The Poet (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  The profile that emerged would be of small use in catching the Poet. The generalities the agents threw into the ring were primarily interior descriptions. Anger. Isolation. Above-average education and intelligence. How do you identify these things among the masses, I thought. No chance.

  Occasionally, Backus would step in and throw out a question to get the discussion back on course.

  "If you subscribe to Brass's last theory, why homicide cops?"

  "You answer that and you've got him in a box. That's the mystery. This poetry stuff is the diversion."

  "Rich or poor?"

  "He's got money. He has to. Wherever he goes, he's not staying long. No job-killing is his job."

  "He's gotta have a bank account or rich parents, something. And he's got wheels and he needs money to put gas in the tank."

  The session went on for another twenty minutes with Doran taking notes for the preliminary profile. Then Backus ended it and told everyone to take the rest of the night off before traveling in the morning.

  As the meeting broke up, a few people came up to me and introduced themselves, expressed condolences for my brother and admiration for my investigation. But it was only a few and they included Hazelton and Doran. After a few minutes of this I was left alone and was looking about for Walling when Gordon Thorson approached. He held his hand out and after hesitating, I shook it.

  "Didn't mean to give you a hard time," he said smiling warmly.

  "That's okay. It was fine."

  He had a tight grip and after the standard two-second shake I tried to pull away but he wouldn't let go. Instead, he pulled my hand toward him and leaned forward so that only I would hear what he had to say next.

  "It's good that your brother isn't around to see this," he whispered. "If I did what you did to get on this case, I'd be ashamed. I couldn't live with myself."

  He straightened up, always continuing the smile. I just looked at him and inexplicably nodded. He dropped my hand and stepped away. I felt humiliated in that I had not defended myself, I had stupidly just nodded my head.

  "What was that about?"

  I turned. It was Rachel Walling.

  "Uh, nothing. He just . . . nothing."

  "Whatever he said, forget it. He can be an asshole."

  I nodded.

  "Yeah, I was getting that idea."

  "C'mon, let's go back to the Boardroom. I'm starved."

  In the hallway she told me the travel plans.

  "We're leaving early tomorrow. It's better if you stay here tonight instead of going all the way back to the Hilton. The visitor dorms mostly clear out on Fridays. We can put you in one of those and have the Hilton just clear your rooms and send your stuff to Denver. Will that be a problem?"

  "Uh, no. I guess . . ."

  I was still thinking about Thorson.

  "Fuck him."

  "What?"

  "That guy, Thorson, he is an asshole."

  "Forget about him. We're leaving tomorrow and he's staying here. What about the Hilton?"

  "Yeah, fine. I've got my computer and everything else that's important already with me."

  "I'll see about getting you a fresh shirt in the morning."

  "Oh, my car. I've got a rental in the Hilton's garage."

  "Where are the keys?"

  I pulled them out of my pocket.

  "Give them to me. We'll take care of it."

  23

  In the early hours, when dawn was still only a hint around the curtains, Gladden moved about Darlene's apartment, too nervous to sleep, too excited to want to. He paced through the small rooms, thinking, planning, waiting. He looked in on Darlene in the bedroom, watched her on the bed for a few moments and then returned to the living room.

  Unframed posters from old porno movies were taped to the walls and the place was filled with bric-a-brac souvenirs of a worthless life. There was a nicotine veneer on everything. Gladden was a smoker but still found it disgusting. The place was a mess.

  He paused in front of one of the posters, from a film called Inside Darlene. She had told him she'd been a star in the early eighties before video revolutionized the business and she started looking old, the wear and tear of the life showing around her eyes and mouth. She'd pointed with a wistful smile to the posters where the air-brushed photos showed her body and face smooth and unlined. She was billed simply as Darlene. No last name needed. He wondered what it was like living in a place where the images of your former glorious self mocked your present self from the walls.

  He turned away and noticed her purse on the card table in the dining room and looked through it. It was full of makeup, mostly, and empty cigarette packages and matchbooks. There was a small spray can for repelling attackers and her wallet. She had seven dollars. He looked at her license and discovered for the first time what her full name was.

  "Darlene Kugel," he said out loud. "Pleased to meet you."

  He took the money and put everything else back in the purse. Seven dollars wasn't much but it was seven dollars. The man at the digiTime dealership had made him pay in advance to order the camera. Gladden was now down to a few hundred dollars and he figured seven more couldn't hurt.

  He put his money worries aside and began to pace again. He had a problem of timing. The camera had to be shipped from New York. It wouldn't be in until Wednesday. Five more days. He knew that to be safe he'd have to wait it out right here in Darlene's apartment. And he knew he could do it.

  He decided to make a list for the store. Darlene's shelves were almost empty except for tuna fish and he hated that shit. He'd have to go out, get supplies, and then dig in until Wednesday. He wouldn't need much. Spring water-Darlene apparently drank tap water. Also Fruit Loops, maybe some Chef Boyardee.

  He heard a car drive by outside. He moved toward the door to listen and finally he heard the sound he had been waiting for. The newspaper hitting the ground. Darlene had told him the tenant in the apartment next door got the paper. Gladden was proud of himself for having thought to ask. He went to the window now and peered through the blinds to the street. Dawn was coming up gray and misty. He saw no activity outside.

  After turning the two locks, Gladden opened the door and stepped out into the crisp morning air. He looked around and saw the folded newspaper on the sidewalk in front of the apartment next door. No lights were on behind the apartment's doors. Gladden quickly walked to the newspaper, picked it up and returned to the apartment he had come from.

  On the couch he quickly went to the Metro section of the paper and flipped through the eight pages. There was no story. Nothing on the maid. He tossed the section aside and picked up the front section.

  He turned the section over and there it was at last, his own photo at the bottom right corner of the front page. It was the mug shot from the Santa Monica arrest. He pulled his eyes away from his own image and started reading the story. He was overjoyed. He had made the front page again. After so many years. His face flushed as he read.

  MOTEL MURDER SUSPECT ESCAPED THE LAW IN FLORIDA

  By Keisha Russell Times Staff Writer A Florida man who authorities said escaped justice as a child molester in Florida has been identified as the suspect in the brutal mutilation murder of a Hollywood motel maid, Los Angeles police said Friday.

  William Gladden, 29, is being sought in the death of Evangeline Crowder, whose body was found in Gladden's room at the Hollywood Star Motel. The 19-year- old victim's body had been cut into pieces and placed in three drawers of a bureau in the room.

  The body was discovered after Gladden checked out of the motel. A motel employee who was looking for the missing maid entered the room and saw blood seeping from the bureau, police said. Crowder was the mother of an infant boy.

  Gladden was registered at the hotel under the name Bryce Kidder, but police said that analysis of a fingerprint found in the room identified the suspect as Gladden.

  Gladden was sentenced to 70 years in prison after a highly publicized child molestation trial in Tampa, Fla., seve
n years ago.

  However, after serving only two years in prison, he was released when his conviction was overturned on appeal. Key evidence-photos of nude children-was ruled illegally obtained by authorities. After the legal setback, prosecutors allowed Gladden to plead guilty to lesser charges. He was released on probation for time already served in prison.

  In another irony, police have also learned that Gladden was arrested in Santa Monica three days before the motel murder was discovered. He was taken into custody on a variety of minor charges stemming from a complaint that he was taking photos of children being washed at beach showers and at the carousel on the pier. However, he was arraigned and released on bail before his true identity was learned.

  -Continued, page 14A

  Gladden had to open the section and follow the story to an inside page. There he saw another photograph of himself staring out at the reader. This was of the thin-faced and red-haired twenty-one-year-old he had been before the persecution had begun in Florida. And there was another story about him as well. He quickly finished reading the first story.

  -Continued from 1A

  Police said they have not determined a motive for Crowder's slaying. Though the motel room where Gladden had stayed for nearly a week had been meticulously wiped clean of fingerprints, LAPD detective Ed Thomas said Gladden made one mistake that led to his identification. That was leaving a single fingerprint behind on the underside of the toilet's flush handle.

  "It was a lucky break," Thomas said. "That one print was all we needed."

  The print was fed into the department's Automated Fingerprint Identification System, part of a nationwide computer network of fingerprint data. A match was found to Gladden's fingerprints, which were on file with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer.

  According to Thomas, Gladden has been wanted on probation violation for nearly four years. The violation was filed when he stopped regular visits to a probation officer in Florida and disappeared.

  In the Santa Monica case, detectives arrested Gladden on Sunday after a chase from the carousel at the pier where they observed him watching young children on the popular ride.

  While attempting to run from police, he threw a trash can off the pier into the bay. He was finally captured in a restaurant on the Third Street Promenade.

  Gladden, who had used the name Harold Brisbane when arrested, was charged with pollution of public waterways, vandalism of city property and evading a police officer. However, the district attorney's office declined to file any charges relating to his alleged photographing of children, citing insufficient evidence of a crime.

  SMPD detective Constance Delpy said she and her partner began watching the carousel ride after receiving a complaint from an employee who had described Gladden as loitering near children and taking pictures out on the beach of nude children being washed at the showers by their parents.

  Though Gladden was fingerprinted upon his arrest, Santa Monica does not have its own fingerprint computer and relies on use of a Department of Justice computer and other departments, including the LAPD, to run prints on the AFIS network. The process usually takes days because departments run their own prints as priorities.

