by John Philpin
“I don’t believe that’s so, Dr. Frank,” she answered, slapping her palm on the table. “Look, we have three dead women here, and—”
“I have doubts about Stanley Markham,” I said.
She swiveled around. “I see. You have some psychic insight about Markham.”
“He worked the Markham case,” Herb said with a look of desperation that told me he did not have a clue about what was happening in his office. “He knows Markham.”
“I also know that Quantico won’t work a case if you recruit your own ‘mind hunter,’ Herb,” I said. “Why don’t I bow out? You’ll have the pros coming, and I have a class to teach.”
The pros. Shit.
Through two decades, I had watched the pros grow increasingly political. They learned and applied the marketing techniques necessary to justify and sustain funding. They knew their target audience and quickly reacted to the public’s perception of crime. A de facto hierarchy of atrocity evolved. Serial murder topped the list, but included its own gradations of outrageousness. Multiple killings of prostitutes or the homeless did not approach the monstrousness of child murders. The slaughter of three female college students was near the top of the list.
Jaworski followed me through the station to the parking lot. “What the hell was that all about?” he asked.
“I guess we old farts don’t know much.”
“I’m sorry, Lucas. I had no idea she was going to be so, well… hostile. This is my case, and I need your help with it. When I want the feds around, I’ll ask them.”
I stopped at the door, turned, and faced the veteran cop. “I meant what I said. If the FBI Support Services people know you have someone private working the case, they won’t come in.”
“We’ll manage.”
I hesitated only a moment, then nodded my agreement. “I ran into Steve Weld this morning,” I said.
“He tell you about seeing Gilman’s car at the motel?”
I nodded. “He’s got no use for Gilman.”
“Weld is a funny guy. Dresses like a hippie, but he’s sharp. I called the motel after I talked to him. Gilman was there with two guests. All of them checked out Sunday morning.”
“Why is he lying?”
“I don’t know, but I’m keeping that information to myself for now.”
I asked Jaworski what two-year-old “incident” Weld had referred to.
“We didn’t have much to do with that,” the chief said. “One of MI’s foreign visitors got drunk and disappeared from the campus. Gilman filed the missing-persons report the next morning. The fear took over after that. The body… well, what was left of it… washed up on the beach two weeks later. Fish did a thorough job on him. The medical examiner never determined a cause of death. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “Weld implied that there was something to it. I don’t know.”
“I’m gonna go have a talk with Karen. You take a look at the autopsy material.”
I watched the chief disappear into the building.
A murder investigation usually reveals unrelated misdeeds and the myriad foibles of the cast of characters.
Two years earlier, an intoxicated foreign visitor had become a meal for the fish.
Steve Weld hinted that Stu Gilman was a fountain of knowledge. The head-bobbing Gilman was wired like an inner spring and lied about his whereabouts on the night of the murders.
A human killing machine disguised himself as dirty laundry, broke out of his cage, and had ample time to play fall tourist in Maine.
The state investigator assigned to the murders behaved like a snappish stockbroker unable to see beyond Markham & Markham, her favorite NASDAQ big mover.
Karen Jasper was right about the bottom line. We had three dead students. We also shared the single objective of removing a killer from the streets.
TEN MINUTES AFTER LEAVING JAWORSKI TO DEAL WITH Karen Jasper, I walked into my borrowed Cape, slammed the door, and dropped the most recent package of photos and reports on the sofa. I had been away from the nuts and bolts of criminal investigation for nearly seven years. Maybe Jasper was right, and I was nothing more than a curiosity from a bygone era.
“Bullshit,” I muttered. “I refuse to go quietly into the investigative night.”
The crime scene photo display remained on my kitchen table. I popped the cap off a bottle of Shipyard and stared at the top photo, a kid barely out of her teens who could be sleeping. A cop’s latex-gloved hand pointed at a small black circle on her right temple. Susan Hamilton was in college, learning and having a good time, until someone walked in and put a bullet through her head.
