“The Satanism kid,” Turner said.
“Who?” the commander asked.
Turner got halfway through the explanation of their interview with Arnie before the commander said, “Yeah, now I remember. Get up there. The Kenitkamette police are holding him and are not releasing anything to the press.”
“They don’t believe him?”
“Get your butts up there and find out what’s going on. I’ve got a goddamn press conference in ten minutes. I didn’t think this could get worse.”
They waited five minutes for the reporters to begin filing into the building for the press conference before they both hurried out a back way to their car.
“I’d rather stay and follow our leads around the country,” Turner said.
“And when you’re Commander you too can do whatever you please.”
“I’m not sure I want to be Commander.”
“I want to be emperor or maybe god of the detectives. Christ, I’m tired. And I’m hungry.”
“I just want to sleep.”
Just before the border to Kenitkamette they stopped at a Dunkin Donuts for coffee and sustenance. “It’s after two already,” Fenwick said. “All this driving around is futile.”
Chief Robsart ushered them into her office. “This is unreal. Parents are here demanding a lawyer for their kid. Kid is here insisting he doesn’t want a lawyer.”
“Does he know about the murder in Millwood this morning?” Turner asked.
“Yep. Says he did that one, too.”
Turner said, “I want to talk to him with his lawyer present, plus a state’s attorney, and his parents.”
“You really want everybody there?” Robsart asked.
“Yeah. I don’t want any legal or constitutional or procedural or any other kind of technical difficulties. If this kid did it, I want everybody around. What happened?”
“Kid walked in here about eleven. He confessed to the first three people he saw. One was a homeless person we were shipping to County Jail, another was a temporary secretary doing filing for the day, and the last was an officer who’s only been working here for two weeks. She had the sense to call me. He tried confessing to me, but after the first sentence, I stopped him. I called the state’s attorney, the parents, and you. He’s been sitting in a conference room. I think I should have called a team of psychiatrists.”
“Arnie is not on the same planet as the rest of us,” Turner said.
“You got that right. He’s hearing voices the rest of us don’t.”
Half an hour later, Turner and Fenwick sat in a room that looked out over a dry and empty fountain. Assembled around an oak conference table were all the people that Turner had suggested be present along with Robsart. Two uniformed Kenitkamette cops brought in Arnie Pantera.
Again, he was dressed all in black, including his cape. He gazed slowly at everyone in the room.
The police and the lawyers had agreed that Turner would be the spokesperson for the group.
“Why are all these people here?” Arnie whispered.
Turner said, “We need to talk to you about the killings. These are the people we wanted present.”
Arnie took a chair next to Turner.
“The police here said you have a statement to make,” Turner said.
Arnie looked around the room again. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, the great Satan has spoken to me. I have done his bidding and I am here to tell you about it.”
“Did you kill Jake Goldstein, Frank Douglas, and Peter Volmer?”
“Yes.” Arnie’s voice never rose above a whisper. He didn’t look at anyone in the room as he spoke, but stared out at the swirling leaves driven by the cool wind.
“Why did you do it, Arnie?”
“Satan commanded it.”
“This is ridiculous,” Mr. Pantera said. He turned to their lawyer. “I demand you put a stop to this.”
The lawyer was an elderly gentleman with a narrow face, bushy eyebrows, and a goatee. He said, “I have informed Arnie of his rights. You were there. I say again, Arnie, I advise you not to speak to the police. This interview should stop immediately.”
Turner didn’t say a word. He wasn’t convinced this kid had done anything yet.
Arnie said, “I wish to tell the world. I have nothing to fear.”
Turner wasn’t sure he’d get sane answers to any of his questions.
“You may continue asking,” Arnie said.
Turner looked at the lawyer and the parents.
“Arnie, listen to me,” his father said. “This is insane. You can’t do this. You’ve taken this far enough. You have to stop now.”
His mother said, “Arnie, we’ll get you all the help we can, but you are only endangering yourself the more you talk.”
They spent half an hour debating with Arnie, alternately cajoling and threatening. The cops and state’s attorney said little, the lawyer only some, and Arnie least of all.
They took a break, and out in the hall, Turner got hold of the lawyer, Mr. and Mrs. Pantera, and the state’s attorney. “Look,” he said, “I don’t think your kid killed anybody. If you’d let me ask him some specific details about the killings, especially today’s murder, I think we can eliminate him as a suspect.”
“It’s a trick,” Mr. Pantera said. “I know how you police trick people.”
The lawyer led the parents down the hall out of earshot of Turner. They returned a few minutes later. The lawyer said, “We want to know before we go in what you’re going to ask.”
Normally Turner would bristle at this, and he saw Fenwick draw a deep breath for a vociferous protest, but Turner said, “Sure. I’m going to ask him about details that didn’t happen and see if he confirms them. If he passes that test, I’ll ask a few details that he couldn’t know that we haven’t released to the public. If he confirms them, he did do it.”
The lawyer and the parents conferred for another few minutes.
Fenwick said, “Why the hell did you give them that?”
