by Rob Ashman
‘Okay. So what are you telling me?’ asked Lucas.
‘I ran more details from the case through the system and found something weird. In the homicide case, the killer left a thumbprint in the centre of the TV screen like a calling card.’
Lucas felt suddenly uneasy. ‘And?’
‘I phoned the house and asked one of the CSI guys to dust the TV.’ Curtis cleared his throat. ‘There’s a thumbprint in the middle of the screen.’
‘That means nothing,’ countered Lucas. ‘People are allowed to touch their TVs, aren’t they?’
‘Sir, they rushed it over, I’ve got the print here.’
‘Have you run it?’ Bassano felt a knot of anxiety building in his stomach.
‘It’s a seventeen-point match.’ Curtis looked almost apologetic for delivering the news.
‘Match to whom?’ Bassano asked.
‘The print matches a serial killer with twelve kills to his name. There is no positive identity, just the previous investigation code name – Mechanic.’
‘Jesus.’ Lucas let the word out with a rush of air.
‘It gets worse.’ Curtis was not looking forward to this. ‘Our records show that Mechanic committed suicide by torching himself and his last three victims in a car. He’s been dead for three years.’
8
Mechanic sat on the floor, exhausted, stripped to the waist with a roll of crepe bandage around the middle with gauze patches placed over the burnt area. It hurt like hell and every movement reminded Mechanic that the situation was getting worse. It was just a matter of time and all control would be lost.
‘What are you doing?’ Daddy’s voice was soft and melodic. Mechanic reeled around to work out where it had come from. This was a complete surprise. No warning, no footsteps, no whispering. Nothing.
‘I told you to get it done.’ The voice was gentle but insistent. Mechanic was in uncharted territory. This had never happened before.
Mechanic tried to scramble to the weights room but stumbled back against the cupboard, knocking crockery off the worktop. Cups and plates shattered sending china shrapnel skidding across the wooden floor.
‘You got it wrong. Now fix it!’ This was terrifying. Daddy was taking over.
Mechanic slumped down. ‘No, it’s too soon, it’s too soon.’
‘Work out what happened and sort it! I can’t wait any longer,’ Daddy boomed.
‘But I can’t yet.’ Mechanic’s will was disintegrating fast. Options were limited. This was bad, very bad.
Tearing at the bandages, Mechanic ripped away the gauze, exposing the angry red burn. Seizing a jagged piece of broken plate, Mechanic stabbed the serrated edge into tender flesh and dragged it across the raw wound. Pain tore through Mechanic’s body as the shard cut deep into the burnt flesh.
Mechanic screamed in pain as blood pooled onto the floor.
For the second time in two days, Daddy fell quiet. What it would take to silence him a third time?
9
Lucas sat in the quiet twilight of his office. A small halogen lamp spilled a cone of light onto his paper-strewn desk and the back wall glowed pale yellow in its reflection. The remainder of the office was dark.
He reclined heavily in his chair, watching the devils of the day dance before him. The station was still alive with the sounds of law enforcement by night, but all Lucas heard was the thumping in his chest and the rushing in his head. It was 7.30pm.
He had made Curtis take him through the matches again and again, but there was no mistake. Mechanic had definitely been in the Mason house. Lucas sent his team home. He needed time to think. He’d called his wife and told her not to expect him until late. This was going to require careful handling.
Lucas was fully aware that, in circumstances such as these, there were protocols to follow, people to inform, wheels to set in motion. But he damn well wasn’t going to raise the alarm on a case that he knew nothing about, especially one that involved an allegedly dead serial killer on his patch. He needed to be in control, he needed to be up to speed, he couldn’t afford to be behind the game.
He only knew scant details of Mechanic’s existence, but anyone who’d picked up a newspaper or turned on the TV in 1979 would know of Mechanic. At that time, Lucas had been in a cushy job, sitting in an office in Chicago and considering himself fortunate that he wasn’t the sorry bastard having to bring this sadistic killer to justice. He didn’t need to know the details then. How times had changed.
