James Swain - The Program

“Stop!” Linderman said without thinking.

Crutch came down the stairs and hurried across the lawn, the look in his eyes pure savagery. He walked right past Linderman and made his way toward the barn on the other side of the property. Linderman got a look at the woman he was carrying. She was dead, her face bashed in beyond recognition.

“I said stop!” Linderman shouted.

Crutch picked up speed, and disappeared inside the barn. Linderman ran after him, knowing that he was chasing something that was not real.

He halted at the barn’s entranceway. The interior was dark and had a rancid smell. He shone his light inside and saw a center aisle flanked by horse stalls. He entered cautiously and heard a rustling sound from above. He found the rafters with his flashlight and imprisoned several nests of birds in its beam. The mother birds chattered down at him, angry for the intrusion.

He let out a sneeze. A thick veil of dust covered everything inside the barn. It gave him an idea, and he shone his flashlight at the ground. No footprints. It had all been a trick of his imagination, yet he could not shake how real it had seemed.

He walked down the aisle and shone his flashlight into the different stalls. The boards on the walls were falling off, and the stalls looked old and uncared for. No one had been here in a long time.

At the end of the aisle was a wash rack for horses. The floors inside the wash rack were made of concrete, and there were drains to let the water escape. A sheeted object sat in the center of this area. The object was rectangular, and appeared to be some type of furniture. Placing the flashlight in his mouth, he grabbed the sheet and gently pulled it away, causing dust to rise lazily into the air.

The object was a wooden table with four chairs. As if by magic, four women had appeared in the chairs, and were happily chatting away. Crutch stood at the head of the table with a baseball bat in his hand, and raised it over his head.

Linderman dropped the sheet and ran.

“Keep reading,” Vick said.

“My eyes are tired.”

“Come on – how many pages are left?”

DuCharme flipped through her thesis on Son of Sam. “Two.”

“So finish it.”

“You folks want some more coffee?”

The waitress hovered next to their table with a fresh pot of joe. It was nearing midnight, and the IHOP was empty save for their table, the employees standing by the swinging door to the kitchen, eyeing their watches. The waitress didn’t care; she knew a decent tip when she saw one.

“Sure. Fill ’er up,” DuCharme said.

Vick declined. She was floating on coffee. DuCharme loaded his cup with cream and several packets of white sugar. He ate too much, smoked too much, and had an insatiable sweet tooth. A walking time bomb, she thought.

The coffee brought him around. He picked up the thesis and resumed.

“Here we go. Since his incarceration in Attica State Prison in New York, Son of Sam has proven to be one of the FBI’s best sources for understanding serial killers. Time and again, Son of Sam has allowed FBI profilers to interview him. He has spoken candidly about his upbringing, and the things which led him to kill. Rarely has he held back when discussing his crimes.

“Perhaps Son of Sam’s most interesting revelation came during an interview with FBI profiler Robert Kessler. Kessler interviewed Son of Sam in Attica on three different occasions, and developed a bond with him.

“During one of their sessions, Kessler discovered a scrapbook in Son of Sam’s cell, and asked if he could look through it. Son of Sam happily obliged.

“The scrapbook was filled with grisly news reports of Son of Sam’s crimes. The New York Tabloids were consumed by the Son of Sam killings during the summer of 1978, which became known as the Summer of Sam, and there were hundreds of such articles.

“Kessler flipped through the scrapbook while watching Son of Sam out of the corner of his eye. He’d seen a glean that hadn’t been there before, and frankly asked the serial killer if rereading the articles was a turn-on.

“Kessler was surprised by the answer he received. Son of Sam admitted that on the nights when he couldn’t find a victim, he would drive back to the scenes of his earlier crimes and fantasize over the shooting. Looking at blood stains on the ground was an erotic experience, and he often sat in his car and masturbated. Wow – what a creep.”

“Keep reading,” Vick said.

“In that candid moment, Son of Sam gave law enforcement a valuable tool in understanding and capturing serial killers. Serial killers did indeed return to the scenes of their crimes. Not because of guilt, as writers such as Dostoevsky would have us believe, but because of the sexual nature of the murder. Returning to the scene was a pleasurable experience, and often fulfilled a killer’s cravings for bloodshed.”

“That’s it,” Vick said.

DuCharme put down the thesis. “It is?”

Vick nodded, furious with herself for not seeing it sooner.

She stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. DuCharme came out with the thesis tucked under his arm and a sheepish look on his face that said he didn’t understand.

“Mr. Clean is just like Son of Sam,” she explained. “He’s returning to the scene of his crimes, and fantasizing over the corpses. That’s why he’s putting the bodies in places where they can be found. It lets him return to the scene and relive the experience.”

“What is he – a cop?”

She thought back to the botched sting at the RaceTrac. Mr. Clean had vanished from the parking lot without a trace, and as she’d stood in the field and tried to figure out where he’d gone, the solitary wail of a siren had whistled through the still night air.

“No,” she said. “He drives an ambulance.”

They sat in Vick’s car and did a search on her laptop of ambulance companies which serviced Broward County. Six popped up. Vick wrote down their names and addresses on a notepad. She knew there might be more – not every company had a website, or could be found on the Internet – but these six were a good place to start.

She handed the notepad to DuCharme and backed out of her spot.

“What’s the plan?” the detective asked.

“We know that Mr. Clean is Cuban, and that he drives an ambulance for a living,” she said. “We’re going to pay these companies a visit, and see if we can track him down. If we do, we’ll call for backup, and arrest him. Look over that list, and tell me which of those companies is closest.”

DuCharme flipped on the overhead light and went through the list.

“American Medical Services is on Broward Boulevard a few miles from here,” he said. “I’m familiar with them – they’re the biggest EMR service in the area.”

“Sounds like a good place to start.”

American Medical Services was run out of a faceless one-story box in an industrial park. Vick parked in the president’s reserved spot, and they got out and walked up the path. The front door was locked and she hit the buzzer.

Soon they were standing in the dispatch area. A pair of desks and a switchboard were the room’s only furniture. The air was stifling hot and smelled of failed deodorant. A chain-smoking man with brown teeth ended the call he was on to stare at their credentials. A sign on his desk said Please don’t touch me when I’m talking!

“What’s your name?” Vick asked.

“Frank Regli,” the man replied.

“You the dispatcher?” DuCharme asked.

“I’m one of them. How can I help you folks?”

“We need to ask you some questions,” Vick said. “How many ambulance drivers does your company employ?”

Regli scratched the day-old stubble on his chin. “A lot.”