The Ghost

by H. Berkeley Rourke

  "Do you have any significant information other than we have already discussed Jeanne?"

  "No, boss, there isn't anything which would be usable in a court to convict the guy. He really has been pretty careful except for the one piece of evidence he left on Rachel Mc Guire, which was a couple of drops of his semen. I don't think the test results are back yet but I will check with Glendale and find out about those results, and then see if the profile can give us a name from our database. But no, aside from the DNA we have nothing other than circumstantial stuff."

  "Then it is not yet time to call in the FBI. They would not be able to give us more than a profile which might or might not be completely accurate. And we can profile this killer ourselves to a large degree with the tools we have available without the feebs at this point. Do you remember George and Jenny Adams? They are much more available to us now they have retired from traveling all over the country."

  As Jeanne and Tom Leivas were talking about the case a call came in to the Republic for Jim Wilson. He had put a recording device on his phone he could turn on in a second. As soon as he recognized the voice he did so. "Hi," Jim said, "who am I speaking with please?'

  "You know who this is, mister. I am the Ghost Rapist."

  "How ya doin tonight guy?"

  "Great, I just did another one. Did you hear about her?"

  "No, not yet. What are you talking about?"

  "I did another one last night. I did her and then I cut her leg and she bled out. You mean your paper isn't going to publish anything about her? What kind of chickenshit newspaper are you assholes running there anyway?”

  "Why don't you hang on guy? I will try to get some information from the police and see whether what you are telling me is true."

  "Are you accusing me of lying, son of a bitch? I killed the bitch. I raped her too. I liked it and I am going to do it again you dumb shit."

  "No, I am not accusing you of lying.We have to check our sources before we can publish anything in the paper, you ought to know that, you sound like you have an education."

  "Don't be plumbing me for information asshole. Goodbye."

  he will get his, that asshole...

  i know who he is, where he is...

  i know where his family is too...

  he will get his, that asshole...

  Jim called Jeanne right away and while he was waiting for her to come on line he checked the recording device to see if it had worked. The sound was clear. The words were clear as well. They were also a little frightening.

  "Jeanne," he said, "I have a recorded piece from our boy. Are you available to listen to it now?"

  Holy shit, he called the day after he killed the Manners woman. This guy is a super egotistical asshole. But I will have to be careful with Jim. She responded, "Yes but I will not make any comments on the record yet Jim."

  "I know. I just think you need to hear this." Jeanne invited Jim to come to her office and bring the original of the recording with him. He went to her office where she had a player set up when he got there. Tom Leivas was there as well. They listened to the tape recording together. While it was being recopied by another detective Jeanne, Tom and Jim discussed its content.

  Tom said, "He sounds young, very young in fact. I would guess his age at less than thirty for sure and more likely in his late teens to very early twenties."

  "That would be my take on it too boss," Jeanne said as Jim Wilson nodded his head.

  Tom added, "Jim if I were you I would send my family to a place where I know they would be safe for a time, maybe several weeks. The last part of the tape makes me think he might come after you or your family. Can you get them out of town without too much dislocation?"

  Jim had considered the implicit threat which seemed to exist in the last part of the tape.He said to Tom, "I don't know if my wife will agree. My oldest daughter is justthirteen so I am sure she will object, but what we tell her she must do, she will acquiesce in eventually. Yes, I think there is a perfect place for them. We have a cabin in the White Mountains which is in my mother's name and I inherited. Actually it is in a trust. No one knows we use it. I can keep my kids out of school for a couple of weeks with a little communication with their teachers I think."

  "Your cabin sounds like a great place. I think you should go ahead," Tom said. "Perhaps in the next couple of weeks we can put this guy on the defensive or maybe even catch him. We are all done with investigating the school officials. But they and the Campus Police officials are still in the wind. We are concentrating on this guy now and if we have to form a city wide task force to get him we will probably be able to do so soon. I already have spoken with my superiors. They are aware we have another recreational killer working in our county, our city. They do not want the publicity or the trouble which will eventually follow with our citizens if we do not appear to be working hard on this guy."

  "Thanks Tom, for the good advice. I am going to go home and talk to my wife right now and get her started packing tonight. I better take this tape with me. I don’t know how reasonable she will be if she doesn’t have a really good reason for doing this.Hopefully she and my daughters will be out of town tomorrow. "

  "We will put some extra patrol on around your neighborhood Jim. Give Jeanne your address and she will contact the division patrolling your area and have a car watch it more carefully than usual. You watch out for yourself as well. Watch for cars in the area you have not seen before. If you see something which stirs your interest it will most likely be nothing, but report it every time and let us make the decision of whether there is an actual threat or not, okay?"

  "I will. In the meantime, if I hear from the guy again I will give you the tape just as soon as it is copied."

