by John Philpin
Willoughby also discovered a Wolf kill in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—a woman who had worked with Cora Riordan’s sister.
He had not been able to link Wolf to Stoneham, but I could imagine the relationship between these distant psychological cousins. The psychopathic “wolfman” had manipulated the psychotic Stoneham, further distorted the flimsy reality on which the young man had held such a tentative grasp.
The federal agent’s final paragraph was jarring:
Computer enhancement of crime-scene photograph #11 revealed one feather in victim’s hair. Lab analysis (contact Harold Raiche) identified feather as originating from “common rock dove” (pigeon).
Neither Ray nor I had noticed the feather, and even if we had, it would have meant nothing.
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, AS I STUDIED WILLOUGHBY’S history of Wolf, Lane arrived at my door with two FBI agents. They were faster that I had anticipated.
“We met in the hall,” Lane explained.
Hiram Jackson had been around the Bureau for a while. I had never met him, but I had heard of him. He was one of the first African Americans to be absorbed into the agency in an effort to make it look like an equal opportunity employer. He was tall, my height, with as much gray in his hair as I had in mine, although he sported a Bureau-prescribed cut and my locks draped over my collar.
I had never heard of his partner, Rexford Landry, a younger, surly, acne-scarred agent. His large class ring told me that he, like many of his peers, had been sucked out of the University of Virginia, then crafted into the champion of justice that he considered himself to be.
Landry got right to the point. “Special Agent Dexter Willoughby is dead.”
Cops watch for reactions when they make announcements like that, so I did my best to drop my jaw. Lane’s shock was genuine.
“God. We just talked to him,” she said, sitting down. “This is hard to believe.”
She looked up at Jackson. “What happened to him?”
“Someone broke his neck,” Jackson said.
They had found Willoughby’s car parked in Falls Church, Virginia. Vienna police had notified the Bureau after they responded to an anonymous 911 tip called in by “an Eastern European,” and determined that the victim was an FBI agent.
Lane shuddered, covering her mouth with her hand.
“You went to see him about John Wolf,” Landry was saying. “Whatever it is you’re working, you didn’t want him in. The Bureau is in.”
“What about Wolf?” I asked.
“Willoughby shut everybody out of the case up north,” Jackson said, cutting off Landry. “That was his way of playing the political game. I was coordinating support for him down here while that investigation was going on. My impression has always been that no one could have walked away from the explosion.”
“That’s not the impression that Willoughby left me with.”
“Huh?” Landry asked, his eyes shifting, gliding over Lane, no doubt mentally stripping her of jeans and sweater.
With Rexford Landry around, no one had to make the trip to the Smithsonian to find out what Neanderthal meant.
I looked at Jackson. “It was more convenient for Willoughby to believe in Wolf’s death,” I said. “He never found the piece of bone or flesh that would have given him that certainty He was, however, abiding by the Bureau’s official line, which makes me wonder why he had been informed of the deaths of Sarah Humphrey and Alan Chadwick.”
The two agents exchanged looks. Feds never give information. They especially don’t let on when they don’t know something. This pair had not known about the two murders.
This was not the first time that I had been on the wrong side of an argument with law enforcement officials. Usually I did my best to cooperate, to jump through whatever hoops they held out, until everyone got comfortable with the idea that, civilian or not, I had something to contribute and was seeking the same end that they were. Now, there was no time to screw around with federal etiquette.
When neither man spoke, I continued. “Despite Willoughby’s intransigence, I think he was distressed by the events in Boston and Orlando.”
“What exactly did he say?” Landry asked.
“I didn’t memorize the conversation.”
Landry clenched and unclenched his fists in an apparent effort to fight off his own anger. “None of us see any reason to think that we’re dealing with John Wolf,” he said. “The Bureau’s position is that he died in Vermont last year. You’re chasing ghosts, Doc.”
“Then why are you here?”
