by Rob Ashman
She was sure her boss, Jeff Chambers, did the Jo Sells bit on purpose to wind her up. In truth, she quite enjoyed the uncertainty it created, providing her with immediate impact. It was especially useful when working in a male dominated environment, although up to now no one had fallen off their chair. This morning had been a first.
‘I’d like to start this again,’ said Lucas exhaling noisily. His calm had returned, and he was conscious he still hadn’t replied to her question. ‘We’re all a little on edge over this, please accept my apologies.’ He got to his feet and extended his right hand.
‘Accepted.’ Jo Sells shook his hand with a firm handshake. She smiled broadly. ‘I’m Dr Jo Sells from the Behavioral Science Unit at FBI Quantico. I’m pleased to meet you. Oh, and by the way, in case you’re wondering the Jo is short for Josephine.’
Lucas smiled. ‘Welcome to Tallahassee, Dr Sells. I’m Ed Lucas, the station Lieutenant here. Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering, the Ed is short for Edmund.’
12
Lucas and Sells sat facing each other across the conference table, hot black coffee steamed out of the chipped white mugs in front of them. Jo took a sip and, wary of the heat, pulled a face.
Both were still making small talk and Jo was sharing a little more detail on her impressive CV. As she talked, she absent-mindedly lifted six packets of sugar from the bowl, tapped them onto the tabletop to square the edges, then tore the tops off them all in a single movement. Lucas was mesmerized as Jo expertly manipulated the sachets. She held them between her thumb and first finger and emptied the entire contents into her cup. She flattened out the packets on the table top and folded the torn tops into the paper over and over again. This made a single folded strip. By now Lucas was no longer listening, he was fascinated by the origami lesson taking place in front of him.
Still talking, she flattened the strip on the desk top, then picked up one end in each hand and twisted in opposite directions. This turned the strip of sugar packets into a compacted spiral. She applied more pressure and then released the sachets onto the tabletop. It formed a perfect double helix which rolled along the desk.
Lucas picked it up. Jo stopped talking.
‘Interesting,’ said Lucas.
‘Oh sorry,’ said Jo, retrieving the spiral out of Lucas’s hand. ‘When I was younger I was embarrassed by the amount of sugar I took in coffee. I’d fold the sachets up like this so people didn’t know how many I’d actually had. Now I make these automatically – most of the time I don’t even know I do it.’
‘Well, that’s a first. I’ve never come across that before,’ said Lucas.
‘My friends called them sugar twists,’ she said, holding up the white spiral. ‘It’s silly, I know, but …’ It was as if Jo had divulged a little too much in her eagerness to explain away her unusual addiction. It was time to get back to business.
‘So what do you have?’ she asked, recoiling from the mug which had burned her lip.
‘Two days ago we had a burglary at a beachfront property out Keaton Beach way. At first we thought it was a routine robbery, but we started to suspect that something wasn’t right and doubted the true motive was theft. We then turned up a fresh print from a serial killer known as Mechanic. A regular nightmare of a guy with twelve kills to his name. He has a peculiar but predictable style. Blows the brains out of the father and kids with a .45, bumps the mother on the head but doesn’t kill her, ties her up in her own nightclothes and leaves her on the bedroom floor. He then loads the bodies into the family car and secures them in place with seat belts. And he always places a thumbprint in the centre of the TV screen as a calling card.’
Lucas stopped briefly for Jo Sells to nod her comprehension. He then continued.
‘For some reason, at the end of his killing spree, he went haywire and operated in an uncontrolled, almost random fashion. He killed a lone FBI guy who was working on the investigation by shooting him through the head on a piece of waste ground a few miles from his hotel. This was completely out of kilter with his normal MO. And if that wasn’t strange enough, a month later Mechanic loaded the bodies of his latest victims into a car, drove to the very same spot of waste ground, doused everything in petrol and set it ablaze. With himself inside.’ Lucas gestured with his hands, as if to exaggerate his incomprehension. ‘Then, after all this, he turns up on my patch three years later still in possession of a recognizable thumbprint.’
