The Informant

by James Grippando

  One of the event coordinators emerged from behind the stage curtain. “Agent Santos?” she said. “You have a phone call. They said it’s important.”

  Victoria felt sudden apprehension. For the past four months, she’d been the FBI’s task force coordinator in the multistate search for a geographically transient serial killer. By far, it was her most important assignment since transferring from hostage negotiation to the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Too often, an “important” message meant very bad news.

  “You can take it in the office,” the assistant said. Victoria followed her behind the stage. They meandered through a dark path of pulleys, ropes and props until they reached the office near the rest rooms. It was a windowless room no bigger than a closet, with books and papers stacked high in every available space. The desk was so cluttered it might have been impossible to find the phone had it not been for the red blinking hold button. Victoria closed the door for privacy and picked up the receiver.

  “Santos,” she answered.

  “Pete Weston here. Sorry to bother you in the middle of your road show, but you told me to call as soon as I had anything.”

  She rubbed the last bit of red dye from her eyebrows, then blinked hard, switching completely out of her training mode. Dr. Weston was a DNA expert in the FBI laboratory at headquarters, one of hundreds of experts she relied on for support.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. “Thanks for working a Saturday. Got my results?”

  “Yes, but you won’t be happy.”

  She sighed, but showed no surprise. “What did you find?”

  “Well, I looked at the specimens from the Eugene, Oregon, scene first. You remember we had some drops of blood in the bathroom, around the sink and tub, well away from the body. Unfortunately, I’m afraid you can rule out your theory that the killer cut himself and left behind a trail of his own blood.”

  “How do you know?”

  “On a hunch I compared the unidentified blood from Oregon to the blood of the other four victims—Cleveland, New York, Arkansas, Miami. I got a match with Miami. He must have taken it with him from the Miami victim, or maybe it had just collected on his knife or soaked into his clothing. He could have frozen it to preserve it, then brought it with him to Oregon and sprinkled it at the scene.”

  “He’s collecting blood now?” she said warily.

  “In a way, yes. But it doesn’t mean you have a vampire on your hands. If you did, you’d probably have me examining blood from blenders and coffee cups by now.”

  Victoria said nothing, though she tended to agree. From the psychological profile she’d helped construct, she already knew the killer was no raving lunatic spewing his own blood, hair and fibers for the police to gather in their evidence bags—the so-called disorganized sociopath. Beyond that, though, no one was sure what they were after. The mixed signals were what made the case so baffling, and the thought of yet another dead end brought a knot to her stomach. “How sure are you about the match with Miami?”

  “Virtually certain.”

  “That’s certain enough for me,” she said. “Given the case history, I guess it was pretty unrealistic to hope for a break that big. Thanks anyway, Doc. You do good work.”

  She hung up, then pushed aside a stack of books to sit on the edge of the desk. After a minute of thought, she dug in her purse for her Dictaphone.

  “Saturday, January eleventh,” she began. “Lab results suggest further modification of profile. Savagery of attacks, level of carnage left behind at crime scenes, absence of actual sexual penetration continue to suggest disorganized qualities. Level of staging and increasing manipulation of evidence, however, indicates a keen presence of mind and well-conceived plan to taunt police and/or thwart the investigation, consistent with an intelligent and organized serial killer.”

  She paused and took a deep breath, as if suddenly comprehending the size of their problem. She switched the Dictaphone back on. “In short,” she said solemnly, “subject can be classified neither as organized nor disorganized. It appears as though we’re dealing with a unique sociopathic hybrid. One killer, with attributes of both.”

  Church let out at noon on that clear but cold Sunday. A call came in to the Candler County sheriff’s office in Metter around twelve-forty-five. The clerical staff didn’t work weekends, but it was time to order new supplies for the detention center on the other side of the sally port, so Barbara Easton was working overtime. The Bible had taught her never to work on Sunday, but she was a nineteen-year-old single mother who needed food on the table. “Sheriff’s office,” she answered in a polite southern drawl.

