Side Effects: An FBI Psychological Thriller (6 page)

Morris didn’t comment on the detective’s pleasant little account.

Neither did I. Instead I gestured down at the body and asked: “The guys who found him put out the fire?”

Detective Brown nodded. “Said he already looked dead—was just lying in here, burning. They managed to toss a bunch of blankets on him and snuff out the flames, but he was already far gone. Blunt force trauma is what killed him though. Burning him after was just icing on the cake. We found an empty can of gasoline out there—” He gestured towards the door and the vast interior of the mill beyond. “Can looked kinda new. Besides, homeless know better than to start a campfire with gas. If it’s anyone’s, it’s kids screwing around, or your guy’s. Must’ve brought it with him.”

Morris snapped on a pair of gloves and squatted in front of the body. Local PD had extended the crime scene well beyond the room we occupied now; their efforts and chatter outside the room were constant as they worked diligently. Brown closed the steel door in a bid to offer some quiet. The three of us now stood alone in the room with the body.

“Nobody heard any screaming or anything, just the smell,” Brown said. He then looked around the airtight confines of the room. “Though I wonder if they would have heard anything in here.”

“They smelled something,” I said.

Brown acknowledged my logic with a nod.

“Maybe gagged again?” I said to Morris, alluding to no screaming reported by the homeless who found him.

“Maybe,” he said, still squatting and inspecting the body. “If so, it was likely burned away.”

Brown looked confused. “You sure this is your guy?” he asked.

Morris didn’t look up when he said yes.

“Thought your guy just cuffed them and did a whack-a-mole job on their heads before he dumped them. Don’t remember reading anything about setting them on fire. Think he was trying to cover his tracks?”

Morris finally stood. He ignored Brown’s question, looked at me and said: “Too burnt to get anything on the right palm.”

“Right palm?” Brown said.

Still looking at me, Morris gestured to the shackle on the victim’s ankle. “That’s new.”

“New but not significant, if you ask me,” I said.

“How’s that?” Morris said.

“I’d bet it’s for restraint only. I can’t see it serving a purpose for the fantasy.”

Morris gestured down towards the body, to the cuffs that bound the victim’s hands behind his back in trademark fashion. “He’s got his restraint,” he said. “Same as always. Why the leg iron too?”

I looked around the room. Four thick walls of concrete, a small window, and a steel door. No idea what purpose the room once served, but right now it reminded me of a prison cell—fine if your cellmate wasn’t a bother; a nightmare if he was.

“This victim was different than the others,” I said. “He’s been living on the street his whole life, tough as nails. He wouldn’t be as compliant as the other victims; there’s no life-leverage to use against him should he threaten to fight back.”

“Life-leverage?” Brown said.

“Sure,” I said. “You grab dad and he’ll do anything you tell him to if you threaten his wife and kids. Hell, most everyone has some kind of life-leverage.”

“But not a homeless man,” Brown said, catching on.

“Right. The only life-leverage a man like that has is his life, and that’s very little. The hardships and dangers they face every day? They’d laugh at the threat of their own life as a means of manipulation.”

“Manipulation for what? What’s he do with them?” Brown asked.

I shrugged. “We haven’t gotten that far yet. Point is the leg iron was used as a fail-safe, in case our victim decided to fight.”

“But he was cuffed from behind too.”

Morris finally joined in. “A fellow agent—” He stopped and looked at me. “You know Agent Holt.”

I nodded.

“A fellow agent was headbutted unconscious while their suspect was cuffed from behind. Then the suspect dove headfirst into Holt’s partner—” He paused and looked at me again. “Becker.”

I nodded again.

“Then the suspect dove headfirst into Agent Becker’s waist with all the force of a linebacker, knocking him on his ass without a breath of air. Suspect managed a good distance before Agent Becker was able to catch up to him. Holt’s nose is still crooked.”

Holt had once told me he got his trademark nose in a bar fight with three guys. I was eager to see him again.

“Why did you ask about the right palm?” Brown said.

Morris looked confused for a moment. It was an act. “Huh? Oh, that was nothing—just talking out loud.”

