Rage Against the Dying

Ten





“So that’s why you did the end run on Morrison and called in me and Weiss without getting authorization. You went to Morrison first and he wasn’t buying it. Then you tried to get Weiss on your side early on, but he wouldn’t discuss the case without assessing Lynch first. Now Weiss is out of the picture so you’re trying to use me to back you up. Did you really think you could pull that shimmy on me?”

“Please,” she said.

I wasn’t finished. “Worst of all, you let me call the victim’s father and tell him we caught the guy.” I imagined Zachariah Robertson, how I had just left him in a hotel room with a laminated picture of his dead child. With that image fueling my anger, I leaned across the narrow table and lowered my voice. “You don’t, you do not bring a father in, show him the remains of his daughter who was tortured to death, tell him you finally found the killer, and then next day tell him never mind. Do you have any feeling at all for what that man has gone through and what it would be like to tell him sorry, our bad? Nuh-uh, Floyd Lynch is the man. He did it.”

“Would you please just listen?”

I was inclined to continue ranting, but couldn’t think of anything else to say at the moment without repeating myself. So I drained off my watered-down vodka and contented myself with glaring, while I put my hands under the table where no one could see me dig at my cuticles. I guess over the past couple of years I’d allowed myself to get a little too relaxed and I was no longer used to this crap.

Coleman took my silence as temporary acquiescence. She began with an apology for insulting my intelligence, which was the least of my concerns, then opened the report on the table and turned to a page with two columns: on one side, under the heading “Route 66 Killer,” the profile of the Route 66 killer that Sigmund had compiled, and on the other side a profile of Floyd Lynch.

“I found nineteen points,” she said. “I used this table David Weiss did as a template and found nineteen points that didn’t match.”

I took the report from her and scanned the page, saw a few characteristics I’d already spotted in Lynch. “Okay, so he’s not as physically strong as we assumed. He doesn’t seem to be as well organized, and is less articulate than we imagined. Big deal, we were wrong. We’re not always on the money.” I threw the book on the table. “Besides, Weiss says himself in his book that profiles don’t get convictions. Only evidence gets convictions. And we’re up to our ass in evidence. Lynch kept journals with all the details. He took us to Jessica Robertson’s body.”

Coleman squirmed a bit. “I know all this.”

“The semen on her body matches him. He had a victim on his truck killed in the same way, with the same postmortem mutilation. He knows about the ears and that was our hold-out information. Nobody but those connected to the case knew about the ears.”

Coleman looked about ready to leap across the table to physically shut me up. “He doesn’t know where the ears are,” she said.

“What?”

“Remember the point Weiss makes about the importance of trophies and souvenirs, how they’re priceless treasure to the killer? Floyd Lynch couldn’t tell me where he kept the ears. He says he forgot.”

That gave me pause, but I had a counter. “He’s just not telling you.”

“He told us everything else.”

“He wants to keep them for himself forever. Even if he goes to prison for life he’ll always know where the ears are.”

“That’s what they all said when I told them. Morrison, Adams Vance the prosecutor, even Royal.”

“Royal…?”

She was caught off guard. Sigmund was right. I hoped she’d never try to go undercover. She stuttered a bit, “Hughes … the public defender.”

She recovered and went on. “They all say it’s a small point in a huge mass of damning evidence. They want this catch so bad. The publicity is enormous, the director himself called to congratulate Morrison, so he won’t back down. Remember there was that highway-serial-killer initiative the Bureau instituted a few years ago.”

“So now you’re hoping I’ll do your work for you. You should have been a brave little soldier and forced Morrison to authorize a further investigation. You know, follow protocol.”

Coleman looked away at that remark. “Look, we found Jessica’s body. As far as Mr. Robertson was concerned, that’s the main thing, isn’t it? That’s why Robertson was here, because he insisted on seeing it.”

“You should go back to Fraud where you belong, dear.”

“Please don’t call me dear—it’s condescending and I don’t deserve it.”

She deserved it, all right. I ignored her and went on, “Sure, we honored Zach’s wish to see Jessica’s body. But it’s been seven years of wanting not only his daughter, but wanting justice. It’s bad enough that Lynch is going to escape the death penalty. Zachariah Robertson’s suffering is beyond anything you can imagine. You’re not going to make it worse because you didn’t have the guts to press a case you think is right.”