I looked down at my clenched fists, whitened knuckles. Tumult churned inside, a rumbling flood of anger that was essential if I were to absorb a killer’s mental circuitry into my own and prowl the world like a methodical hunter of humans.
“Stanley Markham couldn’t find his way to Maine,” I snarled at no one, shoving myself from the table and pacing the room. “She’s barking up the wrong tree.”
Markham was a short, slender man, wiry, pale-complexioned, with soft-skinned hands that he babied. He washed his hands often, treated himself to an occasional manicure, and always wore leather gloves when he killed. My first impression of the man had been one of softness, gentleness. I wondered how he would cope with the sexual politics of prison.
I remembered a cop’s comment after one of Markham’s preliminary court hearings: “Slap a wig and some lipstick on that guy and you’ve got a handsome woman. He’s bound for hard time.”
As Jaworski observed, Markham was the right size for this crime. The height of the blood streaks on the wall beside the two beds, and the distance between the impressions left by two knuckles when the killer’s hand slipped, suggested a small man.
When he had terrorized New England, Markham had required a strict set of stimuli before going into action. His behavior before, during, and after his excursions into the wild was well documented.
The initial, discrete behavior was what his wife called “restlessness.” He would come home from his job as a desk clerk at a local motel and not be able to sit still. Markham said he was depressed.
He always drank a couple of beers when he got home, and when he grew restless, he drank more. Sometimes he passed out. Other times he sat up all night staring at TV. When his wife asked about his behavior, he pleaded trouble at work or said he was annoyed with one of their neighbors.
“We always had money problems,” Markham told me.
Their money was tight, as it was for most young couples, even with both partners working, but the Markhams were not headed for bankruptcy.
Dorothy Markham would tolerate her husband’s behavior for two or three days, then announce that she was going to her sister’s for the weekend. Stanley Markham would drop her there, but he never went inside. He hated Dorothy’s sister.
“I’d take Dorothy over there on a Saturday morning,” Markham told me, “pick her up late Sunday. That gave me all the time I needed. No questions asked. I look back on it now, I got so calm, so relaxed. I’d bring Dorothy flowers when I went to get her. I even played with the baby.”
Markham described what went on in his head; like most of his ilk, he never told all of it. He made a stab at a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. His lawyer eventually talked him out of the NGRI, a nearly unwinnable defense in Massachusetts, but our early conversations were dominated by talk of noises in his head, blackouts, tales of how one victim resembled an old girlfriend who had rejected him. As he drifted toward trial time, Markham claimed that he needed help, treatment. The act was transparent. On the morning that jury selection was to begin, Markham folded his bluff hand, entered a guilty plea, and walked away with life without parole. After a brief stint in a penitentiary, the corrections department moved him to a mental health facility for the criminally insane, proving yet again that state systems are vulnerable to the psychopath’s machinations.
“To be the most powerful man in the world,�
� Stanley Markham told me, “is more important than anything else.”
He always knew what was coming, he said. He never tried to stop it.
“I wanted it to hurry up and happen. I wandered through the house, thinking. I took inventory. I kept the knife and clothesline behind the seat in my van. I had plenty of rags, a change of clothes, a gallon of water, cleaning solvent for the van. After I dropped Dorothy at her sister’s, I drove around.”
Markham covered more miles than most truckers. He cruised through Springfield, Amherst, and Northampton in western Massachusetts, zipped up the highway to Brattleboro, Vermont, then over state roads to Keene, New Hampshire. He prowled neighborhoods where girls raked lawns and rode bicycles and young women jogged.
Markham also traveled in his head. “If she’s on the next block and she’s wearing red,” he told himself, “she’s waiting for me.”
Perhaps he would see a flash of red and feel an instant erection. The woman would be too old or too fat or too tall or with somebody else, but the moment’s excitation, the proximity of a “possible,” kept him wet with sweat, his jeans tight through the crotch.
