Snuff

by E. L. McKenzie

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re right, there’s a conflict here, and I guarantee you when we find The Doctor,” he spat those last two words, “it’s going to be best if a bunch of other law enforcement people are there, too. But in the meantime, you don’t have anyone who knows what they’re doing better than me, who knows this case better, or who is more motivated. You’re not taking me off this case.”

  “You look like hell. You’ve yelled at the Governor twice in the last twenty-four hours. You’ve attacked a pillar of the community. You’re out of control. I have to rein you in.”

  This infuriated Nick. Bosworth was getting information from multiple sources. He didn’t care. He stood. “Phil, this conversation never happened. Go home. Stay out of my way. I’ll get this done.” He stomped out of the office and slammed the door.

  Nick ensured that Mark had all the information he required at his disposal, including access to the secure video conference room to study the various videos law enforcement had now acquired.

  Mark made call after call until well after midnight. He had prepared a script. “Bill, it’s Mark Wagner. I wanted to see if you saw my text or email?”

  If they answered no, he would take the time to talk the executive through the situation. Once he fully explained, or received an affirmative response, he would say, “Before I go further, do you have any questions?”

  After addressing all questions, and specifically emphasizing the urgency of action, he would say, “I need your help. I have studied all the evidence law enforcement has gathered. They have come to the conclusion, and I agree, that the person committing these crimes has significant mining experience, and is likely a mining engineer. They also have concluded he’s working out of Colorado. We are pursuing this individual based on that informed opinion, and are trying to identify suspects based on all of this.

  “The mine this guy has built is not elaborate or sophisticated, but it does incorporate all the mining techniques we use underground. From the little I have seen, he appears to have used a continuous miner to build as large a room as possible. The roof bolts look just like what I’ve always used in room and pillar mining. The larger room is accessed by what appear to be several smaller rooms or shafts. I don’t have detail on that. But this doesn’t look like an old mine that’s been abandoned. It looks like it was built for this purpose. Access to this larger room appears to be from a series of smaller rooms or shafts, all of which have doors, which of course is weird. Since time is of the essence, please trust me when I say I think this guy built this mine with the specific purpose of holding people he kidnapped. I don’t really want to talk about what else he does. Suffice it to say he’s a serial killer.

  “Here’s what I need from you. I need a list of people you think are capable of this. They’d have to have experience as a miner, and be a mining engineer or have those skills. They’d have to be able to do something like this by themselves. Please put everyone on your list who has these capabilities. If appropriate, include yourself and any of your senior leaders. I know that sounds odd, but we don’t want to exclude people because for some reason we have the impression they would never do something like this. Let’s leave that up to the police to ascertain. Put the names in order of most likely to least likely, in your opinion. I need this tonight, hopefully within the next two hours.”

  Saturday ⌁ day 20

  Nick arrived at the office shortly after 4:00 a.m. He was surprised to find the level of activity in the second conference room. He walked in and found a fully engaged team, with Mark Wagner at the helm. Mark acknowledged Nick and pulled away from the group.

  As they walked into the hall, Nick said, “Dang, Mark, you have a lot going on in there.”

  Mark Wagner was in his element. An operations guy from the beginning of his career, nothing energized him like a huge project with a tight deadline. Never in his career had he faced one more important. “We’re going to have this figured out within twenty-four hours; I’m guessing we’ll have a very good guess by the end of the day.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and give me a status now?” Nick asked.

  “First of all, Ronnie and I decided the best thing to do would be to call in a handful of people we know, trust, and could get here quickly, so that’s who all those folks in there are. I have two mining engineers and two operations managers who I think know Colorado mining better than anyone in this state. I also have my Chief Technology Officer and one of her senior database managers in there to make sure we get the data right. I also pulled in my investor relations director to ensure we overwork communications. And Ronnie pulled in three administrative assistants she knows well to help with entering, checking, and double checking all the data. Ronnie and I put together a plan while we waited for everyone to get here. Once we had the crew assembled, we ran the plan by them and revised based on everyone’s experience and input. We decided we should focus on two questions. First, who do we think could do this? And second, where would they do it?”

  Nick nodded, indicating he followed. Mark continued.

  “I worked with the engineers and ops folks to develop a list of people we thought had these capabilities. The list was almost one hundred people. We didn’t want to leave anyone out. It’s easier to weed people out than to go back and add them in later.”

  “Right now, based on the laptops, cell phones, Outlook calendars, and hell, good old day-timers, we have contact information for all but ten of those people. It may not all be current, but it’s pretty good. Working on your assumption that this is happening here in Colorado, we’re going to start following up with all these people at about 8:00. We would start now, but we’d piss people off if we called them in the middle of the night.” Nick nodded again for him to continue.

  “Since we haven’t done this before, we don’t have a great timeline, but we think we’ll have a good answer on potential suspects before lunch. With the suspects identified, we’ll start figuring out where they are, and we hope to have that done for you by the end of the day. This will be iterative, so we’ll work a person, then a location, then that person again, as long as you want us to. I’m guessing you’ll want the civilians out of here soon enough and let law enforcement take over. But this group is with you until this is done.”

  Nick was amazed. No wonder this guy is a COO, he thought. He had accomplished more in ten hours, all non-working hours, than most detectives could get done in a month.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Mark. I owe you a bunch.”

  “You bring Phyllis home alive and well, buddy, and we’re square. You’d do the same for me and you know it.”

  The Doctor did not like to be rushed, but he sensed he did not have time to develop the next script, the sets, costumes, etc. Therefore, he improvised. He smiled to himself, knowing the mark of a true artist, a man of the theatre, was improvisation. Wasn’t that what he was always preaching to his actors?

  The Doctor decided to reprise the previous show, the one Gary Knight had starred in, changing the leading part from a male to a female. He had a store of potential actors acquired during previous Coalition of Values seminars, so casting was not an issue. He was finalizing the costumes, and the scripts and directions had been delivered to the players.

  He would be ready tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest.

  Nick could do little but wait, so he checked in on Sandy Burns and Mike Smith. Smith was appropriately secured and guarded, with the cell phone nearby, plugged into a charger with an antenna booster provided by one of the cell phone companies to ensure any call would be received. He talked to Sandy, then had a few minutes with Smith.

  “Mr. Smith, I am Detective Nicholas Lynch, and I am leading this investigation.”

  Smith looked at him and responded, “Hi, Detective.”

  “Listen,” Nick continued, “I’ve been monitoring your situation closely. I know how important it is to you that we find this guy. Is there anything I should know that I don’t alread
y that you think might help us find him?”

  Smith looked down, pondering the question. “I don’t think so. Like what?”

  “Did you ever meet this guy?”

  “Only through video chat, but, yes, I did see him. He had disguised his face to some degree, but not consequentially. He also got up and walked around a bit, so I saw his build, or stature, or however you want to say it, too.”

  “Tell me everything you can about him.”

  “It’s hard to say over video, so there’s no way to know for sure. But he is white, and he is a pretty average size, maybe 5’10”, 175 pounds or something like that. I mean for all I know he’s 5’8” or 6’0”, but you get the point, pretty average guy.”

  Nick nodded. This would help. “If you had to guess, how old would you say he is?”

  Smith scratched his chin. “More from his voice than meeting him, but I’d say fifty, maybe fifty-five. He’s not young, that I’m sure of.”

  This fit the preliminary profile Friendly had provided. Pretty bland, but it ruled out big people, people of color, and women. Nick prodded from every angle, but Smith did not have much more to offer. He talked about some of the man’s mannerisms and proclivities, nuances Nick filed away depending on what Mark Wagner found.

  It was still early in the afternoon, and he needed to give Mark Wagner time to work. He pulled into the driveway as Nicky and Michelle were getting out of the minivan. They were staying with a family friend on the nights Nick could not make it home.

  He had told them Phyllis was away on an extended engagement that was of such a critical nature she would probably not be in contact much. Kids can be so easy. They asked no probing questions, quickly accepting this as true.

  Nicky and Michelle were on top of him as he opened his car door.

  “Hi dad,” they said happily, in unison. They really had no idea what was going on. They all hugged, then he followed them into the house.

  Nick stayed for almost two hours. The kids talked expansively about school, friends, outside activities, anything they could come up with. They missed their parents, he knew. It felt to him like it had been years since they had all been together. Evidently it felt the same way to the kids.

  He knew once all of this wrapped up things would be different around the Lynch household—probably not for the better. He held his children closely, avoided tears, and headed back to Denver Police Headquarters.

  Nick had not heard from Mark Wagner all day. He had not called because he did not want to interrupt their progress. He knew Mark would call if he needed him, or if he had an answer.

  With the Governor’s Chief of Staff heading the task force, Nick had the power to communicate with law enforcement statewide. At his request, Chief Herde had sent a communiqué to law enforcement throughout Colorado that said to be on standby for a request for significant assistance within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours because they were getting close on the serial killer investigation. Nick, through Herde, referenced the Governor and Marilyn Burg liberally, ensuring they would have whatever resources they required when they went after The Doctor.

  Nick walked into the conference room a little after 7:00 p.m.

  Mark said, “We have it down to five, but we’re struggling to reduce it.”

  Nick bristled with anticipation. “Mark, that’s great. Let me get Burleson and you can walk us through what you have. I have a gut feeling, but I want to hear it all, then we’ll make a decision what to do next.”

  This would be touchy, Nick thought. On the one hand, it would not be hard to swoop down on five different suspects, particularly if it was executed in multiple jurisdictions, spreading out the resource requirements. On the other hand, if The Doctor was not amongst the five, he certainly would hear quickly about this and no doubt run, killing Crawford and Phyllis and anyone else he held as one final act of defiance before fleeing.

