James Swain - The Program

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.

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.