The Poet

39

There was a discernible electric buzz in the air as everyone gathered around a table in the conference room with the million-dollar view. After being brought up to speed by a phone call from Thorson, Backus had decided to move his operation command post from the Wilcox Hotel to the FBI offices in Westwood. We gathered on the seventeenth floor of the federal building in a conference room with a panoramic view of the city. I could see Catalina Island floating out in a golden ocean reflecting the spectacular burnt-orange-and-red start of another sunset.

It was four-thirty Pacific time and the meeting had been scheduled late to give Rachel as much time as possible to obtain and execute a search warrant for records of Gladden's bank account in Jacksonville.

In the conference room, Backus was joined by Thorson, Carter, Thompson, six agents I hadn't been introduced to but who I assumed were locals, and me. Quantico and all the field offices involved in the investigation were also on the conference line. And even these unseen people seemed excited. Brass Doran kept saying over the speaker, "Are we ready to start yet?"

Finally, Backus, sitting at the center of the table, closest to the speakerphone, called everyone to order. Behind him, on an easel, was a crude top-view diagram of the Data Imaging Answers store and the block of Pico Boulevard where it was located.

"Okay, people, things are happening," he said. "This is what we worked for. So let's talk about it and then let's do it and let's do it right."

He stood up. Maybe the moment was getting to him as well.

"We have a priority one lead we're working and we want to hear from Rachel and Brass. First, though, I'm going to have Gordon give the rundown on what we've got set up for tomorrow."

As Thorson told the captive audience about our day's work and discoveries, my mind wandered. I thought of Rachel somewhere in Jacksonville, twenty-five hundred miles from her investigation and listening to a man she didn't like and probably even despised talk about the major break he had made. I wanted to talk to her and try in some way to console her, but not with twenty-five people listening. I wanted to ask Backus where she was so I could call afterward but knew I couldn't do that, either. Then I remembered the pager. I would do that later.

"We are shifting our critical incident team off Thomas," Thorson said. "The LAPD surveillance team is doubling up and will stay with Thomas. We are redirecting our people to be used in a twofold plan to facilitate the arrest of this offender. First off, we now have caller ID on the phones at Data Imaging. We will have a mobile receiver and LED read-out to monitor incoming calls on both lines and the field office is providing all available hands for response teams. We're going to trace this subject's call when he checks in to see if his product is in and try to hold him at the phone until our people can get there. If they do, standard felony arrest procedures will follow. Any questions so far?"

"Air support?" an agent asked.

"We're working on it. I'm told we can count on one bird but we are going for two. All right then, step two is if we are unable to effect capture of the subject through caller ID. At Digital Imaging Answers-let's call it DIA for short-I'll be inside with Coombs, the owner. If we get the call from this guy, he will be told that the camera he ordered is ready for pickup. We'll try to press for a pickup time but not too hard, just keeping it natural.

"If the subject slips through the first net, the plan is to set up on him once he comes to the store. The store's been wired-sound and video. If he comes in, I'll just give him his camera and send him on his way, another satisfied customer. The felony arrest will take place at the time Don Sample, he's our critical team leader, thinks is appropriate and gives the word. Obviously, that will be the first controlled setting our man takes us to. We hope that will be his car. But you all know the procedures for other contingencies. Questions?"

"Why not prone his ass right there in the store?"

"We feel we need Coombs to be there so as not to spook the subject. He bought the camera from Coombs, Coombs should be there. I don't want to try to take this guy down that close to a civilian. Also, it's a small store and we may be pressing it having even one agent in there. You put more in and it's going to look suspicious to this guy. So why don't we just give him the camera and take him down out there on the street, where we can control things a little better?"

With Thorson, Backus and Sample handing off to each other, they outlined the plan in more detail. Coombs would be in the store with Thorson to handle the daily business and real customers throughout the day. But when the outside surveillance teams reported the approach of any customer even remotely matching Gladden's description, Thorson would remain up front to handle the transaction while Coombs excused himself, retreated to a small rear storage room and locked himself in. Another agent, posing as a customer, would enter through the front door as backup after Gladden entered. The interior of the store would be monitored by a video setup. The exterior would be monitored by roving and stationary agents ready to deal with all contingencies once Gladden was identified. Additionally, a female agent in a Los Angeles parking enforcement uniform and car would continuously patrol the block where DIA was located.

"I don't think I need to remind everybody just how dangerous this individual is," Backus said when the briefing was done. "Everybody pack some extra common sense tomorrow. Watch out for yourself and your partner. Questions?"

I waited a beat to see if there were any questions from agents. When there weren't, I spoke up.

