“Unlike the woman where John works, this woman apparently turned around to confront her assailant.”
“How do you know that?” Kate asked.
“Because he shot her in the face.”
“So you weren’t there to investigate a purse snatching. You were trying to get a lead on a murderer.”
AJ nodded. “Like I told you before, we have to follow up every lead we get. Sometimes it’s a little thing that’s the connection we need to help us find the killer.
“Anyway, when I went back to the Clarkson Center to question the woman, I had the photos with me. I set them down on the table as I talked with her, asking her to point out where it happened, what direction she’d heard the attacker run off in, things like that. While I was asking her questions someone stepped out of the front office and called out her name, saying she had a call from the director of the center. Since there weren’t any phones on the work floor, she excused herself for a moment to run to the office to take it.
“John was sitting nearby, working. He leaned over and pointed to a man wearing an apron in the background of one of the photos, not far off at the end of the alley. There were a number of other people in the photo as well—you know, bystanders watching, like at John’s house today—but he pointed to one man in particular. He said that was the man who hurt women.
“I asked him if he had been there, if he had been out back and had seen it. He shook his head and went back to work. Even though it looked like the photo had upset him, I thought he was simply a mentally disabled guy who didn’t know what he was talking about or that maybe he just wanted to be part of the conversation.”
“These were photos?” Kate asked. “Photos on film? You said they had to be real photos. The police don’t use digital equipment?”
AJ smiled at the question. “Usually we do. By chance the forensic team had been on a couple of other cases that turned out to be pretty involved. They’d forgotten to charge their extra batteries, so both their digital cameras were dead. The guy who runs the team, Harold Gillen, is older and he keeps his film camera with his equipment as a backup.”
“That has to be pretty inefficient. Digital photos are available immediately. They’re easier to handle, send, and archive. Why would the police department let him use film?”
AJ shrugged. “I’m sure that sooner or later the department will require digital photos, but at the moment no one pays much attention or cares because our files are filled with older photos and film negatives. Because of that, the lab has developing equipment and scanners to convert photos to digital format when necessary, so for now it’s not an issue.
“Since I’ve gotten photos shot on film from him before, I always suspected that Harold simply liked his older camera better. People would rather use what they are comfortable with. He’s going to be retiring this year, so I doubt that he gives a damn if they want him to use digital. For now he simply says the batteries were dead and no one bothers him about it.”
Kate gestured across the table toward the satchel AJ had brought with her. “You use Harold Gillen to take those photos for you, don’t you? Photos on film? You use him because he’s older and about to retire and he doesn’t really give a damn about the bureaucracy so he doesn’t ask questions or say anything to anyone about what you might be up to.”
It wasn’t really a question. AJ smiled.
“You’re right. But that first time was just chance.”
“So what happened with John? How did this start?”
AJ took a sip and set her coffee cup back down. “While I waited for the woman to come back from her phone call, I asked John—just making conversation to be nice—if he hadn’t been there, then how did he know that was the guy who had done it. He hesitated and finally said he could tell by his eyes.”
Kate nodded. “I’ve heard him say that about people’s eyes.”
She wondered at her own reaction to Edward Lester Herzog’s eyes. She wondered if that was the same thing John felt. She couldn’t imagine how it was possible, or what was going on.
“I didn’t think much about it until a few days later when another detective arrested a murder suspect, a local short-order cook. It was also the guy John had pointed out in the photo. The woman he killed probably got a look at him, so he shot her because she would have been able to tell the police that he wore an apron. That would have narrowed their search. The apron identified him. It could be that was why he shot her.
“In that neighborhood an apron made him invisible to most people on the street. They see a cook in an apron, think he’s a working man, and discount him as a threat. Killers usually want to look nonthreatening, look invisible. It didn’t make him invisible to John, though.
“There are plenty of people who try to identify criminals for the police. Sometimes it’s a mentally ill person who gets the killer’s name from a voice in their head. Then there are people trying to promote themselves to the press as psychics. They make an educated guess, or a lucky guess. They can be wrong a thousand times, but the one time they say something that turns out to be at least partly true, that’s what gets coverage.
“Sometimes I have a feeling myself—a guy just looks guilty. I think any good police officer develops an instinct for when people are lying and when they’re guilty. We deal with criminals all the time, so we have a better mental database of patterns in the way guilty people behave. Those feelings aren’t reliable, though, and oftentimes I’m wrong.
“But this was different. John wasn’t trying to impress me with his ability. He wasn’t seeking notoriety. He wasn’t making an educated guess. He wasn’t making an observation that the guy looked guilty.
“He simply said ‘That’s the man who hurts women’ and then went back to work. There was something eerie about the way he said it that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.”
CHAPTER
NINE
“So what happened next?” Kate asked.
