Brethren

by Shawn Ryan

  Jason nodded.

  "I don't think this is a one-shot deal," Saunders said. "This type of killing isn't emotional; it's not sudden and uncontrollable like someone blowing a fuse. There's too much planning, too much method to the madness. The creep who does this enjoys it. This is killing for pleasure. It's like the first time you get laid. It's so great you want to do it again, and soon. I'd bet my mortgage that this guy already is planning the next one. He's already dreaming about getting his rocks off again."

  "So help us catch him," Jason said. "Do the best fucking autopsy you've ever done. Give us everything you can to go on."

  "I'll try," Saunders said, dropping his cigarette to the ground and grinding it under his heel. "I'll surely try."

  Jason's stomach rolled as he watched Saunders stroll back to his car and get in. He knew the coroner was right; he knew it from the moment he saw Amanda's body. People who killed children were cut from a crazier quilt than other murderers.

  Except to the most insane, children were sacrosanct, off limits if only because, should you be caught and sent to prison, your life was over if the other inmates ever got a chance. Child killers were frowned upon in the hierarchy of the prison system.

  Even serial killers—true lunatics if the word had any meaning at all—usually stuck with adults, and often low-life adults at that. It was safer. People didn't get quite as upset when you knocked off a hooker or a junkie or even a run-of-the-mill businessman. But kill a kid and you're just asking for the hounds of hell and public outrage to come nipping at your heels. Politicians become intimately involved in child murder investigations because the voters chew big chunks out of their asses every day the killer goes unfound. Those hassles inevitably come crashing down on the heads of the detectives assigned to the case. This time, that meant Jason and Badger.

  Jason was lost in these disturbing thoughts when he heard Badger's voice calling him.

  "Jason, c'mere quick," Badger cried, sitting in the passenger seat of one of the police cruisers. The door was open and he was holding the radio mike in his right hand, waving it in the air. Jason sprinted to the car.

  "Dispatch says they just got a phone call from some guy saying he killed a little girl," Badger said. "I've got Lurleen on the radio now. Thought you'd want to hear it."

  Badger put his mouth back to the microphone. "Lurleen? You still there?" he said.

  "Yeah. I'm here," came the shaky reply.

  No "honey," Jason noted.

  "Jason's here now, start over and tell us everything the guy said."

  The sound of Lurleen taking a deep breath came over the radio.

  "Well, like I said, this guy called 'bout four minutes ago and asked if we had any information on the death of a little girl," she said. "I told him he'd have to talk to one of the detectives. I figured he was a reporter or somethin'.

  "Anyway, that's when he asked me if I wanted any information on the little girl who was killed behind the Kroger store," she said. "He said he was the one who'd done it and he was gonna kill some more, only he wouldn't just stick with little girls.

  "Then he started goin' on 'bout how he was bein' merciful to these kids and puttin' 'em outta their misery. How evil was everywhere and a lot of other weirdo religious stuff. And just before he hung up he said somethin' I didn't quite get. He said that if we wanted to know more about him, we should pick up the Yellow Pages."

  "What the hell does that mean?" Badger asked.

  Jason whirled to face a young cop standing behind him.

  "Grab some people, get in your cars, and search every phone booth and pay phone in this area, starting with the ones around this shopping center," he said. "Check every book of Yellow Pages you see. Wear gloves. If you find something, don't touch it. Get on the radio and call us."

  The young officer ran off, the responsibility of his task riding high on his shoulders.

  "Did you trace the call?" Badger asked Lurleen.

  "Yeah, it was from a pay phone at 2635 Pleasant Hill Road, that's a Phillips 66 station."

  "Goddammit," Badger yelled. "That's a quarter of a mile down the road! Get someone down there now!"

  like a kicked-open anthill, cops scurried to their squad cars. The pungent smoke of burning steel-belted radials hung in the air as they squealed out of the parking lot. Jason and Badger remained behind.

  "He's not going to be there," Jason said.

  "I know," Badger said. "But maybe he fucked up and left something behind that he didn't mean to."

  Fat chance, Jason thought.

  Ten minutes later, the patrol cars returned. They found nothing at the gas station, but part of the crime investigation unit remained on the scene, dusting the phone for fingerprints and searching the station for any clues.

  One of the officers, Mallory, hung around after the others moved away. He stood next to Jason and coughed.

  "Yeah Mallory, what is it?" Jason asked.

  "Well, it's kind of strange," the young man said. "I'm not sure I should even bring it up."

  "You already have," Badger said.

  "Yeah, right," Mallory said. "Okay, I was the first one up there and had my spot trained on the station from about three hundred feet away. I swear I saw someone standing at the phone next to the cashier's booth. I looked down the road to make sure I wasn't turning in front of anybody, and when I looked back at the phone, the person was gone. But honest to God, there wasn't anyplace for him to go. Nothing but open parking lot for fifty yards in every direction. And I only took my eyes off him for a split second. Nobody can move that fast."

  "You checked the whole station thoroughly?" Jason asked.

  "Yessir. I went over every square inch. Didn't find a thing."

  "Your eyes probably were playing tricks on you," Jason said. "It's kind of hard to see things this time of the morning, especially with the sun coming up. Makes everything hazy and indistinct."

  "But I was so sure I saw something," Mallory said.

  "Let's see what forensics turns up," Jason said.

  He looked at Badger, who shrugged. Badger opened his mouth to speak when the radio inside the car started barking loudly. The voice of the young officer who'd been sent to look for Yellow Pages leapt from the speaker.

  "Detective Medlocke, Detective Franklin, I've found something!" the officer said, nearly out of breath with excitement.

  "Where are you?" Badger asked into the microphone.

  "Around front, about three quarters of the way down the shopping center."

  Jumping into the squad car, Jason and Badger sped to the front of the building. The young officer stood next to his patrol car, its spotlight directed on a pay phone.

  When Jason and Badger pulled up, the technicians' van right behind, the officer pointed to an open set of Yellow Pages sitting on the ground under the phone. A plain, white envelope rested in the center of the open book, a small piece of cellophane tape holding the envelope in place. On the front was the word Brethren.

  Badger reached in his pocket and handed Jason his Swiss army knife. Flicking open one of the blades, Jason cautiously pried the envelope loose from the Yellow Pages. Using the blade, he flipped the envelope over. The back flap had not been licked and it sprang open.

  "Give me a pair of tongs," Jason said, extending his left hand behind him. A technician laid a clear plastic pair in his open palm.

  Holding the envelope down with the knife blade, Jason drew out a single sheet of paper with the tongs. When the paper was clear, a technician picked up the envelope with another set of tongs and placed it in a clear bag. Jason didn't notice. He was concentrating on the paper's typed message.

  Brethren: The time is nigh. Armaggeddon approaches. The great White Throne Judgment. Resurrection of the Wicked Dead. All sinners and unbelievers shall be cast into the Lake of Fire. Do you know Jesus? Do you know God? They know you. They know the good that's in you and They know the evil in you, too. But there is hope, if we act in time. Satan is at work in our world. Even as he works on adults
, destroying our world from above, he is injecting his venom into the young, their minds washed in the filth of Satan. Even as their bodies and spirit move north, towards heaven, their eyes and minds are facing south, bewitched by hell's bright glow. They are being raped by Lucifer. They must be cleansed. They must be purified. If thy eye offend you, pluck out that eye, the Lord says. He has said it to me. I have obeyed.

  The note was signed "The Mercy Killer."

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Headquarters was hell incarnate. Captain Silverman met Jason and Badger at the door as they arrived from the crime scene about nine that morning. Cyras Silverman's slender, craggy face, usually bland and expressionless, resembled worked-over granite, gray and haggard with cracks running through it.

  Silverman had received a phone call about the murder at six in the morning and arrived at police headquarters at seven. By eight, every member of the county commission had called him, as well as almost every other politician in the county. First they wanted to know what happened, then what was being done to ferret out the killer. What could he tell them except that every possible avenue was being explored? That hardly made them happy.

  "I need something substantial," he told Jason and Badger as they walked through headquarters back door. "I don't expect you to solve this in one day, but give me something pretty soon. I'll hold the bastards at bay for a while."

  Along with the phone calls from local politicians, reporters swamped headquarters, asking questions about the murder, tying up the phones. Word leaked about the crime's brutality and every newspaper and TV station in the Atlanta area wanted details. They almost went crazy when news about the note and the Mercy Killer got out. Jason was furious that information on the note was floating about; he would have preferred to keep that part under wraps for a while. He could only figure that one of the cops or technicians told a wife or a girlfriend who probably told someone who probably called a reporter. By that afternoon, the story would be splashed across every newspaper in the city and be the lead story on every TV station. The national wire services would pick it up from there.

  "This one's going bad and nationwide," Badger predicted.

  The investigative process was one that Jason and Badger knew well. First, information about the note and the murder were fed into the National Crime Information Computer, which came up with a dozen names of religious fanatics and child murderers, but no religious-fanatic child murderers. And most of the "maybes" were either dead or in some mental institution. The computer was still working, though. Nut cases were in no short supply.

  The note itself was in forensics, lab experts examining it for fingerprints and to determine what kind of typewriter it was written on. From there it would be sent to a psychiatrist, who would try to glean some sort of psychological makeup of the writer.

  The ESDA was examining footprints pulled from the pavement around Amanda's body. It would be able to tell weight and height of anyone who was in that area, as well as the shoe size and make of the shoes. Forensics decided to pull prints only in the near vicinity of the body, since the loading area was routinely filled with delivery trucks and workers.

  Knowing that such a murder would take time and planning, officers called local hotels to see who had checked in during the previous several days, checking for drifters or someone staying an inordinately long time.

  For their part, Jason and Badger drove to the Benton's house to question the child's parents. It was a task they detested.

  Joseph Benton was not a man comfortable with deep feelings. It was hard for him to watch movies or TV shows with crying and tense emotional moments. They made him feel distinctly uneasy, as if he were a little boy watching dirty movies.

  He was perfectly suited to his job as a CPA. Numbers and figures were cold and emotionless and safe; they never embarrassed him with their feelings.

  In spite of his repressed emotions, Benton sat on the sofa in his living room, his face red and blotchy from tears. His heavily receding salt-and-pepper hair was cropped too close to the head to look truly sloppy, despite the fact that he was running his hands over his head about once a minute. When he wasn't doing that, he wiped his raw, running nose with a well-used handkerchief bunched in his fist. Each time he finished, he folded the handkerchief into a neat square only to crush it into a tangled wad immediately afterward. Then he started over.

  Benton's wife, Betty, was in the bedroom, sleeping fitfully under sedation prescribed by her doctor. Unable to sit down while her daughter was missing, she had been up and moving about for almost eighteen hours. When the Gwinnett County patrol officer knocked on the front door about seven in the morning with the news of Amanda, Mrs. Benton threw up on his shoes before he even spoke.

  A cup of coffee sat on the Queen Anne table in front of Joseph Benton's knees. It was tomb cold. Benton stared at the cup relentlessly, but never picked it up.

  Jason and Badger drank two cups of coffee and were about to ask for another. It helped victims if they could be doing something to take their minds off their pain. Even the simple act of making a cup of coffee helped a little.

  The questioning began simply: Tell us what happened.

  Benton said he was at the office Sunday night, taking care of some loose ends. He didn't know Amanda had gone skating and instead thought she was with her mother, shopping or something, so he didn't get excited when he came home about eight and neither was there. Only after her mother returned about nine from a bridge game did he realize his error.

  "Why didn't you do something when I called Sunday?" he asked. "Why do you have to wait twenty-four hours? If someone is missing, they're missing. They're either here or they're not."

  Jason began to explain that most missing people turn up within a few hours of their disappearance, but Badger gently coughed and shook his head.

  Amanda was an only child and there were photographs and portraits of her scattered throughout the ranch-style house. Love for the little girl practically oozed from the walls. Her room was painted a delicate shade of lavender, and her bed—white French provincial with a canopy—was inhabited by a herd of stuffed animals. Posters of U2, Billy Ray Cyrus, and cartoon characters Ren & Stimpy adorned the walls.

  She was in the sixth grade at Trickum Middle School, and the yearbook her father brought out held a photo of an amazingly pretty girl with short, blond hair and the smile of a person yet to encounter the harsh realities of the world. The notes and messages written in the back of the yearbook showed Amanda was well liked by schoolmates and by teachers.

  Hell, even the principal signed her annual, Jason thought as he flipped through the book.

  Her father now sat in a chair, a spent balloon of a man, limp and empty. The yearbook was on his lap, open to her picture. He stared at the floor, his voice a monotone.

  "Amanda is such a sweet, beautiful girl," he said. "Why would anyone want to hurt her?"

  For about thirty more minutes, the two detectives tried to dredge whatever information they could from Benton, uncover any untapped tidbit, but it was futile. By this point, Benton's brain couldn't even be called functioning. He finally wound up repeating, "My baby. My baby. How could you do this to my baby?"

  Jason and Badger drove back to headquarters in silence. As he drove, Jason developed an overwhelming urge to call his father, Stephen. An Episcopal priest in Boston, Stephen Medlocke was the person everyone in the family turned to for advice, for solace, even for a good laugh. His father was the solid oak center during the worst and best times of Jason's life. He needed him now.

  Back at his desk, Jason was reaching for the phone, the number for his father's church office already on his fingertips, when Buzz Saunders walked into their office with a manila folder in his hands and a Marlboro drooping from his lips. His eyes were bloodshot and weak, the result of no sleep and the ever-present cloud of smoke surrounding his head.

  "Got the autopsy," he said, grinding his cigarette out on the rim of the wastebasket and immediately reaching
into his pocket to get another.

  "And?" Jason asked.

  "Well, she died by manual strangulation. There were finger-shaped bruises around her throat. But by the time it happened, it was virtually a moot point. There was a monster of a contusion at the base of her skull and I found traces of metal in her skin. Somebody knocked the shit out of her with something big, a pipe or a wrench or something. Her brain was hemorrhaging when the strangulation occurred. Chances are she was already comatose when the fucker was choking her.

  "Something else interesting, too," he continued. "The way her head was taken off. It was done cleanly, not hacked off. There were metal flakes in the tissue of her neck and I've sent them to the lab for ID. I think, though, that they came from one of those outdoor survival saws. You ever seen one?"

  Both detectives shook their heads.

  "Well, basically all they are is a piece of wire stretched between two metal rings. A coating of abrasive metal flakes is attached to the wire so you can saw through stuff quickly. Trouble is, they dull real fast and you can't resharpen them, so, you have to buy a new one after almost every use."

  "Where can you get them?" Jason asked.

  "Not sure. Probably at any outdoor shop."

  Jason picked up his Yellow Pages and leafed through to the O section. As he flipped through the pages, the door opened again and Norman Bibb, head of forensics, walked in. He briefly waved a sheaf of papers at Jason.

  "What've you got?" Badger asked.

  "We didn't find much, just a few fibers—cotton, white, probably from a T-shirt or something," Bibb said. "Doesn't do us a lot of good."

  "No blanket fibers or anything?" Jason asked, looking up from the Yellow Pages.

  "Nope. My guess is the guy wrapped her up in some sort of plastic tarp and hauled her to the shopping center."

  "Not even any hair?" Jason continued.

  "No. The guy must have worn a nylon stocking or something. If he'd been wearing a ski mask, there'd be some fibers from it. You've practically got to have a bag underneath those things to catch all the fibers falling off."