A Long Way Down

by Randall Silvis

  DeMarco said, “The only connection between the murders in 1988 and the Cleveland Torso Murders is the dismemberment and decapitation of the victims. But the Youngstown police do think the 1988 killer could be the same one at work now. Whether he’s a fan of the Torso Killer or not doesn’t seem particularly relevant to me.”

  Hoyle nodded, sipped his buttery coffee. “A copycat twice removed,” he said.

  “Twice, three times, four times removed, it really doesn’t matter,” DeMarco said. “The police have a suspect. The same suspect they’ve had since 1988. They just can’t find enough evidence to make a case against him.”

  Hoyle nodded, unfazed by DeMarco’s impatient tone. “Can we assume competence regarding the earlier as well as the most recent investigation?”

  DeMarco answered, “We shouldn’t assume anything.”

  “We know the basics of sociopathy,” Jayme told Hoyle. “We’re hoping you could take us a little deeper than that.”

  “I would suggest,” Hoyle answered, “that you will be looking not for a sociopath but a psychopath. Although the two types do share qualities in common—a proclivity for violent behavior, lack of remorse, lack of a moral compass—the sociopath tends to be un- or underemployed, easily agitated, prone to fits of rage, whereas the psychopath maintains an emotional detachment. He’s intelligent, cunning, manipulative, quite possibly a very successful and charismatic individual. The sociopath is a loner; he tends to act spontaneously, often in a chaotic or disorganized manner. Which means he can get sloppy, is more likely to make mistakes. The psychopath is a meticulous planner. And, considering the penchant for dismemberment, one with a knowledge of human anatomy.”

  “So,” Jayme said, “around one percent of fifty or so million men. In this country alone.”

  “A rather large field to interview,” Hoyle conceded. “But considerably smaller if we tighten the scope to psychopaths from Youngstown and its corporate limits. Not that all psychopaths grow up to be serial killers. Some make very successful car salesmen.”

  “Or lawyers,” Jayme added with a smile.

  “Politicians,” Hoyle said. “Doctors. Professors. Intelligence agents.”

  “Hollywood producers.”

  “Wall Street tycoons.”

  “Probably even medical examiners,” Jayme teased.

  “Oh, quite probable indeed,” Hoyle said.

  DeMarco was growing restless. “Back to the dismemberment,” he said. “We’re not talking about deboning here. Head and limbs. Anybody who has carved a turkey can cut up a body. Especially with a Sawzall.”

  Hoyle asked, “A reciprocating saw is known to be the instrument used?”

  “For the three in Youngstown, yes,” DeMarco said. “Also, we can’t limit our parameters to Youngstown. He could come from outside the area. Maybe he’s just using Youngstown for his hunting grounds.”

  “Possible,” Jayme said. “But he seems to know the neighborhoods well enough to move bodies around in them without being seen.”

  DeMarco said, “I know the neighborhoods well enough to move a few bodies around.”

  “Case solved,” Hoyle said with a grin.

  Only Jayme smiled. Hoyle, seeing DeMarco’s scowl deepen, continued more solemnly. “Your individual enjoys all aspects of his crime. Choosing his victim. Lying in wait for just the right moment to strike. Dismembering the body. Are you aware that some of the Cleveland victims were still alive when decapitated?”

  DeMarco nodded. “I read that, yes. But Cleveland is irrelevant.”

  “Were any of the recent victims still alive during decapitation?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Jayme told him. “But we’ll find out.”

  “Do,” said Hoyle. “The psychopath enjoys carnage in all its forms. If he happens upon the scene of an accident, he will stand by and watch the victims suffer rather than come to their aid. Most likely, he will photograph their pain.”

  “Too bad we can’t stage an accident and see who turns up,” Jayme said.

  Hoyle appeared to take her joke seriously. “I have often thought it unfortunate that all newborns aren’t subjected to an MRI before they get sent home. Psychopathy has its beginnings in the womb. A failure of certain parts of the brain to fully develop.”

