The Program

Prologue

On a beautiful spring day in 1981, Maria Devine had packed her belongings in a cheap cardboard suitcase, taken her life-savings out of her mattress, and gone to visit her baby brother Renaldo at the madhouse in Havana where he was a ward of the state.

The madhouse was called Mazorra, and was filled with Cuba’s criminally insane, the majority of whom spent every waking hour locked up in their rooms, banging their heads against the walls and screaming at the top of their lungs. Mazorra was an evil place, and Maria could not come here without welling up with emotion.

But today was different. Today, she would not cry, nor would she leave by herself, tortured with guilt. Emancipation had come for her and her brother.

“I have wonderful news,” she’d announced upon entering his room.

Renaldo Devine had sat in a wooden chair in the corner, staring dully into space. His handsome face was marred by his hair, which stuck out at odd angles from his head. He wore a canvas straightjacket, his present for having bitten one of the nurses.

“Go away,” he’d snarled.

“We’ve been approved to leave the country.”

“You are crazier than me!”

Maria had produced two passports, which she’d stuck in front of his face. One was in his name, the other in hers.

“It is true,” she said. “Look.”

He’d stared at the passports in disbelief. Another patient had told him that Castro was throwing thousands of undesirables out of the country, but he’d never dreamed that he would become a part of the exodus.

“When?” he’d asked.

“Our boat leaves this afternoon,” Maria had said. “Isn’t it exciting? I will help you pack.”

Renaldo had cried as Maria freed him. Never in a thousand years would he have imagined himself leaving this place. An hour later, he’d skipped down Mazorra’s front steps with his sister, his clothes tied in a neat bundle beneath his arm.

They’d taken a crowded bus to the port city of Mariel. Renaldo had sat backwards and watched Havana slowly disappear. Right about now, the psychologist at Mazarro would have begun their session. Each day, she’d asked Renaldo the same questions. Where did the human skull buried in his backyard come from? What had happened to the three prostitutes who’d disappeared in his neighborhood? Why did he keep a collection of hunting knives in his room? Every day, the same questions.

Why, indeed. Because he’d wanted to kill those filthy women; because it made him feel good; because he could. Those were the answers to her stupid questions. Simple as that.

Only Renaldo had known better than to answer the psychologist. Instead, he’d swayed his head back and forth, and pretended to be insane. He knew what would happen if she found out about the demon trapped inside his body. She would tell the other doctors, and they’d fill him with drugs, and give him electroshock treatments.

They’d departed the bus at the Mariel docks. There, a mob of people clutching suitcases were waiting to board the fishing boats that were taking people off the island. Renaldo had recognized other inmates from Mazarro standing in line. One was a serial rapist, another had butchered his family. Monsters, just like him.

Maria had steered him to a boat with a smiling captain on the gangplank.

“Hello, Maria. You look very beautiful today,” the captain had exclaimed. “Is this your brother? What a handsome young man.”

Maria had blushed, tongue-tied. Renaldo had stared at the bulge in the captain’s crotch. It had explained everything. His sister had bought their passage with her pussy.

When the captain had tousled his hair, Renaldo had tried to bite him.

They headed to the back of the boat. Maria made him put on a life preserver and told him she was going to the front to buy him a cold drink.

What a nice sister Maria was. She had cared for Renaldo since their mother had died. She knew her brother was broken, but still loved him. Surprisingly, he had no feelings for her. When the psychologist at Mazarro had asked him to describe their relationship, he’d declared simply, “I don’t hate her.”

Soon they were on open water. Renaldo had sat with Maria on an upturned crate, eating sandwiches she had packed for the trip. Other refugees were singing and dancing in celebration of their newfound freedom. Renaldo had felt like he was in a dream.

By nightfall they’d reached an island south of Key West. They were allowed to dock in the marina, but were told there was a backlog of boats, and that they could not be processed until morning. Food was brought on board by the Coast Guard, and the party that had started in Cuba had turned into a bigger party that lasted well into the night.

It was a night that had changed Renaldo’s life. The marina was illuminated by underwater lights that lit up the water like an aquarium. Sitting on the edge of the boat, he’d watched schools of brightly colored fish swim past. Soon a shark appeared in the marina. It had gray, sandpapery skin, a blunt head, and a mouth filled with vicious teeth. The shark appeared to be in a daze, it’s movements lethargic. Suddenly, it snatched a smaller fish that had gotten too close, and swallowed it hole. The carnage happened so quickly, the other fish in the school didn’t notice, and did not try to escape.

The shark had killed the other fish all night long. In front of his eyes, he’d seen an animal kill without being caught. The trick was knowing how to fit into your surroundings, and not draw attention to yourself.

It had been a revelation for Renaldo. Right then, he’d decided to become a shark. He’d learn to blend in, and develop a killing style that was swift, and sure. He would not make the same mistakes he’d made in Havana, and get caught.

At dawn, he’d walked up to the front of the boat where Maria was dancing with the captain. They were sipping from a bottle of wine and pawing each other. They’d forgotten all about him, a fact that had infuriated Renaldo. He’d fought the urge to break the wine bottle on the side of the boat, and cut their heads off.

Instead, he’d started to clap his hands and shuffle his feet. When the dance was over, everyone on the boat had applauded. Maria had hugged him and kissed the top of his head, thinking somehow he’d been healed.

“What a wonderful boy,” the captain had said.

Renaldo had bottled up his rage toward the captain and his sister, and kept it inside for a month. During that time, he and his sister had moved to Fort Lauderdale and found an apartment. His sister had gotten a job as a waitress, and made a home for them. She had bought him new clothes and a motorbike, yet still his rage had remained.

One night over dinner, she had shown her brother a gold tennis bracelet hanging on her wrist. It was a present from her new boyfriend, she’d said. Renaldo had come around the table to have a look.

“How many times did you fuck him for that?” he’d asked.

“You ungrateful little bastard,” she’d said.

Picking up the knife from her plate, he’d grabbed his sister by the hair, and jerked her head back. Looking into her eyes, he’d kissed her forehead before slitting her throat. His new life in America had begun.

Chapter 1

FBI Special Agent Ken Linderman started his day with a run on the sandy beaches of Key Biscayne. Late August, hot and sticky, and he was the only idiot out punishing himself. Soon he was gasping for breath, the sweat pouring off his body like a man going to the electric chair. But he did not stop.

Six years before, he’d been doing laps on the dirt track at Quantico when he’d gotten the call that his daughter had gone missing. Danni was a freshman at University of Miami in Coral Gables, and had disappeared while out running near her dorm. There had been no witnesses or signs of foul play. Danni had simply stopped existing, the earth swallowing her up in one huge gulp. He’d been looking for her ever since.

Standing beneath the shade of a royal palm, he drank a bottled water and cooled down. A pretty brunette on a wind sail caught his eye. Watching her skip across the waves, he thought of his daughter and choked up. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, except that was a lie. Time was the enemy when loved ones went missing, each passing day a reminder of what might have been.

Back at his condo, he made coffee and used it to wake his wife, weaving the cup below her twitching nose. Muriel was small and fine-boned, with hair gone prematurely gray and a soft Virginia accent. Her eyelids flickered awake.

“My, what a handsome waiter,” she said.

“Good morning, madame,” he said. “How are we today?”

Muriel sipped the coffee with a brave smile on her face. She knew what this day was as well. In the kitchen, the phone rang. “You going to get that?” she asked.

“No. It’s probably work,” he said.

“Still planning to take the day off?”

“Yes. I’ve got everything planned for our little soiree.”

His wife perked up. “Tell me.”

“We’re going to take a leisurely drive to Key Largo, and have lunch at a four star restaurant called Song of the Sea that was written up. They’re holding a table for us.”

“That sounds wonderful. Do you want to shower first?”

“You go ahead. I need to cool down some more.”

The bathroom door clicked shut. Linderman stripped down to his shorts and walked out onto the balcony. The ocean breeze felt good against his overheated skin. He watched a school of brightly-painted catamarans race toward the mouth of the bay while thinking how ironic his life had become. He was a profiler, and had helped crack hundreds of cases, yet he could not solve the mystery of his daughter’s disappearance.

He had not started out wanting to be a profiler. Twenty-six years old, and fresh out of the FBI academy, he’d been doing clerical work for an agent named Robert Kessler when something called the Criminal Personality Research Project had been dropped on his desk. Kessler had been visiting prisons around the country, persuading serial killers to talk to him. Those interviews had been given to Linderman to put into cohesive form.

The job had been daunting. Kessler had talked to a hundred of the worst killers, his subjects including cannibals, blood-drinkers, necrophiliacs, crazed giants, demented stranglers, mutilators, and child-killers. There had been no simple way to group them. They were all monsters.

Linderman had decided to chronicle the killers based upon the year they’d been caught. The oldest cases would go first, the newest last. And that was when he’d noticed something no one in the bureau had seen before. Of Kessler’s killers, sixteen had been arrested between 1965 and 1975, the remaining eighty-four between 1975 and 1985. During those last ten years, the number of serial killers had dramatically increased, with an average of one being caught every six weeks.

It was nothing short of an epidemic.

Linderman had written a lengthy memo to his superiors, explaining what he’d found. It had created an uproar. The FBI was spending millions of dollars trying to catch serial killers, yet their number was rising.

No one liked the bearer of bad news. His superiors had kicked him upstairs to Behavioral Science, and told him to “go figure out the problem.” He’d become a profiler overnight.

Only being a profiler was not a job that Linderman had desired. Profilers led difficult lives, and suffered from a variety of medical problems, including bleeding ulcers, anxiety attacks, and rapid and unexplained weight loss. The medical profession called it situational stress, but the gang at Quantico had another name for it. They called it staring into the abyss.

But there had been a plus side to his new position. He’d gotten to work alongside Kessler and Douglas Johnson, two of the finest profilers the FBI had ever produced. They’d taught him the ropes, and over time, Linderman had learned how to cope with the nightmares and health issues, and had started catching serial killers like no one before him. It was his calling, and he might have kept doing it until retirement, only Danni had gone missing.

For four years, Linderman had searched for his daughter while working at Quantico. Then, out of frustration, he’d moved to South Florida with his wife, and taken a job running the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment unit in the FBI’s North Miami office. It was a step down in both pay and stature, but he didn’t care. He was determined to find out what had happened to Danni, no matter what the cost.

Muriel came onto the balcony in a bathrobe, her hair dripping wet. He put his arm around her shoulder and started to kiss her.

“You got a phone call. Several, actually.” She sounded angry.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was Vick. She asked that you call her right away.”

“I’m not working today, remember?”

“It sounded urgent.”

“What about my plan to run away for the day?”

“Oh, Ken, I don’t know.”

He lowered his arm. Muriel looked out of sorts. The day had caught up to her, just like it’d caught up to him during his run. His dream of running away to Key Largo suddenly seemed awkward and foolish. Muriel would stay in the condo, bury herself in a romance novel or watch the programs she’d Tivoed, while he’d go throw himself in a case. It was what their lives had become, and there was no escaping it.

“Are you sure you want to be here by yourself?” he asked.

“I can manage,” his wife replied.

“That’s not what I asked you.”

She nodded stiffly. Her brave face was back. It said she’d manage just fine.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Muriel,” he said.

“Call her back. She needs you, Ken.”

His wife pulled the cordless phone from her robe, and went inside. He punched in Vick’s cell number from memory and heard the call go through. Rachel Vick belonged to the spirited crop of recruits who’d joined the bureau after 9/11. Rachel was smart and brash and wanted to change the world. She’d started as a field agent in Jacksonville, then transferred to North Miami to work under him. Vick was ambitious, and did not hide the fact that she wanted to become a profiler one day, and move to D.C.

Vick answered on the first ring. He could hear the tremor of excitement in her words. “Another violent teenage boy has been abducted in Fort Lauderdale,” she said.

“Same abductor as before?” he asked.

“It appears so. The boy’s name is Wayne Ladd. He’s seventeen, and matches the profile of the other two victims.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Ladd was being dropped off for an anger management class at a rehab facility this morning,” Vick said. “The abductor took Ladd from the parking lot, and killed the driver when he tried to interfere. A surveillance camera from a convenience store across the street captured the whole thing. I need you to come here, and watch the surveillance tape. I think I know who the abductor is.”

Now he understood the excitement in Vick’s voice. She wanted confirmation. “Who do you think it is, Rachel?” he asked.

“Killer X.”

Linderman sat down on a metal chair on the balcony and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. Killer X had been murdering prostitutes in Broward County since the mid-1980s, slicing their throats and tossing their bodies away like trash. To date, over fifty deaths had been attributed to his lethal hand. As killers went, he was an enigma. He left no meaningful clues or fingerprints, and had never contacted the police or the media to boast about his crimes. Few details were known about him, except that he was a man. Every profiler in the FBI had studied the case at one time or another, and no one had been able to stop him.

“Killer X slits the throats of his victims, all of whom are women,” he said. “This abductor is shooting violent teenage boys. It’s not the same perp, Rachel.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not. I’ve studied thousands of serial killers. The motives behind the crimes are different.”

“I found a link. Please come, and see for yourself.”

Vick was pleading with him. Deep down, Linderman wanted her to be right. It would get a horrific killer off the streets, and be a great boost for her career. Only his gut told him Vick wasn’t right. Serial killers did not shift gears.

“You’re absolutely certain about this,” he said.

“Yes. I’m positive it’s him.”

“All right. Tell me where you are.”

She gave him the address, and he promised to be there in a half hour. Going inside, he took a shower and threw on his suit. As he was knotting his necktie, he noticed Danni’s photo gone from the dresser.

“Muriel?”

He found his wife at the kitchen table holding Danni’s photo in her lap, her body racked with sobs. He held her until she stopped crying, then went to see Vick.

Chapter 2

Every county in Florida dealt with juvenile offenders differently. Some put the offenders on house arrest and made them wear electronic monitoring bracelets on their ankles. Others sent the offenders to boot camps, where they lived in bunk houses and drill sergeants turned their lives into living hell. In Fort Lauderdale, offenders were entered into a rehabilitative program called Harmony.

Harmony was an ugly pile of burgundy stucco on the west side of town, its neighbors a nasty biker bar and an Asian massage parlor that took all major credit cards. It was a seedy area, and Linderman found it hard to believe that sending a problem kid there would change him or her for the better, unless the idea was to scare them straight. The street had been cordoned off, and he showed his credentials to a patrol officer before being allowed to enter.

He parked his SUV at the curb and got out. The slain driver’s body lay beneath a white sheet on Harmony’s front lawn. Dried blood stains raced across the grass to the side parking lot, where a pair of gloved CSI technicians from the Broward Sheriff’s Department scoured the area for clues. Vick stood beneath the building’s shade, awaiting his arrival.

“Who moved the driver?” Linderman asked by way of greeting.

Vick stepped out from the shade. She was dressed in a navy pants suit the same color as a cop’s uniform. She was small, and wore heels to compensate for her size. Her sun-streaked blond hair was cropped short, the effect almost boyish. She wore little make-up, yet still managed to look stylish and pretty. Had a badge not been pinned to her lapel, she could have passed as a teenager.

“One of Harmony’s counselors did,” she explained. “The fire ants were attacking him, so the counselor dragged him onto the lawn.”

Florida was like the jungle; when people died outdoors, critters began to eat them.

“How badly was the crime scene compromised?” he asked.

“It’s worthless to our investigation.”

He knelt beside the dead driver and lifted the sheet. The victim was a balding, overweight white male in his late 40s, his shiny head covered in angry red bites. His neck had been sliced, the coagulated blood around the wound stretching from ear-to-ear. Criminals called it giving someone a necklace. He was having a bad day, but nothing like this poor son-of-a-bitch.

“What’s his story?”

“His name’s Howie Carroll. He’s been a Harmony driver for five years,” Vick said. “Carroll was supposed to deliver Wayne Ladd to his anger management class this morning at seven-thirty. One of Harmony’s counselors found Carroll’s body in the parking lot. The counselor assumed Ladd had killed Carroll, and called 911.”

“Why did the counselor think that?”

“Last year, Ladd shoved a bayonet through his mother’s boyfriend’s heart. He’s a violent kid,” Vick replied.

“Just like the first two victims.”

“Yes. They both killed adults in their early teens.”

He stood up, and had a look around the Harmony property. Daylight abductions were rare. It told him that the perp had little, if any, regard for the law.

“Any witnesses?” he asked.

“The manager of the Magic Mart across the street witnessed the killing,” Vick said. “It was also captured on the store’s outside surveillance camera.”

“Is this the tape you told me about?”

“Yes.”

“Still convinced he’s Killer X?”

“I sure am.”

The excitement was still there in Vick’s voice. She’d hooked a live one, and now wanted help reeling him in. She’d given Linderman something to feel good about, and he felt the dark clouds that had been circling around him slowly lift.

“Where’s the manager now?” he asked.

“Inside the store. A homicide detective is getting a statement from him.”

“Let’s go talk with him.”

The Magic Mart was an ice box, the aisles crammed with bags of potato chips and cases of discounted beer. Behind the counter stood a skinny Latino wearing a brown smock with the name Juan stitched in white letters above the breast pocket. Beside him stood a chunky white male with blown-dry hair and an off-the-rack suit whom Linderman assumed was the homicide dick. Both men looked up.

“Why, hello Rachel,” the detective said, flashing a smile.

“Hello, Roger,” Vick replied. “Detective Roger DuCharme, this is Special Agent Ken Linderman, supervisory agent for the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment unit in North Miami. He’d like to speak with the manager.”

Linderman liked the formality in Vick’s voice. Firm but polite. DuCharme glanced warily at him as if sizing up an opponent, then dipped his chin. Linderman didn’t like the vibes the detective was giving off, and nodded back.

“Mr. Gonzalez doesn’t speak English very well, so you need to go slow with him,” DuCharme explained.

If Linderman had learned anything living in South Florida, it was that the vast Latino population spoke English better than people thought. He faced the manager and smiled pleasantly. “Good morning. Please tell me what happened earlier.”

Gonzalez appeared eager to get away from DuCharme. Coming out from behind the counter, he led the FBI agents to the front of his store, where he pointed across the street at the Harmony building.

“This morning, I see a big man on the sidewalk over there,” Gonzalez said. “I think he maybe Cuban or Puerto Rican. A van come into the lot, and the big man run over to it, and wave to the driver like something wrong. The driver get out, and the big man grabs him like this.” Gonzalez mimicked putting someone in a choke hold. “He puts a knife to the driver’s throat, and cuts him bad. The big man jump into the van and punches the boy. Then, he take off. I feel bad for driver – you know?”

“Did you know the driver?” Linderman asked.

“Oh, yeah. He come into the store many times. Nice guy.”

“Anything else you remember?”

“It happen so fast, it didn’t seem real. You know?”

“The man was quick.”

“Oh yeah.” Gonzalez snapped his fingers. “He kill him just like that.”

“I’d like to see the surveillance tape,” Linderman said.

Gonzalez locked the front door and led them to a storage room where a TV and VCR sat on a desk. Linderman pulled up a chair, as did Vick, while DuCharme stood behind them working a piece of gum. Gonzalez pressed the Play button on the VCR.

“You watch,” Gonzalez said.

The TV came to life. A surveillance tape showing the front of the Magic Mart started, the Harmony building and parking lot visible across the street. Stamped in the bottom right corner of the tape was the date and time. The tape had been taken at 7:30.24 that morning.

A figure appeared on the sidewalk in front of Harmony. A tall, broad-shouldered Latino male wearing a floppy white hat, wraparound shades, and an embroidered white Guayabera shirt with matching white cotton pants. The Guayabera was a traditional Cuban shirt, and worn pulled out.

The tape continued to roll. At 7:33:10, a van driven by Howie Carroll pulled into the Harmony lot, and parked by the building’s side entrance. In the backseat sat a teenage boy plugged into an iPod whom Linderman assumed was Wayne Ladd. The boy had a mop of black hair, and seemed to be lost in the music on his iPod.

The man in the Guayabera made his move. Entering the parking lot, he waved to Carroll while pointing frantically at the hood of the van. Carroll got out of the van to have a look. Drawing a knife from his pocket, the man in the Guayabera put Carroll in a choke hold. He fumbled for a split-second, then slit Carroll’s throat in one swift motion. Wayne Ladd watched through the window, his eyes bulging. The man in the Guayabera jumped into the van, and clubbed the teenager to the floor with his fist. Getting behind the wheel, the man in the Guayabera closed the door, and sped away.

Linderman checked the time stamp. 7:33:27. Seventeen seconds and change. Not one wasted movement or step had been taken.

“Show me the link,” he said.

Vick rewound the tape. Again, they watched the killing.

“Watch when he fumbles,” she said.

Linderman watched. The man in the Guayabera tried to grab Carroll’s hair as he slit his throat. Only Carroll was bald, and nearly slipped free.

“He tried to grab his hair, and jerk his head back before he killed him,” Vick explained. “It was an instinctive reaction.”

Vick was right. Not many killers slit their victims throats. The man in the Guayabera had done this many times before.

“I think you’re onto something,” Linderman said.

Vick’s face lit up. “You do?”

“Yes. Let’s see how many more clues he left.”

They rose from their chairs. DuCharme stood behind them like a statue.

“Pretty scary guy,” the detective said.

Linderman did not like working with people who stated the obvious. Their stunted imaginations did nothing but impede the investigative process. He decided to give the detective a chance to redeem himself.

“How do you think our killer got here?” Linderman asked.

“Come again?” DuCharme said.

“His mode of transportation. Did he walk, come by bike, take a bus? Whatever he used, it’s likely someone saw him.”

“I never thought of that,” DuCharme said.

Linderman had heard enough. He told DuCharme he wanted a copy of the tape, then grabbed Vick and headed outside.

“This is a huge breakthrough,” Linderman said, standing beneath the store’s awning. “We’re not going to talk to anyone about it.”

Vick’s spirits crashed. “We’re not?”

“No. The media would have a field day, and that will only impair our ability to catch this guy. Think of the headlines. Serial killer abducts boy, murders driver in broad daylight.”

“So I shouldn’t refer to him as Killer X.”

“Not until after we catch him. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Our killer looked fresh. I think it’s reasonable to assume that his mode of transportation had air conditioning,” Linderman said.

“Do you think he came by bus?”

“Yes. He could have taken a taxi, but that would have meant exposing his face to the driver. This guy’s smarter than that, don’t you think?”

“He’s above average IQ, but unbalanced,” Vick said. “Did you see what he did to the driver after he killed him?”

Linderman spotted a covered bus stop two blocks away. He started to walk in that direction. Vick heels clopped on the pavement as she fell in line.

“No, what did he do?” Linderman asked.

“He kissed the top of the driver’s head as he slit his throat,” Vick said. “He was saying goodbye to him.”

Linderman had seen that, but wanted to see if Vick had noticed it.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“The killer’s shirt was embroidered. A Guayabera can be bought plain, or with embroidery. His clothes were also spotless. I think he’s narcissistic.”

“That’s good. What else did you see?”

“That’s it.” She hesitated. “Did I miss something?”

“Yes.”

Vick did not respond. He waited until they were at the bus stop before telling her.

“He’s driven a van or bus before,” Linderman said.

“How can you tell?”

“The doors on vans are tricky to operate. Our killer closed the door on the first try. He may have been a driver once.”

Vick’s shoulders sagged, and she let out a deep sigh. She was a perfectionist, and would flog herself for the rest of the day over this.

“I missed that,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We all miss things.”

Chapter 3

Linderman called the Broward County Transit System on his cell phone, and listened to a creepy automated voice tell him the times the various buses made their rounds. Hanging up, he said, “A bus comes to this corner at ten minutes intervals starting at six a.m. Call the Broward cops. Someone needs to talk to the bus company’s drivers. Maybe one of them saw our killer.”

Vick put in a call to the Broward Sheriff’s Department. She was not happy with herself, her mouth turned down in a frown. Linderman wanted to tell her to stop pouting – even the best agents missed things – but knew it wouldn’t do any good.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He crossed the street. The pavement burned his soles like hot coals. Inside a convenience store he pulled two sodas from a cooler, and put one against his scalp.

He paid with a large bill. His change came back a dollar short. He showed the cashier his badge, and watched the young man visibly shrink behind the counter. In his late-twenties, with jet black skin, and a sing-song Caribbean accent.

“Your name,” Linderman said.

“Ariel,” the cashier replied. “Is that a policeman’s badge?”

“FBI. Feel up to answering some questions?”

Ariel grew even smaller. “Yes, of course.”

“Early this morning, a big Latino man got off the bus wearing white clothes and a floppy white hat. Did you see him?”

“Oh, yes. He was hard to miss.”

“Tell me about him.”

Ariel brought his hand up to his chin in thought. “It was about seven o’clock, and I had just arrived. The man in white got off the bus with maybe twenty people. He crossed the street and stood out front for several minutes. That’s all I remember.”

“Where were you standing when you saw him?”

“Here by the register.”

“Come here for a second.”

Linderman led Ariel to the front of the store, and made him look outside. One of the most interesting interrogation techniques of the last thirty years involved moving a witness, and having them recount what they’d seen from a different vantage point. For reasons no one quite understood, it helped jog their memory.

“Tell me again what you saw,” Linderman said.

Ariel stared through the glass. “The man in white came off the bus, and crossed the street. He came to the front of my store and hung around for a while. Wait, I remember something now. He went around the side of the building to use the pay phone, and two girls approached him. He said something to them. His voice was quite harsh.”

“Do you know these girls?” Linderman asked.

“Yes. They are prostitutes.”

“Describe them.”

“They are both white, rather small, sisters I think. Today they are wearing pink hot pants and halter tops. They hang around on the corner, and men in cars pick them up for blow jobs.”

Linderman slapped Ariel on the shoulder. “Thank you. Now give me back the dollar you stole from me.”

Vick stood beneath the shade of the bus stop, talking on her cell phone. She ended her call, and Linderman handed her a soda.

“Asshole,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean you.”

“Let me guess. The Broward cops are giving you a hard time.”

“Yes. I spoke with the head honcho, Sheriff Moody. Moody said he was swamped, and suggest we contact the bus company ourselves. What’s his beef?”

“He probably doesn’t like being told what to do.”

