Chapter Six
Detective Mercer arrived early Thursday morning. He was the second detective from the Sheriff's Department to question us. We never saw the first one after his first round of questions at the hospital. They gave us no explanation. Mercer had been assigned. He had been back several times.
He was an older detective than the first. His hair was graying at the temples and he kept it cut short, close to his head. His suit, while tasteful and well fitting was not an expensive one. He was a simple man with simple tastes doing a distasteful job. He was about an inch taller than my own five feet eleven and he looked to be in good physical form. He definitely did not have the usual paunch of the other gentlemen his age around town. Detective Mercer was a man who cared about how he looked.
He arrived unannounced like he was gong to catch us digging some new graves for bodies. I was walking along the road where I had seen the figure the night before. I was looking into the woods, trying to decide whether I wanted to investigate or not. Well, I did. But I am not exactly the initiator type. Kathy would have been in there in a minute. That was the only reason I was even considering it. If not for her, I would be happy to leave this whole thing up to the police. Except it was my land.
Even in the bright light of day, I was not thrilled about whatever might be going on in the woods around me. Maybe a killer was hiding in there. Maybe something worse. I was okay with confronting a killer. I believed things would work out for the best in the natural world. It was that nagging suspicion that this was not something natural we were dealing with here.
Detective Mercer was never rude. But he was never overly polite, either. A job borne of too many contacts with the wrong elements of society and not enough practice working with the good people, like myself and Kathy.
He did not bring happy news. That was how he greeted us.
“I've not got good news for you.” He shook my hand out of obligation rather than friendly greeting.
Kathy gave me one of her frowns that said this was a guy who chose to be just what he was, official and somewhat officious.
“I've got a team of forensic specialists coming out to go through your woods.”
“What for?” I asked innocently.
“Why? Afraid we'll find something?”
“No.” I answered immediately. “I've got nothing to hide.”
“Good.” He was still eying me suspiciously.
Kathy always said she thought he just looked mean that way to discourage people from lying to him. Well, I was not lying. Maybe I was not revealing my suspicions about things outside of the natural, but that was because I did not want to be labeled crazy. Besides, why say something I do not know for sure. He's the detective. I just tell him what I know. He does the rest. Whatever that may be.
The forensics team scoured the woods for two hours before the yelling started. Someone had found something of interest and everyone else was apparently agreeing with them. We chose not to tell them about the shovel being leaned against the deck last night, waiting to see what transpired. I was still hoping I was dealing with a simple homeless guy problem. But I was also starting to admit to myself that something seemed really strange about the dealings from the woods. Too strange for me to just go on without some answers myself.
“What do you think they found?” Kathy asked me.
“Not a clue,” I was honest. I had no idea what made forensic people get excited.
“There's a lot of yelling out there.” Kathy observed.
“Maybe another body,” I conjectured.
“Why would you say that?”
I pointed to the detective walking quickly down the road toward us. He was signaling the officer who stayed with us to do something off to his left. The officer moved from his post next to my deck and stood between us and the vehicles.
“We're going to have to talk some more,” Detective Mercer was smiling now. That could not mean anything good for me.
As he neared the deck, he waved to the officer again.
“Handcuff him.” The detective directed the officer.
“You have the right to remain silent...”
I didn't hear any more. I was trying to figure out what was wrong. Kathy was trying to maintain her composure. I could see her struggling with the fact they were arresting me and the fact she was an officer of the law. There was nothing she could do. She worked for the local police. This was in the hands of the County Sheriff, now. I was in the hands of the Sheriff.
“Don't worry,” Kathy instructed me. “We'll figure this out.”
I already had it figured out. I was being arrested and hauled off to jail. I had done nothing wrong and I was going to jail.
“This ain't right,” Kathy protested.
“Please stay out of this, Ma'am,” I heard the detective tell her.
“The hell I will,” Kathy made her intentions known while backpedaling to ensure she showed them no aggression, staying out of their way. “I will use every channel and avenue I can find to get this straightened out. You've got no reason to be arresting him. He has not done anything.”
“When word gets out what we found out there in his woods, he will most likely need our protection from the local citizenry, Ma'am. I'm doing him a favor by locking him up.” The detective explained to her as he helped the officer load me in the back of his cruiser.
Kathy was still talking to the detective as the cruiser started up and drove me away.
“You're not under arrest, any more” Detective Mercer was joined by another man.
I was sitting in a stark, cold room with a metal table with two chairs on each side of it. There was a window/mirror in one wall but the others were solid, white slabs of barrier to the outside world. I had no idea if anyone was on the other side of the mirror viewing my not-under-arrest questioning. A very functional room without being appealing in the least. The metal chair I was sitting in was very uncomfortable.
“This is special Agent in Charge, Hunter.” Mercer introduced the man.
Hunter was an FBI agent. His suit said so. His demeanor and haircut and the sunglasses sticking out of his shirt looked like life imitating TV. Agent Hunter had seen too many TV shows when he was younger. He was younger than Mercer by about fifteen years unless I missed my guess. The fact the FBI was here probably meant something but I would have to wait for them to explain it to me.
