The Poet (1995)

  Faced with the difficult task of winning a case without key evidence the first jury said was vital, authorities allowed Gladden to plead guilty to one count of lewd behavior with a child.

  The maximum sentence for such a crime is five years in prison and five years of consecutive probation. By that point, Gladden had served 33 months in prison and had earned an equal amount of good-behavior gain time. At his sentencing, he received the maximum penalty but still walked out of court a free man on probation.

  "It was an end run around justice," Hounchell, the prosecutor, recalled. "We knew he did it but we couldn't use the evidence we had in our hands. After that sentencing, it was hard for me to look at those parents and their children. Because I knew this guy would be out there and that he'd probably want to do it again."

  Within a year of his release, Gladden disappeared and a warrant was issued for probation violation. He resurfaced this week in southern California with what authorities here called deadly consequences.

  Gladden read the story completely through a second time. He was fascinated by its thoroughness and the credit it gave him. He also liked how, if you read between the lines, it questioned the story of the cop Gomez. That liar, Gladden thought. He broke in and he ruined the case. Served him right. He was almost tempted to pick up the phone and call the reporter to thank her for the story but decided against it. Too risky. He thought of Hounchell, the young prosecutor.

  "End run," he said aloud. Then he yelled it out, "End run!"

  His mind raced and filled with joy. There was so much they didn't know and already he was on the front page. They would certainly learn soon. They would know. His moment of glory was coming. Soon now.

  Gladden got up and went into the bedroom to prepare to go to the store. He thought it would be best to go early. He looked at Darlene again. Bending over the bed he touched her wrist and tried to lift her arm. Full rigor mortis had set in. He looked at her face. The jaw muscles were already contracting, pulling her lips back into an ugly grin. Her eyes appeared to be staring at their own reflection in the mirror over the bed.

  He reached over and pulled the wig off her head. Her real hair was reddish brown and short, unattractive. He noticed some of the blood had gotten on the lower fringe of blond curls and he took the wig into the bathroom to wash it off and to get himself ready. Afterward, he returned to the bedroom and gathered the things from the closet he would need to go to the store. Glancing back at the body as he was leaving the room, Gladden realized he had never asked her what the tattoo was supposed to be. Now it was too late.

  Before closing the door and leaving the room he turned the air conditioner on high. In the living room, as he changed clothes, he made a mental note to pick up some incense at the store. He decided he would use the seven dollars he had taken from her purse. She was creating the problem, he thought, she should pay to fix it.

  24

  Saturday morning we took a helicopter from Quantico to National and boarded a small bureau jet bound for Colorado. It was where my brother had died. It was where the freshest trail was. It was me, Backus, Walling and a forensic specialist named Thompson I recognized from the meeting the evening before.

  Beneath my jacket I was wearing a light blue pullover shirt with the FBI seal on the left breast. Walling had knocked on the door of my dorm that morning and presented it to me with a smile. It was a nice gesture but I couldn't wait to get to Denver so I could change into my own clothes. Still, it beat wearing the same shirt I had already worn for two days.

  The ride was smooth. I sat in the back, three rows behind Backus and Walling. Thompson sat behind them. I passed the time by reading the biographical note on Poe in the book I had bought and typing notes into my laptop.

  About halfway across the country, Rachel got up from her spot and came back to visit me. She'd dressed in jeans, a green corduroy shirt and black hiking boots. As she moved into the seat next to me she hooked her hair back behind her ear and it helped frame her face. She was beautiful and I realized that in less than twenty-four hours I had gone from hating her to wanting her.

  "What're you thinking about all alone back here?"

  "Nothing much. My brother, I guess. If we get this guy I guess maybe I'll find out how it happened. It's still hard to believe."

  "Were you close to him?"

  "Most of the time." I didn't have to think about it. "But in the last few months, no . . . It had happened before. It was kind of cyclical. We'd get along and then we'd get sick of each other."

  "Was he older or younger?"

  "Older."

  "How much older?"

  "Three minutes. We were twins."

  "I didn't know."

  I nodded and she frowned as if the thought that we had been twins made the loss all the more hurtful. Maybe it had.

  "I didn't catch that in the reports."

  "Probably not important."

  "Well, it helps explains why you . . . I've always wondered about twins."

  "You mean like did I get a psychic message from him the night he was killed? The answer is no. That kind of stuff never happened with us. Or, if it did, I never recognized it and he never said anything about it."

  She nodded and I looked back out the window for a few seconds. I felt good being with her, despite the rocky start of the day before. But I was beginning to suspect that Rachel Walling could put her worst enemy at ease.