“Do you think he did it?”
“No.”
“So we do it their way and we get the hell out of here sometime this century.”
Fenwick shrugged.
Everyone reassembled in the room. Turner again sat next to Arnie.
“Arnie, I need to ask you a few things,” Turner said.
Arnie gave a small nod.
“You shot Jake an awful lot of times.”
“He had offended Satan.”
“Why’d you pick that warehouse to leave him in?”
“It was vacant.”
“Why the third floor?” They’d found him on the second floor.
“I wouldn’t be interrupted.”
Turner resisted the urge to glance at Fenwick.
“Must have been tough carrying him up all those stairs.”
“I don’t remember.”
“We still can’t figure out where you hid your car so it couldn’t be seen.”
“In the alley.”
“Why’d you take his underwear?”
Arnie turned his eyes on Turner. For the first time Turner thought he detected a semblance of recognition.
“Are you trying to trick me?”
“We didn’t find his underwear.”
“Yes.”
“The boy this morning didn’t have his underwear either.”
“Yes.”
“We need to look for it. Can you tell us where it is?”
“No. I don’t remember.”
For fifteen more minutes Turner questioned him. The more Turner asked, the worse Arnie’s memory became. Finally Turner beckoned the lawyer and the parents out of the room. He leaned against the wall in the corridor. The parents looked anxious, the lawyer remained silent. Robsart, Fenwick, and the state’s attorney looked on.
“He didn’t do it,” Turner said.
“Thank God,” Mrs. Pantera said.
“He’s in very bad shape,” Turner said. “That glazed look.”
“Are
you a therapist, Mr. Turner?” Mr. Pantera asked.
Robsart stepped in. “Confessing to a murder and wasting the police’s time like this is a serious criminal offense in itself. We need to talk.”
She led them to her office. The lawyer stayed behind and said to Turner and Fenwick, “We’ve had trouble with Arnie for a long time. He’s been hospitalized before for depression. I’ll do what I can. Thank you for being understanding.”
Back in the car, Fenwick said, “Add this to the fiasco list. How much time did we waste up here?”
“Too much.”
“Have we ever met anybody that whacked out yet?”
“Remember the woman who lied about having borne six kids? Claimed it never happened. Or how about the guy with the beer truck in his living room?”
Fenwick laughed.
“And those were just since this summer. Need I go on?”
Halfway back to Area Ten, Turner found he could barely keep his eyes open.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Fenwick said.
“If we ever solve this, I’m going to sleep for a week.”
At Area Ten they found the bedlam of reporters nearly nonexistent.
“What happened to all the media?” Fenwick asked the uniform working the front desk.
“Made a deal with the Commander. Regular morning and afternoon press conferences. Police personnel not to be harassed.”
“Miracle,” Fenwick said.
On the fourth floor, Blessing brought them over to the map and showed them the latest printout. “We’ve been making calls all day, following up the theory that it’s a serial killer around the country murdering sports kids who’ve had articles about them in the paper. We have a total of eighteen such deaths in the past five years. We called local papers or police departments in every city in the country with a population over a hundred thousand, which meant over three hundred calls. We figured, or we hoped, they’d have anything in their own cities or a small town nearby.”
“What about crushed testicles?”
“Most didn’t know but said they’d try to find out.”
“How’s the pattern for places and dates?” Turner asked.
They strode over to the map. “See the yellow pins?”
The detectives nodded.
“All around the country,” Blessing said. “And no longer in chronological or geographical order.”
“Shit,” Fenwick said.
“There’s gotta be a pattern,” Turner said.
Blessing said nothing.
“What about underwear?”
“Most didn’t know, but said they were sure somebody would have remembered something like that. A few were honest and said nobody checked. Some of these were awful accidents where not just one kid got killed. Whatever they told me didn’t add up to a pattern up here.”
“I’m tired,” Fenwick announced.
“Any news from Millwood?” Turner asked.
“Nothing so far. They’re doing the same as you. Talking to the friends and relatives, schoolmates, neighbors, possible drug connections. They’ve got some guy coming up here later with all they get. We’ll put it all on the computers. They’ve called almost every hour with updates.”
Turner and Fenwick examined the printout carefully.
“You see any pattern?” Fenwick asked.
“Nothing,” Turner said. “The only pattern that exists so far are the crushed-testicle cases.”
Fenwick said, “Let’s get the cities on these eighteen and match them with where everybody we’ve talked to lived in the past twenty years.”
“That’s incomplete,” Blessing said. “I ran each through the computer for criminal records. The current driver’s license information just gave us this state for addresses. We’d have to call all fifty states to check pasts on all of these. I’m getting Social Security records. So far the answer is none of these people lived in any of those cities at that time or in cities that were close to the killings.”
“Except Waverly from Seattle to Spokane when he was in college,” Turner said.
“So the killer visited,” Fenwick said.
“If our theory is correct, somebody did. Problem is, what if the killer isn’t one of the people we’ve talked to so far?”
