Perfect Killer

by Robb T White

  ‘Fuck you, you little shit—’

  Wöissell chopped him on the bridge of the nose with the gun butt.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, ‘but if you don’t do what I say, I’ll kill you.’

  Blood poured from both the man’s nostrils. He wiped his nose with a bare arm that came away streaked with blood. The man hauled himself up into his rig with Wöissell pushing the barrel into his spine to keep him moving.

  ‘Take your seat,’ Wöissell said. ‘Get this thing moving.’

  He hawked up some blood and spat a bloody gob out the window.

  ‘What if I say I won’t?’ the driver said.

  His independent truck operator’s license taped to the visor said Leeland Gambrel. He placed the barrel at the driver’s temple and said, ‘Leeland, I’ll put a bullet into your brain at Mach One speed, and it’ll chew everything in there to pulp. No more arguments, Leeland. Drive.’

  ‘Which way, fucker?’ Leeland asked him.

  ‘Which way were you heading?’

  ‘Florida. Hauling air conditioners, asshole.’

  ‘Not anymore. We’re going east.’

  ‘Yes, sir, fuckhead, sir.’

  ‘I remember a rest stop forty miles ahead. Head for that. I’d like to freshen up a bit.’

  ‘Yes, sir, you faggot, sir.’

  ‘Leeland, you’re not a nice man,’ Wöissel said, ‘but I understand your situation. I’m not a nice man, either. Let’s try to be friends for a little while. It’s in your best interest.’

  ‘Better not nod off, sir. I might slam this rig into a bridge or somethin’—on accident, sir, and you’d go flying through the windshield. You might could get splattered on a tree or a guard rail—make you look like a steaming pile of roadkill. Sir.’

  ‘I’ll manage to stay awake, thanks,’ Wöissell told him and tickled Leeland’s overhanging gut with the barrel for emphasis. ‘Now don’t talk anymore, Leeland.’

  Chapter 33

  THE SURGEONS KEPT HER in a medically induced coma for three days. There was some pinprick bleeding on the brain that worried them. Her other injuries were fractures and contusions that made her look grotesque. Only ICU nurses were permitted in her room until some of the swelling went down. She had bizarre patterns of purple fingertip indentations all over her body from her neck to the backs of her thighs. Her upper arms were blue glyphs of pressure points. The doctors had a hard time believing that human fingers or feet could do that kind of subcutaneous damage.

  When she came to at about five in the morning of the third day in the hospital, the throbbing pain radiated from so many places she felt betrayed by her own body. The nurse increased the morphine drip and she thanked them by blinking her eyes. She was unable to speak or make sounds due to the damage to the strap muscles of her neck.

  That exhausted what little strength she had and she lapsed back into a long dreamless sleep. It was almost two in the afternoon when she woke again and knew, this time, she’d remain awake and would have to deal with the suffering, morphine or not. The pain had lessened by a degree or else her brain wearied of receiving the same messages.

  Her first sensation to comprise a thought was embarrassment for her failure to apprehend the sandwich man at the marina. She hoped Silva would be coming by soon to tell her what happened after she collapsed from the beating. She wanted to be in on the bastard’s interrogation until she remembered she had been unconscious for at least two days. By now, they’d have gleaned everything they could learn about his sick odyssey unless he’d lawyered up.

  A surgeon stopped by that afternoon to give her the list of damages: broken right index finger, two rib fractures, broken metatarsal of the left foot. Fracture of the zygomatic arch, left side. Fractured clavicle. Bruises, lacerations, welts too numerous to count.

  She raised her bandaged hands as if to ask about them. The pain that coursed from the grinding feeling of her fractured collarbone nearly caused her to pass out.

  ‘I’d not move my arms, if I were you,’ the surgeon told her. ‘You’ll need about six weeks and lots of aftercare for that break, I’m afraid. But a little good news. No fractures in either hand, Agent Hui. You’re lucky there. Badly bruised, as I’m sure you can tell. Some of the knuckle skin is exposed to the bone so we have to keep them wrapped.’

  She waited for him to ask her about the source of her injuries. She didn’t feel like writing on the pad near her bed, but she owed her life to his staff’s skill.

