The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller)

by Reeves, Robert

Leas squirmed at the direct verbal assault. “No! That man over there killed Miss Rubert, her kids, and three others, and he knows it. Hell, you know it, you snake! That’s why he confessed!”

  “Objection!”

  Just as the venomous attorney spat out his objection and coiled to strike again a ringing came from Leas’ tan slacks pocket, buzzing against his side. Clasping his hand over its location he looked up to the disapproving eyes of the judge.

  The judge spoke in slow words. “Sustained. Agent Leas, one more outburst like that out of you and I will put you in jail, do you understand me? And didn’t I tell you to turn off your phones? Bailiff, collect Agent Leas’ phone and don’t give it back to him until we are done here.” A large officer in a black uniform with a holstered pistol swaggered up to the witness box and put out his hand. Digging deep into his navy blazer pocket, he withdrew his phone and handed it over, still buzzing from the call. The judge continued, “Now answer the question.”

  Looking across the room to see the bailiff switching the phone off, Leas spoke as he stood halfway up and leaned out of the witness box. “He confessed…and he laughed when he did it, laughed at their deaths and their pain.” Leas settled back into his seat.

  The attorney turned to the center bench and the large black-robed judge behind it. “Your Honor, as you can see the confession is coerced. I respectfully request that the statement be suppressed based upon the admission of Agent Leas that it was obtained by force, fear of injury, and that because of that, it is unreliable.”

  The judge looked to his side to peer at Leas and then turned to address the lawyer standing before him. He rubbed his chin. “I don’t like this, but I have no option under the testimony presented in this hearing today. The evidence is clear. Mr. Flint was strangled immediately before giving the statement. Under those circumstances I find the statement unreliable and it shall be suppressed. Trial is scheduled for a month from now, counsel. I expect real discussions on trying to resolve this case prior to it proceeding. The court is adjourned.”

  DEFENSE COUNSEL HAD done his homework, twisting a tale of a FBI drunk suffering from the death of his young wife into the defense, and it resulted in the loss of the defendant’s admission to killing multiple women. Leas could still see the DAs’ faces, bowed down as he testified, clearly not liking what they heard. His drinking had not interfered with the investigation of Flint and his five roadside murders. It hadn’t. But the loss of his admission meant the jury would be less likely to convict at the trial next month.

  Halfway through the courtroom doors, the local prosecutor grabbed the jacket sleeve of Leas’ right arm and spun him into the wall, preparing to hit him. Before Leas could respond, another young suit interjected, tearing the two men apart and pushing them into a side room of the courthouse. Agent Leas was looking down, straightening his black jacket’s lapel, when the attorney began speaking. “Do you have any fucking clue what you have done? If this shit gets loose he’s going to kill again and that blood will be on your hands. What the hell are we supposed to do now?” The narrow-faced prosecutor shoved his finger into Leas’ face, pacing the room as if he actually wanted an answer.

  Leas gave the man a stern stare and said, “Here’s something novel, you could do your job and prove he’s the murderer just by using the evidence that links him to it.” Leas’ thick black eyebrows were raised as he delivered the last few words.

  The prosecutor looked over his glasses with disdain at Leas’ response. “No, you… You shut your fucking mouth. Do my job? That’s ballsy coming from you, Agent. You know, they warned me about you. A fucking drunk. That’s what they said. All fucked up since your wife’s murder back in D.C., taking it out on every suspect you come across. I’ll have your badge for this royal fuck-up.” Leas’ thick arms tensed under his too-big jacket as he fought to restrain himself. He knew he had screwed the pooch on this one, but he couldn’t control himself. The guy was a killer, and he could prove it, with or without an admission.

  “Just get the hell out. I’m done with you. Go pour yourself into one of those bottles of whiskey that you reek of. And if I ever catch you sniffing around one of my cases again, so help me God, you’ll be the one getting the shit beat out of you.”

