To Probe A Beating Heart

by Wren, John B

  “So, if there are three cases of missing kids, the common factor could be something that is not obvious to you or me at first and we depend on the next victim to add to the data base and that may open our eyes.”

  “We have to look pretty hard at everything, and it could be several

  factors that together flip the switch. Why don’t we look at what you have thus far and maybe we will see something?”

  “Okay, I don’t have my data with me, it’s at home. When will you be here again, Doctor?”

  “My name is Alex, and I was planning on next Wednesday. Will you be around then?”

  “I’ll be sure to be here, same time?”

  “Okay, next Wednesday, the twenty sixth, nine am,” he said as he

  made a note on his calendar. “See you then.”

  “Thanks Alex.”

  Jim went home, reviewed all his data and was ready the following Wednesday for his meeting with Alex. At nine am he was on his way up to the second floor office with his data. “Good morning Alex.”

  “Jim, I am anxious to see what you have, come on in.”

  “What I have is three little girls kidnapped over the last two years in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, McKean, Pennsylvania, and Syracuse, New

  York. One, Annette, was seven years old at the time she disappeared, the next, Candice was ten when she disappeared and Megan was eight when she was taken. Two are blond, one is a redhead, all three have blue eyes.”

  “Okay, now what about the insignificant stuff, like what they were wearing, the time of day, day of the week and what they were doing?” “Yeah, I got some of that too, they all disappeared in the summer months, mid week, a Tuesday, a Wednesday and a Thursday, they were all in the afternoon. These three were taken within a one year period, two with blue shorts and white shoes, one with pink shoes and a white skirt and they all had different colored shirts.”

  “What about weather, you know rain, sunshine, cloudy, it may be

  nothing, it may be something?”

  “I can dig that up, I think. I do know that it was raining when Annette was taken, not sure about the others.”

  “Anything unusual about the day they were taken?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Yeah, with Annette, someone saw a dark blue van with tinted windows. And the driver was about five foot seven, to five nine, slight build, short dark hair, blue blazer, blue shirt, red tie, tan pants.”

  “Only about half a million people fit that description, but the van, now that’s something. What the clothes tell us is that the guy may be a professional of some kind, van hints at a family man. Mid afternoon indicates that he has some freedom with his time.”

  “I wish that I had more.”

  “Well you may have more and not know it yet. Are we sure that the same person is responsible for all three of these abductions?”

  “I have no idea, how could we know that?”

  “We keep looking at what we have and look for more. We hope for a break, maybe somebody saw something and doesn’t realize it. We may have to revisit the neighborhood, talk to the people again and see what pops up.”

  “How do we make that happen.”

  “Let me talk to George, he’s a good man, he may already be into it. Jim this is good stuff. I assume that the suits already have all this.”

  “Yeah, I just wanted to know if I was burning time the wrong way. I will keep looking and if you don’t mind, if something else turns up, I’d like to do this again.”

  “Correction Jim, if anything turns up, you damn well better be up

  here with it.”

  “Let me ask you a few questions.”

  “Sure, fire away.”

  “What makes a man do this sort of thing?”

  “Do you want the college version or the simple version?”

  “Let’s keep it simple for now, and we will build as we go along till I hit overload.”

  “Okay, there is no stock answer, it is a very individual thing. The exact same things could present to two or more totally different people and the reactions will probably be as varied as the number of people. That said, sure there are things that tend to elicit a specific response. If I step on your toe, you will probably say ouch, or some variation of ouch. If you did it to a hundred people, you will probably get several phrases that are common to maybe half of the group, then another that are common to about half again.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Okay, now let’s complicate the equation and say that someone has a number of negative experiences, the probability that that individual will try to respond to those experiences increases. So, if a man walks to work every day and whenever it rains, he passes a large puddle at a specific spot. If a car passes by, he gets soaked. So after a while, he finds another route. Another man may respond by screaming at the driver of the car, another may throw a rock at the car. Same experience, different reaction. If I call you an SOB, you might laugh, you might call me a name or you may punch me in the nose.”

  “Okay, I understand all that, but killing someone, isn’t that going to an extreme?”

  “Sure it is, now we begin to deal with psychosis, and the equation becomes more complex. We may have to go back in someone’s history and piece together a profile. The farther back we go, probably the better the resulting profile.”

  “So this predator is reacting to something that happened to him?”

  “We don’t know, as we gather evidence, something may present itself that stands out as reason. More than likely, it will be a number or a combination of things. Now, our problem is not profiling an individual by looking at his past, here we have to develop an identity from the bits and pieces of his actions.”

  “And that’s why there is no such thing as too much information and nothing is left out of our search.”

  “Right, everything we know today could be a piece of the puzzle, by the same token, a lot of the information may be coincidental or meaningless, but at this point, we don’t know.”

  “So gather everything and keep it in the mix until it gets ruled out.”

