James Swain - The Program

He tested the door and found it locked. He tried kicking it down and got nowhere. He checked the work area for an appropriate tool. The best he could find was a small axe. The candle in his hand had burned down. He used it to light another, then went to work on the door. The wood was old, and fought him every step of the way.

“Hey, is that you?” Fitch called from the top of the stairs.

“Yes,” Linderman replied, breathing heavily.

“You find something?”

“I think so.”

“I called a judge I know, and told him I had reason to believe there had been a murder on this property. He’s issuing a search warrant right now.”

Fitch had just saved him a lot of trouble and headaches.

“Thank you,” he called up the stairs.

“No problem. Let me know if I can do anything,” the officer replied.

“Do you have a flashlight handy?”

“In my car. You want me to get it?”

“Please.”

Soon Fitch came down the stairs shining a megawatt flashlight. He directed the flashlight’s beam at the door without having to be told.

“You looked kind of funny holding that little candle,” Fitch remarked.

Linderman smiled grimly. It had occurred to him that he was about to witness something that no profiler within the FBI had ever seen before – the lair of a serial killer as a young boy. Serial killers dark fantasies started at a tender age, and became more violent and disturbing as they grew older and matured. Now, he was going to see the things which had affected young Jason Crutchfield, and led him to kill his family. Had Rachel Vick’s life not hung in the balance, he would have been giddy with excitement.

Finally the door gave way, and he laid it across the washing machine.

“You want to go first?” Fitch asked.

“Please,” Linderman replied.

Fitch handed Linderman the flashlight.

“Be my guest,” the officer said.

The room was not what Linderman had expected. Meticulously neat and tidy, there were no visible signs of a diseased mind. The bed was made, the floor free of trash. The shelves were lined with teenage bric-a-brac, including stacks of baseball cards and a pair of ping pong paddles. The room also had many comforts, including a stereo system, a portable TV set with rabbit ears that sat on an upturned crate, and a small fridge.

“You see the bodies?” Fitch asked, standing in the doorway.

“They don’t appear to be here,” Linderman replied.

“Crap – there’s my phone. Let me take this.”

“Go ahead.”

Fitch went upstairs to take the call.

The closet came next. It was a small space with stone walls. A half dozen denim shirts and several pairs of stone-washed blue jeans hung from a metal pole. There was one navy sports jacket and gray flannel pair of pants that looked like church clothes. It was all terribly normal, with no signs of problems.

Something wasn’t right here. Crutch hadn’t gone from a normal teenage kid to a serial killer overnight. It had happened over time, the pressure building slowly, until one day he’d erupted like a volcano, and all the anger inside had spilled out.

He rechecked the bedroom. Jammed in the corner was a desk with a stack of school books. Each book had a paper book cover designed to protect it from use. Written on the cover of the top book were the words SOCIAL STUDIES.

Linderman opened the book to a random page, and found himself staring at a page with the words The Nine Satanic Statementswritten across the top. He shut the book, and removed the cover. The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor Lavey. Crutch had been reading about devil worship when he was supposed to be studying history.

He removed the paper covers from the rest of the stack, and checked the spines. Each was a book on Satanism and occult worship.

He put the books back into the stack the way he’d found them. The room would need to be photographed by a CSI exactly as he’d discovered it.

A book bag lay beneath the desk. It was black and had escaped his attention. He pulled the bag out and opened it. It was filled with spiral notebooks, the words SOCIAL STUDIES, ENGLISH LIT, MATH, SCIENCE written on the covers.

Crutch’s school notes.

Diaries and personal writings said more about a person’s mind state of mind than anything else. He was finally going to get to the root of what had driven Crutch over the edge. He started with the notebook that said ENGLISH LIT.

The first twenty pages were notes about the novels of Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Then the notes stopped, replaced by drawings of a crouching, devilish figure with pointed ears holding a sword dripping with bright red blood. Every remaining page of the notebook contained the same drawing.

The other notebooks were identical. After about twenty pages, the school notes ended, and were replaced by the devilish figure.

The notebooks went back into the bag. He placed the bag on the bed so the CSI team wouldn’t miss it. Behind the bed was a black wall with a peculiar shadow. He leaned in for a closer look.

Not a shadow, but a drawing. The same devilish figure, only much larger, almost human size. It’s texture looked odd, and he ran his finger across the outline.

It had been burned into the wall.

He heard a noise and spun around. His flashlight’s beam captured the man standing on the other side of the bedroom. It was young Crutch, holding a baseball bat.

It felt like a dream, and maybe it was, Linderman running up the basement stairs after Crutch, knowing he couldn’t change what was about to happen, but still wanting to try. Thinking perhaps that it would still lead to saving Vick, not knowing why.

He froze in the doorway to the dining room. Crutch’s mother and three sisters sat at the dining room table, chatting amicably while enjoying dinner. Crutch stood at the head of the table, yielding the bat, screaming like a banshee.

Linderman blinked, and everything changed.

The four women lay dead on the floor in their own blood. Crutch was bashing the furniture and the walls with the bat, gnashing his teeth like a lunatic. He somehow looked bigger and more menacing than he really was, the veins on his neck bulging like a weight lifter.

Linderman blinked again.

The dining room was now empty, the dead women gone. Linderman went to the window and stared out onto the front lawn. Crutch was dragging his mother’s lifeless body across the grass by the armpits. Taking her away to be buried.

He ran outside the house and down the creaky steps. He had to see where Crutch was taking his mother’s body. That was why he had come here. To find the bodies.

Halfway to the barn, he stopped running. Crutch and his mother had disappeared in the downpour.

“Hey, are you okay?” Fitch called out.

Linderman stopped and turned around. Fitch stood on the porch with a worried look on his face.

“Do you have cadaver dogs?” the FBI agent asked.

“The department’s got two good ones.”

“Get them.”

“Wake up. Breakfast time.”

Wayne Ladd’s eyelids snapped open. Renaldo stood in the open doorway, wearing his trademark gym shorts and no shirt, his upper torso glistening from his workout. His eyes were smiling, and he almost looked happy.

“What’s on the menu?” Wayne asked.

“Scrambled eggs, bacon, and whole wheat toast. I squeezed some fresh orange juice, too. I also bought some strawberry preserves.”

Wayne heard his stomach growl. Despite everything that had happened, he had not lost his appetite. The meals Renaldo were cooking for him were delicious, and gave Wayne something to look forward to, his day a mindless repetition of watching sick porno movies and listening to loud music.