To Probe A Beating Heart

by Wren, John B

  He slammed the trunk and got behind the wheel and drove away in a very controlled and legal manner. He drove for about an hour when he saw the dirt road and turned in and went to the clearing. Nobody was there, all of the tire tracks were obviously old and the grass was growing straight. He got out of the car, looked around and listened. Satisfied that he was completely alone, he walked into the woods a very short distance and found another smaller clearing that would do for his purposes.

  Averell returned to the car, looked around and opened the trunk. Allison was red faced with swollen eyes and her hands were almost blue. She looked terrified.

  “Oh did I make the tie too tight?”

  “That was very un-thoughtful of you. You should apologize. Now.”

  “You are right, Oh young lady, I am so sorry for making the tie too tight.”

  “Not bad you liar, you’d have made it tighter if you knew it would hurt.”

  Allison was scared and confused, the man was talking to himself and he was hurting her.

  “Now remember, I told you before, we should tell her what was going to happen before we do it and watch her eyes.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember.”

  “Well Sarah,” he said as he pulled her out of the trunk, “we are going to have some fun with you. You are my little toy and I am going to see what you are like inside. I am going to probe you with my probes and then cut you open with my knife and see your heart while it is still beating.”

  Allison was screaming into her gag as Averell watched her eyes bulge and tear.

  “And then?”

  “Oh yes, and then I will cut off your arms.”

  Allison was in a complete panic and almost swallowed her gag. Averell laughed, “This is great.”

  “And ?”

  “And then I will cut off your legs.”

  Allison was out of control, she was vomiting into her gag and Averell pulled it off. She gagged and vomited more and screamed.

  “And?”

  “And then, when I am finished, I will kill you, okay.”

  Allison passed out.

  “I may have already killed her.”

  “Check her pulse.”

  Averell cut the tie on her wrists and checked for a pulse. Then he

  checked her neck. She was still alive.

  “We may not have a lot of time, we should go for seeing the heart first.”

  “You’re right,” and with that Averell laid Allison on the ground and started to remove her blouse. “This is very awkward, I want her to stand. Let’s tie her to that tree.” He lifted her and held her arms over her head and spread between two branches. She was half suspended with her knees bent about a foot off the ground and her feet dragging in the dirt. He stripped her to the waist and used his box cutter to make an incision starting at her neck and extending down to her navel. he made two more cuts and opened her exposing her ribs. He saw her heart, beating.

  “Do you see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that cool or what?”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Now I want to see what happens when I cut her throat.”

  “Okay.”

  He took a probe and thrust it through her carotid artery, blood flowed freely for a few seconds and then stopped, the heart muscle stopped pulsing and he lifted her eye lid.

  “Aw, nobody’s home.”

  “That was amazing.”

  Averell was covered in sweat, he was exhausted. He cut the ties that held Allison in place and placed her on a drop cloth. He proceeded to dismember her body and get ready to bury her at the cemetery. As he cut her apart he envisioned Sarah was laying in front of him and he smiled.

  He imagined Ellie standing next to him criticizing the way he cut into

  Sarah’s flesh and he thought about cutting Ellie next. He smiled.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “Oh, nothing, I am just enjoying the great outdoors.”

  “I see, you’re thinking about Sarah and Ellie. They could be next and this place is perfect. I wonder where they are right now, what they are doing?”

  Averell seemed to snap out of a day dream, “First things first, we have to get this one to the cemetery.”

  “What do you think about burying her here in this place? Phil said nobody comes here. No transportation, no risk.”

  “You know that may be a good idea.”

  He went to the trunk, got out the shovel and looked around for a spot to dig. “Here, this could be good.” He started to dig. After an hour he had a pit deep enough for the three bags. He put them in and started to fill in the hole.

  “Rocks, we should use rocks.”

  “Yes rocks.” He looked around and found a few rocks that he put in the grave. He put more dirt and walked around again looking for rocks. Another hour passed and the job was done.

  Averell was exhausted, completely drained. He sat on the ground and noticed his clothes. Soaked in blood. He stood, stripped and put all his clothes in a plastic bag. He double bagged everything and put it in his trunk. He was naked standing next to his car, thinking. “Water, I need water.” He put clean clothes in a bag and walked into the woods, carrying the bag and a beach towel, in the direction that Phil had indicated there was a stream.

  The water was cold but the air was warm. He waded in a few feet and the bottom was starting to drop off. He dove in and swam for a few minutes and climbed out refreshed. “That was nice, a little chilly, but nice.” He waded in again till the water was up to his waist and he squatted down allowing himself to be completely submerged. He stood and took a deep breath, then he squatted again. He stayed under as long as he could and then stood, gulping another large breath. He repeated the process two more times, each time staying under as long as he could. After the fifth full dip, he slowly walked out of the stream and dried himself off, then dressed and made his way back to the car. The only sign of his activity was the blood on the ground. Anybody would assume that a deer was taken here and this is where it bled out. He went to the car and checked for all his tools. He took everything that had mud or blood on it to the stream and washed it off.