  In this case, the Santa Monica prints taken of the man originally identified as Brisbane were not run by the LAPD until Tuesday. By then, Gladden-who had spent Sunday night in the county jail-had bailed out by posting a $50,000 bond.

  The LAPD then also identified Gladden late Thursday through the print taken from the motel room.

  Detectives involved in the two cases were left to wonder about the sequence of events and how they allegedly took a murderous turn.

  "There is always second-guessing when things like this happen," said Delpy of the SMPD Exploited Child Unit. "What could we have done better to keep him locked up? I don't know. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose."

  Thomas said the real crime was in Florida where Gladden was allowed to go free.

  "Here you have a man, an obvious pedophile, and the system lets him go," Thomas said. "When the system doesn't work, it always seems to be a case like this, where somebody innocent pays the price."

  Gladden quickly went on to the other story. He felt a weird sense of elation as he read about himself. He reveled in the glory of it.

  SUSPECT DID AN 'END RUN AROUND JUSTICE' IN FLORIDA

  By Keisha Russell Times Staff Writer A gifted jailhouse lawyer, according to authorities, William Gladden used his prison-learned wiles to subvert the justice system and then disappear-until this week.

  Gladden worked at the Little Ducks Childcare Center in Tampa eight years ago when he was arrested and charged with molesting as many as 11 children over a three-year period.

  The arrest spawned a highly publicized trial resulting in his conviction on twenty-eight of the charges two years later. By all accounts, the key evidence leading to the convictions was a cache of Polaroid pictures of nine of the young victims. In the photos, the children were seen in various stages of undress in a closet at the now defunct childcare center.

  The telling thing about the pictures, however, was not that some of the children were nude, but the looks on their faces, according to Charles Hounchell, the former Hillsborough County prosecutor who was assigned to the case.

  "All the kids were scared," Hounchell said Friday in a telephone interview from Tampa where he is now in private practice. "These kids didn't like what was being done and it showed. It really went to the truth of the case. What their faces said in the photos matched the things they told the counselors."

  But at trial, the photos were more important than the counselors and what the children had told them. Despite objections from Gladden that the photos had been discovered during an illegal search of his apartment by a police officer whose son was one of the alleged molestation victims, the judge allowed the photos into evidence.

  Jurors said afterward that they relied almost exclusively on the photos to convict Gladden because the two counselors who dealt with the children had been discredited by the attorney representing Gladden for their alleged methods of leading the children into voicing accusations against Gladden.

  After his conviction, Gladden was sentenced to 70 years' imprisonment to be served at the Union Correctional Institute at Raiford.

  In the prison, Gladden, who already had a degree in English literature, studied poetry, psychology and the law. It appears that it is in the law that he excelled. The convicted molester quickly learned the skills of a jailhouse lawyer, according to Hounchell, and helped other inmates with appellate briefs while composing his own.

  Among his more celebrated "clients" in the prison's sexual offender ward were Donel Forks, the so-called pillowcase rapist of Orlando, former Miami surfing champion Alan Jannine and Las Vegas stage hypnotist Horace Gomble. All three are serving time for multiple rape convictions and Gladden was unsuccessful in his attempts to win them freedom or new trials with appeals he wrote while serving time with them.

  But within a year of his imprisonment, Hounchell said, Gladden filed a thoroughly researched appeal of his own conviction which challenged once again the search that led to the discovery of the incriminating photos.

  Hounchell explained that Raymond Gomez, the officer who found the photos, had gone to Gladden's home in a rage after his five-year-old son revealed that he had been molested by a man who worked at the boy's childcare center.

  Receiving no answer after knocking, the off-duty officer said he found the door unlocked and entered. Gomez later testified in a hearing on the matter that he found the photos spread out on a bedspread. He quickly extricated himself from the house and reported his knowledge to detectives who then obtained a search warrant.

  Gladden was arrested after the detectives went back later that day with the warrant and found the photos hidden in a closet. Gladden maintained at trial that the door was not unlocked when he had left his apartment and the photos were not on display. Regardless of whether the door was unlocked and the photo
s left out, he argued, the search by Gomez was a clear breach of his constitutional rights to protection from unlawful search and seizure.

  However, the trial judge ruled that Gomez was acting as a father, not a police officer, when he entered the apartment. The accidental discovery of the key evidence was therefore not a breach of the Constitution.

  An appeals court later sided with Gladden, saying that Gomez had knowledge through his police training of search and seizure laws and should have known better than to enter the premises without authority. The Florida Supreme Court later refused to reverse the appeals court, clearing the way for a new trial without the use of the photos as evidence.