  “Actually counsel, he has to get on a plane.” The other suit piped in and handed the prosecutor a stack of files with what appeared to be a plane ticket on top of the rubber-band bound collection. The attorney looked at the top document for a moment and then turned to Leas again. “Well, lucky fuck. They want you down in Dallas, tomorrow. You’re someone else’s problem now.” The files shoved into his hands, Leas looked down briefly at the ticket and promptly walked out of the courthouse without a word.

  Jumping into his rented blue Kia Sofia, Leas went directly to his dank first-floor hotel room. He hated motor lodges because rooms that opened to the parking lot always posed a danger in his line of work. Opening the door, he discovered the whiskey he had desperately needed since stepping into the courthouse was gone, consumed just hours before he took the stand and forgotten. The silver-grey and brown pinstriped wallpaper and thin-sheeted bed demanded whiskey if they were to be endured one more night. He had eyed an old bar on the corner of the block three days earlier when he arrived for his testimony, but the suits stuck around like flies on a steaming pile, leaving no opportunity to restock the single bottle he’d grabbed on the way from the airport.

  Outside again, he was immediately miserable. For May, it was unusually hot and steamy in Tulsa. He had worked the case against Flint five months earlier when snow dusted the ground and heat was the last thing he needed to worry about. But now, his clothes stuck to him, grasping at his slight chest and arm hair with every movement down the sidewalk. Damn it’s hot. D.C. would have its heat, but not for another month if the city was lucky. Leas just wanted to be back there, where getting a drink didn’t require a steam bath and a dusting of red clay. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough, but for now, he needed that drink.

  Stepping into the empty corner bar, he grabbed the red-cushioned stool closest to the door. His placement was a habit from his days working the beat in Philly for seven years, before the FBI picked him up because he had made a reputation for himself as the ‘hunter of hunters.’ It was Philly where he met his wife Maria, who loved him even if his job required him to work off hours and never see her. When he was around, he was still mentally working the case, trying to get into the minds of killers. But she never complained.

  It was one of those killers who took her life, and he hated himself for it. Alcohol helped numb the pain of loss—he could live, even if there wasn’t much to live for, so long as he was in a consistent state of intoxication. In the past few years the alcohol had taken over, and with it, his temper against killers.

  “Hey sugar, buy a lady a drink?” A crane of a woman with what appeared to be a Dolly Parton wig piled upon her head had moved in on the stool beside him, placing her hand on his knee and repositioning the shoestring strap of her red top onto her shoulder with the other.

  Leas decided to play along. “What would you like?” The woman was nothing he would have chased after before Maria. But, now… Knob Creek told him he needed to get laid, and it didn’t matter how or with whom. Anything to make him forget. The script played out for thirty or so minutes before he escorted ‘Bridget’ back toward his room.

  They diverted their path slightly to hit a small liquor store in the direction of the hotel. Looking over at the woman as the Indian clerk behind the counter rung up the fresh bottle of Knob, he thought, She doesn’t look like a Bridget—maybe a Betsy or Mercedes, but not a Bridget. The saggy skin under her arms suggested she had lost weight by trading one oral fixation for another, further evidenced by the two Virginia Slims she puffed down between the bar and the door to his room.

  He was grateful for the dense mallard-green velveteen curtains at the windows, permitting him to imagine something much better than what Bridget was. All things are beautiful in the dark. The only indi
cator of her true lacking was when her raspy smoker’s voice tried to add drama to the event, moaning an “oh baby” that sounded more like a demon crowing from a small child’s mouth than any seductive measure.

  The deed was done in less than ten minutes. He placed a fifty on the night stand after flicking on the bedside lamp, giving her the clue it was time to go. She was smart enough to gather her things and take the money as he walked towards the bathroom, leaving without question.

  Alone, he sat naked at the edge of the bed. Leas wondered how he had come to this place of murder, cheap sex, and booze. The thought of Maria seeing what he had just done made him sick in that moment. He swung back two more chugs until the whiskey took the pain away with its dry sting. A shower and half a bottle later, he was passed out for the night, wishing it was him who had died.