“We are willing to look at any possible connection to that investigation,” Jackson said, skillfully avoiding my question. “If there is any connection to the Wolf case, of course, you could be someone’s target. The same is true of Detective Frank. I hope we can work together on that one aspect of our investigation into Agent Willoughby’s murder.”
“I’ve already been a target,” I told Jackson. “I don’t usually part my hair just above my ear. A friend of mine is dead. Someone saw to it that Willoughby received files on two other murders that connect to John Wolf. It’s obvious to me that neither of you were aware of that. What about Willoughby’s former partner, Susan Walker? Has she been informed?”
Neither man said a word.
“I would prefer to not see her become one of Wolf’s victims,” I said.
Unlike the subtle connections shared by Wolf’s earlier victims, this group shared an obvious link. All of us had attempted to stop Wolf. I didn’t know why he had chosen the victim order he had, but I believed that he had a script, and Walker seemed an appropriate next choice.
“Wolf is dead,” Landry snapped.
“If you persist in that belief, Susan Walker will be dead. Think about it. But don’t think too long. The Bureau can’t operate under the weight of its own paperwork. By the time you get clearance to take what you folks like to call a ‘proactive’ step, we could all be dead.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Landry said. “Technically, you’re a suspect, Doc You had no use for Willoughby. You were one of the last people to see him alive. Killing a federal agent is a capital offense. Withholding information in a case like this is a felony. So is obstruction. If I decide that you’re getting in my way, I will personally jump in your shit and snap the cuffs on you. I don’t give much of a fuck who you think you are.”
Landry was one of the agency’s mistakes. Some federal hiring process had ingested raw human matter, spit out this unpleasant operative, then stuffed him into an ill-fitting suit. He never should have been hired, and probably should have been fired a long time ago.
I looked at Jackson. “Where is Agent Walker?”
“She’s part of the team working this case.”
I nodded. “I’d like to talk with her.”
“I can tell her that. It’s up to her.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Now, if you would, take your snapping dog down to a hydrant. Tell him he has to piss somewhere else.”
Landry was slow to get it, but when he did, he started moving in my direction. Jackson grabbed him. Good man.
Jackson had just saved all of us a hell of a lot more unpleasantness that what had already gone down.
I CONSIDERED TELLING LANE ABOUT FINDING Willoughby’s body, but decided that would place her in a compromising position. What I had done in Vienna was interpretable as a criminal act. If I had not eliminated all traces of myself from the agent’s home office, Lane could be considered an accessory.
“This is fucking crazy,” Lane said as she sat on the sofa, running her hands back through her long hair. “First Willoughby, now you think he’ll go after Walker?”
She was distressed over Willoughby and frightened by Wolf, but I couldn’t help her. The killer had to be stopped. That task was mine, since the rest of the world seemed content to believe that Wolf had been vaporized. I needed Lane’s help. “It makes sense that Walker will be next,” I said. “So, who’s going to bring him down?”
; After a moment, Lane looked up at me. “Okay, Pop,” she said with a deep sigh, staring at me with a quizzical and appraising expression.
I had seen the look many times before. It conveyed more than a hint of disapproval.
“Human predators seldom take time off to mourn,” I said.
“We’re alone in this, Pop.”
“Then I guess we have to work overtime.”
She continued to study my eyes, then nodded slowly. “I wasn’t impressed with the D.C. detective, Williams.”
“The District isn’t known for investigative brilliance, but according to my friend the senator, Williams would be a star in any department. I understand that he’s a bit unorthodox. Sometimes that’s an indication of creative thinking.”
“He looks to me like a candidate for the cover of Sports Illustrated. Another African American with a shaved head trying to look like Michael Jordan. He’s almost as tall as Jordan, in fact.”
I shook my head. “Should I know who Michael Jordan is?”
Lane laughed. “Sure. He starred in a movie with Bugs Bunny.”
“I know you’re ‘frazzled,’ as your generation likes to call it, but I think you’re departing from reality. Please get unfrazzled.’ What were you able to accomplish?”