  ‘You’ll have some blood in the urine for a while,’ he resumed. ‘Don’t be too alarmed by that. You won’t be allowed to walk alone because of the vertigo from your concussion. What I mean is, get used to that bed because you’ll be in it for a long while.’

  She pinched her fingers together and wiggled her hand to signal pencil, paper. It was difficult to lift her hand from the bedsheet.

  ‘Here you go,’ her surgeon said, handing her the pad and pencil.

  She wrote S I L V A in wiggly, child-like script.

  ‘Your supervisor is on his way from Youngstown. He’s called ICU every day to get a progress report. He’ll be here soon to answer all your questions.’

  She wrote another word; the effort brought out sweat beads on her forehead.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t quite make that out,’ he said.

  She tried it again after another laborious effort: M I R O R.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ he said.

  She made her body stiff as a stone. He got the message.

  ‘Nurse, bring me a mirror,’ he said.

  She held it up for Jade to see herself, slowly turning it side to side to expose all the damage: bloodshot vampire eyes, a nose twice the size of its original, purple and yellow splotches above her eyebrow and beneath her eyes, puffed cheeks with the left side again almost half the size of her face, and maybe the most shocking of all was the gap between her teeth; both front teeth were missing. She didn’t even remember being punched in the face. Maybe he’d stomped her while she was passed out on the floor. Her neck was a grotesque canvas, a child’s paint set of primary colors, spilled and mashed together.

  ‘The hyoid bone is intact, Agent Hui,’ the surgeon said softly. ‘I don’t know how it didn’t snap, frankly, but you were extraordinarily fortunate there.’

  That was sufficient evil unto the day; she wrote S A N D on the paper but that was as far as she got when the effort caused her to faint.

  Gilker came into the room and stopped in his tracks when he saw her. She saw an expression of revulsion sweep across his face before it re-composed.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone for a while,’ the attending nurse said, ‘but it must be a short visit.’

  He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  She clutched the same pad she’d written Silva’s name on and tapped it.

  Gilker craned his neck to read what she had written.

  He looked at her, assessing. Making up his mind, he finally said the word. ‘Dead.’

  Her one good eye teared up immediately. She scribbled another name: H I M.

  ‘Gone,’ Gilker said. ‘We found his truck abandoned at a truck stop fifteen miles east. A truck driver turned up dead at a rest stop. It’s a busy place at night, trucks lined up from one end of the exit to the other.’

  She drew a fat question mark and underlined it.

  ‘We know it’s him. The trucker was shot in the stomach and head. He was stuffed under a blanket in the sleeping compartment. Another trucker hauling steel coil called for a check on him when he noticed the man’s truck hadn’t moved from the same spot. Both his eyeballs were removed. We found them in the cup holder.’

  He told her agents were checking surveillance tapes for the owners of cars parked out front of the rest stop. The cameras were installed to prevent drug transactions at state rest stops but their range didn’t cover the access road where the semis lined up to accommodate the federally mandated down time. It was known that hookers plied their business among
the truckers with some doing double duty as pushers to the long-haul clientele.

  Silva was disarmed soon after entering the cabin cruiser. One of the people on the yacht spotted him going aboard. The autopsy report said his kneecap was smashed, probably as he came down the ladder. Once on the deck, he was clubbed with an old-fashioned belaying pin, a souvenir from a Nantucket whaling vessel. HRT got there too late and found the bodies.

  Her expression asked the next question.

  Gilker said, ‘The boat owner, a local businessman named Brent Lacy, was dead inside by the time you got there. He had a woman with him. She worked in a plastics factory and tended bar at the Wyandotte Club. Divorced, four kids, twenty-five years old.’

  She remembered slipping on some grease on the floor when she cracked her ribs. Their blood.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this right now. It doesn’t give me any pleasure. There’s a hearing scheduled by OPR to determine … whether you followed protocol. I’m sorry, Agent Hui.’

  He left without another word.