"What if the digiShot doesn't come in tomorrow like Mr. Coombs said it was supposed to?"

"Oh, yes, good point," Backus said. "We're not taking any chances. The Internet group at Quantico has one of these cameras and it's coming out tonight on a plane. We'll use that whether the one he really ordered comes in or not. Ours will be wired with a homer just in case, God forbid, he gets by us. We'll be able to track him. Anything else?"

"Has any thought been given to not taking him down?"

It was Rachel's voice on the speakerphone.

"How do you mean?"

"Just playing devil's advocate, it looks like we've got this pretty well buttoned down. This could be a rare opportunity for us to watch a serial killer and observe his hunting and victim acquisition patterns. It could be invaluable to our studies."

Her question set off a debate among the agents over the plan.

"And risk the chance that we lose him and he kills some kid or another cop?" Thorson responded. "No thanks-especially with the Fourth Estate here watching."

Almost everybody came down on Thorson's side of it, the feeling being that a monster like Gladden, though a worthy research subject, should be studied only in the closed setting of a prison cell. The risks of his potential escape far outweighed the riches that might be gained by watching him at work in an open environment.

"Look, people, the plan has been set," Backus finally said, closing the subject. "We've considered the alternatives that have been suggested and I feel that going at him in the way we have outlined is the best and safest plan. So let's move on. Rachel, what have you got for us?"

I watched the body language of the agents in the room change as their attention went from Backus and Thorson to the white phone positioned at the center of the table. People seemed to lean toward it. Backus, still standing, leaned down with his palms on the tabletop.

"Let me start with the bank," Rachel said. "I just got these records about ninety minutes ago, so there hasn't been a lot of time. But, preliminarily, it looks like we have withdrawals wired to three of our cities, Chicago, Denver and L.A. The dates look good. He got money in those cities within days, just before or after, the bait murders in each. There are two wires to L.A. One coincides with the bail last week, and then on Saturday there was another transfer of twelve hundred. He picked the money up at the same bank. A Wells Fargo on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. I was thinking this might be another way of taking him if he doesn't show up tomorrow for his camera. We could watch the account and intercept him the next time he gets money. Only problem with that is that he's running low on funds. After pulling out that twelve hundred, he's down to about two hundred in the account."

"But he's going to try to make some more with the new camera," Thorson said.

"Going on to the deposits," Rachel continued. "These are very interesting but I just haven't had the time to really… uh, in the last two years there has been about forty-five thousand dollars wired to the account. Deposits coming from all over the place. Maine, Texas, California-several from California, New York. There doesn't seem to be a correlating pattern to our killings. Also, I found one overlap. Last November one there were wire deposits made from New York and Texas on the same day."

"He's obviously not making the deposits," Backus said. "Or at least not all of them."

"Those are payments," Brass said over the conference line. "From selling the photos. Payments wired in directly by the buyers."

"Exactly," Rachel said.

"Will we… can we trace back these wires and get to these purchasers?" Thompson asked.

"Uh," Rachel replied when no one else did. "We can try. I mean, we can trace them back but I wouldn't count on much. If you have cash, you can walk into almost any bank in the country and make a wire transfer as long as you have the destination account number and you pay the service charge. You have to give bare-bones sender's information but you don't have to show ID. People buying child pornography and possibly-probably-much worse are likely to use false names."

"True."

"What else, Rachel?" Backus asked. "Anything else from the subpoena?"

"There is a P.O. box for the account mail. It's local and it's probably a mail drop. I'll be checking it out in the morning."

"Okay. Do you want to report on Horace Gomble or save that until you've put your thoughts together?"

"No, I'll tell you the high points, which weren't many. My old pal Horace was not too happy to see me again. We sparred for a while and then his ego got the better of him. He acknowledged that he and Gladden had discussed the practice of hypnosis when they were cellmates. He admitted finally that he traded lessons for Gladden's legal work on his appeal. But he would go no further than that. I sensed… I don't know."

"What, Rachel?"

"I don't know, some kind of appreciation for what Gladden was doing."

"You told him?"

"No, I didn't tell him, but it was obvious to him that I was there for a reason. Still, it seemed like he knew something more. Maybe Gladden told him before he left Raiford what he planned to do. Told him about Beltran. I don't know. He also might've seen CNN today-if they have cable in the dorm. They picked up Jack McEvoy's story big time. I saw it at the airport. Of course, nothing in it links the Poet to Gladden, but Gomble could have figured it out. CNN used the tape from Phoenix again. If he saw that and then I showed up, he'd know what it was about without me saying a word."

It had been the first I'd heard about any response to my story. In fact, I had totally forgotten about it because of the events of the day.

"Any chance Gladden and Gomble have been communicating?" Backus asked.

