrance. Jenkins had already explained to Linderman how Crutch had bitten another inmate and killed him. In all his years, Jenkins had never seen anything like it, and hoped he never did again.

  “Why did he become a vampire?” Jenkins asked.

  Linderman knew a great deal about Crutch’s personal history, yet his penchant for drinking human blood remained a mystery.

  “I have no idea,” the FBI agent said.

  They went in. The interior was cooler than outside, but only by a few miserable degrees. Walking down a short corridor, they passed a line of cells that made up solitary. Each cell had steel door with a number painted on it. Through the doors they could hear inmates talking to themselves and crying.

  At door #6 they stopped. The guard threw back a sliding panel on the door and peered inside. He shook his head sadly.

  “I thought I knew this guy,” the guard said.

  “Let me see,” Linderman said.

  He switched places with the guard. Through the window he saw a windowless room with a naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling. A cot was attached to the wall, a thin mattress the room’s only comfort. A true hell hole.

  The room had been transformed by a madman’s hand. Every square inch of wall space was covered in grotesque charcoal drawings of human depravity and suffering, the pictures traveling straight up to the ceiling. It was as if the artist had taken Dante’s Inferno and a Nazi concentration camp, and put them in a blender.

  Crutch sat on a chair in the room’s center, naked save for a pair of red underwear.

  Behind his chair was the largest drawing of all, a life-size rendering of Surtr holding a bloody sword over his head as he waged war on the world and killed all that stood in his way, the landscape around him littered with headless corpses and engulfed in flames.

  “Who gave him the charcoal?” Linderman asked.

  “We don’t know how he got it,” the guard replied.

  “Please open the door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I can’t let you talk to him by yourself this time,” Jenkins said. “He’s too dangerous.”

  Linderman did not have a problem with that. He didn’t want to be alone with Crutch, and have a repeat of his earlier experience. With others present, Linderman knew he had a better chance of walking away from the encounter unscathed.

  The guard unlocked the door and went in first.

  “Put your muzzle on,” the guard said.

  Crutch picked up the dog muzzle lying on the floor, and secured it around his face. Once finished, he dropped his hands into his lap.

  “It’s on,” Crutch said.

  The guard checked the muzzle, then made Crutch stand up to be searched.

  “He’s clean,” the guard said.

  “Make him sit on his cot,” Linderman said.

  The guard led Crutch to his cot. Crutch sat down and began to twiddle his thumbs. Linderman and Jenkins entered, filling the small space.

  “Woof, woof,” Crutch said.

  Jenkins and the guard leaned against the wall. Linderman dragged the chair in front of the cot, and stuck his foot on it. He took the cartoons he’d drawn, and propped them up onto his leg. The first cartoon showed a crude rendering of a three-story Victorian house.

  “Oh, boy, a dog and pony show,” Crutch said.

  “Yes, and it’s just for you,” Linderman said.

  “How wonderful.”

  “This is your family home in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. I went and visited there. The house is exactly as you left it.”

  Crutch squinted. His eyes, normally still, darted from side-to-side.

  Linderman let the cardboard drop to the floor. Next up was a cartoon of the dining room table with Crutch’s mother at the head, his three sisters occupying the other chairs.

  “This is the dining room with your mom and sisters having a meal,” Linderman said. “As you can see, there isn’t a place setting for you. Your mother made you eat your meals in the basement, where she’d banished you. You must have done something truly awful to have gotten her so angry with you. Was it to one of your sisters?”

  Crutch cursed under his breath, his eyes fixated on the cartoon.

  “You probably enjoyed living in the basement,” Linderman went on. “It was a perfect teenager hangout. But then, the exclusion started to bother you. You didn’t like how your mother and sisters seemed to enjoy your absence.”

  Crutch lifted his eyes to look at Linderman. They were filled with pain.

  Linderman dropped the cardboard to the floor.

  “This next drawing shows you bludgeoning your mother and sisters to death with a baseball bat,” the FBI agent said. “The main course was done, and your family was about to eat dessert. You came up from the basement and heard them talking. Something inside of you snapped, and you dec
ided to kill them.”

  Crutch let out a pitiful noise, the last of his resolve slipping away. The drawing landed atop the others.

  “This next picture is more a guess than an article of fact,” Linderman said. “It shows you and your mother on the front lawn, with you biting your mother on the neck. I’m guessing your mother ran from the house, and you chased her. You bit her on the neck so hard, your teeth went through the skin and broke her collarbone.”

  “You must have found her body,” Crutch mumbled.

  “Yes, I did. Was this the first time you ever drank human blood?”

  Crutch stared long and hard at the picture of him biting his mother.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “What inspired you to do that?”

  “I was angry with her,” he said.

  “But what compelled you to bite her?”

  “A voice in my head told me to.”

  “Had you ever heard this voice before?”

  “No, it was the first time.”

  The cardboard hit the floor.

  “This is a drawing of your mother and sisters bodies propped on the picnic table in the barn,” Linderman continued. “You put the bodies there in an attempt to reenact their last meal inside the house. Why did you do that, Crutch?”

  Crutch stared thoughtfully at the drawing. “You didn’t miss a thing.”

  “I try to be thorough. Why did you put them on the picnic table?”

  “I wanted them to listen to me. They never listened to me.”

  “Even when you were killing them?”

  Crutch shook his head. The cardboard hit the floor.

  “Here is my last drawing. It depicts you burying the bodies in the horse stalls inside the barn. The barn contained four stalls, which suited your needs perfectly. Each body went into a different stall. You wrapped your youngest sister in plastic, yet chose not to wrap your other sisters’ bodies, or your mother’s. Was there a reason for that?”