Vick drank her soda in silence. She did not like having her authority questioned, especially by another law enforcement officer. He supposed it had to do with her size, and being a woman in a field dominated by insensitive men.

“The convenience store manager was helpful,” Linderman said. “He told me that a pair of hookers wearing pink hot pants talked to our killer this morning.”

“I saw those girls a few minutes ago.”

“Which way did they go?”

She lowered her soda and pointed south.

“Let’s go find them,” Linderman said.

Two blocks away they found the hookers negotiating with a john in a Mercedes. Both girls were horribly thin and missing several of their front teeth. Linderman banged on the roof of the Mercedes and flashed his badge. The john sped away. They led the girls down the street to an alleyway. Neither seemed terribly upset by the interruption.

“We’ve never been stopped by the FBI before,” one of the hookers said proudly.

“Maybe we should get out pictures taken,” the other hooker said.

Linderman didn’t bother to ask them their names: They would only give him fake ones anyway. Instead, he said, “This morning at around seven o’clock you talked to a big Latino man dressed in white. Tell me about him.”

“You mean Mr. Clean?” the first hooker said. “That guy was in fucking love with himself. Real prima dono.”

“Prima dona,” the other hooker corrected.

“Fuck you,” the first hooker laughed.

Linderman cued Vick with his eyes. He wanted her to jump in, and take over. It was always better for a woman to interrogate another woman than a man.

“Do you remember what Mr. Clean said to you?” Vick asked.

“He cursed us,” the first hooker said.

“Why did he do that?”

“He was trying to make a phone call. We went up to him to see if he wanted some company, and he told us to go down on each other. Then he started yelling at Ernesto.”

“Ernesto?” Vick asked.

“Ernesto hangs around the convenience store. He was lying in the bushes sleeping off a hangover, and he started singing an old Beatle’s song. I Want to Hold your Hand…”

“It was Please, Please Me,” the other hooker corrected.

“Fuck you,” the first hooker laughed. “Anyway, Mr. Clean told Ernesto to shut the fuck up or he’d hurt him. Ernesto went back to sleep, and Mr. Clean finished his call.”

“Did you hear what Mr. Clean said during his call?” Vick asked.

“Naw.”

“Have you ever seen Mr. Clean before? Think hard.”

Both hookers scrunched up their faces. They shook their heads.

“Thank you. You’ve been a big help,” Vick said.

“Sure we have,” the first hooker laughed.

They found Ernesto lying in the bushes outside the convenience store, just like the hookers said. A young man dressed in dark dress slacks and a collared long sleeve blue shirt, the quality of his clothes suggesting he’d only recently fallen from grace.

Linderman woke Ernesto up, and made him sit with his back against the store window. Vick bought a large coffee, and gave it to him to drink. Drunks were not reliable witnesses, but Linderman decided to give it a shot.

“This morning, you had an argument with a Latino man trying to make a phone call,” Linderman said. “I need you to tell me what you remember about him.”

“Is that what the sirens were about?” Ernesto asked.

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“He slit a man’s throat and abducted a teenage boy.”

Ernesto crossed himself and took a swig of coffee. Caffeine took fifteen seconds to hit a person’s blood stream. The effect it had on Ernesto was nothing short of miraculous. His eyes snapped open, and he instantly became alert. “I lost my job selling cars last month, then my wife walked out on me,” he explained. “I’ve been on a bender ever since. I ended up here last night and crashed. When I woke up this morning, something came over me, and I started singing. This Cuban guy making a phone call started yelling at me.”

“How did you know he was Cuban?” Linderman asked.

“I’m Cuban. I know another Cubano when I hear one.”

“What did he say to you?”

“He told me he’d break my neck if I didn’t shut up. He looked pretty strong, so I stopped singing, and he went back to his call.”

“What do you remember about his phone call?”

Ernesto resumed drinking his coffee and shook his head. The memory was there, Linderman just needed to pull it out. The FBI agent decided to try another approach.

“Close your eyes, and imagine him making the call,” Linderman said.

“What good is that going to do?” Ernesto asked.

“Just try.”

Ernesto shut his eyes. “All right, I see him.”

“Imagine him dropping coins in the phone.”

“Okay.”

“How many coins did he drop?”

Ernesto hesitated. “Six or seven.”

“Coins make different sounds. Was he dropping nickels, dimes, or quarters?”

Another hesitation. “Quarters. They were heavy.”

“He’s stopped yelling at you, and is talking to someone. Who?”

“The crack whores.”

“I mean on the phone. Who did he call?”

Ernesto paused, struggling. “A guy. It was definitely a guy.”

“Did he address him by name?”

“No. They didn’t talk very long.”

“What did he say to him?”

“He said something strange. He said, “I found the right boy for the Program,’ and said goodbye.” Ernesto opened his eyes. “That’s all I remember.”

Linderman patted him on the shoulder. “That’s great. You’ve been a big help.”

The pay phone was on the side of the convenience store. Covered in graffiti, it had a silver sticker that identified it as the property of Sky Tell Communications. Linderman wrote down the company’s phone number and returned to the front of the store. Ernesto was on his feet, brushing himself off.

“Feeling better?” Linderman asked.

“Much. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Here’s my card. Call me if you remember anything else.”

Ernesto crossed the street to the bus stop. A bus came, and he boarded. He’d lost everything but his dignity, and hopefully would climb out of the hole he’d dug for himself. Linderman handed Vick the number for Sky Tell Communications. “This is the number for the company that owns the pay phone our killer used. We need to contact them, and get a list of all incoming and outgoing calls made from the phone this morning. While you’re at it, have the CSI techs dust the pay phone for prints and trace DNA, and see what turns up. We may get lucky.”

“Will do,” Vick said.

“I’m heading back to the office. Let me know how things turn out.”

Linderman headed down the sidewalk. The heat had caught up with him, and he was looking forward to basking in his car’s AC.

“I can catch this guy,” Vick blurted out.

He turned around on a dime. “What did you say?”

“I said, I can catch this guy.”

Vick was like him – by the book. This was not like her.

“How are you going to do that?” he asked.

“When I was at the Academy, we studied a serial killer in Gary, Indiana called Spooky Tooth. Spooky Tooth was incredibly vain, and thought he’d never be caught. The FBI set a trap on the Internet, and caught Spooky Tooth in a few days. Killer X is also vain. If I set a similar trap, I’m sure he’ll take the bait.”

“What are you saying, Rachel? You want to take the case over?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Why should I let you do that?”

“I’m tuned into this guy. I can catch him.”

“By yourself?”

“I’ll need the Broward police to help me. And you, of course.”

Linderman’s first reaction was to say no. Rachel did not have the experience to be taking on a case like this. During her time in Jacksonville, she’d worked the Forgery Unit; upon moving to North Miami to work for him, she’d handled child abductions and helped crack a baby-snatching ring. These were all good experiences, but they weren’t the same as chasing a serial killer. Rachel had never dealt with pure evil, and had no concept of what it might do to her. She didn’t know what it was like to stare into the abyss, and feel the heat scorch her soul. Nor did he think she’d ever woken up in the middle of the night yelling at the top of her lungs. Those were the things that happened to FBI agents who engaged serial killers, and there was no avoiding it.

But at the same time, he couldn’t deny the burning desire in her eyes. It was a look that told him that this was her time. Rachel was sick of being treated like a kid, and being judged based upon her gender and size. She wanted to prove herself, and this was her opportunity to do that. If denied, she might never get another chance, and would be stuck taking orders for the rest of her career.

He stared long and hard into her face, just to be sure he was making the right decision. He decided that he was.

“Let me see what I can do,” he said.

Chapter 4

Vick sat in the hallway outside Sheriff Moody’s office. Through the glass, she watched Linderman make his case for her to take over the investigation. If body language was any indication, it was not going well.

Moody, first name Lester, was a thick-headed man, short on temper and long on intolerance, who should never been made sheriff. Had his predecessor not been caught taking bribes, Moody wouldn’t have gotten the job. The world was funny that way. Morons ran things, while the truly qualified toiled in quiet desperation.

Moody spun in his fancy leather chair, and studied her through the glass. Then, he spoke to Linderman. Vick couldn’t read minds, but she could read body language. Moody was telling Linderman that she looked too young to be given this much responsibility. Too young, too small, too fragile, too pretty. All the strikes against her seemed to start with the word too. It made Vick mad just thinking about it.

Linderman said something that made Moody wince. Had Ken threatened him? It sure seemed like it. Ken was deceiving that way. He had the persona of a mild-mannered little league coach, but there was another side to him you dare not cross. He could be tough, yet she’d never regretted leaving Jacksonville to work for him.

Linderman came out, shutting the door behind him. Vick rose hesitantly.

“It’s your baby,” he said.

Her hands clenched into fists and she rose on her toes. Linderman smiled at her with his eyes.

“Moody wants you to brief his men on how you plan to trap our killer.”

“I’m game. When?”

“Right now.”

“But I’m not ready.”

“Then get ready. I’ll stall him for fifteen minutes. This is the big leagues, Rachel. Do it.”

He went into the office and closed the door behind him. Through the window, she saw Moody talking on his intercom, marshaling his troops. Her elation was replaced by a sickening sense of dread. What if she got tongue-tied, or made a fool of herself? What if she forgot what she wanted to say? Her stomach made a low gurgling sound. Hurrying down the hall, she banged open the door to the women’s restroom.

“Good morning,” Moody said to a conference room packed with plainclothes homicide detectives. “We are fortunate to have the FBI with us today. To my left, Supervisory Special Agent Ken Linderman, head of the Miami CARD unit. Next to him, Special Agent Rachel Vick, also with CARD. Because of the FBI’s experience in handling abduction cases, I’ve asked them to lead up this investigation. Please give them your undivided attention.”

Moody stepped to one side, and the conference room fell silent. Vick felt the eyes of every detective staring at her. There had to be at least fifty of them packed into the room. She had expected Linderman to kick things off, and was surprised when she felt his elbow nudge her rib cage.

“Knock “em dead,” he whispered.

Vick took the floor. In her hands were sheets she’d hurriedly photocopied and stapled together. Seeing DuCharme in the front row, she dropped them in his lap.

“Detective DuCharme, if you don’t mind, please distribute these.”

DuCharme went flush. A detective in the back of the room snickered. Vick found the culprit with her eyes.

“Please save your comments until I’m done,” she said.

She waited until DuCharme was finished before speaking. Her audience was mostly white males, just like the FBI’s North Miami office. Definitely a boy’s club.

“There is a serial killer on the loose in Broward County who is preying on violent teenage boys,” Vick began. “In your hands are photographs of his first two victims, Robert Nardelli, age 16, and Barrie Reedy, age 17. Both boys had murdered adults, and were entered into juvenile rehabilitation programs while serving house arrest.

“Nardelli and Reedy’s bodies surfaced one week after their abductions. Both had been shot in the right side of the temple with a.38 hollow point bullet at close range. Both bodies were discarded in fields not far from major highways. The FBI got interested in the case after Reedy’s body was found. The body was put by a No Dumping sign, which is indicative of the hostility toward society which many serial killers feel.

“This morning at 7:30 a.m., a third teenager, Wayne Ladd, was abducted in the parking lot of the Harmony juvenile rehabilitation program in Fort Lauderdale. Ladd is 17, and admitted to stabbing his mother’s boyfriend last year. Ladd was in a Harmony van, which the abductor also stole. The van’s driver got his throat slit.

“We were fortunate this time. A surveillance camera across the street captured the killing and abduction. Our suspect is a Cuban male between the ages of 35 and 50, about six-foot-two and powerfully built. He’s excessively vain, and likes to spend money on clothes. He may have once driven a van or a school bus for a living.”

Vick caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Linderman stood next to the wall with Moody, and was motioning for her to slow down. She abruptly stopped talking. The sound of pencils scratching away on notepads filled the room. Every single detective was busily writing down notes. They’re listening to me, she thought.

In the back, a black female detective raised her hand.

“Yes, detective,” Vick said.

“Does our killer have a name?” the detective asked.

Vick thought back to the prostitutes they’d questioned that morning.

“Mr. Clean,” she said.

Everyone wrote it down.

“Mr. Clean is on a roll, and has become empowered by his crimes,” Vick continued. “More than likely, he believes the police will never apprehend him. With the sheriff department’s help, the FBI wants to set a trap, and see if we can catch him.”

Vick paused to let the detectives catch up. She had them now. It was her case.

“Our trap will be a special web site devoted to Mr. Clean’s crimes,” Vick went on. “The site will contain information about the three victims, and will invite viewers to share any thoughts or tips through a blog. This blog will have a special filter that will capture the IP addresses of anyone who visits it, along with the physical address of their computer.

“I know what you’re thinking. What if a few thousand people visit the site? What then? Well, the FBI has used web sites to capture serial killers before. We’ve discovered that these sites get heavy traffic the first day, followed by a second wave of visitors that include the victims’ families, friends, and often the killers themselves, who are interested in reading about the investigation, and what people say about them.

“Any good trap needs bait. The site will contain information about Mr. Clean which we know isn’t true, and is designed to entice him to respond. For example, we may say on the site that we think Mr. Clean has a low IQ, when in fact we know he’s above average intelligence. Or, we might say he’s a poor dresser. If we hit the right buttons, he’ll respond on the blog, and correct us. Once he does, we’ll track him down and catch him. Any questions?”

Several hands went up. Vick picked a Latino detective in a middle row.

“It sounds like you’ve got all the bases covered,” the Latino detective said. “What can we do?”

“This site is going to be presented as property of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department,” Vick replied. “It’s essential that the sheriff’s department play along. We need a detective to act as a spokesperson, and talk to the media. And, all of you must talk this up with the rank and file officers you come in contact with.”

“You want us to lie to other cops about the investigation?” the Latino detective asked.

“Yes,” Vick said.

“That’s not ethical.”

“No, but it’s necessary to our investigation.”

“Why? Do you think Mr. Clean is a cop?” the Latino detective asked.

A murmur went through the room. Vick cleared her throat.

“No, but he listens to cops,” she said.

There was a bottle of water on the table beside her. Vick unscrewed the top and took a swallow. The room had grown deathly still.

“The FBI has discovered an interesting trait among serial killers in recent years,” Vick said. “Many of these killers use scanners to monitor patrol car conversations. If we give one story to the media, while speaking the truth amongst ourselves, Mr. Clean might hear it, and figure out what’s going on. We can’t let that happen. Every cop in Broward County needs to be in the same church, singing out of the same pew. Understood?”

The Latino detective nodded solemnly. So did the other detectives packed into the conference room. Vick felt like she’d dodged a bullet, and decided to wrap things up.

“By the end of the day, each one of you will receive an artist’s composite of Mr. Clean, plus photographs taken off the surveillance store film,” she said. “The web site should be up and running by tonight. Please refer to it, and memorize the details. Any questions?”

DuCharme threw his hand into the air. He was the last person in the room she had expected to field a question from.

“Yes, Detective DuCharme,” she said.

“What’s he doing to them?” DuCharme asked.

The question caught Vick off guard. “Excuse me?”

“Mr. Clean. What’s he doing to his victims?”

“We don’t know what he’s doing to them, detective.”

DuCharme sat up straight in his chair. There was a gleam in his eye that she didn’t like, and she sensed he wasn’t going to let it go. Fucker.

“I thought serial killers used their victims to act out their fantasies,” DuCharme said, talking as much to the other detectives as to her. “That’s the gig, isn’t it?”

“Yes, detective, that’s the gig.”

“Then you must have a theory.”

“The FBI does not entertain theories, just facts, detective.”

“Were the victims tortured?”

“No.”

“Sexually abused?”

“There was no evidence of that.”

“You must have found something.”

DuCharme was needling her. If Vick didn’t stop him right now, she’d run the risk of losing whatever credibility she’d established with his peers.

“There were ligature marks on the victims’ wrists and ankles,” Vick said. “Our lab has confirmed that Nardelli and Reedy were bound to a chair for several days with two inch wide leather straps. However, neither victim was physically tortured nor sexually abused, but in fact appeared to have been treated well by their captor. Both had full stomachs of food when we found them, and were dressed in very nice clothes which Mr. Clean gave to them.”

“What’s he doing – killing them with kindness?” DuCharme asked.

The line got a big laugh from the other detectives. Even Sheriff Moody got in on the fun. Vick had been raised in a household without laughter. Hearing it now made her feel like she was being mocked. She slammed the desk with her open palm, the sound sending a shock wave through the room.

“In case you didn’t hear me, Detective DuCharme, Mr. Clean is murdering his victims with a point blank shot to the head,” Vick said. “If we don’t find him quickly, he’ll kill Wayne Ladd in the same fashion. Now, are there any more questions?”

There were none. She glanced at Linderman, and saw him nod approvingly.

“Thank you for your time, and have a pleasant day,” Vick said.

Chapter 5

Wayne Ladd could not shut his eyes.

He sat in a chair with a metal device strapped to his head that felt like a vice. The device had a pair of eyepieces that came down around his face, forcing both his eyes to stay open. He would have ripped the device off, only his arms were tied to the arms of a chair by thick leather straps.

He was scared.

He was in a small room with muted florescent lighting and a vanilla concrete floor. The walls were lined with something that looked like cork. A high-definition TV hung from the wall in front of him, the screen blank. Music blared through a pair of wall speakers, the Beatle’s Helter Skelter.

He was in hell.

He felt a sneeze coming on. He had read once that if a person sneezed with their eyelids open, their eyes would pop right out of their head. He filled his lungs with air and held his breath, and finally the sneeze went away.

He wanted to cry.

He had lost many things in his young life – his freedom, his friends, his older brother – yet losing his vision seemed far worse than any of those losses. Even worse than dying, he thought.

A film started to play on the TV. A porno movie, only not the kind he liked. There was no kissing or hugging or people talking dirty as they tore off each others clothes. He enjoyed those kind of movies. Instead, an enormous black man wearing a huge dildo with a red pump was raping a very scared white woman tied to a table. Watching it made his entire body shiver.

“Turn it off,” Ladd said loudly.

The porno movie continued to play. Ladd tried desperately to look away. He didn’t want to be watching this, or wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about it. He had enough nightmares to deal with.

He turned his thoughts to Amber, his girlfriend. She was sixteen, with long blond hair that teased her shoulders, emerald green eyes, and a pierced naval that turned him on. One night when Amber’s parents were out, they’d torn off each others clothes and had sex on the floor of her living room. They’d made love three times in a row, with each time being better than the last. Amber had taken him to a place that he hadn’t known existed.

Amber had known more about sex than any girl he’d ever dated, and he’d only stopped making love to her because his penis started to burn. They’d lain on the floor and held each other, and he’d told her his deepest secrets.

“Why won’t you go to the police, and tell them?” she’d whispered.

“Because I can’t,” he’d said.

“But you should. You should tell them the truth.”

“It’s not that easy.”

For a long time they’d said nothing, content to stare at the ceiling.

“I love you, Wayne,” she’d whispered.

“I love you, too,” he’d said.

“I don’t want you dating other girls anymore.”

“You want to go steady?”

“Yes. Say you won’t go out with anyone but me. Please.”

“I won’t go out with anyone but you,” he’d promised.

It had been a tough promise to keep. Wayne had more girls in his life than he could handle. It had started right after his arrest for murdering his mother’s boyfriend. Two girls from his highschool who’d never given him the time of day had posted naked photos of themselves on his Facebook page, while another had sent him a sex video on his cell phone. On the video, she had fondled herself while purring his name over and over.

Amber was different. She’d slipped a letter into his locker at school, and asked him to go out. On their first date, they’d sat in her car in a parking lot, and talked for hours. Right then, he’d known she was special.

The door opened, and his captor entered the room. He was a big Cuban with graying temples and cloudy, expressionless eyes. He wore shiny black boxing shorts and no shirt. His upper torso was ripped. In his hands was a device that looked like the blood pressure machine in the supermarket that the old folks lined up to use.

“How do you like the movie?” the Cuban asked.

Ladd didn’t answer. He still hadn’t figured out the Cuban’s deal. He wasn’t like the demented killers in the slasher movies. His voice was soft, and he had a funny little smile that never seemed to go away. He was also a cook, and had made chicken and yellow rice for lunch, which had tasted pretty good.

The Cuban knelt down beside his chair.

“How do you like the movie?” he repeated, raising his voice.

“It’s sick,” Ladd said.

The Cuban’s eyebrows rose like question marks.

“He’s hurting her,” Wayne said.

“That doesn’t make you want to have sex?”

“No.”

“Would you like to see something else?”

“Yes.”

“What would you like to see?”

“Does it have to be porno?”

The Cuban laughed without any sound coming out of his mouth.

“Something where the sex is normal,” Wayne said.

“Very well.”

The Cuban’s hands began to undo Ladd’s pants.

“Hey – cut it out!” the teenager said.

He pulled Ladd’s pants and underwear down to his ankles.

“Look what a big dick you have,” he said. “That is very good.”

“What do you mean?”

“The girls like you, yes?”

Ladd swallowed the rising lump in his throat and nodded.

“You have sex a lot, yes?”

Ladd felt like the Cuban was reading his thoughts.

“Sometimes.”

“That is very good,” the Cuban repeated.

The Cuban wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Ladd’s penis, and pumped it up so it was not too tight. He turned on the black box attached to the cuff, and several colored lights on the front panel started to blink. He patted Ladd on the shoulder.

“Take this thing off my face,” the teenager said.

“I cannot do that,” the Cuban replied.

“If I sneeze, my eyeballs will pop out.”

The Cuban considered it. “I am going to put a new movie on. Promise me you’ll watch it, and I’ll take the device off.”

“I’ll watch the movie. I promise.”

The Cuban removed the metal device from Ladd’s head and tousled his hair. It was the strangest thing. Wayne sensed that his captor liked him.

The Cuban walked out of the room. Moments later, the movie on the TV changed. Ladd felt something drop in his stomach. The new movie had been taken with a jittery hand-held camera, and showed a bearded man in hunting clothes chasing through the woods after a screaming young girl. The music coming out of the speakers changed as well. The Stones’ Midnight Rambler, Mick Jagger singing about sticking a knife down a woman’s throat.

Ladd averted his eyes. From out of nowhere came the Cuban’s booming voice.

“I’m watching you!”

Ladd refused to look at the TV.

“Do it right now!”

The Cuban didn’t sound friendly anymore. Ladd forced himself to accept the terrifying situation he was in. If he didn’t comply to the Cuban’s wishes, the Cuban would hurt him. That was how it worked in the slasher movies, and it was no different here.

“Look at the fucking film!”

Ladd made himself stare at the TV. The hunter had torn off the girl’s clothes and was tying her to a tree. The machine attached to the blood pressure cuff let out a loud beep. He looked down at his crotch. His penis had gone limp.

Ladd knew it was the wrong reaction. The Cuban hadn’t strapped a cuff on his dick for it to go limp. The Cuban wanted his dick to go hard. That was the game.

Give the Cuban what he wants, and maybe he won’t hurt you, he thought.

Ladd looked at sickness on the TV while thinking about Amber, and their last night together. He got an erection despite of everything. The machine let out another beep, this one much louder than before.

He imagined the Cuban in the next room, smiling to himself.

Chapter 6

Sky Tell Communications was one of four regional phone carriers doing business in Broward County. According to Google, the company made its money leasing pay phones to convenience stores and shopping malls. The company’s owner, a Russian named Dimitri Tursenev, was also on Google, and had spent six months in prison for running hookers through a string of strip clubs he owned on South Beach.

With Vick now running the investigation, Linderman had offered to contact Sky Tell, and trace Mr. Clean’s early morning phone call. Normally, that would have meant calling the company, invoking the Patriot Act, and requesting their phone records. Only the owner’s background was a red flag, so he’d driven to company headquarters in Lauderdale Lakes, and punched the buzzer while showing his badge to the surveillance camera over the front door.

“Yes?” a female asked over the intercom.

“FBI. Open up,” Linderman replied.

Static came out of the box like crowd noise at a football game. There was no shade over the front door, and beads of sweat marched down his back.

“Do you have a subpoena?” the female asked.

“No. Make me get one, and I’ll turn the place upside down.”

The door buzzed entry, and he walked down a hallway to where a nervous receptionist sat at a desk. Her hair was dyed a color you didn’t find in nature, and she had enough rings in her face to hang a shower curtain.

“Who’s in charge?” he asked.

“May I see your ID?”

He held his laminated identification card in front her face.

“Now,” he said with emphasis.

“I called Dimitri. He’ll be right out.”

The door behind her opened. A large, balding Russian dressed in black came out, his left foot hobbled by a plaster cast.

“Dimitri Tursenev?” Linderman asked.

“That is me. What is this about?” the Russian asked timidly.

“I’m conducting a criminal investigation. A suspect in a case made a phone call from one of your pay phones this morning. I want to know who he called.”

“You want to see my phone logs?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.”

Tursenev visibly relaxed. He opened his arms as if greeting an old friend.

“Of course. Step into my office.”

Linderman followed him through the door. The FBI had followed a wave of Russian mobsters who had swept into the United States during the past decade. With briefcases filled with cash, they’d bought homes and businesses and taken on the American dream, some succeeding, others failing miserably. Tursenev – bloated, poorly dressed, his face more confused than proud – appeared to be one of those failures.

The office had cheap bamboo shades covering the windows and faded carpet. A coin-counting machine filled with quarters sat behind the desk. The article on Google had said that Tursenev’s strip clubs had made a hundred thousand a week before being shut down. The big Russian had fallen hard.

“So how may I help the world’s greatest crime-fighting organization this morning?” Tursenev asked.

Linderman produced a slip of paper containing the address of the pay phone which Mr. Clean had used. “I need to see a log of calls placed from this phone.”

Tursenev studied the slip, then consulted a map of Broward County hanging on the wall. Finding the address, he dropped himself into a swivel chair, and let his pudgy fingers dance across his computer keyboard. “Each Sky Tell phone has a six-digit code. The code acts as a password, and will let me find the information you want in our computer system.”

A short list of numbers filled the computer screen. Linderman came around the desk to have a better look. As he did, Tursenev stiffened.

“Something wrong?”

“It is nothing,” the big Russian said.

