Without Conscience

by Michael Kerr

  Pulling back from memories, that like a loop would play continuously if allowed, Mark took a route from the Tolworth underpass that would take him to Amy’s via Hampton Court, through Teddington to Richmond Park.

  His ghastly recollections would not be denied, though. They demanded to be relived. Having dug back into a past that was filled with more tragedy than happiness, which he normally suppressed, he gave in to the insistent clamouring. Driving on automatic, he found his thoughts drifting back to another time and place, and was returned to D.C.

  It was a cold and rain-lashed night. He was standing, hands deep in his pants’ pockets, oblivious to the elements as he stared down at the naked body of a teenage girl; the fifth victim of Ralph Hechinger, the Memorial Killer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Medical Examiner officially confirmed the obvious, that the victim was dead, before releasing the body. And after the crime scene technicians had finished up, Mark remained loitering in the driving rain for a while, alone and unmindful of being soaked to the skin as he closed his eyes and digested the facts of the case.

  The ME had noted that traces of semen were apparent, and that bruising to the wrists indicated they had been bound at some stage. Together with the unusual posing of the corpse in a seated lotus position, it was an irrefutable fact that this was the fifth victim of the same killer.

  The autopsy was carried out the following day, and was to result in a single significant find that had not been present in the four previous murders. It would prove to be the case-breaker. They had matching blonde hairs and semen samples from all five victims, which showed that the killer had not been concerned over leaving DNA. All Mark needed was a suspect to match to the trace evidence. The forensic proof was in itself enough to make a bullet-proof case to put before the District Attorney.

  It was in combings from victim five’s pubic hair that a single hair of non-human origin was found. It proved to be simian, from one of the anthropoid apes; an orangutan.

  “The National Zoo,” Mark said to his supervisor, Frank Sorvino, even before the ape’s hair had been attributed to a specific species. “It has to be one of the employees.”

  “Walk me through it,” Frank said, tapping a tightly held pencil on the desktop in an annoying staccato.

  Mark scanned notes that he had made while rechecking the files on the dead girls. “All of the victims had visited the zoo during a six-week period before their deaths,” he said. “The killer saw them there, selected them, and was able to either follow them home or somehow get their addresses. We need photographs and details of all keepers and vets that come into physical contact with the apes.”

  Frank stopped tapping with the pencil, tossed it aside and watched as it rolled off the desk and fell to the floor. “Could be anyone who frequents the place with the intention of selecting his victims,” he said as he withdrew another pencil from a plastic desk organiser, rather than bending down to pick the first one up. “And it could’ve been on the victim, not a transfer from the killer. But it’s worth running with.”

  Two hours later, Mark and Frank were sifting through faxes of employees work records and photographs. Of the ten that worked at one time or another with apes, four were women, and of the other six, only two had blond hair. Provisionally, it came down to two prime suspects. One was a forty-four-year-old married man with two daughters; the other a twenty-seven-year-old, whom a background check disclosed had a rap for aggravated assault on a girl, dating back to when he was at high school.

  Mark had no doubt as to which of the men was the killer. Confirmation came by way of work attendance sheets, showing that one of the suspects, Vern Henton, had been off duty on the day that the fifth victim, sixteen-year-old Sheila Farnsworth, had been taken. Further investigation put Henton in Philadelphia at the time that Sheila had been abducted on her way to school. He had not returned to D.C. until after the girl’s body had been discovered. It effectively ruled him out.

  They approached the man they thought to be the killer as he parked his SUV in the driveway and walked up to the front door of his tract house in Marlow Heights.

  “Ralph Hechinger. I am an armed federal agent,” Mark shouted. “Stop where you are and put your hands―”

  Mark stopped talking. Hechinger had immediately veered to his left without hesitation, to then dive headlong through a front window with his arms crossed in front of his face to protect it from the breaking glass.

  The element of surprise was lost, and although they had placed the man’s wife and daughters into protective custody as a precaution, and had an agent located inside the house, the bust had gone wrong, big time.

