James Swain - The Program

“Son of Sam later admitted to the police that killing Lauria and wounding her friend had sexually excited him. For several days after this, he read the newspaper articles in his home while masturbating. It satisfied a need which so far had gone unfulfilled.”

Dark clouds were directly ahead. In her hurry, Vick had driven directly into the storm. It was the last place she wanted to be.

She hit her indicator and tried to get into a turn lane. Heavy drops of rain pelted her windshield. A split-second later, the clouds opened up, and the downpour began.

“Say that last line again,” she said.

DuCharme ran his finger down the page. “It satisfied a need which so far had gone unfulfilled.”

“That’s it.”

Vick hit her horn and started cutting across the lanes of traffic. She came to the intersection and did an illegal U-turn and headed back the way they’d come. DuCharme said nothing, his mouth agape as he watched her drive.

She punched the gas, hoping to outrace the storm. But it was too late; the darkness and rain had already enveloped them. At the next light, she threw her Audi into park.

“Mr. Clean is dropping the bodies in these locations because it satisfies a need,” she explained. “He’s done it with every one of his victims. It’s part of his signature.”

“Is that what links him to Son of Sam?”

“Yes. Now we have to figure out what that need is.”

The light changed. Vick’s car skidded on the wet road as she hit the gas.

“Keep reading,” she told DuCharme.

Dusk was settling as the Southwest Airlines jet touched down on the runway at Pittsburgh International Airport and the cabin of people broke into applause. The flight had been as rocky as a roller-coaster, and everyone was happy for the safe landing.

Linderman pulled his overnight bag out of the overhead bin. He was one of the few onboard who hadn’t been bothered by the rough conditions. Flying in an airplane was safer than riding in a car, not that you could convince most people of that. The things that people should have been truly frightened of, they rarely were.

Soon he was sitting in a rental on the Avis lot. He’d rented a GPS system, into which he keyed the address of the Crutchfield house. He did not know Pittsburgh, and was going to rely on the GPS to keep him from getting lost.

The interstate was jammed with rush-hour traffic. He inched along, thinking dark thoughts. It had been a brutal day. He’d fantasized killing Crutch in the chapel, imagined seeing Crutch electrocuted at the restaurant, and had visualized Crutch trying to kill his own family at the FBI office in Jax. Evil thoughts had invaded his mind, and would not go away. Kessler had warned him about this, but Linderman hadn’t understood the danger.

Traffic started to move. Soon the city’s gray buildings were behind him, and he was traveling through the hilly suburbs. He had programmed the GPS system so the voice would have a female British accent. It was a nice change, and he let the voice guide him to the Crutchfield home on Morningside Drive in Oakmont.

It was dark when his headlights found the mailbox with the address. It was a remote area with no streetlights, the land heavily forested. He got out of his car to make sure he had the right place. Printed on the side of the mailbox in faint letters was the word CRUTCHFIELD.

He inched his rental down the gravel driveway past a stand of trees. Almost immediately he had to stop. A fallen oak tree lay in his path. He tried to drive around it, only to find there was no room on either side.

He climbed out and tried to move the tree. He managed to get it an inch off the ground, nothing more.

“Damn it.”

He hadn’t come all this way to be stopped by a lousy tree. He opened the trunk and got the flashlight from his garment bag, and checked it to make sure the batteries still worked. They did, and he headed down the driveway by foot.

The walk lifted his spirits. The air was cooler than back home, and there was a refreshing chill in the air. He hadn’t appreciated the cold until he’d moved to Florida to hunt for Danni. Now, the cold was something he dreamed of going back to.

A tall wooden fence greeted him at the driveway’s end. A painted sign had been nailed to the fence. The sign read No Trespassing – This Means You!

He tried to open the gate, and found that it was locked. On either side of the gate was a fence topped with metal spikes. It was growing dark and he probably should have gone back to his car and waited until tomorrow but instead he grabbed the top of the gate with his hand and pulled himself up so he was looking over it.

That was when he saw the house.

It was an old Victorian three-story with a gabled roof and a wraparound front porch with a metal swing. The swing moved eerily back and forth despite there not being a hint of breeze. The front door had criss-crossing boards nailed over it, and pieces of plywood covered the windows. Shingles were missing from the roof and the paint was peeling in large chunks off the front and sides. Not a soul had lived here for years.

He wanted to see more.

It was a bad idea. He didn’t have a search warrant, and would be breaking the law should he step onto the property without one. He believed in the law, and what it stood for. He had never broken the law for the sake of speeding up an investigation.

Until now.

He pulled his head up a few more inches, then threw his leg over the top of the gate. It was a struggle. When the leg did go over, the rest of the body went as well.

He landed on in a heap on the other side. His forty-eight-year-old body had its share of aches and pains, and he spent a moment making sure he hadn’t broken anything. Rising, he dusted himself off, then checked the flashlight. It still worked.

He let the flashlight’s beam guide him toward the house. The state of disrepair grew more evident the closer he got. Stopping on the front path, he shone his light up and down the structure and spotted several birdnests in the rain gutters.

The swing continued its ghostly movement.. With his free hand he grabbed one of the metal chains from which it hung. Only then did it stop.

He cautiously sat down on the swing. To his relief, it did not come crashing down. Shutting off his light, he stared at the encroaching darkness. His friend Jack Carpenter talked about light and darkness as if they were opposing forces, one put on this earth to inspire hope and inspiration, the other an instrument of fear, and death.

A noise snapped his head. It was a woman’s voice, and was high-pitched. He rose from the swing and tried to determine where it had come from.

Then he heard it again. A cry for help, coming from inside the house. There was a boarded window behind the swing. He placed his ear to it, listening.

“Jason, no!” the woman shrieked.

“Shut up, mother!” came the voice of Crutch.

“Oh, my God, Jason, please don’t kill them,” the woman said. “ Please. ”

“But they’re already dead, mother!”

“You killed my babies! You fucking little bastard.”

“You’re next, mother!”

Linderman pulled his ear away from the plywood. He knew what he was hearing wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real – Crutch was in prison, and not inside the house. Yet it sounded as real as his footsteps on the porch.

He was losing his mind.

He retreated off the porch. His heart was pounding out of control and he was experiencing tunnel vision. He needed to get back to the car and calm down.

He heard a thundering noise and shone his flashlight at the house. The criss-crossing boards were no longer across the front door, and the paint on the house looked fresh and new. The front door banged open, and Crutch emerged with the body of a woman slung over his shoulder.