Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

  Eddie Rivers liked to cut off people’s legs. It turned him on. He chose his victims largely by the kind of homes they lived in. It didn’t matter so much what town it was in—his killing ground appeared to be the entire commonwealth of Massachusetts—but it was always a single-family residence with a backyard, preferably one with bushes along the back of the house, but that didn’t seem to be a deal-breaker. He’d surveil the house, learn the occupants’ routines, then return on a night when he knew there would only be one person at home. He didn’t care who it was—man, woman, young, old—it didn’t matter to him. He’d wait until the person was alone, then he’d break into the house, subdue his victim with a stun gun, tie him up, gag him, and cut off his legs at the knees with a hacksaw. He’d do the same thing every time. Once the legs were off, he’d walk out through a back door—he always did the messy work in a room facing the back of the house—peer in a window at the victim he’d just maimed, and, while he bled, Rivers would masturbate into a tissue. Some of this was gleaned during the investigation prior to Rivers’s arrest, some Rivers let slip after his incarceration. It was believed that he was aroused by the infliction of pain, watching its effects on his victim, and by voyeurism. In all, seven of his victims bled to death before help could arrive—four men, two women, and one ten-year-old boy. Two of his victims miraculously survived. They were of little help to investigators, however, because Rivers wore a black ski mask. The only thing he said during the entire time he was with his victims—and he said it to both who survived, so it was assumed he also said it to the ones who weren’t so lucky—was, “I have no choice.”

  Spader drew the case and for fifteen months he did nothing but run into brick walls in the investigation. Meanwhile, the time between attacks grew shorter, which is common for serial killers. After his first victim, Rivers waited nearly four months to strike again. His next victim came three months later. Then two and a half months. The seven weeks. And so on. The killer was spinning out of control.

  When the final two victims fell only a couple of weeks apart, and a week had already passed since the last one, Spader grew anxious. The killer would strike again soon. Time was running out for somebody, somebody who would die a horrible death just so some crazy fuck could jerk off. Massachusetts suburban residents—especially those living in single-family dwellings with backyards—were getting scared. And Spader was getting desperate. And then an anonymous tip came in to the hotline. It said to check out Eddie Rivers of East Boston, and to do so before he killed again. Under normal circumstances, Spader would have taken some time to look into Rivers. Investigate quietly and, if there was something there, move in. But the hourglass was emptying fast, so Spader took Oscar Wagner, who’d been assigned to work the high-profile case with him, and went to East Boston.

  Rivers lived in an apartment building on a street lined with nearly identical, dilapidated three-story buildings. Spader and Wagner walked up the stairs of the second building on the left, stopped at the common doorway that served all the apartments inside, and buzzed what appeared to be the super’s apartment. Two minutes later they were on their way up a dimly lit stairway with peeling avocado paint, up to the second floor. An anonymous tip with nothing more isn’t close to a sufficient basis for an arrest warrant, or even a search warrant, so all Spader and Wagner could do was knock on Rivers’s door and try to talk to him, if they could. Assuming for a moment that the guy was their killer, maybe he’d be stupid enough to speak with them and say something incriminating. Or maybe he’d even let them in and some damning piece of evidence would be lying in plain sight, giving them probable cause to arrest him. Or maybe their visit would scare him into doing something stupid, something that would give him away before he could strike again. At the very least, maybe it would make Rivers—again, if he was their guy—maybe it would make him cautious enough to alter his timetable, wait a while before moving in on his next victim, and maybe that would give Spader time to put together a case on the dirtbag, a good-enough case to get him off the street before he could kill anyone else.

  The door opened as far as the security chain inside would allow and a broad face with dull little eyes stared out at them through the opening. Spader stated that they were the police and wanted to talk with him. Rivers’s eyes shifted from Spader to Wagner and back to Spader again. Something flickered in those dull eyes for a fraction of a second, some cocktail of emotions. Hostility and concern? Or had Spader imagined it? And there was something else, something he hadn’t seen when he first saw the eyes. An intelligence greater than those eyes would have you believe.

  “What’s this about?” Rivers asked.

  “We just have a few questions for you,” Spader answered.

  “About what?”

  “Do you think we could come inside?”

  “No.”

  “It will just take a few minutes.”

  “No reason to come in then, I guess. Ask your questions.”

  Rivers was either smarter than he looked or obstinate enough to have denied access under any circumstances, guilty or innocent.

  Spader tried another tack. “Mr. Rivers, maybe what we’re going to be asking you about isn’t the kind of thing you want your neighbors to hear, you know what I mean?”

  “I got no secrets.” Rivers smiled and Spader was struck by a lightning-quick flash, just a feeling—he couldn’t even call it instinct—that this was the smile behind the black ski mask, the smile the killer wore when he dragged a hacksaw across his victims’ legs. So he asked Rivers where he was on the night of each of the killer’s attacks. “I’m usually home at night, by myself, without an alibi.”

  “What makes you think you need an alibi?”

  “I don’t. I was just trying to save you time. You were gonna ask if anyone could tell you what I just told you, that I was home those nights, and I was telling you that no, they can’t.”