His thoughts raced: Why the hell was Mechanic there? And why was the break-in staged to look like a burglary?
Lucas was getting annoyed by his train of thought – it wasn’t helping him. His first priority had to be to understand what had happened to Mechanic in the past if he was to stand any chance of unravelling the events of the present. Six boxes sat on the conference table, each one marked with an index number and a large sticker on which was written CODENAME – MECHANIC. He crossed the room and picked up the box with the lowest number on it. He slowly walked back to his desk, pulled up the chair and adjusted the light.
The box was full of thick buff-coloured folders which had been forgotten for the past three years. The daily drudgery of enforcing law in a busy city was a walk in the park in comparison to what was contained in these folders. Each box told its own dreadful tale of how fragile the human mind can become and the damage that can ensue when it falls apart. Lucas took the file, turned the front cover and began to read.
Horror first descended onto the state of Florida when Mechanic’s mind snapped at the home of Lillian and Gerald Lang. They lived in a fashionable suburb of Fort Myers in a stylish house that Gerald had designed himself. He was a successful architect and she was a stay-at-home mom, looking after the two children. Tom was eight and Katie was six.
Anything they didn’t have, they probably didn’t want. Gerald commanded vast fees from his work and Lillian tried her best to spend it. She kitted the home out with every conceivable luxury and clothed herself and the kids in the latest fashion. The more he earned, the more she spent. They were happy that way. They had no debts, no problems to speak of and no enemies. That was until around 4am on 16 June 1979.
The blood patterns on the wall suggested Gerald Lang had been sitting upright when the bullet of the .45 slammed into his forehead. He’d been disturbed from sleep by the intruder who’d entered the bedroom, but evidently not for long. Lillian Lang was in that hazy world of half-awake and half-asleep when the back of her husband’s head splattered her with bone, tissue and blood. From the wallpaper under her fingernails, she was clawing her way up the bedroom wall to get away from the exploding head when the blunt instrument struck the side of her temple and she lost consciousness. She slumped from the bed and onto the floor, never seeing who’d hit her.
The gun that was used must have been silenced because the children never left their beds or, it can be assumed, ever woke up. They too were shot through the head as they lay sleeping in separate rooms.
The killer returned to the master bedroom and proceeded to bind and gag Lillian Lang with strips cut from her own nightdress. Then began the ritual.
Gerald Lang was pulled from his bed and dragged along the floor by his feet, out of the bedroom and down the stairs. What remained of his head left a trail resembling a butcher’s slab, along the carpet and on each of the wooden steps, as it cracked and splintered its way down the stairs. Fragments of bone and brain tissue marked its journey through the house. The killer dragged him into the garage and, judging by the size of the blood pool on the concrete floor, left him there for some time.
The children were next. They were dragged to the garage in the same manner and laid out on the floor. Having found the keys, the killer loaded each body into the family car – Dad in the driver’s seat with the two children in the back. The key was placed in the ignition and the doors closed. Each body was held upright by its seatbelt, an absurd safety precaution given the circumstances.
Lillian Lang was left on the bedro
om floor, a purple and yellow ridge running down the right side of her face. It would soon fade to nothing more than a small skin blemish. She was otherwise untouched. Her whole life sat seat-belted and bloody in the family car, leaving scars that would never heal. Bloody footprints on the carpet indicated that the killer had left the house by the same way he came in, through the patio doors which were lifted from their runners by a crowbar-type implement. A single thumbprint was placed as a calling card in the centre of the oversized TV screen. From this point on, Mechanic was born.
Lucas’s mind raced, each fact firing tiny memory triggers. He recalled the news coverage and the inevitable hysteria-provoking articles in the press. He turned the pages of the file and the scene-of-crime photographs tore at the pit of his stomach. However you pictured such carnage, it never reflected reality. Lucas flipped through the pages in an attempt to avoid for now what he knew he would have to study in detail later.
