The Poet

22

When I entered the conference room with Backus and Walling, there were few seats in the room without agents in them. The status meeting was set up with agents sitting around the long table and then an outside layer of sitters on chairs lining the walls. Backus pointed to a chair on the outer rim and signaled me to sit. He and Walling then went to the two remaining slots at the center of the table. The chairs had apparently been exclusively reserved for them. I felt a lot of eyes on me as the stranger but I reached down to the floor and fiddled with my computer satchel, acting like I was looking for something so I did not have to meet any of their stares.

Backus had taken the deal. Or rather, whoever he had called had taken the deal. I was along for the ride, with Agent Walling assigned to baby-sit-as she called it. I had written out and signed an agreement stating that I would not write about the investigation until its fruition or disbanding, or in the event of the occurrence of either of the exceptions I had mentioned earlier. I had asked Backus about a photographer joining me and he said that wasn't part of the deal. But he did agree to consider specific requests for photography. It was the best I could do for Glenn.

After Backus and Walling were settled in their seats and interest in me lagged, I looked about. There were a dozen other men and three women in the room, including Walling. Most of the men were in shirtsleeves and appeared to have been at whatever they were doing for a while. There were a lot of Styrofoam cups, a lot of paperwork on laps and on the table. A woman was making her way around the room handing out a sheaf of papers to each agent. I noticed one of the agents was the sharp-faced man I had encountered in Walling's office and then had seen again in the cafeteria. When Walling had gone to refill her coffee cup, I had seen him get up from his meal and go to the food counters to talk to her. I couldn't hear what was said but I could tell she had dismissed him and he didn't seem too happy about it.

"Okay, people," Backus said. "Let's get this going if we can. It's been a long day and they're probably only going to get longer from here."

The murmur of conversation abruptly halted. As smoothly as possible I reached down to my computer bag and slid out a notebook. I opened it to a fresh page and got ready to take notes.

"First of all, a short announcement," Backus said. "The new man you see seated against the wall is Jack McEvoy. He is a reporter from the Rocky Mountain News and he plans to be with us until this is over. It is his fine work that resulted in this task force being formed. He discovered our Poet. He has agreed not to write about our investigation until we have the offender in custody. I want all of you to extend him every courtesy. He has the special agent in charge's blessing to be here."

I felt the eyes on me again and I sat frozen with my notebook and pen in hand, as if I had been caught at a crime scene with blood on my hands.

"If he's not going to write, how come he's got the notebook out?"

I looked toward the familiar voice and saw it was the sharp-faced man from Walling's office who had asked the question.

"He needs to take notes, so that when he does write he has the facts," Walling said, unexpectedly coming to my defense.

"That'll be the day one of them reports the facts," the agent threw back at her.

"Gordon, let's not make Mr. McEvoy uncomfortable," Backus said, smiling. "I trust he will do a good job. The special agent in charge trusts that he will. And, in fact, he has done an excellent job up until now so we are going to give him both the benefit of the doubt and our cooperation."

I watched the one called Gordon shake his head in dismay, his face darkening. At least I was getting clues right away about whom to steer clear of. The next came when the woman with the handouts passed by me without giving me anything.

"This will be our last group meeting," Backus said. "Tomorrow most of us separate and the OC for this investigation will move to Denver, site of the latest case. Rachel will remain case agent and coordinator. Brass and Brad will stay here to do the collating and all that good stuff. I want hard-copy reports from all agents by eighteen hundred eastern to Denver and Quantico every day. For now use the fax of the Denver field office. The number should be on the printout you just received. We'll set up our own lines and we'll get those numbers to you as soon as we do. Now, let's go over what we've got. It's very important that we're all on the same wavelength. I don't want anything to slip through the cracks on this one. We've had enough of that already."

"We better not screw up," Gordon said sarcastically. "We've also got the press watching us."

A few people laughed but Backus cut it off.

"All right, all right, Gordon, you've made your disagreement loud and clear. I'm going to yield to Brass for a few minutes and she'll go over what we've got so far."