  “And you just happen to know that? Standing here, right now, you know that you were home alone on nine specific nights over the past fifteen months?”

  Rivers smirked. “Well, I’d have to check my calendar to be certain I didn’t have an engagement of some kind, but I’m betting I was home watching TV by myself those nights. I usually am. So you think I’m the guy cutting people’s legs off, huh?”

  Spader and Wagner exchanged looks. “Why would you say that, Mr. Rivers?”

  “Those are the nights he killed those people, aren’t they? Well, I guess some of ’em lived, right?”

  “Those are the dates, yes, but how did you know that?”

  Rivers smiled. “You think I’m stupid? That guy’s been hacking legs off for fifteen months, same as you just asked me. Besides, I think I saw your pretty face on the TV, at a news conference after one of the murders.”

  Spader nodded. “I see. You been following that case closely, Mr. Rivers?”

  “Nah. But they showed you on the news, outside some victim’s house. I don’t really watch the news myself, but it came on right after one of my TV shows, one of those about forensics teams and evidence and shit. There are so many, I get ’em confused. But I watch ’em all. Those shows are really educational.”

  Was he trying to say that, because he watched those kinds of shows, he could avoid being caught?

  Spader stared into Rivers’s dull eyes, eyes that consciously hid intelligence and probably far darker things, and had that feeling again, that feeling that Rivers was their guy. As Rivers held his gaze, that feeling grew into certainty.

  “I’ll catch you, Mr. Rivers,” he said, perhaps unwisely. “I’ll put you in jail.”

  The eyes no longer looked dull. Now they held amusement. And arrogance. “No, you won’t.” A pause, then another smile. “Because I’m not the guy.” He winked at Wagner and said, “Good night, officers.”

  “Detectives,” Spader said. “Or troopers.”

  “Oh, yeah, shit, sorry, detectives.” Spader heard a contemptuous chuckle behind the closed door.

  Spader had left his office
and Olivia’s photo albums behind and moved to a recliner in the living room. He’d also opened his third beer. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about Rivers’s final victims, and how much of their blood was on Spader’s own hands.

  “Sure, I know the guy, but I don’t know nothin’ about anybody gettin’ their legs cut off, ’cept what I seen on TV. Caught you on the tube, by the way. You were lookin’ sharp, my man. A little stressed, but still sharp.”

  J.R. Sands was one of Spader’s confidential informants, one who had, in the past, provided reliable information that served as the basis for a good number of warrants served in the towns around Boston, including East Boston, where both J.R. and Rivers lived. J.R. was a small-time fence of stolen goods. In that capacity he was in touch with a number of criminal lowlifes in the Boston area. Spader knew all about his operation and let him stay in business. The detective figured that if J.R. didn’t fence the goods someone else would, and Spader might as well get something out of it—and that something was information from time to time.

  After meeting Rivers, Spader knew he had to act fast, so he’d called Sands. Rivers—he was sure now it was Rivers—was compressing his time frame. Spader couldn’t arrest the bastard, not with nothing more than an anonymous tip and his own hunch. He hadn’t even been able to justify to his superiors’ satisfaction the use of manpower to watch Rivers over the next few days. There simply wasn’t enough there. But he couldn’t just sit around and wait for Rivers to strike.

  Spader puffed a breath into his hands, trying to blow the chill off them. “Maybe you heard how this killer’s speeding up, killing more and more frequently?”

  They were standing under an overpass at the southern end of East Boston. The place stank of garbage and urine. A few scraps of paper swirled and scraped along the ground, dragged by a brisk early-December wind.

  J.R. sniffed, spat out a glob of phlegm, thoughtfully turning his head first and sending the thick mass a few feet off to his right rather than on the ground right between them. “Yeah, I heard that. But so what? I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know a thing ’bout Eddie Rivers killin’ nobody.”

  Spader shook his head. “I need Rivers, J.R., and I need him now. You know everything that happens in East Boston.”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t killin’ anyone in East Boston, is he?”

  “That’s not my point.”

  “Look, Spader, if I knew, I’d tell you, you know? I got no loyalty to that guy. I barely know him. And like I been sayin’, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout him killin’ nobody. God’s truth, man.” He shrugged.

  Spader stared into J.R.’s dark-brown eyes. An angry horn blared on the overpass above.

  J.R. said, “Shit, I just don’t know nothin’, so I don’t see how I can help you out on this one, bro. Sorry.” And he actually looked it. “Now it’s cold out here, man, so we ’bout done?”

  Spader said, very quietly, “Yeah, I guess we’re done.” J.R. spit again and looked like he was about to turn to leave, when Spader said, “You got a family, J.R.? A wife, maybe, or kids? How about a mother, she still alive?”

  J.R.’s eyes grew cold, as if the late-fall wind had chilled them. He shook his head. “That’s sad, man, really sad.”

  “What is?”

  “You and I known each other for, what? Twelve, thirteen years now? And we don’t know shit about each other, do we? You don’t even know if I got a wife or kids. Well, I had a wife, but she livin’ somewhere else now. And I got kids. They live with her.”

  Spader had struck a nerve. He couldn’t tell if J.R. still cared for the wife, but he cared about the kids. “Rivers doesn’t care who he kills, J.R. He’d kill your kids if he felt like it. Just for kicks.”