  Jayme asked, “And that can be identified with a scan?”

  “Indeed,” Hoyle said, and dabbed the napkin to his lips. “Psychopaths show markedly different levels of brain activity compared to non-psychopaths. Less activity in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, for example, and heightened activity in the insula and striatum.”

  “Meaning what?” DeMarco asked.

  “Decreased empathy for the plight of others, decreased fear of consequences.”

  “But sociopathy,” Jayme said, “is more likely to be the result of childhood trauma, neglect, repeated abuse of one type or another. Am I right, Doctor?”

  “You are,” he said.

  “So I wonder if any current subjects could be compelled to undergo an MRI?”

  “How would that tie anybody to the murders?” DeMarco asked. “And even if somebody were charged, it would provide a great defense. My deformed brain made me do it.”

  “Understood,” Hoyle said. “The neurology is not your concern.”

  “I prefer to stick with what we know,” DeMarco told him. “The 1988 murders were committed the same night, apparently when both men were together. The recent three took place one at a time over the course of a month.”

  “With no similar events in the intervening years?”

  DeMarco said, “I’m assuming we’ll learn that in the briefing. If their suspect has lived in Youngstown continuously from 1988 to the present. If there have been any similar homicides in other parts of the country during any years he might have been away from Youngstown. And if those incidents can be tied to his known whereabouts during that time.”

  Hoyle nodded. “And if not,” he said, “you’re wondering about the hiatus.”

  “Is it realistic?” DeMarco asked. “Two killing sprees thirty-two years apart, with nothing in between?”

  Hoyle said, “We have to allow for the possibility of two wholly different motives.”

  “By the same killer?” Jayme asked.

  “Taking a life,” Hoyle told her, “is an extreme action. It requires a trigger. One might go an entire lifetime, or only thirty-two years, before that trigger is pulled.”

  “The first two victims have a possible link to organized crime,” Jayme said. “But only the first two. In 1988.”

  “Which means they might have been assassinations,” Hoyle said. “Murder for hire. Thirty-two years pass, and the killer, much older now, reflects fondly on what may have been the high point of his life. His crowning achievement, so to speak.”

  “And he decides to do it again,” Jayme said. “Just for the kicks.”

  “To prove to himself he can still do it,” DeMarco said.

  “Or maybe this time the trigger was a midlife crisis,” Jayme suggested. “Loss of a job. Loss of a spouse or lover. Or, possibly, the new ones were murder for hire too. By someone with a grudge against all three victims.”

  “Maybe he just wants to go out with a bang,” DeMarco said. “Make his sick mark on society while he still has the strength for it.”

  They all were silent for a moment, then Jayme said, shaking her head, “Too many possibilities.”

  Hoyle took a long sip of water. Dabbed at his lips again. And said, theatrically, “Nothing is impossible, my dear.”

  “That’s an interesting attitude for a scientist,” DeMarco said.

  Hoyle leaned back in his booth and crossed his arms over his belly. “Science is an approach, sir, well-suited for the examination of cadavers. But limited, at best, for the examination of a subject as infinitely paradoxical as life.”


  Seven

  The RV headed northeast from Aberdeen, Kentucky, at six in the morning, driving into the sun. Jayme took the first and third three-hour shifts at the wheel. Now, late in the day, with the sun well behind them but still too bright in the side mirror, DeMarco, on the fourth shift, drove on cruise control while Jayme slept in the bedroom. His neck and back were tight, his right shoulder aching with occasional searing stabs of muscle pain. Yet he felt good. Strangely content. Maybe it was the act of coming home. Maybe the prospect of a new investigative challenge. Maybe it was the syrupy, quicksand voice of Rachael Yamagata on Sirius radio singing “Meet Me by the Water,” or the thought of Jayme’s smile as she slept, or the lulling hum of rubber over concrete. Maybe it was everything in total, the known and unknowable, the moment itself. He felt a little dopey with contentment, even though he knew it would not last.

