by Rick Mofina
He drew his face to hers, his sweat dropping on her, his breath stinking of beer and cigarettes. He reeked of body odor. As he began tugging at her T-shirt, Ann shut her eyes, feeling his hand, the hand that loved caressing king snakes, moccasins, and diamondbacks, slide down her stomach, then inch lower.
Oh God. It’s really going to happen to me....
Loud thumping on the porch planks out front smashed the quiet.
“Hey, Dad, can I get a soda from the machine!” Startled, he stopped. It was a kid. Right out front. Staccato thudding on the porch continued.
“They got grape!”
A man’s muffled voice, then a car door shutting. The man again saying: “No, Frankie, we got juice. Ours is number two. Four doors that way.”
“But, Dad!”
“Keep it down. I said, let’s go.”
More thumping, fading. A door slamming.
“Christ.” Tribe left Ann for the window, to peek through the curtains.
Another car door slammed. Engler had returned. He entered in seconds, his eyes going to Ann chained to the bed, her shirt torn, jeans unbuttoned, then to Tribe, bare-chested, stomach and face scratched, zipper down.
“What did you do? What the Christ did you do?”
The plastic take-out bags in his hands dropped, Engler charged Tribe, slamming him to the wall. Muscles and veins bulged, teeth were bared. The two men growled as they struggled before Engler shoved Tribe to the floor. He went to Ann. He was going to tear the tape from her mouth but remembered the family a few doors away and kept his voice low.
“Did he rape you?”
Ann shook her head.
“But he was fixing to rape you?”
Ann closed her eyes, half sobbing, and nodded.
Tribe pulled on his shirt, boots, grabbed some food and beer.
“What the hell is it with you and her, John?” He pointed a plastic knife at Engler. “Why didn’t we drop her after the job? Why did we keep her, huh?”
“Sit down and cool down.”
“What kind of sick thing you got going? Look. You color her hair, but not just any color. It’s her color. What’s wrong with you?”
“Shut up.”
“I’m telling you, John, she is going to bring us down. We should drop her, just like the other one. You let me have Carrie; then we dropped her. Clean. Even played out your little switch game in Death Valley. The way you wanted, so you could get your kicks. But we stuck to our plan with Carrie. Remember our plan, John?”
“Shut your goddamned mouth.”
“Whatever happened to our plan? The one that said no witnesses. I don’t recall the part that said drag a transmitter across the country. The wife of some big-ass reporter. What in hell is up with you, you twisted—”
Engler punched Tribe, knocking him to the floor.
“So that’s it.” Tribe rubbed his jaw. “She’s your fantasy, your prize. Something’s going on. Something happened to you in the joint, brother, something bad got you all turned around.”
“Why don’t you put some food in your yap and shut up?”
“Listen to me, I’m going to take her; then I’m going to dump her. It will happen. It always does. My needs are so powerful, I ache. But they will be satisfied. Then we’ll complete our business, go our separate ways. Got that?” The room rattled when Tribe slammed the door behind him.
Engler picked up the remaining food, arranged it on the table, uncuffed Ann.
“I’ll take the tape off to let you eat if you don’t scream.” Ann couldn’t respond. She was shaking.
“You should eat. Take your mind off things.”
A long moment passed before her trembling subsided. She was exhausted. She was hungry. She was terrified. Somewhere she found the strength and nodded.
They ate in silence watching the Bible show as Ann blinked back her tears, stopping herself from saying thank you to the man who’d kidnapped her. When they finished he cleaned up, then handcuffed her to the chair. They stared at the TV set, both of them imprisoned by their fate, watching a fiery minister from South Carolina scream about atonement.
“Will you”—Ann cleared her throat—“will you tell me how you know my husband and what he’s got to do with this? Please?”
Engler was transfixed by the preacher and didn’t answer. “What did your friend mean by saying you colored my hair her color?”
He didn’t answer.
“...if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
He didn’t answer.
“How do you know my husband?” Ann’s voice cracked. “Please, I’m begging you, answer me.”
He didn’t answer.
The screaming minister was now directing viewers to James, chapter 4.
“For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanisheth away.”
57
“Do you know John Mark Engler?” Wilson retrieved the scattered papers and records.
“I know him.”
Reed leaned against the wire mesh of the storage stall staring at the dirt-smeared pages in his hand, not believing what he was reading.
Wilson sat next to him, examining the file.
John Mark Engler was born in 1966, in San Francisco, to an unwed teen who gave him up through a street ministry. Engler lived in several foster homes. At age sixteen he told a teacher his foster father, an alcoholic butcher, was abusing him. No one checked into it. Nothing was done.
One night, after sealing the doors and windows with wood screws, Engler set fire to his family home. Two other foster children, Engler’s foster mother, and the butcher died in the blaze. Engler was arrested three months later, while working in an Oregon logging camp. His large stature enabled him to pass for a nineteen-year-old. Because of his claims of abuse, he was sentenced to twenty-one months in juvenile detention.
Four murder victims by age sixteen. Wilson shook her head.
After his release, Engler drifted and worked as dishwasher, cabdriver, construction worker, bartender and security guard, before becoming a drug addict, a drug dealer, an armed robber and a murder suspect.
In Florida after stealing a car, Engler picked up Tyler Randall Vine, a twenty-two-year-old drifter hitchhiking outside of Miami. The pair consumed cocaine, then decided to rob the Stop N’ Skip all-night convenience store.
The clerk, Harold Smith, a twenty-four-year-old med student who volunteered at a clinic, was visited on his job that night by his girlfriend, Anita Lee, also a med student majoring in research of terminal diseases in infants.
At 3:00 A.M., Vine entered the Stop N’ Skip, pointed a semiautomatic pistol at Smith, and demanded cash. Smith shielded Lee and complied. Vine shot Smith in the head; then Engler entered and they took Lee hostage. It took five days before Broward County searchers, acting on a tip from a local “who mighta seen somethin’ out there,” found her body in the swamp, less than fifty feet from the westbound lane of Everglades Parkway, known locally as Alligator Alley.
Six weeks later, Kansas City PD picked up Vine. He was extradited to Florida, where he confessed to shooting Smith but swore to Jesus it was Engler who murdered Lee. Vine was charged with first-degree murder while the FBI issued a warrant for Engler.
Two months to the day after grappling hooks snagged the belt loops of Lee’s shorts in the Everglades, Engler was taken down by a SWAT team in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he was hiding in the toolshed of a retired funeral director who’d called police about a suspicious noise in his backyard.
Handcuffed in the back row of the Miami-bound jet, Engler told detectives escorting him that Vine had done the killing. What Engler didn’t know was that Smith had survived his wound and had identified Vine as his shooter. While Smith failed to identify Engler, he said a second man had entered the store after he was shot. A foot impression in Smith’s blood matched Engler’s shoes and put him at the crime scene. Broward detectives charged Engler with first-degree. Bo
th men were convicted and sentenced to die by electrocution in Florida State Prison’s Death House in Starke.
Vine worked the appeal process, never once wavering from his account that he didn’t murder anyone. So did Engler, who researched the law with unprecedented intensity, using every avenue afforded a condemned inmate.
But Vine accepted his fate when guards took him to the ready cell for the final three days of his life. He apologized to the families of Smith and Lee for the tragedy. Yet he maintained, as the hours ticked down, that he was innocent of killing anyone. Even after his head and leg were shaved for effective electrical contact, Vine upheld his innocence. Despite the encouragement of two spiritual advisers to unburden his conscience and prepare for everlasting peace, Vine was resolute, right up until the moment he was strapped into the chair.
In the seconds before two thousand volts of electricity were discharged into his body, Vine shouted: “Engler murdered Anita! I saw him! It wasn’t me!” His cries were seared in the hearts of the witnesses, forever haunting some of them as the final words they’d hear on nights when sleep wouldn’t come.
Two days after Vine’s execution, Engler was moved to the ready cell. In Engler’s version, he was the innocent victim. Vine confessed to shooting Smith because Smith identified him, but Vine wanted Engler to die with him. Engler maintained that Vine was a stranger he’d picked up and tried to help, that he’d pulled up to the Stop N’ Skip at Vine’s request to buy a snack. Engler said he ran in to help upon hearing gunfire to see Vine forcing Lee to the car at gunpoint. Vine ordered Engler to drive across the Everglades, ignoring his plea to let Lee go. Engler was scared for his life and complied with Vine.
Engler made his case in an eleventh-hour petition for writ of habeas corpus to the district court. On the afternoon before his scheduled execution, the high court granted Engler’s motion, saying that no weapon had been found, meaning the state had only circumstantial evidence against Engler, nothing strong enough to secure guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The court acquitted Engler. He walked from death row a free man.
“Jesus, Tom, that’s an incredible story. What happened?” Wilson flipped through the pages.
“Engler’s public defenders managed to get the other states to sign off on his lesser crimes for time served in Florida. Engler worked his way back to California, went to college, started a small garage business, got married. Years rolled by. I never knew Engler existed.”
“How did you get on to him?”
“One day out of the blue I got a call from a source who’d suggested I call the Broward County Sheriff’s office in Florida and ask about this old Vine and Engler case. Specifically for any updates.”
“What happened?”
“They’d found the gun used to shoot Harold Smith and his girlfriend, Anita Lee.”
“Who found it?”
“Some environmental group doing work in the swamp near where they found Lee’s body.”
“Did it help? In that condition, after all those years?”
“They set their best lab and ballistics people on it. Vine had said Lee struggled with Engler while getting out of the car. He’d banged his gun hand and bled. Angered, he slapped Lee, then asked Vine for another clip, ‘to make sure he had enough bullets for her.’ The trace blood on the gun and the clip matched Engler’s type and they managed DNA and other physical evidence. It supported Vine’s account that Engler shot Lee.”
“So what did you do?”
“As I remember it now, the call came when I was starting work on the murder mystery series. Word got out on the police grapevine that this Bay Area guy had gotten away with a murder in Florida.”