It was about five o'clock in the evening. I had already had one meal here at the station. I was not looking forward to another. I was not under arrest, they had not booked me, but I was not free to get up and leave either. The uniformed officer standing by the door was testimony to that fact. He never said anything, he just watched me.
“If I am not under arrest, then why am I still here?” I asked innocently enough.
“Sorry. We will be the ones asking the questions here.”
The Agent needed to work on his voice inflection. He didn't sound sorry at all. Robotic responses rarely do. Nor do they inspire confidence in my ability to discern his agenda. Without which, I am hardly able to feel comfortable answering any questions. Unless I know what they want, I am unable to give it to them. Maybe they relied on that. Maybe I was being paranoid because I knew I was withholding information about the strange figure. The ghost or whatever. Maybe I felt like they could see through me and knew I was lying about something.
Damn! I was getting paranoid with all these people staring at me all the time. And who was kidding who? There were no maybes here. They were talking to me because they felt like there was something I was not telling them. They were trained to sniff things like that out. But I could not let them in on my secret. Not yet. Not until I knew what I was talking about.
Then the agent spoke.
“I don't mean to sound calloused or hard but what we have here is serious enough to drain the humor out of any situation. Excuse me for coming off too brusque.” He smiled at me and offered a hand to shake.
I shook it.
“I do not count you as a suspect,” he appr
ised me.
“Then why am I here?”
There was a long pause and both men looked uneasily at each other. When they looked back to me I saw the FBI agent nod slightly to the detective.
We have a problem,” Detective Mercer stated it flatly.
FBI nodded.
How much do you know about the land you are living on?” Mercer asked.
“Not much,” I admitted. “Just what the realtor told me when I bought the place.”
“Do you know about the murder that took place on the property?” FBI guy.
“The realtor mentioned someone had died on the property and made it a bad place to the locals, which is why I got it cheap.”
The two men smiled at each other.
“It was a murder,” Detective Mercer told me.
“Okay. I still do not see what that has to do with me. It was a long time before I got here.”
“True.” Agent Hunter nodded. “That's the main reason you are not a suspect. You would have been a child then. What do you know about the man who committed the murder?”
“Didn't know it was a murder. I thought someone dying on the property meant that an old person had passed away, jinxing the place for locals. The realtor left out the part about it being a murder.”
I tried to sound put out about it but it actually made no difference to me, still. The place was mine, pure and simple. I was developing it as a campground and nothing was going to stop me. In my mind I even thought a murder on the property might generate ghost stories which was always good for business in a place where people came to stay from far away.
“It's a little more complicated than that.” Detective Mercer sounded serious.
“I am the National Agent in Charge of a task group whose job it is to track down serial killers and bring them to justice.”
I nodded. Good to know. So what? I didn't say what I was thinking.
“Do you know the name of the man believed to have committed the killing on your property?” The agent asked.
“No.”
I was honest. Until a minute ago I had no idea there was a murder. It was a trick question, I was sure. Still trying to catch me knowing more than I should and implicating myself in something.
“His name was Berger. Thomas Berger. He spent most of his life here in town and lived what most considered a normal life. Until a child turned up dead. Later, young children started going missing around the county. A massive effort was put into stopping this trend of missing children. Nine in less than a year. That in itself was very disturbing to my group, who became involved after the second child went missing.”
“Why is that?” I felt stupid just sitting there.
“The normal course of a serial killer is to start slowly with a desire to feed an abnormal hunger every great once in a while. To have so many abductions and presumed deaths so close together pointed to a killer who had been killing for a long time and was just now coming to our attention.”
I nodded. Somehow the FBI felt they were behind the curve on this case back then.
“I was not part of the original task group,” The agent told me. I had already figured that out. Too young.
“But I was,” Detective Mercer announced. “I was there when the first child went missing and when the twenty seventh and last went missing, too.”
Twenty seven? That number seemed huge, even for a serial killer. Not that I knew much about serial killers. Twenty seven dead children. That was disgusting. And no one was stopping this guy? I could sense a little of what I believed the police felt at the time. Even a bad cop could not stand idly by and let children be murdered. I stopped feeling put upon by all their questioning and rudely holding me. My temporary discomfort was nothing compared to the burden I now realized these men were carrying for the victims and their families.
“So, you know the guy who did this? What's the problem?” I could not see where this was going.
“The problem is back then we believed Thomas Berger only committed the one killing and dumped the kid on what is now your property.”
“Okay.” I was still not following.
“Our discovery today brings us back to your property in relation to all the other disappearances.” Agent Hunter said.
“My property?”
“Yes, we are still counting the bodies but it seems upwards of forty three so far.”
I lost him as he spoke. Forty three bodies? On my property? Dead children? On my property? This could not be happening. And what did the strange figure coming and going have to do with it?
It was several minutes before I realized where I was again. Detective Mercer was standing over me then and patting my back, offering me a cup of water. The Agent was sitting quietly across from me, watching me intently. The air seemed stifling and close. I had never been claustrophobic but at that instant I had a good idea of what it felt like.
“You okay, Mr. Corwin?” Agent Hunter inquired.
I nodded noncommittally.
“We found a series of graves crossing through the woods. Deep graves, like someone took their time and did the job right.”
I suppose that meant something to them.
“Twenty years ago, when Thomas Berger was found to have been involved in the abduction of a young boy named David Ready, we moved in to arrest him on what was then his property. Now it is yours. We found the body of David in a shallow grave a few yards from Berger's cabin which, as best we can figure, was just about where your worker's campers are today. When we moved to arrest him, he ran off into the woods and disappeared. He's never been heard from since.”
Detective Mercer replayed the story for me from his memory.
“So, the bad guy got away?” I asked.
“Yes,” Hunter answered. “He got away and we have never had another sighting or any word of him anywhere.”
I waited. I felt more was coming. I was right.
“But the abductions and presumed killings continued,” Mercer went on.
“After he was gone?” I wanted them to think I was following even if I was lost.
“That's the part we need help with.”
“But how can I help?”
“You have told your girlfriend that you have seen a person or persons wandering your property.”
Now it made sense. Kathy must have told them how we met and peaked their interest. For years they have had no sighting of this man they are hunting and now they think maybe I have seen him. Well, if I did, he's a ghost or moves like one anyway.
“Can you tell us about it? You've not actually been forthcoming about this before, so we were unsure about how to approach it. You could have been in league with the killer as far as we knew.” Agent Hunter explained the way they had treated me.
For twenty minutes I explained everything that had happened to me concerning the stranger on my property. I left out my fear of him or any description of his coming and going in a mist or strange way. I explained the items left on my deck and that I had no idea what they meant. They listened and took notes but I could not see how anything I said helped them.
When I was finished Agent Hunter asked me if I had any questions for them.
“Do you believe this guy is still out there killing children?”
“Possibly.” Mercer answered.
“But not probable,” Hunter added. “Most serial killers burn out and quit after a time and twenty plus years is a long time for a killer to keep killing. Not that we rule it out but it seems more likely that the killer has passed on his torch to another person just as demented as he.”
“So you think maybe a second killer is still doing these things and he's operating on my property? Why? I own it now.”
“A link maybe. A process. There are lots of reasons to continue in something that has worked for so long.” Agent Hunter nodded his head.
“So, am I in danger?”
“We have no idea of knowing for sure.” Mercer moved back to his side of the table, assured that I was not going to pass ou
t, I guess.
“Should I find somewhere else to stay?”
“That's up to you,” Hunter looked me in the eye. “I would for my own peace of mind and it's going to be quite a zoo out there for the next several days anyway. The forensics people are combing those woods for anything else we can use.”
“I can't believe I am connected to such a morbid part of this area's history.” I announced.
“More than you know,” Hunter gave me a knowing smile.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Only that your girlfriend is another attachment to this … history, as you call it.”
“How so?”
“Over the last twenty years, we have tracked twenty seven abductions and probable murders involving children in this general area, about a hundred and thirty miles in circumference. Of those exactly one has been recovered. She was seven at the time. Missing for thirty hours and suddenly found wandering the roads by a passing motorist.”
“Where?” I had a morbid idea I knew the answer to that question.
“Just down the road from your property. At the time we did not see any connection to the earlier murder and discovery of David Ready's body. Not with your property anyway. Different killer and all. It was searched in a cursory look for evidence but the little girl was unable to help us at all. She could not describe the man or tell us where she had been. She was missing and then just showed up again, like she had left the earth and then was brought back.”
“How does this relate to Kathy?”
“She was the little girl.”
I was speechless. Kathy was abducted and almost killed when she was seven. The thought chilled my bones and shook my belief in mankind. How could anyone have ever hurt her. She was beautiful. She was precious. I felt an anger building in me over anyone or anything that would hurt her.
“Has she mentioned this to you?” Mercer asked.
“No,” I admitted. “We've – uh – had other things to talk about, getting to know one another kind of things. You know, favorite foods, color, things.” I had no idea what I was saying. I just wanted to protect her, lead them away from any connection between her and those dead bodies on my property.
“I understand,” Hunter said. Whether he did or not I didn't care. I was just glad to move on.
“So, what's next?” I asked.
“The forensics people do their thing and the investigation goes on. We have a lot more information now than we had just a day ago. We have tracked a lot of kids but never found any bodies. Now we have bodies and a better picture of the track of the killer and possibly he left behind some incriminating evidence on the bodies or in the graves or possibly through some connection with the kids we have never seen before.”
I nodded, not really understanding all his process but realizing that the agent counted the discovery on my property as a good thing for his investigation. Despite the closure that so many families would get, I could not really see any good coming out of it. But I was willing to let the police do what they do and stay out of the way.
We said our good byes and I left the station with a better opinion of the police than I had when I came in. It's amazing how perspective colors so much of our opinions of people. Coming in I was convinced that the police, especially Mercer, were short sighted, lazy cops who would grasp at any straw to close a case. Now I understood they had a process to undergo and a way of getting to the answers they sought. Still, I was glad to see Kathy waiting for me in her jeep.