  A while later, Jayme came wandering out of the bedroom, moving unsteadily toward her captain’s seat. She kissed the top of his head before sitting down. “I can take over early if you want me to, babe.”

  “I’m good,” he told her.

  “Rolling down the highway.”

  “Rolling like a river.”

  Neither spoke for a while. But he was aware when Jayme leaned forward in the seat to read a highway sign. Aware when she looked up at the directional indicator in the corner of the rearview mirror.

  “Babe?” she said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you miss a turn?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re way too far east of where we ought to be.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “We should be heading north on 79 by now. We should be close to Morgantown.”

  “You mean we’re not?” His satisfied smile gave him away.

  “All right,” she said. “What’s going on here?”

  “I booked us a room in Berkeley Springs.”

  “I thought you wanted to get home tonight.”

  “Tomorrow’s good. Or maybe the day after. We’ll get there eventually. And then we’ll visit the sheriff and tell him we’re on board.”

  “This isn’t like you.”

  “Who is it like?”

  She turned sideways in her chair and leaned toward him. “What’s your plan, Strangelove?”

  “Tonight we’ll get a nice dinner and sleep in a big comfortable bed. I scheduled you for a spa treatment tomorrow morning at nine. Manicure, pedicure, facial scrub, mud bath, hot rocks massage…”

  “Hot rocks?” she said.

  “Maybe it’s cold rocks, I don’t remember. I know it involves rocks. You’re getting the whole megillah.”

  “I never had a megillah before, but it sounds wonderful. And what will you be doing all day?”

  “A long, hot sauna is all I ordered. But that mud bath is starting to sound kind of appealing too. Maybe even the acupuncture treatment.”

  She reached out to rub his shoulder. “I would love to be covered in mud with you. But why are you doing all this?”

  “It’s going to get crazy soon.”

  “In other words, you’re warning me that you will get crazy soon.”

  “I’ve been told that I sometimes develop tunnel vision when working a case.”

  “I wonder who told you that.”

  “Someone who cares,” he said.

  The afternoon light was low and soft, the sky clear, the road ahead flanked by fields of corn. The RV’s shadow ran ahead of the vehicle, showing the way. Van Morrison’s “Caravan” was playing on the radio now, and DeMarco felt as if his own body was on cruise control too. He powered down his window halfway, inhaled the warm, fresh air.

  He said, “I think this might be what happiness feels like.”

  Eight

  The tranquility Jayme and DeMarco enjoyed during their day of spa treatments stayed with them for most of forty hours, precisely until 9:00 a.m. Monday morning, when Mahoning County sheriff Ben Brinker paused before opening the conference room door on the fourth floor of the justice center.

  “Just so you know,” he said, speaking first to Jayme, then to DeMarco, who had already begun to frown, “Detective Olcott is perfectly okay with having you guys on the team. He’s a very mellow guy. Sort of bookish; some might even say nerdy. Very smart. Plays everything close to the vest.”

  “But?” DeMarco said.

  “Fascetti is, uh, a little put out right now. But he’ll come around. Just give him a chance to get to know you. Maybe take them both out for a couple of beers some night soon.”

  “Judging by the way you’re looking at me,” Jayme said, “I’m guessing that the operative word regarding Fascetti is misogynist?”

  Brinker sucked air in through his teeth. “So maybe ‘Old World sensibility’ would be the best way to describe him.”

  “I won’t take any crap from him,” Jayme said.

  “Wouldn’t want you to,” the sheriff answered.

  DeMarco stepped closer to the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Inside the room, cold air was blowing through the ceiling vents, bright morning light streaming through the large tinted windows. The solar film coating the glass gave the world outside a greenish hue.