  “Yeah, sorta, sometimes the true key is not found until long after a

  case is closed, so you hang on to everything.” Alex’s phone rang and he

  turned to answer it. He indicated that he had to take this call .

  “Thanks Alex, I really appreciate this, I can see that I have a lot to

  learn about these kind of people.”

  Alex paused his call and said to Jim, “Listen, check in every couple of weeks whether you have something or not.”

  “Okay, see you in a week or two.” Jim went back down stairs and was heading for his car.

  “Hey partner, what’s happening upstairs, you talking to the D’s?”

  “No, I met with Alex Robertson, showed him what I have and asked a few questions. Learned a bunch, and see that I may have already passed over something critical and never knew it.”

  “Well give me a ride home and tell me about it. Nancy has the car

  today, so I am on foot.”

  “Get in old man and I talk your ear off.”

  Through the rest of the summer and into the fall, Jim stopped in to see Alex every other week at first and by December it was once a month. Their conversations centered on things that Jim had found and how these things might be used to identify their predator. Over the winter Alex was lecturing at a few other colleges and the visits dropped to one in January and one in March.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  They want to know what we know . . .

  In June of 1993, Averell was in Sandusky, about to head to Toledo to

  finish a west bound trek. He was still checked into a motel and decided to keep the room at least for the night. It was 2:45 in the afternoon and he thought about getting dinner and perhaps taking in a movie.

  “An opportunity to play again, my friend.”

  “Yes, we c
ould go west and after come back here for the night.”

  “We could do that, easily. And we know a place.”

  Averell went to the theater and bought a ticket to the evening showing of a film he had seen several times. He made sure that his tools were in the car and headed west on I-90. He passed Toledo at 4:00 pm and was in Goshen, Indiana at 6:35 pm. He had gone over the speed most of the way and not had any sightings of police. The trip back to Sandusky would be completely within the limits of the law. He wandered a bit through residential areas looking at the children playing in yards. Most of the kids were in groups which was problematic and he continued on his way. It was almost 7:30 when he spotted a prime target. Kathy Callen was obviously older than the others, walking alone, carrying a couple of books and day dreaming, looking at the flowers, watching the squirrels and birds. She was thin, in a model sort of way, probably five foot five tall and maybe a hundred pounds. The attraction, however, was more due to her blond hair pulled back into a pony tail, the blue eyes and the blue denim skirt and a light blue blouse she was wearing, complete with the white shoes that Averell so associated with Sarah. She was walking in an area that was shaded by trees, and between two well separated houses. He passed the girl and stopped below a wide spreading oak tree. He got out, opened the back door and paced back and forth next to his car, holding a map and looking very confused. This ploy had worked before and the young girl appeared no wiser than the others he had fooled.

  “Excuse me miss, could you tell me how to get to Main Street, I have to pick up my mother?”

  “Oh, I don’t know any of the streets except this one and that one at the corner. That is where I live.”

  “Are you going home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could I ask your daddy where Main Street is?”

  “No, he is at work until late, but my mom is home.”

  “Great, I will follow you home and ask your mom.”

  That seemed to make Kathy relax and turn to walk toward her street. As she turned, Averell put one hand over her mouth and the other hand grabbed her around the waist and launched her into the SUV. As he pushed her into the seat he reached back and pulled the door closed. He was on top of her and pushed his hand into her face preventing her from screaming. He had a gag at the ready and stuffed it into her mouth and pulled a piece of pre-cut duct tape off the back of the driver’s seat and put it over her mouth. He grabbed a pull tie and secured her hands and another for the ankles of the thrashing girl. He buckled the seat belt and used a third pull tie to restrict her hand movement, securing them to the seat belt. He crawled between the front bucket seats and positioned himself behind the wheel. As he started the engine, and slowly drove below the speed limit heading toward the Interstate, he noted that the time was 7:48pm.

  “Nicely done.”

  “Yes, it was,” Averell said as his breathing slowed. He was now on the ramp to I-90 East and Kathy’s mother was just beginning to wonder what was taking her so long to get home.

  “She probably ran into some of her friends or maybe that boy she

  has been talking about. She will call or be here soon,” she said to herself. An hour later, Averell had reached his wooded area just across the state line in Ohio and Dorothy Callen had called the police and a full scale search was beginning to unfold. It was almost 9:00 pm and daylight was fading, Averell was torturing the little girl and her mother and father were still searching the fields around their home. The police had widened the search area to a 20 mile radius around the home. Averell was about eighty miles away, taking the girl apart limb by limb as the search was still being developed, it covered less than half the distance to the wooded area where Kathy finally and mercifully stopped breathing. Averell was excited and very pleased with the time he spent with Kathy. He had explained to her what he was going to do and as she listened, he started with his probes and she whimpered but very quietly, he opened her chest and she passed out, but he did see her heart as it pulsed for the final time. When he finished, Averell dismembered her body and collected all of Kathy’s parts, putting them in bags as he had done previously and then followed his ritual of rinsing himself off five times in a nearby stream. Cleansed and collected, Averell drove to Maplewood Memorial Park, a cemetery about 5 miles from the woods covering the distance to the cemetery before mid night. He had checked the newspaper and this cemetery had a burial that day. The grave site was easily found and digging was not difficult. Averell placed the three bags containing his latest subject in the hole and he replaced the dirt. The sod was destined to be placed the next day and as he was tamping the ground with his feet, he saw a vehicle come in the entrance moving in his direction. The car dipped between two of the low rolling hills and did not reappear. “A late night visit to a grave site?”