“All good timing.”
“Yeah, I got all the case files I could, made a lot of calls, learned prosecutors in Florida were looking into laying new charges without getting hampered by the double jeopardy clause. They were working a new angle. The last word I’d had was that the case against Engler wasn’t strong enough given the time elapsed and that Vine, the only other witness, was dead and couldn’t be cross-examined. But I still had a good murder mystery.”
“Big time. How could you forget this case?”
“I don’t know, Molly. Maybe I wanted to. I didn’t like Engler. Got a bad read off of him.”
“What happened? How did you meet?”
“He was living in San Francisco. I visited him, interviewed him several times. At first he brushed off the gun as sour grapes by police. He claimed it was planted by vindictive cops. Then he got very hostile, warned me not to run the story. Threatened me.”
“We all get that.”
“Exactly, so it wasn’t a big deal. I just thought the guy was a prick.”
“Then what?”
“I interviewed his wife. I remember I felt sorry for her. She seemed nice. I could tell by her reaction that she knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the man she’d married. It was like the real Engler never existed.”
“Must’ve been a shock.”
“She turned white as a sheet. That I remember. Right before my eyes.”
“He must’ve gone nuts.”
“He came to the newsroom to confront me. Then he got a lawyer. Threatened to sue if we ran the story. There was nothing he could do. We had the facts. It was all true. A murder mystery. We lined the story, I never heard from him. A few weeks later, I tried to call him. His phone had been disconnected. He just vanished.”
“That’s it?”
“No. About a year went by. I’d forgotten all about him. Then I got a call from Hal Forester.”
“The Star’s court reporter? He retired when I came to the paper.”
“Right. Hal said I might be interested in the case of a man charged in several armed robberies and drug deals by the name of John Mark Engler.”
“You go down?”
“I did. To see if Engler would go for an interview.”
“And?”
“In court we exchanged glances; then he went cold on me. He crumpled the notes I passed to his lawyer. He got six years.” Reed checked the file. “Six years in Folsom.”
“Driscoll went to Folsom, probably met Engler there. We got to get this to Sydowski fast. See if Engler’s the guy who took Ann.” Wilson stood. “I hope to hell it’s not him but if it is, it’s a lead, Tom. Let’s go.”
Reed hadn’t moved. He was staring at Engler’s picture. “Tom? What is it? Is there something else about Engler’s case?”
“A few weeks after he was processed, Engler called me from Folsom, had his lawyer patch the call to the newsroom.”
“To say what? Agree to an interview?”
“Molly, we all get crazy calls all the time, right?” Reed swallowed, his eyes stung. “Threats. Like we said, comes with the territory, right?”
“Tom, what did Engler say to you?”
Reed removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Who thinks anything will come of these things? I mean I truly believed Engler was a two-time loser who probably did kill that clerk in Florida and was going to Folsom for six years—”
“Tom.”
“I’ve had bikers, drug dealers, killers, threaten me, say things to me, drive by my house. I mean you cover crime, people rise from the sewer and say things—”
“Tom.”
Reed’s body quaked as the presses rumbled.
“Engler said that one day, when I least expected it, fate would see to it that I felt his pain for what I did to him.”
58
In the suffocating night heat of the Moonlit Dreams Motor Inn, Engler ignored Ann’s questions until she gave up.
She stared at the cracked walls, the cheap oil painting of a palm-lined beach cove in the moonlight. Engler opened another beer, engrossed by the minister raving on the television.
“—and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” The minister waved the Good Book around.
Engler raised his sweating can
to the screen, saying, “Hallelujah, Reverend. I hear destiny calling.”
He took a long swallow, switched off the set and stood before Ann for the longest time, taking inventory of every inch of her from head to toe and back again. Not in the ravenous way Tribe had feasted on her, but with the look people get when they think about something they had loved and lost.
“You still don’t understand, Ann, do you?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t understand who I am or what I am?”
“No.”
“I told you some people make mistakes in life, remember?”
“Yes.”
“And some people are life’s mistakes.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“My mother was a seventeen-year-old prostitute. My father was a twenty-dollar trick. I’m the result she dumped nine months later, like something she’d leave in a toilet. I was never meant to be in this world.”
Ann looked away blinking. He’s crazy.
“I was abused in every foster home I was sent to. By the adults and the older kids. Until the last home. Fate intervened and burned it to the ground when I turned sixteen. Then I was on my own. Unleashed myself on America.”
Engler walked around Ann.
“I traveled. Had my scrapes with the law. The state of Florida did everything, every damned thing within its mighty power to kill me for something I never did. I was twenty hours from being executed when destiny plucked me from the jaws of death and set me free.” Engler drank some beer. “I built a new life for myself.”
At that moment, the first tiny drop of knowledge fell on Ann. He’d walked off death row. Fear and fatigue clouded her memory, but within its deepest corners, she was certain she recalled Tom having once written about a man who’d beaten his death sentence at the final moment.
“How do you know my husband? Did he write about you?”
He froze, glaring at her for several moments.
“Your husband hunted me down to question me about the past.”