The Poet

26

The field office was in the federal courthouse on Washington Street, just a few blocks from the police department where we would meet with the locals the next day. As we followed Mize and Matuzak down a polished corridor to a conference room, I sensed anxiety in Rachel and I thought I knew what it was. By traveling with me, she had been unable to be in the other car when Thompson filled Backus in on what he had learned from the body.

The conference room was far smaller than the one we had used in Quantico. When we entered, Backus and Thompson were already seated at the table and Backus held a phone to his ear. He covered the mouthpiece when we entered and said, "Guys, I'm going to need to talk to my people alone for a few minutes. Uh, what you could do is get some cars if you can. We'll also need to reserve rooms somewhere. Six rooms, it looks like."

Matuzak and Mize looked like they had just gotten word that they were demoted. They nodded glumly and left the room. I didn't know where that left me, if I was invited or excluded, since I really wasn't one of Backus's people.

"Jack, Rachel, have a seat," Backus said. "Let me finish up and I'll have James bring you up to date."

We took seats and watched and listened to the one-sided phone conversation. It was clear Backus was listening to messages and responding to them. Not all seemed to have something to do with the Poet investigation.

"Okay, what about Gordon and Carter?" he said after the messages were apparently finished with. "What's the ETA? That late? Damn. Okay, listen, three things. Call Denver and have them go to the evidence in the McEvoy case. Tell them to check the insides of the gloves for blood. If they find blood, tell them to start exhumation proceedings… Right, right. If it's a problem call me right away. Also, tell them to see if the police took GSR swabs from the mouth of the victim and if they did, have it all sent to Quantico. That goes for all the cases. The third thing is James Thompson will be FedExing to the lab from out there. We need substance identification ASAP. Same with Denver, if it comes. What else? When's the conference call with Brass? Okay, we'll talk then."

He hung up and looked at us. I wanted to ask what he meant by exhumation but Rachel spoke first.

"Six rooms? Is Gordon coming out here?"

"He and Carter are coming here."

"Bob, why? You know-"

"We need them, Rachel. We are hitting critical mass on this investigation and things are moving. At the most, we are now ten days behind this offender. We need more bodies to make the moves we're going to have to make. It's that simple and that's more than enough said about it. Now, Jack, did you have something to say?"

"That exhumation you are talking about…"

"We'll talk about that in a few minutes. It will become clear. James, tell them what you found on the body."

From his pocket Thompson pulled four Polaroid photos and spread them on the table in front of Rachel and me.

"This is the left palm and index finger. The two on the left were taken with the one-to-one. The other two are ten times magnified."

"Perforations," Rachel said.

"Right."

I didn't see them until she had said it, but then I recognized the tiny punch holes in the lines of the skin. Three in the palm, two in the tip of the index finger.

"What is it?" I asked.

"On the surface it looks like nothing more than pinpricks," Thompson said. "But there is no scabbing or closing of the wounds. They occurred close to time of death. Shortly before or possibly after, though there wouldn't be much of a point to it after."

"Point to what?"

"Jack, we're looking for ways this could have been done," Backus said. "How could veteran, tough cops be taken like this? Control is what we are talking about. It's one of the keys."

I waved a hand toward the photos.

"And what does this tell you?"

"That and other things may indicate hypnosis was involved."

"You're saying this guy hypnotized my brother and these others into putting a gun in their mouths and pulling the trigger?"

"No, I don't think it's that simple. You have to remember that it is quite difficult to use hypnotic suggestion to override the self-preservation instinct in an individual's mind. Most experts say it's flatly impossible. But if a person is susceptible to hypnotism, that person can be controlled to varying extents. He can be made docile, manageable. It's only a possibility at this point. But we have five perforations on this victim's hand. A standard method of testing for hypnotic trance would be to prick the skin with a pin after placing the suggestion that there will be no pain. If the patient reacts, the hypnosis is not working. If he shows no signs of feeling the pain, he is under trance conditions."

"And controllable," Thompson added.

"You want to look at my brother's hand."

"Yes, Jack," Backus said. "We'll need an exhumation order. I believe the files said he was married. Will his widow allow this?"

"I don't know."

"We may need your help on that."

I just nodded. Things were getting stranger all the time.

"What are the other things? You said the perforations and other things may indicate hypnosis was involved."

"The autopsies," Rachel answered. "None of the victims' blood screens came out totally clean. Each one had something in his blood. Your brother-"

"Cough syrup," I said defensively. "From the car's glove box."

"Right. It ranges from over-the-counter things like cough syrup to prescription drugs. One of them had Percocet, which had been prescribed for a back injury eighteen months earlier. I think that was the Chicago case. Another one-I think it was Petry in Dallas-had codeine in his blood. It came from prescription Tylenol with codeine. The prescription bottle was in his medicine cabinet."

"Okay, so what's it mean?"

"Well, individually it meant nothing at the time of each of these deaths. Whatever came up on the blood screen in each case was explained by the victim's access to it. I mean, it's reasonable to believe that if someone was going to kill himself, he might take a couple of the Percocets from the old prescription bottle to calm himself. So these things were dismissed."

"But now they mean something."

"Possibly," she said. "The finding of the perforations suggests hypnosis. If you add to that the introduction of some chemical suppressor into the blood, then you begin to see how these men may have been controlled."