  Detective Olcott, fortyish and fit, clean-shaven and blue-eyed, with thinning blond hair combed straight back from a prominent widow’s peak, rose from his seat near the center of the long table. Detective Fascetti, older, broader, and at least five inches shorter than his slim, five-foot-eleven partner, remained seated at the far end, arms crossed over his belly. He had a full head of curly black hair, and a pencil moustache that was inexpertly trimmed, higher on the left, which made part of his upper lip look slightly swollen, and endowed him with the appearance of a perpetual sneer. A pair of wire-rim bifocals rested near the tip of a fleshy Roman nose. Both men were dressed in black slacks and white shirts, though Fascetti’s looked slept in, Olcott’s fresh from the closet. Olcott wore a perfectly knotted blue-striped tie, Fascetti’s mud-brown, with both tie and shirt loose at the neck.

  Lined up atop the table were four file storage boxes of sturdy white cardboard. Written in black marker on the side of each box was a case name: Hufford, Jerome; Lewis, Samantha; Brenner, Justin; Brogan/Talarico 1988. All four boxes looked new.

  Brinker made the introductions. Detective Olcott shook first Jayme’s hand, then DeMarco’s. Fascetti greeted both with a small nod.

  Olcott said, “It’s good to meet you both. I followed the Huston case, Sergeant. What a horrible thing that was.”

  DeMarco glanced at the man’s left hand, saw a gold band. “You have kids, Detective?”

  “Two boys. Though mine are older than Huston’s were.”

  “Still,” DeMarco said, “you know.”

  “Just the thought of it sends a chill down my back.”

  DeMarco nodded, thought, I like this guy. Then he returned his gaze to Fascetti.

  They locked eyes for a few seconds, then Fascetti regarded Jayme. His gaze traveled down her body, then up again. He said, “How tall are you?”

  “Taller than you,” she said.

  His wince was barely detectable, a quick tightening around the eyes. “You weren’t involved in that case, were you?”

  “If she had been,” DeMarco answered, “we’d have solved it in half the time. She was instrumental in the Kentucky case. Not only took down the perp but saved his life afterward.”

  “A real Wonder Woman,” Fascetti said.

  And Jayme said, “So you’re into comic books, Detective?”

  Fascetti sat motionless but for one finger tapping the conference table. “For the record, I’m not in favor of employing outside help.”

  “That’s not your call,” Sheriff Brinker said. “So let’s all just settle down and play nice. Everybody have a seat.”

 
He pulled out the chair at the near end of the table, facing Fascetti, and sat. DeMarco waited for Jayme to take a seat next to the sheriff, but instead she moved three chairs down to sit beside Fascetti, who gave her a long, scowling look that only broadened her smile.

  Oh boy, DeMarco thought, and took the seat across from Olcott.

  “Here’s how this game is going to be played,” the sheriff said. “DeMarco and Matson will be working the case as independent private investigators temporarily attached to the office as consultants. Any new leads or other information they come across will be shared ASAP. Everybody reports to me. I expect full cooperation on all sides. I’ll make sure each of you has everybody else’s cell number, but just keep the egos in check. We have three new victims and three new families waiting for closure. I think if we keep that first and foremost in our minds, we can all behave professionally.”

  Jayme put a hand on the nearest box. “Can we get copies of these files to take home with us?”

  “Those are your copies,” the sheriff said. “We have the originals. And by the way,” he said with a glance at Olcott, then one at Fascetti, “let’s keep all this on the down low for now. As of this moment, the only other people who know about our new recruits are Chief Davis of the municipal police, and Colonel Mesco of the highway patrol. I’d like to keep it that way for as long as we can.”

  DeMarco said, “The first time we flash our IDs or introduce ourselves…”

  “Understood,” Brinker replied. “And given your high profile, Sergeant, there’s bound to be some kind of fallout when the word gets around. Could be negative, could be positive. Probably a little of both. But it’s best to postpone the fallout as long as possible. So nobody talks to the press until this thing is over.”