  After loading the car, he checked his watch, it was 8:36 pm. He calmly drove out of the woods and back on the road toward Erie. Once again he would bury his mileage and come back in this direction the following day as if he had not been there. Everything was working out, he felt very safe very comfortable.

  * * *

  Jim McClarry heard a news report that evening about a girl missing in Elyria, Ohio. When he got home he tuned in the evening news. The information was not complete and he waited until morning to read about it in the newspaper. He cut out the news article and folded it so that it would fit in a file folder, added all the information about Allison into his data base and put another pin in his map in Elyria, Ohio. It is on Interstate 90 about thirty five miles west of Cleveland Heights and other similarities were there. There were now four cases that were of greatest interest ranging from Goshen, Indiana to Syracuse, New York and the one odd case in Syracuse. It was Wednesday, Alex might be in the station today and Jim was anxious to get the newest information on the table. He drove to work and went directly to Alex’s office. No luck. He asked George if Alex would be in.

  “Not today, he went to Chicago for the day, making a presentation on something to do with teenage runaways. If you have something we will bring him up to speed later.”

  “Okay, there was another girl taken from Elyria yesterday. She is in tune with the other three blond, blue eyed victims all the way down to white shoes, blue shorts and within ten miles of the interstate ninety

  corridor.”

  “So we now have four that fit your profile?”

  “Yeah, well sort of, there are four plus several others that don’t fit, but could all still be the victims of one predator.”

  “Okay Jim, are you on the road today, or off?”

  “On the road, and I better get downstairs before roll call or Jeff will los
e his sense of humor.”

  “Right, when is your next day off?”

  “I’m scheduled off on Friday.”

  “You don’t have any plans, do you?”

  “I guess not, I have a date Friday night, but the day is open.”

  “Good, I’ll see you then, and maybe Alex will be in too. He’s due back in town late Thursday afternoon and he usually checks in when he gets back from one of his speaking gigs.”

  “Okay, I’ll be here.”

  Friday came and Jim showed up in the detectives area. Alex arrived an hour later and was carrying a box of file folders. “Hey Jim, I know about Allison and I know that you want to talk, but I have another case in Chicago that they need a read on early next week.”

  Jim was not pleased that he was bumped to second place on Alex’s priority list, but he understood. “Understood, what do you have in the box?”

  “If you really want to know, you can help me sort it out.”

  “I had to ask, but if I can help, I have the rest of the day open.”

  “First things first, you get us some coffee and I will see if we can

  take over the conference room and spread this mess out.” Jim went to the kitchen and loaded up two large coffee mugs with too much sugar and cream and headed back to the conference room.

  “Just the way you like it Doc.”

  “Okay, let’s sort this stuff by date and victim, then we start to read

  through it.”

  “Sounds familiar, we’ve been down this road before.”

  “Not all cases are the same, but we seem to do a lot of the same stuff on every one. This time we have a couple of possible suspects. Each one has an alibi of sorts and of course none of these people would ever hurt a kid.”

  “Have you met each of them?”

  “Yeah, two men and a woman.”

  “A woman?”

  “Jim, what you have to learn, yes, a woman. She is a piece of work

  and so are the two guys. They all have records of molesting children, and she worse than either one of the other two. She liked them both, boys and girls, the younger the better.”

  “I have not given thought to it maybe being a woman. Of course, the witness at Annette’s nabbing was not all that definitive, but the suspect she described was surely a man. Of course he could have had an accomplice, maybe a woman, damn.”

  “Yeah, the other two are no better, all three ought to be locked up

  forever. I’m a psychologist, supposed to understand people and show

  compassion, understanding, but these three have busted too many rules.”

  “What makes a person do this stuff, Alex?”

  “Nothing ‘makes’ them do anything, the different psychoses allow

  them to act out in different ways. Take this one, the woman, her name is Eleanor, she is a sociopath. She has no feelings of guilt for hurting anybody else. To her, whatever works for her at the moment is okay. So she could be doing something minor, but illegal, like parking in a handicap zone, even though she is perfectly healthy. And if you saw her she may have no reservations about killing you to keep you quiet. That’s extreme but real. There is no balance between cause and effect. There is no conscience, a sociopath has no empathy for others.”

  “Could our predator be in that group. He, or she may have taken

  these kids and after he or she finishes with them, he or she kills them just to keep from getting caught.”

  “Yes, and again, there are no hard and fast rules. Just as easily, he could keep them alive so that he could abuse them again and again. Then, when he has used them as much as he cares to, he can dispose of them, any way he wishes. Remember, he writes his own rules.”

  “So this Eleanor is like that, what a b—.”

  “Exactly, then there is this character, Mark, he’s psychotic, not living in the real world. He has delusions, hears voices. The voices tell him to do things and he does. So a voice may say ‘Let’s kill Joe’ and Mark picks up a rock and bashes Joe’s head in. Again an extreme example, but real none the less.”

  “Delightful, so who do you trust?”

  “Well there we are, not knowing who can be trusted until they display some symptom of their problem. If we are lucky, we catch it early on and with proper treatment, some of this negative stuff can be avoided. But we are dependent on good diagnoses and proper treatment.”

  “What kind of treatment?”

  “Prescribed medication, psychotropic drugs, the right dose of the right drug can keep some of these characters from doing any damage. Again, it depends on proper treatment, meaning they take their drugs on schedule, see their analyst on a regular basis, usually takes another party to watch over them and keep them in line.”

  “What about the other one, you only mentioned two?”

  “Oh yeah, Paul. This one is a pedophile, a sexual deviant. He has urges that he cannot control. He sees a kid, boy or girl and he wants to do things to them that turn your guts. He has been convicted once for molesting a three year old girl. Can you imagine that, three?”

  “What treatment do you have for that kind of person?”

  “I never said this, and you never heard it, but I would toss this one in a blender and dump it in the sewer.”

  “Could our guy be like that?”

  “Yeah, he could be.”

  They finished sorting the files and started reading. By the end of the day they were not even half way through the piles. Jim had a date and Alex had a number of calls to make so they made a few final notes and got up to leave.

  “Jim, thanks for your help today, I really appreciate this.”

  “I wish that I could say it was fun, but that would be a lie. Are you

  going to save the rest for Monday?”

  “Wish that I could, but no, I’ll be back here tomorrow morning,” he said as he rubbed his eyes.

  “Tell you what Doc, you sleep in till noon, buy us some decent coffee and I’ll meet you here around one and we can wade through the rest of this sh . . . stuff.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know, one o’clock, not before.”

  “No argument.” And the two left the station.

  A month later, on Tuesday, August 23, 1994 in Utica, New York, a seven year old girl disappeared. Her remains were never found, so it cannot be categorically stated that she was murdered. Sandy Furnasco was walking from her home to a park less than two blocks away. She never arrived at the park. At the time of her disappearance, Averell was in Elyria, Ohio meeting with a manager of a distribution center.

  Wednesday morning, Jim McClarry was reading the Cleveland Plain Dealer and saw the article about Sandy. He immediately added her to his map and the data base and noted that he now had a total of six girls along the interstate ninety corridor that were of interest. Four of them were still alone as a group and the other two, Megan and Sandy were possible but unlikely candidates for their predator, but there was nothing concrete to tie these two to the others. As he was thinking about the number of possible scenarios he realized he was going to be late for roll call. He tossed the rest of his coffee, it was cold anyway and grabbed a banana and headed out the door.

  “You’re a little late this morning, Jim,” said Jeff as Jim came into the locker room. “Alex is upstairs and asking for you. Why don’t you go on up and I’ll have Tony ride with Sean today.”

  “Thanks Jeff, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jim took two stairs at a time

  going up and spotted Alex immediately. “Alex, you looking for me?”

  “Jim, did you see the paper this morning?”

  “Yeah, the girl in Utica, New York. I saw that, But she is not in line with the profile that we are building. Maybe we are all wrong in our

  assumptions. This little girl and the others could all be victims of our

  guy.”

  “Could be one, two or more bad guys, we just don’t know.”

  “Well, we have to make some assumptions and push har
der. I feel terrible, like I shouldn’t do anything else until we get this guy, or guys. We have got to do better than just keeping track of these missing kids.”

  “Jim, I have worked with this group of detectives for almost twelve years and I have learned some things. The best cop in all of creation can only know what there is to know. We have looked at everything and we know very little. Hell the stuff that you are pulling together is terrific. Yeah, maybe the team here would have put the same info together in time, but the fact is, they didn’t. You have done some damn fine work, Jim, so hold your head up. You know that police work can be very frustrating. We are stuck with what we know, and what we can surmise from that. We solve many cases because we get a tip from some guy, from south somewhere, and it proves to be the glue that holds the case together. In this case what we know for sure is very little, what we surmise, well we’re going to see, today. That’s why you are up here with us today, we are going to do a brain dump from everyone on this case and wade through it again, see what seems to stand out.”