To Probe A Beating Heart

by Wren, John B

  “Adam, it’s almost nine, I’ll give Averell a kick in the butt,” said Bart with an evil grin.

  “No, I got him.” Adam stood and took a cup of coffee to the room.

  “Averell get up, it’s time for us to talk again, now, tell me about Barbara.”

  “Who?”

  Barbara Harkin, Auburn, New York, July eleventh nineteen ninety six, come on, you are starting to waste my time and I am becoming impatient. Now Barbara Harkin?”

  “I remember Auburn and The Finger Lakes” and Averell began to talk about Barbara. He finished with, “I gave her a nice spot where she could see the lake and marked her with some stones. She was very good, she was almost perfect.” He smiled as he remembered. His eyes seemed to glass over.

  Adam let him drift into a sleep.

  “We will do this again at ten. Rebecca Markum is next.”

  “We only have him figured for one a year, could he have done others as well?” asked Andy.

  “I suppose, we will start the next one with that question and work up to Rebecca.” said Adam.

  At ten o’clock Adam entered the room. “Averell, get up, let’s get

  through this so you can be returned.”

  “Returned, I don’t understand.” said Averell.

  “Hell, I don’t know, if you tell us everything, then you get the clean cell in a segregated wing. If you don’t, you get put in with the general population, they don’t like your kind, so no tellin’ what will happen there. One guy lasted for a year, but he had to work for it, anyway, you were about to tell me if there were any others that I missed. I want everything. So, go ahead.”

  “I don’t remember names, not all names, some I never knew.”

  “Okay, give me something, a place where else did you find someone in ninety six?”

  “In nineteen ninety six she was the only one, Barbara.”

  “So what about ninety five?”

  “We were in Sandusky, Ohio, found someone who did not cooperate at all.” As he spoke, he was becoming agitated, angry.

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Rebecca Markum, August sixteenth nineteen ninety five. Ring any bells?”

  “Yeah, I remember her, she really pissed me off.”

  “Averell, you better tell me everything, understand?”

  “Yeah,” and he started into a tirade about wanting to see her heart, but she died before he could, followed by a detailed description of the butchery that followed. Andy and Bart got everything on tape and Adam walked out of the room feeling sick to his stomach.

  “I need a break guys.”

  “Understood Adam,” said Bart, “We all do.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Bart checked the in room cameras. Averell was pacing, sweating and pacing and muttering to himself.

  “Adam, I think our friend is going to explode, take a look.”

  “Okay, time in, let’s see where this takes us.” And Adam went into the room.

  “Averell, stop pacing and sit down.” He complied and sat, breathing heavily and very red faced.

  “Now Averell, let us continue. What else did you do in ninety five?”

  “Nothing.”

  “We’ll see, hope you are telling me the truth. So we move on to ninety four, tell me about Allison.”

  “I saw her heart beating, she was great.” Averell was beginning to perspire, within a minute he was soaked with sweat as he spoke about seeing Allison’s heart and watching it stop. Again a full detailed description and the team pushed for another before taking a break.

  “In nineteen ninety three, you took Kathy Callen from Goshen

  Indiana.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “Same place as we took Allison.” and he once again gave a detailed description of what happened.

  “He must relive this stuff frequently to remember this amount of detail,” said Andy.

  Averell completed his description of Kathy, then Candice. Finally Adam was going to hear about Annette.

  “So in ninety one you took a little girl from Cleveland Heights.”

  “We, I had to plan, needed a place where I would not be disturbed. So I found a farm house out on Barkham Lane about four miles from the freeway. I watched the place for a few weeks and nobody came around. Used the barn and cleaned up in the house. Used it three times, then somebody started to work on the place and I had to find something else.”

  “Okay, so who was the first one in the barn?”

  “The woman was difficult to handle and she was still a bit bigger than I wanted. So I had to get someone smaller. I looked at a few of those punk teenage girls, but they were still too big. Then I found this little girl. She was walking in the rain and I almost hit her with my car.” He laughed,

  “She might have liked that better.”

  Right there Adam knew it was Annette. “What was her name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Where was this almost accident?”

  “In Cleveland Heights, on Ashton, I think.”

  “You’re not sure? What was she wearing?” asked Adam.

  “I remember, it was a pink shirt, blue denim shorts and white shoes. Yeah, she was a blond with blue eyes.”

  “And where did you put her?”

  “What about what I did to her?” Averell asked, breathing hard and looking excited.

  “Okay, what did you do to her?”

  Averell described the process from his perspective. As he talked, he became very agitated and seemingly confused. He clearly did do what he claimed, but the sequence could be off. As he was talking, Adam noticed Averell sweating, his muscles were tensed, the veins bulged on his neck and head. The description was more than Adam wanted to hear, but he had to get it all. Adam was a pro, he could do this sort of thing with any other psycho, but he was now talking about his own little cousin. He wanted so much to punch Averell, to grab a knife and slit his throat, but he controlled himself. Now came the last question, “Where did you put Annette?”

  “Annette, that’s her name, I remember that now.”

  “Averell, where is she?”

  “Oh, she’s gone, I buried her.”

  “Where?”

  “In the cemetery, where they found Melissa. I put someone else, in a cemetery.”

  “The same cemetery?”

  “No, I used a couple of different ones.”

  “But Annette is in the same one that Melissa was found in?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that one.”

  “Where in that cemetery, it is a big place?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember. One that was just dug.”

  Adam knew that should be enough to find Annette and said, “Okay Averell, who was next?”

  Averell wanted to talk about Annette, now that he remembered her name and was seeing her more clearly. “What about Annette, there’s more?”

  Adam needed a break and doubted that there was any more to hear and replied, “What have I told you, Averell, I ask, you answer.” With that he turned and walked out of the cell.

  “Hey, come back, there’s more.”

  The team had a hard time listening to the discussion about Annette, but all sessions were taped and copies of each session were made onto DVD’s.

  Averell was pushed for more and he opened up about Marlene and Sleepy. Adam called a time out and left the building phoning his contact. He told him that everything was going well and he would be e-mailing the electronic files of Averell’s statements. He asked for a definition of ‘Sleepy’, looks like he was probably the first victim. Marlene was probably in the same time frame, and both, he surmised were probably before Annette. He drove out of the parking area and was turning on the highway when a police cruiser pulled up next to him. He rolled down his window and said,

  “Is there a problem, officer?”

  “No. Are you Adam?”

  “Yes, what’s happening?”

  “Nothing
, I was told to contact you as soon as I could and let you know that I am running security on this site. My name is Sam,” and he handed Adam a piece of paper. “This is my cell number for this project, you need, you call. If I am not on, I contact our man in place.” “Thanks, we’re in good shape, probably finish early at this rate. I’m heading out to dinner, are you hungry?”

  “Thanks, but this may be our only face to face. We’re family, not

  friends.” Sam laughed.

  “It works for all of us, Sam. Take care, stay healthy.”

  “Will do,” and Sam continued his patrol.

  Adam drove down the road about a mile and pulled into a fast food restaurant. He bought four meals with drinks and headed back to the building.

  “Hey guys, my treat, got you some fine dining here.”

  “Adam, your timing is great, Averell is talking in his sleep.” said

  Andy.

  The four of them sat around the monitor and watched, listened and ate their gourmet grub as they listened for anything intelligible.

  “A lot of nonsense, but you never know,” said Bart.

  “Let’s help him out,” said Andy.

  Adam took the microphone and spoke in a low easy voice, “Averell why did you hurt Sleepy?”

  “Drunk, sloppy, drunk,” he muttered.

  “Where did you put him?”

  “Didn’t put him, left in bushes, drunk, knife,” he said.

  “Tell Adam everything, okay?”

  “Everything, okay.”Adam turned off the microphone and said “Keep listening, we will wake him in about an hour.”

  The group finished eating and cleaned up. Adam again changed his

  shirt and checked his laptop for messages. After an hour, Adam went into the cell and said “Averell, time to talk. We have another question for you. Wake up.”

  Averell moved, they had let him sleep almost three hours, now he was sitting up on the floor. He looked around the room and noted the table and chair were gone, his pail was on the floor and a bottle of water was next to it.

  “So, Averell we want to know about the others” said Adam. “Let’s start with Sleepy, tell me about him.”

  “Sleepy, he—.”

  A beeping sound caught Adam’s attention and he turned and walked out of the room. “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem, Adam, you have an e-mail,” said Andy.

  Adam came out and opened the message.“What do we have?” said

  Bart.

  “Sleepy may be a guy named George Deitz, his body was found in a rest area in Ohio in July, 1990. He was stabbed and left in the bushes.”

  “That fits,” said Andy, “ What else?”

  “There was a Marlene Fielding, murdered in Toledo that same year. They are both kind of on his sales route.” said Adam.

  He read through the rest of the message and went back into the cell, saying, “We have a winner.” He entered the cell and said to Averell, “We have to talk about George, or as you called him, Sleepy.” Averell thought for a moment, trying to remember the name in

  ‘Sleepy’s’ wallet. “I don’t know his name. It was an accident.”

  “No, no Averell, an accident is when you trip into him and he is cut, this was a knife being jammed into his guts and the killer tried to split him open. That was not an accident, and the second cut was from ear to ear, that was no accident either. The two together spell m-u-r-d-e-r and you did it.”

  Averell looked defeated, beaten, wanting to go to sleep. “Yeah, he

  came at me and I stuck him in the guts. Then I made sure he was dead.”

  “You mean you cut his throat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You see Averell, that was easy, now tell me about Marlene.”

  “Marlene, was. She was a bitch. She needed to die. I did a good thing with Marlene.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “We picked her because she was not a nice person, she was screwing over an ex husband and did not respect anybody else, she needed to go away.”

  “Who is ‘We’ that you refer to?” asked Adam, “You mean Stelian?”

  “I meant me, I picked her.”

  “Okay, so you did this by yourself, you decided, and Stelian didn’t

  help.”

  “Yes, by myself.”

  “How did you get her to come into the building with you, where you killed her?” asked Adam.

  “I hit her on the head with a sap and put her in the back of my van.”

  “Your dark blue van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It had tinted windows, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Averell was starting to enjoy talking about doing Marlene. This was the first one that he had selected and planned out. He continued, “She was heavy, hard to move around, but I got her in the van and took her to the building. Then when she was starting to come around, the dizzy bitch walked from the van to the table that we used.”

  Averell grinned, thinking about it. Over the next hour, he went into detail about how he set Marlene up to be played with and how it ended. When finished, Averell was tired and starting to slur his words. Adam figured that enough had been accomplished for this session and allowed that Averell could have a “Happy Meal” and be allowed to fall asleep.

  The team assembled the taping of Averell’s monologue and added some notes. It was electronically stored and copied to the legal contact in Boston. He would gather all the information and be prepared to release it to the authorities when the interrogation was complete.

  After an hour of sleep, Adam once again woke Averell and said, “Well Averell, that was good. Now we would like to hear about the next one. Who did you kill next?” He had a listing of a number of people that had disappeared and were still missing. Marlene was killed in August 1990 and none of those listed seemed to be in the right geographic area until Annette in August of 1991, but that did not mean that one of the unlikely ones had not fallen prey to Averell.

  Averell looked confused, but did not want to ask a question. He said, “We had to plan better. Marlene was messy.”

  “You and Stelian had to plan better?”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  There should be two grave sites here . . .

  Sean knew more than he allowed Jim to see. A word in the right ear brought a response from the same source that had contacted Jim previously with another phone call to his home.

  Once again, Margo answered the phone and handed it to Jim with that same quizzical look, “It sounds like that Irish guy again.”

  Jim took the phone, “Hello, this is Jim. “

  “Jimmy boy, you’ve lost our favorite suspect, have ya’ now?”

  “I haven’t lost anybody, but I think you may have abducted someone.”

  “Remember the rules, Jimmy boy, ask me no questions and I’ll tell

  you no lies.”

  “So you do have him.”

  “That’s a question and no matter what the truth is, the response would be the same, I don’t want you even thinking that I might be lying, so I’ll not answer you.”

  Jim knew that this was going nowhere and any information would have to come from a civil conversation. “Okay, I give up, I suppose that I will assume that if you do have him, he is being treated with the respect that a human being deserves, and if you learn anything, you would share that with me?”

  “Jimmy, you’re a fine young man. I will say this, whatever we learn in our investigation, where ever it comes from, and from whomever, you will be completely informed. As far as treatment of Mr. Danker, I have never met the man, but I can assure you that we would not harm a hair on his head.”

  “So you would turn him over to us?”

  “You’re assumin’ that we have him.”

  * * *

  The team’s work was almost done. Averell was fed and allowed to sleep for a full eight hours. The team had assembled the information into two identical
packages and sent them to a contact in Boston. One package was to be delivered anonymously to James O’Leary at the O’Leary Law Firm in Boston and the other was to be sent via FedEx to Jim McClarry in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The O’Leary Law Firm was founded over a hundred years ago and had been the prime family business all that time. The Clan had used this firm over those one hundred plus years on several occasions and this was no exception. The story of Carl Mason was well known to the firms attorneys and the thought that this may happen again someday was joked about but never really seriously considered. So when the youngest Mr. O’Leary received a call from a man with a slight brogue and the name Aaron, he was stunned, and a bit apprehensive.

  “You’ll be receivin’ a package this afternoon lad,” said Aaron, “open it and that’ll be our line for communication.”

  Puzzled, Jimmy agreed and went immediately to the firm’s senior partner and told him about the call. Thomas O’Leary told Jimmy to sit and wait for the delivery. He called in the other partners and they discussed the situation.

  “Not a lot of choice here, is there Tom?” said his brother Al, “If it’s the same deal, we say what we know, tell them everything, cooperate as much as we can.”

  “It has to be about the little Shelton girl. That was a tough one on her family. Must be seven or eight years ago now. Don’t think her mom has had a peaceful day since then.”

  “I don’t know the family, but remember the story,” said another

  partner.

  Tom’s secretary came in with an envelope and handed it to Jimmy.

  “Thanks Emmy,” Said Tom.

  Jimmy opened the envelope and poured the contents on Tom’s desk. There was a prepaid cell phone and a battery. Jimmy assembled the phone, turned it on and set it back on the desk. They made small conversation as they waited and after five minutes and the phone finally rang. Jimmy picked it up, pushed the speaker button and said “Hello.” Al had a small tape recorder at the ready and turned it on.

  “Good afternoon gentlemen, my name is Aaron, at least for today,” said the caller with a slight brogue. “I assume you have gathered the several partners for this call, Jimmy boy.”

  “Ah, yes I did.”