  Wagner called in Ronnie Hull who was handling the documentation for all the information they were gathering. They sat across from Nick and Burleson.

  “Mark, why don’t you and Ronnie walk us through what you have, logic and all. We’ll ask a few questions as you go, but for the most part let you proceed uninterrupted.”

  Wagner nodded and began. “In a lot of ways, this is similar to acquiring mineral rights for mining. First, it is important to understand the universe of possibilities. Only then can one make the best decision.”

  Again, Nick was impressed with this guy’s intelligence. He was extremely thorough.

  “We cast the net as wide as possible. I know you know the caveats, but I think it’s important to state them anyway. Given the time constraints, we believe we have considered as many suspects as possible, but there is the chance this killer is outside the group we have considered. However, I have talked to my colleagues, and we agree that if the killer is a miner in Colorado, who worked here, we’d stake our reputations on him being one of these five people.”

  “First, we entered every name we could think of into a database that Ronnie is handling. I think the database is now over ten thousand people, is that right Ronnie?”

  “It’s a little over twelve thousand now.” Nick about fell out of his chair. How did they accumulate and disseminate this much information this quickly? He had called Mark only twenty hours earlier.

  “We entered name, age, gender, ethnicity, height, weight, we have several entries for different levels of mining experience, various company experiences, current work location, and a whole lot more detail. I have executives here from every major mining operation in Colorado, and they all brought detailed history on people, so we were able to upload most of this electronically, manipulate, sort, that sort of thing.

  “As an aside, the privacy immunity waiver you provided from the Governor helped tremendously. No one balked at providing information given that blanket coverage. It was smart to get that.

  “We then developed criteria for eliminating people. The criteria were first objective, then subjective. We are looking for a white male approximately fifty years of age, of average size, who is capable of mining on his own. We know the types of skills that would be required to build rooms like he built, based on studying the videos, so we have criteria for eliminating people who couldn’t do that type of work. The most likely scenario is a mining engineer with some actual background as a miner, a laborer. Someone accustomed to getting his hands dirty, but smart and strategic.

  “We eliminated people extensively. We’ve worked the list all day long. We started making calls at 8:00 as I told you we would. For the people we had not eliminated, we developed a script with Detective Burleson,” he said, nodding Burleson’s way. Burleson grunted acknowledgement.

  “We followed up on all these people. Since we have executives from all the bigger mining companies, each of them handled the calls for folks that work for or used to work for them. With only a few exceptions, we were able to eliminate nearly everyone during this second pass.”

  “While these calls were being made, we developed a second script and approach for the folks that were not eliminated during the first pass. Detective Burleson played a heavier role in this. This was a group of over one hundred people. We involved local law enforcement in following up on where these people were, whether or not they would be considered suspects, etc. Based on this, we culled the list down to ten people.”

  “Detective Burleson took the list of ten and, based on further investigation we’re not privy to, has eliminated an additional five.” Wagner looked at Nick for further direction.

  Nick sat and absorbed all of this.

  “Vince,” he said, turning to the detective, “what was it you did that allowed you to eliminate the first five that would not allow you to eliminate the other five.”

  “On the second pass for these ten, we had the Sheriff or Chief of Police in the local jurisdiction follow up. Chief Detective Bosworth was on the phone, too, when I called each officer. The direction, and we used the Governor’s name, was that the Sh
eriff or Chief of Police himself or herself was supposed to follow up on this directly. There would be no delegation of this task, and this was to be done solo.”

  Nick nodded, understanding confidentiality was about to be a problem. They had to find The Doctor now or he was going to catch the scent and be gone.

  “Did you talk to each of the ten law enforcement officers after they had completed their quick investigations?”

  Burleson nodded. “Actually it was only eight, because we had two people each in two different counties.”

  “Are you comfortable that the five that were eliminated should have been?”

  Again, Burleson nodded. “Chief Detective Bosworth and I spent quite a bit of time together afterwards to confirm this. The five eliminated were each visited personally, and in each case the Sheriff or Chief was one-hundred percent certain this person could be eliminated. Do you want detail on each of the five? I have it.”

  “No, if you guys are okay, I am. What about the five that weren’t eliminated?”

  “No one talked to them. Each of these were in smaller communities, where there’s no police department, only the sheriff.” Nick nodded. This was good. A sheriff’s department in a small community typically knew people better than police did in their municipalities. Nick wasn’t sure why, but this had always seemed to be the case.

  “Here’s what I want to do,” Nick said decisively. “I want a conference call scheduled for 9:00 p.m., roughly thirty minutes from now. I want all of us, Bosworth, the five sheriffs, and the executives from the companies each of these five works or worked for. We’re going to see if we can eliminate anyone else. If so, great. If not, we’re going to prioritize and hit at the top two first, then the next two, and finally the fifth option. Kelly, in advance of the call have your folks run background checks on all five to see if anything pops. I suspect the sheriffs already have, but I don’t want to miss something easily found.”