The Poet (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  He hung up and looked at us. I wanted to ask what he meant by exhumation but Rachel spoke first.

  "Six rooms? Is Gordon coming out here?"

  "He and Carter are coming here."

  "Bob, why? You know-"

  "We need them, Rachel. We are hitting critical mass on this investigation and things are moving. At the most, we are now ten days behind this offender. We need more bodies to make the moves we're going to have to make. It's that simple and that's more than enough said about it. Now, Jack, did you have something to say?"

  "That exhumation you are talking about . . ."

  "We'll talk about that in a few minutes. It will become clear. James, tell them what you found on the body."

  From his pocket Thompson pulled four Polaroid photos and spread them on the table in front of Rachel and me.

  "This is the left palm and index finger. The two on the left were taken with the one-to-one. The other two are ten times magnified."

  "Perforations," Rachel said.

  "Right."

  I didn't see them until she had said it, but then I recognized the tiny punch holes in the lines of the skin. Three in the palm, two in the tip of the index finger.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "On the surface it looks like nothing more than pinpricks," Thompson said. "But there is no scabbing or closing of the wounds. They occurred close to time of death. Shortly before or possibly after, though there wouldn't be much of a point to it after."

  "Point to what?"

  "Jack, we're looking for ways this could have been done," Backus said. "How could veteran, tough cops be taken like this? Control is what we are talking about. It's one of the keys."

  I waved a hand toward the photos.

  "And what does this tell you?"

  "That and other things may indicate hypnosis was involved."

  "You're saying this guy hypnotized my brother and these others into putting a gun in their mouths and pulling the trigger?"

  "No, I don't think it's that simple. You have to remember that it is quite difficult to use hypnotic suggestion to override the self-preservation instinct in an individual's mind. Most experts say it's flatly impossible. But if a person is susceptible to hypnotism, that person can be controlled to varying extents. He can be made docile, manageable. It's only a possibility at this point. But we have five perforations on this victim's hand. A standard method of testing for hypnotic trance would be to prick the skin with a pin after placing the suggestion that there will be no pain. If the patient reacts, the hypnosis is not working. If he shows no signs of feeling the pain, he is under trance conditions."

  "And controllable," Thompson added.

  "You want to look at my brother's hand."

  "Yes, Jack," Backus said. "We'll need an exhumation order. I believe the files said he was married. Will his widow allow this?"

  "I don't know."

  "We may need your help on that."

  I just nodded. Things were getting stranger all the time.

  "What are the other things? You said the perforations and other things may indicate hypnosis was involved."

  "The autopsies," Rachel answered. "None of the victims' blood screens came out totally clean. Each one had something in his blood. Your brother-"

  "Cough syrup," I said defensively. "From the car's glove box."

  "Right. It ranges from over-the-counter things like cough syrup to prescription drugs. One of them had Percocet, which had been prescribed for a back injury eighteen months earlier. I think that was the Chicago case. Another one-I think it was Petry in Dallas-had codeine in his blood. It came from prescription Tylenol with codeine. The prescription bottle was in his medicine cabinet."

  "Okay, so what's it mean?"

  "Well, individually it meant nothing at the time of each of these deaths. Whatever came up on the blood screen in each case was explained by the victim's access to it. I mean, it's reasonable to believe that if someone was going to kill himself, he might take a couple of the Percocets from the old prescription bottle to calm himself. So these things were dismissed."

  "But now they mean something."

  "Possibly," she said. "The finding of the perforations suggests hypnosis. If you add to that the introduction of some chemical suppressor into the blood, then you begin to see how these men may have been controlled."

  "Cough syrup?"

  "It could possibly enhance a subject's susceptibility to hypnosis. Codeine is a tested enhancer. Over-the-counter cough medications don't have codeine in them anymore but some of the replacement ingredients could still act as similar enhancers."

  "Have you known this all along?"

  "No, it was just something that had no context until now."

  "Has it come up before? How do you know so much?"

  "Hypnosis is used fairly often as a law enforcement tool," Backus said. "It's also come up on the other side before."

  "There was one case several years ago," Rachel said. "There was a man, a Las Vegas nightclub kind of guy who did hypnotism as his act. He was also a pedophile. And what he'd do is, when he'd do shows at county fairs and so forth, he'd get close to kids. He had a children's act, a matinee, and he'd tell the audience he needed a young volunteer. The parents would practically throw their kids at him. He'd pick the lucky one and say he had to go backstage to prepare the child while some other act was going on. He'd hypnotize the kid back there, rape her and then through hypnotic suggestion, wipe the memory. Then he'd trot the kid onstage, do his act and then take her out of the trance. He used codeine as an enhancer. Put it in their Cokes."