“Everything you asked me to. Williams is skeptical. We can’t blame him for that. He’s also an undercover drug cop. They don’t believe anybody about anything.”
“Lane, the first hints about Wolf’s possible movements around this city are going to come from street cops or informants. That makes Williams a good contact. Getting the word onto the street is tedious and time-consuming, but it’s more likely to produce results than anything else we could do right now.”
Lane grabbed her notebook from her purse. “I gave him what we have. I also called Swartz. The composites of Wolf that Swartz did last year will be here in the morning. Williams has the list of Wolf’s aliases. He wanted to know what to do with ‘all this shit,’ as he put it. I figured car rental agencies, the airports, neighborhood hangouts, hotels, that sort of thing. At least for a start.”
“Good. Be sure to inform Williams that Willoughby is dead.”
“What about the feds, Pop? They’re investigating the murder of one of their own. We haven’t heard the last of them.”
Jackson impressed me as reasonable. Rexford Landry was another matter. I felt certain that the volatile agent was going to be a problem.
“They’ll be around again,” I said.
I also had a sneaking feeling that John Wolf was going to be of assistance in convincing the Bureau that he had not died in Vermont. He had signed in at his murders; for years, he left messages behind. The signatures were often subtle; his messages varied. He had many names, and all the necessary numbers and IDs to go with those names. The law enforcement computers never detected his work.
Linkage blindness. That pissed you off, didn’t it, lad? You had your freedom, but nobody knew your name.
Now, he had returned from the dead. He had to sign in, had to leave his mark in some unmistakable manner. He would want the computers to light up, short out, and crash.
He needed one cop—preferably a fed—to look at another and say, “He is here.”
Just like the Second Coming.
“You and Susan Walker were friends, weren’t you?” I asked.
“I can try to reach her. We never got to be friends, exactly, but I’m sure she’d be willing to talk to me.”
“Please see her before you do anything else. She is in danger. Jackson will deliver my message to Agent Walker, but neither one of them believes in the reality of that danger. Be certain that she understands.”
VENGEANCE IS AN ART.
There is a stimulus. Someone offends you, causes you inconvenience, or harms you. What follows is what the shrinks like to call “brooding.”
I prefer to describe it as preparation.
When I was in my teens, the state put me in a place they referred to as a “therapeutic educational environment.” I was a model student—or inmate—and I had a mental list of the people I intended to kill.
I spent the first month in that institution mastering the game, learning what the teachers and counselors wanted to hear. Then, as I said all the correct phrases, and performed for them, I perfected my ability to slip in an out of the place as I pleased. I also mastered the art of car theft. Away from the campus, I could be in any one of five different states in three hours.
I killed in all of them.
They suspected me in one murder—questioned me, accused me, almost arrested me. It was a joke.
As a juvenile in the custody of the state, the laws were on my side. Confidentiality protected me. All legal proceedings were held behind closed doors, and court records referred to me only by first name and the initial of my last name. The records of all proceedings were sealed. The social service agencies were my partners in crime.
One of my forays into the night was even more of a close call than my near arrest, although I was the only one who knew it. One night after bed check at eleven P.M., I slipped out of the dorm, jogged into the village, hot-wired an old Chevy, and drove to Sanford, Maine. My quarry was the former receptionist at the mental health clinic that I had been forced to attend.
Anita Baines would check my name on a list when I entered the waiting room, then stare at me until it was my time to go in with the social worker. “I ain’t gonna rip off the Newsweek” I told her.
“You think you got everybody fooled,” she said. “You’re nothing but a fuckin’ killer.”
Anita was perceptive but dumb, and had sealed her own fate. I smiled at her. “You might be next,” I said.
“You don’t scare me, punk.”