Brown seemed to buy it. “Gotcha. Anything else I can get you guys?”

“Few minutes alone would be great, detective.” Morris gave a genuine smile.

Brown frowned. “Alone?”

“Please.”

“What for?” He aimed the file in his hand at the victim and then waved it in the air. “Anything else you wanna know about this guy is in here.”

Morris smiled again. “Oh, I know that; I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. Just a few minutes.”

Both Detective Brown and his frown stayed put.

Morris stopped smiling. “Please.” He was no longer asking.

Brown sucked his teeth and flashed a contemptuous smile. “Sure thing,” he said. He then raised the file again. “Should I even offer it?”

“That would be really helpful, thank you,” Morris said.

Detective Brown handed the file over to me while keeping his eyes on Morris. He then turned and left without another word.

“I thought I was fine,” Morris said.

“Why’d you hold back the right palm detail? You worried about leaks?”

“Yeah. The right palm has been the one detail we’ve been able to keep away from the media. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“By saying it in front of him?”

“I got lost for a moment. It was dumb.”

“Yeah it was.”

His ice-blue eyes clicked on me, his expression void of our usual levity. “I got lost for a moment. It was dumb,” he said again.

“Okay…” I said with a polite, if not patronizing little smile. “So, what do we have here?”

“We have a homeless man, likely abducted from Trenton.”

“His dive bar girl after being cock-blocked in upstate Pennsylvania,” I said, hoping my using one of his metaphors might ease his weird intensity.

“Right.”

“How’d he get him in the car?” I asked.

“Money’s always good.”

“Soup kitchen girl said he’d been on the street for years. He’d be wary of cars flashing money.”

“Unless he turned tricks,” he said.

“Did he?”

“No idea.”

“Let’s say he didn’t. Car rolls up and offers money. Guy that street savvy isn’t just going to climb into a car for the promise of money.”

“Never underestimate the power of the almighty dollar,” he said.

“Okay, let’s run with that then. He promises a ton of cash—for what?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Sure—how’d he get him to agree to go all the way from Trenton to Newark?”

“Maybe he didn’t know he was going to Newark.”

“So then where did he think he was going?”

Morris leapt ahead. “Why burn him?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Let’s back up a minute.”

“No,” Morris insisted, pulling a roll of TUMS from his pocket and popping a few. “Let’s do the here and now. Why’d he burn him?”

“We can only arrive at the here and now if we go back to the
then
and
before
.”

“Bullshit—we
are
here. Why’d he burn him?”

“You know what I mean. The only way we’re going to understand this man is if we reconstruct his methodology.”

“Are you really going to stand there and preach to me?”

“Your seniority doesn’t make you impervious to impulsiveness, Tim. I know the heat you’re getting. You asked for my help—let me help you.”

“So then help me,” he said. “Do your thing.”

I’d taken the drug on the ride from Philly to Newark. It’d had more than enough time to kick in by now, but as I’d mentioned before, I had no way of knowing when it would do its thing, or if it would even happen at all. Simply willing my senses to get all uber-receptive didn’t work. Whenever it happened it came on with the suddenness, and momentarily helplessness, of a sneeze. Right now the only thing I sensed, maybe a bit stronger than usual, was the smell of peppermint from the TUMS Morris had just finished munching.

“It’ll happen when it happens,” I said. “In the meantime, there’s this thing called investigating that has proven to be pretty successful over the years.”

Morris made a weird grumbly noise in his throat—brat for
fine.

“Thank you,” I said with a smidge of condescending calm, “let’s backtrack a little then. If our victim didn’t know he was going from Trenton to Newark, where did he think he was going? What would keep you in the car for all that distance?”

“I still say money,” Morris said. “Street savvy or not, money changes things.”

He was right. Money was capable of disturbing feats.

“All right, let’s say money got him to Newark,” I said. “What then? What got him in here?” I waved my arm around the room. “What got him in those?” I pointed to the leg iron and the cuffs. “No way money did that. And remember, our guy has no life-leverage on the victim.”

“There had to be
some
kind of leverage. Either that or the victim was unconscious when he was cuffed and shackled.”

