Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Once I understood evil was real,” Clay said, “once I understood it was something so tangible that I shuddered in its presence and in the destruction it left behind, I couldn’t help but question the reason for its existence. What was it trying to destruct? I finally saw that evil took away love and anything good. As if it hated anything in the light of love and found a way to use humans to vent the hatred. It gave me a sense of something we’ll never truly see or understand: a raging battle of two supernatural forces.”

  Clay paused, self-consciously looking at his blunt, work-worn fingernails. “Russ, I’ve been at the edge of that battle. I know evil is real. Later, when I began to wonder about the other side, part of why I was able to accept it was because I knew evil was real.”

  Clay paused as he struggled to find a way to explain. Finally he said, “Let me change the subject in a way. To try to understand evil, I asked around: psychologists, psychiatrists, priests. It was almost like I was making an unofficial scientific study. I was even able to convince the Bureau to fund some of my research on the basis that it could help our profiling.”

  Fowler regarded Clay without blinking.

  “I was able to meet with a priest who had exorcised a demon from a woman,” Clay said. “You might try to tell me it was a priest who merely believed he had exorcised a demon and that she got better by the power of suggestion. I can’t argue with that, except to say this was an intelligent, skeptical man who didn’t want to believe it himself until, halfway through the exorcism, the demon began to speak. The priest said her face became reptilian, her eyes lidded like a snake, her voice hoarse with contempt. He said he’s spent hours in front of a mirror since, trying to replicate the utter ugliness of her evil grin, and he doesn’t believe it’s humanly possible to move muscles in that manner.”

  “I’m not scoffing,” Fowler said. “I won’t challenge your priest without listening to him myself.”

  “Out of everything we discussed, one thing has stayed with me. The priest told me that Satan has no power except in a human body. I asked him to explain. He said there came a point, three days into the exorcism, when the demon repeatedly threatened to kill him and threatened to kill the possessed woman. The demon was snarling with homicidal fury, speaking through this woman, who was writhing in her restraints. The priest was terrified, yet at the same time he saw a way to pull the demon loose from the woman’s body. He challenged the demon to make good his threat. Nothing resulted except more threats. An hour of the vilest threats followed, until the priest realized this demon, like all demons, was spirit. It could do nothing without human hands to help him. Hers were tied. The demon was helpless.”

  “Are you saying the serial killers you have hunted are all possessed by demons?”

  “In a few cases, I would say yes,” Clay replied. “That might surprise you, but you’d probably find a lot of police and investigators in those cases agreeing with me. As for the rest, I almost wish it were so. It would be much easier to accept if we could believe it was literally the devil at work, playing these killers as puppets...”

  “But –” Fowler prompted.

  “But after speaking to the priest, I began to see things in a new light. Satan – if you want to personify him – can’t do anything unless we make the decision to do his deviltry. And that’s what it comes down to: our decisions, good or bad. For most of us, the choices are forks at decision points – big or little – in the paths of our lives. For the killers, enough forks in the path have led them to a road where they’ve chosen far more obvious evils than our ordinary lies and greed."

  Clay had never before articulated his thoughts to anyone. He found himself speaking quickly, as if he were afraid he might lose his words as they entered his mind. “I’m telling you all this because I’d seen so much evil I wasn’t able to accept God until I’d found a way to understand it in a world He created.”

  Clay stopped, struck by another way to explain. “Russ, you know I love Kelsie. Could I point a gun at her head and force her to do my will?”

  Fowler grunted out a no answer.

  “Sorry,” Clay said, aware he was talking more in one stretch than he had done in years, “but you’ve got me going, and I don’t want to stop. If you accept that God created us in His image, I think you have to accept that He gives us free will. The way I see it, God won’t put a gun to our heads, either, for the same reason I couldn't to Kelsie’s. Love. I don’t believe God lacks the power to destroy us or destroy evil. By His choice, it is with pain that He has allowed us choice. I believe He weeps to watch when we choose evil; and in so doing, choose to inflict punishment upon ourselves.”

  Fowler lifted a hand briefly, then let it drop. Clay accepted it as a sign of interruption.

  Fowler drew a breath, and it seemed to Clay that the old man’s lungs were brittle with effort. “So if we always have choice,” the old man said. “Evil will always win.”

  “Russ,” he said, softly, “if you don’t understand the battle was fought and won on a cross two thousand years ago, then it will always appear that evil has won.”

  “How do you expect me to believe that?” Fowler croaked. “People don’t come back to life.”

  “There’s the great mystery, isn’t it? Either Jesus was God and did. Or He was a nutcase and didn’t. Which puts it back to a faith decision made of our own free will – while He watches and waits.”

  Fowler started wheezing. He tried a brave grin. “Think believing will help me as the end closes in?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Clay said, thinking of what his old Indian friend, George Samson, had said about the pursuit of truth.

  It was not the answer Fowler expected, and his surprise showed in his face. “Doesn’t matter? Then what’s the sense of believing?”