  I tried asking her questions about herself to turn it around. She mentioned the marriage I already knew about from Warren but she didn't say much about her former husband. She said she had gone to Georgetown to study psychology and was recruited in her last year by the bureau. After becoming an agent in the New York field office, she had gone back to school at night at Columbia for a law degree. She freely admitted that being a woman plus having a law degree put her on the bureau's fast track. The BSS was a plum assignment.

  "Your folks must be very proud of you," I said.

  She shook her head.

  "No?"

  "My mother left when I was young. I haven't seen her in a long time. She doesn't know anything about me."

  "Your father?"

  "My dad died when I was very young."

  I knew I had strayed beyond the bounds of routine conversation. But my instinct as a journalist was always to ask the next question, the one they don't expect. I also sensed that she wanted to say more but wouldn't unless I asked.

  "What happened?"

  "He was a policeman. We lived in Baltimore. He killed himself."

  "Oh, man. Rachel, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

  "No, it's okay. I wanted you to know that. I think it has everything to do with what I am and what I'm doing. Maybe it's that way with your brother and this story. That's why I wanted to tell you that if I was harsh with you yesterday, I'm sorry."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "Thanks."

  We were silent for a few moments but I sensed the subject wasn't closed yet.

  "The suicide study with the foundation, is that . . . ?"

  "Yes, that's why I started it."

  Another void of silence followed but I was not uncomfortable and I don't think she was either. Eventually she got up and went to a storage area at the back of the cabin and got everybody sodas. When Backus was through joking about what a fine stewardess she made she sat down with me again. As the conversation began again I tried to move the subject away from the memory of her father.

  "Do you ever regret not being a practicing shrink?" I asked. "Isn't that what you first went to school for?"

  "Not at all. This is more satisfying. I've probably had more firsthand experience with sociopaths than most shrinks have in a lifetime."

  "And that's only the agents you work with."

  Her laugh came easily.

  "Boy, if you only knew."

  Maybe it was only the fact that she was a woman, but I sensed she was different from the other agents I had known and dealt with over the years. She wasn't as sharp around the edg
es. She was a listener, not a teller, a thinker, not a reactor. I was beginning to feel I could tell her what I was thinking at any given time and not worry about the consequences.

  "Like Thorson," I said. "He seems like he's got his top screwed on a little too tight."

  "Definitely," she said and then an uneasy smile and shake of the head followed.

  "What's with him, anyway?"

  "He's angry."

  "At what?"

  "A lot of things. He's got a lot of baggage. Including me. He was my husband."

  It didn't really surprise me. There had been the visible tension between them. My initial impression of Thorson was that he could be poster boy for the Men Are Pigs Society. No wonder Walling had a dim view of the other side.

  "Sorry I brought him up, then," I said. "I'm batting a thousand here."

  She smiled.

  "That's okay. He leaves that impression on a lot of people."

  "Must be hard to have to work with him. How come you're both in the same unit?"

  "We're not exactly. He's in Critical Incident Response. I float between Behavioral Science and CIR. We only have to work together at times like this. We used to be partners before we married. We both worked on the VICAP program and spent a lot of time on the road together. Then we just came apart."

  She drank some of her Coke and I didn't ask any more questions. I couldn't ask any of the right ones so I decided to cool it for a while. But she continued on unbidden.

  "When we divorced I left the VICAP team, started handling mostly BSS research projects, profiles and an occasional case. He switched over to Critical Response. But we still have our little meetings in the cafeteria and on cases like this."

  "Then why don't you transfer all the way out?"

  "Because, like I said, assignment to the national center is a plum. I don't want to leave and neither does he. It's either that or he just stays around to spite me. Bob Backus talked to us once and said he thought it would be better if one of us transferred out, but neither of us will blink. They can't move Gordon because he's got seniority. He's been there since the center started. If they move me the unit loses one of the only three females and they know I'll make a beef about it."

  "What could you do?"

  "Just say I'm being moved because I'm a woman. Maybe talk to the Post. The center is one of the bureau's bright spots. When we come to town to help the local cops we're heroes, Jack. The media laps it up and the bureau doesn't want to dim that. So Gordon and I get to keep making dirty faces at each other across the table."

  The plane pushed over into a descent and through the window I could look up ahead. On the far west horizon were the familiar Rockies. We were almost there.

  "Were you involved in the interviews of Bundy and Manson, people like that?"

  I had heard or read somewhere about the BSS project to interview all known serial rapists and killers in prisons across the country. From the interviews came the psychological data bank the BSS used to create profiles of other killers. The interview project had taken years and I remembered something about it having taken its toll on the agents who faced these men.