“Can I get you anything else?”

Coleman and I both jerked upright at the voice, as if we’d forgotten we were in a restaurant. I don’t know how long Cheri had been standing there. We slapped on smiles that from the waitress’s perspective might have looked more like snarls.

“Just the check, please,” I said.

Cheri picked up our plates and left.

“You’re no better than Morrison,” Coleman said, crossing her arms and looking at me like that was the worst thing she could say.

“Bullshit” was all I could come up with on the spot.

But Coleman would not be distracted. “What about Floyd Lynch? What if he’s innocent of the Route 66 murders?”

“Innocent? Coleman. The man f*cks mummies.”

Everyone in the room looked over and I realized I wasn’t using my indoor voice anymore.

“There’s not even real evidence that he didn’t just find that body like he says he did. We can’t prove that he killed the woman on his truck. So you’re going to put a man in prison for life for desecration of a corpse? Being repulsive isn’t a capital offense,” Coleman said quietly.

She was right. You convicted someone for their crimes, not their nature. I had said something similar more than once in my career. I looked at her posture, which managed to stay straight even when she was leaning over the table, and her naturally curly hair, and her professionally plain glasses, and I wondered if her analysis of the case showed the same perfection, the same attention to detail.

“Did you coerce him? Feed him the information?” I asked.

“I swear no. Morrison wanted nothing to go wrong, so we videotaped all the interrogations. You can see for yourself.”

“Why do you think he would confess?” I asked, knowing from experience that it happened all the time for no damn good reason.

“I don’t know that part yet,” she said.

“Did you ask him?”

She relaxed again now that I was asking questions instead of attacking. “He’s sticking to his story and he seems to know all the details. Seems, hell, he’s got it down cold. It’s all in here,” she said, tapping the report, pushing it part of the way toward me again with the tip of her well-manicured finger that I bet she never chewed. “It’s short, not the whole murder book, just what I thought was important for my analysis. Please look at it…” she paused, fixed me with a look and continued, “especially this video.” She opened the report and pointed to a DVD tucked into an envelope and pasted inside the cover. “This is the part of the interrogation I’m talking about, the part that I can’t get out of my head. Look at it before you tell me to f*ck off.”

When I hesitated a moment more, she said, her self-assurance slowly returning, “I know you don’t know me, and I’m asking a lot. But even if you don’t care about sending the wrong man to prison for life, look at it this way. If Lynch didn’t do the Route 66 murders, then the guy who did is still out there.” Coleman leaned across the table again. If I’d had lapels I think she might have grabbed them. “Don’t you see, Lynch knows the details of the case so well. If he didn’t do the killings I’ll bet he knows the man who did. Lynch could lead us to the man who really killed Jessica Robertson. A man who at any point might start killing again.”

If she was right, she was absolutely right, and I really disliked that. I had one objection left. “Do you realize my being involved is not a benefit? Have I indicated that Morrison and I share anything but a mutual disgust?”

She ignored that, her face allowing itself to finally reveal just how stricken she was by the load she’d been bearing by herself. “Agent Quinn, I wanted Floyd Lynch to be the Route 66 killer so bad. I want it as much as anybody does. It would make the rest of my career, being the one who interrogated him. But I just can’t get his expression out of my mind, when I asked him about the ears, I mean. I saw a different man. More pathetic than psychopathic. I think about it in the middle of the night. It’s like there’s this ton of evidence that says he’s guilty, but I can’t let go of the one piece of evidence that makes me doubt he really is. I’ll do anything to get to the truth and it’s driving me a little crazy. Has that ever happened to you?”

I didn’t respond, and Coleman took it for yes. She said, “All I’m asking for is your expert opinion on whether the case deserves to remain open. That’s all. If you think I have a point, I’ll find the corroborating evidence and somehow force the issue, get Lynch to recant before he officially pleads guilty—I don’t know how.” She tried to give me a good hard stare, but her eyes drifted off. “And if you say I’m f*cked up on this at least I’ll get some sleep again.”

“You don’t have much time. Days?”

Coleman nodded and pushed the report the rest of the way across the table. “Promise you won’t make up your mind until you’ve looked at the video.”

Even in this case, the lure of the unknown was too much for me to resist. I put the report in my tote bag and told her I’d call her in a couple of days. All right, all right, the following day.