Anita married, left the clinic, and moved to Maine. I waited what I considered an appropriate time, then followed her. It wouldn’t have mattered where she went. Only the timing of her death might have changed. Had she moved to Denver or Dallas, Anita might have bought herself a couple of years. But she was going to die.
It was two A.M. when I drove into a quiet Sanford. I had no trouble finding her apartment building, then slipping the lock on the front door. They lived on the second floor, without a dead bolt. I slipped the lock and stepped inside, closing the door behind me. Then I waited in the darkness until I heard the sound of breathing—two distinct sets of muscles drawing air in, pushing it out—then walked to the open bedroom door.
He was the bulk on the right side of the bed. I remember wondering why so many men insist on sleeping on the right side. Even in the movies.
When I was sure of the position of his head, I brought my recently sharpened ax down hard. There was a spasm of movement on his side of the bed; nothing on hers.
I went to Anita, slipped the wire loop around her neck, yanked on the two wooden handles, and waited for her to open her eyes. When she did—her arms struggling to come out of the blankets—I smiled and said, “Read about it in Newsweek.”
Then I pulled tighter and waited for her to die.
I knew that I didn’t have much time, but I lingered in the apartment long enough to take a brief inventory of the things these two people had acquired—the objects that were somehow necessary to their identity or their existence. A TV set. A stereo. Two matching, molded plastic candy dishes. A clock in the shape of a fish. A framed photograph of the pope.
I could only shake my head. None of it made any sense to me.
I left the place with some reluctance. I wanted to explore, to learn more about my victims. Who had they been, and why? There wasn’t time. I slipped out of the apartment, and started the long drive back to Vermont.
On Route 4, just before Concord, New Hampshire, an officer from the Epsom police department pulled me over.
“Oh, shit,” I said to the cop, “my aunt is gonna kill me. I’m supposed to get this back before my uncle has to go to work. I swear I haven’t been drinking. I’ll take the breath test. Anything.”
He glanced at my fra
udulent license, then studied the registration. “Where you been?” he asked.
“My girl,” I said. “She just moved over here.”
“Real lady killer, huh?”
I gave him my best goofy smile. “She’s okay with my aunt, but my uncle …”
“Slow it down,” he said, handing the papers back to me. “Gettin’ laid ain’t worth gettin’ killed over, or killin’ somebody else.”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t an Academy Award performance, but it got me back on the road, and it was my first lesson in how crudely law enforcement agencies operate. Had he opened the trunk, the officer would have found a bloody ax, a wire strangulation loop, and Anita’s head.
It’s never enough to commit murder. The artistic touch is a necessity. I buried her head at the edge of the mental health clinic’s parking lot, beneath a forsythia bush. I assume it’s still there.
I WATCHED THE FEDERAL AGENTS LEAVE THE Willard. Judging from the white cop’s expression, he had not enjoyed his meeting with Dr. Frank. He stood on the sidewalk, hands on his hips, glancing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. The black man stood behind him, writing in a narrow notebook.
All cops are assholes.
Feds are worse than most local police departments, but they are all incompetent. Wife kills husband, or husband kills wife, the locals can handle that reasonably well—provided that the assailant is sitting there, covered with blood, with the weapon in his or her hand, confessing.
But don’t count on it.
And don’t count on federal agents investigating anything. That’s a bad joke. The only technological claptrap they don’t have are cruise missiles, but they never caught the “Green River Killer.”
Despite a profile by John Douglas, and extensive interviews with that master sleuth and law enforcement consultant Theodore Robert Bundy—a Vermont native more famous than Calvin Coolidge—the feds have no idea who patrolled the Seattle-Tacoma strip wiping out its female population. They don’t know who killed the prostitutes in New Bedford, Massachusetts, or the ones in San Diego.
Of course, whores don’t matter. They’re typically of some hue, ethnicity, and religion other than WASP, and they carry disease. Clearly, they are part of what Charles Dickens called “the surplus population,” and in need of elimination. A predominantly white, Christian government agency really can’t be expected to give a shit.