  Shots split the air as Mark and four other agents crashed through the door. They careered down the hall and entered the living room, to stop in their tracks, met by the sight of Special Agent Will Carpenter. He was lying on his back, blood blossoming from a chest wound to stain his shirt in what looked like a crimson Rorschach blot resembling a six-pointed star. Standing over him, Hechinger leant forward and pressed the muzzle of a .45 up against the fallen man’s forehead.

  “There’s nowhere to go from here, Ralph,” Mark said, keeping his Smith & Wesson trained on the killer’s face. “Just put the gun down and let’s all walk away from this in one piece.”

  “No deal, fed,” Ralph said in a calm and even voice. “I got urges, and did some terrible things, is all. There’s no way back from the shit I’m in.”

  “Don’t make me shoot you, Ralph,” Mark said.

  The balding zoo keeper actually smiled, and said, “How did you know it was me?”

  “You left ape hairs on the last victim. After we found those, it was easy.”

  Ralph shook his head. “Forensics is taking away all the hard slog for you guys,” he said. “But this is one of those times where no one wins. I’m going to count back from three, and then pull the trigger. I don’t know if this guy is dying or not. But his only chance is if you shoot me before I blow his brains out.”

  “Don’t do this, Ralph,” Mark said, and could hear the quaver in his own voice, and feel the sweat oiling up the palms of his hands.

  “What’s your name, fed?” Ralph said.

  “Ross...Mark Ross.”

  “Well, Mark, decision time,” the middle-aged family man said. “Three...Two...”

  The gunshot was deafening, like rolling thunder in a box canyon. Through Mark’s eyes, time became a stop-motion film. A red hole appeared as the bullet punched out Hechinger’s right eye, blowing him back, away from the wounded agent. The other agents fired, and the large, overweight zoo keeper pirouetted, spun around by the hot lead, to smash face-first into the wall behind him and drop, a dead weight, to hit the floor with a resonant thud of finality. The only movement was his left leg. It shuddered for a few seconds, then straightened out and became still.

  Real time resumed. Mark lowered his gun as the other agents moved forward to secure the scene; one kicking the pistol away from the corpse’s hand as another padded the sucking, wheezing hole in Will Carpenter’s chest.

  Will died during transit to ER, and Mark was devastated. He had been the team leader, and found it impossible to reconcile the fact that a friend and colleague had died, and that the killer had manipulated his actions, using him to affect what was in all but name a suicide to thwart due process.

  The following week he had handed his badge and gun in to Frank Sorvino with a letter of resignation. It was as though he had crossed the thin line that separated love and hate. He turned his back on the world of pointless violence and death, to walk away from the talent he possessed to track down creatures that only existed to pursue their deviant need to abuse and kill their fellow man.

  Soon after, Gemma had put in for a transfer back to the UK, and together they had started a new chapter of life in London. There followed a period of calmness and fulfilment that Mark had never previously known. Each day was somehow imbued with a warmth and texture that he had been unable to experience while continually t
rying to infiltrate the minds of homicidal maniacs, which in essence necessitated his thinking how they thought, to the point of almost assuming their identities in order to hunt them down.

  Strident blasts of a car horn snapped him back into the present. He had stopped at traffic lights that were now glowing green. The street noises and music from his radio flooded back. He raised his hand in a spread-fingered gesture of apology to the irate driver behind him and then accelerated JC across the intersection, surprised to find that he was only a few minutes from Amy’s. He mused over how time could lengthen or shorten in an unfathomable manner, depending on the level of boredom or engrossing occupation that engaged the mind. Time really could seem to fly by, or be drawn out interminably.

  Amy met him at the door, to become a welcome, solid reality in his arms. He held her tightly, absorbing her presence and the individual subtle fragrances of her hair, skin and perfume. It struck him that a large part of his inner self had the ability to move forward and meet life on terms he had no control over. Optimism for what the future might hold triumphed over past setbacks. He truly believed that the facility to rise above and overcome adversity was a trait that had made mankind such successful survivors. Adapting to change was the key to the future.