A woman across the table from Backus cleared her throat. She spread three pages of what looked like computer printouts in front of her on the table and stood up.

"Okay," she said. "We have six dead detectives in six states. We also have six unsolved homicides that the detectives had been working individually at the time of their own death. The bottom line is we don't feel comfortable yet making a firm commitment to whether we have one or two offenders out there-or possibly even more, though this seems unlikely. Our hunch, however, is that we are dealing with one but at the moment I don't have a lot backing that up. What we do feel comfortable with is that the deaths of the six detectives are certainly linked and therefore most likely the work of one hand. For the moment our emphasis is on this offender. The one we are calling the Poet. Beyond that, we only have the theory of linkage to the other cases. We'll talk about them first. First, let's start with the detectives. Take a look at the first PVR in your package for a few seconds and then I'll point out some things."

I looked at everyone studying the handout and felt annoyed at being left out. I decided that after the meeting I would talk to Backus about it. I looked over at Gordon and saw him looking at me. He winked at me and then turned his face to the reports in front of him. I then saw Walling get up and come around the table to my side of the room. She handed me a copy of the printout. I nodded my thanks but she had already headed back to her spot. I noticed that as she walked back she glanced at Gordon and their eyes locked in a long stare.

I looked at the pages in my hands. The first sheet was just an organizational structure with the names of the agents involved and their assignments. There were also the phone and fax numbers for the field offices in Denver, Baltimore, Tampa, Chicago, Dallas and Albuquerque. I ran my eyes down the list of agents and found only one Gordon. Gordon Thorson. I saw that his assignment simply read "Quantico-Go."

Next I looked for Brass on the list and guessed easily enough that she was Brasilia Doran, assigned on the sheet as "victim coordinator/profiling." Other assignments to agents were listed. There were handwriting and cryptology assignments but most were just noted as cities of assignment followed by a victim's name. Apparently two BSS agents would go to each city where the Poet had been to coordinate investigations of those cases with agents from the city's field office and local police.

I turned the page to the next sheet, which was the one everybody else was reading.

PRELIMINARY VICTIMOLOGY REPORT-THE POET, BSS95-17

VICT #

1. Clifford Beltran, Sarasota County Sheriff's Dept., homicide.

WM, DOB 3-14-34, DOD 4-1-92

Weapon: S amp;W 12 gauge shotgun one shot-head POD: residence. No witness

2. John Brooks, Chicago Police Dept., homicide, Area 3.

BM, DOB 7-1-54, DOD 10-30-93

Weapon: service, Glock 19 two shots, one impact-head POD: residence. No witness

3. Garland Petry, Dallas Police Dept., homicide.

WM, DOB 11-11-51, DOD 3-28-94

Weapon: service, Beretta 38 two shots, two impacts-chest and head POD: residence, No witness

4. Morris Kotite, Albuquerque Police Dept., homicide.

HM, DOB 9-14-56, DOD 9-24-94

Weapon: service, S amp;W 38 two shots, one impact-head POD: residence. No witness

5. Sean McEvoy, Denver Police Dept., homicide.

WM, DOB 5-21-61, DOD 2-10-95

Weapon: service, S amp;W 38 one shot-head POD: car. No witness The first thing I noticed was that they didn't have McCafferty on the list yet. He'd be number two. I then realized that the eyes of many of those in the room were falling on me again as people read the last name and apparently realized who I was. I kept my eyes on the page in front of me, staring at the notes under my brother's name. His life had been reduced to short descriptions and dates. Brasilia Doran finally rescued me from the moment.

"Okay, FYI, these were printed up before the sixth case was confirmed," she said. "If you want to put it on your sheet now, it will be between Beltran and Brooks. The name is John McCafferty, a homicide detective with the Baltimore Police Department. We'll get more details later. Anyway, as you can see, not a lot of things are consistent through these cases. The weapons used differ, places of death differ, and we have three whites, one black and one Hispanic as victims… The additional case, McCafferty is a white male, forty-seven years old.

"But there are limited common denominators to the physical scene and evidence. Each victim was a male homicide detective who was killed by a fatal head shot and there were no eyewitnesses to these shootings. From there we get into the two key commonalities that we want to exploit. We have a reference to Edgar Allan Poe in each case. That's one. The second key is that each victim was believed by his colleagues to have been obsessive about a particular homicide case-two of them to the point that they had sought counseling.

"If you turn to the next page…"

The sound of pages turning whispered through the room. I could feel a grim fascination settling over everyone. It was a surreal moment for me. I felt like maybe a screenwriter does when he finally sees his movie on the screen. Before, all of this was something hidden in my notebooks and computer and head as part of the far realm of possibility. But here was a room crowded with investigators openly talking about, looking at printouts, confirming the existence of this horror.

The next page contained the suicide notes, all the quotes from Poe's poems that I had found and written down the night before.

"This is where the cases irrefutably come together," Doran said. "Our Poet likes Edgar Allan Poe. We don't know why yet, but it's something we'll be working on here at Quantico while you people go traveling. I am going to defer to Brad for a moment to have him tell you a little about this."

The agent sitting directly next to Doran stood up and took up the lead. I flipped to the front page of the package and found an Agent Bradley Hazelton listed. Brass and Brad. What a team, I thought. Hazelton, a gangly man with acne-scarred cheeks, poked his glasses back on his nose before speaking.

"Um, what we've got here are that the six quotes in these cases-that's including the Baltimore case-come from three of Poe's poems as well as his own last reported words. We are looking at these to determine if we can get some kind of common fix on what the poems were about and how they may relate to this offender. We're looking for anything there. It seems pretty clear that this is where the offender's playing with us and where he is taking the risk. I don't think we'd be here today or Mr. McEvoy would have found a connection among these cases if our guy didn't decide to quote Edgar Allan Poe. So, then, these poems are his signature. We'll be trying to find out why he chose Poe as opposed to, say, Walt Whitman but I-"

"I'll tell you why," said an agent sitting at the far end of the table. "Poe was a morbid asshole and so is our guy."

A few people laughed.

"Uh, yes, probably that's correct in a general sense," Hazelton said, oblivious that the comment was made to lighten everyone up. "Nevertheless, Brass and I will be working on this and if you have any ideas, I'd like to hear them. As for right now, a couple of things to throw out. Poe is credited with being the father of detective fiction with the publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which is basically a mystery story. So we may have an offender out there who is looking at this as some kind of mystery puzzle. He simply likes to taunt us with his own sort of mystery, by using Poe's words as clues. Also, I've started reading through some of the established criticism and analysis of Poe's work and found something interesting. One of the poems that our guy used is called 'The Haunted Palace.' This poem was contained within a short story called 'The Fall of the House of Usher.' I'm sure you've all heard of it or read it. Anyway, the standard analysis of this poem is that while at face value it serves as a description of the house of Usher, it is also a disguised or subconscious description of the story's focal character, Roderick Usher. And that name, you know if you were at last night's briefing, came up in the death of victim number six. I'm sorry, that's Sean McEvoy. He's not just a number."

He looked over at me and nodded and I nodded back.

"The description in the poem… hold on." Hazelton was looking through his notes, then found what he needed, pushed his glasses back again and continued. "Okay, we've got, 'Banners yellow, glorious, golden; / On its roof did float and flow,' and then later on we have, 'Along the ramparts plumed and pallid.' Okay, and then a few lines later we have mention of 'two luminous windows' blah, blah, blah. Anyway, what this translates to as far as a description goes is that of a reclusive white male with blond hair, perhaps long or curly blond hair, and eyeglasses. There's your start on the physical profile."

There was a roll of laughter through the room and Hazelton seemed to take it personally.