  She lay back on the pillow. The fluorescent lighting hurt and made the buzzsaw in her head worse. The Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibilities was an inquisition no agent wanted to face in good health or bad. Agents were reprimanded for leaving briefcases unattended and terminated for use of safe houses without the proper paperwork. It was like the Gestapo flying squads hanging soldiers on leave if their paperwork wasn’t up to date.

  In the days that followed in the hospital, then the rehab facility, and finally, her rented motel room on Mahoning Avenue in Youngstown, she would replay every second and every movement from the moment she and Silva parked their SUV to that last eye-blink on the deck floor before the light faded. It nauseated her every time but if she didn’t follow herself into the deep blackness of the cabin cruiser, he would never leave her alone.

  When she could walk without excessive pain, she took a cab to a nearby Roman Catholic church and lit a candle for Silva.

  Chapter 34

  WÖISSELL HAD THE MONEY from Leeland’s wallet and he had a late-model black sports car. The car came from Quamie Willis, a State Farm insurance agent, who was on his way back to East Cleveland from a statewide insurance conference at a resort and conference center on Johnnycake Road in Mentor.

  He had stopped off at a TGIF in Willoughby just up the road with some of the others at the conference. They mocked the main topic on the agenda, ‘The Power of Agility: Driving Growth and Sustainability’ as one big yawn and bought rounds for one another and for the sweet-looking college girls coming to the bar to party. They all stayed too long at the bar. He’d just made the turn, was barely back on Interstate 90, when his bladder protested.

  The white man who appeared behind him as he opened the door of his Mazda might have been a transient, some druggie or panhandler. He’d grown up on some tough streets, was an all-state, honorable-mention running back for South High School. Besides bottle courage, Quamie had confidence. A look at the man told him he had nothing to be afraid of; the rest stop was deserted at two in the morning. Quamie saw him studying the big wall map in the lobby for travelers.

  ‘What you want, man?’

  ‘I’d appreciate a ride,’ the man said.

  Quamie stopped and faced him, not a fighter’s stance but arms loose at his sides; if the fool approached any closer, he’d chest-bump him backwards and swing on him.

  The man took a step. I’ll make short work of you, fool, he thought.

  Something went wrong or else he was drunker than he realized. His swing went wild, never came close. The man was there and then he wasn’t. Quamie hoisted himself to his feet and bull-rushed the dude. Now he knew something was wrong because he was sitting on his ass on the filthy cement, looking up at the man. A swollen knot appeared magically above his right eye.

  Quamie charged, the man hip-bumped him off balance and then, like a human spider, was wrapped completely around him, his legs scissoring his throat and shutting off his air; the man gripped his left arm, bent it upwards by the wrist with such force he could hear the tendons shred.

  Troopers found Quamie sitting in the parking lot, incoherent, filthy, groaning from pain and streaked with his own vomit. It didn’t look like a DUI charge until Quamie made them understand he ‘was assaulted, man, and mugged by a psycho and had my car stolen!’

  The troopers put out an APB on his Mazda and Columbus PD made a hot stop on it the following day near the innerbelt five miles east of the Westerville exit.

  The two teens inside claimed they ‘found’ it on a street in East Cleveland and were taking it down to Columbus to ‘sell’ to a cousin.

  Jade received the bulletins at the hospital from a resident agent named Holland.

  ‘Agent Hui, I came by at two but you were gone,’ he said.

  ‘I was getting another MRI,’ she said. It sounded like speech from someone who had a speech impediment because of childhood rubella.

  She had to speak very slowly to be understood; her missing teeth and the swelling of her throat made speaking painful and changed how words were pronounced. Yesterday she lost another tooth on her lower jaw, a molar had become infected; the doctors had to drain a Dixie cup’s worth of pus and pull it. With all the other damage to her head, throat, and jaw, this damaged tooth had gone unnoticed. She had a vague memory of being hit there with the side of his hand. She asked Gilker to have hospitals in a 100-mile radius called in case his hand became infected from mouth bacteria.

  ‘Cleveland PD gave us the sheets on Jerome Noble and Lacebius Johnson a.k.a. ‘Bones’ Noble and ‘Tone’ Johnson, respectively. These two crimedogs run in a Cleveland gang called the One-Hundred-Third Murda Block. Both with lengthy criminal records. Neither one knows Quamie Willis, ever met him, or recognized the mugshot of your man using the alias Ted Wassermann.’