AJ turned the cup in her fingers as she collected her thoughts. “Over the next few weeks I couldn’t get John’s quiet certainty, his sincerity, out of my mind. Something about it, and about him, haunted me. I’m a detective. My life is devoted to investigating. A lot of hard work goes into finding the guilty party. What John had done didn’t make any logical sense.
“I decided that I needed to see if I could find a way to explain it. I wanted to prove to myself that I was imagining things, or he was. I wanted to put it to rest as luck or chance or a random coincidence so that I could forget about it.
“I went back to the Clarkson Center with the excuse of following up with the woman after the man had been charged. When we were alone, I asked John if I could stop by his house. He knew I was a police officer, and of course I’m female, so even though I could tell it made him apprehensive to do something so out of the ordinary, he seemed to feel safe with me and agreed.
“That night I came prepared. I showed John a lot of photos. I told him that I just wanted to know his reaction to a variety of people. I wanted to wear him down with pictures of regular people and ones I knew were petty criminals but not violent.
“In the stack I also had a photo of a guy who had just been arrested and charged in a killing spree over in Indiana.”
“John picked out that photo,” Kate said.
AJ nodded. “The instant John saw the photo of the guy, he flipped out. I had to put it away and then get my arms around him and hold him to calm him down. He was shaking like a leaf.”
Kate had often done the same thing herself when John was frightened, so she knew that it would have helped. Kate liked that AJ had done the same.
AJ stared off into her memories moment. “I don’t know,” she said without looking up, “something happened that night. We kind of bonded a little. I felt a real empathy for him, a sadness at the things he could apparently see that others couldn’t. Sadness that he had to live with such fears. He felt safe with me because I believed him. He said that other people didn’t believe him,
but I did.”
Kate felt a flash of guilt, because she had often dismissed John’s concerns when he told her about people he said were bad. She would try to tell him that he was just imagining things.
“Even though he was mentally disabled, I felt that maybe he had a special gift, a kind of insight that the rest of us don’t have. There was a gentleness about him, a simple sincerity.
“I started to wonder if maybe John might be able to help.”
Kate bristled. “Help?”
AJ looked up to meet her gaze.
“Last week I had to tell a young mother that her husband had been murdered in a robbery. The victim had cooperated and handed over the money from the register. There was no reason to bludgeon him to death. It was cold-blooded murder, a complete lack of empathy for the life of another human being. The victim’s wife and child are now alone in the world. They were barely making ends meet as it was. What are they going to do now?
“I’ve had to show mothers and fathers photos of the men who tortured, raped, and murdered their daughters to see if they knew the killer. When I see my own little boy I think of the animals out there and what they do to other children, what they would do to him if given the chance.
“If we catch a killer, then the next victim doesn’t die. The next family isn’t devastated. That person gets to live their life.
“It was obvious to me that John’s murder was a rage killing. The man who did it has likely killed before. He gets off on it. He’ll kill again unless he’s stopped. Imagine if we could have caught him before he harmed John.”
Unable to imagine the things AJ had seen on a regular basis, Kate shifted her gaze to the window, seeking refuge out in the darkness beyond it.
“I told John the truth,” AJ said. “I told him that I thought he had a special ability and that maybe he could use it to help me catch bad men before they could hurt people. John was excited by that prospect. He said he didn’t like people to get hurt. Even though he was apprehensive, he agreed to help me.”
“John didn’t ever like anyone to hurt,” Kate said quietly as she stared out the window. She looked back. “So you started showing him photos of suspects?”
“Not in the beginning. At first I just came over to visit him to make sure he was comfortable with me and knew he could trust me. A few times I called him the day before and told him that I would bring him dinner the next day. On those days, the days I brought him dinner, I didn’t show him photos. I just told him funny stories about my life that I knew he would enjoy hearing. I brought him the photo of the black-and-white cat that was there on his refrigerator. He loved it.
“From the very beginning I knew that I had to protect him from what would happen if anyone else found out, so I impressed upon him that what we did had to be a secret between the two of us. I told him that he didn’t ever have to help me if he didn’t want to, but if he did he couldn’t tell anyone, not even you.”
AJ smiled at the memory. “By then I was pretty sick of hearing all about the great and wonderful Kate.”
Kate had to fight back a sob. She wasn’t great at all. John had needed her and she hadn’t been there for him. She had failed him. She told herself that she could cry later.
“John seemed to grasp that I was being careful to protect him, and that I wanted him to keep it secret in order to keep him safe. He trusted me and kept our secret. At first, I simply wanted to discover what was really going on and the limits of what John could actually do—if he could actually do anything.
“Truth be told, I was really trying to prove him wrong.
“I also needed to find out if whatever it was he was able to do was at all reliable. I was still pretty skeptical. Once in a while I look at someone and know they’re guilty. You just get a feeling. But my feelings aren’t reliable. I needed to be convinced that John’s ability was not only different, but rock-solid reliable.