  CHAPTER 6

  DALLAS

  HIS PORES STILL emptying themselves of the whiskey onslaught from his Friday night, Leas passed through airport security at DFW trying to remember how he had come to hunt those who killed. As a member of CIRG, the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, he had been told that his time in Tulsa was done. The reprimand would come, but he was still one of the best they had. So, they were sending him out to investigate a death that matched one recently in the Tudor City neighborhood of Manhattan. He had talked with New York’s Detective Lefler on his way to the airport and been filled in on the investigation in that case and another potentially related killing outside San Diego a month and a half earlier. There was a loose pattern and that was never good. Boarded, the plane’s seatbelt made a point of reminding him of his few extra pounds from too much whiskey and too many fries on the road, digging against his government-issued black blazer.

  A blonde, middle-aged flight attendant with too much drugstore makeup came to his cramped coach seat and asked if he needed a drink. Thinking it was best for now to hold off, he ordered water. As she walked away she gave him a big smile framed in deep red lipstick over her shoulder. Except for the deep black circles under his eyes, his black hair and creamed-coffee skin would have disguised his forty-three years. “Being Hispanic has its advantages,” he would say when someone feigned shock at his age. “…Of course, there are disadvantages, too.” The prejudice of color still lingered like a cat hanging by its claws on a window ledge. Yet, he had benefited from the gravity of time taking its effect on the issue, slowly pulling down some barriers.

  Leas had joined the FBI to satisfy his need to understand killers. In high school he’d read Kraft-Ebing’s 1886 study of homicide, Psychopathia Sexualis, which introduced him to the study of serial killers. In his opinion, other than the occasional movie at the castled El Raton Theater, growing up in rural Raton, New Mexico, he had few options but to read. Today, his reading choices would be flagged by the school as a potential threat to other students and the school. But in the mid-80s, he was just called ‘dark.’ He had to agree that ‘dark’ was a good description for that pimple-faced boy in New Mexico. His teenage bookshelves were loaded with fiction and non-fiction, all on one subject, serial murders. He couldn’t say when he acquired his taste for the crime, but it had stuck early and he had never let it go.

  The ‘punk’ movement overshadowed his obsession back then, with bands like Flux of Pink Indians and X singing of riots and standing up to organized government. The Reagan years were great for those voicing anarchy, violence, or just hatred of any issue. The government was too busy with the USSR to consider threats in schools.

  Today, it was a very different situation. With 9/11, a new focus was placed on domestic sources of violence. This was only compounded by the recent events at the Aurora Theater in Denver and Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, which put a clear focus on threats in our own backyard. His lifelong fascination would rightfully raise flags in school today and land him in counseling, at a minimum, if for no other reason than to ward off liability for the school should he act on his interests.

  But he didn’t act. He never wanted to murder, but he did want a front seat to the psyches of those who did. And he hadn’t been involved on either of those recent events. Mass killings, where four or more people are killed at once, weren’t his specialty. At forty-eight, Leas wasn’t ‘the expert’ on serial murders, but he was pretty close. It was still unclear whether there was a new serial killer on the loose. Technically, a serial murder is defined as a series of three or more killings, not less than one of which was committed within the United States, having common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes were committed by the same actor or actors. In layman’s terms, someone who killed three people in separate and distinct events.

  Looking down at the stack of manila files on his lap, he wondered if he was dealing with another serial killer. From the outside, there wasn’t anything special about the murder he was now flying to Dallas to review; well, at least for someone who investigates such things. What was unique was that he was being assisted back in Quantico by Units 2 and 3 of NCAVC, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes. What interest would Unit 3, Crimes Against Children, have in a thirty-four year-old dead guy in Dallas?

  With Mr. Patrick, he now had three bodies. Were these murders linked? He still didn’t know. What he did know was that if they were linked, the murders were occurring at a much faster rate; the killer had become impatient. And, impatient knives produced more bodies.