‘Initial thoughts?’ asked Jo.
‘Well, apart from how the hell does that happen, the main thing that jumps out is this dramatic deviation from his normal kill pattern. The FBI guy he blew away on a piece of waste ground just doesn’t make sense. His name was ...’ Lucas got up and fished around in the box file at his side.
‘Victor Galbraith.’ Jo interrupted his search.
‘What?’
‘The man’s name was Victor Galbraith.’
Lucas eyed Jo with extreme suspicion. ‘That’s right, it was,’ he replied. ‘Either you have an uncanny knack of guessing the names of dead people or you are remarkably well briefed, Doctor. Do you want to tell me which one it is before we continue?’
‘I’m well briefed, Lieutenant.’
‘But that doesn’t figure. We haven’t had time to compile a summary case file for you.’
‘I don’t need one.’ Jo could feel Lucas’s stare burning into her.
‘So how the hell do you know details like that?’
‘Victor Galbraith was my boss at Quantico when he was killed by Mechanic. Victor headed our division in the Behavioral Science Unit.’
‘No shit. Go on.’ Lucas felt outmanoeuvered.
‘Sure, okay.’ Jo took a deep breath. ‘Having completed my psychology degree, I did a post-grad in criminology. Victor Galbraith was a visiting fellow at the university. He tutored me and I gained my doctorate quickly. Then he steered me into taking a job with the FBI. With his sponsorship I couldn’t fail and was recruited into the Behavioral Science Unit. I’d been there a couple of years when Mechanic first started killing. The FBI were involved, and Victor was the natural choice to develop a psychological profile of the killer on such an important case. Victor thought it would be good experience for me to see how what we did worked in practice, so I went along with him as part of the team.’
Jo continued, not allowing Lucas to interrupt. ‘The other reason Victor was selected was that, at the time, the guy running the show here at FPD was a real hard knock called Dick Harper. Harper thought that all shrinks should be strangled at birth and welcomed us to the investigation like a dose of crabs. Victor was very senior and they thought that he could handle Harper. They couldn’t have been more wrong, it was a bloodbath between them.’ Lucas held his hand up for Jo to stop.
‘Why did Harper hate shrinks so much?’ Lucas asked.
‘He always thought they were there to make excuses for the criminal low life rather than to make sure the real victims got justice. But as much as he hated shrinks, he hated Victor more. They had some previous history between them. Years earlier, Harper had arrested a guy for the malicious wounding of a woman. Victor didn’t work for the Bureau then and when the case went to trial he was called by the defence to provide expert testimony. Victor told the court that the guy’s upbringing was so bad he didn’t know any different, and that’s why he behaved the way he did. Instead of going to jail, he was sent to hospital to undergo psychiatric tests. After three days he escaped, tracked down the woman and killed her for grassing him up. Of course, he was arrested again but all through his trial he taunted Harper that he had tricked the system and fabricated the whole home–life story. Harper went ballistic and was very public in his opinion of Victor. He blamed him and all of his profession for the killing. Then, years later, they locked horns in the Mechanic case, both of them having serious scores to settle, and it all kicked off again.’
‘I see,’ Lucas replied, motioning her to continue.
‘Harper wouldn’t let Victor in on the case and ke
pt him in the dark. Victor, on the other hand, fought tooth and nail to work his way in. Their public outbursts were often as much front page news as the case itself. It was a journalist’s dream. They wasted no opportunity to blame each other for the slow progress of the investigation.’ Jo stopped speaking to give Lucas time to absorb all she’d said.
‘What a pantomime,’ Lucas said. ‘What happened next?’
‘There was massive press coverage. The papers never tired of saying the entire state was gripped in “Mechanic panic”. Some catchphrase, eh? Harper was under incredible pressure to catch this guy, but drew nothing except blanks at every turn. To add to his troubles, he was receiving notes in the mail from Mechanic, taunting him that he wasn’t smart enough to catch a cold, let alone a serial killer. This was kept well under wraps, no one outside of a few people knew about it, but the notes gradually tore him apart. Mechanic even sent Harper his suicide note the day before he torched himself and his final three victims in that car. This proved the last straw and Harper retired shortly after the case was wound up.’
‘But why was Galbraith shot?’ Lucas asked.
‘That was never clear. The problem was that there was so much public euphoria at Mechanic’s death that loose ends like that were never resolved. Even the police assumed that Mechanic killed Galbraith, and now Mechanic was dead. Case closed.’
‘How did they positively identify Mechanic from the bodies in the car?’ Lucas was on the edge of his seat.
Jo looked uncomfortable. ‘I suppose they didn’t, or more to the point couldn’t. We only had burned remains to work with. The thumbprint was the only thing we had to identify Mechanic and without it there was nothing to make a positive ID. The ballistic tests proved that the gun found under the driver’s seat was the weapon that he’d used to commit the murders. That’s all we had.’
‘Let me see if I understand this correctly. A man dies in a burned-out car along with three of Mechanic’s latest victims. Based purely on circumstantial evidence, the conclusion is that he must be the killer.’ Lucas looked at Jo for confirmation. ‘Oh, and of course not forgetting the suicide note which was leading you by the hand to reach that conclusion.’
‘That’s about the strength of it,’ Jo replied, then went on the offensive. ‘I don’t think you get it, Lieutenant. You’re grossly underplaying the public’s need to have Mechanic off the streets, any way they could. The entire state of Florida was in a complete frenzy. You have to realize this happened at the same time they arrested Ted Bundy. He’d been wreaking his own havoc, killing two women and attacking two more at Florida State University, then killing a fourteen-year-old girl in Lake City. Following his arrest, he had a massive show trial in the June of 1979 in Miami, which was televised to the nation. Two hundred and fifty reporters camped out around the courtroom. It climaxed when he was sentenced to death twice. He had a second trial in Orlando six months later and was sentenced to death again.’ Lucas stared at her, unimpressed. He knew all about Ted Bundy and it was no excuse for sloppy police work in the Mechanic case.
She pressed on. ‘Bundy had the whole state terrorized, even though he was in captivity. This guy decapitated at least twelve of his victims and kept severed heads in his apartment as mementos. All this took place over the same six-month period that Mechanic was on the rampage in Florida. It was a manic time. No wonder there was a tidal wave of relief when the news broke that Mechanic had died in that car. To question the validity of that would have been catastrophic, not only for the authorities but for the politicians as well.’
Lucas held his head in his hands while his elbows rested on the desk. He raised his eyes to meet Jo’s gaze.
‘So it was buried. No difficult questions, no embarrassing forensics, no further action.’
‘Yep,’ Jo replied.
‘Great. Just fucking great.’ Lucas made no apology for his first swear word of the day.
They drained the last of the coffee from the flask. The silence between them was long and painful. Lucas glanced at her, wondering what revelation she was going to come out with next.
Lucas was resentful. He kept telling himself that it should be an advantage that Jo had previous involvement with Mechanic. It would give them the inside track on so many things, but he felt left behind. That annoyed him. He needed to formulate his own theories and draw his own conclusions, not have them handed to him on a plate. He broke the silence.
‘I want you to brief my people. They need to know everything that we’ve talked about. Later you and I will drive over to the Mason place to take a look at the crime scene and see if it triggers anything.’ Lucas rose from the table and pulled on his jacket.
‘Will you be at the briefing?’ Jo asked.
‘No, I’m going to pay Dick Harper a visit, see if the man and the legend match up. I’ll pick you up from the station later and we’ll go to the Mason house together.’ Lucas was on his way out of the door.
‘I have a rental car. I can drive myself and meet you there.’
‘No, you and I need a period of quality uninterrupted time together for a long chat. We can do that in the car.’
‘If we need to talk, why not now? Anyway, shouldn’t I be with you when you talk to Harper?’ Jo was irritated at being sidelined.
‘To answer your points in order, Dr Sells: one, I’m not ready to talk and two, I don’t need a doctorate in psychology to work out that Harper won’t be very forthcoming in the presence of the late Dr Galbraith’s protégée. I’ll see you around lunchtime.’ Lucas got up to leave. ‘And, by the way, it’s thirteen,’ he said on his way out.
‘What is?’
‘It wasn’t Mechanic in the burned-out car. So when you brief my guys, it’s thirteen kills, not twelve.’ He banged the door shut behind him.
Jo Sells sighed. The impact of her arrival had already faded.
13
Lucas had done his homework on Harper. He was five feet ten inches tall with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. To describe him as thickset was a ludicrous understatement.
He’d never married. ‘Always married to the job’ was the excuse he always gave, but the truth was that he was a lost cause where women were concerned. At nearly fifty-six years of age, he was invisible to women and had developed into a resentful individual with a prickly and uncompromising nature. He was predisposed to push people away and hence had no close friends, only drinking buddies. Therein lay the origins of his long-running drink problem. He used to be a functioning alcoholic, able to operate at a reasonable level in work, but not anymore. He was now barely functioning at all. He was a full-blown testament to the effects of excess alcohol and personal neglect.
His behaviour had become increasingly erratic and aggressive and the force had retired him early as an alternative to firing his ass out the door. His pension was adequate for a reasonably comfortable lifestyle, but Harper chose to forego that option and drank his way through the lion’s share, which only left him enough money to live in squalor. Even the thirty dollars it would cost to replace his glasses, he preferred to spend behind the bar, which left him with a semi-permanent squint to compensate for his short-sightedness.
Of course, he hadn’t drunk away all of his cash by himself. If he had, he’d almost certainly be dead by now. He’d used it to engage a loose association of ex-police buddies he substituted for friends. In this way, Harper had no need to invest anything in the acquaintances he drank with, no regular contact, no shared interests or interesting conversation. No, all it required to remain transient bosom buddies was an investment in Bourbon and beer.
He occasionally used a hooker, usually an older streetwalker who needed the cash to feed her kids rather than to feed a drug habit. He considered prostitution an important part of the social fabric of life and a necessary service. It was the pimps he loathed, and when he’d been in charge of the force, he’d used every asset at his disposal to eradicate them.
As a younger man, he’d been drafted into the Korean War. In the middle of t
he terror, carnage and loss of young life he felt completely at home. He loved it. He could be himself. The physical hardship and the constant threat of death – mixed with a heady cocktail of endless opportunities for extreme violence – enthralled Harper. There were no friendships, no attachments, just a random stream of people who supported the same cause, but seldom matching Harper’s skill and enthusiasm.
The one black spot on this cherished time was the death of his brother. Matthew was two years older, but was called up around the same time. One day in Osan he foolishly ventured into an underground tunnel, following a guy suspected of stealing fuel from the base. The fourteen-year-old girl sitting near the entrance and watching the proceedings with childish innocence counted to thirty and then detonated the charges. They only buried bits and pieces of Matthew Harper. It was all they could find. The military put bricks into the coffin to give the illusion of weight as they carried him into Arlington National Cemetery.
Initially Dick Harper grieved for his brother with dignity and restraint, but the process lasted just long enough to bury Matthew’s pitiful remains. Then Harper went to war like no man ever should. He realized that the more Korean insurgents he killed, the less his grief hurt. His kill rate was phenomenal. He had a charmed existence, walking out of fire fights without a scratch, while a procession of casualties were medevaced out. He’d been decorated more times than he cared to recall, but the shiny metal trinkets weren’t important to him. His only priorities were to minimize the pain from his grief and to even up the score.
Once the war was over, the prospect of army life without the excesses of war wasn’t for him. He found life as a soldier dull, dull, dull. He got into fights with other men on his base and soon became a liability. So he bought himself out and returned to civilian life. Four months later he joined the police and, after a shaky start, he performed beyond expectation.