It was magical thinking. “She” was not waiting, so he continued driving east from Keene through Peterborough and Nashua, and by late afternoon he prowled the outskirts of Portsmouth. He did not see the saltwater marshes and mudflats as he guided his van through a long, slow curve and changed the color in his mind.
“If she’s wearing white…”
“You always knew what you were going to do,” I told Markham.
“There were some things I didn’t know. I always knew that I’d recognize her. I never saw any of them before in my life, but I recognized every one of them.”
“You remember each one.”
“Not as people. Everyone who comes here needs me to say I feel bad, that I’m sorry for what I did to them. Taking them away from their families. Taking away their lives. I could say the words they want to hear, but I won’t. They wouldn’t be true. I felt great after each one. Really pumped. I’d get flowers or candy for Dorothy, something for the kid. I felt like a million bucks. It never lasted. Couple of weeks, a month, then it started all over again. When Dorothy moved out, I went on the road more often. I didn’t wait for the girls to come out and play. I went in after them. There are only two things that I regret, Dr. Frank. I wanted each one to last longer, and I don’t want to live the rest of my life in prison.”
Markham stabbed most of his victims, although bludgeoning and strangulation were occasional methods of choice for him. He never shot a victim, never owned a gun. Guns were too noisy, he said, too messy, too easy to trace. Besides, he loved the intimacy—the scent, the soft feel, the taste, the heat—of a close kill.
Now Stanley Markham was free, trying to find his way home. Had he somehow found his way to Ragged Harbor instead? I didn’t think so. But what if I was wrong?
I HAD WORKED OTHER CASES IN WHICH THE MIND-SET was slow to come. I learned early to leave them alone, to allow my attention to go elsewhere. This time I headed for my worn copy of Wes “Scoop” Nisker’s Crazy Wisdom. Over the years, my cat Max had chewed numerous page corners, as if marking them for my attention. He never bothered with other books, probably because they were not as readily available, but I enjoyed believing that Max and I shared a love of the nonlinear. I always opened to one of Max’s selections.
I pulled the book from my duffel bag and switched on the radio to find some decent music. The host of a local show read the weather, the tides, and a fishing forecast, then launched into a report on the murders, followed by an editorial.
“Herb Jaworski has served this town during four decades of growth, increased tourism, and rising crime rates,” he said. “He has kept up with most law enforcement advances. His achievements are many. However, all of us reach the time in our careers when we need to hand over the reins to the younger folks coming along. That time has come for the chief.”
What blither. I snapped off the radio and wandered into the small study at the back of the house. “Aging is bad enough,” I muttered. “We don’t need a fucking Greek chorus.”
I settled into the chair, found what looked like Max’s most recent chomp, and flipped open to Chapter Four, “Crazy Western Wisdom.”
“Appropriate,” I muttered, thinking again how we had been trained to value thought, intellect, and reasoning, to the nearly total exclusion of an empty and receptive mind.
As I considered whether I could read by the light from the window, I sensed movement to my right.
I continued to read, but struggled with the words because I was distracted by motion where there should be none. Finally I turned my head, and immediately wished that I’d found somewhere else to sit.
I stared into the broad face of a four-foot timber rattlesnake coiled on the shelf at eye level. Its tail segments were silent as it slowly raised up. The snake sensed the presence of warm-blooded prey. I watched its tongue flick in and out as the rattler completed its coil, then arched backward, prepared to strike.
Sweat poured down my neck. My fingers trembled as I allowed the book to fold into my lap, then moved my hands to the ends of the chair’s arms. When I had a decent grip, I propelled myself from the chair onto the floor in the middle of the room.
The snake lurched at my vacated space and landed on the leather chair.
Now the rattler buzzed its alarm and looked mighty pissed.
I pushed myself to my feet, silently cursing my stupidity for not bringing a weapon with me from Lake Albert. I thought I would be teaching school, not defending myself against vipers.
I ran to the living room, grabbed the fireplace poker, and returned to the study. The rattler remained on the chair, its head tucked low in its coil, its tail vibrating. I glanced at the poker in my hand and decided that a full retreat was in order.
I jogged to the front of the house, grabbed the phone without a second’s hesitation, and called Jaworski.
MINUTES LATER, I WATCHED AS THE CHIEF STOOD IN the study doorway, aimed a .22 caliber rifle, and fired. The gun’s crack echoed through the small house.
Jaworski’s shot shattered the snake’s head. A spattering of skin and blood decorated the chair.
“That’s a timber rattler,” he said. “We don’t get them around here. Way up north you hear about a few, maybe near Rangeley or on Mount Katahdin. They like heat and big, flat rocks. You got a first for Ragged Harbor.”
Herb sounded like a little boy at the ballpark for the first time.
“I could do without the distinction,” I said, wondering how a snake that was not indigenous to the area had made its way into my study. “Is there any possible way that thing just wandered in here?”
Jaworski reached behind the chair, then turned. He held a burlap sack.
“One bite won’t kill you, but it will take you out of commission for a while. Doubt he’d bring his own burlap bag. Like I said, there aren’t any rattlers within fifty miles of here.”
Jaworski used his rifle to nudge the dead snake into the sack.
I glanced at my still-trembling hands and felt my heart thudding like a poorly tuned engine.
“You must have been hard at work to piss off someone in the four or five days you’ve been here.”
“The only obvious hostility I’ve noticed was in your office a few hours ago, from the lovely Detective Jasper, and from the clerk at Downtown Grocery every time I go in there.”
Jaworski nodded. “I don’t understand Karen. She’s a damn fine detective, but she sure doesn’t have much use for you. She’ll have to live with it. I made that clear to her. Angie Duvall down at the store is like most folks in town. They don’t like anyone who’s connected to the college. This time of year, the only strangers in town are on the hill.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s the college and its fat endowment from Martin International. The kids raise hell, piss away more money on beer and pizza in one night than some folks earn in a week. Then t
here’s MI. If you believe the rumors, they wash and move money.”
“Have you had any specific complaints about MI?”
Jaworski thought for a moment. “One or two. Mostly it’s rumors. I tried talking to Gilman about it, just to let him know he had a public relations problem. He showed me the door. Attitude like that irritates the local folks. This isn’t the richest town in the world, and Martin’s flak catcher drives around in a silver Jaguar. Two years ago, when their visitor washed up on the beach, Angie Duvall for one was convinced that somebody murdered him. I pulled the file on that case after you asked me about it. He was Hispanic. So were the two Gilman was with Friday night. When I tried to do a little background on the dead guy, I got shut out. The feds handled it.”
Jaworski walked to the door. “What about this?” he asked, holding up the burlap sack.
After I called Jaworski, I had examined the doors and windows and found no signs of forced entry. Somebody besides Karen Jasper did not think kind thoughts about me. My gut told me that whoever it was had a key to my house.
“I’ll be more careful,” I said, walking the chief to the door.
“You have a weapon?”
“Didn’t think I’d need one to teach school.”
Jaworski stopped on the porch. “Might be a good idea if you got one.”
The chief gazed at the sky, then looked at me with a flicker of a smile. “Lot of violence these days,” he said. “More than when we were kids.”
I GLARED AT THE PHONE. WHEN I HAD USED IT TO report my intruder, I had been under duress. The next call was elective, so I had time to think about it.
I don’t have a phone in my home in Michigan. My concession to electronic communication is the fax machine. My daughter Lane insists that my refusal to “reach out and touch someone” is symptomatic of my technophobia. I tell her that when she quits Homicide and enrolls in medical school, I will pay more attention to her diagnostic efforts.
After a moment of loathing, I overcame my aversion to using the damn thing and called my oldest friend, Ray Bolton, a detective with the Boston Police Department.