Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  “Not for this!” he growled. “This is a life for a life, McRyan, a life for a fucking life!”

  “What did they do, Drake? Tell me what they did, because from where I’m sitting I don’t see it. They maybe went to a party with your sister. For that they should die?”

  “They killed my sister.”

  “How? How did they kill your sister, Drake?”

  “They were in the van. They hit Rena with that van and sent her flying into that ditch. Rebecca, Melissa, Janelle and Hannah all confirmed it. You know it’s true, McRyan. And do you think one of them went to check on her? That one of them would have called 911 when she was down in that ditch?”

  “You’re saying she could have been saved?” Mac asked, checking his watch.

  “She could have been saved, that’s right. She could have been saved.”

  “But they left her there?”

  “They left her there to die.”

  “Is that what Rebecca Randall told you? Is that what she told you when you tortured her?”

  “Torture, hah,” Johnson mocked.

  “Are you an expert at administering it?”

  “What I did to her was nothing. Like you’ve never used some enhanced interrogation techniques? Give me break.”

  “I play by the rules,” Mac lied. He’d used Riley and Rockford to issue a tune-up on occasion, particularly to save the chief a few years ago. “I don’t need to cheat.”

  • • • •

  “You’re so full of yourself, McRyan,” Drake raged, grabbing the steering wheel. “I don’t need to cheat, give me a fucking break.”

  “I don’t,” McRyan answered. “Drake, there is no evidence that these women were involved in your sister’s death. Did you ever stop to wonder if Rebecca Randall just told you what you wanted to hear so that you wouldn’t kill her? So that you’d stop beating and torturing her? Did that ever occur to you as you’ve gone on this killing spree?”

  “I got the truth.”

  “If you did, you cheated,” McRyan answered arrogantly.

  “So what?”

  • • • •

  “Cheating is for the weak,” Mac pushed, looking at his watch. He was digging under Johnson’s skin, under the Reaper’s skin. “You’re weak, Drake. Rena was weak.”

  “No, no she wasn’t. She was murdered!”

  “She got drunk, she got high, she did X, she wandered off and stumbled along impaired on the narrow shoulder of a county road on a dark, humid, foggy night. What do you expect?”

  “She made mistake. She didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Nor did the victims, Drake, they didn’t deserve to die either. Maybe they made a mistake too.”

  Mac heard Galloway mutter, “He’s north of DC somewhere. Get the Maryland State Police in the loop.”

  • • • •

  The anger returned. “Rena paid for her mistake with her life, McRyan. What price did those women pay? Those incompetent fools in Auburn didn’t even have Randall, Donahue, Wyland, Williams or any of those women in their file anywhere. They weren’t going to be found. I found them by accident.”

  “Accident, exactly,” McRyan replied. “We keep coming back to that term, Drake. It was an accident. The whole thing was an accident.”

  “Where was the accountability, McRyan? Where was the one person in that group with the courage to step up and be accountable? Not one did. NOT ONE!” he screamed.

  • • • •

  “So you snapped, didn’t you? You couldn’t live with the fact that they got away with it.”

  “No, so I got justice,” Johnson answered darkly. “I got justice on them all,” and Mac thought he’d made the case against Johnson on all six murders.

  “You know what this call tells me, Drake?”

  “What?”

  “You’re ill. You’re mentally ill.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are. You need help. There’s something wrong, your brain chemistry is off, it happens to people all the time. There’s no other explanation for this, Drake. It’s mental illness. It is no sin. It’s not your fault, it just happens. There was a trigger that set your illness off, that made you go crazy, Drake. It was finding that picture with your sister and those women. It made you go crazy. It made you do things you’d never otherwise do. You’re a danger to yourself and others, Drake.”

  “Only to those who were responsible for Rena’s death, McRyan,” Johnson answered, “and to those who would stand in my way for justice for her.”

  “Drake, you have to stop. You need to turn yourself in and let us help. Let me help. Let me help you with your pain, the pain that is eating at you. Drake, it’s why I spoke to you at the press conference this morning. I wanted to talk to you, to tell you there is help available, that there’s something wrong and we can help you. I want to help you but this has to stop and you have to turn yourself in. Otherwise the killing will never stop, Drake. Now that you’ve started killing, you’ll never be able to stop. These women will not be enough. You have a taste for it now. You’ll find others, you’ll find some reason justifiable to you and you’ll kill others. You may not think you will, but you will. We need to make this stop.”

  “Fifteen seconds,” Wire whispered.

  • • • •

  He looked straight ahead in silence. McRyan was right. He knew his brain chemistry was wrong, that he’d changed, but he shook his head, “No, you can’t help me, McRyan. You can’t.”

  “You’re murdering people, Drake.”

  “They’re the murderers, McRyan.”

  “No, Drake. You’re the only murderer here.”

  “No! No! No!”

  • • • •

  “Drake, all you’ll be remembered as is a crazy killer. Is that what you want? Nobody will ever remember Rena. Her negligence, her carelessness, will simply be part of the story.”

  “We got him,” Galloway exclaimed quietly. “He’s on I-495, Capitol Beltway, north side somewhere between Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire.” Then into the radio he said, “Flood the area. Everything we got and shut down the Interstate.” To Mac, he said, “Longer the better, we can zero in.”

  • • • •

  “No, McRyan, you’re wrong. Rena …”

  He slowed down, the traffic slowing down dramatically in front of him. He had to quick move a lane to the right to avoid hitting the car in front of him. He looked in his rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t going to get hit and in the distance he saw flashing lights. The Reaper looked straight ahead and saw more flashing lights in the distance on the eastbound side. The dashboard clock read 1:13 P.M. He’d been on the phone four minutes, maybe more.

  “You son of a bitch,” the Reaper railed and then threw the burner phone out the window.

  He needed to get off the interstate but he was stopped in traffic, two lanes from the right shoulder. The lights were approaching from both directions.

  “Screw it,” he muttered, hitting the gas, turning the wheel hard right, caving in the front driver’s side of the compact car to his right. As he crossed the first lane, he took out the rear quarter panel and pushed the Ford Explorer into the far right lane and then turned hard left around the Explorer and accelerated down the shoulder, the exit five hundred yards ahead.

  • • • •

  “Drake! Johnson!” Johnson was gone. “Shit, I lost him,” Mac said, putting his phone into his pocket and going to Wire, who had a laptop up with a map of the Capitol Beltway.

  “He’s in this area,” Dara pointed on a map she was holding, “between Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue.”

  “Still in DC,” Mac stated with a pensive look as he examined the map, thinking one thing but seeing another. “There are two exits, Colesville Road and University Avenue. We need a chopper!”

  “On the way, almost over the area,” Galloway reported. “Maryland State Police chopper.”

  “We need to get cars on those off-ramps, shut them down. We need to lo
ck everyone on the interstate!”

  • • • •

  The Reaper accelerated down the shoulder, pushing the needle on the panel van past sixty miles per hour. The exit lane was a hundred yards ahead. A car started sticking its nose out and he clipped the front right quarter panel, shoving the car back into the rest of the cars. The collision pushed the van into the concrete barrier on the right of the shoulder but he powered through the impact. He hit the accelerator again and kept going, speeding to the exit ramp to southbound University Avenue.

  He could see two squad cars were coming up northbound University Avenue from the south as he floored it down the exit ramp.

  There wasn’t much time. He had to ditch the van.

  • • • •

  “Exit ramps are shut down,” Galloway reported as they rushed down the hall to the communications center. “We’ve got troopers and the local cops closing in, Mac. The chopper is over the area. If he’s on the interstate, we’ll get him.”

  “Traffic cameras, get us hooked into the traffic cameras for that area,” Mac ordered as they burst into the communications center.

  “On it,” an agent said, hitting a number of key strokes and pulling the cameras up on his computer screen. “This is Colesville Road on the left and University Avenue on the right.”

  “Traffic is stopped cold on Colesville,” Wire noted.

  “On University as well, but … what is that?” There was smoke billowing from a car and a jumble of cars in the two left lanes. “Where is that camera pointing?” Mac asked.

  “That one looks north of the University Avenue exit,” the agent replied.

  “Roll the tape back on that camera, can you do that?”

  “Yes, give me a second,” the tech hit some key strokes and maneuvered his mouse. “I’m going back five minutes.”

  “Run it fast-forward.”

  The tech fast forwarded the tape. Mac, Wire and Galloway hovered over his shoulder. “There, what’s that?” Mac shouted, pointing at the screen.

  The tech stopped the video, ran it back and pushed play at normal speed. A white panel van was driving fast down the shoulder as a car stuck its nose out a hundred yards short of the exit ramp. There was a collision and the van powered through, not stopping and kept going.

  “That has to be him,” Mac exclaimed. “Is that the exit to southbound University Avenue?”

  “Uhh …” the tech started, “yes. Yes, south on University.” The tech checked the map for that exit. “He can only go south.”

  “Get us traffic cameras for that. Do they exist?”

  The tech hit some more key strokes, “No cameras in that specific area. Let me see what’s closest.”

  “Galloway, tell everyone, white panel van, right front caved in, traveling south on University. That’s where we need the presence. Get that chopper going south on University.”

  • • • •

  The Reaper reduced his speed, traveling through the residential area on south University Avenue. He couldn’t drop the van around here, it was too conspicuous and there was no place to blend in.

  He stayed south but he needed to get out quick.

  A shopping area was visible in the distance. In fact, several shopping areas were on both the left and right side of the street. He didn’t want to drop the van in the middle of a parking lot, but he wanted the crowds of the shopping centers to blend into.

  The Takoma Crossroads Shopping Center was on his right.

  He turned right into the mall lot and took the lane on the far north edge of the parking lot to the driveway to the backside of the large strip mall.

  • • • •

  Mac and Wire pored over the map of the area south of I-495 along University Avenue. The phone call had been over for four minutes now.

  “Mac, he’s going to ditch the van. He’s got to be thinking we’ll catch him on camera somewhere.”

  “I agree, but he needs a good place to … drop …” Mac traced University Avenue south on the map with his finger to where it crossed with New Hampshire. “This is the best closest spot. This shopping area, there’s the Takoma Shopping Center and Langley Park Shopping Center.”