Tursenev’s eyes darted to the canvas bag lying beneath the desk. Linderman felt tempted to pull the bag out, and have a look inside. Only that wasn’t why he was here. Instead, he pointed at the computer screen.

“Are these the calls originating from that phone?”

“Yes,” Tursenev said under his breath.

Linderman stared at the list. Only one phone call had been made between seven and seven-fifteen that morning. The call had a nine-zero-four area code, which was the area code for Jacksonville, Florida. Mr. Clean had called someone in Jacksonville before he’d murdered the Harmony driver and abducted Wayne Ladd. If Linderman could track that person down, he’d be one step closer to learning Mr. Clean’s identity.

“I need a copy of this page,” Linderman said.

Tursenev hit a command on the keyboard. The printer on the desk purred like a kitten, and a sheet spit out. Linderman removed it from the tray, and placed it on the desk.

“I want you to sign and date this, and authenticate that this phone number came from this pay phone,” Linderman said.

Tursenev made a pen appear and signed his name with a flourish. Linderman signed and dated the page as well, just in case it needed to be later used as evidence in court. He folded the sheet and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“Are we done?” Tursenev asked.

“Yes. Thank you for your help.”

Tursenev pulled a metal flask and two shot glasses from his desk drawer. “I sense you have found something which is important to your investigation,” he said, filling the glasses with a clear liquid. “I believe a toast is in order.”

“What are you pouring?” Linderman asked.

“Vodka.”

“No thanks.”

“I will not tell, if that is what you are thinking.”

Tursenev raised one of the shot glasses to his lips and waited. Linderman found himself being tempted. Maybe a quick jolt would lift him out of his dark mood. After all, it was his day off, and he could do whatever the hell he wanted.

He picked up the shot glass.

“To your health,” Tursenev said.

“And to yours.”

They clinked glasses. Tursenev smile broadly, his mouth filled with dark, crooked teeth. Linderman saw something in that smile that he hadn’t seen before. It was the look of a man who’d succumbed to temptation long ago, and who’d helped him solely because he was afraid Linderman might search his office, and discover all sorts of bad things. It was the face of the devil, hidden behind a pleasant Russian accent.

He had known many men like Tursenev; they were the bane of his existence. To let Tursenev penetrate his defenses was a mistake, for it would taint his ability to do his job, and rub against his soul like a rough stone. Linderman had to stay clean. He had come to that conclusion long ago, for it was the only way to stay out of the abyss.

He put the shot glass down and left the office.

9/11 had changed many things in criminal investigations. Perhaps the most notable was the ability to track a phone number, be it a land line, or a cell phone. In the old days, the process took time and sometimes even court orders, and often brought investigations to a standstill. Today, the process was much faster, with the three major phone companies willing to give up the information to any government agency who requested it.

With his car’s AC blasting in his face, Linderman sent out official FBI information requests on his laptop to AT &T, Verizon, and Sprint, asking them to supply him with the name of the owner of the 904 telephone number.

Five minutes later, one of the companies replied.

The company was Verizon. The 904 number which Mr. Clean had called belonged to cell phone owned by a Verizon customer named Eric Drake who lived at 387 Foxtrot Road in Jacksonville.

It was a good start.

Linderman called Verizon’s corporate office in lower Manhattan, and asked for their legal department. Soon he was speaking to a company lawyer, who informed him that Verizon would not produce logs of customer calls without court orders. Linderman told the lawyer the investigation involved the abduction of a minor. That changed things. “Promise me a subpoena signed by week’s end, and I’ll email you the information immediately,” the lawyer said.

“You’ve got it,” Linderman said.

“Give me your email address,” the lawyer said.

An email from Verizon soon appeared on his laptop. Finding a McDonald’s, he ate lunch in his car while studying a spread sheet showing every call made and received on Eric Drake’s cell phone in the past twelve months.

On average, Drake made seven outgoing calls a week on his cell phone, with all of the calls made late at night. Every outgoing call was made to a 954 or 754 area code, which was Broward County. The calls were to different numbers, with not a single duplication over a twelve-month period. Either Drake knew several hundred people in Broward – which was unlikely – or he calling pay phones so the calls couldn’t be traced.

The incoming calls to Drake’s cell phone were the same, only less in volume. Drake received one or two incoming calls a week, all from Broward County, and all from different numbers. It was highly suspicious, and suggested that Drake was running some sort of criminal operation.

Linderman decided to run a background check to see if Drake had a record. Using his laptop, he went to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and typed in Drake’s name and address. The system was far from instant, and a Please Stand By message appeared on his screen.

Then he had a thought. Regardless of what he found, either he or Vick would want to fly to Jacksonville, and interview Drake. At some point, the director of the FBI’s Jacksonville office would have to get involved. Better now than later, he decided.

Vaughn Wood ran the FBI’s Jacksonville office, and had gone through the FBI academy with Linderman. Wood had made his chops doing undercover work, and had brought down an outlaw motorcycle gang. Linderman was one of the few people who knew Wood’s nickname when he’d run with the gang. They’d called him Little Jesus.

He called Wood’s office line, and heard his friend pick up.

“Hey, Ken, I’m in the middle of lunch. How’s it going?”

“I need a favor, LJ. Have you ever run across a guy named Eric Drake? He had a cell phone conversation with a serial killer this morning. I’m trying to find out why.”

“He lives in Jax?”

“According to phone records, yes.”

“Name doesn’t ring any bells. Are you sure the name is real?”

“What do you mean?”

“A lot of criminals use aliases when they purchase cell phones. That way, we can’t run them down.”

“I don’t know if the name is real, or not.”

“Let me see what I can dig up,” Wood said. “Call you back on this number?”

“I’ll be here.”

Linderman sat in the McDonald’s parking lot and waited for a call back. He had spent most of his career toiling in an office at Quantico, protected from the outside world. Only since becoming a field agent had he experienced the bitter pill when a case broke bad, and all his hard work led to nothing.

Wood called him back. He wanted the news to be good, and the dark clouds swirling around him to evaporate. He answered by saying, “That was fast.”

“This is a beauty,” Wood said.

“Let me guess. Drake has a criminal record a mile long.”

“Actually, he’s clean as a whistle. Never committed a crime in his life, as far as we know.”

“Then why is this a beauty?”

“Eric Drake is a guard at Florida State Prison in Starke.”

Chapter 7

Linderman knew of Florida State Prison. Also known as Starke Prison, it was a brutal correctional facility in north/central Florida that housed some of the worst criminals in the country, many of whom sat on death row, awaiting the executioner’s call.

Eric Drake had been a guard at Starke Prison for three and a half years, and presently worked the graveyard shift. Thirty-three years old, he was a highschool grad with four years in the Navy. He shared a house in nearby Jacksonville with his brother, Randy, a known crystal meth dealer. Outside of his brother’s lengthy rap sheet, there were no blemishes on Drake’s resume.

Linderman was deeply concerned by this new twist in the investigation. Starke Prison housed a number of notorious serial killers, several of whom he’d profiled while at Quantico. Eric Drake came in contact with those offenders every day, and now he was linked with another serial killer, this one on the outside. Linderman’s gut told him there was a link, and he needed to find out what it was.

“How badly do you want to talk to this guy?” Wood asked.

“Badly,” Linderman replied. “A serial killer named Mr. Clean spoke with Drake this morning. I want to know why.”

“Should I haul him in?”

“I’d prefer if you put Drake under Special Ops, and watch him. I need to talk to the agent handling the case about our next step.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“Rachel Vick.”

“You pick Vick in charge?”

“She asked, so I said yes.”

“Do you think she’s ready?”

“She needed to get her feet wet. I’ll call you once I know something.”

Linderman drove to the Broward County Sheriff’s Department headquarters on Andrews Avenue. Special Ops was a surveillance procedure used by the FBI to monitor people of interest, and employed wire-tapping, hidden tracking devices, and small planes and helicopters to follow a person’s movements twenty-four/seven. It was a real life Big Brother, and he hoped it turned up information that explained what Drake was doing.

Sheriff’s headquarters was humming as he walked in, a mixture of uniformed cops, lawyers in expensive suits, and their clients in cheap threads. The food chain in law enforcement was strange that way; only the hired mouths seemed to prosper.

He showed his ID to the receptionist, and asked for Vick. He was directed to the third floor, office at the end of the hall. Rachel was at a computer when he entered.

“Good morning. How’s it going?” he asked.

“I’m almost done,” Vick replied. “The web site devoted to catching Mr. Clean will be ready to go live this afternoon. Tell me what you think.”

He pulled up a chair. You couldn’t be in the forensic business without being computer literate, and he recognized his own limitations. That was why he liked to work with young people. They’d grown up playing on computers, and were more comfortable with them than driving cars.

The web site Vick had created to catch Mr. Clean was a static site, without any streaming audio or fancy computer graphics. In that regard, it was identical to other web sites run by the Broward Police, and used the same color schemes and typeface. A letter on the home page from Chief Moody contained his smiling photo.

The site had three distinct areas. The first was devoted to information about the abductions and killings; the second, a physical profile of Mr. Clean along with an artist’s composite; the third, a blog where people could share tips or exchange ideas about the case.

There was a certain clumsiness to the site that was immediately evident, including a number of misspelled words and an occasional grammatical mistake. He assumed that Vick had found similar mistakes on other web sites run by the Broward cops, and had decided to emulate them.

Vick had also decided to play a psychological game with Mr. Clean. In the profile area, she’d referred to Mr. Clean as “a sloppy dresser,” when in fact they knew he was meticulous about his appearance. She had also stated that their suspect was “Hispanic, possibly of Mexican descent” when they knew he was Cuban. Vick had purposely included these mistakes on the site to target Mr. Clean’s vanity, and irritate him. Hopefully, he’d come onto the site, and post a correction on the blog.

“I like it,” Linderman said. “What software did you use?”

“Dream catcher,” Vick said.

“How will you track viewers who come on the site?”

“I’m going to place an alarmed visual traceroute program in front of the site. If anyone accesses the site, either by hacking or through authorized channels, a notice of the person’s ISP and physical location will be instantly sent to my BlackBerry. Using that information, I should be able to find out who that person is, and run a background check on them. If they’re someone of interest, I’ll proceed accordingly.”

Vick made it sound like another day at the office. Only it seldom worked out that way; serial killers often understood computers and the Internet as well as they did. He said, “When do you plan to go live with this?”

“By six o’clock. I want to make tonight’s local news broadcasts. Chief Moody has agreed to have one of his detectives hold a press conference, and trumpet the site. The publicity should generate a wave of viewers the first night. After that, traffic will thin out, and only family members and the morbidly curious will visit. And hopefully our killer.”

“Which detective is going to the media?”

“DuCharme.”

Linderman frowned. “Why him?”

“He was the first plainclothes detective at the crime scene, and spoke with a newspaper reporter. He also broke the news to Wayne Ladd’s mother yesterday. Chief Moody felt that for continuity’s sake, DuCharme should be the police’s face on the case.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Vick started to reply, then stopped. Rising from her chair, she went to the door, shut it, then sat back down. “DuCharme’s an asshole. He also thinks he’s God’s gift to women. Personally, I’d rather not work with him, but I think Moody has a valid point.”

“You don’t want DuCharme jeopardizing your investigation. Get rid of him the moment he starts acting up. Understand?”

Vick’s face reddened. She mumbled “Yes, sir.” and nodded stiffly. She acted flustered, and it made Linderman wonder if he’d made the right decision in turning the case over to her. There could be no hesitation or second-guessing when dealing with evil. He stared at the web site she’d created to catch their killer.

“I tracked down the person Mr. Clean called from the pay phone this morning,” he said. “His name is Eric Drake. He lives in Jacksonville, and works as a guard at Florida State Prison in Starke.”

“Mr. Clean called a prison guard?”

“Yes. According to Drake’s phone records, he’s received several hundred phone calls from Broward County over the past twelve months, all from different numbers and no number twice. A rather odd pattern, don’t you think?”

He watched Vick’s reflection in the computer screen. She started to reply, but bit her lip instead. He who hesitates is lost.

“Drake must somehow be connected to these crimes,” Vick said. “One of us needs to fly to Jacksonville, and talk with him.”

“I agree.”

Another pause. Come on.

“I think I should stay here, and monitor the web site traffic in case Mr. Clean posts a comment,” Vick said. “Would you feel comfortable interviewing Drake? I know that today is the anniversary of your daughter’s disappearance. I can get another agent to go if you’d rather be home with your wife.”

Did he want to be home with Muriel, sharing this miserable day? Or would he feel better putting the screws to a suspect, and not thinking about Danni? The answer was as obvious as it was uncomfortable for him to accept, and he rose from his chair.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

He walked out of the office. She met up with him at the bank of elevators, and touched the sleeve of his jacket. The gesture reminded him of Muriel trying to break down his stony resolve, but never quite getting through.

“I’m sorry, Ken. I know this must be hard.”

“Thank you, Rachel.”

An elevator came. He stuck his foot in the door instead of getting on.

“I have a suggestion to make,” he said. “There’s an ex-cop named Jack Carpenter you should get in touch with. Carpenter once ran the Broward Sheriff Department’s Missing Persons Unit, but got kicked off the force for being an avenging angel. He specializes in tracking abductors. He might have some insights on Mr. Clean.”

“What kind of insights?” Vick asked.

The elevator door was trying to eat his foot. He kicked it hard, and sent the door back. “Mr. Clean is treating his victims well for a period of time, then killing them. That doesn’t follow any pattern I’ve ever seen. Maybe Carpenter will know what it means.”

“How do I find him?”

“Carpenter keeps an office over a bar in Dania called Tugboat Louie’s. Call the bar, and ask for him. Use my name if you’d like.”

“You said Carpenter’s an avenging angel. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that term.”

“It’s someone who believes in justice more than the law.”

He stepped onto the elevator and hit the button for the ground floor. Vick remained in the hall, looking slightly bewildered. He wondered if he’d cut the cord too soon, and if she’d be lost without his guidance. He watched the door close in her face.

“I’ll call you once I land in Jacksonville,” he called out.

“Please,” Vick said.

Chapter 8

The sun was setting as Vick pulled into Tugboat Louie’s. The press conference had gone smoothly. DuCharme had managed to talk for five minutes without stepping on his dick. The detective had announced the launching of the web site, and asked the public to help them catch Mr. Clean. It was the right message to be sending out, and Vick felt like she’d done everything she could to set a trap for their killer.

She crossed the parking lot smelling warm beer. It reminded her of her first weekend in college, when she’d drank so much at a party that she’d passed out. A roommate had told her this was a sign of alcoholism, only Vick had known otherwise. There had been no booze in her house growing up, her father a strict Baptist minister opposed to having fun. Getting shit-faced had been nothing more than a late awakening.

Louie’s was a madhouse. It was happy hour, and pretty young women were dancing on tables to the jukebox while men in suits wildly clapped their hands. A smiling middle-eastern man wearing a black bow tie and a white cotton shirt greeted her.

“Some ID, please,” the smiling man said.

It was not the first time Vick had been carded in a bar. The smiling man examined her credentials as if they might be fake, then handed them back.

“I’m looking for Jack Carpenter. I called earlier,” Vick said.

“Ah, yes. I remember you now.” He unhooked a chain in front of a narrow stairwell. “Go upstairs, last door on the right.”

She glanced into the bar before going up. U2's Joshua Tree was on the jukebox, and the place had gone wild. She tried to imagine herself dancing on a table with her skirt hiked up and a bottle of beer in her hand. Maybe in another lifetime, she thought.

Upstairs smelled like low tide. The door to Carpenter’s office was ajar, and she rapped lightly on the frame.

“Come on in,” a man’s voice said.

She pushed the door open with her foot. Jack the avenging angel stood at the window on the other side of the room, the lights from Louie’s marina dancing on his rugged face. Tall, lean and beach-bum handsome, he wore faded khakis and a Tommy Bahama shirt missing several buttons, his skin as bronzed as a penny.

“I’m Special Agent Vick. I called earlier,” she said.

“Is special your first name, or agent?”

“It’s Rachel.”

“I’m Jack. Nice to meet you. Make yourself at home.”

She shut the door behind her. A brown, tailless dog crossed the office and sniffed her shoes. Growing up, she’d owned a dog named King who’d never been allowed inside her house. Many a winter night had been spent on the back porch with King shivering beneath a wool blanket. She petted Carpenter’s dog.

“Pound pup?” she asked.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“They respond differently to affection.”

“You’re very observant. Have a seat.”

Vick sat in the folding chair in front of Carpenter’s desk. Her eyes fell on the photographs taped to the wall behind the desk. Nine girls, three boys. In the margins were dates written in black magic marker that stretched back ten years. One was of Danni Linderman, her lips spread in a thin Mona Lisa smile. Vick had seen photos of Danni before, but not this one. The resemblance between her and Ken was unnerving. Same high forehead, same mouth, same intelligent eyes. Had Vick not known better, she would have thought they were twins.

“Do you think she’s still alive?” Vick asked.

Carpenter quizzed her with a glance.

“Danni Linderman,” she explained.

“I never think those thoughts,” he said.

He sounded like one of her instructors at the academy. Until a body is found, you must assume the victim is still alive. She took a deep breath.

“Perhaps I should explain why I’m here.”

“Please.”

“The FBI is chasing a serial killer who’s abducting violent teenage boys, treating them well for a few days, then killing them. He abducted his third victim this morning from a rehab facility in Fort Lauderdale. His patterns don’t match anyone we’ve chased before. I’d like to get your opinion on what his motives might be.”

“Why are you calling him a serial killer if they are only two victims?”

“His skill sets match those of another serial killer. He’s also arrogant in the manner in which he disposes of his victims. We’re certain he’s done this many times before.”

“You mean he’s killed before.”

“That’s right.”

“But you think the abductions are something new.”

“That’s our impression, yes.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Did Linderman tell you to come see me, or did you come on your own?”

His words had a bite to them. Vick folded her hands in her lap.

“Ken suggested it,” she replied.

“I’ll tell you why I ask. I’ve talked to plenty of FBI agents. The majority don’t want to hear what I have to say. They come to me for the same reason they go to see psychics. It lets them tell their bosses they left no stones unturned.”

Vick instantly understood. Carpenter had been burned. She rose and crossed the room so she was standing beside him. “You’ve been in the business from the start. The FBI got into the business later in the game. You know a lot more than we do.”

“Who told you that?”

“I figured it out myself. South Florida is ground zero for child abductions. After Adam Walsh was abducted, the boy’s father couldn’t get any satisfaction from the police or the FBI, so he started his own grass roots movement. One of his missions was to get police departments to create special units to hunt for missing kids. The first departments to do that were in South Florida. You ran the Broward unit for fourteen years, and put hundreds of abductors behind bars. You have more experience than the FBI does when it comes to dealing with these people. That’s why I’m here.”

Carpenter did not respond. Instead he just stared, his eyes boring a hole into her soul. The phone on his desk rang. He answered it, then put the caller on hold.

“Want a burger?” he asked.

The question caught Vick off guard. She had thought he might throw her out.

“Love one,” she said.

“How do you like it cooked?”

“Rare.”

“Two bloody, all the way,” he said into the phone.

The smiling middle-eastern man entered the office holding a tray with two hamburger plates and a couple of sodas. He served them, placed a bowl of table scraps onto the floor for the dog, and left without uttering a word.

Carpenter ate his food while reading the case report Vick had brought. The report chronicled Mr. Clean’s crimes, and included grisly crime scene photographs of the first two victims. It was said that a killer was soulless if he could eat a meal after taking someone’s life. The opposite was true in police work. Cops were routinely subjected to photos of killings and death, which most could eat through without a problem.

Her host finished his meal and the report at the same time. There was a scowl on his face and his eyes betrayed concern. He placed his elbows on his knees and folded his hands beneath his chin. His eyes took on a faraway expression.

“That bad?” Vick asked.

“Troubling,” he said.

The word gave her pause. Jack Carpenter did not impress her as a man who was bothered by much. She put her burger down and wiped her chin with a paper napkin.

“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” she said.

“Mr. Clean is not acting like a serial killer. He’s acting like a serial abductor. Serial killers don’t become serial abductors.”

“They don’t?”

“Not that I’ve ever seen. They’re two different species of criminals.”

“What about Ted Bundy and Simon Skell? They were both serial killers who abducted their victims and later killed them.”

“Bundy and Skell were not serial abductors. Bundy coaxed young women into his car and bludgeoned them to death. The abduction was strictly a mechanism to capture his victim. He was not abducting the girls to keep them.

“The same was true with Skell. Skell and his gang abducted women from their apartments, took them to Skell’s house, and eventually killed them. The women were kept in dog crates and were not fed. From the moment Skell got his hands on those women, he began to kill them, even though the process took a while.

“Your abductor is not following that pattern. He’s profiling violent teenage boys, abducting them, and keeping them for an extended period. He’s not torturing them, and appears to be feeding them well. Why he’s killing them is a mystery, but he’s doing it humanely – one shot in the head with a hollow point bullet at close range. Based upon your report, I’d say he’s forming a bond with them.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. It happens with every abduction. The abductor has to care for the victim, and make sure they’re doing okay. As a result, a bond forms. The longer the abduction lasts, the stronger the bond becomes. This never happens with serial killers. They either kill their victims immediately, or kill them slowly. There’s never time for a bond to form.”

“So what is Mr. Clean? A serial killer, or a serial abductor?”

“It appears he was a serial killer who’s become a serial abductor.”

“Have you ever seen that before?”

“No. That’s why the case is so troubling.”

Her host rose and went to the window to look down on the marina. She put her finished plate on his desk and joined him. Down below, the party from the bar had spilled out onto the dock, with a gang of drunken revelers forming a Conga line, their bodies bumping and grinding to the loud music. Her desire to join the party had long vanished; all she longed to do now was solve this unnerving case.

“Why did Mr. Clean change?” Vick asked.

Carpenter stared at the flat water in the marina. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’s the same person he was all along, and this behavior is an aberration.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s abducting violent boys.”

“Yes, it does. In fact, it’s the answer.”

Vick bit her lower lip so hard it made her wince. Carpenter was holding back. Not playing a game, but trying to make her think the way he thought.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me,” she said.

“Mr. Clean is acting out of character. That’s not normal. My guess is, he’s working with a partner who’s calling the shots, and getting him to abduct these boys.”

Vick thought back to the phone call Mr. Clean had made at the convenience store right before abducting Wayne Ladd.

“A Svengali,” she said.

“That’s right. Serial killers can be manipulated, just like everyone else. There’s a second person working with Mr. Clean.”

“A tag-team,” Vick said.

“Is that what the FBI calls them?”

“Yes. One member of a tag-team does the dirty work, while his partner calls the shots. The second person is usually smarter and more manipulating than the first.”

“I think that’s what you’ve got here. Find the partner, and you’ll discover what Mr. Clean’s motive for abducting violent teenage boys is.”

Vick’s body tingled with excitement. At this very moment, Ken Linderman was on a plane to Jacksonville, prepared to track down the man controlling Mr. Clean. Rarely did the pieces of a puzzle fit together so neatly. A faint smile formed on her lips.

Her host turned from the window. His slate-blue eyes were dead, and Vick felt an icy finger run the length of her spine.

“This is your first time dealing with serial killers, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Just a guess.”

Chapter 9

The Bonnet House was one of Renaldo’s favorite places. A thirty-five acre barrier island off Las Olas, the estate was filled with a variety of exotic animals, including chattering Brazilian squirrel monkeys, raccoons and panthers, the animals freely roaming the grounds. He visited often, and would sit at the base of a mangrove tree, watching the animals eat each other.

Late at night, when the estate was closed, daring raccoons would scale the walls, and invade the corner of Las Olas Boulevard and A1A, their icy blue eyes shimmering in the dull street lights. They were scavengers, and would tear apart garbage cans looking for food.

Tourists often fed the raccoons, and let them touch their bodies. Tonight, a brave German stood on the corner with his arms outstretched, and let a family run up and down his body looking for nuts stuffed in his pockets. His wife stood nearby, snapping photos while shrieking with laughter.

Renaldo stood on the corner across the street. He’d seen tourists feed the raccoons before, and always wondered what would happen if the tourist sneezed, or a car beeped its horn? Would the raccoons become frightened, and bite the tourist? It seemed like the natural reaction to such a situation. His only wish was to be there when it happened.

A pay phone began to ring. Renaldo looked up and down Las Olas. It was midnight, the streets empty save for the crazy Germans. He picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Hello, my friend,” the caller said.

“Hello.”

“How are you tonight?”

“I am good.”

“Was your day productive?”

“Yes. I have the boy.”

“Splendid. What is that racket in the background?”

“A woman laughing at her husband doing something stupid.”

“What, pray tell?”

“The husband is letting wild raccoons run across his body while she photographs him.”

“Are you in a zoo?”

“No, a public place.”

“How strange. Have you started the boy on the Program?”

“Yes, I started him right away.”

“How has he responded?”

“He hated the first pornographic film I showed him. He said it was sick.”

“That is not a good sign. The films are important. They open doors in the mind.”

“He liked the second film, though.”

“Really. What was it?”

“A hunter chasing a woman through the woods and raping her against a tree. The boy liked that.”

“Did you measure his erection?”

“Yes. It lasted six and a half minutes.”

“Did he still have it after the film was done?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a promising sign. Are you keeping a log of everything that happens?”

“Yes. I am eager to get to the next phase.”

“Don’t be.”

“Why?”

“Each phase is important for the boy’s evolution. Continue to show him the films until he’s ready to move forward. Don’t speed things up.”

Renaldo fell silent. He desperately wanted the Program to work. The first two times he’d tried, it had failed, and he’d had to kill the boys, who he’d grown to like for different reasons. But the new boy showed promise. The new boy had all the right ingredients to make it through the Program, and graduate.

“Still there?” his friend asked.

“Yes.”

“You have done well. I am very proud of you.”

“Thank you.” Renaldo became conscious of the time. It was growing late, and he needed to get back to the house, and check on the boy.

“I need to go,” he said.

“Tomorrow night, same time?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a new number for me to call?”

“Yes. Hold on.”