  “If you want truth, truth’s degree of helpfulness won’t matter. If the resurrection story is untrue, neither you nor any other honest man would want to believe it, helpful or not. On the other hand, if it is true, you and every honest man won’t care whether it gives help; you’ll just want to believe.”

  The old man thought it through, then finally grinned in appreciation. “You ought to become a preacher, son. Nothing like getting close to my deathbed for people to start coming in to save me by sugar spoon-feeding me or ramming it down my throat with guilt or threats of eternal hell. You put a practical edge on it. Truth as a reason to believe. I like that. A new twist.”

  Fowler began to cough. When he caught his breath, he said, “There are days it seems like I don’t have long to decide, I can tell you that.”

  Clay could think of no reply that would not sound trite or patronizing.

  Fowler continued. “You’ve given me plenty to chew on, son. Plenty. And the time was right for it. Thanks.” With effort, he found more breath. “Come back tomorrow when I’m rested some. You should have plenty more to discuss with me by then.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a boxful of files and evidence I’ve been hiding since that summer. Go down to Ron Duggan’s. We called him Two Car. His address is listed in the phone book. He’s a former deputy. Dumber than a bag of hammers, though. Bigger than a boxcar. He’s been holding on to it for me.”

  “D-u-g-g-a-n?”

  Fowler nodded absently. “I’m truly sorry about this,” he told Clay. “For years now, I’ve believed the trouble was over. Now...”

  He tightened his lips in a grimace of disgust. “Either it’s a different man who took Kelsie, or it’s one come back to life.”

  “What on earth –”

  “Read through the files. Make your own conclusion first. It’s the speeding ticket that tipped it for me. Then we’ll talk. But I’m not sure it will do you much good. If I’m right, the guilty man – and I don’t mean Nick – is long dead. Which is why I let the investigation die. If I’m right, you’re looking for someone else, and I have no idea how to help you there.”

  1:38 p.m.

  “Mr. Sonny Cutknife, please,” James said into the
telephone, irritated at the audible gum-chewing he heard from the secretary on the other end.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “James McNeill.”

  “I’ll see if he’s taking calls.”

  “You tell him that –”

  The secretary put James into a Muzak hold. He gritted his teeth as he waited. Any other time he’d have hung up.

  “It’s Sonny.”

  “Meet me here at the ranch,” James said.

  “I find this interesting. Any reason why?”

  “You might recall our conversation this morning.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ve reconsidered,” James said. “And I doubt you. want the rest of my thoughts over the telephone.”

  “What time do you want me there?”

  “Four-thirty.”

  “Clearing my schedule right now,” Sonny said. “I’ll see you then.”

  James hung up. Then he dialed another number – Johnny Samson’s. James would need help for his discussion with Sonny Cutknife.

  1:40 p.m.

  As Clay drove through town from the hospital toward the address for Ronald Duggan, he was glad technology now gave him two tools that had been unavailable to him during his agent days – cellular phones and VICAP, the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.

  While Clay had not worked on establishing VICAP in the mideighties – he’d been in the field, not administration – he knew its history thoroughly, all the way back to the 1950s and a Los Angeles serial-killer rapist named Harvey Murray Glatman who became the real-life original for dozens of cliched fictitious fiends with Glatman’s MO of paying women to pose unclothed for modeling auditions as a way of luring them into seclusion.

  Glatman’s later confession had provided one of the earliest insights into the mind of a serial killer and a classic example taught by the Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico. From boyhood, Glatman had progressed from infantile sexual experimentation to making passes at girls to minor sexual assault, and finally, fifteen years later, to making his murder and rape fantasies a reality.

  Because Glatman roamed from county to county in the already considerable urban sprawl of the Los Angeles area, jurisdictional barriers prevented investigators from connecting the murders. Had it not been for the persistence of an L.A. homicide detective named Pierce Brooks, who personally tackled the considerable task of combing the newspaper files and prying information from the police files of the separate counties, Glatman might have continued his slashing ecstasy for years.

  It was the same Pierce Brooks, more than twenty years later, who fought for a grant from the Justice Department to begin a program that would overcome the police jurisdictional barriers. His dream was a computer system fed criminal data by police departments from all across the country, and accessed for data by departments all across the country.

  VICAP became a reality in the mideighties, partially because the FBI pushed for it, partially because of the horrible reality of a society in transition. In the fifties and sixties, virtually all homicides were solved within a year of the murder – most fell into the category of murders committed by someone known to the victim.

  As the seventies arrived, so did a new mobility, and a quarter of all murders were going unsolved. Serial killings and random murders both went from being rarities to being a terrible fact of life; seemingly unrelated murders didn’t just occur across the span of counties, but were linked by interstate highways. A media frenzy pushed Congress into action, and VICAP, as a national central information computer, was born.

