Fountain let out a sickening groan.
“Oh, please, Kevin, I just ate lunch,” she said.
“The station filmed it,” Kevin said, “but it was so gross it never aired.”
I looked across the desk at Fountain. “Do you mind if we watch it?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Do you mind if I leave the room?”
“Not at all.”
Fountain left her office. When she was gone, Kevin inserted the tape into the deck attached to the TV and hit Play.
“You want it with or without audio?” he asked.
“With,” Saunders said.
The screen flickered to life. Dressed in black, Bash stood in a grassy field clutching a cordless mike. Beside him stood a gap-toothed farmer wearing dirty coveralls. Behind the farmer was a large squealing hog tied to a stake in the ground.
Bash and the farmer bantered back and forth like a couple of frat house buddies. Then the farmer drew a curved knife from a sheath in his belt, and knelt down beside the hog. The castration took place with the farmer's back to the camera. There was nothing to see, but the sounds were gruesome.
“Enough of that,” Saunders said.
Kevin muted the clip with the remote. Soon the segment ended, and the camera pulled back. I could see Bash standing beneath the shade of an enormous oak tree off to the side. With him were four men, their faces masked by shadows.
“Freeze it,” I said.
Kevin froze the clip. I stared at the four faces, as did Saunders.
“Any of them look familiar?” Saunders asked.
I stared hard. Then I shook my head. The resolution on the clip was poor, and the faces were indistinguishable.
“I need this blown up and lightened,” I said.
“Your wish is my command,” Kevin said, popping the cassette out.
We followed him down a long hallway to an editing room, which was windowless and quite chilly. A black male technician was on duty, and Kevin explained what we needed. The tech inserted the tape into a deck, then had us go into the next room, a brightly lit soundstage with a giant video monitor hanging on the wall.
“I'd like to watch football on that baby,” Saunders said.
The frame we'd just been watching appeared on the monitor. Now, Bash and the four men looked larger than life.
“Would you look at that,” Saunders said.
Standing next to Bash was the history professor who'd molested his student. The teacher wore a baseball cap pulled down low, but it didn't hide enough of his face. It was definitely him.
“Do you recognize any of the others?” Saunders asked.
I stared at the other three men. They were smiling and looked like a bunch of guys having a barbecue in someone's backyard.
“Can you make the faces lighter?” I asked the tech.
“Sure,” the tech said from the other room.
The faces turned a few shades lighter. The guy to Bash's left wore shades and a leather bombardier jacket and was trying to look cool. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Skell, and I looked at his hands. Fingers were missing on both.
“That's Skell,” I said.
“Jesus, are you sure?” Saunders said.
“I'd bet my life on it.”
“What about the other two?”
The third man's face was partially turned. Hispanic, broad-shouldered, with an ugly facial scar. It was the guy who'd pumped three bullets into my car on 595.
“This guy tried to kill me the other day,” I said, pointing.
Saunders shouldered up beside me.
“What about the fourth one? Do you know who he is?”
The fourth man in the photograph was ten years older than the rest. He had meticulously styled blond hair and a beach-ball stomach. A thick gold necklace hung around his neck, and his watch looked like a Rolex.
“Never seen him before,” I said.
Saunders looked at Kevin.
“How hard would it be for us to get prints of this?” he asked.
Kevin walked into the next room and spoke with the tech. A minute later Saunders and I were holding color prints done off a laser printer. As I stared at Bash and Skell and the other members of the gang, my hands started to tremble. Finally, after six months of scratching my head, I was beginning to understand what I was dealing with.
“I need to talk to Ken Linderman,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I have a theory I want to share with you,” I told Linderman.
We'd driven back to the FBI building on Gray Street and were sitting in Saunders's office, talking on a squawk box.
“I'm listening,” Linderman said through the box's speaker.
“I think Skell is part of a gang of sexual predators,” I said. “Skell, a shock jock named Neil Bash, a high school history teacher, and two other men lived in Tampa three years ago, and if my hunch is correct, they preyed on underage girls. When the history teacher got busted and went to jail, the remaining members moved on to greener pastures.”
“You mean Fort Lauderdale,” Linderman said.
“That's right,” I said. “They came to my town and started abducting young women and having their way with them. They picked women who had no families and wouldn't be missed. They also chose women who were emotionally immature, so they could pretend they were underage and indulge in their fantasies.”
“Like role-playing,” Linderman said.
“Exactly,” I said. “Pedophiles do it all the time. But Skell's group was different. Instead of letting the women go when they were done with them, they killed them. My guess is, they realized this was the best way to cover their tracks.”
“Let me see if I get this right,” Linderman said. “You think that Skell and his team became killers in order to hide what they really were.”
“That's right,” I said. “They never stopped being pedophiles. They just found a way to satisfy their sexual cravings with less fear of retribution.”
Saunders was sitting directly across from me, hands on knees, listening intently to our conversation. He shot me a funny look.
“You think these guys kill their victims because it was less dangerous than what they were doing before?” Saunders asked.
“That's right,” I said.
“Don't you think that's a bit of a stretch?”
Before I could answer him, Linderman jumped in.
“Not really,” he said. “The justice and penal systems are less harsh on murderers than on sexual predators of children. This is especially true for first-time murderers. In terms of self-preservation, Skell and his friends made a wise choice.”
Saunders leaned back in his chair and shook his head.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath.
“I also think that the team divides up the duties,” I went on. “Bash is the front man. He's a minor celebrity and gets them invited places. Maybe that's where they scout for victims. Bash also protects the other members if they get caught, the way he did with the history teacher, and the way he's doing now by attacking me.”
“Damage control,” Linderman said.
“Exactly. The Hispanic is the abductor. He works for a cable company. He goes to the victim's house and cuts the cable on a pole. Then he gets a call to fix the outage, goes back to the house, and snatches the victim. There's never been a sign of a struggle at any of the victims' houses, so my guess is he's chloroforming them. I also think he's disposing of the bodies.”
“Why?” Saunders asked.
“He has the truck, and works with a partner. It's just a hunch.”
“What about Skell?” Linderman asked. “What's his role?”
“He pulls the strings and directs the action,” I replied.
“The mastermind?”
“Yes. He's got a genius IQ, so it would make sense that he's calling the shots and orchestrating the show.”
The laser print of the gang sat on Saunders's desk. Saunders picked it up and pointed at the blond guy with the perfectly round stomach.
“What about the fourth guy? What's his role?”