Renaldo dug out a slip of paper containing the phone number of a payphone at the RaceTrac gas station at the intersection of Sunrise Boulevard and Andrews Avenue. Earlier that day, he’d checked the location, and deemed it safe. He read the phone number to his friend, who repeated it back to him.

“I will talk to you tomorrow night,” Renaldo said.

“One more thing.”

“What?”

“The man with the raccoons – is he still there?”

The crazy Germans were going strong. The man had refilled his pockets with nuts and gone back to his crucifix pose, the raccoons racing up and down his arms and legs while his wife leaned against the wall, weak with laughter.

“He’s here,” Renaldo said.

“Do you have a gun with you?”

“Yes, I have one.”

“I would like you to shoot it into the air. Then tell me what happens.”

There was real mischief in his friend’s voice. Renaldo checked for cars, and seeing none, knelt down and drew a.38 special from an ankle holster. Standing, he took another look around before deeming it safe.

“Ready?” he said into the phone.

“By all means.”

He fired a round into the air, the booming sound echoing across the nearby ocean. The shot was followed by a second, equally as loud.

The raccoons reacted as most animals did when hearing gunfire – and savagely bit the German on his arms, legs and face before jumping off, and scampering over the wall. The German fell to the ground in agony, his wife kneeling helplessly by his side.

“Done,” Renaldo said into the phone. “The raccoons ripped him apart.”

“How wonderful,” his friend said.

Chapter 10

The cinder block house shared by Eric and Randy Drake had a crumbling front porch and curtained windows pulled so tight that it was impossible to see inside. The patch of front lawn, flooded from a recent downpour, was gray and sickly.

Linderman sat in an unmarked van across the street, spying through binoculars. With him was Vaughn Wood and two FBI agents wearing bulletproof Kevlar vests and armed with shotguns. Down the street, their backup sat in a second van.

A strung-out man staggered out of the Drake house, and crossed the flooded lawn without seeming to care. He drove away sucking on a glass meth pipe.

“How many is that?” Wood asked.

“Six,” Linderman replied.

“I really want to shut this operation down.”

“Let’s wait until Eric gets here, okay?”

Wood fell silent. It was nearly eight a.m. Eric Drake had finished working the graveyard shift at Starke Prison, and was heading home with a Special Ops chopper on his tail. Linderman had considered arresting Eric as he got off work, but had decided it was better to meet Eric at his house, and question him inside. It would give Linderman the opportunity to look around the house for any incriminating evidence.

Only arresting Eric at home was a risk. His brother Randy was selling crystal meth out of the house, and might give them trouble. Having to deal with Randy was the price they were going to have to pay to nab Eric.

Wood’s cell phone vibrated, and he took the call. “That was the pilot of the Special Ops chopper. Eric Drake is two blocks away,” Wood said.

“Let’s grab him on the lawn,” Linderman said.

Wood called the second van and relayed the plan.

“All set,” he said, hanging up.

Thirty seconds later, a gray Ford pickup rumbled down the street and pulled into the driveway. Eric Drake got out, and stretched his arms in the air. Late thirties, he wore a pea green guard’s uniform, and had thinning hair and a droopy handlebar moustache. He didn’t look menacing, but looks were often deceiving.

Linderman drew a Glock 22 from his belt holster, and held it against his chest. At the same time, Wood drew his sidearm. The two agents in the back were fingering the shotguns in their laps. Both had been drinking coffee and were wired.

“Let’s do it,” Linderman said.

Wood called the second team on his cell phone.

“It’s show time,” Wood said into the phone.

The four men poured out of the van and sprinted across the street. At the same time, the agents in the second van jumped out, and ran toward the house. It was an impressive show of force, designed to instill terror in the heart of the Eric Drake.

It worked. Eric dropped his metal lunch box on the ground, and his eyes went wide with fear.

“FBI. Put your arms in the air,” Linderman said.

Eric threw his arms into the air and blinked several times.

“Against the car,” Linderman said.

Eric hugged the car, his legs spread wide. Linderman patted him down. His suspect was shaking from head to foot.

“Does your brother have a gun?” Linderman asked.

“You mean Randy?” Eric replied. “Yeah, he’s got a couple inside the house.”

“I want you to tell him to come outside and surrender. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Linderman guided Eric down the front path. The other agents stood on the lawn, ankle-deep in water, their weapons trained at the house. Two of the agents were gone, and were covering the back door in case Randy should attempt to escape.

“Talk to your brother,” Linderman ordered.

“Hey, Randy, it’s me,” Eric Drake said, cupping his hands over his mouth. “You need to come outside. Do as I say, man.”

The front door cracked open, and a bloodshot eyeball stared at them.

“What the fuck’s going on? Who are these guys?” Randy Drake shouted.

“It’s the FBI,” Eric replied.

“FBI? You shitting me?”

“No, man. They want to talk to me. Come on outside,” Eric said.

Linderman was surprised. Even though Randy was running a meth lab, Eric knew the FBI was here to see him. It told him that whatever Eric was doing, he’d been doing it for a while, and his conscience was eating at him.

“How do you know it’s not some guys trying to rob us?” Randy asked.

“Randy, listen to me,” his brother pleaded.

“They could have stolen FBI badges and made up phony ID,” Randy said, his voice rising in accusation. “Happens all the time.”

Randy Drake sounded delusional. There was only one way this was going to break, and that was bad. Linderman aimed his Glock at the front door.

“Come outside with your hands up,” Linderman ordered.

“Who are you?” Randy replied.

“Special Agent Ken Linderman. Do as I say – right now!”

“Yes, sir!”

The front door banged open. Randy came onto the porch wearing a pair of bright red underwear and nothing else. He looked like his brother, only fifty pounds heavier. Drool ran down the side of his face, and his tattoo-covered arms cradled a machine- pistol.

“Fuck you, mother-fuckers!”

Randy squeezed a round over their heads. The agents returned the fire, and riddled the porch with gunfire, the bullets tearing shingles off the house. Linderman had a bead on Randy, and shot him in the shoulder and side. The bullets seemingly had no effect, and Randy laughed and slipped back inside, the door slamming shut behind him.

“Shit. He’s a meth tweaker,” Wood said.

Meth tweakers were real-life zombies. Addicted to crystal meth, they often stayed awake for weeks at a time, and did not feel pain. Stories of them being shot multiple times and not stopping were mythical within the FBI. So too were the stories of the widespread destruction they caused, and the innocent lives they took with them.

Eric was handcuffed and locked into one of the vans. Then the team swarmed onto the porch. The front door was kicked down, and they entered single-file. Linderman was the last inside, and found everyone standing in the living room, a small space filled with mis-matched furniture. Randy was not there.

“Let’s search the house,” Wood said.

The FBI did everything by the book. The house was checked using systematic search protocol, with the team going room by room, searching in closets and under beds for their suspect. After each room was checked, one agent remained behind, preventing Randy from back-tracking on them.

Linderman stayed behind in a bedroom. The room had trash on the floors, and looked like a cyclone had hit it. The smell of smoke filled his nostrils.

“I smell fire,” he called out.

He followed the smell down a hall and entered a spacious kitchen in the back of the house. The equipment used to cook crystal meth was on the stove, bubbling away. Kitty litter covered the floor, having been used to soak up spilled chemicals. Randy stood at the sink, shooting through a broken window at the two agents in the backyard.

“Freeze!” Linderman said.

Randy paid him no heed. A bullet penetrated the wall and tore through Randy’s arm, shredding the biceps. It didn’t faze him.

Linderman had to make Randy stop shooting. The combination of the boiling chemicals and gunfire could easily blow the house up, and kill everyone inside. Only Randy was too far gone to be reasoned with.

Having no other option, Linderman shot Randy in the side. It was the third time he’d put a bullet in him. Three shots was usually the charm. The machine pistol fell from Randy’s hands into the sink.

“What the hell,” Randy gasped.

Linderman lowered his gun. He’d shot men before, and the feeling was always the same; revulsion, twinged by the exhilaration that the threat had passed.

Except Randy didn’t go down. He staggered across the kitchen like he was drunk, and grabbed a carving knife off the counter. His eyes were blinking wildly and rolled up once in his head, then snapped back down.

“You’re gonna die,” Randy said.

Linderman’s Glock held fifteen rounds. He had been trained to count his shots when he fired his weapon, and knew that twelve rounds were left in the magazine.

“Stop,” the FBI agent ordered.

Randy charged him with the carving knife. Linderman squeezed the trigger and kept his finger down, the bullets popping Randy at short range. Each shot slowed him down a fraction, but did not halt his forward momentum.

When Randy was six feet away, Linderman put a bullet in his forehead. The look in his eyes said he’d sold his soul to the devil long ago.

Wood entered the kitchen as Linderman was turning off the stove.

“Jesus. How many times did you have to shoot him?” Wood asked.

“Too many.”

“We’ve got a problem. Eric is screaming for a lawyer. Says we had no right coming here without a search warrant. What do you want to do?”

If Eric Drake lawyered up, he’d never find out why he’d been talking to Mr. Clean. He hadn’t come all this way – and risked his life – to let that happen.

“Bring him into the kitchen,” Linderman said.

“You want him to see his brother?”

“Yes. I’m going to do a number on him.”

Linderman opened the kitchen door and walked down a short flight of steps into the backyard. The two FBI agents who’d been exchanging gunfire with Randy had taken up cover and concealment positions behind a rotting wood shed. “All clear,” he called out.

The two agents cautiously emerged from behind the shed. One was a woman, the other a man, their faces wet with fear.

“Is he down?” the female agent asked.

“Down and out,” Linderman replied. “I need your help.”

“Of course,” she said.

Linderman had the female agent lie on the ground on her back, and close her eyes. Next, he had the male agent place his weapon on the ground, and kneel beside her.

“Stay like that for a few minutes,” Linderman said.

“What am I supposed to be doing?” the female agent asked.

“Playing dead.”

Linderman went back inside. Wood had brought Eric Drake into the kitchen. Eric was staring at his brother’s bullet-ridden body lying on the floor. Eric’s hands were handcuffed behind his back and he was silently weeping.

“Why’d you have to shoot him so many times?” Eric said, seeing Linderman. “He didn’t deserve to die like some dog.”

Linderman pulled Eric across the kitchen to the open back door, and pointed at the female FBI agent lying on the ground. “That’s why I shot your brother,” he said.

“Is she dead?”

“Yes. Now, do you still want to call a lawyer, or would you rather make a deal?”

Eric turned away from the door. He was smart enough to know that he could be charged as an accessory to his brother’s crimes, and might spend the rest of his life in prison for killing an FBI agent.

“What do you want from me?” Eric asked.

“I want to know about the calls you’ve been making on your cell phone,” Linderman said. “If you cooperate, we’ll say you weren’t here when the shooting happened.”

“I won’t get charged with this?”

“That’s right.”

“Will Randy get all the blame?”

“Yes, Randy will get all the blame.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes.”

“Let me hear you say it.”

“It’s a promise. Randy will get all the blame for what happened.”

Eric glanced over his shoulder at his brother’s corpse. His look of sorrow had been replaced by outright hostility, and Linderman could only guess at the tortured relationship the two brothers had shared.

“You’ve got a deal,” Eric said.

Chapter 11

Eric sat on a sagging couch in the living room. Linderman sat directly across from their suspect, while Wood stood beside him.

Both FBI agents gave Eric hostile stares. It was an intimidating tactic used during interrogations that often scared suspects into telling the truth.

“I want to hear about the nightly phone calls you’ve been making to Broward County for the past twelve months,” Linderman said.

“I ain’t been making any calls to Broward,” Eric replied.

“I’ve got a phone log from Verizon that says otherwise,” Linderman said.

“You’ve got a what?”

“A phone log. It shows the calls you’ve been making. There are several hundred to Broward county area codes.”

“You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?” Eric replied.

Linderman pulled up the chair a little closer. He’d learned never to tell a suspect what he did, or didn’t know during an interrogation.

“There’s a bag in the cab of my pickup. That’ll explain things,” Eric said.

Wood went outside and got the bag, which he brought into the house. Inside the bag were half a dozen Nokia Cell phones. Then it clicked what Eric was doing.

“You’re renting cell phones to inmates inside Starke Prison,” Linderman said.

“That’s right,” Eric said.

“Who’s getting them?”

“I’m not really sure.”

“Stop lying, or our deal is off.”

Eric shifted uncomfortably. “All right. I deal with one inmate. His name is Raul Martinez, but everyone calls him Thunder. I rent the cell phones to him, and he doles them out to different inmates who he has agreements with. I don’t ask questions because it’s none of my fucking business. Thunder gives me the phones back every morning when I end my shift, and I bring them home, and charge them up. That’s the deal. You want to know who’s calling from Broward, talk to Thunder.”

Taking his iPhone from his pocket, Linderman got onto the Internet, and went to the FBI’s computerized index of criminal justice information in Clarksburg, West Virginia. He punched in a six-digit password to gain access, then went to the criminal record history information section, and looked for Raul “Thunder” Martinez on its search engine. Within seconds, a rap sheet and mug shot appeared on the iPhone’s screen. Martinez was from the Little Havana section of Miami, and had run with a street gang called the Latin Kings. His mug shot showed a man with no neck and a mouth filled with gold teeth.

Linderman signed off from the site and folded the phone. Eric was telling the truth. Sort of. He leaned forward in his chair. “How long has this been going on?”

“’Bout a year,” Eric said.

“How much is Thunder paying you?”

“Two hundred bucks a week per phone.”

“Who is Thunder renting the phones to inside the prison?”

“I told you – I don’t ask questions.”

“You’re lying. You know who Thunder is renting the cell phones to. It’s the only way you can protect yourself. You don’t want some inmate saying something crazy over the phone, and having it get back to you, so you make sure Thunder rents them to guys who aren’t off their rockers, or stupid enough to get caught. Tell me their names, Eric, or the deal is off.”

Eric fell back on the couch and shut his eyes. Linderman guessed he was fighting with himself. If he ratted out Thunder, he’d pay for it down the road. Men like Thunder never forgot the people who betrayed them.

Linderman stood up, his chair scraping the floor. Eric’s eyes snapped open.

“Last chance,” the FBI agent said.

“The list of names is in the glove compartment of my pickup. I keep it with my registration.”

“Does it contain all the names?”

“Yeah.”

Linderman headed for the front door. The female FBI agent he’d talked into playing dead came down the hallway and entered the living room.

“Hey – you told me she was dead!” Eric said.

“I lied,” Linderman replied.

Linderman walked outside. The pond on the front lawn was a breeding ground for mosquitoes, and he battled an angry swarm on his way to the pickup. Opening the driver’s door, he hopped in.

The pickup was old and showing its age. He popped the glove compartment and an assortment of papers and manuals fell into his hands. He sorted through them until he was holding a transparent plastic folder containing the registration. A piece of notepaper was tucked into the bottom of the folder, which he pulled out. Written across the top of the notepaper were the words Thunder’s Guys. Beneath that, the names of six men.

Alba Johnson

Claude Ricks

Ervin Gunnells

Humberto Lopez-Ortiz

Leon Kradlak

Crutch

Linderman needed to check the names, but didn’t want to type all those letters on his Iphone’s tiny keyboard. He went to the van and retrieved his laptop from the floor of the passenger seat and powered it up. Soon he was on the FBI’s web site. Using the search engine in the criminal record history information section, he pulled up the criminal file of each name on the list, and read through them.

The first five names were of prominent drug dealers. Alba Johnson and Claude Ricks had worked for the South American drug cartels and run major cocaine operations out of Miami; Ervin Gunnells had sold heroin and speed in the Tampa Bay area; Humbero Lopez-Ortiz had run a major ecstasy business in the Ocala, while Willie Kradlak had been a drug kingpin in Pensacola. This made sense. By having access to a cell phone, these men could talk to their partners on the outside, and continue to run their operations while serving out their sentences.

That left the sixth name on the list, Crutch. The name was not on the FBI’s data base. Nor did it appear when Linderman searched the “nickname” section of the site, which contained the various aliases and nicknames used by different criminals. Crutch was a mystery man.

Linderman weighed what to do. He could press Eric, but he had a feeling that Eric was not going to play ball anymore, especially since he’d already caught him in a lie. His other alternative was to call the warden at Starke Prison. As an FBI agent, he could call a federal prison at any time, and be given full access to any information that he requested.

He got the prison’s number from information, and punched it into his cell phone. An operator answered. He identified himself, and asked for the warden.

“One moment, sir,” the operator said.

He was put on hold. The mosquitoes had invaded the van and were circling for the kill. He glanced in the mirror, and saw one attached to his forehead. He squashed it with the palm of his hand, leaving a blood stain on his skin.

“Warden Jenkin’s office. This is Carol,” a secretary answered.

Linderman identified himself and asked to speak to the warden.

“Warden Jenkins is currently in a meeting, and asked not to be disturbed. May I tell him what this is about?”

“I’m calling about an inmate who may be involved in the abduction of a teenage boy in Broward County,” he said.

“An inmate in Starke?”

“That’s correct.”

“Please hold on.”

As Linderman waited, he stared at Eric Drake’s list of names. He felt certain that Crutch was the man he was looking for. Mr. Clean was a serial killer, and there was no reason for him to be talking to the other five men – all drug dealers – on the list. By process of elimination, that left Crutch.

“This is Warden Jenkins,” a man with a booming voice announced.

“Special Agent Ken Linderman, FBI. I need your help, warden. A name has come up in connection with an abduction, and we think this person is an inmate in your prison.”

“How can that be?” Jenkins asked.

“It appears this inmate has had access to a cell phone, and was talking to his accomplice on the outside.”

“How did he get a cell phone?”

“One of your guards has been bringing cell phones into the prison, and giving them to an inmate named Thunder Martinez, who was passing them out.”

“A guard? Which one?”

“His name is Eric Drake.”

Warden Jenkins delivered a stream of obscenities into the phone.

“Drake brought six cell phones into the prison,” Linderman went on. “Five of the inmates who received the phones have been identified as drug dealers. We haven’t been able to identify the sixth man yet. We have a name, but think it’s a nickname.”

“What is it?”

“Crutch.”

“Crutch? You mean Jason Crutchfield?”

“Perhaps. Is he an inmate?”

“Yes, he is, but I find it hard to believe that he’d be involved in your case. Crutch is a model prisoner, and is coming up for parole in January. He does data processing in our records department, and has never caused any problems. Why, I just saw him an hour ago. We had a nice chat about the weather.”

“Could it possibly be someone else?” Linderman asked.

“Perhaps. We have fourteen hundred inmates.”

“Would you mind checking?”

“What exactly am I looking for?”

“Anyone with the word Crutch in their name.”

“This could take a while. We’re not totally computerized.”

“How about if I call you back in an hour?”

“Very well,” the warden said.

Linderman ended the call and got back on the Internet. Warden Jenkin’s reluctance to accept that Jason Crutchfield might be involved in wrongdoing was bothersome, especially considering the source of the information.

He returned to the FBI’s web site and pulled up Crutchfield’s criminal record. Jason Richard Crutchfield had been arrested in Melbourne, Florida in 1999 for the kidnaping and rape of a woman named Lucille Moore. His mug shot showed a diminutive man with glasses perched on the end of his nose, thinning hair worn in a feeble comb over, and feral-like features too small for his face. His head was tilted sideways, his eyes staring at the camera with distrust. The report was long and meticulously detailed, and Linderman read each word feeling like he’d stumbled upon a dark and terrible secret.

Chapter 12

There are monsters, and there are monsters.

On a drizzly October morning in 1999, a thirty-three-year-old woman named Lucille Moore crawled naked down the sidewalk inside an upscale housing development in the town of Melbourne, Florida. Handcuffed and weakened by a severe loss of blood, Moore waved to passing cars until a good Samaritan came to her aid.

“Please don’t take me back to that house.” Moore pointed to a sprawling property at the end of the street with beautiful landscaping and a large swimming pool. Her rescuer wrote down the address and drove Moore to the hospital.

At the hospital, an emergency room doctor spotted bite marks on the side of Moore’s neck, and ran a series of tests that showed half the blood was gone from her body. No one at the hospital had ever seen anything like it before.

As Moore recovered, she told the police about the polite little man with the plaid sports jacket and red bow tie who’d offered her a ride home from a bar one night. Once in the car, the man had thrown a nylon rope around her neck, and strangled her unconscious.

Moore had awakened to find herself handcuffed to a shower, her kidnapper standing naked beside her. A video camera was set up, along with bright lights. With the camera rolling, her captor had raped her, then bitten her on the neck, and sucked down several pints of blood. Finished, he’d told her how delicious the blood had tasted.

Several hours hour later, the bizarre ritual had been repeated. Growing weak, Moore had realized that if she didn’t do something, she would die. Her captor had left the bathroom with the promise to be back soon. With the last of her strength, she’d ripped the showerhead out of the wall, and escaped through a window.

Moore’s abductor was soon identified by the police. Jason Crutchfield, age thirty-two, an MIT grad who worked as a computer engineer for a local NASA contractor. No criminal record, although he’d been a suspect in his college girlfriend’s slaying in Massachusetts a decade earlier, but never formally charged.

A team of policemen were sent to Crutchfield’s house armed with a search warrant. Crutchfield had greeted them at the front door wearing a satin smoking jacket and holding a pipe. When confronted, he’d claimed that he’d paid Moore for sex, and that nothing unusual had happened. He’d continued to embellish his story, and displayed all the classic signs of a sociopath.

Crutchfield was arrested, and a number of items of interest were seized from his house, including a video camera, a collection of S &M video tapes, and a stack of women’s necklaces hanging from a tie rack in his closet.

Crutchfield had refused to cut a deal with the prosecutor, and his case had gone to trial. He’d taken the witness stand in his own defense, and presented himself to the jury as a mild-mannered, soft-spoken man who listened to baseball games while tinkering with electronic gadgets in his basement. He’d stuck to his story about Moore being a prostitute, and claimed that Moore had told him she often sold her blood to raise cash.

To counter Crutchfield’s testimony, the prosecution had called Linderman’s mentor, FBI profiler Robert Kessler, as an expert witness. Kessler had worked on several cases involving human vampires, and was considered an expert on the subject.

Kessler had presented a different side to Crutchfield. He’d told the jury that the extreme physical and mental injury to Moore showed that Crutchfield was a sadist, while the presence of a video camera in the bathroom said the crime was premeditated. The manner in which Crutchfield had bitten Moore and extracted her blood indicated that he’d done this before, and the presence of the necklaces indicated there were many other victims. Clearly, Jason Crutchfield was a danger to society, and needed to be put away.

Kessler had made a strong argument for sentencing that exceeded the guidelines mandated by the court. The jury had agreed with Kessler, and had sentenced Crutchfield to fifteen years in prison, with a chance for parole in ten.

By the time Linderman had finished reading the record, the mosquitoes had returned, and he spent a minute swatting them into oblivion.

He knew that Jason Crutchfield was the person he was looking for. Crutchfield was a sociopath, just as Mr. Clean was a sociopath. The only people sociopaths trusted were each other. They were talking to each other, and he needed to find out why.

He decided to call Bob Kessler, and see what other insights he might have on Crutchfield. He pulled up Kessler’s number from his cell phone’s address book, and heard the call go through. Kessler answered sounding out of breath.

“Hope I’m not getting you at a bad time,” Linderman said.

“Not at all, Ken. I was out on the lawn practicing my golf swing.”

“How’s retirement treating you?”

“It’s great until I run out of golf courses to play.”

“I need to pick your brain for a few minutes.”

“Sure.”

“Tell me about Jason Crutchfield. His name has come up in another case, and I wanted to hear your feelings before I questioned him.”

“You’re going to interview Crutchfield in prison?”

“That was the plan, yes.”

“Jason Crutchfield is the prince of darkness. Take my advice, and tell him as little as possible about yourself when you interview him. Otherwise, you’ll start getting postcards from him, like my family did.”

“He contacted you?”

“Yes. Right after I testified against him at his trial. He somehow got my home address, and my children’s addresses as well. For several years he sent us hand-made cards during the holidays. They were sick.”

“Were you aware he was coming up for parole next year?”

“What? Who told you that?”

“The warden at Starke Prison. He made Crutchfield out to be a model prisoner, and said he was coming up for parole. It sounds like they’re buddies.”

“Did the warden bother to read the report I sent him?”

“I don’t know, Bob – what did it say?”

“It said that Jason Crutchfield was one of the most dangerous serial killers I’ve ever encountered,” Kessler said. “While I was on the witness stand at his trial, Crutchfield kept looking at me and grinning. I’ve seen that look before. It was like a cat that’s just eaten a canary. It told me that he’d committed crimes more heinous than those he was being tried for, and enjoyed that I didn’t know what they were.”

“What did you do?”

“I started digging. Crutchfield was a suspect in his college girlfriend’s slaying ten years earlier, so I used that as my starting point. I contacted the cops in the town where he lived while he was in college, and asked if they’d had any unsolved homicides around that time. Sure enough, they had. The bodies of four naked young women had been found in a remote wooded area, all of them having been raped and murdered. Unfortunately, there was no physical evidence linking them to Crutchfield.

“Right after he graduated from college, Crutchfield took a job in Raleigh, North Carolina programming computers. I contacted the Raleigh police, and sure enough, the bodies of four women were found in the woods during the time he lived there. The condition of the victims’ bodies were identical to those in Pittsburgh.

“Crutchfield lived in three more cities before eventually settling in Melbourne. I contacted the police in every city, and each time, I scored a hit.”

“How many victims did you find?” Linderman asked.

“Twenty-four. There were four in each city, all women. He was a regular killing machine. On top of that, there’s evidence suggesting he might have done away with his family when he was younger.”

“What happened to his family?”

“I don’t know. They just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Why wasn’t any of this in his record?”

“Because the bureau won’t let us put things on the record without proof. I sent a report to the warden at Starke, and told him what I’d found. I also offered to speak in front of the parole board when Crutchfield became eligible. It was all I could do.”

“Did the warden ever contact you?”

“Never heard a peep.”

“I need for you to email me a copy of that report.”

“Of course. Not that it’s any of my business, but what is Crutchfield doing? I spent a lot of time studying this guy, and I’d like to know.”

“He’s in contact with a serial killer in Fort Lauderdale who’s abducting violent teenage boys, and murdering them.”