I opened the file and started reading. Head still in the file, I pointed to the west wall where local PD had lifted prints. “Local PD lifted several prints there—” I then pointed to the far wall. “And there.”

“I know,” he said, sounding dejected. “They’re the victim’s prints.”

I lifted my head from the file. “You’re missing the point. If the victim’s prints are on two of the four walls, that means he wasn’t cuffed at the time. How could he have been?” I gestured down at the victim and the way he was cuffed behind his back like all the others.

Morris’ dejected face started to dissolve. “Go on.”

“How do you get cuffs on a man with nothing to lose?”

“You threaten him.”

I snorted. “With what? There’s no daddy with a family here. This was a man who went to sleep every night prepared for it to be his last.”

Morris looked dejected again.

I handed the file to Morris and glanced back at the far wall. “How many prints did they lift from here?”

Morris scanned the file. “A lot,” he eventually said.

“And the west wall?”

He dropped his head into the file again. “Quite a few on that one too.”

“Both hands?”

He groaned and dropped his head again. “Yeah.”

“Weird.”

“What?”

“Why both hands? He couldn’t have been testing for give—it’s concrete.”

“Maybe he was pounding on the wall? Calling for help?”

“Who pounds on a concrete wall?”

“Someone who’s desperate. Scared.”

“What scares a hardened man like our victim?”

There was a hard and fast knock on the door. Detective Brown entered before we told him to. “Thought you two should know,” he said. “We just got word from Trenton PD. They got a witness.”

“And you’re sure the make of the car was a Toyota?” Morris asked.

Reggie Boyle nodded emphatically, almost child-like in his certainty. “A Toyota, yup. It was a Toyota, I seen it.”

“But you don’t remember the model,” Morris said.

The emphatic child left Reggie’s face. He dropped his head. “No…couldn’t make it out.” His head suddenly popped up, the eager child back, hoping to offer consolation. “It was silver though! Or gray…gray or silver…gray or silver Toyota…gray or silver.”

“You say you got a look at the driver?” I said.

Reggie nodded. “I seen him. White boy.”

“What else?” Morris said.

Reggie shrugged. “Looked like a white boy…all y’all look alike.”

“Hal was white,” I said.

Reggie smiled. “All
y’all
white folks look alike.”

Morris started to ask another question when Reggie suddenly blurted: “Hold up! Why’d you just say
was
? Hal
was
white? He dead?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Morris said.

Reggie spun away from us and stomped the ground. When he turned back he had tears in his eyes. “How’d he die?”

“That’s not important, Mr. Boyle,” Morris said. “Can you try and remember—”

“It’s important to
me
. How’d he die?”

“He was murdered,” Morris said.

“White boy who picked him up do it?”

“We don’t know.”

Reggie spun and stomped again, cursing this time.

“Mr. Boyle, can you please try and remember more about the man’s appearance? It may help us find him.”

Reggie turned back. “I don’t know…looked like you, I guess,” he said, waving a hand up and down Morris.

I glanced at Morris and then back at Reggie. “He had dark hair? Blue eyes?”

“Dark hair, yeah. Couldn’t see his eyes too good.”

“Anything else?” I asked. “I know he was in a car, but…anything else you can remember? Did he appear fat? Skinny?”

Reggie shrugged, still visibly upset by the news about Hal. “I don’t know—kinda average, I guess.”

Of course he was. I’m still waiting for the day when a serial killer looks anything
but
average.

“Y’all say Hal was murdered?” Reggie said.

Morris only nodded.

“How?”

“I’d rather not get into it, Mr. Boyle,” Morris said, reaching into his pocket for his TUMS. He popped a few and immediately began crunching them. The smell of peppermint was brutally strong; strong enough to make me spin away from both men as though they’d offended me.

“Maggie?” Morris said to my back.

Apparently sense of smell is closely linked with memory, more so than any of our other senses. This was something I recalled but only realized in hindsight. At that exact moment, no such realization was forthcoming. Instead I found myself transported back to Newark, in the concrete room with victim number seven at our feet, horribly burned, Morris impatient, wanting to skip ahead, insistent on knowing why this particular victim had been burned: