by Sean Lynch
Farrell stood shakily up. The energy vacuum he experienced in the aftermath of the earlier adrenaline rush was intensified by the bourbon. He felt he could close his eyes and sleep on the beach forever. He had to find a place to sort things out. His mind was reeling. He would deal with this in the morning.
He staggered from the beach to the sidewalk and began to walk towards the distant lights of the South Shore Shopping Center. The stores were still open in the run up to Christmas.
Farrell hadn’t gone a block when a taxicab pulled up. Its driver was apparently trolling the beach in search of patrons. Farrell raised a wobbly arm and mumbled, “Taxi!” in a slurred belch.
The cab pulled over, and a middle-aged African-American got out.
“Take it easy dude,” the cabbie said. “You got to be cool. This here’s a navy town. Alameda cops cruisin’ the beach day and night for fucked-up motherfuckers like you. Where you goin’?”
“Need to find a hotel,” Kearns slurred.
“You want fancy or economy?”
Farrell patted the thick wad of bills in the envelope in his pocket.
“I want fancy. Not in Alameda. You know a place?”
“I’ll take you to the Hyatt, near the Oakland Airport. That cool?”
“Sounds cool as hell,” Farrell slurred. The cabbie opened the door and he climbed in. Farrell closed his eyes.
An instant later the cabbie was shaking his shoulder. “We here. Wake up now, we here.”
Farrell sat heavily up. He allowed the cabbie to lead him to the lobby, where he leaned heavily on the registration desk. He fumbled in his pocket for some bills and gave the cabbie three twenties. The cabbie grinned and walked off, muttering something about “drunk-assed fools.”
The registration clerk frowned first at Farrell’s breath, his bloody face, and then at his lack of luggage, but relaxed when he saw the cash. The clerk gave him a key to a room on the second floor after relieving him of several bills. Farrell staggered off to the elevator.
By the time Farrell got out of the elevator on the second floor and put his key in the lock, the walls of the hotel were spinning wildly. He entered the room, closed the door, and locked the chain. He turned on the lights to find a tastefully decorated room with a king-sized bed.
He shrugged out of his coat and jacket. The fact that his pockets contained five revolvers made this task all the more difficult. He withdrew the thick medical file from his waistband and tossed it on a table. He struggled to remove his trousers and kicked off his shoes. Then he collapsed on the bed.
Farrell fell asleep immediately, and slept fitfully for the next fifteen hours. He dreamed of a dragon which slaughtered a medieval village.
CHAPTER 44
Special Agent Steve Scanlon wiped his dripping nose for the thousandth time and tried to relax. His flight had been delayed twice due to the inclement weather, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever get back to Des Moines. Not that he was in a hurry.
There was a tremendous break in the investigation within the last twenty-four hours. News of the shootout in Northern California, and the attempted kidnapping of another child, coincided with his task force’s acquisition of a military 201 file. The file belonged to Lance Corporal Vernon Emil Slocum, USMC; the brother of Elizabeth Slocum.
Despite the Slocum woman’s reluctance to cooperate in the investigation, his agents gained access to the master file in the Armed Services Personnel Command in St Louis. If the Bureau was good for nothing else, it was good for its vast information network.
A copy of that file was faxed to Scanlon, and it broke the investigation wide open. Scanlon spent the better part of the night perusing the documents, though a team of military and medical analysts were currently doing a more thorough job.
Most certainly Slocum was their man. A faded photograph of him in his USMC dress blues even matched the Identi-Kit composite drawings made after the Meade murder. And though Kearns and his accomplice stole Slocum’s medical file from the veteran’s hospital in Des Moines, they’d failed to swipe the file of Buddy Cuszack, the accomplice Kearns shot and killed at Elizabeth Slocum’s home in Omaha. It appears Cuszack’s stay at the VA hospital in Des Moines after his service in Vietnam coincided with Slocum’s.
It was all coming together; all but the whereabouts of Deputy Kevin Kearns’ elusive partner and Vernon Slocum. Scanlon wasn’t sure which suspect he wanted more.
A nationally broadcast press conference was to be held at 8 o’clock that morning. Scanlon himself would have normally been given the honor of delivering the press their anxiously awaited news, since he was Special Agent in Charge. But several factors prevented his appearance on national television.
Not the least of which was his injury. Though several weeks had passed since Kearns clobbered him, both of Scanlon’s eyes were still dark, with purple rings surrounding them. His nose was an endless faucet of snot and blood, and Kleenex had become a permanent part of his attire. But Scanlon knew the real reason he was kept from the conference, and it wasn’t his looks.
Word had traveled far and wide throughout the Midwestern law enforcement community of his inability to keep the rookie deputy in custody. Scanlon committed the equivalent of a mortal sin; he’d embarrassed the Bureau. The final blow was allowing Kearns to escape for the second time after being knocked out by a girl posing as an attorney, the very same ruse which facilitated Kearns’ first escape. Scanlon wasn’t allowed at the press conference because the FBI didn’t want any uncomfortable questions regarding the status of the renegade deputy or the origin of the condition of Scanlon’s face.
Scanlon was therefore given orders over the phone this morning to report forthwith to his home station in Des Moines. Little else was said, but the underlying implication of reprimand was quite clear, even over the telephone.
He knew his status as Special Agent in Charge of the Des Moines Office was in jeopardy, and took his order to report immediately to Des Moines, while the investigation was still under way, as tantamount to being relieved of command.
The press conference was a success. Slocum’s identity and picture were broadcast with an admonition for private citizens to notify the authorities if he was spotted. The press was generally polite, and didn’t cause the FBI much grief. Except for one reporter who worked for the Nevada Journal, a paper published in the home county of Tiffany Meade.
This reporter repeatedly asked questions about Deputy Kearns, and wanted to know if criminal charges were being filed against him. He kept asking where Special Agent Scanlon was, and didn’t seem satisfied that Scanlon had fully recovered from his injury and was busy elsewhere with more pressing cases. He fired question after question at the Bureau spokesperson, who eventually said, “That’s all we have at this time,” and left the podium.
Of course the Bureau didn’t release all the pertinent details of the case. For example, they didn’t release to the press that a man was found stabbed and clinging to life in California at Cole Ballantine’s home. Or that the man was Iowa Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Kearns.
Scanlon glanced at his wristwatch, and again at the monitors which displayed the arrival/departure times for all flights. It was at least two hours before his flight would take off, assuming it wasn’t delayed again. Whitney Houston was musically asking “Didn’t We Almost Have It All?” via the airport loudspeakers, adding to Scanlon’s annoyance. He’d always hated the perpetually perky singer.
He opened his briefcase and pulled out the file. He sifted through the photocopies until he found the document that recorded Slocum’s arrest in Saigon. At the bottom of the arrest sheet, clearly legible in the INVESTIGATING OFFICER box, was scrawled the name SSgt Robert Farrell. It meant nothing to Scanlon. A faded name scrawled on a faded document by a soldier in a war long over.
How Kevin Kearns, a green rookie deputy from a rural Iowa county, had tracked Vernon Slocum across the country, staying only one step behind him, was still an unanswered question. The military file was only a part o
f it.
The file was how Kearns knew. That’s why he and his partner were in Omaha, at Elizabeth’s house, lying in wait for Slocum. And that’s why they ended up in Alameda, California. They’d traced the suspect’s relatives using the file, somehow knowing Slocum would be doing the same.
But how did Kearns know about the file to begin with? About its significance? It meant that Kearns had to know Slocum’s identity almost from the beginning.
Or his partner did.
It all boiled down to the mystery man. The fake lawyer. That son of a bitch.
It boggled the mind. A killer’s trail, twenty years cold, becomes fresh again. A hayseed Iowa deputy and a phantom hunter stalk that killer, leaving the resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the dust.
It would soon be over. Witnesses were being interviewed. Ballantine’s Alameda neighbors, bystanders from the red-light district of downtown Omaha, the surviving teacher in the schoolyard, and anyone else who’d seen the suspect were being shown photographic line-ups containing Slocum’s picture.
Ballistic evidence was being compared, and matched. Slugs found in the bodies at the burned-out meth lab in Coon Rapids, Iowa were confirmed as matching the ones in the bodies of the Iowa state troopers, the bouncers at 24th and Lake in Omaha, and in the walls of the Ballantine house in Alameda. Bodily secretion evidence from the sexual assault victims was consistent with Slocum’s medical records, and the blood left at the scene of his crash in Alameda. Piece by piece, the puzzle was being assembled.
All that remained was the apprehension of Vernon Slocum. By late today his face would be known to millions of television viewers nationwide. It was 1987, after all, and modern technology could broadcast in minutes what once took days or weeks to get out to the public. Hopefully the Bureau would net the fugitive murderer soon.
Special agents contacted Slocum’s former doctors at the VA hospital, most of whom were long retired. Agents interviewed Elizabeth Slocum to the point of exhaustion. Incidentally, they also conducted an in-depth background check into the history and activities of Kevin Kearns. None of this produced any leads in discovering the identity of Kearns’ mystery partner.
This mystery man was still at large, though not as vehemently pursued by the FBI as Slocum. Scanlon learned the man, whoever he was, had prevented a child belonging to Cole Ballantine from being kidnapped. But he’d disarmed and threatened to shoot two Alameda police officers in the process. Yet his burned out car left no trace of forensic evidence, like fingerprints, to assist in identifying him. Scanlon couldn’t help but think this elusive man hunter had to be a cop, or someone with military or security experience similar to law enforcement training. He was too good to be otherwise. And he covered his tracks well.
Apprehending Kearns’ partner could wait. Deputy Kevin Kearns was under guard in the intensive care unit of Highland Hospital in Oakland. He wasn’t going anywhere, this time. He’d undergone surgery which saved his life. When Kearns awoke he would be induced to give up the identity of his partner in crime in lieu of reduction in the charges and the length of sentence he was inevitably facing. Unfortunately, the doctors attending to Kearns’ recovery couldn’t say exactly when that would be.
In any case, all Bureau focus was on locating and apprehending Vernon Slocum. And the Bureau now knew a lot about him.
Some of the most insightful information about Vernon Slocum’s history came from Cole. He was cooperating fully, and told the FBI investigators interviewing him the horrific account of his childhood in Iowa; an account corroborated by special agents conversing with Elizabeth. Special agents had been dispatched to the Slocum farm near Ogden, Iowa, to interview their father, Emil J Slocum. The results of contact with the elder Slocum would be reported to Scanlon as they came in. He was still the Special Agent in Charge, at least for now.
It was a productive twenty-four hours. That’s how it often went. Sometimes weeks of tenacious investigative work produced nothing. Then out of the blue a break would come, a break that would unravel the entire fabric of the crime. Scanlon only hoped he’d be around to see the eventual conclusion of the case.
“Mister Steve Scanlon. Passenger Steve Scanlon, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Steve Scanlon, please pick up the white phone.”
His own name interrupting Whitney’s singing ended his examination of the file. He put it into his briefcase and walked over to a white telephone on the wall.
“This is Steve Scanlon,” he said in his nasal voice.
“Mister Scanlon,” said a pleasant-sounding female voice. “I have an urgent call for you. Please hold and I’ll transfer it.”
Scanlon held the receiver to his ear and wiped his dripping nose. A moment later he recognized the familiar voice of Special Agent Tatters.
“You there, Steve?”
“I’m here. Go ahead.”
“What are you still doing in Omaha?” Tatters asked.
“Trying to leave,” Scanlon snapped angrily. “The flights are all delayed because of the weather. It’s snowing like hell. Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t have to?”
“It ain’t much better here in tropical Des Moines.”
“So what couldn’t wait?”
“Two things,” Tatters said. “First, I thought you’d want to know this morning I met the honorable Emil Jensen Slocum. One of the Story County deputies, Detective Rod Parish, drove me out there. Hell, it took us an hour by four-wheel drive just to–”
“Spare me the epic saga. What did you learn?”
“That’s the point; nothing. The old guy is mad as a hatter. Met us at the door with a shotgun. Babbled a lot about Okinawa, and his days fighting the Japs. He’s gones-ville, Steve. Wouldn’t let us on his property, and I saw no point in pressing the issue. All the things he did to his kids are past the statute of limitations, so we can’t arrest or even charge him with anything. He’s not a material witness, and doesn’t have to talk to us if he doesn’t want to. Not that he’d have any useful information. He’s a dead end, Steve.”
Scanlon pondered this a moment. “I still want surveillance on his house, in the event his son returns. It’s a long shot, but I don’t want to exclude the possibility. Have the Story County deputies help you set it up, and be sure to–”
“Sorry Steve,” Tatters cut in. “No can do. That’s the second thing I was going to tell you. You’ve been relieved. Hoersten is on the way from Chicago to take over. The task force’s already been given specific orders to disregard your orders. I’m sorry to have to be the one to break it to you, but if your flight was on time you’d already know. Everybody else does.”
Scanlon gripped the phone tightly, unable to find words. If he was being relieved so quickly, it could only mean one thing: the Bureau was going to front him; make him the scapegoat in the blundered investigation. It would protect the Bureau’s image with the public. Scanlon had seen it many times before. When it came to the reputation of the Bureau, no single agent was safe.
“Thanks for the warning.”
“So long, Steve. I’m sorry.”
Scanlon hung up the phone. In all likelihood he was not only being relieved of his command, but would also face a suspension, perhaps even dismissal. Dismissal was unlikely though; the Bureau rarely fired an errant agent. The FBI preferred to keep a reprimanded agent around as a lesson to others.
Special Agent Steve Scanlon sat down heavily on a bench crowded with holiday travelers and stared through a window at the falling snow. He couldn’t remember so bleak a winter. He wiped a tissue across his nose and put his chin in his hands.
CHAPTER 45
Bob Farrell lay soaking in the tub, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’d awakened just before noon, feeling as if he’d been run over by a train. The nausea in his stomach and the dryness in his throat were relieved somewhat by the hot bath, but the driving headache he experienced was resisting all efforts to conquer it. The cuts and scratches on his face stung.
He awoke soake
d in sweat. Room service brought up a Bloody Mary and aspirin, and after gulping down several pills with the cocktail he undressed and slid into the tub.
Farrell added more hot water and ran his hands through his straggly hair. It was in need of a trim. His activities over the last few weeks left little time for a haircut. He lay in the tub and pondered.
Slocum was in the wind. Farrell was alone, without a plan, and the object of a nationwide police search. Though he was confident the FBI could not identify or apprehend him, he felt useless and lost.
Farrell spat out the remnant of his smoke and washed more hot water over his face. His mind was racing, still dazed by the events of last night. The Iowa deputy had delivered everything he’d promised, and Farrell couldn’t have asked for anything more in a partner. And for his troubles, Farrell got him killed.
He got out of the bath and put a towel around his waist. His clothes were given to the room service clerk for laundering and would be clean shortly. He felt a little better, and he walked out of the bathroom on relatively steady feet.
He sat at a small desk and glanced at the objects on top of it. There was Kearns’ wallet, the envelope of cash, Farrell’s own wallet, his badge and pocketknife, and the piece of paper with Jennifer’s address on it. He stared at the phone number for a long time. He knew he had to tell Jennifer of Kevin’s death, but dreaded it.
He picked up the phone and dialed long distance. He noticed his hands were shaking again.
“Hello,” came a feminine voice.
“May I speak to Jennifer?”
“She can’t come to the phone right now. You’ll have to call back.”
“Please don’t hang up. I’m her father, and I’m calling long distance. Could you tell her? I know she’ll take the call.”
There was a long silence at the other end. Finally, “OK. Wait a minute.”
Farrell waited for what seemed like hours, clenching and unclenching his fist. Eventually he heard the receiver pick up.