“A tag team?”

“Yes. We’re calling the other killer Mr. Clean. There’s a videotape of him killing the driver of a van and abducting his latest victim that I can send you.”

“I’d like that.”

The front door of the house opened, and Wood stepped out with a concerned look on his face. Linderman had been gone a while, and he waved to his counterpart. Wood returned the wave and went back inside.

“I’ve got to run,” Linderman said. “Thanks for your help. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“One more question,” Kessler said.

Linderman smiled into the cell. Bob Kessler was famous for asking one more question during investigations, his curiosity insatiable.

“Go ahead.”

“You said Mr. Clean was abducting and killing teenage boys. Crutchfield’s previous victims were all women. What do you think these guys are up to?”

The mosquitoes had returned and were attacking him with abandon. Linderman was sick of the blood on his hands from killing them, and climbed out of the van.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m going to find out.”

Chapter 13

Normally, Linderman would have enjoyed the scenery as he and Wood drove from Jacksonville to Starke Prison, the towering pine trees lining both sides of Highway 301 as beautiful as any he’d ever seen.

But sightseeing was not on today’s agenda. His conversation with Bob Kessler had turned his internal radar up a notch, and with each passing mile, his apprehension grew. Kessler had called Crutchfield the prince of darkness, and told Linderman to be careful. It didn’t matter that Crutchfield was incarcerated in a maximum security prison, or that he passed his days in a nine by twelve cell. Crutchfield was the personification of evil, and as every FBI profiler knew, evil knew no boundaries.

Wood wanted coffee, so they stopped in Starke. The main drag consisted of every fast-food joint you could name and a Baptist church the size of a Wal-Mart. They picked a mom-and-pop, and sat in a secluded booth.

“What do you know about Warden Jenkins?” Linderman asked.

“Jenkins came in on the coattails of a scandal,” Wood replied, blowing steam off his cup. “The last warden got preoccupied running a softball league inside the prison, and was blinded to the fact that the guards were having sex with the female inmates. The place was a regular Sodom and Gomorrah. The local newspaper found out, and blew the lid off of it.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About three years ago.”

“Did Jenkins bring in new people with him?”

“He turned the place upside down. Is that important?”

“Yes. Bob Kessler sent a report to the previous warden telling him that he’d linked twenty-four murders to Jason Crutchfield. I’m guessing that during the transition, Crutchfield used his job in the records department to make that report disappear. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts Jenkins never saw it.”

“So Jenkins has no idea who Crutch is.”

“That would be my guess.”

The journey to Starke Prison was one of straight lines. The two-lane highway leading to the prison was as straight as a shotgun blast, as was the walk from the visitor’s parking lot to the main reception area. The final walk to the red brick administration building was also straight, the rough concrete scraping the FBI agents’ shoes.

Jenkins greeted them with the respectful courtesy befitting federal agents. A pear-shaped Southerner with watery eyes and hair combed straight back, his rumpled white shirt hung off his body like a gunny sack; down its center ran a thin necktie.

Jenkins waved at two stiff-backed chairs in front of his desk. Linderman and Wood sat down and declined his offer of a cold drink.

“After our conversation, I figured you’d come, so I took it upon myself to cancel the prisoners’ yard time today,” Jenkins said. “Crutch is in his cell, as are the other inmates in his building. I was watching him on a surveillance camera when you gentlemen came in.”

“You have surveillance cameras in your cells?” Linderman asked.

“No, afraid we can’t afford that.” Jenkins turned the computer on his desk so the screen faced them. “But we do have cameras in the cellblocks which watch the common areas. The cameras lenses can be electronically shifted to stare into cells. It lets us spy on the inmates if needed.”

Linderman stared at the figure on the screen. Crutch sat on a cot with a pair of earphones on his head, his hands gliding through space like an orchestra leader, his fingers plucking each note out of the air without losing tempo. Linderman sometimes engaged in the same ritual when listening to music, and guessed Crutch was listening to Bach or Beethoven, the music beautiful beyond plight and time.

“Do all your inmates have private cells?” Linderman asked.

“No. The majority live in a barracks,” Jenkins replied. “Crutch asked to be put in a private. Claimed that being small put him at a disadvantage with the other inmates.”

“Is his cell regularly checked?” Wood asked.

“We have over fourteen hundred inmates in this facility. We don’t check cells unless the inmate is a problem.”

“So his cell hasn’t been recently checked,” Wood said.

“That is correct,” Jenkins said stiffly.

“Crutch was paying another inmates two hundred dollars a week to use a cell phone,” Linderman said. “How would he get his hands on that kind of money?”

“Someone probably sent it to him through the Inmate Trust Fund,” the warden replied. “Inmates are allowed to have up to five thousand dollars in their accounts.”

“Does anyone check where the money goes?” Wood asked.

“No.” The crossfire of questions was not to Jenkins’ liking, and he said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear what you think Crutch is doing. I realize that talking on a cell phone is against the rules, but the man isn’t a drug dealer, or involved in organized crime. What kind of crimes can he be committing?”

“Jason Crutchfield is a serial killer,” Linderman explained. “He’s communicating to another serial killer who abducted a teenage boy yesterday.”

The blood drained from Jenkins’ face and for a moment he said nothing.

“You’re absolutely positive about this,” the warden muttered.

The two FBI agents nodded stiffly.

“This is just incredible,” Jenkins said. “Just the other day, I saw Crutch in the chapel. He was in the front row, deep in prayer.”

Linderman wanted to ask Jenkins if he’d overheard who Crutch was praying to, but knew the remark would anger him.

“We need to see the records department where Crutch works,” Linderman said. “Once we’re done there, I want to search his cell.”

Jenkins rose from his chair.

“Follow me,” the warden said.

The basement of the administration building was cold and damp and accessed only by stairs. Jenkins unlocked the door to the records department by punching a five-digit code into the lock. The door swung in, and they entered.

The records department was a low-ceilinged room with beige filing cabinets lining the walls, and three stainless steel desks. Except for a large clock on the wall, the room was void of decoration.

Jenkins flipped on the overhead lights. They were florescent, and painful to the eyes. Linderman stared at the Dell computers sitting on each desk.

“Does Crutch have access to these computers?” Linderman asked.

“Yes, he does,” Jenkins said. “The department’s administrator is in the process of transferring all of the prison’s paper files into the prison’s computer’s data base. Crutch is one of our better data processors.”

“How often is he down here?” Linderman asked.

“Five days a week.”

“Did Crutch have Internet access?”

“No, of course not. Inmates are not allowed to use the Internet.”

“So his computer doesn’t have Internet access,” Wood said.

“That’s right. I just told you that.”

“Do any of the other computers have Internet access?” Linderman asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” the warden said.

“So there’s a chance that one of these other computers has Internet access, and Crutch might have gotten on the Internet by using it,” Wood chimed in.

“Perhaps,” Jenkins said, growing red in the face.

“Please turn the computers on so we can check,” Linderman said.

Jenkins powered up each of the computers. It was obvious Jenkins didn’t like to have his authority challenged, only Linderman saw no other choice. The Internet was a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. In Nevada, a twisted killer incarcerated in Ely State Prison had managed to track the singer Madonna’s whereabouts by using Google and some old-fashioned ingenuity, and had made her life a living hell until the authorities had figured out what he was up to.

Linderman and Wood watched the computers come to life. One computer had a different screen than the other three, and required a password to enter.

“Whose computer is this?” Linderman asked.

“That belongs to Alvin Hodges, the records department administrator,” Jenkins explained. “He’s off today. His wife is expecting their first child.”

“Do you know the password?” Linderman asked.

“I’m afraid only Alvin does.”

“I need you to call him and get it.”

“But why is that computer important?” Jenkins asked, growing frustrated. “Crutch doesn’t use it. His computer is on the other side of the room.”

“Look at how the desks are situated,” Linderman said. “Crutch can sit at his desk, and spy on Hodges while he’s working on his computer. Crutch may have seen Hodges type in his password. He might be getting on Hodges’ computer when he’s not here, and going onto the Internet.”

“Crutch is only allowed in the records room when Hodges is here,” the warden said. “He can’t get on Hodges’ computer, even if he wanted to.”

“What if Hodges goes to the bathroom, or leaves for a break?” Linderman asked. “That would give Crutch time. I need to get on this computer.”

The warden shook his head and muttered “Very well,” under his breath. He spent the next few minutes tracking down Hodges on the phone, and getting the password from him. Hanging up, he said, “The password is Colette. It was Hodges’ mother’s name.”

“Did his wife have her baby?” Linderman asked.

“Yes. A six pound little boy. They’re both doing fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Linderman sat at Hodges’ computer and entered the password into the box on the screen. A screen saver appeared filled with program icons. One was for Windows Internet Explorer. He clicked the mouse over it, and was taken to CNN.com. By clicking the mouse on the down arrow next to the web site’s domain name, a list of web sites recently visited on the computer appeared. The names for two sites appeared. The investment firm of Charles Schwab, and a Jacksonville-based bicycling club.

“Does Hodges like to ride bikes?” Linderman asked.

“It’s his passion,” the warden said.

“I think these two sites are ones he’s visiting,” Linderman said.

“So Crutch isn’t using Hodges’ computer,” the warden said.

“I didn’t say that. Crutch may be using the computer to access the Internet, and then erasing the places where he visits from. It’s not that difficult.”

“Click on Favorites,” Wood suggested. “Maybe Crutch is storing things in there without Hodges knowing.”

Linderman clicked on the Favorite tab. Hodges should have routinely checked his computer to make sure no inmates were using it. Only Crutch had convinced Hodges that he was trustworthy, and Hodges had probably never bothered.

A dozen domain names appeared on the screen. Linderman began to individually check each site. The first five were hardcore pornography, and included bondage and S &M. They were followed by sites called orgish, and rotten.com, which featured videos of death and human disaster, with an emphasis on body parts.

“God Almighty,” Jenkins said under his breath.

The next two sites were fan sites devoted to serial killers. Then came the law enforcement web sites, including the Broward Sheriff’s Department, the Miami-Dade County Police Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Florida branch of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. These were followed by a site devoted to exposing the torture techniques used on terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

It all spelled Crutch. Each site was another portal into his sick psyche. But it was the last site that made Linderman sit up straight in his chair.

“Christ Almighty,” Linderman said under his breath.

The last site was the FBI’s criminal data base, the very same site he’d visited that morning. The fact that it took a password to gain access didn’t matter. Crutch was a computer expert, and had probably already hacked it.

“We’ll need for a forensics tech to take this computer apart, and see what other gems we can find,” Linderman said.

“I’ll call over to my office, and get one of our agents on it,” Wood said.

Linderman glanced at Jenkins. The warden’s color had not improved, and he looked like he might get sick.

“I want to see his cell,” Linderman said.

Chapter 14

Linderman explained to Jenkins how he wanted the search done. He did not want Crutch to know that the FBI was looking at his things. Better for him to think that the search was part of something larger taking place inside the prison.

“We can do a weapons search inside his cellblock,” the warden suggested. “Those are not uncommon, and every cell gets checked.”

“Do you ever take things from the cells during these checks?”

“Sometimes.”

“So Crutch won’t be suspicious if we took something from his cell.”

“No, but I’d suggest you also take items from other inmates’ cells,” the warden said. “You know how these guys talk.”

“Where will Crutch be during the search?”

“We’ll put him and the other inmates from his building into the cafeteria.”

“I don’t want Crutch or any other inmate to see us.”

“I can arrange that.”

“Good. Let’s get it started.”

Linderman and Wood went to the parking lot and retrieved a Canon camera with a zoom lens from the equipment locker in the trunk of Woods’ car. When they returned to Jenkins’ office, the warden had already started the process of moving the inmates from Crutch’s building to the cafeteria on the other side of the prison.

Linderman went to the window and parted the blinds with his finger. A few hundred yards away, a line of inmates were walking down a wide concrete walkway. He tried to find Jason Crutchfield in the line.

“Give me your camera,” he said to Wood.

Wood passed him the camera. Linderman extended the zoom and had another look. He found Crutch near the back of the line. Their suspect was small in stature, with thinning, neatly parted hair. He wore wide-rimmed glasses which sat perched on the end of his nose like a librarian’s. His orange jumpsuit was spotless, and without creases. He looked about as threatening as an accountant.

Lowering the camera, Linderman glanced at the warden. Jenkins had come in on the coattails of a scandal, and was about to become part of another.

“Ready when you are,” Linderman said.

The three men crossed the prison grounds in one hundred degree heat. There was no breeze, the air dead and still. The prison had no tall buildings that offered an escape into the cool shade. Soon they were dripping sweat.

Two uniformed guards met them at the front door to Crutch’s building.

“Take us to Crutch’s cell,” Jenkins told them.

The guards walked them down a short hallway to an electronically operated door, which had been left open. The door led to a large cellblock.

“Which cell is Crutch’s?” Jenkins asked.

“Last cell on the left,” one of the guards replied.

“Is it open?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stay here. Both of you,” Jenkins said.

The guards took their positions outside the cellblock. Linderman entered first. The odor inside the cellblock hit him hard. Shit, piss, desperation, and fear, a combination of odors that no room deodorizer could erase.

“God, is that foul,” Wood said.

Crutch’s cell was at the end of the block. Linderman wondered if corner cells in prison were the same status symbols as corner offices in the outside world. He stopped at the cell door. Small and tidy, the cell contained cardboard shelving units lined with paperback books, music CDs, and an assortment of knick-knacks, including packs of gum, a deck of playing cards, and a stack of index cards wrapped with a rubber band. He removed a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and fitted them on.

“I’ll search, you shoot,” Linderman said.

“Got it,” Wood replied.

Linderman started by taking the sheets off the bed, and checking the mattress and box spring for hidden pockets. They were both clean, and he remade the bed so it looked just like before. Then, he took the index cards off the shelf, removed the rubber band, and dealt them individually onto the bed. Each card was covered in a tiny scribble of writing. He stood back, and let Wood photograph each card, making sure that his counterpart shot them in the same order they’d occupied in the stack.

Next were the paperbacks. Linderman leafed through them to be sure they didn’t contain hollowed out compartments, then laid them out to be photographed. Their subjects ranged from true crime books by Ann Rule, to criminal psychology, to a short story collection by Stephen King entitled Different Seasons. One of the stories, Apt Pupil, had been underlined in several different places.

Then came the CDs. His earlier hunch had been correct: Crutch favored classical music. His shelves were filled with piano works by Bach and Beethoven, sprinkled with early Herbie Hancock. Linderman opened each CD pocket to check on its contents. Satisfied, he laid them on the bed to be photographed.

The last items were the knick-knacks. A tin can filled with buttons, some yarn, a book of stamps, several unused envelopes, and the playing cards. They were not the type of items that typically held clues, but he laid them out anyway.

“What are those?” Wood asked, pointing at the cards.

“Playing cards,” Linderman replied.

“They look like a pack of cigarettes. Take them out of the box. I don’t want to be confused later when I look at the photos.”

Linderman took the cards out of the box and fanned them on the bed. They were dog-eared and worn. Their back design showed a drawing of the state of Florida with a gold shield superimposed over the state. Printed in bold letters inside the shield were the words Florida Association of Crime Stoppers. Below that, a quote from Voltaire:

“To the living we owe respect; to the dead we owe the truth.”

The truth. Sometimes it was hard to find the truth. Linderman had seen these cards before. Printed on their faces were photographs of fifty-two people who’d been murdered or had gone missing in Florida. Each card contained a brief bio of the victim, along with a toll-free phone number to call. The cards were distributed to Florida’s prison population in the hope they might lead to tips or information in cracking the cases. He knew about the cards because Danni’s case was featured on one. Danni’s card was the Queen of Diamonds, which she would have liked. Beneath her photograph were the words 18 Year Old White Female followed by a sixty-five word description of how she’d disappeared while jogging at the University of Miami.

“All done,” Wood said.

Linderman scooped up the cards and found himself staring at the dead and missing. In the margins of each card Crutch had written cryptic notes in pencil, sometimes several sentences long. The printing was tiny and needed magnification.

“Find something?” Jenkins asked, standing outside the cell.

“There’s writing on these playing cards,” Linderman explained. “I want to keep them, if that’s all right.”

“Take whatever you want. Just make sure you take things from the other cells as well.”

Linderman slipped the deck into his pocket. He supposed he should have leveled with Jenkins, and told him about Danni’s card being in the deck, and how he wanted to see what Crutch had written in the margins. But he decided against it. He’d stopped believing that anyone truly cared about what had happened to his daughter except he, his wife, and a handful of his friends. So he rarely talked about it, and never with strangers.

Linderman grabbed a handful of items from other cells. Wood met him in the center of the cellblock when he was finished.

“All done?” Linderman asked.

“All done,” Wood said.

Chapter 15

“Having a little cougar-time?” a voice asked.

Vick turned away from her computer. DuCharme stood in the doorway to her temporary office at police headquarters, holding two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries, his body reeking of cheap aftershave.

“Excuse me?” she replied.

DuCharme bit his lower lip. As opening lines went, it was a real stinker.

“You’ve never heard of cougar-time?” the detective asked.

“Afraid not.”

“It’s a popular expression with the kids.”

“That’s nice.”

She went back to her computer. The police department’s server had been down, and her web site had just gone live. She was monitoring the postings on the site’s blog, hoping Mr. Clean took the bait. There was technology which would have enabled her to read the site’s blog on her BlackBerry, only no one in the building knew how to use it.

“Those coffees must be hot,” she said.

“You bet they’re hot. They’re burning my fingers.”

“Put them on the desk and have a seat.”

DuCharme put the food on the desk. He grabbed a chair and sat so their legs were nearly touching. Shredding the bag, he removed two huge Danish pastries dripping with sweet cheese, and offered Vick one.

“No thanks,” Vick said.

“Aw, come on. They’re really good.”

“I was raised never to eat anything bigger than my head.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Roger, I’m sure.”

DuCharme inhaled the first Danish as if it were his last meal, gulped down his coffee, then attacked the second with the same gusto. The crescendo was a deep belch which he smothered with his fist.

“You’ve piqued my curiosity,” she said. “What’s cougar-time?”

“It’s when older women pursue younger men,” DuCharme said, licking the sugar off his fingers.

“And why would that pertain to me?”

He pointed at the photographs of Mr. Clean’s three victims lying on the desk. “Those are three good-looking boys,” he said.

“Those are our victims. In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Clean is picking good-looking teenage boys to kidnap and kill. I was studying them.”

“I thought Mr. Clean was picking them because they were punks.”

“Punks?”

“Yeah. You know, trash.”

“Why do you call them that? Because they’ve killed?”

“Damn straight.”

“They’re still victims.”

“Society’s better off with them gone, you ask me.”

No one asked you, Vick nearly said. She stifled the urge to blow him off, and tried a more tactful approach. “Society treats young people who kill differently than adults. Young people, especially teenage boys, often act impulsively, and don’t fully comprehend the consequences of what they’re doing.”

“What… we should let them skate?”

“No, just give them another chance.”

“Why do that?”

“So they can be rehabilitated.”

DuCharme pointed at Wayne Ladd’s photo. “That boy stuck a bayonet through his mother’s boyfriend’s heart. He got right in his victim’s face, and looked him in the eye when he killed him. There’s no changing punks like that.”

Vick wanted the conversation to end. A new posting had appeared on the web site’s blog. Reading it, the skin on her scalp turned warm and prickly.

The police are never going to catch this guy because the police don’t know what they’re doing. They’re fucking assholes. They look at things, and only see what they want to see. How can people that fucking stupid expect to solve a crime. Answer: THEY CAN’T!

Someone with real anger toward the police had written this. The claim that the police would never catch the killer was also troubling. Vick typed a command into her computer that allowed her to access the filter on the site. The author’s IP address appeared on her screen, along with the physical address of the author’s computer. The posting had been made from a computer terminal at the Broward County main library.

Vick phoned the library and spoke to the sheriff’s deputy in charge of security. She asked the deputy how many cops were on duty.

“I’ve got five officers in the building,” the deputy said.

“Get them together, and go to where the computer terminals are located,” Vick said. “Have your officers hold whoever’s sitting at those computers. Our suspect is a large Cuban male between thirty-five and fifty years of age. He’s armed and extremely dangerous. I’ll be right there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said.

Vick hung up and grabbed her purse off the back of her chair. She was halfway out the door when she spotted DuCharme frantically punching a number into his cell phone. She paid it no heed, and hurried down the hallway toward the elevators.

The Broward County library was an imposing six-story structure on the corner of Andrews Avenue and SW 6th Street in downtown Fort Lauderdale. A covered walkway protruding from the building’s second floor led to an elevated parking garage across the street, which also serviced the nearby courthouse. Vick had planned to park in the garage and use the walkway, only there was a problem. The front of the library was jammed with police cars, both marked and unmarked. Unable to maneuver around them, she put her FBI decal on the dash, and parked in a bus zone. She turned to DuCharme, who sat in the passenger seat.

“Is this your doing?” she asked angrily.

“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” the detective said.

“What if Mr. Clean was listening to the police patrol car conversations on a scanner, and heard your distress call go out? You didn’t say our suspect was a serial killer, did you?”

“I may have…”

“You idiot.”

Vick jumped out of the car and slammed the door. She ran up the steps while pinning her FBI badge to her jacket lapel. The library’s head of security greeted her at the front door. His name was Deputy Murphy, and he had snow white hair and the weary gloss of an older cop. She waited until they were inside an elevator before speaking.

“Tell me what you’ve got,” Vick said.

“We detained four people who were on the library computers using the Internet,” Murphy said. “I spoke to the librarian who monitors the computer area, and she said they were the only patrons on the computers at the time you called.”

“Describe them.”

“Suspect number one is a retired postman in his late-seventies. Number two is an overweight white male in his late teens. Number three, an expectant housewife. Number four, a smart-mouthed teenage girl.”

None of them matched Mr. Clean’s profile. Yet one of them had written the angry post on the web site. Vick needed to find out why. The door parted with a hiss and they got out on the sixth floor.

“Is the teenage girl giving you a lot of crap?” Vick asked.

“She won’t shut up.”

“Cursing?”

“Quite a bit. It took me by surprise. She’s clearly upset about something.”

“That’s the one I’m looking for. Let’s put her in a room by herself. I’m going to grill her.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

DuCharme appeared as Vick was preparing to question suspect number four. He was out of breath, and had been searching the building for her. He tried to apologize, and Vick cut him off at the knees.

“You get in trouble every time you open your mouth,” Vick said.

“Look, I’m really…”

“Shut up.”

He nodded compliance. Vick grabbed the doorknob and twisted it. The room was windowless, with a round conference table and eight chairs. Plastered on the walls were posters of Dr. Seuss characters promoting National Reading month. A sullen teenage girl sat in a chair at the end of the table. Deputy Murphy stood behind her, his arms crossed.

Vick cleared her throat as she entered the conference room. She heard DuCharme shut the door behind her. That made him good for something.

“Hello,” Vick said. “My name is Special Agent Vick, and I’m with the FBI.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open and panic lit up her eyes. She was the complete package. Luscious face, full bosom, hypnotic eyes, small waist. The kind of girl that boys dreamed about late at night, and fought over in schoolyards. Her clothes were suggestive, and showed cleavage and plenty of well-tanned skin.

“What’s your name?” Vick asked.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” the girl shot back.

Vick came around the desk so fast that the girl pulled back in her chair.

“Answer the question,” Vick said.

“But I haven’t,” the girl said defensively.

“Not cooperating with an FBI agent is a crime, young lady. How would you like to go down to police headquarters with me?”

The girl’s eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head.

“You went onto a police website this morning, and posted some unpleasant things on a blog,” Vick said. “I want to know why. Let’s start by you telling me your name.”

“Amber Spears.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Do you have any ID?”

“No.”

Vick removed a pen and notepad from her purse and placed them on the table. “I want you to write down your name, your address, your home phone number, and both your parents names. While we’re talking, I’m going to have my partner check you out. If I find you’re lying to me, I’ll run you in.”

Amber wrote down her personal information on the notepad. Vick tore off the sheet and crossed the room to where DuCharme slouched against the wall.

“Make yourself useful, and check this out,” Vick said under her breath.

DuCharme left. Vick grabbed a chair and sat facing Amber. The girl’s nostrils were flared, her breathing accelerated. Vick touched her wrist, and Amber lifted her eyes from the floor. Their gazes locked.

“Why did you post that blog? Do you know something about the case?”

“Wayne Ladd’s my boyfriend,” Amber said. “I didn’t like the things the police said about him on their web site. They made Wayne out to be a monster. He never hurt anybody in his life.”

“Wayne Ladd killed his mother’s boyfriend.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Did Wayne tell you that?”

Amber let out a sniffle and nodded. She was wearing cheap mascara, and her tears were giving her racoon eyes. Vick took a Kleenex from her purse and gave it to her. Had Amber not been in love, Vick would have told her about the police report that said Wayne had been covered in her mother’s boyfriend’s blood when the police had arrived at the scene, the bayonet still clutched in his hand. Or about the confession he’d made with a lawyer present. Vick would have told her those things, only love blinded people to the truth, and let them see only the things they wished to see.

The door to the conference room opened, and DuCharme stuck his head in.

“She checks out,” he said.

Vick rose from her chair. She’d just raced across town to confront a pissed-off teenager. It angered her as much as DuCharme’s blasting it over the airwaves. She started to leave, and Amber touched her sleeve.

“Wayne didn’t do it,” Amber said.

Vick had had enough of Amber’s denials.

“Then why did he confess?” Vick asked.

“He was protecting her.”

“Who?”

“His mother.”

“You’re saying that Wayne confessed to protect his mother.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes. I know it’s true.”

“How do you know it’s true?”

“Because Wayne wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’s gentle and kind and likes to write songs on the guitar. He’s the sweetest boy in my school. That’s why I love him.”

Vick had read Wayne Ladd’s file. It had been clean except for the boyfriend’s killing. That had bothered her. Boys who killed were usually out of control.

“He’s not a monster,” Amber whispered.

The tears had dried on Amber’s cheeks. In her beautiful eyes was a look of a much older person, of someone with wisdom beyond her years. It took Vick by surprise, then the slow realization of the situation took hold.

