The Definitive Albert J. Sterne

by Julie Bozza

  “That’s not for you to decide.”

  “Really.” Fletcher held the cold gaze easily. “You know, it’s fifteen. I worked it out. Fifteen cases you’ve helped me with in five years.”

  But Albert turned away.

  Fletch deliberately changed the subject. “It’s not that I want to go away right now. If I break one more date with this woman I’m seeing … It’s getting complicated, and I’m afraid she’ll think it’s simpler to -”

  Albert said, “I have work to do, Ash.” He leaned over the table, reaching for one of his steel tools.

  “That’s fine, Albert. I’ll see you when I get back.” He didn’t get a response, so Fletch left the room, quietly pulling the heavy door shut behind him.

  When in Washington, it had become Fletcher’s habit to meet with McIntyre, who’d been transferred to Records at HQ some years ago. They always went out together for lunch and gossip, and Fletch found Mac very useful when he needed to search the Bureau’s files for a case. This visit was no different. Fletcher headed down to Records as soon as he arrived, called Mac to the counter and told him that he’d left Albert behind conducting autopsies.

  Before Fletch could explain any further, Mac drew away and gazed at him in wonder. “You voluntarily asked Albert Sterne up to Colorado again? You must be a masochist or something. Most people are smart enough to avoid him and there you are encouraging him at every opportunity. You’re gonna learn this one the hard way.”

  Fletcher chuckled, though he couldn’t help but reflect that, while Albert was not the easiest person to know, he surely didn’t deserve this continual antipathy. “Come off it. You like him, too.”

  “Don’t tell him that. Anyway, it’s more a case of I used to like him, but I wised up. Celia always asks after him,” Mac commented wistfully, “but at least she’s not always inviting him down there. You should wise up, too.”

  “Caroline would agree with you.”

  “Hey, did you hear the latest?” Mac cast a glance around Records to ensure there was no one within hearing distance, then leaned closer over the counter. “Albert walks in one day, and there’s this photo on his desk, in a nice frame so it looks like it’s a girlfriend. But it’s not a photo, it’s an X-ray of a stiff, one of the Jane Does from the cold room. Someone had done its hair up, given it earrings and one of those cheap metal necklaces, you know the ones with a name - the name being Albert, of course - and posed it. Everyone was expecting him to hit the roof, but he just looked at it, and got on with his work. Then the next day the whole forensics staff, and anyone else even remotely connected, find themselves sitting through this mandatory three-hour lecture on ethics and professionalism in forensic pathology, by the driest professor on earth.”

  Fletch listened to this with a raised eyebrow. “Serves them right.”

  “Nothing fazes that guy. A couple of weeks ago, someone slipped a paper clip under a body when it was being X-rayed. They must have taken a proper X-ray for Albert to work with, then slipped this fake one into the report to Jefferson. You could hear Jefferson yelling a mile away, wanting to know why Albert hadn’t included in his report that the stomach contents included a damn paper clip - it was a poison case, you see. I don’t think Albert deigned to react that time.”

  “That’s going a bit far.”

  “True enough,” Mac agreed. “But you have to admit it was kind of funny.”

  “Yeah. So, did they get a laugh out of the lecture?”

  “Laugh? Don’t be ridiculous. They were bored out of their brains, they hated him for it.”

  “But that’s just Albert’s sense of humor. I know it’s dry, but …”

  “Sense of humor,” Mac was musing. “Albert with a sense of humor. What a crazy concept.”

  Fletch stood straight again, frowning. “Doesn’t anyone know him at all? He’d have been thoroughly amused, putting them through that.”

  “You think? Apparently he just sat up the front, totally bland. You know that standard expression of his.”

  “I know there’s a lot going on behind it.”

  Mac mirrored Fletch’s frown. “I guess they appreciated him not turning in the people responsible. On the other hand, no one thought it was fair to punish them all.”

  “I can’t believe they find him that difficult to understand. He must have some sort of relationship with his colleagues - even if it’s only playing horrible jokes on each other. You know, Mac,” Fletcher continued, “I thought at least you understood him. We hardly ever gossip about anyone else, and you’re always right when you bother analyzing him.”

  “You’re the one who does most of the analysis.”

  “This is mad.” Frustrating. Fletch didn’t know if he was more annoyed at Albert for his stubbornness, or at the rest of the world for being so easily fooled.

  “It’s revolting, that’s what it is. Her skeleton hands over her heart, and that ghastly necklace. I think - I hope he shredded the thing.”

  “Why does he make his life so impossible?”

  “Don’t tell me he’s finally losing your sympathy after all these years.”

  “No … He interests me, and I can still see that pony in there - but I want to know why there has to be so much shit. Anyway,” Fletch continued with a conspiratorial smile, “I suspect the interest is mutual, and what more does one person need to like another other than to be liked in return?”

  Mac shrugged, and drew back. “Just don’t tell him it’s me that passes on the gossip.”

  “You value his good opinion, don’t you? I’ll tell you the truth, though - that’s only one on a long list of reasons I don’t want to broach all this with him.”

  “So what are you doing here, Fletch? Other than catching up with the gossip on Albert, of course. What’s this case you have him working on?”

  “I found three bodies,” Ash said quietly after a moment, “and I need to trace the offender. He’s done this before, he has to be somewhere in your files.”

  “What have you got on him?”

  “White male, probably in his late twenties or early thirties; victims all white males, between eighteen and twenty-five; sadistic sexual homicide; fits the organized profile.”

  Mac stared for a moment. “What else have you got? That’s very broad. There’s too many of the bastards out there. Though I suppose most of them prey on women, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do.” Fletch said, “Let’s find a spare desk - there’s plenty of detail.”

  “How was the flight?” Caroline Thornton asked on Fletcher’s return to Denver.

  “Scary.”

  “Bad weather?”

  “No,” Fletch told her, “this ghastly stuff they tried to convince me was coffee.”

  “You poor boy.”

  They eyed each other and laughed, and then grew serious. “You’ve identified two of the victims,” Ash prompted. The high cold wind, and the weak sunshine, made the airport parking lot an uncomfortable place to loiter. But it seemed better to talk about these things in the clean open air.

  “The first was through the orthodontic plate - his dentist matched it up. Andrew Harmer, an eighteen-year-old college student, lived on campus here in Denver. Went missing in September, six months ago, with no warning.”

  “Family?”

  “Parents and two younger sisters. They live out of town.” She exchanged another glance with Fletch. “And they’re taking it about as badly as you’d expect. The father insisted on identifying the body, you know what state it was in.”

  “Do they know all the gruesomes?”

  “The broad story, not the detail. I did the hard stuff last night, you missed out on that - but we’re going to interview them now, before the papers take hold and shake it up.”

  “We, as in …?”

  “You and me, Fletch. That’s where we’re heading.”

  Ash sighed. “All right. Is there someone local?”

  “No one who knows them well. The police lent us someone to leave with them fo
r twenty-four hours.”

  “I don’t suppose this ever gets any easier.”

  “We need the information, you know that. And I don’t trust anyone else to do it.”

  Fletcher suddenly smiled a little, wry. “Like Albert Sterne, for instance?”

  Thornton groaned. “Don’t even joke about it. This is the last time you invite him onto our cases, I swear. The bastard has finally succeeded in annoying everyone in Colorado. It’ll be a wonder if he isn’t the next corpse we find two feet under a river bank.”

  “We’ll have to try to prevent that - we’re going to need him. What about the other ID?”

  “The third body was Brett Jones, twenty-four, worked in a restaurant outside Grand Junction.”

  “So the offender traveled a lot, at least within Colorado.”

  “Yes …” Thornton frowned thoughtfully. “I was going to assume that he might be a truck driver, a salesman, something like that. But it seems to me that a fair proportion of the serial killers we know about covered a lot of miles, looking for victims. Perhaps that’s how they operate.”

  “Maybe one of the things we look for is a four-wheel-drive with a relatively high odometer reading. And someone who’s away from home a lot. But does he live out in the country where the bodies were found, or around Grand Junction, or in Denver -”

  “- or somewhere else entirely?”

  “And how did he meet the young men? He must have brought them home, somewhere he felt safe and could take his time, but how did he get them there?”

  “Invited them,” Caroline suggested.

  “That would make him very plausible.”

  “Many of these serial killers have been.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe he has a cabin up in the mountains.”

  “You want to start narrowing this down, Fletch?”

  “Not yet. Tell me about Brett Jones.”

  “He lived alone, only a father - they weren’t close. Brett didn’t turn up for work one day back in November but his father didn’t report him missing for two weeks.”

  “How did you identify him?”

  “Matched the photo from Missing Persons and confirmed it with medical records. The father seemed to think his only son was heading for a nasty end and got what he deserved.”

  “I hope you’re kidding.”

  Thornton shrugged. “Maybe he’s just trying to cope. Anyway, we’re due to go talk to the Harmers. All right?”

  “All right.” Fletch slid into the passenger seat of Caroline’s car. “So, getting to the mundane side of this business, who are we answering to on this one?”

  “The Special Agent in Charge himself,” Thornton declared with a tiny smile.

  “You mean they’re letting you and me run with it?”

  “Cut our teeth on the thing, was how the SAC put it. This is it at last, I figured. A chance to prove ourselves, clamber up a rung or two. There’s only one problem - you’ll need to cancel that leave you wanted at the end of the month, or postpone it at least.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Fletch said absently, puzzled by this unexpected opportunity.