  “Good afternoon.” The man’s voice was completely calm, lacking any sense of urgency. His speech, however, was thick and gravelly, seemingly disguised. “I want to report a homicide.”

  “A homicide? You mean someone was murdered?”

  “That’s the only kind of homicide I know of.”

  “Where! I’ll call for an ambulance.”

  “Too late. I told you: She’s dead.”

  “Okay, uhm. Just calm down, all right?” She was fidgeting with her hair, speaking more to herself than the caller. “Are you sure she’s dead?”

  “Dead sure. I’m the one who killed her.”

  Her mouth opened but words didn’t follow. “You—” her voice cracked, “you’re calling to report your own murder?”

  “It’s not my murder, missy. I’m not dead. I’m the murderer.”

  The patronizing tone gave his words even more impact. Her hands started to shake, and her mind went blank. “Are you—is this some kind of joke?”

  “Let me put it to you as plain as I can, lady. The last person I talked to is now a bloody mess on her bedroom floor.”

  A lump came to her throat. She’d been a secretary only a month. Her training hadn’t covered this, but her instincts told her to get him to talk to a cop. “Sir, would you like to speak to the sheriff?”

  “I’d like to speak to somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing. Make it fast.”

  “Just one sec.” Her shaky finger hit the HOLD button, then she dropped the receiver and peeled down the hall. “Sheriff!” she shouted. “Come quick!”

  Sheriff John Dutton was in the back, chatting with his deputy by the Mr. Coffee machine. He was fifty-two years old, fair-skinned and freckled with wavy red hair that was turning precipitously gray. Twenty-eight years of cruising in patrol cars and pigging out at the local Egg ’N You Diner had put an extra thirty pounds around his waist. Barbara was panting and wide-eyed with panic when she reached him.

  “Man’s on the line,” she blurted. Her chest was heaving as she tried to catch her breath. “Says he killed someone.”

  He blinked in disbelief, but her eyes told him she was deadly serious. He dropped his chocolate doughnut on the counter and sprinted to the phone. A ringful of keys jingled on his belt loop, and his heavy thighs rubbed together to the tune of tight polyester slacks. He jumped in the chair and caught his breath. “Did he say anything else?” he asked quickly, before getting on the line.

  “Nuh-uh. Just that he killed someone. His voice sounds kind of funny, though. Like maybe he’s disguising it.”

  He grabbed the receiver, then paused and grimaced. For years he’d been pushing for an upgraded phone system, but the county budget didn’t even allow for automatic recording of calls to the new 911 service, let alone to the sheriff’s office. “Fetch me my Dictaphone,” he barked.

  Barbara scrambled across the room to his desk, rifled through a drawer full of pens, pencils, and crumpled candy bar wrappers, and came up with the Dictaphone. She hustled back to the sheriff, who picked up the receiver and switched on the Dictaphone, holding it by the earpiece. He cleared the nervous tickle from his throat and pushed the blinking button on the telephone. “Hello, this is Sheriff John Dutton. Who am I speaking to?”

  “Prince Charles of Wales,” came the sarcastic reply. “I’m not about to tell you who I am,
fool.”

  “Okay, no problem. No problem at all.” He spoke in the even, understanding tone that had kept dozens of domestic disturbances from turning into bloodbaths. “I hear there’s an incident you want to report.”

  “It’s no incident. It’s a homicide.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “What do you want to hear, Sheriff? How she begged me not to do it? Or how she screamed when I did?”

  He drew a deep breath, forcing himself to show no emotion. “So the victim’s a woman, I take it.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Who is she?” He closed his eyes and waited, fearing he might know her.

  “Name’s Gerty. Lives over in Hainesville.”

  He brought his hand to his forehead, grimacing with anguish. Hainesville had but one Gerty; the world knew but one Gerty. He bit back his anger and forced himself to maintain a congenial tone—anything to keep the guy talking. “You sure you don’t wanna tell me who you are now, pardner?”