  CHAPTER 7

  ARRIVING AT TONY Patrick’s Angelina Drive home just west of Dallas’s downtown area, Agent Leas immediately noted the lack of any evidence of forced entry. He knew his killer.

  “Captain Monroe, the FBI’s representative is here. What did you say your name is again?” A young local detective, no more than maybe twenty-six, with a large camera around his neck, ushered Leas through the doorway of the home and into its living room, where several other detectives stood discussing indecipherable matters.

  Leas had learned from one of the files that the body had been found at six a.m. Friday when a co-worker had arrived to give Patrick a ride to work. When there was no response from honking the horn, he knocked on the door and it opened, revealing the bloody body of Patrick lying in the middle of the living room. The officers had been on the scene a full day by the time Leas got into Dallas. It was now six p.m. Central Time and the officers were worn and tired like an old rag.

  “Agent Leas, Quantico. Nice to meet you, Captain Monroe.” Leas extended his hand to the black officer and they shook as the captain took stock of the man before him. Leas similarly took in his host, noting Captain Monroe had some obvious years on him. Sixty-eight? His classic double-pocketed, deep blue short-sleeve shirt and matching pants were accented by the large egg-shaped badge with a star at its center that was brandished across his left chest. On either side of his collar were pinned four gold stars, to signify his experience and importance. From the busied movements about him, it was apparent the captain had full control of the scene, and Leas had no interest in stepping on his toes.

  “Agent, can you tell me why you’re here and what you have to do with my guy?” The look on the captain’s face conveyed the clear message that he was not happy to have to tolerate the FBI’s involvement in his case. Another agent came up behind him, and the captain occupied himself with signing a form while Leas answered.

  “Captain, your guy caused a few red flags to pop up in our system. Seems some of the injuries match another recent crime in New York City, and perhaps one in San Diego. So, of course, I’m here to see if there’s any relationship between them, and if so, I have a lot of restless nights ahead of me.” Leas looked down at the small plastic numbered tents scattered around the room.

  “Indeed.” The captain’s face soured but his interest was clearly peaked. “Do tell. Agent Leas, you say? What about my guy has the FBI spending my tax dollars to fly in a high-class shrink to tell me how to do my job?” The younger agent walked off, satisfied with the signature he had collected.

  Leas look
ed around the room. “Captain, I’m not a shrink, just an investigator like you. And I’m not here to frustrate your investigation, and certainly not here to tell you how to do your job. In fact, you are very much respected back at Quantico. Your work on the Charles Albright case was impressive, to say the least.” Leas was referencing the Dallas Ripper, also known as the Eyeball Killer, who killed three prostitutes between December 1990 and March 1991. His signature was shooting the victims and removing their eyes. But for the hair found by Captain Monroe’s team on the last victim, Albright would have walked because the jury did not convict him of the first two.

  The captain huffed, “Agent, don’t blow smoke up my ass. Dallas is still in the South and we are very much astute at recognizing a snow job. You still haven’t answered my question. Why. Are. You. Here?” The captain was clearly losing patience in playing host.

  Turning his direct attention to the captain, Leas continued. “Of course, Captain. It seems some of the elements of your scene caused a match in ViCAP.” ViCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, was the database where all violent crimes in the country were cataloged and collected so that they could be analyzed for potential patterns. “In this case, the cut patterns seemed close enough to another crime to cause ‘taxpayer dollars’ to be spent to ship me to Dallas.”

  “Yeah, like what?” The captain’s Deep South Texas accent oozed out.

  “Well, to be certain, I’ll have to take a look at the body back at the coroner’s to confirm; but your officers documented a square cut on the victim’s lower back that may match that New York case I mentioned.”

  The captain looked at Leas and said, “When was that death?” Leas had the captain’s attention now. He needed to provide enough information to keep it, and his cooperation, but not enough to risk a leak by any of the captain’s crew. It was too early to put whoever this was on notice that the FBI might be on their trail.