  “Wasn’t it some family shindig up in Idaho?”

  “Harley and Beth’s tenth anniversary. And she’s expecting their first child soon. Any excuse for a party, that lot.”

  “You’re going to be an uncle? Congratulations! You going to mind missing the party?”

  Fletch shrugged. “They won’t miss me.” He continued, “The thing is, why are they giving this case to us?”

  “You found the bodies. That counts for something.”

  Not necessarily, Fletcher thought. He and Caroline were both relatively raw when it came to murder, especially a case like this which would surely prove to be complicated and high profile. Mac had said that he thought Fletch was being watched, that the Bureau still didn’t know what to make of Fletcher Ash - and that hanging around with Albert Sterne wasn’t going to win him any credits. Meanwhile, Caroline was in much the same boat because it wouldn’t take many mistakes or misadventures for women to be edged out of the field and back to the typing pool. “Caroline,” he said, “we’re going to have to be careful.”

  “Yeah, why?” she asked absently, more interested in the traffic as she turned onto a busy road.

  “Our careers are on the line. I’ve been working towards this since I was a kid, you’re heading for special agent in charge if you play your cards right …”

  “Cut the flattery, Fletch. I know all that, I know how important this job is to you.” She spared him a glance. “Don’t you think we’re up to this?”

  “We’re good, we’ve been ready for this for years. But we’ve got to be careful, too.”

  “Sounds like perfectly normal paranoia to me.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay, I figure I’ve been dealt a pretty damned good hand of cards. And you just happen to be one of them. So my advice to you is to view this case as an opportunity.”

  “But so many of these serial murders aren’t solved.”

  “I know, Fletch. But you’re as sick as I am with all the paperwork and shit-shoveling. Let’s make this happen.”

  Ash said, “All right.” Silence for a few minutes. They turned off the highway and into a town that seemed set to resist the urban sprawl. “Albert’s in that good hand of cards.”

  Thornton let out a laugh. “A wild card, maybe. Or a joker - and who’s the joke on?”

  “He’s very good, you know that as well as I do. And he has a lot more direct experience than both of us put together.”

  “God,” she groaned, “if we must. I suppose we must. I’ll talk to Washington again, see if he’s assigned to anything else right now. If not, we’ll ask him to hang around here for a few more days.”

  “Great,” said Ash. “Thanks.”

  “Well, if he doesn’t make you sorry for it, I surely will.”

  Andrew Harmer’s sisters were only eight and eleven years old. The youngest, sensing the mood of the adults, swung between silent sulks and tearful stubbornness. After a few minutes of this chaos, Caroline asked the police officer to take the children off to play somewhere.

  But the older sister turned back at the door, gazed directly at Fletch. “I thought you were bringing Drew home.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid Drew won’t be coming home,” Fletch said evenly.

  “So where is he?” she persisted.

  “He’s in heaven, child,” her mother said, impatient and upset in equal measure. “I told you he’s in heaven now.”

  The girl kept her eyes fixed on the young FBI man as if she expected a better answer from him. Fletch shrugged mentally. There were too many other toes he’d be stepping on. “Drew is in heaven,” he repeated, willing himself and the girl to believe it. “He’s happy there.”

  Then the children were gone. The five adults remaining waited in silence for a long moment, no one willing to begin this. Caroline and Fletch were on a two-seater, facing Mr and Mrs Harmer on a matching sofa. A tray of coffee makings sat neglected on the table between them. Albert was behind Fletch, sitting at the dining table, with strict instructions from Caroline to be seen and not heard unless he had some particularly useful question. The bereaved parents ignored his stony face.

  Caroline at last moved to pour them each coffee. In the bustle of milk and sugar it seemed easier for her to say, “I know this has been truly terrible for you but we have to ask you some more questions.”

  The mother said, “I thought it would be a relief, to finally know one way or the other. But to think of the things you told us last night …” She trailed off, and seemed to be waiting for someone to deny what had happened.

  “I know,” Caroline said as gently as she could, “it’s the worst news we could bring you. But it’s better coming from us than the lies they’ll put in the papers.”

  “To think of the pain Drew went through, the shame of it.” Her gaze was direct but Mrs Harmer seemed unaware that she was wringing he
r hands as she spoke, wringing them over and over each other. “It’s worse than not knowing, it’s worse, and I thought it would be better. I’d rather imagine he ran away, though that would be - I shouldn’t be thinking of my own feelings, but I can’t help wishing, if he had to die, it could have been cleaner. For his sake, of course, for his own sake.”

  “The first thing I have to ask you,” Caroline said, “is whether you have any idea who might have done this thing.”

  It seemed that this was the final outrage. Her hands tightened into fists. “Are you saying this monster could have been someone we knew? That Drew knew? That he endured all that at the hands of a friend?”