"Sam, that kind of answer does squat for me right now."
I blinked and felt my lips separate but nothing came out. "Excuse me?"
I finally said.
"Jesus, Kincaid." Griffith shook his head at me. "Tunnel vision. A
real tunnel vision problem. You didn't get my point at all yesterday,
did you?"
"Yes, sir. Keep the eye on the ball. The big picture. The greater
good." Usually, I can manage to sound earnest even though I know I'm
being snide. This time, I just sounded snide.
"Damn it. Yes, the strength of your case matters when your bad guy's
telling everyone who will listen that he's the innocent victim of the
Keystone Kops and that some serial rapist is on the loose. It matters
even more when there's another guy on death row saying the same thing,
and a little old lady serving a life term backing him up. Jesus. You
made it sound yesterday like your guy was just taking advantage of the
publicity with Taylor. Now I've got to find out from the papers that
there's something to it."
Shit. I hadn't read the papers this morning, and I'd blown off
Manning's call last night. I decided it was better not to interrupt
Griffith's diatribe with information that made me look even more inept
and uninformed.
"Jesus, I started with the Softball, Kincaid, when I asked you about
your case. The bigger question is why the hell you didn't bother to
mention your little tryst with Chuck Forbes. You sat here in my office
and acted like this was a routine case with some incidental mention of
the Zimmerman matter. Now I've got this." He picked up a folded
Oregonian from his desk and slammed it down for emphasis.
When in doubt, bluff. It usually works. "Sir, I'm not sure how it
would have been relevant during our meeting yesterday for me to start
discussing my personal life, whatever that may be."
"And you still think that today?" he asked. Again with that damn
newspaper.
My only choice was to 'fess up. "I'm afraid I didn't get a chance to
see the paper this morning yet, sir. Like I said, I'm in trial, and I
was running late."
Griffith stared at me for a second. Then he started laughing.
"Oh. Well then, let me have the pleasure of being the first to
introduce you to the story that may very well end your career and mine.
Please, be my guest. Go over to the sofa if you'd like. It's quite
comfortable, and, I guarantee, that's quite an article. It might take
awhile."
I thought about rewarding the sarcasm by lying on the sofa as he
suggested, but I wanted to keep my job.
I unfolded the paper to a banner headline that read, Does Portland Have
a Serial Killer? A smaller line beneath it explained, Letter from "The
Long Hauler" Supports Theory Linking Current Sex Trial to Murder of
Jamie Zimmerman. There was a large photograph of a smiling Jamie
Zimmerman, with smaller booking photographs of Taylor, Landry, and
Derringer. The text below the pictures explained that, despite claims
of innocence, Taylor was on death row and Landry was serving a life
sentence for the rape murder of Zimmerman, and that Derringer claimed
that whoever killed Zimmerman must have committed the crime he was
accused of.
I had to read the article quickly, since Griffith was obviously growing
impatient:
Like the letter first disclosed by the Oregonian last week, the one
received yesterday arrived in an unremarkable white envelope bearing a
Roseburg postmark. The writer again claims that he and not Jesse
Taylor and Margaret Landry strangled Jamie Zimmerman. In this new
letter, however, the writer maintains that Zimmerman's murder was just
the beginning in what has become a string of grisly murders, scattered
throughout the Pacific Northwest and previously believed to be
unconnected. He also claims responsibility for a brutal rape that is
the basis of the trial of Frank Derringer currently being held in the
Multnomah County Courthouse. Calling himself the Long Hauler, the
writer identifies himself as a long-haul truck driver from Oregon whose
travels across the country have made it easy for him to kill five women
undetected.
I was surprised by the graphic detail reprinted verbatim in the paper.
At one point, the author explained that killing Zimmerman had ignited
an insatiable desire in him to kill. Six months after he strangled
Jamie Zimmerman, he couldn't withstand the temptation anymore, so he
picked up a prostitute at a truck stop in Ellensburg, Washington, and
strangled her with a leather belt while he orally sodomized her. I
kept reading.
Explaining his self-declared pseudonym, the writer says, "All the good
ones had a name. Son of Sam, Boston Strangler, Green River Killer.
Unless you think of something better, you can just call me the Long
Hauler."
In addition to detailed descriptions of the murders of Jamie Zimmerman
and four other women, the writer also describes his involvement in a
violent sexual assault upon a victim he refers to as "the girl who was
dumped in the Gorge last Feb[ruary]." He claims that, as he had done
prior to and since Zimmerman's murder, he went with a friend to look
for a prostitute to share.
He says, "I knew we were going to kill the girl when my friend couldn't
[achieve an erection]. He started working her over and it brought out
the urge in me. Maybe the Gorge is my lucky spot. That couple took
the fall for me after I did Jamie, and now the cops think some other
guy did the other girl. I guess the bad luck is that this time she
lived. (Ha-ha.)"
The writer's description of the incident closely matches the crime for
which Frank Derringer is currently on trial. Derringer is accused of
raping a thirteen-year-old girl and leaving her for dead in the
Columbia Gorge with an unidentified accomplice. During his trial,
Derringer has claimed to be the victim of a mistaken eyewitness
identification. Because of similarities between the offense and
Zimmerman's murder, Derringer has suggested that the crimes were
committed by the same person or persons.
I reached the end of the front page text of the feature story and
opened the paper to jump to the continuation. Apparently, the writer
gave detailed descriptions of the five murders, but the Oregonian was
declining to publish any potentially identifying information until law
enforcement officials verified its authenticity.
An exasperated sigh from Griffith reminded me that I was supposed to be
rushing. I closed the paper back to the front page and looked up at
him.
"I'm sorry, Sam. Was I disrupting your reading?"
"I was getting through it as quickly as I could," I said. "So the
paper agreed to keep the details quiet until we figure out if this
guy's for real?"
Griffith didn't hide his annoyance. "Yeah, IA's trying to find any