James Swain - The Program

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Jenkins said.

They walked to the visitor’s parking lot. The sun was blinding, and Linderman squinted to find his rental among the vast landscape of cars.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to nail the bastard,” Linderman said.

“How? You said he hadn’t broken any laws.”

“There are twenty-four murders that the FBI believes Crutch is responsible for. I should be able to link at least one of them to him. Once I do, I’ll come back here, and put the screws to him. That should make him talk.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Jenkins asked.

The offer was sincere. Linderman didn’t believe what Crutch had said about Jenkins not having a spine. If anything, Jenkins had impressed him as someone who followed the law, no matter where it took him.

“Yes, there is. You can make Crutch’s life living hell. If he starts feeling the pressure, he might start talking.”

“How would you suggest I do that?” Jenkins asked.

“Ostracize him. Let the other inmates know what kind of animal he is. That sort of thing.”

“I can do that,” Jenkins said.

They shook hands. Linderman had a feeling he’d be seeing Jenkins soon.

Linderman drove into the town of Starke. He turned on the radio, and listened to country music while replaying what had happened in the chaplain’s study.

He hadn’t blacked out or fainted. He’d had an episode in which his imagination had eclipsed the rational part of his brain. His fantasy of killing Crutch had seemed real because to his brain it was real.

Murderous fantasies were a topic that he was familiar with. They were what drove serial killers to seek out their victims, and snuff out their lives. They started when a serial killer was young, and grew as the killer’s anger with society grew. At some point during the process, the fantasy became more real than reality.

He thought of Ed Kemper, a highly intelligent giant who’d killed his grandparents when he was fourteen, then killed eight more women after being released from prison. He’d once interviewed Kemper in a room filled with guards, knowing Kemper’s stated desire to screw the head off an FBI agent, and leave it on a table.

“Tell me about your fantasies,” he’d said.

“I sorry to sound so cold about this,” Kemper had apologized, “but what I needed to have was a particular experience with a person, and to possess them in a way that I wanted to. I had to evict them from their human bodies.”

“Could the fantasy have worked without evicting them?” he’d asked.

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Kemper had stated.

Linderman thought back to his own murderous fantasy. Strangling Crutch had been the starting point, not the end. He’d needed to evict Crutch from his body before his fantasy of smashing his head against the desk could begin. It disturbed him to think that his fantasy had matched someone like Kemper.

Linderman knew what he had to do. Check himself into a hospital and get help. He was a danger to himself and the people around him. His mind was poisoned.

Only going into a hospital would mean quitting the case, and he wasn’t going to do that. People were depending on him, and he could not let them down. He owed it to them, and to himself, to see the case through.

He made a promise to himself. He would seek medical treatment once the investigation was finished. By staying focused on his work, he could get through this. His dedication to his job had saved him from going crazy during the past six years, and it would save him now.

Soon he was sitting in the restaurant where he’d eaten breakfast. His table was near the electric chair behind the velvet cord. A little boy was getting his picture taken in the chair, his father snapping endless photos. It seemed ghoulish, and he reminded himself that the chair was a spare from the prison, and had never been used.

A big-haired waitress swooped down on his table. He let himself be talked into the lunch special. When she was gone, he booted up his laptop, and opened a folder containing Crutch’s index cards. He found the card devoted to Killer X, and studied it.

He had to give Crutch credit. He’d figured out who Killer X was by studying his crimes, besting the profilers at Quantico. He needed to fix that. If Crutch could figure out the puzzle, so could he.

He started by copying what Crutch had written on a separate sheet of paper. It was an unusual exercise, designed to make the writer feel the words as they came off the pen. He wrote slowly, pausing to stare after each line.

Name: Killer X

Age:40-50

Characteristics:Handsome, soft-spoken, a person women

are not initially afraid of.

Resides: South Florida

# of years killing:25+

Upbringing:Did not know father, barely knew mother.

Raised by sibling or grandparent. May have

done time in prison at a young age, which led

to a lifelong fear of being incarcerated.

Fetishes:Bodybuilding, nice clothes, grooming

products (aftershave, cologne, cleansers)

Type of victim:Female prostitutes

Victims’ characteristics:Street walker (no call services)

20-30 years old

No kids or family (not missed)

Raped

Throat slit

Last seen at night

Black or Hispanic, but will kill a

white girl in a pinch.

Body found near hwy or public road

Notes:Can’t get enough of his victims. Just like

SOS. Should be easy to find.

Linderman chewed on the end of his pen. The last three lines were already haunting him. What did Crutch mean, can’t get enough of his victims? And who was SOS?

His lunch came. He’d lost his appetite, and pushed the plate aside.

He studied the Crutch’s notes until his eyes turned blurry. The clue to Killer X’s identity was staring him right in the face, yet he couldn’t identify it. Crutch had claimed that he could look at the photograph of a dead person, and know what their killer had been thinking when he’d committed the crime. Perhaps he needed to look at the victims’ autopsy photos, and see if anything popped out.

Then he had a thought. This wasn’t his case, it was Rachel’s. She had made Mr. Clean right from the start, and was tuned into him. Vick needed to have a crack at this, and see what she could come up with. He kicked himself for not thinking of her sooner.

It was not a phone call he wanted to make inside the restaurant. He found his waitress on the other side of the room, and mimed signing a check. She mouthed that she’d be right over.

He leaned back in his chair to wait. The morning’s events had added to his exhaustion, and he rubbed his eyes and smothered a yawn.

His gaze fell on the electric chair. The velvet rope was gone, the chair occupied by a man wearing an orange prison uniform, his arms and legs tied down. It was Crutch. His head had been shaved, and strapped beneath his chin was a leather restraining device to stop him from screaming when the juice was thrown. Behind the chair stood a man with his hand on a switch, his face masked by shadows.

The switch was thrown, and Crutch started to convulse. Smoke came off the top of his head, and blood poured down his nose. The man in the suit lifted the switch, and Crutch fell limp in the chair. He had ridden the lightening into the hereafter.

The executioner stepped out of the shadows. Linderman’s heart skipped a beat. He was looking at himself. He was the executioner.

“Something wrong?” the waitress asked, slapping the check down.

He snapped back to reality. The electric chair was empty, the velvet rope back in place. Nothing had happened.

“No,” he managed to say.

“You’re looking mighty pale. The food didn’t upset you, did it?”