by Joe Conlan
Once they were seated, the children immediately ran off to play video games. Deborah and Daniel didn’t expect to see them again until after the food was delivered. They placed their orders and those for the kids with the server then took advantage of the moment to chat. After catching up on recent events and the health of family members, Daniel broached the more important subject matter of the evening.
“Sweetie, I don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready for, but I have to ask. Does your willingness to take my calls and meet with me mean you’d like to work on our relationship?”
“Daniel, I’m taking one day at a time. I just don’t think I’m capable of looking that far into the future right now. I can’t even tell you what I want to do next week. What I can tell you is I’ve been doing a lot of work with my therapist on trust issues and forgiveness. Before I ever even think about our marriage, I have to learn to forgive you.”
“So that means you’re considering it... forgiving me?”
“It means I’m working hard on being a little bit more realistic about life and men. I’m not saying unfaithfulness is excusable. But, we’re human beings and we make mistakes. Most people deserve a second chance. Don’t take that like I’m saying I’m capable of giving you another chance. I’m working on the idea in therapy.”
“Well, I’ll settle for that. I’m gonna do my best not to rush you into anything. You know I’d move back in tonight if you’d let me. I’ve been a mess without you.”
“It hasn’t exactly been a party for me. I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Daniel. I’m gonna take things very slowly. I think maybe we should get a little counseling. What do you think?”
“I’m ready to try anything. Like I told you on the phone and a million times in emails, I want this to work. So, whatever we need to get it to happen, I’m all for it.”
“I think it’s best. Even if, in the end, it doesn’t work out, the therapist’ll help us with whatever relationship we have after. We definitely have some issues we need to resolve. A relationship is nothing without trust. I can’t lie to you. I’m going to have to work hard. There are definitely no guarantees. Geez, here comes the server with our food already. I better go get the kids.”
“No, you sit, honey. I’ll go get them.”
Daniel headed for the game room to find the boys involved in a tense game of video tennis. They resisted their dad’s request to wrap things up convincing him to compromise and allow them three minutes to be seated at the table. After the boys arrived, the Falcone family enjoyed their first dinner together in more than two months. They joked, laughed, talked about the boys’ school and tennis and just appreciated each other’s company. The angst that was Daniel’s constant companion for many weeks was finally beginning to dissipate.
After the busboy cleared the table and the family ordered their desserts, Dale and Timmy ran off to get in a final video game or two. Deborah seized the opportunity to bring up a matter that was on her mind.
“Daniel, the other day, I received a letter in the mail from Annie.” Daniel’s eyes almost popped out of his head. Deborah, who couldn’t help but notice his reaction, said, “Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad. I guess she felt the need to apologize to me though she claimed she wasn’t looking for forgiveness. Not that I care how she feels, I got the impression she’s truly upset that we’re still having problems. She offered us a free cruise hoping it would be a start to us getting back together. I didn’t respond.”
“Honey, I haven’t spoken to Annie in months. I told her I couldn’t see her anymore. I asked her not to contact you.”
“She mentioned that in the letter. When I realized it was from her, I was pretty mad. But, the more I think about it, I’m not so sure I want to give up a free cruise. It’s not like she’ll be on the ship.”
Daniel felt that the best strategy would be to keep his opinions on the matter to himself. He said, “My only concern right now is for you and the kids. I’m sure Annie’ll be fine. I appreciate her concern. This is our business. Whatever you want to do with her offer is fine by me.”
“Even if I were inclined to accept, it wouldn’t be something I’d be ready for any time in the near future. Perhaps down the road.”
“Like you said, sweetheart, one day at a time.”
Much earlier that same day, Shem Chassar had parked his Jeep Cherokee in the Ross Department Store lot located on the south side of the Diplomat Mall in Hallandale. The vehicle was positioned so that he had a view of both east and westbound traffic on East Hallandale Beach Boulevard and easy passage to the exit onto the street. The time had come to initiate the next phase of his masterpiece plan. Access to the agent’s wife to gather information about her and her habits was essential to develop the final touches. He had spent the last few days waiting in this parking lot for hours at a stretch. His goal was to catch the wife passing without the protection of an unmarked police tag.
The Ross store was less than a mile from the Falcone condominium, directly across from the entrance to their community. East Hallandale Beach Boulevard was the only exit available to the residents of their building complex. If the wife drove out of her neighborhood, he would see her. Shem was only too aware the Falcone family’s home was being watched by two undercover agents for the past few weeks. Falcone and his buddies had become a major nuisance. Shem could no longer rely on them to abandon their stake-outs. It was time to make something happen. His only option was to stay vigilant and hope that the wife found a way to slip past her constant companions. Everyone eventually needed a bit of privacy.
As he sat waiting patiently, his break didn’t quite happen in that fashion. He almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing when the agent’s Crown Victoria occupied by the entire family passed directly in front of him. The fact that the undercover agents hadn’t followed solidified his decision. It was a risk to tail them but an opportunity Shem couldn’t pass up. After waiting several seconds to be sure they weren’t being followed, he pulled out of the parking lot onto the street maintaining a distance of at least three car lengths behind the Crown Victoria. Though he was happy to have this chance, it infuriated him the wife would agree to be in the same car with her immoral, lying and cheating husband. He admonished himself to wait to see where this was leading before he jumped to any conclusions maintaining his pursuit until they pulled into the Dave and Busters in Hollywood. Shem continued to the next intersection, made a U-turn and made his way back to the restaurant. After cutting off the engine, he grabbed his bag from the back seat, pulled out a wig of long, disheveled hair and placed it on his head. To complete the disguise, he put on a Peterbuilt baseball cap and leather motorcycle jacket then exited the Jeep and entered the restaurant.
The building housing Dave and Buster’s was immense. The bar, restaurant and gaming area covered more than forty thousand square feet. The bar alone sat more than two-hundred patrons. The structure, as a whole, held a capacity of two thousand people. He passed the reception podium deliberately ignoring the hostess who greeted him and scanned the part of the dining room visible from the bar. He spotted the agent and his wife engaged in an intense conversation at a table along the wall opposite the far side of the bar. He proceeded into the restaurant and chose a seat at the bar just fifteen feet from the couple with his back to them. Luckily for Shem, the restaurant was mostly empty making it easy to eavesdrop. The subject matter of their talk was less fortunate. Shem couldn’t believe the woman was actually considering working on a relationship with the shameless philanderer. He wondered if all women were just totally fucked in the head.
Listening to the family’s conversation was edging on the unbearable. Several times during the course of the dinner, he contemplated walking out of the restaurant. He was a hair’s breadth from finally making the decision to get up from his barstool and spare himself anymore of their pathetic display when the wife made a comment that stopped him in his tracks. She had received a letter from Annie. Though Shem was pleased to hear Annie and
the agent were no longer seeing each other, the most fascinating piece of information in the correspondence was Annie’s free cruise offer to the Falcone family. The wife may have refused the gift, but her comments were suggesting and his fine-tuned intuition was telling him she would accept some time in the near future.
Sitting in his Jeep in the restaurant’s parking lot ten minutes after the Falcone family left the premises, Shem was in deep contemplation. It was now just a matter of time. If he could maintain an even-temper, the light would be shining brightly at the end of the tunnel. He reminded himself that patience was always extremely important to a successful outcome. His lack of it almost cost him some very valuable information. The final piece of the puzzle would soon be in place. As the details of his course of action became clearer in his mind, the anger smoldering beneath the surface remained at bay.
Chapter 15
While weeks passed and more information was collected regarding the investigation of the Hannah Richards’ murder, a sense of frustration continued to plague Daniel. After hours upon hours of time and manpower dedicated to the subject, there were still no leads to help identify the suspect. They had his genetic code and partial fingerprint. The videotapes and the witness description provided them with a fairly accurate composite sketch. Special Agent Frazier was able to develop a much more complete profile of the killer’s probable behavioral characteristics with the discovery of the linked murders. The killer’s file currently consisted of four accordion files stretched to their limits with more than one-thousand pages of evidence analysis. About the only piece of information they were lacking was a name.
It was determined that each of the victims, except for Hannah Richards, was engaged in prostitution. Teams were dispatched to the European cities where the other murders took place to interview the female prostitutes in those areas. The women were shown a detailed description of the suspect with the composite drawing of his face. A friend of Francesca Leone was able to recognize the picture claiming she saw Francesca with the man several hours before she was murdered. This information managed to confirm that the composite drawing was accurate and it was used for his photograph on the Ten Most Wanted list. To date, it didn’t help lead to the suspect’s identification.
Leland and Mancini scoured the streets of Miami and New York respectively, showing the composite picture to the prostitutes in those cities. New York was a bust. They had better luck in South Florida. One prostitute in the Ft. Lauderdale area and another in Miami thought they recognized the suspect as one of their previous clients. They described him as tall, extremely fit and handsome, though not much of a talker. The Miami girl recalled that when she gave him oral sex, he seemed to reach orgasm, but didn’t ejaculate. None of the three women could say he came back as a repeat customer.
Agent Frazier wasn’t sure whether the prostitute’s identification of the suspect was accurate and if so, if his failure to ejaculate was significant. For purposes of the investigation, they had to recognize the possibility it was the serial killer. His sexual handicap was a fact they couldn’t afford to ignore. Through the study of previous case histories, Frazier was aware of a sexual condition known as dry orgasm. There were several causes, including surgical removal of the prostate or bladder, exposure to radiation in the pelvic area and release of semen into the bladder. It wasn’t an uncommon disorder, most often associated with older men. It didn’t ordinarily afflict men of the suspect’s age range. If the killer was, in fact suffering from the syndrome, it was well worth paying a visit to hospitals and urologists in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward Counties. Several investigators were assigned to the task and to accumulate a list of young men with the problem. As of yet, this line of investigation was no more successful than any other previously pursued by the task force.
