Blackjack (4 page)

“That, however, is of no consequence. He’s already DNA-tied to at least three more kills: two in Florida, one in Texas. All women. He’s a dead man, and the clock is winding down.”

“Clock?”
Percy snorted. “You mean calendar, don’t you? It takes longer to kill one of those maggots in this country than it would to rebuild the Pyramids with Lego blocks.”

“That’s not our assignment,” the blond man said, his measured voice holding just a trace of condescension. “But
this
is. Last night, out of the blue, Towers said he wanted to make a statement about the Canyon Killings in California. They Miranda-ed him up and down, got it on video as well, but he insisted on confessing to the murders. All of them.

“That’s what we have. His statement, nothing more. In a few more seconds, the volume will come up, you’ll hear it for yourself.”

The consultant assumed an attentive posture but remained silent. He apparently did not intend to take notes.

The sound came up on the monitor as the camera moved in tight on the speaker’s face.

“First of all, you people need to understand that this business about me only killing women is absolute bullshit. I mean, there’s no point in me not telling the truth
now
, is there?

“I’m a natural-born killer. Hell, I couldn’t even begin to count how many people I’ve sent over to the other side. But that’s got nothing to do with sex. I kill for the fun of it.

“See, it’s like movies. No matter how much you like any one movie, it gets old after a while. So you watch a new one. What makes me special is that I don’t watch movies; I
make
them. I’m not just the star; I’m the director.

“Don’t matter to me where I am. When the mood hits me, I just go all red inside … and somebody dies. Walking Death, that’s me. You people think you can understand
that?
”

An off-camera questioner asked: “You said you wanted to talk to us about the Canyon Killings?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. I got a lot more than those to talk about, too … if I feel like it.”

Off-camera: “What does that mean, Mark?”

The speaker’s posture tightened. His face narrowed in the anger he had carried throughout his adult life. “It means
respect
, that too complicated for you? Respect, that’s all I’m asking for. I’m tired of being treated like crap. No cigarettes unless I ask one of the cops to come and light it for me. No TV, no mail. I can clear a lot of cases for you guys. All I expected was to be treated like a
man
, you know what I mean?”

Off-camera: “We’ll do what we can.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I got rights. Same rights as anyone else. Granny-killing niggers get treated better in here than
me?
I got a right to speak to the media if I want to. And what about my mail? You
know
you got no right to hold on to that.”

Off-camera: “Your lawyer …”

“I don’t need no two-bit Public Defender to be
my
lawyer. Once I get to tell my story, you best believe I’ll have all the lawyers I need.”

The screen flickered out, faded to black.

“This next tape was made a few hours later,” the blond man said.

The consultant so far addressed only as “Doctor” just nodded, clearly waiting for more.

When Towers faced the camera again, his hair was freshly coiffed, and a full pack of cigarettes was by his elbow, along with a yellow legal pad and some sharpened pencils. He was still seated, but in a more comfortable chair. The leg cuffs had been removed.

“Then there was that time in Texas. Just outside of Houston, in this Lovers’ Lane. I would’ve been satisfied with a straight-up robbery, but that kid had to try and get tough with me. After I did him, I couldn’t very well leave the bitch around to be a witness, so I did her, too. That’s my trademark:
no witnesses. You check around, you’ll see what I mean.”

Off-camera: “The Canyon Killings …?”

“Yeah, you want to get right to it, don’t you? Okay, fair enough. Now that you’re treating me like a white man, I’ll give you what I said I would—I’m a man of my word. So listen: When you’ve been in prison, done as much time as I done, you know how the joints’re full of punks trying to make a name for themselves. Big talkers, but it’s just a bunch of stories they tell. It’s enough to make a real man sick.

“Like that little weasel down in Florida, Bundy. Whining about how looking at pictures of naked women made him crazy and all. You know what? That one he said he did in Idaho—now, that was an outright lie. That one was mine. Bundy must’ve figured, once he’s locked up, he takes credit for the kill, nobody’s exactly gonna
volunteer
to come forward, say he’s lying.