"It's in the books," he protested. "I'm serious and I think it's a place to start."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," said a voice from the outer rim. A man stood up so he'd have the attention of the whole room. He was older than most of the other agents and carried the no-nonsense air of a veteran. "What are we talking about here? Yellow banners flowing-what is this shit? This Poe stuff is great, it'll probably help that kid over there sell a lot of papers, but nothing's convinced me in the last twenty hours that I've been here that there's some mope out there on the street who somehow some way got the drop on five, six veteran dicks and put their own weapons in their mouths. I'm having a hard time seeing it, is what I'm saying. Whaddaya got on that?"

There was a hum of agreeing comments and nods in the room. I heard someone call the agent who had started the ball rolling "Smitty" and I saw a Chuck Smith listed on the front page of the pocket. He was heading to Dallas.

Brass Doran stood up to address the issue.

"We know that's the rub," she said. "Methodology is what we are least prepared to discuss at this point. But the Poe correlation is definitive in my judgment and Bob agrees. So what's our alternative? Do we say this is impossible and drop it? No, we act as if other lives may be at stake because they may very well be. The questions you have will, hopefully, be answered as we go. But I agree it is something we need to be considering and it is always healthy to be skeptical. It's a question of control. How does the Poet get control of these men?

She turned her head and scanned the room. Smitty was silent now.

"Brass," Backus said. "Let's go on to the first victims."

"Okay, folks, next page."

The page we turned to contained information on the murders that had obsessed the detectives the Poet killed. These were called secondary victims on the report, even though in each city they had actually died first. I noticed that once again the sheet was not up to date. Polly Amherst, the woman whose murder had obsessed John McCafferty in Baltimore, had not yet made the list.

SECONDARY VICTIMOLOGY-PRELIMINARY

1. Gabriel Ortiz, Sarasota, FL student HM, DOB 6-1-82, DOD 2-14-92

Ligature strangulation, molestation (kapok fiber)

2. Robert Smathers, Chicago student BM, DOB 8-11-81, DOD 8-15-93

Manual strangulation, mutilation antemortem

3. Althea Granadine, Dallas student BF, DOB 10-10-84, DOD 1-4-94

Multiple stabbing, chest, mutilation antemortem

4. Manuela Cortez, Albuquerque, NM housekeeper HF, DOB 4-11-46, DOD 8-16-94

Multiple blunt force, mutilation postmortem (kapok fiber)

5. Theresa Lofton, Denver, CO student, day care employee WF, DOB 7-4-75, DOD 12-16-94

Ligature strangulation, mutilation postmortem (kapok fiber)

"Okay, once again we are missing one," Doran said. "Baltimore. I understand the case was not a child, but a teacher. Polly Amherst. Ligature strangulation and postmortem mutilation."

She waited a beat in case people were writing notes.

"We are still in the process of having files and data faxed in on these cases," she continued. "This was just put together for the meeting. But, preliminarily, what we are looking at as far as these secondary cases go is a commonality involving children. Three victims were children, two worked directly with children and the last one, Manuela Cortez, was a housekeeper who was abducted and murdered at some point while going to the school her employer's children attended to walk them home. The extrapolation is that the intended targets in this chain were children but in half the cases perhaps something went wrong, the stalking pattern was somehow interrupted by the adult victims, and they were eliminated."

"What is to be made from the mutilation?" an agent on the outer rim asked. "Some of it's post and with the kids… it wasn't."

"We're not sure, but a guess at this time is that it might be part of his cloaking. By using different methodology and pathology he has been able to camouflage himself. On this page these cases may look similar but the more complete the analysis the more different they are. It is as if six different men with differing pathologies killed these victims. In fact, all the cases were submitted on VICAP questionnaires by the local agencies but none drew matches to the others. Remember, the questionnaire is now up to eighteen pages.

"Bottom line, I think this offender's read up on us. I think he knew how to do things differently enough with each of these victims so that our trusty computer never scored a match. The only mistake he made was the kapok fibers. That is how we have him."

An agent on the outer rim raised his hand and Doran nodded at him.

"If there were three incidents of kapok fiber being recovered, why didn't we get a match on the VICAP computer if all cases were entered like you said?"