“The killer has to know something of the pattern of these kids’ lives.”
“Maybe it’s random chance. That’s why there’s no pattern. Killer passes through town. Looks in back issues of local newspapers for his victims. If in the time he’s around, he sees his opportunity, they die.”
“Assuming one of the people we’ve talked to is the killer, how could we track all these people for all those years? Even if we checked all the airlines for these people, they could have driven, gone by train. They could have lived halfway between two of the cities.”
“Did somebody track them?”
“No.”
“They could also have lived under a false name.”
“That’s doable but tough in our day of paper trails.”
“Can we get credit-card records?”
“We can try.”
“So what the hell do we have?” Fenwick asked.
Blessing looked at the latest computer printout. “This is all in the last ten years. We didn’t put this morning’s in yet. We have crushed testicles in five cities, counting Goldstein here. They are on random dates of the year, spaced irregularly through that time.” He attached the printout to the corkboard.
Turner read out loud:
“April 5, 1985, in Spokane, Washington—supposed suicide, possible murder.
“October 23, 1986, in Fresno, California—gang killing.
“July 19, 1991, in Odessa, Texas—car accident.
“January 31, 1993, in St. Louis, Missouri—suicide.”
“We have missing underwear here and in two other cities,” Blessing said. “August 10, 1986, in Rapid City, South Dakota, and September 17, 1990, in Abilene, Texas.”
Blessing pointed, “We have articles written about them and dead kids in seventeen places without Goldstein and Douglas.”
“April 5, 1985, in Spokane, Washington, supposed suicide—possible murder.
“May 26, 1985, in Portland, Oregon—gang violence.
“June 17, 1985, in St. Paul, Minnesota—three kids in the same car accident. All had been featured in the same article so we counted all three.
“August 10, 1986, Rapid City, South Dakota—suicide.
“October 23, 1986, in Fresno, California—gang killing.
“November 1, 1986, in Padre Island, Texas—two kids in a swimming accident.
“February 1, 1987, Denver, Colorado—skiing accident.
“May 20, 1987, Cheyenne, Wyoming—suicide.
“March 21, 1988, Tucson, Arizona—car accident.
“September 17, 1990, in Abilene, Texas—four kids in a car; one had an article so we only count one.
“July 19, 1991, in Odessa, Texas—car accident.
“January 26, 1992, in Birmingham, Alabama—car accident.
“February 5, 1992, in Boulder, Colorado—shot by best friend.
“July 4, 1992, in Duluth, Minnesota—boating accident.
“July 5, 1992, in New Orleans, Louisiana—suicide.
“January 31, 1993, in St. Louis, Missouri—suicide.”
“We’ve called all of these?” Turner asked.
“Spoke to cops and medical examiners in each city. Most were sympathetic.”
They worked at trying to separate out the data, using different combinations and rearranging the information. When they finished, Turner looked at the results. “This tells me nothing,” he said.
Fenwick handed him a list. “These are the accidents. Three of the eight are in Texas. I don’t think that helps.”
“If it is a very smart serial killer, he or she could have done some or all of these, made them look like suicides or accidents, or murders, or any goddamn thing.”
“Where’s what you’ve got on where everybody we’ve tal
ked to lived?”
“Here,” Blessing said.
“One of them lived in Texas from September 1980 to June 1985. During which time none of the killings happened in Texas. Waverly wasn’t playing in any of these cities on the days of the killing. The list doesn’t point to him as the killer. None of the others has lived in these cities during any of these times.”
“What earthly good is this?” Fenwick asked.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Turner said. His shoulders slumped. “I thought we had something.”
“One curious thing,” Blessing said. “We couldn’t get any background on your Jose Martin or his dad. They have no history before four years ago. They appear in our records but not before that.”
“No Social Security on Mr. Martin?” Turner asked.
“Not before four years ago,” Blessing said.
“There’s got to be Social Security records,” Turner said.
“Not if they changed their identities. Not if they worked very hard at establishing a new life. What are they running from? Want me to hunt some more?”
“Yes, do what you can, but I’ll ask myself,” Turner said. “Call the cops who were outside their house and see if either of them left early this morning.”
Minutes later the reply came back. Nothing unusual. Kid left for school under escort at the regular time. Father left for work fifteen minutes later. Both were in the house. Nobody came or went before then.
“That is still too odd,” Turner said. “I’ll be seeing the kid tonight at my place. If I have to, I’ll drag him over to his dad’s and get answers from both of them.”
Joyce, the assistant, walked up to Blessing and handed him a note.
“This ought to cheer you guys up,” Blessing said. “We just got a big anonymous tip, says here Daryl Logan, the representative from the university in the sky box, was with the boys after the game. Went with them to their car.”
“We’ve had a confession, why not a fake lead?” Fenwick asked.
“I’m not putting a lot of hope into this,” Turner said, “Caller isn’t still on the line?” he asked Joyce.
“I tried to keep him talking, but he gave me the message and hung up.”
“Did he sound old, young?”
Another Dead Teenager Page 17