  “Are you all right? You look terrible,” Amy said, pulling free to stand back slightly and study his face.

  “Thanks. You look gorgeous,” he said, dumping his soft, canvas Cardin holdall on the floor next to the mahogany telephone seat. “What does a guy have to do to get a coffee around here?”

  After an early lunch, Amy broke her good news.

  “I got my licence, Mark. I’m a certified pilot now. I can go up into the wide blue yonder whenever I get the urge, or can afford to.”

  “You never told me. When did some fool deem it safe to let you fly over an unsuspecting public?”

  “Last Wednesday. I thought if I failed, then I could just book more lessons and not have to tell anyone I’d flunked.”

  “Congratulations. We’d better go out and celebrate this evening,” Mark said, getting up and going around the table to kiss her.

  “Sounds good. I’m going up this afternoon for half an hour. Do you want to come along for the ride?”

  “The ride, yeah. The flight, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I fly when there’s no alternative.”

  “You mean to say you’re scared of flying?”

  “Scared doesn’t do it justice. I’d rather wrestle alligators than be up there without a parachute.”

  “It’s the safest―”

  “Way to travel,” Mark finished for her. “I know. All the stats say so. But I still feel a hell of a lot safer with both feet on the ground or driving JC. The chances of surviving a car crash are much better than nose-diving into a field, or dropping into the ocean from a great height. Add what happened to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to the equation, and you’ve got a twenty-four-carat coward on your hands. I tend to think that if a terrorist or suicide bomber did manage to get past security, then he’d pick the flight that I was on.”

  “So, you won’t come?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’ll enjoy watching you show-off, from the safety of the bar.”

  “You might get an oil-smeared mug of tea or coffee. It’s not a big operation.”

  The airfield near Mitcham had only been open for six months. It was small, but had all the facilities, including a bar; its panelled walls hung with paintings and prints of World War II fighter planes and bombers; a commemorative display of Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancasters and the like.

  “You said there was no bar,” Mark said, on being led in and introduced to Sid, the steward.

  “I didn’t want you coming along just for the booze. I’ll see you soon,” Amy said, pecking him on the cheek and rushing off.

  He ordered a large Scotch from Sid, and could tell from the old guy’s clipped voice, military bearing and handlebar moustache that he was ex-RAF, and doubtless wholly responsible for the aviation-oriented gallery of magnificent flying machines.

  Flying had given Amy a sense of freedom that was incomparable to anything else she had ever done. Apart from being with Mark, it was the biggest thrill she could imagine possible; an endeavour that rewarded her with pure delight.

  After going through the pre-flight check and starting the engine, she spoke to the tower. “Cessna one five zero Foxtrot Charlie ready for taxi,” she said, adrenaline coursing through her veins as the plangent roar of the engine reverberated throughout the cockpit.

  “Roger, Cessna one five zero Foxtrot Charlie. You are cleared to taxi onto taxiway zero one right.”

  “Zero one right, Cessna one five zero Foxtrot Charlie,” Amy said, nursing the throttle and turning the Cessna out on to the taxiway. Less than two hundred yards distant, she could see Mark. He was standing next to the white-painted cast-iron railings that fronted the decking of the covered porch of the bar. He raised a hand as if to toast her, and she knew that it would be gripping a glass of Black Label and ice.

  Giving him a salute – that made her feel like a Biggles or Douglas Bader type – Amy then concentrated wholly on the task at hand.

  With step-by-step instructions from the disembodied voice on the radio, Amy was soon straightening the nose wheel to line the plane up on the runway’s centreline. Another quick check of instrumentation, followed by permission to take off, and she pushed the throttle forward. The light aircraft almost leapt, as if unleashed, to pounce like a big cat and rush along the concrete strip; its destination, the sky above.

