The Criminal Mind

by Thomas Benigno

  “This will help you sleep,” he said.

  “But I got a sedative already, and don’t need any help sleeping,” I said firmly.

  “It will also help you with the pain in your head.” He raised his eyes and seemed to be examining my scalp. “We should change those bandages. I’ll have a nurse do it when I leave.” Again, he remained poised and controlled—like a doctor should, and like a patient would expect.

  I looked down at the needle. My head was starting to ache again. The din in the emergency room was getting worse. My ears were ringing. They had never done that before. Charlie’s snoring in the bed next to me was getting louder. Perception was overtaking reality. I could hear a man crying. It was the old man who handed me my pants. The chatter of hospital personnel and patient complaints was deafening. The doctor stepped closer. Everything was moving in slow motion. He leaned against the side of the bed, his scrubs brushing against my arm, a stethoscope dangling from his neck. I looked for his nametag. He wasn’t wearing one. He smiled at me again. Then the smile disappeared, and his face took on the coarse pale look of a department store mannequin.

  Lack of sleep, head injuries, plus a sedative, and I was feeling faint.

  The needle penetrated my arm.

  Like a ghost or an angel, the curtain parted on the opposite side of my bed and Maureen appeared. I reached out to her. I missed you. She had a pistol in her hand. It was pointed in my direction. She looked sad, angry too—yet resolute. I was happy and afraid to see her at the same time.

  She raised her arm and fired.

  My face was covered in blood. More shots rang out. The area around me was consumed with smoke. The needle was still in my arm. The doctor, who wasn’t a doctor at all, was lying on the floor beside my bed, a bullet in his head. Maureen had shot him dead before he could pump me with a deadly overdose of the morphine that was still in the syringe.

  I wiped the blood from my eyes. Maureen was gone. The same two FBI agents who had driven us to the hospital burst through the curtains, guns drawn, asking if I was alright. A nurse followed—the same one who huffed away earlier. She looked down at the man in scrubs on the floor and screamed. She then looked at me and carefully pulled the needle from my arm.

  “What the fuck?” Charlie growled as he raised his head and turned toward me. “What the hell happened? Damn, Nick. Are you okay?”

  “I wasn’t hit,” I answered, as the nurse wiped the blood from my face while muttering something about God and heaven. “Some phony doctor was about to give me a syringe cocktail. Maureen shot him and saved my life.”

  While the one nurse continued to clean me up, two other nurses and an emergency room doctor approached with hospital security. One of the FBI agents flashed his ID with one hand while making a call with the other. “We got this,” he shouted to all who would listen, then glanced at his partner who was crouched down next to him.

  Charlie gestured half-heartedly to the area in front of my bed and out of my line of sight.

  I leaned over, despite the nurse cleaning me up, and demanding that I sit still.

  Lying in a pool of blood, her beautiful blue eyes open and lifeless, was Olga Sokolov, alias my Maureen. The dead man in scrubs was a Russian national—and her husband.

  As soon as I had hung up with Donald Riggins, he called the FBI field supervisor and insisted that the two agents who had dropped us off at the hospital be ordered to turn around, and fast. Once they arrived outside the emergency room doors, they bolted out of their car, and rushed in. Swatting curtain after curtain aside, they searched for me, until they turned down the corridor where my bed was located.

  There, they spotted Maureen, gun in hand, pointed straight at me.

  She never saw them coming.

  After she put a bullet in her husband’s head to save me, the FBI put three in her. From their vantage point, they thought I was the one they would find shot and killed. They were wrong about that—and wrong about Maureen. That controlling louse of a husband whom she had described to me when detailing her phony background—the one who cheated on her, treated her like an intangible possession, used and abused her—was real; only he was Russian, not American. The note that she left with the doorman to my building in Manhattan was also real. I would like to think that she had left it because in some small way—that I can’t possibly measure or calculate the sincerity of—she cared about me, and wanted out of the life of crime she was leading under the iron fist of one obsessive and controlling husband.

  In the end, she risked her life and lost it to save mine. As far as I was concerned, when she pulled that trigger, she attained her absolution. Whether it was also her salvation is up to a much higher power.

  Did I ever really know her? Of course not. She made her choices long ago and in the end, they worked out tragically for her—bad choices tend to do that. But when I look back and think about her, and what I thought we had, I always seem to find a proper way in which to remember it.

  Both Charlotte and John rushed to see me shortly after I ducked yet another attempt on my life. Fortunately, by the time they showed up, I was an admitted patient and had been moved out of the emergency room crime scene.

  Charlotte insisted on staying the night. Armed federal agents outside my room or not, I wouldn’t hear of it. The following morning, she popped in on her way to work and John called right after she left to check on me as well.

  Then—who would have guessed it—but lo and behold, later that morning, Donald Riggins showed up.

  Since Charlie had been discharged—and I was already missing the quirky old bastard—I was looking forward to the company of yet another.

  As it turned out, all Charlie needed was a good night’s rest, some food in his belly, and he was fine. The hospital arranged for his transportation back to the Veterans’ Center.

  When Riggins walked in, a broad smile was draped across his face. In his mid-seventies, he had a short white beard and a twinkle in his eye that reminded me of a Macy’s department store Santa—a good Santa, not a bad one. We shook hands warmly.

  “Guess I screwed up by calling the FBI in here yesterday,” he began.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Nice to know you cared enough to call back up. I was beginning to think you were only in this for only the sheer adventure.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” he said with a slight smile. “After all, you are my employer, and I do like getting paid. It’s kind of hard to collect from a dead man, you know.”

  I chuckled. “Nothing you say should ever surprise me, Don, but for the life of me, it continues to.” I then noticed the red and white bag in his hand filled with Denny’s hamburgers.

  “Want one?” he asked. “I got you a burger and fries.”

  “Hell, yeah. Give it here,” I said eagerly. Hospital food was never my favorite.

  As we ate our lunch, he briefed me on the follow-up investigation in Cartersville. “From the deer and moose heads mounted on the cabin walls, it seems that Richard Norris was a hunter of sorts. By the way, it’s illegal to hunt moose in New York, but that didn’t stop him.”

  “You mean a law-abiding serial killer he was not?”

  Riggins smiled weakly and continued. “It wasn’t until the FBI got hold of a series of photo albums, kept in a large steamer trunk at the foot of Norris’ bed, that additional proof surfaced pointing to the overtly friendly and corrupt relationship he had with the local sheriff’s department. Seems the arrogant Deputy Carter was an avid hunter also, as was evident by the dozens of photos they found of him and Norris taken during their hunting trips together. And that’s not the only pastime the two shared. When a local drug dealer—who’s in jail and awaiting trial—saw the commotion at the cabin on the news, he called the local district attorney’s office. For a nifty plea deal, he was more than willing to turn state’s evidence against the dirty deputy. A warrant was quickly issued to search Car
ter’s house, and when a few loose floorboards in the guest bedroom were removed, keys were found to a rented garage full of cocaine, heroin, and bags of cash. The leasee of that garage? None other than Richard Norris. Needless to say, Deputy Carter was immediately placed under arrest and held without bail. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what the seizure of such a large quantity of cocaine means for the deputy.”

  “It means he’s facing serious jail time,” I answered. “No wonder he went nuts trying to stop the FBI from going in that cabin. He wanted to get to Norris before the FBI did. Little did Carter know, but Norris was already dead.”

  “In the end,” Riggins added. “It was all about drugs and money—dating back to when that teenager who started us on this adventure was just a little girl entrusted to the care of her mother’s drug dealer boyfriend, who happened to have his own arrangement with the local police.”

  I listened and shook my head in sorrowful resignation.

  But Riggins had one more bomb to drop on me. “Seems that steamer trunk in the cabin at the foot of Norris’s bed was an heirloom—a 1940s edition with drawers and compartments. In other words, it had been in the family for at least fifteen-to-twenty years before that degenerate, Richard Norris, was even born.”

  “I remember seeing that trunk, but I paid it no mind. I was crazy out-of-my-mind at the time and couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

  “Seems that trunk also had a false bottom.”

  “Why am I not surprised? More photos?”

  “Not exactly. Try the pink summer dress of a teenage girl.”

  “And this was the father’s trunk—Richard Holcomb?”

  “From the age of the trunk, no doubt.”

  “And the dress…did you tell Charlie about it?”

  “I even sent him a photo…and I do believe I heard him crying over the phone. He told me that his mother bought his sister, Peggy, that very dress. It was the one she wore the night she snuck out of the house to meet her prom date. He said that he could never forget that dress as long as he lived.”

  “So, Richard Holcomb killed Peggy—but why?”

  “You mean why does a kidnapper and killer of little boys—kill the teenage girl next door?”

  “We know he’s a maniac, but it’s got to be more than that.”

  “Well, without becoming too much of a psychotherapist, there is more to the story.”

  “Isn’t there always?”

  “I know you’ve heard the expression ‘follow the money.’ Well, money is not the only type of evidence that can provide answers. The same goes for weapons, which can be traced all the way back to the manufacturer—illegally obtained or not. And if not illegally obtained, to its rightful owner.”

  “Weapons? What weapons? I thought Peggy was strangled, her body sawed to pieces. They only found her skull for God’s sake.”

  “That’s not where I’m going. I’m talking about the gun Charlie used to kill Richard Norris.”

  “What? Charlie said it was an illegal gun that he got from an old Upstate friend—someone he served with in Vietnam.”

  “And you know who that friend is?” Riggins was smiling, and though I didn’t think he was one for dramatic pauses, I suppose this was an exception. “Does a Howie Hendricks ring a bell?”

  I thought for a moment. “No, not at all.”

  “How about Howard Hendricks?”

  “Do you mean, Howard, Peggy’s high school boyfriend?”

  “Bingo.”

  “I never did know his last name. I don’t think Charlie ever mentioned it. So, Howard is the old friend Charlie was referring to?”