  "That was a trip," she said. "Me, Gordon, Bob, we were all part of that. I still get a letter from Charlie every now and then. Usually around Christmas. As a criminal he was most effective in manipulation of his female followers. So I think he thinks that if he is going to get anybody to sympathize with him at the bureau, it will be a woman. Me."

  I saw the logic and nodded.

  "And the rapists," she said. "A lot of the same pathology as the killers. They were some sweet guys, I tell you. I could just feel them sizing me up when I'd go in. I could tell they were trying to figure out how much time they'd have before the guard could get in. You know, whether they could take me before help came in. It really showed their pathology. They only thought in terms of help coming to save me, not that I might be able to defend myself. Save myself. They simply looked at all women as victims. As prey."

  "You mean you talked to these people alone? No separation?"

  "The interviews were informal, usually in a lawyer room. No separation but usually a hack hole. The protocol-"

  "Hack hole?"

  "A window one of the guards could watch through. The protocol called for two agents in all the interviews but in practice there were just too many of these guys. So most of the time, we'd go to a prison and split up. It was quicker that way. The interview rooms were always monitored but every now and then I'd get this creepy chill from some of those guys. Like I was alone. But I couldn't look up to see if the hack was watching because then the subject would look up and if he saw the hack wasn't looking, then . . . you know."

  "Shit."

  "Well, for some of the more violent offenders, my partner and I would do it together. Gordon or Bob or whoever was with me. But it was always faster when we split up and did separate interviews."

  I imagined that if you spent a couple years doing those interviews you'd come away with some psychological baggage of your own. I wondered if that was what she had meant when she had talked about her marriage to Thorson.

  "Did you wear the same clothes?" she asked.

  "What?"

  "You and your brother. You know, like you see some twins do."

  "Oh, the matching stuff. No, thank God. My parents never pulled any of that with us."

  "So who was the black sheep of the family? You or him?"

  "Me, definitely. Sean was the saint and I was the sinner."

  "And what are your sins?"

  I looked at her.

  "Too many to recount here."

  "Really? Then what was the most saintly thing he ever did?"

  As the smile dropped off my face at the memory that would be her answer, the plane banked sharply to the left, came out of it and started to climb. Rachel immediately forgot her question and leaned into the aisle so she could look toward the front. Presently I saw Backus coming down the aisle, his hands grabbing the bulkhead for balance. He signaled to Thompson to follow him and they both made their way back to us.

  "What is it?" Rachel asked.

  "We're diverting," Backus said. "I just got a call from Quantico. This morning the field office in Phoenix responded to our alert. One week ago a homicide detective was found dead in his home. It was supposed to be suicide but something was wrong. They've ruled it a homicide. Looks like the Poet made a mistake."

  "Phoenix?"

  "Yes, the freshest trail." He looked at his watch. "And we have to hurry. He's to be buried in four hours and I want to have a look at the body first."

  25

  Two government cars and four agents from the field office met us after the jet landed at Sky Harbor International in Phoenix. It was a warm day, compared to where we had come from, and we took our jackets off and carried them with our computer bags and overnighters. Thompson also carried a toolbox which contained his equipment. I rode with Walling and two agents named Matuzak and Mize, white guys who looked like they had less than ten years' experience combined. It was clear by their deferential treatment of Walling that they held the BSS unit in high esteem. They had either been briefed on the fact that I was a reporter or judged by my beard and hair that I was not an agent despite the FBI seal on my shirt. They paid little attention to me.

  "Where are we going?" Walling asked as our gray nondescript Ford followed the gray nondescript Ford carrying Backus and Thompson out of the airport.

  "Scottsdale Funeral Home," Mize said. He was in the front passenger seat while Matuzak drove. He looked at his watch. "Funeral is at two. Your man is probably going to have less than a half hour with the body before they'll have to suit him up and put him in the box for the show."

  "Was it open casket?"

  "Yeah, last night," Matuzak said. "He's already been embalmed and made up. I don't know what you're expecting."

  "We're not expecting anything. We just want to look. I assume Agent Backus is being briefed up ahead of us. Do you two care to fill us in?"
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  "That's Robert Backus?" Mize said. "He looks so young."

  "Robert Backus Junior."

  "Oh." Mize made a face that seemed to show that he understood why such a young man was running the show. "Figures."

  "You don't know what you're talking about," Rachel said. "He's got the name but he's also the hardest-working and most thorough agent I've ever worked with. He earned the position he has. It probably would have been easier for him, in fact, if he had a name like Mize. Now can one of you fill us in on what's going on?"