  “Sure thing. I’m your next-door neighbor, asshole. I’m the guy standing behind you in the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggly.”

  “You got a name?”

  “One more stupid question, Sheriff, and I’m going to have to ask you to put the girl back on the line.”

  “Fair enough. Just stay on the line, okay?” He took a sip of cold coffee from Barbara’s Styrofoam cup, ignoring the lipstick on the rim. “Tell me this much: Did you know Gerty—or did she know you?”

  “Never met her before. Never even laid eyes on her.”

  “Then why in the world would you kill her?”

  “Because I’m a bad person.”

  “Well, you must have some kind of reason. You don’t just kill somebody for no reason.”

  “You’re thinking way too logically, Sheriff.”

  “I just want to know why you did it. That’s all.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you why.” The voice tightened with anger. His speech became slow and deliberate, with eerie pauses between words, as if some other part of him were answering: “Because…I…felt like it.”

  The sheriff winced. It sounded like he meant it—the guy just felt like it. “Where’s she now? Where’s the body?”

  The man sighed, then there was silence. Precious seconds passed. The sheriff felt his throat going dry. He feared he was losing him. “Come on, pardner. Let’s not play games. Where’d you put the body?”

  “I didn’t put her anywhere. I can’t believe you hick-town cops haven’t gotten over there yet. Shit, man, if I had to sit around waiting for you and Barney Fife to find her, no one would ever recognize my work.”

  “Why? How long ago did you kill her? Just tell me that.”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Why’d you wait so long to call us?”

  “I wasn’t through with her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He let out a deep, sarcastic sigh of boredom. “It means that now I am through with her.”

  “You son of a bitch. What did you do to her!” He was on the edge of his seat, his face flushed with anger.

  “Sorry, Sheriff,” he said coolly. “That was your final stupid question.”

  The line clicked, and then came the dial tone.

  Chapter 3

  two rapes, nine robberies and a fatal drive-by shooting. After thirteen years with the Miami Tribune, Mike Posten had seen enough crime to recite the daily tally without emotion, like “two eggs and toast with a side of bacon.”

  At six feet two he could be intimidating when necessary, and some of the characters he met made it absolutely necessary. He was easy to talk to but not a “smooth talker,” with warm brown eyes and a disarming smile that had once made him a bit of a heartthrob after hours. His J-school professors had told him that even though he was no pretty boy, he had the talent and presence to go far at a major television network. For him, however, the printed word was the most rewarding form of journalism. The morning newspaper was the world’s equilibrium. As irreverent as he could be sometimes, he maintained a dedication to his craft that had earned him a Pulitzer and the grudging admiration of his colleagues.

  That Monday morning had been particularly busy, and Mike had wasted most of it in Miami’s “Little Havana” area trying to interview some drunk with vomit on his shoes who said he’d found a nice pair of sneakers in the Dumpster with the feet still in them. Normally Mike would have kept right on working through lunch, but today was a personal matter.

  Lunch-hour traffic was moving briskly across MacArthur Causeway. The six east-west lanes almost seemed to float in the blue-green waters of Biscayne Bay, connecting the skyscrapers of downtown Miami to the neighboring island of Miami Beach. Along the south stretched Government Cut, a narrow waterway for cruise and cargo ships that probed like a mile-long finger from the Atlantic. Waterfront mansions rimmed the private residential islands to the north, home at one time or another to the likes of Al Capone and Julio Iglesias.

  Mike and Karen Posten drove in separate cars from their marriage counselor’s office to the restaurant on Miami Beach. She led in her Infiniti. He followed in his black Saab convertible. It was a metaphor, he thought, for the current state of their marriage—separate, with him in pursuit. Two months ago, she’d suggested he take an apartment. She swore there was no other lover. There was no physical, mental or substance abuse. No money problems. And most of all, no passion. After eight years of marriage, they’d become two very successful people who took each other for granted. At least that’s what their counselor had told them.