On 2 August Mechanic snapped again.
This time it was at the modest home of Jeff and Julie Tate. He worked as a sales manager at a paint manufacturer in Tampa, she was a telephone operator for a firm of accountants. They also had two children. Zak was eleven and Luke was nine.
Their fate was a carbon copy of the slaughter of the Lang family. Jeff had been shot in bed, removing most of the left-hand side of his face, and Julie had been clubbed about the head and the nape of her neck. She’d fought with Mechanic, but only briefly until the blows rendered her unconscious. She was bound and gagged on the bedroom floor. Both kids would have been shot through the head too if it hadn’t been for Luke’s unexpected sleepover at a friend’s house. Unfortunately, this after-school treat only included Luke. Zak Tate was belted in the family car along with his father.
When Luke’s dad didn’t turn up to take him home the following morning, and several phone calls weren’t answered, his friend’s mom dropped Luke off on her way to the mall. It wasn’t far to walk from their house, but the Florida summer was in full heat and the air quality was poor. It wasn’t worth the risk. Days like this were never a good thing for Luke. She dropped him off outside the house and waved goodbye.
Luke Tate found the front door bolted from the inside, preventing him from entering with his key. He shouted through the door, but still no response. He went around the side, raised the garage door and walked in. He never made it to the house door at the back wall of the garage. He saw his father and brother sitting bolt upright in the car, gaping cavities where their heads had once been.
This triggered Luke’s asthma. The bout was so severe that his hopeless fumbling in his overnight bag for his inhaler was useless. He died on the floor of the garage. Mechanic had achieved a full strike after all, and the calling card thumbprint was testament to the identity of the killer.
Lucas’s mind swam in the memories of three years ago. He recalled that when the news had broken that the killings were linked, the police had tried to play down the term ‘serial killer’. But with the persistence of the press and the morbid fascination of the general public, it was a lost cause. Fascination quickly escalated into panic. The terror spread like wildfire.
The third set of killings in October sent the emotional temperature rocketing. Fort Lauderdale was the venue, the Andrews family were centre stage.
It was exactly the same ritual as before. A heavy, blunt object left Janet Andrews with a fractured skull, while three bullets fired at point-blank range left her nothing to live for. Dad plus the two kids had been belted into the car, Mom was bound on the bedroom floor with straw-coloured fluid flecked with blood running from her right ear and down her jaw line. The single thumbprint was once again in place, like a stamp of quality.
For four days Janet Andrews lay in a coma, blissfully ignorant of the horrors that awaited her. She had recovered enough by the fifth day to be told of her family’s fate and she wished with all her heart that she could slip back into her coma, never to return. On day six, she realized that the ringing sound in her head had been there the day before. On day seven, the doctors told her that her balance would return given time, but the ringing in her right ear would probably remain. Trauma-induced tinnitus, they called it.
Post-traumatic shock set in on the eighth day and her time in a coma seemed to Janet Andrews by far the best option. On day nine, and in a confused state, she put it to the test.
Her fall was not dramatic. A healthy person would have survived, but a single flight of hospital stairs to a woman with a serious head injury proved too much for Janet Andrews. It was never clear whether her failed balance took her over the top step or if it was a desperate need to not face the world without her family. Either way, the outcome was the same. The fall knocked her unconscious and she died hours later of a massive brain haemorrhage.
Lucas read the scribbled file notes. The Andrews family had been devout churchgoers and as she lay in her hospital bed the impact of what happened had convinced Janet there was no God. How could there be?
In the days after the killings, she felt completely betrayed by her faith. All those Sundays, for what? All those prayers and participation in religious pageantry, for what? The loss of her faith became as much of a personal tragedy for Janet Andrews as losing her family. How could such a large part of her life turn out to be a total sham? Now she was armed with stark evidence that God did not exist, she was freed from the onerous process of having to believe in Him.
