Rage Against the Dying

Thirty-one





Rather than going home and having to pretend, I drove straight down into the city, stopping at a Bruegger’s for black coffee and a plain bagel to absorb its acid. I tried Coleman’s phone again, still no answer, still no message. She had contacted the office just the day before, but why not me? Why was she avoiding me?

I flipped open the phone I had found at Peasil’s and checked for phone numbers he had called. I tried them all, and they were all on the level of food delivery. If he had spoken to anyone more sinister than Papa John’s Pizza, he had deleted that number. Yet I thought about how a deleted number could lead to the Route 66 killer. For an experienced digital technician the phone in my hand might hold both the identity of the real killer as well as the evidence to get me arrested for Peasil’s murder. I tucked it back in my tote, making a mental note to find a good hacker outside the Bureau.

I killed an hour calling all the numbers on the phone, getting more and more frustrated with a powerlessness I had never known when I had a badge. Feeling like a pressure cooker was getting me nowhere, so around ten thirty I headed over to the federal courthouse, where I knew Floyd Lynch was being brought to make his official plea.

Parking at the courthouse was a bitch, and so was finding a place to stand on the steps. Tucson hadn’t seen the likes of a serial killer since the sixties when an Elvis-looking young man dubbed the Pied Piper of Tucson was picking off high school girls. Everybody was at the courthouse, local and national news teams, and it was pretty funny to see Three-Piece Morrison; Adams Vance, the federal prosecutor; and Royal Hughes, the public defender, all jockeying for position in front of the cameras.

From where I stood I could only hear Morrison’s answers to the reporters.

“—proud of our fine local and federal law enforcement agents, including Deputy Sheriff Maxwell Coyote and our own Special Agent Laura Coleman, who succeeded in the capture of the man who will no doubt prove to be one of this century’s most active serial killers.”

“—that’s correct, initial interrogations quickly led to a voluntary confession of no less than eight murders dating back to 1998, the last victim found on his truck when we arrested him.”

I scanned the crowd for Coleman.

My eyes lit instead on Zachariah Robertson.

At first there was that same cognitive disconnect that I had experienced when I saw the photos of myself taken from Gerald Peasil’s van. My brain had to catch up with the sight of Zach and realize that he had not gotten on the plane back to Michigan after all.

He was nearly hidden behind a cameraman from Fox News Tucson. He was watching me.

Zach and I had been together at one of those times in life when there is raw feeling with no skin on it. You get to know people at those times like you do at no other. We both knew what was happening now. I could see it in his eyes, in the sag of his mouth, open slightly, panting like a nervous dog.

“—Floyd Lynch was twenty-six at the time of the first murder.”

“—yes, except for two of the victims, we have identification. One of the unidentifieds is a Mexican alien who had been picked up after crossing the border illegally. It’s for reasons like this that the FBI has been so intensively involved, besides the fact that the crimes crossed state lines and therefore fell under federal jurisdiction.”

“—correct, all the victims were women.”

It became imperative that I make my way through the crowd to reach Zach’s side. I struggled to get through the press of the crowd, muttering “FBI, FBI,” which had an effect on the regular bystanders but not on the journalists, who held fast to the space they had managed to acquire and would not give way an inch if I was the pope with a case of diarrhea. Still, I was pushing my way through as best I could when a wave of recognition went through the crowd, a sheriff’s car pulled up, and Max got out, followed by a handcuffed Lynch.

“—Lynch has provided enough detailed information at quite extensive interrogations, some of which was withheld from the public, so that we have no doubt of his confession.”

“Max,” I called. He was closer to Zach than I was. I wanted him to be aware. Max looked around at the sound of his name, but didn’t see me.

A couple of extra sheriff’s deputies forced a path through the crowd.

“—that’s a question better suited for Federal Prosecutor Adams Vance.”

Morrison stepped out of the way for Vance, who, being a short man, adjusted the microphone slightly. “—yes, he has been declared competent to make those confessions. Floyd Lynch is not insane.”

“Max,” I called again. This time he found me, but his recognition wasn’t the way it would have been a couple days before. Beyond meeting my eyes, he didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t nod or wave or lift his chin to question what’s up. If anything, he looked a trifle apprehensive as if I might be the dangerous one. He said something to a deputy standing close-by. The deputy looked at me.

“Zach,” I called more loudly and pointed at the man. But Max had already turned away and moved out of earshot, and the deputy didn’t seem to make any sense of what I said.

I started to see the scene in different ways, all twined together. Maybe it was Lynch’s upper lip that triggered this, the way it protruded a bit. My attention following the rest of the crowd’s, I turned to watch him for the first time since seeing his interrogation video.

“—Floyd Lynch is scheduled to make his plea before Judge Sewall at eleven thirty this morning.”

I remembered the Lynch I saw at the dump site, and how he now looked more like a sickly animal who doesn’t know why the dogs are snapping at him.

Next to that memory there was another, much older one, from well before my days with the Bureau. I was sitting in front of the TV waiting for Mom to get us some sandwiches. We’d been to the eleven o’clock service, what Dad called the Alka-Seltzer Mass, because he said all the people with hangovers went to that one. It was just a bit before Thanksgiving, and because this was Florida we pretended it wasn’t so hot and had the windows open.

The program I was watching was broken into by a news bulletin.

A rare live broadcast. Outside shot of an armored car. Inside shot, lots of photographers with those cameras where the flashbulb attachment is bigger than the camera itself. All suits except one dressed in a white shirt and thin pullover sweater.

Not a white hat; no one was wearing hats at the courthouse. Then, not enough security, I thought, and pushed harder, trying to decide whether it was better to get to Zach first or Lynch first or make a big enough scene so Max would be forced to pay attention.

In the broadcast I was remembering, a man stepped out of the crowd of reporters, a thickish man who got too close. He raised a weapon and fired it into the other man’s stomach. Someone in a white suit who was leaning forward, clearing a way through the reporters, jerked his hands back to his body, his head back over his chest and even his lips back from his teeth as if every part of his body was intuitively drawing back from the line of fire.

I was the only one who knew, in a way, that this was happening again, and I failed to stop it.

Too late, as Lynch got halfway up the steps, Zach broke from the crowd, ran forward, and yelled, “Lynch!” As the man turned, Zach fired a single shot at Lynch’s gut. Lynch closed his eyes, opened his mouth in a soundless groan, and clutched his stomach. And there was the lip, curled up over his teeth. Startled, Max jerked his hands back to his body, his head back over his chest and his lips back from his teeth as if every part of his body was intuitively drawing back from the line of fire.

Too late to reach Lynch, I turned my attention back to Zach. He looked at me again, gave the first smile I’d seen in seven years, which made him a totally different man, lifted the gun again. The crowd went wilder, the camera crews simultaneously ducked and raised their equipment over their heads to capture someone getting killed.

At the Texas police station it had been a snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38, the victim had been Lee Harvey Oswald, and the killer had been a small-time Nevada crook named Jack Ruby. Unlike that weapon, the one Zach used was just a .22, not much of a gun. But different from that time, rather than allowing himself to be taken by the police officers, Zach pressed the trigger and shot himself in the head.