(2011) The Gift of Death (12 page)

‘
But what about a press conference?’ she said. ‘You know that’s what these guys want. They want to see you up there, and they want to talk to Weislander, Kate Cramer and Cassie Veringer.’

‘
No way,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to allow Kate Cramer and Cassie Veringer to be eaten alive by a pack of vultures.’ He took a deep breath as he assessed the situation. ‘Look, it’s against my better nature, but if needs be, I’ll take the press conference.’

‘
But Cramer and Veringer are off limits? You sure? There’s nothing like a spot of female vulnerability to get people’s attention.’

God, she made him sick. At times he thought she was just as bad as some of the corpse-feasting crime reporters out there.

‘
Afraid so.’

‘
Okay, I’ll get back to you. And no new leads I can give these hungry babies?’

‘
Not yet,’ he said, finding it difficult to retain his composure. ‘But I’ll see what I can come up with. Also, can you find out how Cynthia Ross got the story?’

‘
She’s one tough lady, she might not tell me much, but I’ll try.’

‘
Great. Speak later.’

As he cut the line he wondered whether sometimes he was doing his job for the sake of the entertainment industry – for the viewers of the news networks, the readers of supermarket tabloids, the internet geeks obsessed by conspiracy theories – and not the safety of the general public. He didn’t have the time to think about that at the moment. He had serious work to do.

He clicked on the secure link and scanned down the list of names on his computer screen. There were five men who had served time with Gleason in San Quentin and who had since been released: Lee Tomlin, Harry Lomax, Michael David Federline, Charles Garrison and Robert Dean Hornbeck.

Tomlin, a 45-year-old black man, was a petty drug dealer and small time pimp; Lomax, 31, had been sentenced for internet fraud and identity theft; Federline, 37, had committed a series of indecent assaults on young women; Garrison, 52, subjected his wife to regular beatings until, on the last occasion, he had nearly killed her; and Hornbeck, 48, a former high school teacher and summer camp leader, was a paedophile who couldn’t keep his hands off young boys.

‘
Right guys – hey, listen,’ said Josh, standing up and shouting across the investigation room. ‘We’ve been sent the names from the prison and I’m copying it and sending it to each of you right now.’

His black eyes narrowed as he bent down to send the email. He had been working for two weeks now without more than an hour of sleep a night and the effects were beginning to show. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, razor burn had spread across his neck like a nettle sting and his skin looked pale and gaunt. But he couldn’t allow himself any slack now. Although he had tried his best to be objective the investigation had become something of a personal battle, one he had to win; after all, the alternative was just too painful to contemplate.

‘
Okay, as you can see we’ve got five names, men who may have been associates of Gleason in San Q,’ he said, addressing his team. ‘By the way, before I go any further, I presume all of you are up to speed on the Gleason case?’

The question was, of course, rhetorical – he prided his team on the quick acquisition and accumulation of information – and it was met with grunts of affirmation and the nodding of heads.

‘
Great. So I want a full background check on each of these individuals as well as a current address. As you know, this case is urgent, so as soon as we have addresses I want them brought in for questioning. We can’t let this one slip away from us. As everyone knows, three people all connected with Gleason have been sent threatening packages, and in the case of Dr Kate Cramer, who was the lead forensic artist in the case – well, she discovered a dead baby girl floating in the sea outside her house.’

Although this was not news to the team it was still met with expressions of outrage and disbelief.

‘
The perpetrator is obviously willing to kill,’ he continued. ‘And so it’s most likely he’s killed before.’ He looked across the room to Dr Jennifer Curtis, the specialist psychological profiler on his team. ‘Would you agree, Jennifer?’

A tall, slim and beautiful black woman stood up and addressed the room.

‘
That’s right, sir,’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘From all indications I would say, without a doubt, that we are dealing with a psychopath, someone who has, most probably since he was a child, felt no concern or empathy for anyone or anything. He views people – babies, even – as nothing more than inanimate objects that he can manipulate at will. I thought it would be a good idea to go back to the police records of each of these individuals concerned and scour them for any signs of psychopathic or sociopathic behaviour. Obviously, since they have all ended up in prison it’s likely that most, if not all of them, will have experienced behavioural problems of some sort – problems at school or work, feelings of isolation and alienation, addiction to drugs or alcohol. But I want to look for signs of disassociation as well. The person who is doing these things no doubt feels superior to the rest of mankind. He thinks, to a certain extent, that he is some sort of god, and the rest of us are his little playthings.’

‘
Get all the original police interviews and court transcripts on each of these five men and see what you can find.’

He turned to another member of his team, a stocky black man, who he knew happened to be gay, and who, in the course of a number of investigations, had proved himself to be an expert interviewer and interrogator.

‘
Lansing – I want you to go to San Quentin and interview the governor and staff and other inmates and see if you can discover any more about Gleason and his connection with these men. Did Gleason have any confidantes? Who were his friends, if that sick fuck had the capacity to make any? Did he have any enemies? Did he do any deals in prison? Take drugs of any sort? Who came to visit him? Did he receive any letters? Okay?’

‘
Right, sir,’ said Lansing. ‘I’ll fly up there tonight.’

‘
Great. What’s the latest on the daughter, Roberta Gleason? Helen, did you manage to get hold of her to check to see that she is okay?’