  "Jeanne," Tom said as Jim Wilson left the homicide station, "I want you to talk to the Glendale people and the Surprise people and see if they will agree to furnish any people for a potential task force if one seems to become necessary. Give their leaders a good briefing on everything which has gone down so far and make sure they understand the guy is now classified as a serial killer. I am going to contact FBI and see if Behavioral Analysis wants in on this or if they will at least provide us with a profiler. I am going to contact George and Jenny right away as well."

  Jeanne spent most of that day talking with supervisors in Major Crimes units or Homicide units of Surprise P.D., Glendale P.D., and on her own she decided to bring in the Maricopa County S.O. Homicide Unit as well. She told all of them her discussions were preliminary but wanted to warn them there appeared to be a recreational rapist/murderer, or serial killer, on the loose in the valley. When the homicide supervisors she talked to asked questions to which she didn't know answers she told them she would have Tom get back to them. Each department wanted further contact from Tom.

  Tom dropped by her office as she was doing her calling and stuck his head in the door, waited until she finished the call she was on and said "FBI is not able to be involved right now so we are on our own for the moment. Their BAU is buried with problems all over the country and cannot be of much help. They volunteered to try and give us a profile. I told them we would probably consult with George and Jenny Adams about a profile. They said it would be best So we need to get hold of George and Jennie as soon as we can and have some conversations with them." Tom took off without any further talk about a profile and Jeanne knew he would be bringing the Adams in as soon as he could.

  It seemed, somehow to Jeanne murder cases always came to a crashing halt in the investigation. If they were not spouse on spouse, or something immediately evident as to who was the victim and who was the doer, a slowdown always occurred. If there was a necessity for substantial investigation the entire thing slowed down to a crawl. It also seemed to her that information, more and more information about the killer, about the crime, about the victim, about generalities as well as specifics, finally brought about movement in the investigation. It could be months on end before a real teaser of a case could move much at all. As Tom left
her office she thought it was likely it would have to be the same in this case as well.

  Jeanne knew her limitations. She did not have a background enabling her to understand serial murderers as well as she might want. She thought they were mostly psychopaths or sociopaths. She had never really studied the topic at length. There had never been a necessity in her career for the kind of intense work it took to categorically study serial killers. She decided she would spend some time defining the type of people in which homicide might have an interest.Later in the afternoon she started some research. Her first step was to go on line and simply type into her search engine “Types of Serial Killers.”

  She knew that most cops thought categorizing a serial killer as such took place after his or her second or third victim. Jeanne found many definitions, including one from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics that defined a serial killer as " . . . one killing one or more persons in at least three separate events." She thought the definition a little strange so she stuck with her research. Finally, she found an FBI definition coming from a 2002 symposium. It said serial killing was defined as ". . .the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s) in separate events." This definition was a little more emphatic than the one offered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. She chose to go with the FBI definition and made note of it to be used in later conversations.

  From the information she found on the FBI symposium she also learned there were a lot of common myths about serial killers, some of which she personally believed. She thought they were all social misfits or recluses and found that was completely wrong. She thought they were all white males and all motivated by sex, but found that again to be all wrong. She had heard of the BTA killer and thought he moved from state to state a lot. She had heard of the killers in California that moved around a lot. She thought it was probably a characteristic and was shocked to find out many such as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer lived a very sedentary and simple life.

  Jeanne also decided she should know something about the types of killers there were, and how they were categorized. If and when she got into the discussions with the Adams at least she could sound like she had some brains. Right away, using the FBI information, she categorized the Ghost Rapist as an Organized Killer. She discovered organized killers are focused on a particular victim in part, might watch the victim or several victims for weeks. Since the Ghost had already announced he was stalking his victims it was an easy conclusion to reach. He was definitely an organized killer. Unfortunately, it also meant he might be more difficult to catch. It probably meant he was probably very bright and capable, very intelligent, and meticulous in his care not to leave forensic evidence. She already knew after his calls to the newspaper he really thought he was stumping the police. The calls to the reporter fit within the egotistical needs some serial murderers seemed to show. Based on her research she thought he would continue to contact Jim Wilson.

  The more difficult analysis she found dealt with whether the killer was focused on the act or the process. What the hell? Why would anyone care, she thought as she read about this topic? Then she found information that process killers seem to get some pleasure from torture or the slow death of their victims. It seemed to her torture also played into the Ghost Rapist's treatment of his victims.

  She decided the Ghost was a "process" killer who exhibited both lustful pleasure from the killing and the rape. He also seemed to have a taste for the "power" coming with the actual killing, the process of playing God over the victim. She thought that eventually he would blurt something out in the conversations with the Republic and her friend, Jim Wilson. They both were convinced the Ghost would call Jim again and again.

  Chapter 6

  Resources

  During the period prior to Jeanne coming on the force, and before Tom came on as well, one of the Captains of Homicide was a man named George Adams. His father was a Captain of Homicide before him. During his tenure as Captain George dealt with the capture of a serial murderer named Dan O' Rourke. Dan killed George's father. The killing of George’s father precipitated the manhunt resulting in Dan O’ Rourke’s capture. Before Dan was captured it was learned he was responsible for taking many more lives.