“So in the beginning I got photos of known felons from solved cases where we had convictions. Of course, John didn’t know that the cases had already been solved or that the killers were behind bars. I showed him photos of hundreds of men, even some women, and sprinkled in with those photos were those men who had been convicted of serious crimes.
“John never once got a serious offender wrong. Those photos always upset him.
“He felt uncertain about some of the petty criminals, but even so he was right about them every time. The more serious the crime, the more agitated he became, the more certain he was. He never had any doubts about those and he was never wrong. Not once.
“With murders—the savage, cold-blooded kind—he always went nuts. I had to calm him down after showing him a photo of that kind of killer.
“I remember the night I showed him a photo of a serial killer—Albert Lang, a real psycho. He liked to go after young men who were socially awkward. He tied them up, cut off their clothes, and tortured them for days. Took bites out of them while they were still alive and helpless.”
AJ leaned in, her brows drawing together until there were deep vertical creases between them. “Do you have any idea how much force it takes to actually rip off a mouthful of living human flesh, muscle, and sinew with your teeth? Sounds easier than it actually is. Can you imagine having duct tape over your mouth, wrapped around your head a half dozen times, your hands and feet tied to a bed, choking on your own screams and spit as his teeth pulled, twisted, and tore bites out of you? Every agonizing moment must have lasted an eternity.”
AJ shook her head as she sat back. Her fierce expression eased, but the knuckles of her fisted hand were white. Kate could see a deep hunger for vengeance in the woman’s eyes.
“John cried for two hours when I showed him Albert Lang’s photo,” she finally said, her voice softer. “I held him and told him that it was all right, that the man was already in prison. I assured John that he was safe, Kate was safe, and Albert Lang couldn’t ever hurt anyone else again.
“I told John that his home was his castle and he was safe in his castle. That finally made him smile.”
Kate rubbed the goose bumps on her arms as she imagined the terror of Albert Lang’s victims. It was easy to imagine John’s terror. She had no trouble understanding why Detective Janek wanted to do whatever she could to stop that kind of evil.
“So, you just showed John pictures of convicted people?”
“At first,” AJ said, finally looking back at Kate. “After a while I showed him pictures of people I suspected. Once John picked someone out in a photo, I would investigate them to see if I could build a solid case. I never used John’s name or involved him in any way, I swear. And I never used the information from John as an excuse to arrest someone. I had to be convinced by the evidence that I had a case against them.
“At first I had been trying to disprove John’s ability—that’s when by chance I first learned that it had to be a photo printed from a negative. I found myself using John to give me a direction where I might not have looked, or to back up my own suspicions.
“A few times John helped me identify a murderer—simple cases, like men who had murdered their wives. It’s usually the husband or boyfriend when a woman is murdered. Most victims know their killer. That kind of killer is usually pretty sloppy and they leave lots of evidence. We usually had strong suspicions to begin with and were already building a case before I showed John the photos. John’s ability at first became a way to reassure myself that I had the right guy.
“I always had several stacks of photos, and lots of extra photos to fill out the stacks. I didn’t want to show John only one man for fear he might think I was suggesting he react to that particular photo. I always showed him a whole stack, sometimes several stacks.
“One of the men in the extra photos on that particular day just so happened to be a serial killer—Edward Lester Herzog—although at the time no one knew it. At that point the mousy electronics salesman wasn’t even a suspect. He was merely one of dozens of people who had some kind of contact with the victims. br />
“I often had a person’s picture taken so I would have it with their statement. I like to be able to connect a face to the statement. Not all the detectives do that. Maybe I’m being thorough, or maybe it’s police instinct, or maybe I’m just overcompensating because I’m a female officer and feel that I always have to do better, be better, not miss anything, prove myself. At any rate, that’s how I came to have the photo of Herzog in the stack. At the time it was nothing more than an extra photo.”
AJ pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she again stared off at nothing. “When John saw that photo that I just showed you, the one that at the time I didn’t think was anyone, he cried out that it was the devil.
“He ran into his bedroom and hid behind the bed. I sat there with him half the night. I couldn’t understand what he saw in that photo that I couldn’t see, but I sure as hell knew that he saw something evil.”
AJ looked up and forced a smile. “I’ve got a little boy of my own, so I’m pretty good at comforting little boys.”
Her smile ghosted away. “I hated seeing John so terrified and knowing that I was the one who brought that terror to him. The compensation for my guilt is that I know that had we not stopped Herzog, who at the time wasn’t even a suspect, he would have gone on to murder more young women.
“Killers like that tend to think they’re smarter than the police. Killing fulfills an inner need. Oftentimes those types of killers are incredibly difficult to catch. The more murders they commit without getting caught, the more confident they become. They don’t stop unless they’re stopped. John did that.
“He always made me promise not to tell Kate about him seeing the devil. He grasped that he was helping people, but he didn’t want you involved, didn’t want you to be anywhere near the danger. As scared as he was, he was a brave man, too.