"Cough syrup?"

"It could possibly enhance a subject's susceptibility to hypnosis. Codeine is a tested enhancer. Over-the-counter cough medications don't have codeine in them anymore but some of the replacement ingredients could still act as similar enhancers."

"Have you known this all along?"

"No, it was just something that had no context until now."

"Has it come up before? How do you know so much?"

"Hypnosis is used fairly often as a law enforcement tool," Backus said. "It's also come up on the other side before."

"There was one case several years ago," Rachel said. "There was a man, a Las Vegas nightclub kind of guy who did hypnotism as his act. He was also a pedophile. And what he'd do is, when he'd do shows at county fairs and so forth, he'd get close to kids. He had a children's act, a matinee, and he'd tell the audience he needed a young volunteer. The parents would practically throw their kids at him. He'd pick the lucky one and say he had to go backstage to prepare the child while some other act was going on. He'd hypnotize the kid back there, rape her and then through hypnotic suggestion, wipe the memory. Then he'd trot the kid onstage, do his act and then take her out of the trance. He used codeine as an enhancer. Put it in their Cokes."

"I remember," Thompson said, nodding. "Harry the Hypnotic."

"No, it was Horace the Hypnotist," Rachel said. "He was one of our interviews on the rape project. At Raiford down in Florida."

"Wait a minute," I said, "Could he-"

"No, this is not him. He'd still be in prison in Florida. He got something like a twenty-five-year bid. This was only six, seven years ago. He's still inside. He's got to be."

"I'll have it checked anyway," Backus said. "To be sure. But, regardless, you see the possibility we're looking at here, Jack? I'd like you to call your sister-in-law. It would be better if she heard it from you. Tell her how important it is."

I nodded.

"Okay, Jack, we appreciate it. Now, why don't we take a break here and see what there is to eat in this town? We've got the conference call with the other FOs in an hour and twenty minutes."

"What about the other thing?" I said.

"What thing?" Backus asked.

"The substance in that detective's mouth. It looked like you guys knew what that was."

"No. I just made arrangements to send the swab they took back east and then, hopefully, we'll know."

He was lying and I knew it but I let it go. Everybody stood up and headed into the hallway. I told them I wasn't hungry and needed to find a place to buy some clothes. I said I'd find a cab if there were no stores within walking distance.

"I think I'll go with Jack," Rachel said.

I didn't know if she really wanted to or her job was just to watch me, make sure I didn't run off and write a story. I raised my hand in an I-don't-care attitude.

With directions from Matuzak we started walking toward a mall called Arizona Center. It was a beautiful day and the walk was a nice break from the intensity of recent days. Rachel and I talked about Phoenix-it was her first visit, too-and eventually I steered the conversation back to my last question to Backus.

"He was lying, so was Thompson."

"You mean about the oral swabs."

"Right."

"I think Bob just doesn't want you to know more than you need to. I'm not talking about as a reporter. I mean, as a brother."

"If there is something new, I want to know it. The deal was I'd be on the inside. Not on the inside sometimes and then on the outside-like with this hypnosis crap-other times."

She stopped and turned to me.

"I will tell you, if you want to know, Jack. If it's what we think and all the killings follow a pattern, then it's not going to be very pleasant for you to dwell on."

I looked in the direction we were headed. The mall was in sight. A sandstone-colored edifice with welcoming open-air walkways.

"Tell me," I said.

"Nothing is for sure until the swab is analyzed. But it sounds like the substance Grayson described was something we've seen before. You see, some repeat offenders are smart. They know about leaving evidence behind. Evidence like semen. So they use condoms. But if it's a lubricated condom the lubricant can be left behind. Detected. Sometimes it's accidental… and sometimes they want us to know what they did."

I looked at her and almost released an audible groan.

"You're saying the Poet… had sex with him?"

"Possibly. But to be frank, we've suspected it from the start. Serial killers… Jack, it's almost always about sexual gratification. It's about power and control and these are components of sexual gratification."

"There wouldn't have been time."

"What do you mean?"

"With my brother. The ranger was right there. There couldn't have…" I stopped, realizing that there only wasn't time afterward. "Jesus… Oh, man."

"That was what Bob had hoped not to have to tell you."

I turned away and looked up at the blue sky. The only imperfection was the slash of the twin contrails of a jet long out of the picture.

"I don't get it. Why is this guy doing this?"

"We may never know that, Jack." She put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "These people that we hunt… sometimes there is no explanation. That's the very hardest part, coming up with the motivation, understanding what drives them to do what they do. We have a saying for it. We say these people are from the moon. Sometimes it is the only way to describe it when we don't have the answers. Trying to figure these people out is like putting a shattered mirror back together. There is no way to explain the behavior of some humans, so we simply say they are not humans. We say they are from the moon. And on the particular moon where the Poet comes from, these instincts that he is following are normal and natural. He is following those instincts, creating scenes that give him satisfaction. It's our job to chart the Poet's moon and then we'll be better able to find him and send him back."

All I could do was take it all in and nod. There was no comfort in her words. All I knew was that, if given the chance, I wanted to send the Poet back to the moon. I wanted to do it myself.

"C'mon," she said. "Try to forget about that for now. Let's go get you some new things. We can't have those reporters thinking you're one of us anymore."

She smiled and I returned it weakly and let her push me toward the mall.