Amber was telling the truth.

Chapter 16

Binoculars in hand, Renaldo stood on the roof of the elevated parking garage across from the library. Six cruisers and two unmarked Crown Vic sedans were parked by the entrance, the officers standing on the sidewalk with their chests puffed out.

He knew why the police were here. He’d heard the distress call over his scanner. A serial killer named Mr. Clean was inside the library, and every cruiser in the area had been instructed to go there.

He’d never heard of Mr. Clean. Was there another serial killer in Fort Lauderdale that he didn’t know about? Curious, he’d decided to find out.

Going to the computer in his study, he’d typed Mr. Clean into the Yahoo search engine. Yahoo had taken him to the web site of a company that sold household cleaning products. Mr. Clean was the company mascot, a muscle-bound cartoon character dressed in white. The cartoon looked like a cross between a black man and a Latino, or what some called a mulatto.

Then it had hit him. He was Mr. Clean.

It had scared him. Someone must have seen him abduct Wayne Ladd. The police had done up a profile, and given him a cute nickname. Now, they were hunting for him. This was bad.

Then, he’d had a strange thought. If he was Mr. Clean, who was the person inside the library? He’d decided he’d better find out.

As he’d started to leave his house, he’d realized that Wayne needed to be fed. As part of the Program, he cooked three delicious meals a day for Wayne, and fed him tasty snacks whenever the boy was hungry. Wayne needed to be happy, and keeping his stomach full was a good way to do that. He’d prepared a thick roast beef sandwich, which he’d taken to Wayne’s room. He’d untied Wayne, and watched him wolf down the food.

“I have to go out for a little while,” Renaldo had said. “I will make you a wonderful dinner when I return.”

“Are you going to leave me tied to the chair?” Wayne had asked.

Renaldo had nodded solemnly.

“What about the movies? Can’t you show me something else?”

The TV was showing a gang rape to the accompaniment of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

“What would you like to see?”

“I don’t know – something normal for a change.”

Renaldo did not know what normal was. He’d tied Wayne back to the chair and left the house.

A movement in front of the library caught his eye. Three people were coming down the front steps, the police letting them pass. Renaldo studied them through his binoculars, one at a time.

The first person was a soft-looking white man wearing a cheap brown suit. Pinned to his lapel was a policeman’s badge.

The second was a cute little blond wearing a dark pants suit. She appeared to be in charge. Another cop, he guessed.

The third was a sexy teenage girl.

The cute blond escorted the teenage girl to a police cruiser. The blond spoke a few words, and the teenager nodded solemnly. The teenager wasn’t wearing handcuffs, and didn’t appear to be in trouble.

Moments later, the cruiser drove away with the teenage girl.

Renaldo focused on the cute little blond. She got behind the wheel of a blue Audi that was parked illegally in a bus zone. A decal on the dash said FBI.

This was really bad.

He did not want to mess with the FBI. They were smarter than the police, and never quit. The FBI would put him back in a mental hospital, or in prison. They were the enemy.

He decided to leave.

“Hey – don’t I know you?” a raspy voice asked.

Renaldo shivered in the brutal summer heat. No one knew him. He did not have a single friend in the entire world. He turned to find an aging black man standing behind him. The old man’s clothes were odd – dark dress pants, a navy button-down shirt, white necktie, red suspenders, and a porkpie hat titled rakishly to one side. Hanging around his neck was a laminated badge with a blurry photograph.

“I don’t think so,” Renaldo said.

“I’ve seen you around town. You drive around at night, picking up hookers.”

He knows, Renaldo thought.

“We talked once. About three months ago, thereabouts,” the old man went on. “You were scouting for tail down by the bridge. I was there, and we struck up a conversation. You asked me about my clothes.”

Renaldo dug deep in his memory. The old man was a professional panhandler. His gimmick was to approach tourists on the street, and gave them a spiel about being in town for a Shriner’s convention, and losing his wallet. That was the reason behind the odd clothes and ID tag.

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” Renaldo bowed his head and attempted to walk around him.

“Why were you spying on the police?” the old man asked.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been watching you the whole time. Saw you pull into the garage, and followed you up here.”

Renaldo’s inner alarm went off. His first thought was to kill the old man, and throw him in the trunk of his car. He could dismember him in the bathtub at the house, and feed him to his neighbor’s dogs. They stayed out at night, and were always hungry.

He glanced over his shoulder. The police cars had vacated the library. It was doable. If he got a hand around the old man’s throat, no one would hear a thing.

He reined in the murderous impulse. He needed to be like the shark, and not draw attention to himself. Removing his wallet, he pulled out a crisp twenty dollar bill, and shoved it into the old man’s hands.

“What’s that for?” The old man sounded indignant.

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“That’s not enough to shut me up.”

Renaldo opened his billfold. He had eighty dollars.

“Take all of it,” Renaldo said.

“I want more.”

“That’s all I have.”

“You’ll pay, when you hear what I have to say.”

There was an expression for what the old man was trying to pull. It was called a shakedown. Renaldo closed his wallet and headed to his car on the other side of the roof, near the ramp. The old man fell in step behind him. Renaldo noted how he was keeping his distance, staying a few yards back. He knows everything.

“I’ve been watching you a long time,” the old man said. “You’re a bad one, you are. Trolling the streets at night, picking up hookers. You take them home and kill them, then dispose of their bodies. Tell me I’m right.”

Renaldo kept his eyes peeled to the ground and kept walking.

“You wear a uniform sometimes. What are you, a deliveryman?”

Renaldo kept walking.

“Or a fireman?”

Renaldo pulled his keys out of his pocket.

“I knew some of those girls,” the old man went on. “I kept telling the police they were disappearing, but they didn’t listen.”

Renaldo jammed his key into the driver’s door and opened his car. The heat bubble inside the vehicle swept over his body, and he staggered back.

“How many have you killed? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? I bet you don’t even know the number. Poor girls disappear, nobody gives a rat’s ass.”

Renaldo leaned against the car and tried to catch his breath. As strange as it sounded, he’d been raised Catholic, and believed in heaven and hell. He knew that someday he’d end up in burning in hell for all the killing he’d done. He wondered if this was a preview of eternal damnation.

“I have a bank account. I’ll give you what’s in it,” he managed to say.

“Now you’re talking, son. Give me the address, and I’ll meet you there.”

Renaldo told him the bank’s location. The old man headed for the stairwell. He had a spring to his step, and was already counting the money.

Renaldo watched him leave. The old man was a con man. He would come back in a few weeks, and shake him down again. Then he’d do it again. It was how these things played out. He would turn Renaldo’s life into a nightmare.

My life will be hell before I die, he thought.

A jetliner appeared in the cloudless sky. On an approach pattern for the airport, its engines drowned out all sound. It was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, and Renaldo drew his knife. The old man glanced over his shoulder as the shark descended upon him. “Please,” he begged.

He dragged the old man into a stairwell and slit his throat, the blood flowing down the stairs. Then he got a small saw he kept in his trunk for situations like this. He went to work on the old man, and cut him up. The pieces he wanted to keep, he wrapped in plastic, and put in his car. The rest he dragged to the other side of the parking garage, and propped up against the wall, using the old man’s porkpie hat to hide his missing head.

Renaldo appraised his handiwork. The old man looked like he was taking a siesta. The police would freak when they took the hat away, which was exactly what he wanted.

He decided to put a cherry atop his cake. From his car, he found a slip of paper and a ballpoint pen. On the slip he wrote the words Mr. Clean. He folded the slip into a neat square, and stuck the slip in the rim of the old man’s hat.

He drove to a 7/11 and locked himself in the restroom. He washed the blood off his hands and splashed cold water on his face. He felt tired. Taking another life no longer brought the same thrill it once did. It was more a matter of habit now. Like eating and sleeping and going to work.

He appraised his reflection in the mirror. His hair was flecked with gray, and his eyes, so pretty when he was young, had turned listless and old.

He bought a sixteen-ounce coffee, which he drank in his car. He thought about Wayne. The teenager was seventeen, the same age he’d been when he’d started killing prostitutes in Havana. Wayne’s whole life was spread out before him. It excited Renaldo to think about all the things Wayne might accomplish, if given the right start.

He drove back to the house, determined to give Wayne that chance.

Chapter 17

Nothing died on a computer.

Deep within every hard drive were trails of a computer’s activity. People who sent and received emails were especially vulnerable. Traces of emails remained on a computer long after the actual messages were erased. Few people knew how to clean away these traces, and hardly anyone ever did.

Then there was data. Every single document that was created by, or stored on a computer left a history, even if the document was erased from the file it had been created in, and from the computer’s recycle bin. That data was also there, waiting to be found.

Finally, there was metadata. Every document on a computer was loaded with hidden data. Who created the document, where it had been sent, all the changes and alterations that have been made to it, were all recorded like a giant footprint.

All of the information was there, and all of it could be found.

“So find it,” Linderman said.

The tech out of FBI’s Jacksonville office grinned. His name was Chip Williams, and he was old school, with a starched white shirt, a thin, perfectly knotted necktie, and a military-style buzz cut. Williams sat in front of Alvin Hodges’s computer in the prison’s records department, looking for traces of Crutch’s activity on the hard drive.

“This could take a while,” Williams said.

“Take as long as you want,” Linderman replied. “Our suspect isn’t going anywhere.”

Williams began by downloading a special software program into the computer. Then his fingers danced across the keyboard like a concert pianist. Within seconds, hundreds of domain names scrolled down the screen like movie credits.

“Looks like your suspect has been spending a lot of time surfing the Internet,” Williams said. “A lot of these domain names are law enforcement web sites. He would have needed a password to enter most of them.”

“He’s a computer expert. He could have hacked them.”

“Any idea what he was looking for?”

“No. Could he have been downloading information from these sites, and storing it in some secret area of the hard drive?”

“That’s not so easy, even for an expert.”

“He used to do work for NASA.”

“Well, then sure. No problem.”

“Search the hard drive as thoroughly as you can. I’m going upstairs to the warden’s office. Call me if you find anything interesting.”

“Will do,” Williams said.

Leaving the records department, Linderman leaned against the cool concrete wall in the hallway outside. He tried not to think about the deck of cold case playing cards in his pocket, or the scribbling he’d seen on Danni’s card. He reminded himself that he’d come to Starke Prison to find the man who’d abducted Wayne Ladd. That was his first priority. Everything else had to wait.

Only he couldn’t wait.

This was Danni.

In college he’d studied philosophy. One discussion had always stood out. A father takes his young daughter and her best friend to the beach. The two girls go swimming, and are pulled out by the tide. The father can only save one child from drowning. Which one does he save?

The answer was his daughter. The father could always forgive himself for letting another child drown, but he could never forgive himself for letting his daughter perish.

He took the deck out of his pocket and slipped the cards from the box. Finding Danni’s card, he held it up to the dim overhead light. Writing filled the margins, the letters so faint that he couldn’t make out what they said.

“Damn it,” he said.

He put the cards away. Scrutinizing Danni’s card would have to wait.

He took the stairs to the warden’s office.

He entered without knocking. Jenkins sat at his desk while Wood hovered beside him, both staring at Jenkin’s computer. Neither man lifted their gaze.

“Find something good?” Linderman asked.

“I’m not sure what we’ve found,” Wood said.

He came around the desk. On the screen was one of the index cards from Crutch’s cell. The handwriting had been blown up and was clearly legible. It was a psychological profile of Mr. Hyde, a serial killer who’d terrorized Seattle for over a decade.

Linderman had profiled Mr. Hyde at Quantico, and knew a great deal about him. Mr. Hyde was a pansexual, and would have sex with any object, man, woman or child. Crutch’s profile contained information he’d never seen before, including intimate details about Mr. Hyde’s abusive childhood, his early sexual experiences, an addiction to pornography and S &M, and the types of violent fantasies that plagued him. Several sentences were underlined, including Lived in attic as a boy and Does not know meaning of love.

“What did you find on the other index cards?” Linderman asked.

“There are fifteen index cards in all,” Wood said. “Each contains a detailed profile of a serial killer in the United States who’s still at large. There’s the Gray Man, the Denver Ripper, the Necktie Killer in Boston, and a dozen more.”

“How about Killer X in Fort Lauderdale?” Linderman asked.

“Here’s there, too.”

“Let me see the card.”

The index card containing Killer X’s profile appeared on Jenkin’s computer. It was as detailed as Mr. Hyde’s, and included facts about Killer X’s upbringing that had eluded law enforcement, including an addiction to bodybuilding and certain men’s grooming products. A line at the bottom of the card caught his eye.

Can’t get enough of his victims. Just like SOS. Should be easy to find.

“Jesus Christ,” Wood said. “He was trying to track these guys down, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, and he succeeded with Killer X,” Linderman said. “Let me ask you a question. Did you find any mention on the cards of Wayne Ladd?

“No,” Wood said.

“How about Robert Nardelli or Barry Reedy? They were the first two victims.”

“Nothing about them, either,” Wood said. “So far, we haven’t found any evidence linking Crutch to those crimes.”

Linderman went to the window and looked down onto the yard. He had traveled to the prison fully expecting to find evidence that would link Crutch to Mr. Clean, and his crimes. Without that proof, he couldn’t move the investigation forward.

In the distance, he saw the inmates returning to their cellblock. Crutch was in the same position in the rear of the line, chatting amicably with the guard. He still doesn’t know we’re here. It gave Linderman an idea, and he went back to the desk.

“I want to give Crutch a cell phone tonight,” he said.

“Why – so he can call this killer again?” Jenkins said.

“Yes. Crutch doesn’t know we’re on to him. That’s to our advantage. We’ll give him a slave phone, and monitor his calls.”

“A slave phone?”

“They’re cell phones equipped with special monitoring chips that are tracked using satellites,” Linderman explained. “It will tell us the phone number of anyone Crutch talks to, and let us eavesdrop on his conversations.”

“But how will you get the phone to him?” Jenkins asked. “You arrested Drake.”

“We’ll cut a deal with Drake, and get him to help us.”

“I’m not partial to giving out passes,” Jenkins said matter-of-factly. “Drake compromised the prison’s security. The son-of-a-bitch deserves to do time.”

“What’s he looking at – a couple of years in prison?” Linderman argued. “With a decent lawyer, he might end up doing a hundred and eighty days in county. He’s our link to Crutch. We need him on our side.”

Jenkins scratched his chin in thought. Linderman looked at Wood, and saw the director of the Jacksonville office dip his chin in agreement.

“What the hell,” Jenkins said. “Let’s do it.”

Wood called the jail in Jacksonville and spoke to the deputy in charge of booking new prisoners. He cupped his hand over the phone. “Drake’s lawyer showed up a half hour ago. They’re getting his name and number for me.”

“Good,” Linderman said.

Wood returned to his call. Linderman pulled Jenkins to the other side of the room, and dropped his voice. “I don’t want Crutch knowing we’ve been here. Can you keep him locked up without arousing any suspicions?”

“Sure,” Jenkins said. “I’ll keep everyone in his cellblock confined.”

“Perfect.”

Jenkins got on his phone, and made arrangements for the inmates in Crutch’s cellblock to remain in their cells for the rest of the day. Linderman felt his spirts rise. The investigation was moving ahead. Now it was a matter of putting a slave phone into Crutch’s hands, and waiting for him to make contact with Mr. Clean.

He excused himself, and left the room.

The bathroom was at the hallway’s end. Locking himself inside, he removed Danni’s card from the deck of cold case playing cards, and held it up to the harsh light above the sink. The tiny words written in the margin jumped to life.

One of Skell’s

He felt himself shudder. Simon Skell was a notorious serial killer who’d preyed on young women in South Florida before being killed in a manhunt. Linderman had long suspected Skell in his daughter’s abduction, only had never been able to make a link.

One of Skell’s

He fanned through the rest of the deck. There was writing in the margins of the other cards, which he held up to the light and read. On each unsolved case, Crutch had written the name of a killer. Like someone playing a game, Crutch had matched the killers to their crimes.

Next to many of the unsolved cases were questions marks. Linderman guessed these were cases where Crutch wasn’t sure, and had to guess.

He flipped back to Danni’s card. There was no question mark next to Skell’s name. It was a statement of fact.

One of Skell’s

He shuddered again.

Crutch knew what had happened to Danni.

Chapter 18

Crutch stiffened as the cell door closed behind him. A strange smell scented the air. Expensive aftershave, or perhaps cologne. Not something any of the bovine guards would wear. He’d had a visitor.

His eyes scanned the cell. Things had been touched, the bed remade. He went to the shelves and inventoried his personal items. His deck of cold case playing cards were missing. He stomped his feet and clenched his fists in anger. Those cards were special. He’d been able to match most of the crimes in the deck to specific killers, and make good guesses on the others. It had been fun, and helped pass the time.

The voice inside his head screamed.

He went to the cell door. Across the block, a three-hundred pound black inmate named Leon shot him the hundred yard stare. It was a look meant to inspire fear.

“Yo, peckerwood. Guards take anything from your cell?”

“They took my playing cards,” Crutch said.

“They took my tooth brush. How am I gonna brush my fucking teeth?”

“I’ve got a spare.”

“Give it to me.”

Leon was a bad ass, and treated Crutch like dirt. Leon believed the extent of Crutch’s crimes were a single charge of kidnaping and rape. In Leon’s eyes, that made Crutch a nothing, or what the black inmates called a peckerwood.

Crutch did not have a problem with that. He had not told Leon about the crimes he’d committed. Nor had he told any of the other inmates. Most of the inmates liked to brag about the bad things they’d done. Crutch had done the opposite.

Crutch had researched hundreds of serial killers during his time in Starke. He knew more about serial killers than anyone alive. When it came to being incarcerated, being a serial killer was no badge of honor. At best, the other inmates shunned you. At worst, they killed you.

Crutch tossed the spare toothbrush to Leon.

“Think they’re gonna let us exercise in the yard?” Leon asked. “I hate being cooped up in here.”

“Beats me,” Crutch said.

Leon put on his headphones. Soon he was riding a wave of rap music. Crutch cupped his hands over his mouth and called down the hall. A steel door slid back, and a pimply-faced guard named Mickey stuck his head in.

“What do you want?” Mickey asked.

“I need a favor,” Crutch replied.

Mickey lumbered into the cellblock. Only twenty-eight, he was so overweight that he had difficulty walking. He stopped at Crutch’s cell door, his body jiggling.

“What’s up little man?” Mickey asked.

“I want to know who searched my cell.”

“One of the guards searched your cell.”

“It wasn’t one of the guards. It was someone else.”

“That’s news to me.”

Everything’s news to you, Crutch nearly said.

“Can you ask around, and find out for me?”

“What’s it worth to you?”

Telling Mickey that he wanted something would only increase its eventual price.

“The usual.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Mickey left the cell, the steel door banging behind him. Crutch heard the static of a walkie-talkie as Mickey called around. Soon, Mickey was back at Crutch’s cell.

“Who did you piss off?” Mickey asked.

Crutch feigned innocence and shook his head.

“It was two FBI agents,” Mickey said solemnly. “The first was Special Agent Vaughn Wood. He’s the director of the FBI’s Jacksonville office.”

Crutch knew of Wood. He was low level, and not someone who worried him.

“Who was the second person?” Crutch asked.

“It’s gonna cost you extra.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so, little man.”

Crutch gripped the bars at chest height. Mickey was leaning close enough for him to grab him by the head and pull his face into the bars so he could sink his teeth into the carotid artery in his throat. One bite, and fat boy would be doing the death dance.

“How much?” Crutch asked.

“Double.”

Mickey grinned wickedly. The second name was much better than the first. That was why Mickey was putting him through the wringer.

Kill him, said the voice inside his head.

“You’ve got a deal,” Crutch said.

Mickey brought his face closer and dropped his voice. “The second guy in your cell was Special Agent Ken Linderman. He used to be a profiler at Quantico, now runs the CARD unit down in Miami, whatever that is. I hear he’s a big shot.”

Crutch released the bars and lowered his hands. Ken Linderman had helped capture half the serial killers in the country through his profiling. Now he was on a one-man crusade looking for his precious little daughter. Of all the FBI agents who could have searched his cell, Linderman was the most dangerous.

“I want the money by tomorrow,” Mickey said.

Kill him now, the voice said.

“Of course,” Crutch replied.

Mickey left, leaving Crutch with his dark thoughts.

Crutch knew how it worked with the FBI. They could enter any prison at any time, and start giving orders like they owned the place. If Linderman wanted to search his cell again, he would. Next time, Crutch might not be so lucky.

The surveillance camera in the hall was pointed away from his cell. He lifted up his cot, and unscrewed the right front leg. The people who ran the prison were cheap. When a bed broke, it was repaired in the machine shop instead of being replaced. He wasn’t the only inmate who’d paid to have a hollow leg put on his bed.

Two items fell out of the hollow leg into his hand. A long piece of steel with a sharpened point – what prisoners called a shiv – and a 16 gigabyte memory stick he’d found on the floor of the records department. No bigger than his thumb, the memory stick held more data than most PCs, and could be plugged into the department’s computers through their USB ports. Stored on the stick was a project which he called The Program. It was the most important thing he owned, and could not fall into the FBI’s hands.

He returned the shiv to its hiding place. Taking a pack of gum off the bookshelf, he carefully peeled away the plastic, and used it to wrap the memory stick.

The surveillance camera in the hall was still pointed the wrong way. He dropped his pants and sat on the toilet. Reaching between his legs, he stuck the memory stick up his rectum into his anal cavity. He didn’t imagine the FBI looking there.

He lay down on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. Several years of research had gone into the Program, and he likened it to doing a doctor’s thesis. It was his life work, and would live on long after he had perished.

It had all started one day in the mess hall. Another inmate, a professional jewel thief, had told him how he’d been “turned out’ by his father. Crutch had never heard the expression before, and asked what it meant.

“It’s how you get trained,” the jewel thief had explained. “An older guy takes you under his wing and teaches you the trade, then turns you out into the world.”

“Like an apprentice,” Crutch said.

“Exactly. You gotta have young people coming up.”

The jewel thief was right. Every trade needed new blood. But there was a problem in Crutch’s world. Law enforcement was becoming more adept at catching serial killers. Their ranks were thinning, one killer at a time.

He’d decided to change that.

With the memory stick, he’d downloaded hundreds of documents off the Internet, which he’d later studied when he was supposed to be data processing. Written by doctors and psychiatrists, the documents were about the minds of serial killers, and why they killed. He’d compared their findings to his own experiences, and the experiences of other serial killers whom he’d talked to in prison. Over time, he’d begun to see certain patterns and shared experiences. The fantasies that drove serial killers were different, yet originated from the same dark place in the soul. And those fantasies started young.

Crutch was an engineer by trade, and knew that his research was flawed. The pool he was drawing from was too small to be conclusive. He’d needed more information, only the Internet didn’t have it. He’d decided to hack the FBI’s web site.

The FBI had more information about serial killers than any other police agency in the world. Their site had hundreds of thousands of criminal case records and hundreds of lengthy reports. These were not clinical dissertations, but gritty accounts from agents assigned to fight monsters. Crutch had gotten his hands on the good stuff.

By combining the FBI’s information with his own research, he’d written a manual on how to turn out a serial killer. In the first chapter, he’d profiled the kind of teenage boys who were driven into violent fantasy lives. Teens who’d already committed violent acts – or taken a human life… were the best candidates.

Once the right teen was found, the boy needed to be kept isolated, and subjected to sensory deprivation. The tortures at Gitmo had proven that a person’s defenses could be quickly broken down. Bombarding the teen with pornographic films was one way to accomplish this; playing raucous music another.

The final phase of the Program was the most important. In it, the teen was made to perform a progression of violent acts while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, culminating in the murder of a young woman. This killing would be the teen’s defining moment, and determine whether he would graduate.

Crutch had planned to test The Program once he was paroled. But waiting had proven unbearable. He had to know if his thesis was right, so he’d found someone on the outside to help him.

According to the FBI’s web site, there were fifteen active serial killers in the country. Some were relatively new to the game, while others were old hands. The most intriguing was Killer X, who’d been hacking up prostitutes for twenty-five years. Killer X was getting on in years, and needed to pass the torch. He was the perfect person to test The Program.

The next step had been finding Killer X. That part had lasted many months. He had studied Killer X’s victims, and eventually seen a pattern that had eluded the FBI. That pattern had allowed him to identify the type of work Killer X did for a living. Renting a cell phone from one of the other inmates, he’d then tracked Killer X down.

Their first conversation had lasted several hours. Killer X had sounded tired of killing, yet had confessed that he did not know how to stop. Right then, Crutch had known that Killer X was the right person for the job.

He rose from his bed and went to the cell door. The surveillance camera was pointing at his cell now. It scared him, knowing how close he’d come to being caught. He needed Linderman gone so he could continue with his work.

Kill him, said the voice inside his head.

“I’m working on it,” he said aloud.

Chapter 19

Eric Drake looked like he’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. His right eye was swollen shut, his lips red and busted, and his nose resembled an overcooked blood sausage. The ice pack dripping down the side of his face only added to the gloom.

Linderman entered the interrogation room inside the Jacksonville Pretrial Detention Facility already knowing what had happened to Drake. Another inmate in the lockup had recognized Drake from Starke Prison, and decided to settle an old score. Drake had come out on the losing end of the exchange.

Drake’s lawyer sat beside him. His last name was Rucker, which Linderman thought he should change for obvious reasons. Rucker was shaped like a possum, and wore a cheap suit that did not fit him, and sported a haircut that resembled a bird’s nest. Those were not good signs in the criminal defense world.

Linderman closed the door and leaned against it. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, and gave Drake a soul-searching stare.

“I want to offer you a deal,” the FBI agent said.

“Can you believe the nerve of this guy?” Drake muttered to his attorney.

“Hear him out,” Rucker said.

“This guy shot my brother to death this morning. Then he fucking lied to me, and said my brother had killed an FBI agent. Now he wants to cut me a deal.”

“Hear him out,” Rucker repeated.

“Why the hell should I?”

“He’s holding all the cards, Eric, and you’re holding none. As your attorney, I’d encourage you to listen to whatever he has to say.”

“You’re not my attorney, Fred, you’re my brother-in-law.”

“Just shut up and listen to him, Eric. Please. It’s for your own good.”

Drake said something unintelligible under his breath. The ice pack was leaking down the side of his face and soaking the collar of his orange jumpsuit. He looked more than a little bit afraid. Justice had a way of catching up to people, and paying them back when they were least expecting it. It was payback time for Drake.

“What’s your deal?” Drake asked.

“I want you to go back to the prison tonight, and give your contact a bag of cell phones that the FBI will supply you,” Linderman said.

“What do I get in return?”

“Play ball, and I’ll ask the prosecutor to drop all charges against you.”

“You’re yanking my chain.”

“No, I’m not.”

Rucker grabbed his client’s biceps and gave it a squeeze.

“Take it,” the attorney whispered.

“I gotta think about this,” Drake whispered back.

“Take it, before he changes his mind.”

“Is this a sting?” Drake asked Linderman.

“Yes, Eric, it’s a sting.”

“Who are you setting up?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Drake eyelids flickered. Thinking hard about what he was getting himself into, and the consequences once it played out.

“I want a new identity and to be put in witness protection,” Drake blurted out.

“Eric…” the attorney said.

“Shut up,” Drake said. To Linderman he said, “The inmate I rent the cell phones to is named Thunder. Thunder used to run the Latin Kings down in Miami. When he finds out I set him up, he’ll send a posse to kill me, no questions asked.”

“I can put you in witness protection,” Linderman said.

“Do I get to pick the city?”

“Name it.”

“Arizona.”

“Done,” Linderman said.

“When is this sting going down?”

“Tonight.”

“What if Thunder asks about my face? What do I tell him?”

“Tell him were in a car accident.”

“I’ll need you to give me a story. I’m no good at lying.”

“I can give you a story. We can work on it back at your house.”

“All right. I’m in.”

Rucker sprang to his feet and stuck out his hand. Linderman shook it, sealing the deal. Drake cleared his throat and said, “Hold on a minute.”

The tone of Drake’s voice was troubling. Like he was about to drop a bomb on them. Linderman dropped the attorney’s hand and shot Drake a hard stare.

“What’s wrong?” Linderman asked.

“If this sting goes sideways, I don’t want to get blamed,” Drake said.

“Why would it go sideways?”

“Thunder might find out it’s a sting. He’s a mean sob.”

“If you handle it right, he won’t know a thing.”

“It doesn’t matter how I handle it. Thunder still might find out. Other inmates, too.”

Drake knew something that he wasn’t sharing. Linderman crossed the interrogation room and stopped a foot from Drake’s chair.

“Explain yourself,” the FBI agent said.

“I told you this morning that every inmate is allowed to keep five grand in a bank account,” Drake said. “Thunder uses his money to bribe the guards for information. So do a lot of the other inmates. There are no secrets inside Starke Prison.”

Linderman thought back to Crutch crossing the prison yard while chatting amicably to a guard. It had looked innocent, only now he realized how dangerous it really was.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Linderman said.

An hour later, Drake was released from the lockup. Linderman was waiting outside the PDF in an unmarked van, which he used to drive Drake back to his house on the south side of town. Vaughn Wood and two field agents followed in a second van. The two vehicles parked in Drake’s driveway behind his pickup truck, and everyone got out.

Drake entered the house and went to his bedroom to change. The two field agents accompanied him. As was customary with sting operations, Drake would be watched round-the-clock until the sting took place. They didn’t want Drake to get a change of heart, and tip someone off. The only way to prevent that from happening was by bird-dogging Drake, and making sure he didn’t call anyone.

Linderman sat at the dining room table with a notepad and a pen. He composed a story for Drake to use if Thunder asked him about his busted up face. He tried to keep it simple, in the hopes that Drake would be able to remember it.

Drake appeared freshly showered and shaved and wearing clean clothes. He sat across from Linderman and drummed the table. Linderman looked up from his writing.

“Tell me what I’m gonna say tonight if Thunder questions me,” Drake said.

“Here’s what I came up with.” Linderman looked down at the notepad. “After you left work this morning, you were sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to change when a drunk rammed your pickup from behind. You weren’t wearing a seatbelt, and your face hit the dashboard. The bag of cell phones got ruined, and you had to go to Radio Shack and replace them. That’s your story.”

“Let me try.”

Linderman slid the notepad across the table, and Drake recited the story back to him. Coming out his mouth, the words sounded stiff and false. Drake knew it, and slapped his palm on the table.

“This ain’t gonna work,” he said miserably.

“Then simplify it,” Linderman suggested. “Tell Thunder you wrecked your car, and the phones got destroyed. Let him figure out the rest.”

“What if he starts questioning me?”

“Walk away.”

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” Drake mumbled.

Linderman tapped his pen on the table. Drake’s comment that there were no secrets inside Starke Prison had given him food for thought. “Do you know an inmate named Jason Crutchfield? He goes by the nickname Crutch.”

“Everyone knows Crutch,” Drake said.

“Does Crutch bribe the guards?”

“Oh, yeah. Crutch is a big source of cash.”

“Which ones?”

“Mostly to the guards in his cellblock. You know, for information about stuff going on inside the prison. There’s someone else, too.”

Drake was like a little kid who couldn’t keep a secret. Linderman leaned in.

“Who’s that?” the FBI agent asked.

“Alvin Hodges in the records department,” Drake replied. “Crutch pays Alvin so he can get on his computer. Alvin goes out for a smoke, and leaves his computer running so Crutch can surf the Internet.”

Linderman tossed his pen onto the table. Every rock he flipped over, another snake slithered out. Crutch had a cell phone at his disposal, and unobstructed use of the Internet. Had he been a teenager, he would have been sent to his room, only this was a highly intelligent sociopath. Crutch was as dangerous as a lunatic with a loaded gun.

He had to handle this carefully. Once he found out why Crutch was talking to Mr. Clean, he would take his toys away from him, and threaten to get several more years added to his prison sentence. He would put the squeeze on Crutch, and scare him into coughing up what he knew about Danni. It wasn’t ethical, but he didn’t care. He was going to find out what Crutch knew about his daughter’s disappearance before he left Starke.

A loud knock brought Linderman to his feet. He opened the front door to find Woods’s assistant, a freckle-faced, red-haired young woman named Clare, standing on the stoop. Dangling from her hand was a large canvas bag.

“Good afternoon, Special Agent Linderman,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Clare. Yourself?”

“Just terrific. I’ve got the six slave phones you requested. The guys in the lab tested them earlier, and the phones work great. There’s a problem with the satellite, but that should be fixed later this afternoon.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Reception issues. The techs assure me it’s no big deal.”

“Great. Have you gotten a warrant for us to eavesdrop?”

“Yes. We contacted a judge this morning. It’s all been taken care of.”

Clare passed him the canvas bag with a big smile on her face. He’d worked with Clare before; nothing seemed to faze her, and everything was either terrific or great.

“How do I turn on the special chips inside the phones?” he asked.

“You don’t have to. The chips will come on when the phones are powered up. The technology is brand new. It’s really amazing.”

Linderman took a slave phone from the bag and pulled off the back cover. The inner workings looked normal. That was good, because he had a feeling that Crutch might get curious and check out the new phone when it was given to him.

“Thanks for the quick turnaround,” Linderman said. “Please call me when the reception issues have been worked out.”

“I will. Have a terrific day.”

He stood in the open door way and watched Clare walk to her car. She stared at different birds and stopped once to watch a pair of squirrels race playfully across a tree limb. She appeared utterly happy and without a care in the world, and he wondered if he’d ever been like that. If he had, he couldn’t remember it.

He returned to the dining room. Opening the canvas bag, he placed each of the slave phones on the table. Drake stared at them with a dull look on his face.

“Those the new phones I’m going to deliver?” he asked.

“That’s right, Eric.”

“What was she saying about the satellite?”

“There’s a problem with the reception that’s being fixed.”

“I sure hope this works.”

Linderman’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he took it out. It was Rachel. They hadn’t spoken all day, and he walked outside the house for some privacy.

“Good morning. How’s it going?” Linderman greeted her.

“I’m going to kill the son-of-a-bitch,” Vick replied.

Chapter 20

Vick sat in her Audi with the windows rolled up. Her dumb-ass police sidekick leaned on the hood, blowing smoke rings like a circus clown. His hand had brushed her thigh during the ride over, and she’d nearly punched his lights out.

“You mean DuCharme?” Linderman asked over the phone.

“Yes, DuCharme,” Vick said.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I thought we’d caught Mr. Clean on the web site,” Vick explained. “DuCharme called in the cavalry without telling me. His call went out to every cruiser in the county. He referred to Mr. Clean by name, and called him a serial killer. I’m going to have to shut the site down.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Linderman said. “I thought the web site was a good idea.”

There was a conciliatory tone in Linderman’s voice. He cares how I feel, she thought. It softened the blow, and she felt herself calm down.

“Are you with DuCharme right now?” Linderman asked.

“Yes, but he can’t hear me. How are things in Jax?”

“I’ve had a productive day. Mr. Clean’s contact at the prison is a serial killer named Crutch. I’m setting up a sting that should put a slave phone in Crutch’s hands tonight. There are some reception issues that need to be cleared up. Once they are, I’ll call you.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Vick said.

“How’s the rest of your investigation going?”

“It’s hit a wall.”

“Don’t give up. Run down every lead, no matter where it takes you. We still don’t know what Mr. Clean’s motive is for abducting these boys.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I also want to make a suggestion. Get rid of DuCharme. I heard a bad story about him before I left.”

“What did he do?”

“DuCharme was part of a bust with two vice cops. They were in the suspect’s house making the arrest when the suspect pulled a gun. One of the vice cops shot the suspect, and he died. The Broward cops conducted an internal investigation to make sure everyone’s story matched up. DuCharme and the vice cops were required to turn over their guns to have ballistic tests run on them. Guess what the tests revealed?”

“I have no idea.”

“DuCharme’s gun didn’t have a bullet in the chamber when the bust went down.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I wouldn’t kid you, Vick. He’s a menace. Get rid of him.”

DuCharme hopped off the hood and came up to her door. Vick was afraid he knew they were talking about him, and put on a fake smile.

“Yes, sir. I’ll talk to you soon.”

She folded her phone and got out of the car.

“Still angry at me?” DuCharme asked.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Vick said.

Run down every lead, no matter where it takes you.

Vick walked up the path with DuCharme on her heels. The single-story house was owned by Wayne Ladd’s mother, Jewel, and had mustard colored walls and old-fashioned jalousie windows. The roof was missing several shingles, and resembled a patchwork quilt. Parked in the car port was an aging Saturn and a bicycle with two flats.

“I don’t understand why we came here,” DuCharme said.

“I want to talk to Mrs. Ladd,” Vick replied.

“But she’s a drunk. I spoke with her yesterday. It was a waste of time.”

“Please lower your voice.” Vick pressed the front buzzer. Hearing nothing inside, she pulled back the rusty screen door, and rapped on the front door. “Anybody home?”

“Hold on,” a woman’s voice called from within.

“I’ll wait,” Vick called back.

“Probably just crawled out of bed,” DuCharme said.

“Please stop.”

“I just don’t get why we’re here, that’s all.”

“Then I’ll explain. We think Mr. Clean abducted Wayne Ladd because he killed his mother’s boyfriend. Only Wayne’s girlfriend swears that Wayne isn’t the killer, and only confessed to the crime to protect his mother. That’s why we’re here.”

“So what are we looking for?” DuCharme asked.

“The truth.”

The door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman reeking of booze. Hopelessly frail, she had a weather-beaten face and bloodshot eyes, and could barely stand up. A tabby cat slipped between her legs, escaping outside.

“Who are you?” she slurred, clearly drunk.

“Good morning, Mrs. Ladd,” DuCharme said, turning on the charm. “This is Special Agent Vick with the FBI. We’d like to speak with you. May we come in?”

“You were here yesterday,” she said to DuCharme.

“That’s correct,” the detective replied.

“Is this about my baby?”

“Yes, it is,” DuCharme said.

Her voice rose. “You found him, didn’t you? Wayne’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No, ma’am…”

Jewel Ladd’s face cracked, and she began to sob. DuCharme looked at Vick as if to say Now what? Vick felt like she’d been set up, and that DuCharme had known how this would play out well before she’d knocked on the door.

“Deal with her,” Vick said.

Being small had its advantages. Vick glided around Jewel Ladd and went inside. She entered the living room and took stock of the interior. Jewel had done a good job of blocking out the sunlight, and a TV flickered in the corner like a campfire. Vick found a hallway leading to the back of the house, and headed down it.

Vick wasn’t sure what she was looking for. She knew little about Wayne Ladd except for his crimes. That had jaded her into thinking he was simply another adolescent monster. Her talk with Amber had changed that perception. Amber had said Wayne was gentle and kind, qualities that violent boys rarely exhibited. It had made Vick wonder if really she knew anything about him.

She came to a pair of doors at the hallway’s end. Taped to one was a photograph of a blond-haired, dimple-faced young man wearing an Army uniform. Vick guessed this was the bedroom of the older brother, Adam, who’d died in Iraq.

The second doorway had a splashy poster from the movie Wayne’s World. She didn’t have to guess whose room this was.

She stuck her head into the second bedroom. Tiny, with a desk and a bed shoved into opposite corners. The walls were black, the ceiling white, with plenty of streaks where the colors came together. A Megan Fox bikini-poster hung over the bed. No one should have a body that gorgeous.

She cased the room. A pile of text books sat on the desk. She glanced over the titles. Advanced Algebra, Biology, English lit, third year Spanish, and a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions. The kid wasn’t stupid.

She found Wayne’s notebooks beneath the pile. She thumbed through them, hoping to find some personal notes or drawings that might give some insight to Wayne’s psyche. Instead, she found page after page of school notes.

The closet was next. Wayne’s wardrobe consisted of baggy jeans, chinos, and Nike sneakers. An electric guitar sat in the corner wired to a speaker. Behind it, a shelving unit containing song books and a shoe box filled with letters.

She went through the shoe box. The letters had been sent from Adam Ladd when he was stationed in Baghdad. In chilling detail, Adam had described life in a war zone, and the numbing effect it was having on him, and the other soldiers in his platoon. She put the letters away thinking the two brothers had been close.

The last place she looked was under the bed. That was where boys usually stored things. She found a thin cardboard box filled with photos of Wayne taken in elementary school. He’d been a handsome kid even back then.

Vick dusted herself off. Something wasn’t right here. It took a minute, but she finally put her finger on it. The room was too normal. She’d expected to find a collection of hunting knives, or an illegal handgun, or a diary filled with rants against his teachers and classmates with some graphic drawings thrown in. These were the things that indicated deep-rooted anger in teenage boys. So where were they?

She had a thought. Perhaps Jewel had gone through her son’s room after his arrest, and thrown out the bad things. That was the natural thing for a mother to do. She decided to ask her, and returned to the front of the house.

Jewel lay on her back on the couch, passed out. DuCharme stood beside her, shaking his head.

“She kept crying until she fell asleep,” he said. “She’s really looped.”

“I need to ask her some questions,” Vick said.

“Good luck.”

“You’re not going to help me wake her up?”

“What do you want me to do – sing to her?”

Vick knelt down beside the couch and gently shook Jewel’s shoulder. “Mrs. Ladd? Please wake up. I need to speak with you.”

Jewel muttered under her breath but did not come to. Vick hoped a strong cup of coffee would bring her around, and stood up.

“I’m going to brew some coffee. Stay here and watch her.”

“Get me a cup,” DuCharme said. “Sugar, no cream.”

“In your dreams.”

The kitchen was like the rest of the house – dark and depressing. Vick found the coffee maker on the counter. Beside it sat a fifth of vodka in a brown paper bag. She pulled the bottle out of the bag to see that three quarters was already gone. She fished out the sales receipt. Jewel had bought the bottle from a liquor store that morning.

It made Vick mad. Jewel was getting shit-faced while her son was being held captive by a killer. She poured the rest down the drain, and returned to the living room.

“No coffee?” DuCharme asked.

“Lock the door on your way out,” Vick said.

Popping the trunk of her Audi, Vick fished through the box filled with files of active cases. She found Wayne Ladd’s file, and soon was studying it in her car. DuCharme climbed in and fastened his shoulder harness.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

She ignored him, and continued to read. Wayne Ladd had murdered his mother’s boyfriend by sticking a bayonet through his heart. The boyfriend was a bartender with a history of abusing women. When the police had arrived at the boyfriend’s house, Wayne had been standing over him clutching the weapon, his clothes soaked with blood. He had confessed at the scene, and shown no remorse.

Vick found the description of the bayonet buried in the report. The murder weapon was a Swiss Sig 1957 Pattern Bayonet, made of tempered steel, with a nine and a half inch blade. The detective who’d written the report had checked the bayonet’s history, and discovered that it was a collector’s item, and cost three hundred dollars on the open market.

Vick closed the report, deep in thought.

“Find something?” DuCharme asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to arm wrestle you?”

“Wayne’s bedroom didn’t have a single military item in it, yet the bayonet was a collector’s item. The murder weapon belonged to someone else.”

“You don’t think Wayne is a killer, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re pissing in the wind. The kid had a motive, and he confessed. Case closed.”

Vick slapped the file shut and tossed it into the backseat. DuCharme was right; she was grasping at straws. Only the smug look on the detective’s face was too much to bear. That, and the knowledge that Linderman had moved the investigation forward, and was close to catching their killer, while she had done nothing.

She fired up her engine and backed down the drive.

Chapter 21

The Broward Sheriff’s Office Evidence Unit was situated a block off Sunrise Boulevard inside a soulless industrial park. The size of a small airplane hanger, the warehouse housed over a quarter million pieces of crime-related evidence, and was responsible for maintaining the integrity of evidence before trials.

The reception desk was empty. Vick and DuCharme scribbled their names on a sign-in sheet and waited for assistance. DuCharme whistled like he was doing bird calls.

“You are so easily amused,” she said.

“Two o’clock. Everybody must be on break,” the detective said.

“Do they all take a break at the same time?”

“Sure. They’re three-ninety-fives.”

“Is that their job classification?”

“Uh-huh. They make nothing, and give nothing in return.”

Vick tapped her toe impatiently. It was not unusual at police evidence warehouses for things to get misplaced or simply disappear, never to be seen again. She hoped this wasn’t the case with the murder weapon in Wayne Ladd’s case.

She wanted to see that bayonet. During her training at Quantico, she’d learned a great deal about weaponry. The Swiss made some of the finest weapons in the world, and proudly marked their products with serial numbers. If Wayne’s bayonet contained a serial number, she’d have a good chance of tracking down it’s previous owner.

An evidence tech appeared behind the desk. Blond and skinny, he didn’t look old enough to be shaving. He grinned at Vick while acting like DuCharme wasn’t there.

“Afternoon. Can I help you?” the tech said cheerfully.

Vick and DuCharme both displayed her ID.

“We need to get a piece of evidence from storage,” Vick explained.

“Wow. You’re with the FBI. I always wanted to be an FBI agent,” the tech said. “Do you like your job?”

“The hours are long and the pay stinks,” Vick said. “Otherwise, it’s a great life.”

The tech laughed under his breath. He slid a request form across the desk.

“Fill this out, and I’ll go find your evidence myself,” the tech said.

“Why, thank you.”

DuCharme filled out the form. Protocol dictated that only a Broward detective could request evidence from the Broward Evidence Unit. Vick made sure that DuCharme wrote the case number in bold letters so the tech didn’t bring them the wrong item. When DuCharme was finished, Vick handed the tech the sheet.

“Sit tight. I’ll be right back,” the tech said.

“What a loser,” DuCharme said when the tech was gone.

“I thought he was kind of cute,” Vick said.

“Is that the kind of guy you like? Young and stupid?”

“Yes. The dumber the better.”

The tech returned with the murder weapon. It was inside a plastic bag and looked like a kid’s toy. Vick removed the bayonet from the bag, and balanced it on her palm.

It was not a toy. Over a foot long, and heavy. Knives could be used for different things, but a bayonet’s purpose was to take human life. It made her think that whoever had given the bayonet to Wayne had expected him to kill with it.

Knowing the bayonet had gone straight through a man’s heart gave Vick pause. She spied a serial number printed on the neck in tiny letters. She’d hit pay dirt.

“I need to examine this,” she said to DuCharme.

“I’ll sign it out,” the detective replied.

DuCharme played with the bayonet while Vick drove to police headquarters. He’d already forgotten about the tech, and hummed softly to himself. She wondered if it was his upbringing or lack of education that made him so unbearable to be around. She thought he might cut himself with the blade, but didn’t say anything.

Back in her temporary office, Vick got on the Internet, and did a Google search for Swiss Sig distributors in the United States. There was only one, located in San Francisco. She went to their web site and scrolled through the pages. There was no phone number, just an email address, and she fired off a letter to the president, asking for his help. In the letter she included the serial number off Wayne’s bayonet, along with her own contact information.

“You done?” DuCharme asked. He sat on the other side of the desk, rattling his car keys. They hadn’t eaten lunch, and he acted hungry.

“Not yet,” Vick replied.

“Soon?”

“Hard to say.”

“Want to get a bite to eat?”

Vick’s cell phone rang, saving her. It was Linderman.

“Hey, Ken,” she answered.

“The reception issue has been cleared up. The sting is on,” Linderman said. “Crutch will be given a slave phone tonight. If he contacts Mr. Clean, the slave phone will tell us the phone number Mr. Clean is using, and his physical location. I want you to get a team of agents to together, and be ready to run him down.”

Vick felt her heartbeat quicken. “Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want the Broward cops to know about this. That includes DuCharme.” He paused. “Is he still working with you?”

“Yes.” Her voice was a monotone.

“Get rid of him right now. That’s an order.”

“Will do.”

“I’m counting on you, Vick. This may be our last chance to catch Mr. Clean.”

“I won’t let you down.”

The call ended without Linderman saying goodbye. Vick folded her phone while looking across the desk. DuCharme had a loopy grin on his face. Rising from her chair, she shut the door, then leaned against the desk and faced him.

“Ready to go?” the detective asked.

“I’ve got some bad news,” she said. “We’re no longer working together.”

He frowned. “Is that what that phone call was about? Someone called, and told you to get rid of me?”

“It’s my decision. I should have told you earlier, at the library. I can’t have you undermining me or questioning my decisions. You’re hurting my investigation.”

“What? You’re too good to be questioned? Is that it?”

“I never said that.”

“We’re supposed to be a team.”

“This is my investigation, not yours.”

“That’s not the way it was explained to me.”

Vick folded her arms. She had said all she was going to say. DuCharme got the hint and abruptly stood up.

“You know what your problem is, Rachel?” He paused, as if expecting a reply.

Vick said nothing.

“You’ve got a crush on Wayne Ladd. He’s young and pretty, and that’s what turns you on. You’ve convinced yourself that he isn’t a killer despite all the evidence, so you’re running around town, trying to prove otherwise. It’s a god damn waste of time.”

Vick didn’t like his tone, or the way he was looking at her.

“Please leave,” she said.

“Are you throwing me out?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got some nerve, little lady.”

Vick nearly slapped him across the face. Instead, she pushed herself off the desk, and walked around him. She jerked open the door.

“Get out,” she said.

DuCharme’s face turned bright red and the veins popped in his neck. His dreams of chatting Vick up over a late lunch had come crashing down on his head. Hustling past her, he walked quickly down the hallway toward the elevators.

“Stupid bitch,” he said loud enough for her to hear.

Chapter 22

At a few minutes before midnight, Linderman drove an unmarked FBI van beneath the wooden arch that greeted visitors to Starke Prison. A thunder storm had settled in, and the van skidded on the rain-slicked highway. Drake emitted a nervous laugh.

“Just be my luck to get in a wreck,” the prison guard said.

Linderman glanced at the pair of headlights in his mirror. Wood was following in a second van and had also taken the skid. Wood righted his vehicle and fell in behind him. Up ahead, the lights from the prison blinked like buoys in a turbulent sea.

“Tell me what I’m supposed to say if Thunder asks about my face,” Drake said.

“We just talked about this,” Linderman replied.

“I know, but my memory ain’t for shit. Tell me again.”

“You’re not high, are you?”

“Course not.”

Linderman repeated the story. Drake was a strange bird. His imagination was limited to NASCAR and the sitcoms he watched on TV. John Wayne once said that life was tough, but it was tougher if you were stupid. Drake lived up to that remark.

“Got it,” Drake said “Now explain the deal to me again.”

“We signed papers with your lawyer,” Linderman said. “The deal is done.”

“I know it’s done. I just want to hear it again.”

“Once you deliver the slave phones to Thunder, you’ll walk out of the prison, and get in a van being driven by Special Agent Wood. Wood will drive you to a hotel by the airport where a pair of FBI agents are waiting.”

“A safe house,” Drake said.

“That’s right. You’ll stay in a room with the agents. If we have to use you again, the same procedures will be followed. Once the sting is done, you’ll be put on a plane to Arizona, and enter witness protection.”

“Will there be a car in Arizona for me, and a house?”

“Yes, Eric.”

“I’m gonna need money.”

“We’ll help you find a job. Anything else you want to know?”

“I think I’m good,” Drake said.

Soon they were on prison grounds. Linderman parked and zippered up his rain slicker. They both got out. Drake turned up his collar and headed toward the employee entrance of the prison. He had not gone five steps when Linderman called out to him.

“Your forgot something,” the FBI agent said.

Eyes downcast, Drake retrieved the slave phones from the back seat.

Linderman entered Warden Jenkins’ office at a few minutes past midnight. A dinner tray from the cafeteria sat on the desk, the meat loaf and mashed potatoes hardly touched. Jenkins sat at his desk, staring at his computer.

“You want some dinner?” Jenkins asked.

“I already ate,” Linderman said. “Is the feed on your computer?”

“Yes, sir. Came in a few minutes ago. I’ve never been involved in a sting operation,” Jenkins admitted. “What exactly is going to happen?”

“It’s quite simple. Any call made over the slave phones will be transmitted by satellite to our Jacksonville office. The call will be recorded, and typed up by a stenographer. The text will be sent to your computer for us to see.”

“What kind of delay is there?”

“It depends upon how fast the stenographer types. There’s usually no more than a ninety second lapse.”

“How will we know which conversation is Crutch’s?”

“Two things will tell us. Crutch will be calling Broward County. His call will either have a 954 or 754 area code. And, he’s the only inmate using a cell phone who isn’t a drug dealer, so what he says will give him away.”

“Will you trace the call?”

“Yes. A team of FBI agents is standing by in Broward.”

“Sounds like you’ve got all the bases covered.”

“Let’s hope so.”

The two men fell silent. They both knew what came next. Lightning flashed in the windows and the rumble of thunder shook the building. Fifteen minutes later, Linderman’s cell phone vibrated. It was Wood, and he sounded furious.

“What’s wrong?” Linderman asked.

“Drake is in my car,” Wood said. “He changed his story.”

“Jesus Christ. I’ll be right down.”

There was no fast way out of the prison. Linderman left Jenkins’ office and was processed through the main building. He reached the parking lot five minutes later. His chest was heaving as he walked through the puddles. He wanted to rip Drake’s head off, only Drake was too dumb to understand how dangerous a changed story could be. A single slip-up or suspicion and someone could get killed.

Wood’s van was parked with its headlights on. Drake sat in the passenger seat with a blank look on his face. Linderman banged on the passenger window.

“Get out of the car,” Linderman shouted over the storm.

Drake climbed out. He stood in the pouring rain with a pitiful look on his face. Linderman grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Tell me why you changed your story,” he said.

“I’m sorry… I just forgot.”

“Tell me what you said.”

Drake cowered in fear as lightening cracked the night sky. “I saw Thunder in the mess hall. He was making snacks for the night guards. He delivers the cell phones the same time he delivers the snacks. He asked about my face. I got tongue-tied and forgot my story. I told him I’d fallen asleep driving home, and hit a tree.”

“Did he buy it?”

“I guess.”

“Did he ask you about the phones?”

“Yeah. I gave him the bag, and he said “New phones?’ and I told him the old ones got destroyed in the wreck. He asked me if I was going to charge him more to pay for them. I told him I was thinking about it.”

“Was that the end of the conversation?”

“Yeah. I left right after that.”

“You’re sure you didn’t say anything else to him?”

“Positive. Oh, wait a minute…”

“What?”

“Shit. I can’t believe it.”

“ What?”

“I forgot to get the money.”

Linderman nearly hit him. Thunder had run a street gang. He would piece the puzzle together – Drake’s busted up face, the brand new cell phones, Drake forgetting to get paid – and realize that Drake was running scared, and working with the law.

“Go back and get the money,” Linderman said.

Drake’s eyes went wide. He was soaking wet and looked like a scared dog.

“Say no, and the deal is off,” Linderman told him. “We’ll take you back to your house, and leave you there.”

“No Arizona?”

“No Arizona. That’s the price for screwing up.”

A storm cloud opened up directly overhead, the rain coming down so hard that Linderman could hardly see the shivering figure standing directly in front of him.

“All right,” Drake said.

Drake went back inside the prison. Linderman climbed into the van and sat with Wood. Still breathing hard, he watched the storm rage around them.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Wood said.

Linderman did as well, but said nothing. He had long ago accepted that bad feelings were part of his work, and would only go away the day he turned in his badge.

Drake reappeared and tried to get in the car. Linderman got out, and made him stand in the rain. He was not going to have a conversation with Drake without looking him in the eye. It was the only way to gauge if Drake was telling the truth.

“Tell me what happened, and don’t leave anything out,” Linderman said.

“Thunder was still in the cafeteria. I got the money and left,” Drake said.

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him I wanted my dough.”

“How did he react?”

“He just laughed, said I had shit for brains.”

“He wasn’t suspicious?”

“Hell, no. I’ve forgotten the money before.”

“You’re not lying to me, are you Eric?”

“I swear, I’m telling you the truth.”

He stuck out his hand. “Give it to me. All of it.”

Drake removed a rolled up tube of bills from the pocket of his shirt. Linderman tore the rubber bands away and counted the money. It was all there.

“Is the deal still on? Am I still going to Arizona?” Drake asked.

“Yes,” Linderman said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 23

Crutch lay on his cot, listening to the storm.

He thought about a girl he’d fallen in love with in the tenth grade. Lee Chambers, with shoulder-length blond hair and shimmering blue eyes, had sat behind him in science class, and was the most perfect creature he’d ever seen. They’d become friends, and had started eating lunch together in the school cafeteria. His feelings for her were only real feelings that he’d ever felt toward another human being that did not involve violence or death. It had made him think there was still hope for him.

One summer, he’d gone away to camp. Upon returning home, he had discovered that Lee’s family had moved away. Heartbroken, he’d gone to his mother for help. His mother didn’t know where the Chambers family had gone, and had told Crutch that he’d just have to adjust to the loss.

Crutch had cried for days. He could not stop thinking about his mother’s response. Another mother might have helped him get Lee’s forwarding address, and encourage him to form a pen-pal relationship. Not dear old mom. She had chosen to crush him instead.

That was when he’d started hearing a voice inside his head.

Kill the bitch, the voice had said.

The voice would not go away. A few months later, he had killed his mother and three sisters at the dining room table. That was when he’d discovered the beauty of killing, and the equitable sharing of unendurable loss, and suffering.

The steel door leading into the cellblock opened, and light flooded the cellblock. A night guard entered, and stood in the center of the cellblock with his arms crossed.

Thunder shuffled in behind the guard, carrying a bag of cell phones. Thunder was a huge Latino, his face dotted with scars and cryptic tattoos. He went to Leon’s cell first, and handed the black inmate his cell phone.

Crutch gripped the bars in sweaty anticipation. Prison life was defined by waiting. Waiting for meals, waiting to be let out in the yard, waiting to hear from lawyers. The timetable was always someone else’s. Tonight, it was Thunder’s.

“Yo peckerwood, how’s it hanging?” Thunder said, coming to his cell.

“Big and long,” Crutch replied.

“Glad to hear it.”

Crutch stuck his hand through the bars. Thunder slapped the cell phone onto his palm. The moment it touched his skin, Crutch knew something was different.

“What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

“What do you think it is?”

“It’s new.”

“My source got into a wreck, smashed up the old ones. He had to buy new phones.”

Crutch brought the new phone up to his face. It was a Nokia. He flipped it open and studied the keypad. The numbers looked bigger.

“Give it back. I’ll rent it to someone else,” Thunder said.

Crutch continued to stare at the phone. He did not like change. It raised every suspicious fear in his body.

“No, I’ll keep it,” he said.

“Take it easy, peckerwood.”

The Latino left the cellblock with the night guard. The steel door shut behind them, plunging the cellblock into darkness.

Sitting on his bed, Crutch powered up the new cell phone. The face was brighter than his previous phone, and easier to read in the dark. Thunder purposely delivered the phones at night, when the surveillance camera could not see into the cells.

He punched in the number Killer X had given him last night and hit Send. Each time he spoke to Killer X, his friend ended the call by giving him a new phone number to call. The numbers were always to payphones. Killer X knew all the angles.

“Hello?” Killer X answered.

“It’s me,” Crutch said. “How was your day?”

“Not good.”

“What happened?”

“The police are hunting for me. I heard them talking over my scanner. They’ve even given me a name. They call me Mr. Clean.”

“You should be proud of yourself. Only special people get names.”

“They tried to trap me.”

“Really? How?”

“With a web site. Someone went to the site, and told the police what fools they were. The police thought it was me. They caught a girl at the public library.”

“A girl? Who is she?”

“I don’t know. I went to the library and watched from a safe spot across the street. Later, I called the library, and told them I was a reporter. A guard answered my questions.”

“That was ballsy.”

“I have more bad news.”

“What?”

“The FBI is involved. I spotted one of their agents at the library. A little blond bitch. She had an FBI decal on the dashboard of her car. She was running things.”

Crutch stared into the darkness of his cell. While Special Agent Linderman had searched his cell this morning, another FBI agent had been chasing Killer X in Fort Lauderdale. He did not believe in coincidences. The FBI were on to them.

“What should I do?” Killer X asked.

“Let me think about this. How is the boy doing?”

“The boy is strange. I don’t think he’s right for the Program.”

“How so?”

“He doesn’t seem angry enough.”

“He fits the profile perfectly. Keeping working with him. He’ll come around.”

“Your voice is fading.”

“We’re having a bad storm.”

“This is different. You sound far away, like at the bottom of a well.”

Crutch’s breathing grew short. Tiny gasps really, clinging at life. The new cell phone had bothered him the moment it had touched his skin. Now, he knew why. The FBI had bugged it, and Special Agent Linderman was tracing the call, and probably listening in as well. There could be no other explanation for why he’d gotten a new cell phone the same day the FBI agent had searched his cell. If he didn’t act quickly, his friend in Fort Lauderdale would be apprehended.

“Are you there?” Killer X asked.

“Still thinking.”

“I don’t want to be caught. I can’t be caught.”

The fear in his friend’s voice was palatable. Crutch imagined himself hurtling down a black, bottomless pit. His body bounced off the walls, crushing his bones and snapping his head like a rag doll. He screamed at the top of his lungs, knowing it would never end.

He pulled himself back to reality. Beads of sweat did a death march down his face. Then, he had an idea.

The FBI was on to him, but he was also on to them. He could use that to his advantage, and turn their lives into living hell.

Fuck them good, the voice in his head said.

Having Leon as a neighbor had its advantages. Drug dealers never spoke normally when they talked business. The spoke in code.

He raised the cell phone to his face.

“You need to take a vacation,” Crutch said.

“I do?”

“Yes. How does that sound?”

His friend hesitated. Then said, “A vacation sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“I knew you’d understand,” Crutch said.

Chapter 24

At twelve-thirty, the FBI satellite picked up a call from a slave phone to a 954 area code in Fort Lauderdale, and relayed the call to the FBI’s Jacksonville office.

While the call was being recorded, a stenographer wearing a headset typed the conversation into word processing program. Sixty seconds later, that conversation appeared as text on Warden Jenkin’s computer at the prison.

At the same time, the 954 number was run through a software program designed to trace phone calls. This program instantly determined the 954 number’s physical location, and emailed the address to Linderman’s iPhone, along with a street map with a red arrow showing where the call was coming from.

“Talk about one-stop shopping,” Jenkins said.

Linderman liked the analogy. When the FBI put its mind to something, there was nothing it couldn’t do. He called Vick’s cell phone and heard her pick up.

“We’ve got Mr. Clean in the cross hairs,” Linderman said.

“Yea,” Vick said.

“He’s talking at a payphone at a RaceTrac gas station on the corner of Sunrise Boulevard and State Road 84. Where are you?”

“I’m sitting in my car in a parking lot on Sunrise Boulevard near the entrance ramp to I-95,” Vick replied. “I’ve got three agents with me. Two other teams of agents are parked in other spots around the county.”

“Which team is closest to this location?”

“We are.”

“He’s yours. Get him.”

“I’m already on the road.”

Linderman needed to end the call, and let Vick do her thing. Talking was a distraction. But a nagging feeling needed to be extinguished.

“Do the Broward police know about the sting?” Linderman asked.

“No, sir.”

“What about DuCharme?”

“He’s out of the picture.”

“Glad to hear it. Good luck, Rachel.”

“Thank you, Ken.”

The line went dead. Linderman folded the phone.

“Looks like the text of their conversation is coming through,” Jenkins said, swinging his chair closer to the computer. “Damn, these letters are small.”

Linderman fitted on his reading glasses. The delayed text of Crutch and Mr. Clean’s conversation was running across the screen like an old-fashioned teletype. Reading it, he felt the hairs on his neck rise in alarm. Mr. Clean had spotted Vick at the Broward library, and knew the FBI was chasing him. Mr. Clean was scared and approaching panic mode. Serial killers who went on tilt were capable of incredible destruction. Linderman immediately called Vick back to alert her. A frantic busy signal filled his ear.

“God damn it,” he swore.

Jenkins pointed at the screen. “You better take a look at this. Something strange is going on.”

Linderman followed his finger and stared at the words on the screen.

“Let me think about this. How is the boy doing?”

“The boy is strange. I don’t think he’s right for The Program.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t seem angry enough.”

“Your voice is fading.”

“We’re having a bad storm.”

“This is different. You sound far away, like at the bottom of a well.”

“Who’s the boy, and what’s The Program?” Jenkins asked.

“The boy is our kidnap victim,” Linderman explained. “Mr. Clean is obviously putting him through some type of regimen.”

“Lord, I wonder what he’s doing to him.”

The text became frozen on the page. Linderman ripped off his glasses in anger and called the FBI’s Jacksonville office. He started to read the riot act to the agent coordinating the trace of Crutch’s cell phone conversation when the agent stopped him.

“There’s nothing wrong with the transmission,” the agent said.

“Then why isn’t the text moving?” Linderman snapped.

“Your suspects stopped talking. They just started back up. You’ll see the rest of the conversation shortly.”

“But why did they stop?” Linderman pressed him. “Could they have known their conversation was being bugged?”

“Possibly.”

“What do you mean, possibly?”

“There was a glitch in the system right about the time they stopped. It had to do with atmospheric conditions not being normal for this time of year. Your suspects might have heard it on their phones.”

“How long would it have lasted?”

“No more than ten seconds.”

“It would have been nice to know this before.”

“Sorry. It doesn’t happen very often,” the agent said.

Linderman ended the call. He tried to call Vick and got patched into voice mail. Vick and the rest of the agents on her team were stepping into a hornet’s nest. He left a brief message, and told Vick that she was in danger.

“For the love of Christ,” Jenkins said, “now they’re talking about taking a vacation. What the heck’s going on here?”

Linderman closed his phone and shifted his attention to the computer screen.

“You need to take a vacation.”

“I do?”

“Yes. A very long vacation.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“I knew you’d understand.”

Linderman balled his hands into fists. The sting was blowing up in their faces. Crutch had seen through it, and was now giving Mr. Clean instructions on how to deal with the problem.

“They’ve started talking in code,” he explained.

“Like the drug dealers do,” Jenkins said.

“Exactly. The word vacation was the signal for them to start using the code. They know we’re listening to them.”

“Any idea what they’re saying?”

“Most verbal codes are fairly straight forward. Usually, the suspects simply start saying the opposite of what they mean.”

“If that’s the case, then your agent in Fort Lauderdale is in trouble,” Jenkins said.

“Take a look.”

Linderman brought his face up to the screen.

“What about the cute little blond FBI agent?”

“I think you should leave her alone.”

“But I wanted to introduce her to the judge.”

“Is he with you?”

“Oh, yes. The judge is in my car.”

“Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea.”

His breath fogged the screen. He knew about the Judge. It was the nickname for a Taurus.410 revolver that was capable of firing shotgun shells. Judges around the country had started carrying them beneath their robes as protection against violent criminals in their courtrooms. Crutch was telling Mr. Clean that it was all right to shoot Vick.

Again he dialed Vick’s number. This time, he prayed for her to pick up.

Chapter 25

Sunrise Boulevard was a sea of headlights. One a.m. on a weekday night, and the traffic was backed up for miles.

Vick gripped the wheel and stared at the cars in front of her. Ever since joining the FBI, she’d dreamed of taking down a dangerous criminal – a terrorist, or perhaps someone on the Ten Most Wanted List. Now her dream was about to be realized.

Just up the road was the intersection for State Road 84. The RaceTrac gas station was on the southwest side. Six vehicles were parked at the gas pumps, another eight in front of the service center. Capturing Mr. Clean in a public place was dangerous, but she didn’t see any other choice.

Three veteran FBI agents shared the car with her. Special Agents Ayer and Padgham sat in back, while Special Agent Cunningham rode shotgun. Middle-aged and gray, the three men had fifty-plus years experience between them. In a small way, each reminded Vick of her father, which was strange. She despised her father, yet had chosen to lean on men similar to him for help.

The light turned green. Vick drove thirty feet before it turned red. She hit her brakes hard. Up ahead, a car backed out of a parking spot in front of the RaceTrac. Vick felt her heart skip a beat. Was Mr. Clean getting away?

The car pulled onto 84. It was a convertible with the top down, the driver a balding white male talking on a cell phone. Mr. Clean was still inside, talking to Crutch on a payphone. Vick decided to make things happen.

“I’m going to burn the light,” she said.

She put hand on the horn and kept it there. Cars parted, and a space magically opened up in front of her. She floored the gas and reached the intersection.

The turn arrow was red, the cars in front of her braked. She considered hopping the median and driving on the wrong side of the road. Only too many cars were coming in the opposite direction, and she might get in a wreck.

She kept her hand on the horn and flashed her brights. The drivers in front of her got the message, and ran the light. She did the same, taking the turn on two wheels. The entrance to the RaceTrac was right on top of her. She spun the wheel in the opposite direction. Her Audi rocked like a carnival ride.

She braked in front of the service center, her breath caught in her chest. She glanced at Cunningham, then the others. They were cool, calm and collected. Bastards.

“Badges,” Vick said.

The agents pinned their badges to their clothing so they were plainly visible.

“Everyone set?” she asked.

“Ready when you are,” Cunningham said.

They piled out of the car. The service center was a rectangular building with a wall of windows in the front. Inside, there was a food court, bathrooms, and aisles of chips and snacks. The payphones were behind the food court, next to the rear entrance. Standing at the windows, Vick spotted a large Latino male talking on a phone.

“There he is,” Vick said.

Her partners stared through the glass. Mr. Clean was hard to miss. Six-foot-three and approximately two hundred and forty pounds, he wore a white tee-shirt over his muscular chest, acid-stained jeans with holes in the knees, and his kinky hair cut short. Clutched in his hand was a super-sized fountain drink.

Vick said, “I want Ayer and Padgham to cover the back entrance while Cunningham and I go through the front. I’ll give you fifteen seconds to get around the building. Remember gentleman, our suspect is armed and very dangerous.”

Ayer and Padgham took off running. Both agents had their weapons drawn and were moving faster than their years.

Vick silently counted to fifteen. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she tried to stay calm. Cunningham had the front door open, and she followed him inside.

Time was relative to the speed you were traveling, and how fast your heart was beating. Vick felt like she was moving in slow motion as she and Cunningham passed through the food court. She drew her Glock from the harness inside her sports jacket, and held it in front of her chest. Every movement felt painfully slow. All around her, people were ducking under tables for cover.

Mr. Clean didn’t see them coming. He was the only person at the payphones; the closest bystander an elderly woman extracting cash from an ATM machine. She got her money and teetered away, having no idea how close she’d come to a killer.

Mr. Clean raised his drink and sucked through the straw. He shook the ice cubes, trying to get the last drops of soda out of the cup. The phone’s receiver was clutched in his other hand and held down by his side. Like he’s on hold, Vick thought.

There was a wall of windows behind the pay phones. Ayer and Padgham were behind it, aiming their weapons at Mr. Clean. Vick made a quick motion with her hand, and they slipped inside the back door.

Mr. Clean was surrounded.

Finally, their suspect reacted. He placed his drink on the ledge beneath the pay phone and stared at Vick. Genuine surprise registered across his face.

“You guys filming a TV show?” he asked.

“Put your hands behind your head!” Vick shouted.

“Me?” he asked, sounding shocked.

“Yes, you! Do it now!”

Their suspect dropped the phone and clasped his hands around the back of his head. The phone was on a metal cord, and banged noisily against the wall. To Vick, it sounded like a cannon going off.

The four FBI agents quickly closed around him. While Ayer pressed his gun against Mr. Clean’s back, Cunningham made their suspect turn his pockets inside out, then frisked him. He was not armed. A cheap plastic wallet was produced. Vick pulled out a handful of credit cards and a Florida driver’s license.

“Is your name Wilfredo Pruna?” she asked.

Sweat pancakes had formed on their suspect’s tee-shirt. His breathing was labored, his eyes blinking rapidly. He looked ready to pass out.

“Yeah,” he mumbled under his breath.

“You’re under arrest,” Vick said.

“Look, I told the judge that I’d get the payment to her soon.”

“What payment is that?” Vick asked.

“The alimony payment to my ex-wife. I lost my job, got behind a few months. You know how it is.”

“We’re arresting you for kidnap and murder,” Vick said.

Pruna gave Vick a wide-eyed stare. He twisted his head to look at the other agents.

“That bastard set me up,” Pruna said angrily.

“Cuff him,” Vick said.

Cunningham made Pruna lower his arms and put them behind his back. The FBI agent put a pair of plastic handcuffs around Pruna’s wrists and pulled them tight.

“Don’t you want to hear my story?” Pruna said indignantly.

“Sure, we do,” Cunningham replied.

“I was going into the bathroom to take a leak,” Pruna said. “Guy was standing by the phones, said he’d give me ten bucks to hold the phone so he could get something from his car. I said sure. Sounded like an easy way to make some cash, you know?”

Something hard dropped in the pit of Vick’s stomach. The story sounded lame enough to be true. She thought back to the casual way Pruna had been holding the receiver. Not on hold, but waiting for someone.

She said, “Describe this guy.”

Pruna perked up. “My height, real strong-looking, had a Cuban accent. He was wearing tinted glasses and a baseball cap. He had some kind of uniform on.”

“What kind of uniform?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he a policeman?”

“No, I’d recognize that.”

“Anything else stick out?” Vick asked.

“He was shy. He didn’t look directly at me when he spoke.”

Vick looked at her partners. Their faces said it all. They’d been set up.

“You said he went outside to his car,” Vick said. “Where was he parked?”

“I saw him walk across the field to the tire store next door,” Pruna said.

“Did you see what he was driving?”

“No. I just saw him cross the grass to the lot.”

“Show me where he went.”

Vick put her hand on Pruna’s back and turned him around so he faced the windows. Behind the convenience store were a line of cars. Beyond them, a field of knee-high grass that led to the parking lot of a Tire Kingdom. Pruna put his face up to the glass. Vick did the same. Then she saw him. A large Cuban man wearing shades and a baseball cap passing between two parked cars, walking toward her. His movements were lithe, and reminded her of a fish moving effortlessly through the water. In his outstretched right hand was a huge pistol that looked like something out of a cowboy movie.

“Get down,” Vick shrieked.

The windows imploded and glass rained around them. Vick felt a stinging sensation on her cheek and knew she’d been hit. She put her hand on Pruna’s arm and pulled him down to the floor. Her partners dropped down as well.

Mr. Clean kept firing, pinning them to the floor. Everyone in the restaurant was screaming, some in English, some Spanish, the sounds fueling its own hysteria.

“Stay down!” Vick yelled.

Pruna lay beside her on his side, moaning. A ragged bullet hole had appeared in the front of his tee-shirt. Blood began to seep out of his body like water coming out of a spigot, forming a hideous pool on the floor.

The gunshots stopped. Vick rose on shaky legs while staring through the gaping hole where the windows had been. She saw nothing.

“Is everyone okay?” Vick asked.

“We’re all hit,” Cunningham replied.

Vick checked out her team. Padgham sat on the floor, clutching his arm, his head rocking from side to side as he tried to control the pain. Cunningham and Ayer were aiming their guns at the windows, their faces covered in blood. Hundreds of tiny holes had appeared in the walls and the payphones. Mr. Clean was firing buckshot.

“Ayer, get these handcuffs off our suspect, and try to stop his bleeding,” Vick barked. “Cunningham, follow me outside.”

Vick hopped over broken glass and hurried outside with Cunningham beside her. She aimed her gun at shadows that held no threat while Cunningham searched between the rows of parked cards.

“He’s not here,” Cunningham said.

Together, they ran across the field to the Tire Kingdom, and searched its grounds. Mr. Clean had vanished. Cunningham got on his cell phone and called for backup. Vick stepped away from him, and stood very still, listening to the night sounds. It was quiet save for the hiss of cars and the mournful wail of an ambulance racing down Sunrise Boulevard. People didn’t just disappear into thin air, yet Mr. Clean had done just that.

“Where are you,” she whispered.

Her shoulders sagged, feeling the weight of her own failure. She’d done everything by the book, yet the sting had blown up in their faces. She was going to get blamed for this. It was how the game worked.

She headed back to the convenience store, knowing the worst was yet to come.

Chapter 26

Crutch lay on his cot, listening to the mayhem on his cell phone. The payphone at the Race Trac was off the hook, and he had heard Mr. Clean ambush the FBI agents who’d come to arrest him.

It was as much fun as going to the movies.

But that wasn’t the best part. Far from it. The best part was that he was on a party line, and the FBI was hearing the mayhem as well, and probably recording it. Linderman’s clever sting had blown up in his face.

That will teach you to steal my playing cards, he thought.

He heard sirens in the background. Someone should have noticed the payphone dangling off the hook by now, and had the foresight to kill the connection. But that hadn’t happened. He guessed that Mr. Clean had inflicted some serious injuries, and no one was paying attention to the little things.

He wanted them all to die. He’d counted five voices – four whom were FBI agents, the fifth the poor rube who’d gotten stuck holding the payphone – and he envisioned them all gasping their last breath, their eyelids flickering.

Lights out, sayonara, cheerio, see you in the funny papers.

Kill them all, said the voice in his head.

He heard two new voices in the background. A pair of medics were trying to save the rube. Crutch listened hard to their conversation.

“He’s lost too much blood,” one of the medics said.

“Come on, pal, don’t give up,” the other medic said.

“Shit. He’s going down.”

The medics gave it their best shot. Finally they stopped talking and a respectful silence followed. The rube was officially dead.

Crutch shook his head ruefully. It would have been much nicer if one of the FBI agents had died, but the rube’s dying would have its benefits. The FBI had arrested an innocent man, then gotten him killed. The newspapers and TV news programs would have a field day with this. It was the kind of fuck-up they lived for.

His thoughts shifted to the FBI agents who’d participated in the sting, both here in Jacksonville, and down in Fort Lauderdale. They were probably mourning the rube’s death right about now. Crutch had never experienced feelings for strangers, but he recognized it in others. Displays of caring were how people coped with their own mortality and insecurities. It was weakness, laid out for all to see. He told himself that these FBI agents were weak, even though he’d never met them.

He went to the toilet and dropped his pants. He took a long piss while holding the cell phone above the bowl. He hoped they were all listening.