"I don't think so," Rachel said. "I checked with the hacks. Gomble's mail is still filtered. Coming in and out. He's managed to work his way up to trustee status, works in the prison's receiving shop. I guess there is always the possibility that incoming shipments might contain some kind of message but it seems doubtful. I also doubt Gomble would want to risk his position. He's got it pretty nice after seven years in. Nice job with a little office. He's supposedly in charge of supplying the prison canteen. In that society, that would make him a power. He's got a single cell now and his own TV. I don't see the reason to communicate with a wanted man like Gladden and risk all of that."

"Okay, Rachel," Backus said. "Anything else?"

"That's it, Bob."

Everyone was silent for a few moments, digesting what had been said so far.

"That brings us finally to the model," Backus said. "Brass?"

Again all eyes went to the phone on the table.

"Yes, Bob. The profile is coming together and Brad is adding some of the new details even as we speak. This is what we think we have. We might have a-this could be a situation where the offender went back to the man who set him on the path, who abused him and thereby nurtured the aberrant fantasies he later felt compelled to act upon as an adult.

"It's a play on the patricide model we have all seen before. We are almost solely focusing on the Florida cases. What we see here is the offender, in effect, seeking out his replacement. That is, the boy, Gabriel Ortiz, who currently held the attentions of Clifford Beltran, the father figure who abused him and then discarded him. It is the feeling of rejection the offender encountered that may motivate everything.

"Gladden killed the object of his abuser's current affection and then came back around and killed the abuser himself. It looks to me like an exorcism, if you will, the cathartic rush of eliminating the cause of all that was wrong in his life."

There was a long period of quiet while I thought Backus and the others waited to see if Brass would continue. Backus finally spoke up.

"And then, what you're saying is, he repeats the crime over and over."

"Correct," Brass said. "He is killing Beltran, his abuser, over and over. It is how he gains his peace. But, of course, the peace doesn't last long. He has to go back out and kill again. These other victims-the detectives-are innocents. They did nothing other than their jobs to be chosen by him."

"What about the bait cases in the other cities?" Thorson asked. "They don't all fit the archetype of the first boy."

"I don't think the bait cases would be as important anymore," Brass said. "What is important is that he draws out a detective, a good detective, a formidable foe. This way the stakes are high and the purging he needs is there. As far as the bait cases go, they may have simply evolved into a means to the end. He uses the children to make money. The photos."

As high as the group had been with the prospect of a major break or even conclusion to the investigation coming the following day, a gloom now descended over everyone. It was the gloom of knowing what horrors there were out there in the world. This was just one case. There would always be others. Always.

"Keep working it, Brass," Backus finally said. "I'd like you to send a psychopathologic report as soon as possible."

"Will do. Oh, and one other thing. This is good."

"Then go ahead."

"I just pulled the hard file on Gladden that was put together after some of you visited him six years ago for the rapist profile data project. There's really nothing here that wasn't on the computer already. But there is a photograph."

"Right," Rachel said. "I remember. The hacks let us go into the block after lockdown to take a picture of them, Gladden and Gomble, in their cell together."

"Yes, that's what this is. And in the photograph there are three bookshelves situated over the toilet. I would assume these were shared shelves, both men's books. But anyway, the spines of these books are clearly visible. Most are law books that I am assuming Gladden must have used while working on his own appeal and for other inmates. Also, there is Forensic Pathology by DiMaio and DiMaio, Techniques of Crime Scene Investigation by Fisher, and PsychoPathologic Profiling by Robert Backus Sr. I'm familiar with these books and I think Gladden could have learned enough from these, particularly the book by Bob's father, to possibly know how to make each of the bait killings and crime scenes different enough from each other so that a VICAP hit could be avoided."

"Shit," Thorson said. "What the fu-what was he doing with those books?"

"I assume by law the prison had to allow him access to them so that he could properly prepare his appeal," Doran replied. "Remember, he was pro se. He was certified in court as his own attorney."

"Okay, good work, Brass," Backus said. "That's a help."

"It's not all, either. There were two other books of note on the shelf. Edgar Allan Poe, the Poems and The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe."

Backus whistled his delight.

"Now, that's really starting to tie things up," he said. "I assume we can find all the quotes in these books?"

"Yes. One of these is the book Jack McEvoy used already to verify the quotes."

"Right. Okay, can you shoot us out a copy of that photo?"

"Will do, boss."

The excitement in the room and coming over the phone lines seemed almost palpable. It was all coming together, all the pieces. And tomorrow the agents were going to go out and get this son of a bitch.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning," Thorson said. "Smells like…"

"Victory!" shouted those in the room and on every phone.