He looked over to a pale, drawn woman who was wearing a pink fleecy hat. He knew that Helen Holt had been diagnosed with breast cancer and that the hat hid a patchy scalp, the result of chemotherapy. He had pleaded with her to take more time off work, but she was insistent she was well enough to carry on. The treatment had left her weak, but it had seemed to be effective. What she needed, she had told him, was something to keep her mind off her illness; this case, he was sure, would certainly do that.

‘
I paid a visit to her home in Hollywood, but she wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘I left a couple of messages on her home phone and her cell, but they went unanswered. Finally, I went to her workplace, at Cedars-Sinai, where I found her. She told me that she had been out of town for a few days, staying with a friend in Vegas.’ She flicked through the pages of her notebook until she found the summary of the interview. ‘Although she was in the middle of her shift, she talked to me in her break. She seemed genuinely shocked when I asked her about her father. She told me that she had tried to forget about him and that he had deserved to die in prison. She couldn’t forgive him for what he had done. After leaving home at 18 to go to college she never saw him again. There’s obviously still a lot of anger there and I -’

‘
Sorry to interrupt, Helen, but I think it’s necessary to share with you certain details of the Gleason case that were never made public at the time, for reasons which will soon be obvious. Most of you will have heard of Detective Bill Vaughan, who headed up the case, and who sadly passed away before seeing Gleason sentenced. According to his notes, Roberta was systemically abused by her father during her teenage years.’

‘
And why wasn’t he prosecuted?’ asked Jennifer, a note of anger in her voice.

‘
Soon after Gleason was arrested Bill Vaughan went to interview Roberta. She told him that Gleason had abused her until, at the age of 18, she left home to go to college. That was in 1992, the same –‘

‘
- the same year that the attacks started,’ said Jennifer. ‘So Gleason, after losing his daughter, began to hunt out replacements.’

‘
That’s right,’ said Harper.

‘
The sick fuck,’ said Jennifer. ‘But I still don’t get it – why didn’t the state prosecute Gleason on grounds of abusing his daughter?’

‘
After Gleason was arrested – as a result of the facial reconstruction provided by Dr Cramer, and his last victim – Vaughan thought that the case against him was so strong, the evidence from Cassie Veringer together with the forensic matches would guarantee a death sentence. And, of course, he was right.

‘
From reading Vaughan’s notes it seems that he felt sorry for Roberta, who was already in a vulnerable state. She told him that she couldn’t face testifying against her father. She had escaped the past and wanted to build a new future for herself, a future in which she hoped to help others as a nurse. She worried about the stability of her mental health, especially if she was forced to stand up in court. Vaughan knew that, as a professional, he should report her evidence so that the state prosecutor should decide on the best course of action, but he chose not to.’

The room fell quiet.

‘
I know what Vaughan did was way out of order, and as a fellow detective I have to condemn him for that, but as a man I admire him. He knew that Roberta’s testimony would not add anything to the strength of the prosecution’s case. After what Roberta had been through he didn’t want her to be Gleason’s final victim.’

‘
I can understand that,’ said Helen. ‘And that certainly helps explain a lot of things. I wondered why she looked so haunted.’

‘
But she’s okay?’

‘
Yeah, apart from the obvious distress about being reminded about her father she seemed to be fine.’

‘
What did you say about why you wanted to speak to her?’

‘
Just that it was a routine inquiry, which of course she didn’t believe. So then I told her there were certain things that I couldn’t talk about, which she seemed to understand.’

‘
And she’s received nothing suspicious?’

‘
No, nothing.’

‘
Good, and it would be great if you could keep a friendly watch over her.’ Harper ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘So it seems Vaughan’s decision was the right one, after all.’

Jennifer’s eyes narrowed slightly as she said, ‘You think that if he had forced her to give evidence then she would have received something nasty in the mail?’

‘
Maybe, yes. So at least it saved her that trauma.’ He checked his watch. ‘Okay, that’s enough for today. The first priority is finding these five men. Agreed?’ Again Harper did not wait for an answer. ‘Any other questions?’ There were none. ‘We haven’t got much time.’

14

Fucking coward. The chickenshit, yellow coward. He knew he shouldn’t think those kind of thoughts, use those kind of words, but wife beaters were the lowest of the low. Beneath contempt.

He stared at the bald-headed man sitting on the bar stool and imagined what he could do to him. How good it would feel to take hold of a brick and slam it into his skull, reduce it to a bloody pulp. If he did it hard enough, he thought, he could even break the bone and destroy the white brain matter beneath.

‘
You want another?’ asked the bartender.

‘
Sure,’ said the man on the bar stool.

‘
You just travelling through?’

‘
Could say that.’

‘
Thought so. Haven’t seen you in here before. You live in LA?’

The man nodded slowly, took a sip of his bourbon, and then looked down, a gesture that clearly signalled an end to the exchange. Since his release from the state prison he had perfected the art of non-communication. He stared at the TV screen in the corner of the dark room and pretended to watch a football game. All he could think about was his kid, Danny. Tomorrow was his 13
^th
birthday. Another birthday he wouldn’t see his father. It just didn’t seem fair somehow to be denied the right to see his own son. Sure, he could understand why he wasn’t allowed to make contact with Sharon. Why would he want to see that whore anyway, he thought. He should have finished her off when he had the chance. But a boy needed his father, especially at that age. The forced separation from Danny had been much worse to bear than those years in prison. And now? Why was he still being punished for a crime that he’d served time for? Like he said, the system was full of shit.