Fatal Encounter, Chapter 13
by Irv Pliskin
Back at the cabin, Hallen and BB decided it was time to check out the third wall safe. They wanted to take no chances, and open the door remotely as they had done before. Although it seemed unlikely that there would be a problem, Hallen thought that being careful was an intelligent position to take. Using the door-opening device, Sammy had created, Hallen undid the lock. Then he started to pull the door open. He got it open slightly and then slammed it shut.
BB was startled.
“What's going on Jerry? Why did you do that?”
“I may be wrong, Barney, but that safe is not the same set up as the other ones. ”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Well, when we got the doors slightly open on the other two, a really bright light came on inside the safe. Like in a refrigerator. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, I do. I was surprised the safes were equipped with electric lights.”
“Yeah, me too. But this one has no light, and so I thought I should close it and check that out.”
“Well, maybe the light is blown out.”
“Maybe it is, but I want to make sure that’s what the problem is. It could be something entirely different. Won’t take me long to check it out.”
“There are two light switches down there,” Hallen said. “One turns on the overheads. I wonder what the second one does?”
“Nothing,” BB said, “I toggled it when we first went down there. Nothing happened.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Well, were the overheads on when you did that?”
“Sure, they were.”
“Have you tried it with them off?”
“No, why should I?”
“No reason but let’s try it and see what happens.”
Using the long pole they used for the safe doors, Hallen flicked the switch BB said hadn’t done anything. Then he turned off the overhead lights. The room was almost dark, but there were soft red lights illuminating the area dimly
“What the hell?” BB said. “What are those red lights?”
“Haven’t you ever developed pictures, BB? Those are photographic safe lights. You use them in the dark room so you don’t screw up the film or the negatives or the exposed printing paper.”
“Really?”
“Sure, I did a lot of photography as a kid. That's what the red lights are.”
“Why do you think he has that set up like that, Jerry?” BB asked.
“I’m not sure, but my guess is that he has stuff in that safe he has prepared on photo paper. It’s been exposed, but not developed. I think it’s another safeguard so no one sees it. If the safe is opened in the light, the stuff will be ruined. If I’m right, he has some info that he thinks is important. I’ll go down and check it. If it looks like photo paper, we’ll have to get a light tight box down there and get it to the lab to process.”
“You got enough light to go down there on the ladder?”
“Yeah, I think so. Let me see. When I get down there, put the cover on the trap hole, so no absent light spills down there and affects what’s in the safe.”
Hallen got to the bottom of the hole without incident and in the glow of the safe lights he opened the safe. He looked in and determined that the contents of the safe appeared to b photographic paper: no way to know if it was exposed or not. He knew that it was unusual for unexposed paper to be out of the light-proof box, so he assumed that the material was indeed, exposed.
He closed the safe tightly. He would have to send for a photo tech with a set of light tight boxes, collect the papers and have them processed. He felt certain that it could be important to the search for Rogers. Hallen was convinced that Rogers had gone crazy.No sane man would do the things Rogers had done. No sane man would kill so heartlessly and in such a ruthless manner.
Hallen came up out of the room, and called the photo lab on his cell phone. He told them what he wanted and went back to his office, leaving his crew to catalog, photograph and compile the material that had been found up to this point.
There was a call from the techs that had made head and shoulder photos from the collection of videotapes. