Season of the Assassin

by Laird, Thomas

  I sat next to her. I reached out and touched the back of her hand. She looked over at me and smiled gently. She resembled the Madonna, I thought. At least, all the pictures and other renderings I’d seen of the Virgin Mary. Her smile made the room warmer, more comfortable. It was almost scary, supernatural. She was the other side of the Anglin coin.

  ‘Go ahead and tell us what happened on that night in 1968,’ Doc prompted.

  ‘It was a Saturday night.’

  Theresa took hold of my hand and held on firmly.

  ‘I didn’t know what was happening to the other girls. I only found out what he did to the last two, because they were in the same room as I was…I was in the bathroom when he came into our suite. The door was shut. I heard them struggling with him, and then he must have tied the two of them up because I didn’t hear any more struggling. I was going to try and hide in the bathroom, but I thought he’d surely check there when he came back. I came out of the toilet and I was going to try and look for a knife or a scissors or something to cut them loose. Then I heard him turning the handle of the door, and I fell to the floor and I crawled under the bed.

  ‘He had his back to me at first. But when he turned I saw his face. My head was at the edge of the box spring, and I could see him as he watched my two roommates. One of them was on the bed I was underneath, and one was on the bottom bunk of the bunk beds across the room. After I got a good look at him, I inched my way further beneath the bed.’

  ‘Why did you chance it by taking a look at him, Theresa?’ I asked.

  She gripped my hand even tighter.

  ‘Because I knew he was going to kill them. I knew he would kill me too if he found me. I had to see him…Maybe he wouldn’t find me, I thought, and then he wouldn’t get away with what I knew he was going to do.’

  ‘What kind of weapon did he use?’ Doc asked.

  ‘I saw a straight razor in his hand. I don’t know what else he used…He went to the bunk bed and hit her. She was tied up like a pig. She couldn’t move. I saw him beating her when I crawled back to the edge of the box spring. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry out. But I knew he would do the same things to me if I made a sound.

  ‘He beat her and beat her…and then he raped her. Twice, I think. Once when she was lying on her back and the other time…’

  She squeezed my hand again.

  ‘He sodomized her. Her name was Carolina. He attacked her as if she were not even human. It was like watching an animal in the barnyard…Then he turned her back over and cut her throat with the straight razor. Carolina couldn’t make a sound because of the gag he used on both of them. She bled badly. Spurts of blood. I almost got sick, and I inched my way back under the center of the bed.

  ‘I didn’t see him kill Marita. She was on top of the mattress above me. I saw the bedding come down at me as his weight went on top of her. He must have raped her twice or three times. I can’t be sure. But I heard her groan when he killed her. I knew he had killed because the blood ran down the wall next to me and began to pool beside me. Then there was less weight on the bed. I saw him walk across the room. I moved myself closer to the edge where I could see.

  ‘He took the razor and cut Carolina from her breasts to her privates. He opened her up like a cow. I could see her insides…’

  Theresa halted. I asked her if she needed a break or if she wanted some water.

  ‘No. Let me finish this…He slaughtered her like a steer or a pig, and then he came back to the other bed and cut Marita. Again I knew what he did because more blood came dripping down the wall next to me, and the smell was…was unbelievable.’

  She stopped there.

  ‘What did he do then?’ Doc asked.

  ‘He left. He wiped his straight razor on Carolinas sheets, and he left.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’ I asked her.

  ‘I waited. I waited for hours. I wet my own nightgown because I was afraid to get up…But I did get out from under the bed, and when I saw what that man had done…I blacked out, I think, because the next thing I knew I was at Elgin.’

  ‘How do you know Carl Anglin was the man you saw in that dormitory room?’ Doc asked.

  ‘From the pictures of him that you showed me.’

  ‘You are positive the man who murdered

  Carolina and Marita was Carl Anglin?’ Doc asked again.

  ‘It was Carl Anglin. I’m sure.’

  ‘With all the drugs that have been put into your body, you’re certain the killer was — ’

  ‘What I saw was the truth. Nothing I saw that night was a hallucination. My hallucinations came after the murders. Someone drugged me for thirty years, Detective Gibron. Someone stole my life, or at least thirty years of it, with a drug, but that night he killed all those girls…There was no drug in my body that night. I did not hallucinate what he did. Carl Anglin killed Marita and Carolina and I know he killed the others as well.’

  We stopped the tape.

  ‘Have you had any visions? You know, flashbacks?’ Doc asked.

  ‘No. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘We need the jury to know you’re lucid, Theresa. They mustn’t be distracted by thinking you’re having visions or episodes,’ I explained.

  ‘I understand…No. My head is free of that drug now. I know it. I know what I remember. I saw Carl Anglin butcher my two friends. No one should have witnessed what I saw, but it is God’s truth, what I’m telling you.’

  I held her hand firmly. Then I released her.

  ‘Do you need any more?’ she asked.

  I wanted to embrace her. To hug those frail shoulders. But I couldn’t.

  ‘You’ll have to tell the prosecutor — he’s called Mr Field — the same story Theresa. Then you’ll have to say it again to a jury. And to a defense attorney who’ll most likely want people to believe you’ve had a bad acid trip,’ Doc warned her.

  ‘I know what I’ve told you is the truth.’

  ‘I believe you. We both do,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got to make sure that the jury buys your version. Anglin’s attorney will do anything and everything to make you look like a lunatic. I want you to know what you’re going up against,’ I told her.

  ‘I don’t care what they think. I have to say what I know.’

  I nodded and took her hand again.

  ‘Take it easy. We’re both on your side, here.’

  *

  We had the shrink’s word Theresa could be ready to leave Indiana in two weeks. Then, he said, they’d be sure that she was free of the threat of any possible ‘episodes’.

  Our first stop was with Henry Field, the prosecutor.

  His jaw almost literally dropped when he heard about the return of Theresa Rojas to the real world.

  ‘Christ! How long have you two been sitting on her?’

  ‘About a month,’ I admitted.

  ‘And you didn’t see fit to — ’

  ‘Would you have liked to have a semi-comatose star witness?’ Doc said. ‘We had to be certain she was back. And she is back.’

  ‘I ought to be very pissed off…Did you take a deposition?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Did she ID Anglin?’

  ‘Yes,’ Doc told him.

  ‘How?’ Field wanted to know.

  ‘From the photos…She saw him do one of the roommates from her position under the bed. But she actually witnessed a killing with her own eyes.’

  ‘They’ll try to make it look like she’s tripping her way through the past. They’ll make her look like a drugged-out — ’

  ‘When you hear her, you’ll believe her,’ I interrupted. ‘So will the jury. Henry, it’s like listening to Mother Teresa. Our Theresa, like her namesake, has a very high believability rating, I’d say.’

  ‘She’d better have. She’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘She’s all we need, Henry,’ Doc said firmly. ‘She’ll help those twelve honest souls on the jury to shove that lethal-injection syringe all the way up Anglin’s skinny ass.’

 
; ‘Here are the tapes,’ I said, passing them over to Field. ‘You listen to them and decide.’

  In a half-hour we were back in his office.

  ‘I’ll have a warrant for Anglin’s arrest in about twenty minutes. Make sure he doesn’t flee the county,’ Henry Field warned us.

  *

  There would be a small army present at the cuffing of Carl Anglin. A dozen squads. A backup SWAT team, just in case Carl got testy.

  Anglin had relocated to the far northwest part of town. Our street people had pinpointed his new digs just two days ago, Tactical informed us. There would be no stakeout. It was the middle of a hot July afternoon, and we were going straight in. We weren’t sure he was in there, but we were about to find out.

  The block was swarming with police vehicles. We had got the street cordoned off at either end as well as the two streets east and west that ran parallel to Dempsy Street, where Anglin now lived.

  Doc and I led the way up to the second-floor apartment. There were no federal people accompanying us on this raid.

  The entry at the ground level had no lock, so Doc could put his burglary tools back in his pocket. He and I and four uniforms made our way up to the second flight.

  ‘Anglin! Police! Open the door!’ Doc yelled.

  We waited five beats, and then the uniforms rammed the door with their metal apparatus that splintered the entryway open after three hits.

  We went into the flat with our guns aimed waist high. There was no one in the living room. Nor in the dining room or kitchenette. All that remained was the bedroom.

  I was at point. We opened the bedroom door.

  On the mattress sprawled that gorgeous brunette from Anglin’s other apartment who’d greeted us in the buff a few months prior.

  She was naked except for her thong panties again, but this time her face was a mess, a collection of bruises and lacerations.

  I propped her head up on the bloody pillow.

  ‘Can you talk?’ I asked.

  She tried to blink her eyes, but one of them was swollen shut, thanks to Anglin’s fists.

  ‘Please. Where is he? Can you talk at all?’ I repeated.

  She managed only a whisper.

  ‘Carl…He said he was on his way…’

  ‘Where?’ I urged her.

  ‘He said he was on his way…Unfinished business. He said he was on his way to…Indiana.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  [July 1999]

  This was my first helicopter ride since my second tour in Vietnam. The chopper took off from the top of our downtown headquarters. It had taken us a half-hour of speeding through city traffic to get from Anglin’s apartment to HQ, but Doc had the siren and the lights going, and we made it quickly through the snarl-ups. I hated high-speed pursuits. Doc understood my fear, but he had no choice. We barely missed a few other cars and several pedestrians. But we made it.

  I also had no love of heights. I made my nervousness clear to our chopper pilot, who laughed and lifted off from the multiple-storeyed headquarters building. The pilot, Jack McDade, had also been a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. The pilots were, as I recall, the goofiest bastards in country.

  ‘We’ll get you there in minutes,’ Jack grinned.

  Doc’s face was already green. This was his first ride in one of these rickety-ass miracles of aviation.

  ‘We may not have minutes,’ I reminded the pilot.

  ‘I hear you,’ Jack told me. This time he was all business.

  We headed east-southeast, toward Indiana and Theresa Rojas.

  ‘The Major told him. The Major got it from the Fibbies who got it by surveillance that we weren’t aware of, someone at the hospital who shot their mouth off — ’

  ‘What difference does it make now, Doc?’ I asked.

  He nodded resignedly. Who knew what kind of a lead Anglin had on us? Maybe the helicopter would even the odds. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to penetrate the hospital’s security…which I knew wouldn’t stop him. When he got there, he’d get in. That was his kind of thing. After all those years of experience, it’d be like walking through the front doors of a church on Sunday.

  The Indiana State Police had been notified. They were on their way. But the hospital was in a remote area, and it’d take some time for them to arrive. Also, the choppers in Indiana were all engaged at the moment. It’d be an hour before any of them came free, so the cops had to go by automobile. There was no place near the hospital for an ordinary airplane to land.

  So we were it. We were the closest available helping hand.

  I’d already contacted the hospital by phone. They were on high alert — whatever that meant. Doc and I and Jack were likely to be the only cops on scene in about fifteen minutes.

  The crosswinds began to pick up, so Jack’s job was made more difficult.

  ‘No problem. We’ll get there. But we’re going to have to go in lower than I’d like to. Let’s all of us keep our eyes open for power lines.’

  ‘Shit,’ Doc declared.

  ‘Indeed. Shit,’ Jack repeated and smiled.

  We swooped down to about a hundred feet from ground level and the pilot changed course slightly to fly directly above Indiana Highway 96. Jack claimed it would be the quickest way to the mental facility.

  It began to rain, complete with lightning and thunder.

  ‘Isn’t this stuff supposed to ground us?’ Doc asked.

  ‘Yeah. Usually,’ Jack snorted.

  But he pressed on above the light traffic below us. We were moving faster than the cars, but I couldn’t figure out the speed. I was too terrified. I clutched the arm of my seat like it was a buoy in a shark-infested ocean.

  In another ten minutes we saw the building where Theresa Rojas lived. There was a small park just a few blocks from the actual site, so Jack wanted to put us down there.

  The sky was nearly as green as Doc’s face. I could imagine tornado sirens going off in the distance. But just then the wind died down to nothing. We landed with rain streaming down the bubble canopy of the chopper. When we got out of the helicopter, lightning daggered down out of the east, and suddenly we couldn’t see the hospital’s lights.