  “Your man only kills in the ’burbs, Spader, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there ain’t no green lawns around here, no tennis clubs or moms droppin’ kids off at soccer practice.”

  “That’s not my point.”

  “Then what’s your point?” The laid-back J.R. was gone.

  “You’re right, it’s not going to be your kid, but it could be. It could be your kid, or your mother, or your friend, or you. It won’t be, because he’ll probably strike in the suburbs, like you say, but he could pick just about anyone, and somebody’s going to suffer, suffer in a way you wouldn’t want to suffer, in a way you wouldn’t want anyone you care about to suffer. And others will be left behind, alive—family, friends—and they’ll feel the way you’d feel if you lost your kids.” Spader took a breath while they stared at each other, then he turned away and headed toward his car. “Just something to think about,” he added.

  “Hold up.”

  Spader turned.

  “Rivers is pond scum, man, but like I said, I don’t know shit about him killin’ nobody, okay? Let’s get that clear.”

  “Okay. So why’d you stop me?”

  “I was just wonderin’. Did you know Rivers deals?”

  “Drugs? I don’t think we knew that. And I watched his place a couple of times. Didn’t seem to be a lot of foot traffic in and out of there.”

  “Trust me, man. He only sells outta there a couple of nights a month. And they aren’t regular nights, you know? They change and you gotta know someone who knows someone who knows when he’s open for business, you know?”

  “And you know this how?”

  A pause. “I buy from him sometimes, okay?”

  Spader thought for a moment. This could be enough. “And you know when he was selling out of his apartment last? The exact date?”

  “Last Thursday.”

  “You’re sure about that? No doubt?”

  “Last fucking Thursday. Friend of mine picked up some weed for us.”

  “And the one before that?”

  J.R. thought for a moment. “The first of the month.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Dead certain, yeah, but I don’t know what that does for you, man, ’cause it got nothin’ to do with them people dyin’.”

  “I’ll worry about that, J.R.,” Spader said. “Thanks.”

  He had his hand on his car-door handle when, from behind, he heard J.R. clear his throat. Spader turned. J.R. was looking down at his feet. He moved a pebble with the toe of his brilliant-white sneaker.

  “You think this shit I gave you helps at all, Spader?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  Spader called Oscar Wagner on his cell phone. Wagner had left Ten Fed hours before, but he said he was eating a late dinner not far away. He took down all the information Spader wanted included in the search warrant application. He’d return to the office, type it up, and put a call in to the judge on call for warrants. Spader hoped it would be Judge Banks, who was known to be a pretty soft touch for warrants. In the meantime, Spader would make some calls and put together a team to execute the search warrant. When Spader ended the call, he had no idea how profoundly several lives would be affected by what Oscar Wagner did in the next hour.

  While waiting to hear back from Wagner, Spader drove to their scheduled rendezvous point, an abandoned warehouse a few blocks from Rivers’s residence. Spader’s plan was simple. Although he didn’t have a sufficient basis for a warrant related to the murders and attempted murders, nor would an arrest warrant on drug charges pass constitutional muster, Spader had enough for a search warrant covering Rivers’s residence. Spader figured they’d search the house for items associated with the possession or sale of illegal drugs, and while they were looking, they might come across evidence linking Rivers to the murders. If the initial search was legal, and the places they searched in Rivers’s apartment were places in which evidence related to the suspected illegal drug activity could realistically be concealed, anything they found relating to other crimes was fair game. And if they were lucky enough to find Rivers at home when they served the warrant, and they found evidence of a crime, they wouldn’t need an arrest warrant. They’d have probable cause to arrest and Spader could snap the cuffs on the son of a bitch then a
nd there. He prayed it all worked out like he hoped. He prayed they’d find enough to at least get Rivers off the street and into jail on drug charges. And he prayed the piece of shit was home and not already in the process of committing another in his series of truly heinous crimes.

  Thirty-five minutes after Judge Banks—it had indeed been Judge Banks—approved the warrant, Spader and Wagner were back at Rivers’s apartment building. They walked up the stairs and buzzed the super. Then they climbed up through the avocado-green stairwell to the first floor and approached apartment number three. Because Judge Banks had agreed with their assessment that the suspect would likely destroy crucial evidence immediately after the police announced their presence, their request for a “no-knock” warrant, one allowing unannounced forced entry, was granted. Spader followed Massachusetts procedure and made a token “threshold reappraisal of the actual threat” to the evidence they were there to search for, then gave the signal and two East Boston police officers swung a heavy iron battering ram into the door, splintering it and knocking it off its hinges. Then Spader, Wagner, and the two cops were through the door, Spader identifying them as police officers and ordering anyone inside to remain still, hands in sight.

  They were in a living room. The television was on. A single lamp in one corner illuminated Eddie Rivers standing up from the couch, a bottle of beer dropping from his left hand, his right slipping behind his back. Spader told him to freeze, asshole, but Rivers didn’t, and his hand brought a gun from behind his back. Spader ordered him to drop the gun and Rivers didn’t do that, either. Instead, he began to raise it. Someone yelled “gun!”