  “Lots of people and traffic,” Wire added, nodding. “He could blend.”

  Mac looked to the tech, “Traffic cameras in that shopping area, search now!”

  “On it.”

  To Galloway, he said, “Flood that area with cops. Get the chopper there.”

  • • • •

  He was out of the van. Slipping in an open rear door, he walked inside, through a maintenance area and into the mall proper and towards the main front entrance. At the front doors, he peered outside. Hanging around was not an option. The blending helped but he needed to keep moving. He pushed through the front door and turned right, walking along the sidewalk, under the canopy, a Washington Nationals baseball cap on his head, sunglasses, everything he needed from the van stuffed into his backpack.

  He could hear the whoosh of a chopper in the distance as well as sirens. The walls were closing in. There wasn’t much time. He saw a cab waiting in the distance.

  Then he saw another option.

  • • • •

  “Agent McRyan, look at this,” the tech suggested. “The camera looks north on University from where it intersects with New Hampshire. Look up here,” the tech pointed to the upper left corner of the screen.

  “White panel van with a front bumper very askew, turning right into that parking lot. What’s that a parking lot for?”

  “Takoma Shopping Center.”

  “How many minutes ago?”

  The tech grimaced. “Three minutes.”

  “Galloway.”

  “On it, Mac,” the senior agent answered, barking orders into his radio. “Takoma Shopping Center. Everyone converge now. Lock it down, lock down a five-block radius.”

  • • • •

  The FBI Suburban turned hard left onto Jackson Street and pulled up just short of the driveway behind the mall. Mac and Wire filed out even before the truck fully stopped, jogging towards the van, already being worked by an FBI forensic team.

  It had been less than fifteen minutes.

  “This is the van,” Wire observed. “The bumper is barely hanging on, a kaleidoscope of paint from other vehicles and enough body work to keep a repair shop busy for an entire day.”

  Mac walked away from the van. “So where does he go? Where did he run off to?”

  “Is he inside the perimeter still?” Wire wondered.

  There was a five-block perimeter, squad cars everywhere. The doors to the mall were locked while each store was searched. Officers were searching other vehicles and interviewing bystanders, showing the picture of Drake Johnson.

  The Langley Park police chief approached. “Agent McRyan, we’ve got a perimeter set. We have police from all nearby jurisdictions and the Maryland State Police. It’s tight as can be. We’re letting nothing move. People have been ordered to stay in their houses. Everyone is frozen in stores here at the mall.”

  “Thanks, Chief. My only question is, how quickly did you set that perimeter?”

  The chief grimaced as they walked around to the front of the mall, “From the time we knew this was the place, it took a few minutes to get it tight, to get everyone in here.”

  Mac nodded and understood, already thinking they might have missed their shot. They were a few minutes behind the whole way. If only they could have kept him on the interstate. “What do you think?” he asked Wire, who was looking past him.

  “I think he got out. How about you?”

  “He could be hunkered down in one of these houses around here,” Mac replied in a more hopeful tone. “It’s the middle of the day, people off at work, he gets inside and hides until we clear.”

  “Maybe,” she replied as she walked past him. He turned to see her approaching a police officer fifty feet away talking to a young boy, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old.

  Mac turned to look f
or the Langley Park police chief, “Chief, it’s possible he’s one, hunkered down in a house around here, or two, he slipped through or out before the perimeter was set. So if he were to get away from here, what? Taxi? Bus? Steal a car or truck?”

  “Those would be the likely options.”

  “Let’s start checking those.”

  “Mac!” Wire yelled. He turned to see her still talking to the police officer and a kid in front of a video game store. “You need to hear this.”

  Mac jogged over.

  Wire said to the kid, “Tell Agent McRyan what you told me.”

  “Sir, I was inside the store, looking at games. When I came out, my new black mountain bike was gone.”

  • • • •

  The Reaper pedaled fast but calmly along the wooded path, having beaten the road blocks by maybe thirty seconds to a minute before they encircled the neighborhood around the mall. Even in the distance now he could hear more and more sirens and media choppers hovering overhead. If they looked down, they would not have seen him, the path running underneath the canopy of large trees blowing lightly in the breeze. The sound of the sirens started to fade behind him the farther he pedaled.

  He breathed a little easier.

  • • • •

  6:48 P.M.

  Mac leaned against the Suburban, his aviator sunglasses softening the glare of the bright July sun as it slowly meandered towards the western horizon. The five-block perimeter remained tight and the house-to-house search continued, though at this point nearly complete. Two police helicopters continued to hover overhead, with more television helicopters hovering farther in the distance. Thankfully, with such a large perimeter, the media was held back. Mac said he’d handle the news conference; he didn’t agree to media updates. To the extent there would be any further updates, they would be handled by Galloway.

  They couldn’t find Johnson.

  Wire approached with two bottles of water, handing one to Mac. He opened it and took a long sip, downing half the contents along with four Ibuprofen gel capsules.

  “I’d say he got through,” Dara said matter of factly as she took a position to Mac’s right, leaning against the truck.