  ‘What about prints in Gambrel’s truck?’

  ‘All over the place,’ Holland said.

  ‘Ballistics—’

  ‘—ballistics came back to Agent Silva’s gun, no surprise there.’

  Her own gun was found on scene underneath a chair.

  ‘What about the bus and train checks?’

  ‘About six men matching the Wassermann description rode out of the terminal. Four have been checked out. Chicago PD was waiting for the fifth man when it arrived. He checked out. A returning serviceman. Number six bought a ticket for Boston. Marshals and state police boarded it outside Schenectady. He wasn’t aboard. Passengers, mostly African-Americans, recalled a white guy they thought looked like the photo they showed around, but one said he got off at a scheduled stop in Utica. Another said Troy. Take your pick.’

  She thought about his savage cool down there in the dark of the cabin’s hull and hated herself for deeming it notable. He gives one FBI agent a savage beating and kills another, a twenty-year veteran. Instead of trying to get as far away as fast as he can with three agencies of law enforcement minutes behind him, he jacks a trucker—not just any trucker, but a very big trucker, forces the driver to drive west, kills him in a rest stop with state troopers going back and forth on every major highway in the state, mugs another man in the early morning hours fifty yards from where he’s murdered and mutilated the trucker. Then he abandons one car in east Cleveland and steals another car. Doesn’t bother wiping down the truck cab or the Mazda because he’s running scared now—or he’s following a plan.

  Holland believed the sandwich man wanted cops chasing their tails—and we did, he acknowledged, all the while he’s on a Greyhound going east. A diversion that worked but could have backfired with all those moving parts. Yet he managed to pull it off.

  If the sandwich man was one of the six men who matched the description, why did he bail on the Greyhound if he’d gone that far undetected? She tried to picture a map of New York in her head. He left the big urban centers between Schenectady and Troy where most criminals on the run would prefer to hide among populations, especially if money was a concern. He could
have gone south to the Catskills or north to the Adirondacks where it’s harder to hide among villages and small towns.

  He doesn’t need money, she thought; he doesn’t feel lost in wide-open rural areas.

  Maybe he’s been there before with his sandwich truck. Plenty of seasonal cabins in both places to lie low. After all, he was smart enough to pick an independent trucker, not a company driver. That truck stop in Conneaut was a hub for Werner, J. B. Hunt, Schneider, and other big national companies, but like a lion stalking a gazelle, he knew which one he wanted. Those trucks not only had governors to hold them to sixty-five maximum speed, but they had GPS trackers.

  The profilers were barely able to accommodate the inconsistencies he presented in his bloody wake. He was a puzzle they couldn’t fit the pieces into so far.

  He’s shy, they said; he stutters, they said. He’s a Facebook fiend, they said. Then he’s antisocial, an angry loner, they said. He feels no remorse—except for the time he gave money to the woman he had widowed. Yet he doesn’t just kill, he disfigures, makes them less than human, grotesque. He’s probably a high school dropout, low IQ, they said. But she held in her hand the copy of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus from the abandoned truck. Holland brought it over when they finished bagging and tagging everything. It seemed to be about the nature of what can be known as truth.

  Quantico finally chose organized over disorganized based on that book and his fighting skills; that fork in the road being a primary building block to assembling a portrait. She felt his breath on his face, but she couldn’t see him, only his power, and rage. He had trained somewhere and he was disciplined. If they could find his dojo, they’d be one more step closer—or maybe only as close as they were ever going to get. They didn’t know his real name and he’d never been printed until Buffalo. In Greek mythology, a chimera was a hybrid creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. But it was essentially identified as female. Shapeshifters, vampires—the male’s atavistic fear of the female rampant, the vagina dentata. Serial killers, in her experience, were a crude, misogynistic lot as a rule. The Bureau’s book of computer slang, laughable to teens who abandoned or never used most of it, had one acronym the online trolls used that struck her as telling: WAPCE. Women Are Pure Concentrated Evil.