  “Or a couple of kids who can’t afford a motel room?”

  He gave the dirt a final brush with his hands, put all his tools away and started his van then drove slowly away with no lights. There was just enough light from the moon to allow him to pull out a service road and away from the cemetery without using his headlights. As soon as he was on a highway, he turned on his headlights and drove directly toward the interstate.

  “We’re safe.”

  “Yeah, safe.”

  At 1:23 in the morning, Averell was back in his motel in Sandusky and standing in the shower. He awoke at 7:30 in the morning and went down to breakfast where he took the movie theater ticket and tore it in half putting one piece in his pocket and the other in a trash container. After breakfast, he returned to his room to pack up and get ready to get on the road. He turned on the television and caught a news report. No mention of any girl missing in Indiana. He wondered if she had been missed yet, and he sat on the floor in a corner with his back touching two walls.

  “I want to know what they know.”

  “They want to know what we know.”

  “We have to be very careful, I think we will be very quiet for a

  while.”

  “Yeah, good idea.”

  “Maybe they saw something, like the SUV, it sticks out, we could be identified.”

  “Maybe somebody saw your fat lip.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “We will look at new cars when we are back in Rochester.”

  “Another van?”

  “We will look.”

  “Yeah.”

  He sat in the corner, not saying anything for an hour, his head drooped, he fell asleep.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  The next one, yes, the next one . . .

  Averell woke around noon to the sound of the maid rattling door knobs.

  “Still here, but I will be out in a few minutes.”

  “It’s okay,” said the Spanish accent, “checkout was at noon, ten minutes ago, maybe I am not here yet, okay.”

  “Thanks, I’ll hurry.”

  “Okay.”

  Averell had already packed up and had simply to vacate the room, he hurriedly visited the bathroom and was out the door when the maid said, “You just leave me the keys and I will tell them you were gone before noon.”

  Averell looked at her name tag and said to the short, overweight and almost elderly woman, “Maria, you are a beautiful person.”

  Maria giggled and said, “Oh Mr. Danker, you are always so nice.”

  Averell loaded his car and drove out of the lot heading east.

  The trip east was longer than he had anticipated. It seemed as though everyone on his list wanted more of everything in anticipation of the upcoming school year. He decided to violate his rule of two stops per day and was making three most days and staying longer in each town to make sure he hit everybody he could. His normal two week trek west took over three weeks, but the orders made it worth his while. When he finally made it back to his base in Rochester, he looked at his records and said, “Holy—, I could take a few months off, wow, I did damn good this trip.”

  “So, we
look at new cars now, right?”

  “Right, a new buggy for Averell.”

  “And me too?”

  “Yeah, and you.”

  Averell drove to the dealer where he had purchased the van and the SUV. He was greeted by a salesman and he asked, “Is Tom Walters here today?”

  “Tom, oh he is no longer here, I can help you though,” said the salesman.

  “No that’s alright, do you know where he went?”

  “Ah, well I think he went to our dealership on the east side of town, on Clark Street.”

  “I know where that is, thanks,” and he left.

  When he arrived at the Clark Street lot, Averell saw Tom in the showroom talking to some people. He parked his SUV and walked into the showroom and as a salesman approached him, he said, “I want to talk to Tom when he is free.”

  “Oh, okay, Mr. Walters is very busy today, could I tell him what this is about?”

  “Sure, I want to buy a car.”

  “Well he usually leaves that up to the sales team, that’s us on the floor.”

  “Really, well—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, Tom crossed the room and extended his hand, “Averell, how have you been?”

  Averell looked at the salesman and said, “That’s why I wanted to see Tom, I haven’t seen him in a coupla’ years and he remembers me.” “Not bad for an old guy, eh Averell. Dave I’ll handle this one and put it on your tab.”

  “Oh sure Mr. Walters, sure.”

  “You seem to be doing pretty well here,” said Averell.

  “Yeah, well after you bought that monster out there,” he said, pointing at Averell’s SUV, “the manager’s slot came open at this place and I jumped on it.”

  “So what can I do for you today?” asked Tom.

  “Well, it’s time for a change, a new buggy for Averell.”

  “How did the SUV work out, I mean, that’s a lot of vehicle there, you sure that you need a change. How many miles have you put on it?”

  “Well, I have about 140,000 miles on it now, and it rides like a champ. But I don’t want to hold on too long and be surprised with repairs when it starts to come apart.”