by Tom Schreck
I was heading in the front door when I heard Billy’s voice.
“Sir!” he said, wheeling his bike out from behind the side of the cookie factory. I could see the spokes of the bike but I couldn’t see Billy.
“Billy?”
“Here, sir.” He pulled his ninja mask down to show his face. I thought to myself that life couldn’t get much weirder.
“What’s going on?”
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I heard about your night, sir.”
“How did you hear about my night?”
“I have a police scanner, sir.”
“Yeah, well, I’m okay. Shouldn’t you be home?”
“Sir, I wanted to check on you, sir.”
“Billy, you don’t need to check on me. Go on home.”
“Sir, yes sir,” Billy said and then peddled away.
Well, it was good to know I had a ninja guardian angel/stalker looking out for me.
The boys were in and at it. Tonight they were absorbed in the Kennedy assassination.
“The mafia was up there in the suppository,” Rocco said.
“I think you mean ‘depository.’ The Texas School Book Depository,” Jerry Number Two said.
“What the hell was that, anyway?” Jerry Number One asked.
“That’s where they kept the books for kids in school,” TC said.
“But it was November and the kids were in school. Why did Texas have so many extra books?” Rocco asked.
“I don’t know, but that’s where Lee Wilkes Booth shot him,” TC said.
“You mean Lee Harvey,” Jerry Number One said.
“Lee Harvey? That’s the guy who does the radio news and says ‘Lee Harvey… Good day!’” Rocco said.
“That guy shot Kennedy? When did that come out?” TC asked.
Kelley was drinking and looking straight ahead, oblivious to everything else.
“Sorry, Kell.” It was all I could think of.
“Jackson’s wife is pregnant with their second. They have a three-year-old,” he said.
“Do they have any idea who?”
“No, none. It’s gotten very strange. They tried talking to you and you gave them what you knew in between passing out. You okay?”
“Yeah-it brought back some of the shit from last time.”
“Don’t mess with that shit, Duff.”
“I know.”
We sat in silence through two more beers each. Finally, Kelley broke it.
“I know this goes against everything I ever say to you, but if you come up with something, make sure you let me know,” he said.
33
The next morning found me far less than bright eyed and bushy tailed. I guess a Valium/Schlitz double-header will do that to you. Al joined me for coffee and he still continued to look me up and down like he didn’t know what to make of me. There was no Walter Payton runs through the Blue, no barking like crazy, and no remote teething. He just kept an eye on me.
“I’m fine, now leave me alone,” I heard myself say to the basset hound I shared my life with.
I sat at the kitchen table, drinking a pot of coffee and thinking about what I had learned in the last couple of weeks. I had set out to save Howard, who was letting me know he was being set up only to have him change up in a matter of days and not only confess but threaten me if I continued to try to help him. I found out about this drug, “Blast,” that killed a bunch of inmates years ago when Howard was inside, and a suspicious graduate student that disappeared around that same time. That grad student later became a psychiatrist named Gunner who traveled around the country from job to job, and whatever city he appeared in there were unsolved murders. Then, as of a few years ago, Dr. Gunner fell off the radar screen completely.
So either Howard is the vicious murderer everyone tells me he is and I’m a big sap, or this Gunner guy had something to do with the Blast and the murders and is somehow in Crawford killing people because, well, that’s what he does. The fact that some of the current victims had drugs in their systems may actually fit in with that. Of course, kids having drugs in their systems could mean what it does all over this country-that kids do a lot of drugs.
There was a third alternative. Maybe it wasn’t Howard and it wasn’t Gunner and it had nothing to do with drugs. Maybe it was a group of copycat murderers who had taken their fascination with killing to the next level.
I was doing my best to be as logical and as strategic as absolutely possible. The Schlitz and Valium notwithstanding, it felt good to organize it into arbitrary categories even if all it gave me was the perception of logic. The fact of the matter was that Howard was missing, and even though he periodically contacted me, he never spoke long enough for anyone to trace the call and his cryptic messages gave me no real information, especially lately. The last several messages repeated the same message and tried to warn me off.
That suggested to me that I should do as much research on Dr. Gunner as possible. I knew employment dates and I knew the unsolved murders during his tenure, but I knew little else. I wasn’t clear exactly what I could find out that would be helpful, but it felt like the direction I should head toward. Rudy had tipped me off to a national registry for physicians and their license history, which I ran down in the hospital library. Gunner’s license had no sanctions or censures, and he didn’t have any lawsuits during his time as a doctor.
He kept up with his continuing education credits and there were positive citations or awards. He sounded like your run-of-the-mill psychiatrist. I decided to call his previous employers again just to see what kind of feel I could get for the guy. The place in Seattle refused to disclose any more information than they already had. The Mississippi hospital referred me to administration, and they said they’d have to get back to me. I began to realize that if I continued to go the quasi-legitimate route then I was likely to get no useful information.
I tried a different strategy when I called the place near Milwaukee. I described myself as an old med-school buddy who was getting a reunion trip together and said that I wanted to find my ol’ buddy “Guns.” The HR director thought about it a bit and transferred me to the hospital medical director, who only knew Gunner as an acquaintance but seemed to remember an OR nurse he was friendly with. She now worked in a clinic off-site from the hospital, and I waited while he found me her number.
Leslie Roy worked at a women’s health center, and I called her right around lunchtime.
“Sure, Dr. Gunner and I were… uh… close for a while. I mean we dated and it didn’t work out, but we remained friendly,” she said when I reached her.
“Do you ever hear from him? We’re trying to get the guys together for a cruise. You know, to remember the old days in med school,” I said, trying my best to sound like a carefree, fun-loving doc.
“He left here to care for a friend who was dying. He was a very committed friend once you got to know him.”
“Geez, what happened?”
“There was another doctor who worked here at the same time about the same age as Dr. Gunner. They became close friends when the doctor was diagnosed with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Gunner left to take care of him.”
“Wow, are they still in the area?”
“I don’t believe so. I think he moved him to Arizona or New Mexico. The other doctor was estranged from his family, so Dr. Gunner was all he had.”
“I don’t know how to ask this but-” She interrupted before I could finish.
“I never did hear if the other doctor died, but it has been a few years now, so I don’t see how he could’ve made it this long.”
“What was the other doctor’s name?”
“God, it’s terrible, but I can’t remember. He was some sort of specialist, so we didn’t see him a lot. I can’t remember.”
“Well, Guns doesn’t show up on any medical registries so it’s really hard to find him. If you think of the other doc’s name that might help a bit. Ca
ll me if you think of it, okay, hon?” I said.
She agreed to and I gave her good ol’ Dr. Dombrowski’s home phone number. I’m not sure what all of this told me except that Gunner disappeared and the funky murders where he lived stopped. That, or wherever he was in the interim had a series of unsolved gruesome slayings, but that was impossible to prove or disprove. The only thing that traced him back to this area was grad school, and he fled after suspicious circumstances. It didn’t make sense that he would come back here.
Not that the lifestyles of serial killers ever made any sense.
I flipped on the TV just to try to let my mind think of something-anything-else for a while. The TV turned on to MSNBC, the channel that I was watching last, and they were in the midst of a “Crawford Slaying” report.
“Would you say this is the first break in the investigation?” The pretty brunette with the huge brown eyes was saying to a correspondent next to the Crawford courthouse.
“The police officer had, I believe, a T-shirt believed to be Howard Rheinhart’s with Rheinhart’s blood stained on it. It was in the back of the officer’s personal vehicle with an assault-style knife that would be consistent with the weaponry used in some of the slayings, and at least one source is saying the police officer was at the scene of the latest killing before the 911 tapes show the murder was called in. The police officer’s name is Brendan Mullings and he has been placed on administrative leave.”
“Is there speculation that he is the slayer?” Brown Eyes asked.
“Not yet. It may be that he was just involved in unauthorized activities, but either way the Crawford PD just isn’t saying.”
While the two continued talking, the TV screen was filled with the official cop photo of Mullings.
It was the guy I had been calling Larry Bird.
34
Crawford was a mess. There were services for the policemen who were murdered, there were yellow ribbons all over town to signify city mourning for the teenagers who were slain, and there was the constant presence of the national news people. Howard Rheinhart’s image was on wanted posters, and a fair number of them had been defaced with messages about how he should be tortured when he was caught. Now Mullings was getting his fair share of sound bites, and there was speculation that he was way too close to everything and his suspension was soon to turn into an arrest.
The Union Star front page was a tribute to the policemen, and they began a new section of the paper dedicated just to the slayer. There was a day-by-day section, complete with a timeline and full biographies of all the victims. The special section made the situation that much more bizarre, like it was a media opportunity. I wondered if advertising in the “Slayer” section came at higher prices.
In the regular local section there was a short piece on the back page about the McDonough kid who overdosed last week. The coroner was unable to identify the specific drugs that he used; he was only able to list the metabolites of whatever was in the kid’s system. In other words, whatever he was taking was not related to any current drugs of abuse that came up on current drug screens. That, the article said, was quite unusual because although new designer drugs are always being tinkered with, they almost always are derivatives of some already-existing popular drug.
The metabolites, the stuff the body breaks the drugs down to in our metabolism, were new and different from anything anyone had ever seen. It appeared as though the kid had taken the drug for about two weeks before OD’ing, and they couldn’t tell if he took too much of the substance on one occasion or if the buildup of the stuff in his system did him in. I had some questions for Rudy.
“Rudy,” he said when he answered the phone.
“Geez, you’re gruff,” I said.
“Kid, I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”
“All right. Quick question. When someone OD’s, is it more likely because they took too much at one time or that they’ve been taking too much over the course of a few days?”
