Midnight Rambler

CHAPTER FOUR

“State your name,” the bailiff declared.

“Jack Harold Carpenter,” I replied.

“Place your left hand on the Bible, your right hand in the air.

Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

My fingertips rested lightly on the Bible's cracked leather cover. I hadn't given testimony at a trial in six months, and I felt out of place standing in a courtroom. My navy Ralph Lauren suit was too large for my thinned-down, six-foot frame, and the skinny necktie I'd purchased at a thrift shop that morning didn't adequately hide the monstrous coffee stain on my white cotton shirt. Although my life had changed drastically since my departure from the police force, its purpose had not, and I straightened my shoulders.

“I do,” I replied.

“Please be seated,” the bailiff said.

I took the hard wooden chair in the witness stand and felt the previous witness's warmth. Wilson Battles, the silver-haired judge presiding over the case, acknowledged me with a nod. I'd testified in his courtroom before, and I nodded back.

Then I looked at the jury of eight women and four men. Their faces were hard, filled with skepticism and doubt. I was not a popular person. Back when I was a detective, I put a murder suspect named Simon Skell into the hospital for an extended stay.

The case was still discussed in the newspapers and on TV. One editorial had called me a stain on the conscience of the community. But that wasn't why I was here. Before my fall from grace, I had been a damn good cop and had pulled plenty of monsters off the streets. One of those monsters was sitting in this courtroom.

By the time my testimony was over, I wanted there to be no doubt in this jury's minds as to who that monster was, and what he'd done.

Lars Johannsen sat at the defense table flanked by two high-priced defense attorneys. Lars was a big Swede with a face shaped like a milk bottle and a shock of blond hair. He stared coldly at me. His petite wife sat behind him in the spectator gallery, tearfully shredding a Kleenex.

The prosecutor stepped forward to begin her questioning. Her name was Veronica Cabrero, and she wore heavy makeup and an emerald-green dress that clung to her body like Saran wrap. Around the courthouse she was called the Cuban firecracker, and she had been fined for contempt by several judges for outbursts in their courtrooms. I would do just about anything for her.

“Mr. Carpenter, you were formerly chief investigator of the Broward County Missing Persons unit, correct?” she began.

“Yes,” I answered into the microphone perched by my chair.

“How long did you hold this position?”

“Sixteen years.”

“Would you say you're an expert at locating missing people?”

I'd heard it said that an expert was someone who lived a hundred miles away. The truth was, I enjoyed finding missing people and had never wanted to do anything else. When people went missing, there was always the hope of finding them alive. And even the tiniest ray of hope looked bright compared to the blackness of most police work.

“Yes,” I said.

“The afternoon of Abby Fox's disappearance, you were the first policeman to arrive at Lars Johannsen's house,” she went on. “As chief investigator, did you normally handle cases like this?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“Usually one of my people.”

“Why did you take this case?”

All good testimony is rehearsed, and mine was no exception. Facing the jury, I explained how years earlier I'd found Abby Fox working the streets of Fort Lauderdale as a teenage prostitute. She'd been tossed out of her house by her parents and was what people in law enforcement call a “thrownaway.” I'd gotten her into a shelter and, over time, helped her get her life together. Since then, we'd talked on a regular basis, and I knew that she'd gone to work as a nanny for a big Swede who'd been giving her funny looks. When the call came in that she was missing, I took it.

“Please describe what you found when you arrived at Lars Johannsen's house,” Cabrero said.

Lars had met me at the front door. He'd explained how Abby had left five hours earlier to buy groceries and had not returned. I immediately got the color and model of Abby's car from him and issued a tri-county alert for the vehicle.

An hour later, Abby's car was found parked near a wooded area a few miles from Lars's home. I decided to conduct a search using several sheriff 's deputies, plus some neighbors who'd volunteered to help. I also let Lars tag along.

The search was conducted by the book. Everyone lined up six feet apart in the woods, took one giant step, stopped and visually inspected the ground, then repeated the process. After a few hours, everyone had started to slow down.

Then something odd happened. Lars sped up and started plowing through the woods. As a result, the rest of the search party also sped up. It felt like a ploy, and I instructed the deputies to remain with the group while I stayed behind to search the area.

It did not take me long to find Abby's shallow grave. She'd been buried in a shaded area behind a stand of thick cypress trees. I cleared away the earth with my hands until her head was uncovered. She was an attractive girl, and the ring of purple bruises around her neck made me choke up.

There was also a white handkerchief covering her eyes. The placement of the handkerchief told me a lot. It said that the killer had known Abby and had feared her gaze, even in death.

I caught up to the search party, found Lars, and took him to my car. I told him that I'd located Abby's body and watched his reaction. When he refused to meet my gaze, I took the handkerchief out of my pocket and showed it to him. It was in a plastic evidence bag, which I dangled in front of his nose.

“Whose fingerprints do you think we'll find on this?” I asked.

Lars looked away. The truth was, his fingerprints on the handkerchief wouldn't have proved a thing. It could have been Abby's handkerchief, which he might have touched at some time. Only Lars hadn't known this, so he broke down and confessed. A voice-activated tape recorder in the glove compartment had recorded everything.

“Is that when you arrested him?” Cabrero asked.

“Yes,” I said.

I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. I had avoided looking at the jury while speaking, but I looked at them now. Their icy resolve had melted away. I'd swayed them.

“Did Lars Johannsen tell you why he killed Abby?” Cabrero asked.

“No,” I said.

“Do you have any theories why he did it?”

One of Lars's defense attorneys sprang to his feet.

“Objection!” he said.

“Sustained,” Judge Battles said. “Ms. Cabrero, this courtroom is no place for theories, despite the witness's obvious credentials.”

“I'm sorry, your honor,” Cabrero said. “I have no further questions.”

“Your witness,” Battles told the defense.

I did have a theory as to why Lars Johannsen strangled Abby Fox, and it went like this: Lars matched the description of a guy who'd been picking up prostitutes in Fort Lauderdale and brutalizing them. It had gotten so bad that Vice had set up a sting operation in an attempt to catch him.

My theory was that Lars knew about the sting and had decided to lie low. But over time, his cravings became too strong, so he hired Abby to watch his daughter. In Abby he saw a perfect victim. She was young and attractive and had no family. By having her in his employ, he could abuse her whenever he wished-what cops call one-stop shopping.

Only Lars's plan had a flaw. Abby had gone through intensive counseling, and along with no longer being a prostitute, she was also no longer a victim. She was her own person, and when she rebuffed Lars's advances, he flew into a rage, strangled her, and buried her body in the woods.

I didn't have a shred of proof to support this theory, just sixteen years of dealing with scum like Lars to know I'm right. Lars had hurt many women before Abby and, if let back into society, was going to hurt many more.

The shorter of Lars's defense attorneys approached the witness stand. I disliked defense attorneys who work in pairs. They reminded me of tag teams in wrestling matches, with neither member strong enough to go solo.

This one was named Bernie Howe. Howe had a clogged-sinus voice and a hair transplant that looked like rows of miniature cornstalks. Clutched in his hand were several sheets of paper, the top of which I was able to read upside down. It was a certificate of death, commonly called a COD, from Starke State Prison.

“Mr. Carpenter,” Howe began, “isn't it true that when Lars Johannsen confessed in your car, you in fact were physically assaulting him, and inflicting such pain that he was forced to say that he'd killed Abby Fox?”

“No,” I replied.

“Isn't it true that you put your hands around the defendant's neck, choked him for over a minute, and threatened to kill him if he didn't confess?”

“No.”

“Mr. Carpenter, isn't it true that without your taped confession, there is no other solid evidence linking my client to this crime?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Carpenter, two weeks after my client was arrested, you were thrown off the police force, correct?”

Cabrero jumped to her feet and started to object. With a stare, I killed the words coming out of her mouth. The defense had only one tactic, and that was to turn the case against Lars Johannsen to one against me. I was ready for it. Cabrero sat back down, and I answered the question.

“I wasn't thrown off the force,” I replied.

“But you were asked to step down,” Howe said.

“I resigned.”

“So you did remove yourself from the force.”

“That is correct.”

“Before you resigned, didn't the police conduct a hearing where you were accused of assaulting a suspected serial killer named Simon Skell, also known as the Midnight Rambler, who spent two weeks in the hospital as a result of a beating you inflicted upon him?”

“Yes.”

“Isn't it true that you fractured Samuel Skell's nose, jaw, and arm; knocked out several of his front teeth; threw him through a window; and fractured three of his ribs during that beating?”

“He attacked me during his arrest.”

“Please answer the question.”

The injuries that I'd inflicted upon Simon Skell had been in the newspapers enough times that I imagined every person in the courtroom could recite them from memory.

“Yes,” I said.

“Mr. Carpenter, isn't it true that while you ran the Missing Persons unit of the Broward County Police Department, you conducted a personal vendetta against people committing violent crimes of a sexual nature?”

“No, I did not.”

Howe flipped over the sheets of paper in his hand and shoved them beneath my nose. “Do you recognize these, Mr. Carpenter?”

I looked down and studied the pages.

“No,” I said.

“You're saying you don't know what they are?”

“No, I didn't bring my glasses.”

The jury rewarded me with a few thin smiles. Scowling, Howe displayed the sheets to them. “These are certificates of death issued by the warden at Florida State Prison in Starke for three sexual predators who Jack Carpenter sent there. These certificates were found thumbtacked to Jack Carpenter's office door the day he left the police force.”

Howe faced me. “You put them on your door, didn't you, Mr. Carpenter?”

“That's correct,” I said.

“Would you care to explain why?”

“If a bad guy died in the joint, I usually let the other detectives know. We liked to keep up on that sort of thing.”

Howe bore a hole into me with his eyes. “Isn't it true, Mr. Carpenter, that you sent information to the warden at Starke that was so damaging to these men's reputations that it eventually led to them being murdered by other inmates?”

“I'm sorry, but which men are you're talking about?” I asked.

Howe read off the three men's names from the CODs. Finished, he glanced up at me with a smug look on his face.

“Recognize them, Mr. Carpenter?”

“They sound familiar, but I'm not sure,” I said.

Howe looked to the judge's box. “Your Honor, the witness is being evasive.”

“Mr. Carpenter, you are required to answer the question,” Battles said in a scolding voice. “Do you recognize the three names Mr. Howe just read, or don't you?”

Howe was accusing me of ethical misconduct. It was a hard charge to make stick, and it would have been easy for me to deny that I'd set those three men up. But I had something else in mind.

“Your Honor, I honestly don't remember if I did or not,” I said. “Perhaps the defense would be so kind as to jog my memory.”

Battles was a thirty-year veteran of the legal system and had seen his share of artful dodges in the courtroom. He studied me before replying.

“How would you propose Mr. Howe do that?” Battles asked.

“Have the defense read aloud the crimes these three men committed. I'm sure that once I hear what they did, I'll remember them and can tell Mr. Howe if I sent information to the warden at Starke that was inappropriate.”

A disapproving howl came out of Howe's throat. The last thing he wanted was to have his client associated with the heinous crimes committed by the three men whose names were on those CODs.

Battles silenced Howe with a wave of the hand. Then he removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. There were many people in the Broward legal system who did not approve of the things I did as a cop. But there were also many who did. I had always wondered which side of the fence Battles stood on.

“That sounds like a fine idea,” Battles said. “Mr. Howe, read the crimes.”