  George retired from Phoenix P.D. but he began to study and work on the notion of what a serial killer was and how to ferret one out. His learning process included his wife as well. Jenny Adams became the profiler of the family. She studied the FBI Behavioral Analysis Group methodologies very carefully. She took many classes in psychology and studied many cases occurring throughout the country. In due time George and Jenny began to assist police departments who sought their help in dealing with serial murderers. They worked closely on many occasions with Phoenix Homicide, both as hired consultants and as friends of the leadership of the Homicide unit. In those times the homicide unit was led by Jim Cade, Eduardo Ontiveros and Josie Du Puy. Lieutenant Tom Leivas came on as a part of the homicide team in a bombing case. He became the leader Jeanne's section of the homicide unit some years later.

  Tom called the Adams' residence. As it happened he knew they were in town. Tom was no expert in serial killings. He had become a Lieutenant of Homicide in Phoenix after the death of Josie Du Puy. Tom's experiences as a bomb specialist in Iraq and the Army in general had led him into the P.D. The bombing case that eventually killed Josie Du Puy brought him to Homicide. When Eduardo Ontiveros retired and Josie was killed Tom became a Lieutenant in Homicide.He had been privileged to meet and work with George and Jenny before Josie's death.

  he Ghost prepared once again...

  he had found a campus queen...

  he could not resist her charms...

  she was dark, beautiful, easy...

  he would wait a few days...

  but it would happen to her...

  she would be next on his list...

  first he would find the reporter...

  and he would terrorize him...

  and maybe he would do his wife...

  but this new queen, oh yes...

  she would have her turn ...

  he watched her enter her dorm...

  it would be so easy right then...

  but he had time, plenty of time...

  George answered the phone, "Adams."

  Tom identified himself and said to George, "I heard that you have retired George."

  "Hi Tom, you old reprobate. Yes, we have, or let's say we are taking a hiatus and trying to decide whether we want to do less traveling in future."

  "George, I don't mean to be abrupt but we have a serial rapist/murderer working in the West Valley, mostly at Scalian University, but in Surprise and Glendale as well. I wonder if you could help us with some profiling and ideas if any come to you about how to deal with this guy."

  "I don't know how Jenny will feel about this Tom but I am certainly willing. She is very deeply involved in our church in recent weeks. I should also say we have heard some of the rumors of how students are being treated at Scalian. We think it is tragic and a travesty. So does our parish priest by the way." Tom was interested to know the rumors of student unrest as a result of administrative mistreatment had spread so far into the town.

  Tom replied to George’s comment, "Sooner or later the President and Vice President will surface and have to face the music George. How would it be best for you to do this? Would you be willing to come down to the station for a get together?"

  "Sure Tom, that would be fine. If Jenny wants in I will bring her with me. Is tomorrow okay to start the process?"

  "Whenever you are ready George. I will leave word at the front desk to issue you and Jenny, if need be, credentials and get you back to our conference room."

  Tom left his office and went to Jeanne. He told her that George and possibly Jenny as well would be coming the next day to talk about the cases. He asked Jeanne to put together the Perp and Victim charts on large posters and to put together a list of the pieces of circumstantial evidence they would rely on in p
rofiling the guy from the autopsy reports and the interviews with the rape victims from Scalian. She began the work immediately. She titled the chart listing the evidentiary material EVIDENCE.

  Once she completed the scarce information she had in victim and perp charts she began work on the circumstantial evidence they had from the interviews and the autopsy reports.

  Her list of items included: Male; apparently white; slightly built according to Celia Ventura; not strong;

  a)-he uses a plastic bag over the head of the girl that he is going to rape to start the process;

  b)-he apparently has a large tool as all the women were bruised rather badly as a result of the rape, rape is always from behind and he ejaculates very quickly according to all the women. The quick ejaculation may indicate a young and inexperienced male;

  c)-he has the girl take off her own panties and/or shorts, pants, whatever, then puts her hands behind her and he twist ties them in place;

  d)-apparently he has some knowledge of anatomy because he cut the femoral artery on the last victim without having to do a lot of digging around in the leg;

  e)-he is white by all the accounts of the girls, the reporter says he thinks the guy is white; he left a DNA sample which has not yet been tested on one victim, indicating he may be a little more careless than we thought;

  f)-from the locale of the bruise on the neck where he held the bag shut on one victim it appeared he sat on top of her and watched her die, and may well have done the same thing with the victim he cut;

  g)-very arrogant according to reporter, self important, feels he is a ghost and will not or cannot be caught by us mere mortal police;

  h)-may be a student at Scalian or perhaps a graduate assistant, may be employed in some non-curricular capacity at the school based on his having begun and continued his rapes at the school for about eight months prior to causing the death of Marilyn Cummings.