“Oh…uh, no. No, of course not, sir.” He scanned the room, desperately seeking salvation. “Shelly!”
She practically jumped out of her seat. “What?”
“I asked Shelly to research the possible antitrust ramifications of a joint venture, Mr. Crichton.” Chuck swiveled his chair toward hers. “What about it, Shelly? Where’s my memo?”
Shelly’s face slowly emerged from the chair. Red blotches were creeping up her neck. “But you just gave me the assignment Friday afternoon—”
“Don’t make excuses,” Chuck snapped. “You knew we had staff meeting today.”
“But it was already four-thirty.”
“Then you should’ve stayed late.”
“But I had to pick up Angie—”
“No one else expects special treatment just because they have children, Shelly.”
“No one else—” She paused, then let it die, apparently realizing it was useless.
“Typical,” Rob whispered to Ben. “Chuck screws up, dumps the project on someone else at the last moment, and lets them take all the blame.”
Chuck swiveled back to Crichton. “I’m sorry about this, sir. I’ll take care of it immediately.” He glared again at Shelly, then tossed his notebook angrily into his briefcase.
Ben could feel himself perspiring—and he wasn’t even the one in the hot seat. At least, not yet.
Crichton drained the last of his coffee. “Damn,” he said. “Herb, call Janice. I need more coffee.” He peered across the table as if he were selecting candidates for a firing squad. “All right. Who’s next?”
8
SERGEANT TOMLINSON LEANED BACK in the metal folding chair and stretched. He was so exhausted that he hurt. And with good reason. He saw by the clock on the wall that it was almost four in the morning. He’d been in the library since midnight—and that was after completing a full eight-hour shift on the switchboard.
The library was in the basement of the central headquarters building. It still looked like a basement, too—it was dank, poorly ventilated, and lit by a single phosphorescent lamp dangling from the ceiling. Not exactly ideal working conditions.
But his diligence was paying off. He was slowly assembling a profile of the serial killer and how he operated. The perpetrator was obviously highly organized. Clever—and what’s more, smart. Every action—the murders, the dismemberment, the disposal of the bodies—had been meticulously planned and executed. The killer was in charge at all times. As a result, he was very difficult to catch.
Tomlinson had spent the wee hours of the morning poring over comprehensive data accumulated by the FBI. The Behavioral Sciences Unit at the Training Academy in Quantico had been investigating the serial killer phenomenon for decades, but in 1978 they began the Crime Analysis and Criminal Personality Profiling Program. FBI agents systematically interviewed imprisoned serial killers (who were almost always anxious to talk) about their backgrounds, their motivations, and their methods of operation. Startling similarities emerged.
Broadly speaking, the FBI divided serial killers into two categories: the organized personality and the disorganized personality. Tulsa’s killer fell into the first category. According to the FBI profiles, this conclusion provided Tomlinson with considerable information that was more than likely true about the killer.
He was (a) a man, (b) between the ages of twenty and forty-five, and (c) almost certainly white. He was probably a first-born son. Parental discipline from his father had been inconsistent or nonexistent; his mother may have been abusive. During his childhood, he engaged in what the FBI called the homicidal triangle: the torture or abuse of animals, followed by bedwetting in his early teens, followed by a period of firestarting. He learned early in life that he obtained sexual gratification from inflicting pain.
He had a better than average I.Q., but his grades in school were mediocre. Not because he was stupid, but because he was apathetic. For similar reasons, he probably had a low-profile job and a spotty work history. He was living with someone—parents or maybe a girlfriend. He was an abuser of alcohol, or drugs, or both.
The list of probabilities went on and on. He loved nothing more than to drive. Serial killers were almost always trailers; they often put eighty thousand miles on their cars in a single year. He was friendly and socially adept. (All his friends said no one was smoother than Ted Bundy.) He captured his victims without using force. He would kill them in an efficient manner; he would always clean up afterward. He would probably keep a souvenir of each kill and he would be certain to follow the press coverage of his murders. Scrapbooks were not uncommon.
That was the portrait of the man they were hunting, as Tomlinson saw it. And unlike the rest of the force, he had an idea of where to look.
Before Tomlinson became a plainclothes officer, he’d walked the beat and driven a patrol car in downtown and north Tulsa—the best and the worst districts in Tulsa. In central downtown, it was all suits and ties—not much for a beat cop to do. Occasionally he even got to ride the Mounted Patrol horse. If you traveled a bit in the wrong direction, though, you ended up in the oldest and worst part of the city. Street crime was everywhere; it was just a question of where to begin. Tomlinson saw the full array: drunks, con men, prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts, drug pushers. After a few weeks, he came to know them well. And he was there for three years.
During that seemingly endless time, Tomlinson learned more about the people of the streets than he had ever wanted to know. He saw runaways jump off the bus and fall into the arms of their future pimps. He saw desperate druggies risking AIDS just to get that hot white magic shooting through their veins. But most importantly, he knew the significance of a certain twenty-acre tract in west Tulsa County—the area in which all three victims’ bodies had been found.
It was The Playground—the street people’s amusement park, the druggie’s Disney World. Every now and then, a bunch of heads, or maybe some ladies of the evening, would leave Eleventh Street (The Stroll, as its denizens called it) and throw a party. Usually the party was a large-scale sex and drugs group event. Sometimes the host would be a pusher who’d scored big; sometimes it would be an outsider—say a wealthy John trying to set a new personal record. The Playground was easily accessible, but safe, secluded, and absolutely unpoliced. The revelers could do anything they wanted out there.
And now it appeared that someone was.
Anybody in the Eleventh Street in-crowd would know about The Playground and might well consider it a fail-safe place to dump a body.
Tomlinson closed his books and threw down his pen. Just thinking about this was making him sick. He’d been learning all about the grisly activities and tragic backgrounds of America’s worst. He felt as if he knew this nameless killer, maybe even better than he knew himself. And he was repulsed. For the first time, he felt the horrible inefficiency of the criminal justice system. Due process? Probable cause? Someone just needed to grab a gun and put a bullet through this man’s forehead.
Tomlinson rubbed his aching eyes. There was so much more he needed to do. He wanted to access the FBI archives at the National Crime Information Center. He wanted to visit the morgue and see what Dr. Koregai could tell him about the victims. And he wanted to stake out Eleventh Street, to keep a watchful eye and an alert ear for possible clues. That was his edge, as far as solving this crime went—his link to the Eleventh Street criminal subculture.
But a stakeout would have to wait; now he had to get home. Karen would be furious. She wasn’t too keen on his staying up till he was blurry-eyed and frazzled. She’d much rather he stayed home with her and Kathleen.