“Uh. If I understand you right, it can go either way, but it’s more common for addicts just to do too much. Drugs that build up over time usually don’t make it to market, or for that matter even the black market. People tend to frown on drugs that will kill them if they take a dose for a few days.”
“Do you know the coroner?”
“Stanley? Sure. He has a pig roast every summer.”
I tried my best to not conjure up the image of Rudy at a coroner’s pig roast for about fifteen different reasons.
“Call him and ask him about the toxicology reports of the slaying victims.”
“Kid-”
“C’mon, Rudy, this is important.”
“You should be resting or doing arts and crafts or something. I’m not kidding-you shouldn’t fuck around with PTSD.”
“Call me as soon as you know something,” I said, and I hung up before I got the argument.
I got Al his breakfast and added sardines for being such a good boy. I was listening to the soothing sounds of him snarfing it all down when the phone rang.
“All the victims had some sort of unidentifiable designer drug in their system,” Rudy said.
“I figured. One more question-was it the same designer drug in each kid?” I asked.
“No. It was slightly different in each case. How did you know that?”
“One more question.”
“You just said that.”
“Was it poisonous if it built up?”
“He didn’t say. I’m not even sure he could tell something like that.”
“Call him right back and ask him.”
“Kid-”
“Rudy, call him.”
I hung up and sat back on the couch. My neck vein was doing its thing and my knees were going up and down. I think I had figured something out but I needed it confirmed.
The phone rang.
“Yes, the shit in all of them was poisonous and very similar but not exactly like the shit that killed the McDonough kid. How’d you know all this?” Rudy said.
“Rudy, these murders aren’t what they appear to be. They’re about something else entirely.”
“What?”
“You remember the guys who died while Howard was in Green Haven?”
“Yeah, they were taking that ‘Blast’ shit, right?”
“Yeah-how fast did they die?”
“I don’t know, they all died within two weeks of taking it, I think.”
“And then the grad student disappeared.”
“So?”
“Suppose the grad student was trying to perfect a new get-high drug. He tests it on the inmates but finds out they die when they take it.”
“Yeah…”
“Suppose that same guy is still trying to perfect the drug. So he test markets it on a bunch of high-school kids.”
“Yeah, but those kids were murdered before they died from the drug.”
“Exactly. Whoever the guy is, he’s taking the kids out before they can OD and implicate him.”
“But why all the weird shit? The blood drainings, the decapitating
…”
“Two reasons. One, so he can frame Howard, who conveniently was discharged just in time. I’m betting the guy studied when Howard would be paroled and set this plan up for a perfect cover.”
“Huh?”
“He picks Crawford because he knows Howard will be there. Decides to use McDonough kids as his human guinea pigs and knows if the drugs don’t work, he can kill them and blame Howard. In the meantime, he kidnaps Howard so Howard can’t defend himself.”
“What’s the other reason for the murders? You said there were two reasons,” Rudy said.
“The sick bastard likes it,” I said.
35
“You think Mullings did it?” I asked Kelley. We were promulgating a stereotype by meeting at the Dunkin’ Donuts. I had a toasted coconut and a glazed and Kelley was just drinking coffee.
“Look, Mullings is an asshole, everyone knows that,
but that hardly makes him a murderer,” Kelley said.
“What about the kids at McDonough, the ones in the fan club?”
“They’re keeping an eye on them. Two got picked up for smoking pot, and they had some strange kung-fu-type weapons on them.”
“What are you guys making of that?”
“Creepy pothead kids with toys to make them feel tough.”
“Did they do forensics on them?”
“Forensics? Duffy, go back to boxing, will ya?”
“Humor me for a second. What if we looked into this guy Gunner a little closer?”
“So, all we have to do is find a guy who left the area a decade ago and who there’s presently no record of… anywhere?” Kelley said.
“Aren’t there records I can go through-death records, driver’s license, shit like that?” I asked.
“Yeah, but unlike on TV, it isn’t that easy. I can try, but I have to have a reason to start requesting that sort of thing.”
“A reason? You’re kidding, right?”
“Not really. There’s two ways of doing this. I can present the whole bit to Morris, who can then take over. That’s the legitimate way.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten, but Howard has confessed. Why would anyone expect anything different? There’s a confession, a history, and clearly a means, in that he’s done this sort of thing before.”
“What’s the other way?”
“I sneak around and get the information.”
“You up for it?”
“You’re nuts, you know that?” Kelley said and then shook his head. He said he’d have whatever he could by the end of the day or sooner.
Around three thirty Kelley called and let me know he came up with absolutely zero. He was able to do it quickly because nothing at all came up on Gunner. The best we can tell is that he ceased to exist, at least in this country, about five years ago. No medical license renewal, no driver’s license, no credit card, and no mortgage. There was also no record of death.