  Once high above the ground and settled into her short flight plan, Amy allowed a part of her mind to absorb and appreciate the exhilaration of being free from all earthly constraint. It was rare to feel truly alone and apart from the teeming world of uncertainty far below, in what now appeared as clusters of toy-town buildings, with the sprawl of London to the north and a patchwork quilt of green fields, pockets of wooded areas and arable land stretching to the southern horizon. Only scuba diving in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean, while on holiday three years before, had given her almost the same sense of emancipation. It would be nice to explore the depths with Mark by her side, to glide hand in hand through the blue; to be weightless and experience the equanimity and quietude together. She believed that such participation in surroundings at the outer frontiers of man’s familiarity could promote a truly unique sense of bonding; a sharing of danger and survival that would surely cement a relationship in a special, red-letter way.

  All too soon she had landed, and although pleased to see Mark waiting outside the office, was saddened at once more being a captive of gravity.

  Mark had been thrilled, watching the small plane cut through the vault of gunmetal grey sky. At times, weak sunlight had emblazoned it, glancing off the fuselage to give the aircraft the appearance of a silver dart. And more than once it had disappeared, puncturing sullen clouds, only to reappear as though cast out from the swollen mass; a thorn expelled from bruised flesh.

  “Feel better for that?” he said, embracing her as she finally climbed down from the cockpit.

  “Renewed. It’s like a form of rebirth, if that makes sense.”

  “That’s how I feel after a sauna and massage.”

  “When do you allow some bimbo to give you a body massage?”

  “I haven’t for years. But when I did, it was all done in good taste, and my towel covered my modesty at all times.”

  “You say,” Amy said, finding it hard to believe, but wanting to.

  “Yeah, I say, Doubting Thomas. And I’m taking the fifth on this line of questioning.”

  “Okay, let’s go home, take a shower together and then have that celebratory meal.”

  “Where do you want to eat?”

  “I thought we could try that new Italian restaurant, La Piazza. It’s only a few minutes walk from the house. We can both enjoy a drink without drawing straws for who stays sober and drives.”

  “Sounds swell.”
r />   “Then...if you’re a real good boy, I’ll give you a full body massage, with no towels included.”

  “You got yourself a deal, lady,” Mark said, already feeling aroused.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At seven a.m. on Friday morning, Mike phoned Barney’s home number.

  “Yes?” Anna Bowen said.

  “It’s Mike Cook, Mrs Bowen. Could I speak to the boss, please?”

  “Sure, Mike, I’ll get him,” Anna said, then put the receiver down and went out through the kitchen door to where she could see Barney standing, smoking a cigarette and studying his beloved Koi carp in the large kidney-shaped pond that he used as a mental balm; a therapeutic escape from the harsh reality of his thankless job.

  “Barney. Mike’s on the phone,” she shouted.

  He waved and then made his way up the lawn to the house. Anna watched him. She thought how drawn and tired he looked. His steel-grey hair was beginning to thin; his shoulders seemed permanently drooped these days, and he had lost a little weight. She would be glad when he quit the force. He had given his life to police work and she wanted him to enjoy retirement. Her biggest fear was that he would die in harness. The years of stress and long hours had taken their toll. She could not help but think that his fight against crime had been as effective as rowing against the tide in a holed boat. The measures and deterrents in place did not work. Her view was that convicted criminals should be stripped of all rights and privileges, and that on leaving prison should not ever wish to do anything that would put them at risk of being incarcerated again. She was sick of hearing how badly done by they were while inside. No one forced them to steal and rape and commit murder. They should, in her opinion, be treated as they deserved to be…badly. If a person knew that if after serving a custodial sentence they so much as spat in the street, then they would be locked up for the rest of their life, she was sure that the crime rate would drop dramatically. Honest, law-abiding citizens deserved better protection from the lowlifes’ that preyed upon them. A zero-tolerance policy against criminals should be adopted and adhered to. She got so mad with the ineffectual hot air that politicians fed to the masses. She would love to see a public referendum with a straightforward choice of yes or no to the reintroduction of the death penalty. The Government was supposedly there to serve the people but, in her view, only suppressed and dictated, and was therefore little more than a thinly veiled autocracy.