"Human error. In the first case, the Ortiz boy, kapok was indigenous to the area and dismissed. It wasn't put on the questionnaire. In the Albuquerque case, the fibers were not identified as kapok, the survey was not updated. An oversight. We missed the match. We only got that from the field office today. Only in the Denver case was the kapok seen as significant enough to include on the VICAP request."

There was a groan from several of the agents and I felt my own heart sink a bit. The possibility of confirming that there was a serial killer at work as early as the Albuquerque case had been missed. What if it hadn't been missed, I wondered. Maybe Sean would be alive.

"That brings us to the big question," Doran said. "How many killers have we got? One who does the first string and another who does the detectives? Or just one? One who does them all. For the moment, based primarily on the logistical improbabilities associated with two killers, we are pursuing a theory of linkage. Our assumption is that in each city the two deaths are linked."

"What's the pathology?" Smitty asked.

"We're only guessing now. The obvious one is that he sees killing the detective as a way of covering his tracks, ensuring his escape. But we have another theory as well. That is that the first homicide was committed by the offender in order to draw a homicide detective into the frame. In other words, the first kill is bait, presented in such a horrific fashion as to attract a homicide detective's obsession. We are assuming that the Poet then stalked each one of these officers and learned their habits and routines. That enabled him to get close and carry out the eventual murder without detection."

This silenced the room. I got the feeling that many of the agents, though surely veterans of numerous investigations of serial killings, had never before encountered a predator like the one they were calling the Poet.

"Of course," Brass said, "all we have is theory for the time being…"

Backus stood up.

"Thank you, Brass," he said, then addressing the room added, "Quickly now, because I want to do some profiling and get this wrapped up, Gordon, you had something for us."

"Yes, real quick," Thorson said, standing up and moving to an easel with a large drawing pad on it. "The map in your package is outdated because of the Baltimore connection. So if I can have your attention up here for a moment."

He quickly drew the outline of the United States with a thick black marker. Then, with a red marker, he began to draw the Poet's trail. Starting in Florida, which he had drawn proportionately small compared to the rest of the country, the line went up to Baltimore then over to Chicago then down to Dallas then up to Albuquerque and finally up further to Denver. He picked up the black marker again and wrote the dates of the killings in each of the cities.

"It's pretty self-explanatory," Thorson said. "Our man is heading west and he's obviously pissed off at homicide cops about something."

He raised his hand and waved it over the western half of the country he had drawn.

"We'll look for the next hits out here unless we get lucky and get him first."

Looking at the terminus of the red line Thorson had drawn gave me a strange feeling about what was ahead. Where was the Poet? Who was next?

"Why don't we just let him get to California, so he can be among his own kind? End of problem."

Everyone laughed at the joke from one of the agents seated in the outer rim. The humor emboldened Hazelton.

"Hey, Gordo," he said, reaching back to the easel and tapping a pencil on the small rendering of Florida. "I hope this map wasn't some kind of Freudian slip on your part."

That brought the loudest laughter of the meeting and Thorson's face reddened, though he smiled at the joke at his expense. I saw Rachel Walling's face light up with delight.

"Very funny, Hazel," Thorson loudly retorted. "Why don't you go back to analyzing the poems. You're good at that."

The laughter dried up quickly and I suspected that Thorson had taunted Hazelton with a barb that was more personal than witty.

"Okay, if I can continue," Thorson said, "FYI, tonight we'll be alerting all the FOs, particularly in the West, to be on watch for something like this. It would help us a lot if we could get an early notice on the next one and get our lab into one of the scenes. We'll have a go team ready. But right now we are relying on the locals for everything. Bob?"

Backus cleared his throat to continue the discussion.

"If nobody has anything else, we come to profiling. What can we say about this offender? I would like to put something on the alert Gordon sends out."

Then came a procession of throw-out observations, a lot of them free-form non sequiturs, some of them even bringing laughter. I could see there was a lot of camaraderie among the agents. There was also some strife, as exhibited by the play between Thorson and Walling and then Thorson and Hazelton. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that these people had sat around the table in this room doing this before. Sadly, many times before.

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."