  In retrospect, VICAP was so sensible it seemed inevitable. At the time, however, computers were more expensive, and most cops were suspicious of the new technology. Even with younger, more computer-literate officers entering into police work, VICAP faced a long adolescence. The VICAP form took an hour for a police detective to complete. Not all local police departments reported their current unsolved violent crimes to VICAP, let alone processed their backlist. Only near Clay’s retirement did VICAP become an effective tool. Because of that, he’d never really had the chance to use it in his field operations.

  He, of course, had never expected the need for it in retirement and wished, more passionately and with more pain than he would have believed possible, that he didn't have the need to access it now...

  As Clay reached Highway 40 and turned east toward Columbia Falls, he reached for the other piece of technology that helped him occasionally as a rancher and that would have helped considerably more in his FBI days, his cellular phone. He dialed a number from memory and juggled the phone with one hand, coffee and steering wheel with the other.

  “Flannigan,” came the voice. Aside from less volume and. more rasp in Flannigan’s voice, Clay felt he could have been in a time warp, once again back in the days when he’d first called Dennis Flannigan because of a serial killer. Only now Flannigan had retired, and the serial killer had not.

  “Dennis, it’s Clay.”

  “Let me get back into my rocking chair, son. I fell out from surprise. Clay Garner? The Clay Garner?”

  “Quit your griping,” Clay said. “I sent you Tennessee whiskey for Christmas.”

  “And that Christmas card with your family photo. I can’t believe someone that beautiful still keeps a mutt like you around.”

  Clay winced. Male banter, when insults meant affection, occasionally had its drawbacks.

  “Dennis –”

  For a moment, the reception faded.

  “Sounds like you’re in your truck,” Flannigan said. “Knowing your West Virginia thriftiness, I don’t think this is a social call.”

  “Not exactly. I need your help at Quantico.”

  “Sure.” No hesitation, no questions, although surely he had some, Clay thought.

  Clay decided not to force his friend to ask. “This one involves family, Dennis. If I go in asking questions and something leaks to the media, it will become a zoo. You know, something like serial killer stalks hunter of serial killers. It’ll make things tougher than they already are, especially since the local here is dragging his feet on calling in help.”

  Long, respectful silence came from Flannigan’s end. “Kelsie?” he finally asked.

  “Probably Taylor too.”

  “Clay, that Christmas card remark. I –”

  “Don’t sweat it. How could you know?”

  “Still...”

  “Dennis, I need you to run a data search through VICAP.”

  “Let me get a pen and paper.”

  Clay jammed the brakes to keep from hitting a car that made a rolling stop before pulling onto the highway. California plates. It figured.

  “I’m back,” Flannigan said.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Clay told him. “Pull up a search on all kills within five hundred miles of Kalispell.”

  Whoever it was had been smart enough not to play in his own backyard. Otherwise, a concentrated pattern of murders would be too obvious. Clay was thinking the person needed a job to exist, which meant Kalispell had to be his base. At best, he’d be able to take two or three days off, unless he was able to limit his hunting to yearly vacations. That meant a leash of eight to ten hours drive to bracket the time he’d need to select, capture, and toy with his prey.

  “Any particular type of kill? Style? Victim?”

  “Make it a broad search for any unsolved murders on women between the age of twenty and fifty. Don’t look for any particular MO. Pull them all. He’s a smart one. If he’s been doing this undetected for twenty-three years, he’s disguised his pattern. It’s a long shot – I think we’d have heard if he left the same signature on others – but pull up anything related to eagle feathers.”

  More static silence as that registered with Flannigan. “Did I hear you right? Twenty-three years? Eagle feathers!”

  “You heard me right. I think it’s the same one who brought me to your department.”

  “The one who stalked Kelsie when she was a teenager.”

&
nbsp; “Yeah.” Clay watched for the turnoff to the county road that would take him to Ronald Duggan's place.

  “Clay” – Dennis spoke with horror, not the hunter’s excitement they’d shared during their careers together. This was personal – “after all these years, what would trigger him again?”

  "If I could figure that out,” Clay said, “I might have a chance of getting him.”

  * * *

  Clay had seen his share of mobile homes, especially growing up. A lot of them did have the stereotypical discarded appliances out front, serving as bookends for rusting vehicles. This one, however, was among a patch of pine trees, and the yard was neat, the only vehicle in sight parked on tires, not wooden blocks.

  Clay stepped out of the car, and a terrier bolted at him from a doghouse at the side of the home. It danced around his feet, feinting in and out, yipping alarm.

  When Clay reached the door of the mobile home, he didn’t need to ring the doorbell. Two Car Duggan was just inside the screen door, surveying his visitor.

  From what Clay saw through the screen, this was a definite exception to the rule that owners began to resemble their dogs and vice versa. If Duggan was still in the force, they’d have bumped his nickname to Three Car. He wore broad suspenders over a graying T-shirt, probably because belts for someone of his girth were not commercially available.

  Duggan didn’t open the screen door. He didn’t even greet Clay.

  “Fowler sent me here,” Clay said. The yappy terrier was at the bottom of the steps, still giving Clay full attention and volume.