A team to inspect records of men travelling outside the United States was assembled by Special Agent Mancini. It was their job to determine if they could pinpoint one traveler who had been to the countries in question at the times of the European murders. After weeks of examining thousands of passports and getting permission from the various nations to scour through their travel records, the search came up empty. Not only did the suspect seem to have no identity, but he was able to travel from country to country as if he were a phantom voyager.
Every night that Daniel returned to his studio apartment, he would spend hours reviewing piles of information collected by his investigators. He felt there had to be a clue locked somewhere inside the details and was a firm believer in the value of profiling. He always had a special interest in the subject. Crime analysis and the study of criminal behavior had intrigued him since he was a child. In his initial years as a rookie agent, it was his plan on his way to the top to someday become one of the exclusive group based in Quantico. He attended seminars offered by FBI profilers and conducted his own research. In the end, his career path led in a different direction, though he always kept up with developments in the field.
Frazier’s most recent report was the last thing Daniel would read before he allowed himself a few minutes to relax before going to bed. His last updated profile indicated that the man they were looking for was intellectually exceptional, streetwise, and sophisticated and most likely considered himself a self-made man. With regard to his profession, he would be a business owner or highly placed executive in his company or firm. He was proud of his manipulative talents and probably committed crimes in the past involving deception or theft.
From a sexual standpoint, he would most likely have some disability or handicap. The women of his past with whom he had sexual relations mocked him and laughed at him for his inadequacy. This combined with an overbearing and perhaps even abusive mother fostered a rage that caused him to believe women were merely objects to be mistreated. He has an overactive sex drive and his fantasies associated with masturbation often are excessively aggressive. Power and dominance motivates him. He thoroughly enjoys beguiling and then controlling women. When he chooses his victim, he knows he’s going to kill her and revels in the thought as he manipulates her. He was exposed to sex at a very young age and associates it with brutality.
Frazier believed there would be a salient resemblance in physical appearance between the women that mocked him, his mother and the women he kills. The murders provided him with short-term gratification, but would never alleviate the profound void that had grown exponentially since his youth. Nor would they ever correct the perceived transgressions committed by those women who offended him and the abuse suffered at the hands of his mother. In the meeting where Frazier presented his completed profile to the task force, he reminded everyone that serial murderers often develop a sense they can’t be caught. This especially applied if the investigators have missed all the clues the killer either intentionally or inadvertently left at the crime scene. This mindset was the reason for his success. It would also be the cause of his ultimate demise. It offered him the motivation to continue to kill. However, in due course, he would get sloppy. Daniel was counting on it.
The obstinate South Florida summer usually refused to relinquish its grip to the Fall until sometime in late October or early November. That afternoon was as hot and muggy as a day in mid-August. It was Halloween and Daniel was deciding on what he would wear to escort the boys for an evening of trick or treating. Deborah warned him the forecast predicted rain though at the moment, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Mindful of her near perfect record predicting the weather, he wouldn’t even consider doubting her. He decided on a t-shirt and jeans and threw a windbreaker in the back seat of the car while he was thinking about it.
On the home front, Daniel couldn’t have been more pleased with the progress he and Deborah had achieved so far in their work to rectify their relationship. They were seeing a marriage counselor two times a week for the past month a half and worked their way to having dates on Friday and Saturday evenings. His only disappointment was the lack of sex. He was forced to accept making love to her would be the last step before she allo
wed him to move back into the house. That was just Deborah’s way. It was too significant an act for her to take any less seriously.
There had been one other obstacle along the road to reconciliation. For a while after he and Deborah separated, his father-in-law was being an asshole. At first, Daniel understood Jack was playing his role as the protective father. It didn’t excuse his behavior one night recently when Daniel was picking up the boys from his in-law’s place and he and Jack almost came to blows. Daniel remained as calm as he could throughout the argument, but Jack was so irritated at one point, he reared his fist. The loud altercation had attracted the attention of neighbors. Fortunately, no one had called the police. Daniel didn’t need to give the media any more ammunition to abuse him, especially when it involved his personal life. In the past week, he and Jack had been getting along famously. Deborah must have said something about the work they were doing to repair their marriage. For the most part, the rapport between the two men had returned to the pre-affair status. Based on his father-in-law’s marriage history, Daniel felt that Jack had huge balls to sit in judgment anyway.
Daniel drove the short distance from his studio apartment to his condominium, confident the day was coming soon when he would no longer be separated from his family. He was certainly more than ready to put this chapter of his life behind him. When he pulled into the parking space in front of his home, the boys were waiting outside in their costumes. As usual, they were thrilled to see their dad and were on top of him before he could extricate himself completely from the car. Deborah was standing in the doorway witnessing the assault with a big smile on her face. After granting the boys their due attention, Daniel made his way to Deborah. He had graduated to more than just a peck on the lips as a greeting. Although the kiss she planted on his lips was more a tease than anything else, he was happy to get the more passionate embrace.