"Okay, folks," Backus said, clapping his hands twice. "I think we've covered enough for now. Let's keep sharp. Let's keep this spirit. Tomorrow could be the day. Let's say it is the day. And you people listening in the cities, don't stop for one minute. Keep working your end. If we get this guy, we'll still need physical evidence connecting him to the other crimes. We need to place him in every city for trial."

"If there is a trial," Thorson said.

I looked at him. The humor he had shown a moment before had now evaporated. His jaw was set. He got up and headed out of the conference room.

I spent the evening alone in my room, filling my computer with notes from the conference meeting and waiting for Rachel to call. I had paged her twice.

Finally, at nine-midnight in Florida-she called.

"I can't sleep and I just wanted to make sure you didn't have another woman with you in there."

I smiled.

"Not very likely. I've been waiting for you to call. Didn't you get my pages or are you just busy with another man?"

"No, let me check."

She put the phone down for a few moments.

"Darn, the battery's down. I've got to get another. Sorry."

"You talking about the pager or the other man?"

"Funny guy."

"So why can't you sleep?"

"I keep thinking about Thorson in that store tomorrow."

"And?"

"And I have to admit I'm fucking jealous. If he gets the arrest on this… I mean, it's my case and I'm two thousand fucking miles away from it."

"Maybe it won't happen tomorrow. Maybe you'll be back in time. Even if you're not, it's not going to be him. It's going to be the critical team."

"I don't know. Gordon's got a way of getting in there. And I have a bad feeling. It's tomorrow."

"Some people might call that a good feeling, knowing that this guy's going to be taken off the street."

"I know, I know. Still, why him? I think he and Bob… I didn't really get it clear from Bob why he sent me to Florida instead of someone else, instead of Gordon. He took the case away from me and I just let him."

"Maybe Thorson told him about you and me."

"I was thinking that. He would, too. But I don't see Bob doing what he did and not talking to me about it, not telling me why first. He's not that way. He doesn't take a side until he hears both sides."

"I'm sorry, Rachel. But look, everybody knows it's your case. And it was your break with that Hertz car that brought everybody to L.A."

"Thanks, Jack. But it was just one of the breaks. And it doesn't matter. Making the arrest is like what you said about getting the story first. Doesn't really matter what's happened before."

I knew I wasn't going to be able to make her feel better about the situation. She had brooded over it all night and there weren't enough words for me to change her mind. I decided to change the subject.

"Anyway, that was good stuff you got today. It seems like everything is coming together. We haven't even caught the guy and so much is known about him."

"I guess. After hearing everything Brass said, do you have sympathy for him, Jack? For Gladden?"

"The man who killed my brother? Nope. No sympathy at all."

"I didn't think so."

"But you still do."

She took a long time answering.

"I think of a little child that could have been a lot of different things until that man did what he did. Beltran set the child on the path. He's the real monster in all of this. Like I said before, if anybody got what he deserved, it was him."

"Okay, Rachel."

She started laughing.

"Sorry, I guess I'm finally getting tired. I didn't mean to be so intense all of a sudden."

"It's okay. I know what you meant. There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than the cause, though it's the cause that is usually the most vilified."

"You have a way with words, Jack."

"I'd rather have my way with you."

"You have that, too."

I laughed and thanked her. Then we were silent for a few moments, the line open between us, stretching two thousand miles. I felt comfortable. No need to talk.

"I don't know how close they'll let you get tomorrow," she said. "But be careful."

"I will. You too. When will you be back?"

"I hope by tomorrow afternoon. I told them to have the jet ready by twelve. I'm going to check out Gladden's mail drop and then get on the plane."

"Okay. Why don't you try to go to sleep now?"

"Okay. I wish I was with you."

"Me, too."

I thought she was about to hang up but she didn't.

"Did you talk about me with Gordon today?"

I thought about his comment, calling her the Painted Desert.

"No. We had a pretty busy day."

I don't think she believed me and I felt bad about lying.

"I'll see you, Jack."

"Okay, Rachel."

I thought about the phone conversation for a while after hanging up. Our conversation made me feel kind of sad and I couldn't pinpoint the true reason. After a while, I got up and left the room. It was raining. From the doorway of the hotel I checked the street and saw no one hiding, no one waiting for me. I shrugged off the fears of the night before and stepped out.

Walking close to the buildings to avoid as much of the rain as I could, I went to the Cat amp; Fiddle and ordered a beer at the bar. The place was crowded despite the rain. My hair was wet and in the mirror behind the bar I saw dark circles cut under my eyes. I touched my beard the way Rachel had caressed it. When I was done with the black and tan I ordered another.