  “Yep. They served in Vietnam at about the same time; only Howard got drafted while Charlie enlisted. They ran into each other overseas and remained good buddies ever since. Howard married a few years after he returned home, had three kids—all girls. It was his wife who started calling him Howie. I supposed she thought it was cute or something, and it stuck from there.”

  “So, Charlie probably never thought he would use the gun, and figured he would just get it back to Howard before he left, with no one the wiser.”

  “I suppose. After the shootout in the emergency room yesterday, the agents searched the area for weapons. That included your open bag.”

  “I had asked someone to get the pants I was wearing out of my suitcase. The killer’s ID was in it.”

  “We know.”

  “Come to think of it. Where is my suitcase anyway?”

  “The FBI has it.”

  “And they traced the gun Charlie shot the killer with that fast?”

  “It’s 2018. That’s not hard to do—especially if you’ve got a legit weapon with serial numbers on it.”

  “So, the pistol was not legal and got traced back to Howard. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Once they gave me the owner, I wasted no time reaching out to him. Nice guy, he picked up the phone when I called. He’s still married to the same woman. He still lives in Phoenix, outside Cartersville. He has three daughters. All have moved away, and from what I gathered, life as a whole, has been good to him.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. But let me think about this for a minute…so, when Charlie told me the gun was illegal—he was lying just trying to protect Howard and keep him out of this?”

  “Likewise, I assured Howard that there would be no charges brought for giving Charlie the gun, especially since it saved three lives and stopped a serial killer dead in his tracks. And you know what he said when I told him that? He said if he had to go to jail for the rest of his life because he gave Charlie that gun, it would have been worth it.”

  “I’m not surprised, but you still didn’t answer my question. Why in God’s name did Richard Holcomb kill Peggy?”

  “The answer, I’m afraid, was also in the steamer trunk. Seems Holcomb not only kept the pink dress, but Peggy’s purse as well. I haven’t told Charlie about this part yet, but I will. When he started crying over the photo of the dress, I stopped there. I plan on going to see him when I leave here, unless you think I shouldn’t.”

  “He’s a pretty tough guy—but we are talking about his sister,” I huffed. “Besides, Donald, I can’t answer you until I know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Peggy’s purse was in the trunk also. It was also pink. In it was a tube of lipstick, makeup, tissues, a five-dollar bill, and here is where we hit pay dirt—a camera. A 1965 Kodak Instamatic with undeveloped film inside it.”

  “That figures. She was on her way to her first prom, after all.”

  “Of course, that figures, but it’s the photos she took that told us what we needed to know.”

  “You mean—you were able to develop them?”

  “Not me—the FBI. They have a lab that can develop just about anything.”

  “But she never made it to the prom, so what could…don’t tell me?”

  “There were only two pictures taken. Both were outdoors and apparently snapped on her way to Howard’s, along a road somewhere between her house and his. It’s hard to place the location exactly.”

  “And now you’re about to tell me is that she saw something she shouldn’t have, and to make matters worse, took pictures of it.”

  “Unfortunately for her, yes. First, she took a photo of a woman walking ahead of her on the other side of the road. The shot was taken from about thirty feet away. You couldn’t see the woman’s face because she had her back to Peggy. The woman was in low heels, had shoulder-length blonde hair, and was wearing a dress. A pocketbook was hanging off her arm. Nothing unusual about that—until the lab developed the second photo. In that one, the woman had stopped walking and is looking over at Peggy taking the picture. She appears to be engaged in conversation with a boy, eight or nine years old, hanging off a two-wheeler. Apparently, Peggy had walked past them and for some reason decided t
o turn and snap this second photo. We didn’t find out why until we enlarged it. And I’ve got to tell you, for a 1965 Kodak Instamatic, it took one hell of a picture.”

  “You’re doing it to me again, Don. Please just tell me what you found.”

  “It’s what the FBI found. I just confirmed it. Seems this woman…wasn’t a woman at all. It was Richard Holcomb dressed up as one. And I can only figure that once he saw Peggy snap that photo of him with that little boy, she was done for.”

  “She must have had her suspicions. Her bedroom window overlooked his aunt’s house. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had seen him in the same get-up before. Maybe she had her suspicions already.”

  “And when she saw that same man stop that little boy when no one else was around, or should I say when he thought no one else was around, Peggy must have known something wasn’t right.”

  “But why the first photo?”

  “When the FBI blew that one up, you could see the bicycle’s front tire in the frame. Holcomb had probably flagged the boy down first. Once Peggy saw that, she got wise, took out her camera, and snapped the photo.”

  “Any theory on why he dressed up as a woman, other than he may have liked to?”

  “Keep in mind, when Peggy saw him on her way to Howard’s, he was hiding out and wanted in Manhattan for murder. Maybe that’s how he got around in Cartersville—in disguise.”

  “Maybe that disguise served another purpose as well,” I added. “It was probably a lot easier to lure little boys as a woman, than as a man. But what I can’t figure is: Why keep Peggy’s purse and dress to begin with?”

  “It’s quite common for serial killers to keep mementos. Also, there were short blonde hairs found under the shoulder straps of the dress. Peggy’s hair was dark brown. For all we know, while playing dress-up he probably wore the dress a few times himself.”