  "I remember," Thompson said, nodding. "Harry the Hypnotic."

  "No, it was Horace the Hypnotist," Rachel said. "He was one of our interviews on the rape project. At Raiford down in Florida."

  "Wait a minute," I said, "Could he-"

  "No, this is not him. He'd still be in prison in Florida. He got something like a twenty-five-year bid. This was only six, seven years ago. He's still inside. He's got to be."

  "I'll have it checked anyway," Backus said. "To be sure. But, regardless, you see the possibility we're looking at here, Jack? I'd like you to call your sister-in-law. It would be better if she heard it from you. Tell her how important it is."

  I nodded.

  "Okay, Jack, we appreciate it. Now, why don't we take a break here and see what there is to eat in this town? We've got the conference call with the other FOs in an hour and twenty minutes."

  "What about the other thing?" I said.

  "What thing?" Backus asked.

  "The substance in that detective's mouth. It looked like you guys knew what that was."

  "No. I just made arrangements to send the swab they took back east and then, hopefully, we'll know."

  He was lying and I knew it but I let it go. Everybody stood up and headed into the hallway. I told them I wasn't hungry and needed to find a place to buy some clothes. I said I'd find a cab if there were no stores within walking distance.

  "I think I'll go with Jack," Rachel said.

  I didn't know if she really wanted to or her job was just to watch me, make sure I didn't run off and write a story. I raised my hand in an I-don't-care attitude.

  With directions from Matuzak we started walking toward a mall called Arizona Center. It was a beautiful day and the walk was a nice break from the intensity of recent days. Rachel and I talked about Phoenix-it was her first visit, too-and eventually I steered the conversation back to my last question to Backus.

  "He was lying, so was Thompson."

  "You mean about the oral swabs."

  "Right."

  "I think Bob just doesn't want you to know more than you need to. I'm not talking about as a reporter. I mean, as a brother."

  "If there is something new, I want to know it. The deal was I'd be on the inside. Not on the inside sometimes and then on the outside-like with this hypnosis crap-other times."

  She stopped and turned to me.

  "I will tell you, if you want to kno
w, Jack. If it's what we think and all the killings follow a pattern, then it's not going to be very pleasant for you to dwell on."

  I looked in the direction we were headed. The mall was in sight. A sandstone-colored edifice with welcoming open-air walkways.

  "Tell me," I said.

  "Nothing is for sure until the swab is analyzed. But it sounds like the substance Grayson described was something we've seen before. You see, some repeat offenders are smart. They know about leaving evidence behind. Evidence like semen. So they use condoms. But if it's a lubricated condom the lubricant can be left behind. Detected. Sometimes it's accidental . . . and sometimes they want us to know what they did."

  I looked at her and almost released an audible groan.

  "You're saying the Poet . . . had sex with him?"

  "Possibly. But to be frank, we've suspected it from the start. Serial killers . . . Jack, it's almost always about sexual gratification. It's about power and control and these are components of sexual gratification."

  "There wouldn't have been time."

  "What do you mean?"

  "With my brother. The ranger was right there. There couldn't have. . ." I stopped, realizing that there only wasn't time afterward. "Jesus . . . Oh, man."

  "That was what Bob had hoped not to have to tell you."

  I turned away and looked up at the blue sky. The only imperfection was the slash of the twin contrails of a jet long out of the picture.

  "I don't get it. Why is this guy doing this?"

  "We may never know that, Jack." She put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "These people that we hunt . . . sometimes there is no explanation. That's the very hardest part, coming up with the motivation, understanding what drives them to do what they do. We have a saying for it. We say these people are from the moon. Sometimes it is the only way to describe it when we don't have the answers. Trying to figure these people out is like putting a shattered mirror back together. There is no way to explain the behavior of some humans, so we simply say they are not humans. We say they are from the moon. And on the particular moon where the Poet comes from, these instincts that he is following are normal and natural. He is following those instincts, creating scenes that give him satisfaction. It's our job to chart the Poet's moon and then we'll be better able to find him and send him back."

  All I could do was take it all in and nod. There was no comfort in her words. All I knew was that, if given the chance, I wanted to send the Poet back to the moon. I wanted to do it myself.

  "C'mon," she said. "Try to forget about that for now. Let's go get you some new things. We can't have those reporters thinking you're one of us anymore."

  She smiled and I returned it weakly and let her push me toward the mall.

  27

  We met back in the conference room of the field office at six-thirty. Backus was there, trying to work out the logistics with the phone, along with Thompson, Matuzak, Mize and three agents I hadn't been introduced to. I put my shopping bag under the conference table. It contained two new shirts, a pair of pants and a package of underwear and socks. I immediately wished I had changed into one of the new shirts because the introduced agents studied me and my FBI shirt with grim looks that suggested I had committed some kind of sacrilege by trying to impersonate an agent. Backus told whoever he was talking with to call him back when it was set up and then hung up.