  “Lost her,” Mike muttered as he turned north on Ocean Drive. Probably a dozen cars looked exactly like hers—it was south Florida’s current luxury vehicle-of-choice. He would have bet a week’s salary that one of these days while eavesdropping on police radio he’d hear not that the suspect had fled in a white four-door sedan but that he was not driving an emerald black Infiniti.

  He spotted his wife a few blocks ahead, entering one of the sidewalk cafés that made South Beach so popular. Parking was impossible on Ocean Drive, so he curbed his convertible at the valet stand, right behind a flaming red Porsche with a personalized license plate reading UNWED MD. If ever a case could be made in support of drive-by shootings, this guy had to be it.

  Ocean Drive was, by local consensus at least, the most colorful strip of restored Art Deco hotels in the world. On a sunny afternoon like this one, it was a prime cruising lane for people watchers and scantily clad beachgoers. Tourists sipped espresso and conversed in a dozen different languages. Speeding Rollerbladers weaved in and out of pedestrians, excusing everything from sweaty sideswipes to head-on collisions with a glib, “Sorry, dude.”

  Mike had never considered himself one of South Beach’s so-called beautiful people, though his thirty-eight-year-old body was still fit, trimmed by years of discipline at the rowing machine and an undying passion for competitive sports—basketball and racquetball being his favorites. His hairline had given him a brief scare in his early thirties, but the recession had stopped quickly, and it was clear now that his thick, dark mane with flecks of gray would survive middle age.

  Karen was already seated at a wrought-iron table beneath a Cinzano umbrella by the time he got his valet ticket. He made eye contact and waved from across the restaurant. She seemed a little out of place in her pearl necklace and navy blue business suit, but she still looked great, fanning herself with the menu. Her thick auburn hair was shoulder length, slightly longer on the left than the right—a daring cut for the newest partner at Saunders & Sires, Miami’s largest and, by all accounts, stodgiest law firm. At thirty-two she was six years younger than Mike, but she had an uncanny ability to look younger or more mature as the circumstances demanded. Either way, she was striking—deceptively so for a woman who’d finished at the top of her law school class and served as editor in chief of the University of Miami Law Review.

  Mike arrived just as the waiter was setting two salads on the
table.

  “I’m kind of in a hurry,” said Karen, “so I went ahead and ordered for you. Grilled chicken Caesar.”

  “Sounds good.” He pulled up a chair, unfurled the cloth napkin, and then winced curiously at the distinctive shiny metal bowl holding his salad.

  “The salads come in dog bowls,” explained Karen. “That’s why it’s called the Dog Gone Café. Clever, huh?”

  “Oh, it’s beyond clever,” he said, smirking. “I’d say it rivals the kind of trendy logic that would have the Russian Tea Room serving entrées in teacups.”

  They made small talk for a while, then ate in silence, not for lack of anything to say but for lack of nerve to say it. The bowls were nearly empty before either could steer the conversation in a serious direction.

  “Session went well today,” said Mike. “Don’t you think?”

  “Better,” she said, shrugging. “I think we still have a ways to go, though.”

  He looked at his bowl. He was starting to feel like a dog. Throw me a bone, Karen.

  “Mike, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I really wish you wouldn’t always look to me for status reports. It seems like all you ever want to know is how close we are to solving the problem. But you don’t ever really talk about what we have to do to fix things.”

  “Sorry. I was just feeling pretty good about what Dr. Newsome said about our psychological profiles today—that we’re so much alike.”

  Her brow furrowed. “That’s not what she was suggesting. She said we’re the psychological mirror image of each other.”

  “Which means we’re exactly the same.”

  “It means we’re total opposites. When you look in the mirror, everything’s reversed.”

  He averted his eyes, befuddled. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Anything else, folks?” the waiter interrupted.

  “No, thanks,” said Karen. She checked her watch. “Sorry, but I have to scoot back to the firm. I’m deposing a bank vice president at two-thirty.”

  “You mean you’re not staying for the Milk-Bone soufflé?”