The Night Monster

CHAPTER 17

I sat on a chair in the empty room, and gave my statement to a Homicide detective, who wrote it down on a notepad. Then he videotaped me. Later, he would compare my answers for any inconsistencies or things I might have left out. The process lasted forty-five minutes, and was draining.

When the detective was done, Burrell entered the room with Buster on a leash. She handed the leash to me, and we walked outside.

“I took him for a walk and gave him some water,” she said, trying to make nice.

“Thank you, Detective,” I said.

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Whatever gave you that idea.”

I put Buster into my car and climbed behind the wheel. Burrell rapped the driver’s window with her knuckles. I lowered the window and she knelt down so our faces were a few feet apart.

“I hate when you pout,” she said.

Her conscience was eating at her. I jammed the key into the ignition and turned on the engine. I left the engine running and looked at her.

“What do you want me to do?” she yelled at me. “Disobey the mayor, and get my ass fired? I don’t want to end up…”

She didn’t want to end up like me. I couldn’t blame her, but that didn’t mean I was going to back off.

“Go ahead and charge Biggs,” I said. “He’s pond scum and deserves the humiliation. When you talk to the press, tell them he’s the main suspect at this time. Then have a meeting with the chief, and tell him that you have doubts about Biggs, and you want to continue to pursue other leads. The chief will understand and give you his blessing. By doing that, you’ve covered your ass.”

Burrell dipped her chin and shut her eyes. I thought I saw her lips move. The detective who’d interviewed me came to the front door of the house, and called to her.

“All right, Jack. I’ll do it.” She banged twice on the hood of my car and went inside.

I got on 595 and headed east. I had lived with Naomi Dunn’s abduction for so long, it had eaten an invisible hole in me. I could only imagine what Sara Long’s disappearance was going to do to my psyche if I didn’t find her.

Soon I was driving south on I-95, my destination the FBI’s Miami field office in North Miami Beach. The office handled criminal activity stretching from Vero Beach to Key West, as well as Central America and Mexico, and was a hotbed of activity, with over seven hundred special agents and support personnel housed in a single facility.

One of those agents was Special Agent Ken Linderman. Linderman ran the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Unit, and was responsible for investigating nonparental abductions of kids in Florida. As a rule, the FBI didn’t work with private investigators, and Linderman was no exception. But he did work with me. We had a history, and Linderman never failed to take my phone calls, or see me if I asked for an appointment.

The afternoon skies were darkening as I drove up to the guard booth. A man in uniform came out, and glanced suspiciously at me and Buster.

“What can I do for you?” the guard asked.

I handed him my driver’s license. “My name’s Jack Carpenter. I’m here to see Special Agent Linderman. He runs the CARD unit.”

“Hold on.”

The guard called into the building. I popped my trunk in anticipation of being searched. The guard came out and did a quick inspection.

“Have a nice day,” he said.

I did my usual hunt for a parking place. Finding one with shade, I rolled down my windows. Buster curled up on the passenger seat and went to sleep.

Soon I was sitting in Linderman’s office. The office had a nice ocean view, only Linderman chose to sit at his desk with his back to the window. Nearing fifty, he was thin and compact, his gun-metal gray hair cropped short like a Marine’s, his eyes as hard as stones. Before coming to Miami, he’d run the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Division, where he’d profiled the nation’s worst serial killers and mass murderers. Then, five years ago, his daughter Danielle had vanished while jogging at the University of Miami. He’d been looking for her ever since, and had taken the CARD job to continue his search.

We’d met a year ago. We didn’t have much in common except a shared passion for our work. In that regard, we were like brothers. I’d helped Linderman chase down many leads. We had traipsed through mosquito-infested swamps together, and searched abandoned scrap yards. I had seen him break down when we’d found a bone in a shallow hole, only to later discover that it belonged to a dead animal. I’ve heard it said that a person who loses a child dies every day. If that was true, then I’d seen Linderman die many times.

“I need your help,” I told Linderman.

He hit his intercom, and told his secretary to hold his calls.

“I’m listening,” Linderman said.

“Eighteen years ago I got called to an apartment complex where a coed named Naomi Dunn was being assaulted. I got knocked down by the attacker, and he left with Dunn slung over his shoulder. The case was never solved.

“Last night, a Florida State female basketball player named Sara Long was abducted from her motel. It was the same guy who abducted Naomi Dunn. I tried to stop him, and he put me in the hospital.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“The abductor was this huge guy, and incredibly strong. I spent today running down leads and looking at evidence. This guy has a partner, and I’ve decided that they’re a pair of serial abductors who specialize in abducting athletic young women. I need the FBI to help me find them.”

Linderman’s eyes narrowed. His daughter’s high school graduation photograph sat on the windowsill directly behind him. Danielle Linderman was tall, blond, and athletic, just like the two victims.

“Could this pair have abducted my daughter?” he asked.

His voice was flat and hard. I detected no outer emotion on his face, but I knew it was there, buried deep within him like a smoldering flame. I didn’t want to fill him with false hope, but for all I knew it could be true.

“Yes,” I said.

His eyelids fluttered almost imperceptibly.

“I’ve spoken with the police several times,” I continued. “Unfortunately, they’re stuck on another suspect. Sara Long’s boyfriend is going to be charged with her abduction.”

His jaw tightened. “You obviously came here with a plan of action. What is it?”

“I’d like you to do two things for me. The cops have located the stolen minivan used in the abduction. The abductors wiped it clean of fingerprints, but there’s a chance they left behind some trace of DNA. I was hoping the FBI would inspect the minivan to see if I’m right.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Where’s the minivan now?”

I gave him the address where vehicles were impounded by the Broward cops.

“What’s the second thing?” Linderman asked.

“The police have checkpoints at all major highways and roads. I’m certain the abductors are lying low, waiting to move Sara. Once they turn on the TV and hear that Sara’s boyfriend is being charged, they’ll know that the checkpoints have been lifted, and will try to move her.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want the FBI to turn on their cameras.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your cameras. I want you to turn them on and look for these guys.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I put my elbows on Linderman’s desk, and gave him my best no-nonsense look. “A few weeks after 9/11, I spotted crews in Broward installing surveillance cameras at the major intersections and toll-booths. I’m a nosy guy, so I took down the license numbers on their trucks, and checked them out. Guess what I found?”

“What?”

“They were all FBI.”

Linderman shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“It didn’t take me long to figure out what was up. Thirteen of the 9/11 hijackers lived in south Florida, so the FBI decided to install street cameras to hunt future terrorists. You probably don’t keep the cameras on all the time. Too expensive to operate and to monitor effectively. But you do turn them on when a suspected terrorist slips into town. Am I right?”

A thin smile crossed Linderman’s face. Then it was gone. That was as much as he gave you.

“You’ve very observant, Jack. Yes, there are surveillance cameras at every major intersection and tollbooth, and a few other places you might not imagine. It’s a secret, so I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“Can I ask how they work?”

“The cameras are connected to a computer in this building that has a sophisticated facial recognition program built into its hard drive. We can burn a photograph of a suspected terrorist into the program and ask the computer to tell us when a person who resembles that photo passes in front of one of our surveillance cameras.”

“How well does it work?”

“We’ve nabbed several bad guys trying to slip in through Port Everglades just last month.”

“If I gave you a film of one of Sara Long’s abductors, could you take his photo off the film and put it onto your program?”

“It all depends upon the quality of the film.”

“It’s a surveillance tape from a casino.”

“That should be fine. We’ve used casino footage before.”

From my pocket I removed the two CDs I’d gotten at the Hard Rock, and handed them to him.

“Here you go,” I said.

Linderman slipped the first CD into his computer, turning the screen so it was visible to both of us. The tape of Mouse talking to the girls appeared.

“Any idea who this guy is?” Linderman asked.

“He calls himself Mouse. That’s all I know about him.”

“What’s on the second CD?”

“Another tape of Mouse. This time he’s outside the casino.”

“I’ll send both CDs downstairs, and have a tech burn Mouse’s photograph into our facial recognition program. It would be helpful if we had some idea of the vehicle he’s driving.”

“He’ll be driving something big. Like a van, or a small truck.”

“Why not a car? They could drill airholes in the trunk, and hide Sara there. That’s how most serial abductors move a victim.”

“His partner would have a hard time fitting into a regular car. He’s about six-ten and three hundred pounds.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said he was huge.”

“He’s also a killer.”

Linderman punched a button on his desk. His secretary appeared, and he handed over the CDs and explained what he wanted done with them. She left, and he got on his laptop, and began typing.

“I’m going to send an e-mail to the other CARD teams around the country, and see if these guys might have struck before,” he said. “Give me the details again.”

I repeated my story to Linderman, and he wrote down every word. When he was done, he read back what he’d written, and asked me if I was satisfied.

“Yes,” I said.

Linderman punched a key on his computer and sent the e-mail.

“Now let’s hope someone has seen this pair before,” he said.

I leaned back in my chair and felt the air escape from my lungs. It was the first time that I’d told someone my story, and hadn’t had my sanity questioned.

I was getting somewhere.