  “I liked my youngest sister.”

  “Her body was the least decomposed, and still had pieces of flesh under the fingernails from where she must have scratched you. The FBI is in the process of identifying the DNA, which no doubt will be matched to yours.”

  Linderman let the final drawing float to the floor. He lowered his leg from the chair, and brushed off the dirt it had left. Sitting down, he stared intently at the little man who’d caused so much bloodshed and horror.

  “I can prove that you murdered your family,” the FBI agent said. “I’ve already spoken to the Oakmont DA, and she wants you to stand trial for these crimes. She’ll seek the death penalty. Pennsylvania is one of thirteen states that still executes people.”

  Crutch’s body trembled and his breathing grew shallow. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, and hugged himself. Like so many merchants of death, he was a coward, and afraid of dying himself.

  “Are you offering me a deal?” Crutch asked.

  “Yes. I need to find Mr. Clean right now.”

  “What do I get in return?”

  “I’ll tell the DA about the notebooks I found in your bedroom, and how they prove you were insane at the time of the killings.”

  “Sparing me the death penalty.”

  “That’s right.”

  Crutch leaned forward. “What about our original deal? Don’t you want to know what happened to Danni? Or are you willing to sacrifice her to find Mr. Clean?”

  Linderman leaned forward as well. So great was his urge to strangle the life out of Crutch that he kept his hands firmly on his knees. “You don’t know what happened to Danni, outside of what you already told me. I realized it earlier. You were lying.”

  “No, I wasn’t!” Crutch thundered.

  “Yes, you were. You claimed that Simon Skell told you the name of the rich foreigner he sold my daughter to. Skell never would have done that. Skell didn’t confide in anyone, not even the members of his gang. He was too cagey for that.”

  “But he confided in me,” Crutch said.

  “And risk having you squeal so you could win an early release from prison? I don’t think so. You don’t know the name of the man who has my daughter, and you never did.”

  Crutch eyelids fluttered and he rocked back on his cot. He had run out of bullets.

  “You are very intuitive,” he said.

  “I want Mr. Clean,” Linderman said.

  “Promise me I’ll be spared the death penalty. I trust you, you know.”

  “I’ll do everything to insure you aren’t put to death,” Linderman replied.

  “What about Leon, the inmate I killed. Will I be charged for his murder?”

  Linderman glanced across the cell at Jenkins.

  “No,” the warden said. “It was an act of self defense.”

  Crutch nodded, satisfied. “Very well. Mr. Clean is a Cuban ambulance driver named Renaldo Devine. He derives pleasure from dumping his victims bodies in public places, then being available when the 911 call comes in. His name is on the log of every hospital where a victim was brought in.”

  “Is that how you found him?” Linderman asked.

  “No. The hospitals would not divulge the information. All I knew was that he was an ambulance driver. Broward County has six companies which do this kind of work. I found the names of the drivers on the company’s web sites, and left messages at work for them. I used the name of Mr. Clean’s latest victim, and asked the driver to call me back. I left about a hundred of these messages. Finally, Devine called me back.”

  “Keep going.”

  Crutch’s eyes narrowed through his muzzle. “Who said there was more?”

  “I did.”

  “But what if there isn’t?”

  “The deal is off.”

  “Fucking bastard!”

  “Watch your mouth!” the guard warned.

  “Very well. Mr. Clean lives by himself in a house on a dead end street in Cooper City. He keeps guns in every room of his house, and has taken many precautions to protect himself. Be careful, or he will surprise you. That’s all I can think of at the moment. Perhaps I can call you if I remember something else of value.”

  “You aren’t going to be making any phone calls from this prison,” Jenkins declared.

  Linderman rose from the chair. It had been a long, difficult journey, but he had finally learned the truth. He scooped up the story boards from the floor.

  “I’d like to keep those, if I may,” Crutch said.

  “What for?” Linderman asked.

  “You know what they say. All we have are memories.”

  Chapter 52

  Vick woke up in the darkness, her mouth tasting of dried blood. She ran her tongue over her teeth, and found them all there. So much for small favors.

  It wasn’t the first time a man had smacked her in the face. Her father had once knocked out one of her front teeth during a heated argument. He’d later apologized, and offered to buy her a car. But it was too late for apologies. The damage had been done, and she’d left home as soon as she’d been able to support herself.

  Thinking about her father brought warm tears to her eyes. He’d been such a bastard that she’d promised herself to never shed another tear over him again. Yet here she was, letting the waterworks flow.

  The tears kept coming. Was it really her father she was crying for? Or were the tears for Wayne Ladd? Not the Wayne Ladd who’d raped her and then delivered a right cross to her jaw. No, she was crying for the beautiful teenage boy whose photograph had conjured up heartthrob dreams and fantasies of highschool boyfriends she’d never had. That punch had shattered those dreams while extinguishing a flame deep inside of her.

  She heard voices. Mr. Clean and Wayne were having a conversation. She shifted her body and put her ear against the wall of the trunk. She could hear them talking about food, and whether they wanted burgers or Chick Fil-A. How lovely.

  They settled on burgers, and went to a drive-through. She listened to Mr. Clean order two double bacon chee
seburgers and two large orders of fries through the squawk box. The cashier repeated the order, his voice crackling with static.

  Mr. Clean parked somewhere nearby, and he and Wayne ate lunch. They did not talk while they ate. It reminded Vick of meal time at her home growing up, her fathers and brothers wolfing down their food without making a sound.