“That’s how
I
figured out what I needed. Just in case, I mean. I needed some sorta way to tell everyone where I been, in case I ever had to
prove
it. And I guess now’s the time.

“The way it started, the idea, I mean, was because I done a lot of hunting when I was a kid. So what I decided, I’d just skin ’em when I was done with ’em. And that’s what I done down in the Canyon.”

Off-camera: “Are those the first ones you did like that?”

“Not even close,” the speaker scoffed. “There’s quite a few others, scattered here and there. When you find them, you’ll always find my brand on them, too.”

Off-camera: “Where would we find them, Mark?”

“Mark? I call
you
by your first name? I don’t feel like talking anymore. Take me back to my house.”

The screen flickered to black.

“Anything?” the blond man asked.

The consultant looked around the room. He took off his
glasses, rubbed them on the lapel of his muted green sports coat, and said: “He’s not the one you want.”

“What?!” Percy half-snarled.

“It’s not him. He had nothing to do with the Canyon Killings. He’s just dancing, playing a game, bargaining with the only cards he has left. Towers is a psychopath, all right, but he’s not your man.”

“What
is
a psychopath, Doc?” Tiger asked, leaning forward, interested for the first time. “Everybody throws that word around, but they never say what it means.”

The consultant turned slightly to meet the Amazon’s eyes: “Psychopath, as in ‘pathology.’ They’re not ‘crazy’ in any clinical sense, but they’re always missing a few pieces from normal. Like morality … or what we call morality, anyway. Some are fearless, some are cowards. But this much is a guarantee: they
all
lack a conscience of any kind, they
all
share a profound sense of entitlement, and
none
possess the quality of basic human empathy.

“But that’s where the generalizations end. Actually, many of them are what we call ‘ambulatory’—they walk among us and we never see them. But no matter how they come across, they’re all very straight-line in their thinking. Personal-need gratification drives all of them. The reason that some fly under the radar is that different psychopaths seek different gratifications.”

“Come on, Doc,” Tiger urged him, knowing there
had
to be more.

“I understand you’re looking for a common factor, some way to link a series of killings. But the only thing all psychopaths have in common is their deficiencies. What makes them different is not what they have, it’s what they lack. They never
feel
much of anything. You won’t find any trace of remorse, anxiety, depression, and so on. Many of them have learned to fake such feelings to a remarkable extent.
This would be especially true of malingerers—people who have something to gain by appearing to suffer from a mental illness. And, actually, very common among those who’ve been in ‘treatment programs’ while incarcerated.”

“Roger that,” Percy said.

“Some psychopaths are intellectually gifted,” the consultant continued. “And some are downright stupid. But they’re
all
dangerous, every single one of them.

“Think of them as Outsiders. I don’t mean ‘outlaws,’ I mean outside the human race. This guy on the screen is pure toxic waste, no question. But he’s
not
the answer to your question.”

“Didn’t you write an article for the
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry?
‘Trophy Taking as a Subset of Serial Killer Typology’?” Wanda asked, slyly.

The consultant threw her a half-salute, acknowledging that she’d done her homework. “I sure did, ma’am. But this boy—the one on your screen over there—he’s no trophy-taker. He’s a sadistic rapist, and he’s a killer, no question. But there’s another ingredient common to all psychopaths that we haven’t talked about yet—they’re all capable of lying so plausibly that they fool even the most experienced interrogators.”

“Like to see one of them pass a polygraph,” Percy muttered.

“Like to see one of them not,” the consultant retorted. “A polygraph measures heartbeat, blood pressure, galvanic skin response—all indicators of self-perceived guilt. Most of us feel guilty when we lie—and control questions can usually deal with the natural anxiety
anyone
would feel hooked up to the machines. But a psychopath doesn’t know what guilt is—they never even bounce the needles on those machines.”

Percy didn’t respond. But his darkening complexion spoke volumes.

The consultant waited to see if there were any further challenges. Hearing none, he continued: “This Towers individual doesn’t present any diagnostic difficulties. He kills when he panics, and he panics every time one of his sexual assaults doesn’t go according to his script. I don’t know any more than what you already told me, plus the material you sent, but I guarantee you that when they search his lousy little furnished room, or the car he was living out of, they won’t find any women’s panties, or hair ribbons, or Polaroid photos … nothing like that.

“Why? Because, in his mind, the women he raped all wanted him. That’s the music playing in his head, and there’s only one tune on that jukebox. Mostly rapes, but some homicides. The only women who
didn’t
want him are the ones he killed. To him, those women would be ‘cock-teasers.’ Miserable lying sluts who led him on, then pulled back at the last minute.

“But they were
not
trophies, nor was the style of killing designed to ‘pose’ the victims. He already knows how long any death-penalty appeal is going to take, and he still wants to do everything possible to extend that time. What he
really
wants is to be extradited. The state where the Canyon Killings took place didn’t have the death penalty at the time they occurred. They were still in what we call the
Furman
window, when the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty on constitutional grounds. All of the death-penalty states had to rewrite their laws to comply with that ruling, but they couldn’t do it retroactively. Why do you think Manson still gets parole hearings?

“So what this Towers individual is doing is working this unsolved case the same way any good psychopath would—he’s
using
it. The more he pulls a Henry Lee Lucas blanket over law enforcement’s eyes, the better treatment he gets. Soon, he’ll be getting deranged women to write him love letters
 … and
those
he’ll want to keep. He’ll probably negotiate a book-and-movie deal, too.

“But, like I said, not all psychopaths are intelligent. This one blew it on the time line. The Canyon Killings were more than forty years ago. He probably read about them in one of those ‘true crime’ porno books. But you’ve got a verified DOB on this beauty—pretty hard to kill before you’ve even been born.”

“Look,” the blond man said, “let’s say we already knew all that. And we have plenty of reasons—solid forensic reasons—to take this freak out of the picture on the Canyon Killings. That’s not the real reason we brought you here.”

“I figured as much,” the consultant said, unfazed. “Point out the target and I’ll take my best shot.”

“Is there anything you can tell us? Anything about who
would
do the kind of thing we’ve been studying?”

“Whoever did the Canyon Killings, now,
there’s
your trophy-taker. Classic ‘collector’ mentality.”

“Some psychopaths take trophies, and
this
one took human spinal cords?” Tiger said, a slight trace of disbelief in her tone.

“I don’t think so,” Doc answered. “It doesn’t feel like that to me. I don’t get that same sense of triggering—where something sets them off
after
a killing. It feels more as if whoever did these thought removing the skin of the victims would reveal whatever was under it.

“And don’t even say ‘organized serial killer’ to me. The Canyon Killings actually come across almost like … like an investigation of some kind.”

“What’s this ‘investigation,’ then?” the tiger-maned woman demanded. “Isn’t that what you’re here to tell us?”

“Yeah,” Percy echoed. “Isn’t that what makes you worth seven hundred bucks a damn hour?”

The husky man again rubbed his glasses, this time with a
pristine handkerchief. “You think my services aren’t worth what I charge, don’t hire me next time.”

“We didn’t—”

“That’s right.
You
didn’t hire me. The people who did,
they’re
smart enough to listen to what they paid for.”

“What are you saying?” Wanda asked, using a tone indicating that she really wanted to know.

“I’m saying that there has to have been more of those killings, and all with a connector of some kind. Like one of those video games where there could be a thousand playing at any one time, all over the world. That’s the part nobody’s been listening to. Up till now, I’m thinking.”

“But doesn’t that fit? He couldn’t have done the Canyon Killings. And he had to know we know. In fact, didn’t you actually
say
that doing that interview was just a game to him?”

“There’s more than one kind of game,” the consultant answered. “The part where you blew it was not asking enough questions.”

“What questions?” the blond man asked, as close to angry as he ever allowed himself to get.

“Questions such as why would they put together a team like
you
folks for signature killings that happened such a long time ago? You’re not exactly the Cold Case Squad. So I’m thinking that this
is
about the Canyon Killings, but that those aren’t even close to being the only ones. Like I said, the kind of game I’m trying to tell you about, it’s a game where there’s got to be more than one player.”