  "Okay," he said. "We start the full meeting as soon as they have the phones set up. Meantime, let's talk about Phoenix. Beginning tomorrow I want to start a ground-zero investigation of both the detective and the boy. Both cases, from the top. What I'd like-Oh, I'm sorry. Rachel, Jack, this is Vince Pool, SAC Phoenix. He's going to give us whatever we need."

  Pool, who looked like he had twenty-five years on the job, the most of anyone in the room, nodded at us and said nothing. Backus didn't bother to introduce the other men.

  "We have the meeting with the locals tomorrow at oh nine hundred," Backus said.

  "I think we'll be able to brush them aside gently," Pool said.

  "Well, we don't want any animosity. These are the fellows who knew Orsulak the best. They'll be good sources. I think we have to bring them into this but remain firmly in control."

  "No problem."

  "This one may be our best chance. It's fresh. We've got to hope the offender made a mistake and between these two deaths, the boy and the detective, we can find it. I'd like to see-"

  The phone on the table buzzed and Backus picked up the receiver and said hello.

  "Hold on."

  He pushed a button on the phone and hung up the receiver.

  "Brass, you there?"

  "Here, boss."

  "Okay, let's run down the list, see who've we got."

  Agents from six cities announced their presence on the speaker.

  "Okay, good. I want this to be as informal as possible. Why don't we go round-robin to see what people have. Brass, I'd like to finish up with you. So Florida. Is that you, Ted?"

  "Uh, yes sir, with Steve, here. We are just getting our feet wet on this and hope to have more by tomorrow. But there are some anomalies here that we think are already worth noting."

  "Go ahead."

  "Uh, this is the first, or believed to be the first, of the Poet's stops. Clifford Beltran. The second incident-in Baltimore-did not take place until nearly ten months later. That is the longest interval we have as well. This leads us to possibly question the randomness of this first kill."

  "You think the Poet knew Beltran?" Rachel asked.

  "It's possible. At the moment, though, it's just a hunch we are working. There are a few other things that when thrown into the stew are worth taking a look at in support, however. First, this is the only one with a shotgun. We checked the autopsy file today and they aren't pretty pictures. Total obliteration with both barrels. We all know the symbolic pathology of that."

  "Overkill," Backus said. "Suggesting knowledge or acquaintance of the victim."

  "Right. Next we have the weapon itself. According to reports, it was an old Smith and Wesson that Beltran kept in a closet, on a top shelf out of sight. This information is attributed in the reports to his sister. Beltran had never married and lived in the house he grew up in. We haven't talked to the sister ourselves. The point is, if this was a suicide, yeah, fine, he went to the closet and got out the shotgun. But now we come along and say this was no suicide."

  "How did the Poet know the shotgun was up there on the shelf?" Rachel said.

  "Riiiiiight . . . How did he know?"

  "Good one, Ted, Steve," Backus said. "I like it. What else?"

  "The last thing is kind of sticky. Is the reporter there?"

  Everyone in the room looked at me.

  "Yes," Backus said. "But we are still off the record. You can say what you were going to say. Right, Jack?"

  I nodded and then realized they wouldn't see this in all the other cities.

  "That's right," I said. "We're off the record."

  "Okay, well, this is mere speculation at this time and we're not sure how it fits but we have this. On the autopsy of the first victim, the boy, Gabriel Ortiz, the coroner concluded, based on examination of the anal glands and muscles, that the boy was the victim of long-term molestation. If the boy's killer was also his abuser over a period of time, then this does not fit with our pattern of random selection and acquisition of victims. So that seems unlikely to us.

  "However, looking at it from Beltran's point of view three years ago of not having the benefit of our knowledge, something here doesn't fit. He had this one case, knew nothing about the others we know about now. When the autopsy came back concluding the boy was the victim of long-term molestation, it stands to reason that Beltran should have jumped all over that and looked for the abuser as suspect numero uno."

  "He didn't?"

  "No. He headed a team of three detectives and he directed almost all investigative work toward the park where the boy had been abducted after school. I got this off the record fro
m one of the guys on the team. He said he suggested a wider focus looking into the boy's background but Beltran turned him down.

  "Now the good stuff. My source at the sheriff's tells me Beltran specifically asked for the investigation. He wanted it. After he supposedly offed himself, my source did some checking and it turns out Beltran had known the kid through a local social services program called Best Pals, which puts fatherless boys with adults. Like a Big Brother program. Beltran was a cop, so he had no trouble going through the screening process. He was the boy's Best Pal. I'm sure you can all take it from there."