She had always held the firm belief that suicide was wrong in the eyes of the Lord. However, now that she was unencumbered by that view, her tumble down the stairs was never considered an accident. Rather it had been viewed as the last act of a sick woman with nothing to live for and no belief in a divine force to keep her from doing it.
A handwritten note had been scribbled at the bottom of the file notes. It read: Claim for hospital negligence pending, Dick Harper, 23 Oct 1979. Lucas stopped reading and replaced the files. Dick Harper. Now that was a name to conjure with. Lucas knew him well or, at least, he knew the folklore that surrounded him. He was a bull-headed bastard of a man who’d held the position of Lieutenant at the time of the Mechanic murders. He was straight out of the old school. Harper had been promoted through the ranks in his early years, due mainly to his uncompromising style and formidable reputation which exactly fitted with the times.
‘Cops make the best villains,’ he would boom. ‘Just use it wisely.’ Double talk for ‘Do whatever needs to be done, but don’t get caught while doing it.’ Harper hadn’t been a bent cop. He’d proudly boast that he’d never accepted a bribe in his life, but he wouldn’t let the mere technicality of a known scum-bag’s innocence get in the way of a good collar. He held the criminal fraternity in a grip of fear, a grip that was as often physical as it was metaphorical.
Unfortunately for Harper, the force’s top brass had changed as did their attitudes to such activities. They brought with them a new enlightened style for a modern police force. The problem was that Harper couldn’t change and he was increasingly seen as out of step.
His career had suffered, and Harper had felt the control that he’d enjoyed for so long slip away from him. He’d been beside himself with rage and frustration as known criminals walked free from his station after procedures hadn’t been followed. Sleight-of-hand lawyers constantly unearthed irregularities in the treatment of suspects.
One explosive disagreement with his superiors had stood out from the rest. It followed a vigorous interview with a street mugger who’d been caught kicking the shit out of an old woman because she wouldn’t let go of the bag over her shoulder. Harper was heard to shout at his boss.
‘Doesn’t anybody care that the bastard did it?’
‘That is not the issue here,’ was the cold, monotone response.
‘Well, sir, I beg to differ. It’s a major fucking issue to me.’
There was no doubt that Harper felt a good deal better for replying as he did, but the resulting suspension from duty took the shine off it. He was reinstated two weeks later
when the mugger failed to turn up to corroborate his complaint. In fact, he failed to turn up anywhere at all, not at his apartment, nor his place of work. Nowhere. Without him it was easy for Harper to cry victimization and his pasty-faced boss had to eat lots of very public humble pie. The complaint was quashed.
The other cops at the station never questioned where the mugger had gone nor had his disappearing act come as a great surprise to anyone. Harper hadn’t touched him personally, but had leaned on certain members of the criminal fraternity to do themselves a favour. This was food and drink to Harper, his own version of the force’s new enlightened techniques.
Lucas looked at his watch. It was nine-thirty. The remaining two boxes contained murders nine, ten, eleven and twelve plus the interview notes, analysis, statements and hypotheses. All based on a nightmare three years old.
Lucas didn’t open them. He’d seen and read enough for one day. He lifted the telephone.
‘Hi, this is Lucas, get me FBI headquarters Quantico.’ He replaced the handset and waited. Within seconds it rang.
‘Hello, this is the FBI. Can I help you?’
‘Yes, this is Lieutenant Edmund Lucas of the Florida State Police Department. I’d like to talk to Jeff Charmers. And, before you ask, I am aware of how late it is.’
‘May I have your identification number please?’ asked the operator. Lucas gave his ID.
‘Won’t keep you a moment.’ The line echoed and buzzed as the code was processed. After a while she returned. ‘Putting you through, Lieutenant.’
‘Jeff Charmers.’ The voice was bright and alert despite the hour.
‘Jeff, this is Lieutenant Ed Lucas of FPD. I’m sorry to call you so late.’
‘That’s okay. It must be urgent.’