  ‘Jesus. The power’s out…Jack, you can stay here if you — ’

  ‘Bullshit,’ he laughed. ‘I’m going in with the troops. That creep could be out here somewhere. I like your company a whole lot, Jimmy.’

  ‘All right. Are you packing?’ I asked the pilot.

  He patted his shoulder holster.

  ‘Always,’ he said softly, and grinned.

  The rain began to come down as we tried to make sure we had all our weapons in tact. I checked the ankle holster, and I drew out the Bulldog .38. It was my gun of choice in close encounters. It’d halt Anglin — a whole platoon of Anglins — with its stopping power.

  We moved out quickly toward the hospital. By now the rain was coming down furiously, making it almost impossible to stay on a straight line to the facility, but we pressed on in spite of the deluge. I was first; Doc and Jack followed with their weapons in their hands.

  The front gate, one of those black wrought-iron deals, was wide open. I looked at Doc. I could barely see his face until another streak of lightning lit up the sky. There was more than concern in his expression as we approached and passed the opened gate.

  We ran up to the entrance. We could see nothing through the glass door because there was no light on inside. I would’ve thought they’d have used candles or a backup generator, but there was no illumination inside that I could see.

  ‘He’d take care of the generator even without the storm, Jimmy. He knows how to create a friendly atmosphere for his business.’

  We walked into the darkened building. Doc’s railroad flashlight gave us some help in finding our way. Outside the rain swirled everything into an opaque green soup. Inside we had a slightly better chance of seeing what was in front of us.

  We reached the admissions desk. No one there.

  Until Doc aimed the flashl
ight’s beam behind the desk and found the unconscious body of the receptionist. My partner reached down and found that she still had a pulse.

  ‘He hasn’t had time to have fun with the staff,’ I told Doc and Jack. ‘He’s gone directly to the target.’

  We left the still-breathing receptionist where she lay, and we moved on down the hall toward Theresa’s room, number 226. There was a knocked-flat orderly about twenty feet down the hallway. He was still alive as well, Doc discovered.

  When we arrived at Theresa’s room, we found the door had been opened. Jagged streaks of lightning outside illuminated the inside of her cubicle just for a second. Anglin was holding her from behind. He was sitting on the bed. Doc leveled the flashlight at the two of them. Anglin had his forearm underneath Theresa’s chin, and we could see that he was squeezing hard. The beam of the flashlight showed us the razor that he was gripping tightly in his right hand while he methodically, expertly choked the life out of our only witness with that forearm.

  I could hear Theresa gurgling. Anglin was looking at the three of us pointing our pistols at his forehead.

  ‘Turn that fuckin’ thing off or I’ll cut her right now.’

  Doc extinguished the flashlight.

  ‘This is pointless, Carl,’ I reminded him. ‘You aren’t leaving here and you know — ’

  ‘She’s the last one. The one I missed, back when your daddy couldn’t cuff me…You know how many staff members they got here? Eight. That’s how many. I chloroformed five of them and had to club the rest. Picked them off one by one. Mother Nature made it too easy…And then you three had to show up. The cavalry, right?’

  ‘You should’ve whacked that big-titted brunette. She pointed us at you,’ Doc told him.

  ‘That’s what you get when you leave your enemies alive. Can’t hurt you if they ain’t

  breathing.’

  ‘You hurt her and you won’t get your day in court,’ I reminded him.

  ‘She ain’t going to testify against me…Are you, girl? See, we’ve been sitting here for the past few minutes, just before you so rudely interrupted us, and we’ve been discussing the past. You know. The history that we shared all those years ago. Theresa was jabbering when we first began, but I think she’s done had a relapse…And you’ve already noticed that all those lovely folks here at the home are still breathing. They’re just taking a nap. Now, you all might get me for assault and breaking and entering and whatever else you want to cook up, but you ain’t getting me for the nurses because you just lost your best witness again…She was a talkative little thing when I first got in here. Even a bit feisty…Bit me on the forearm. See?’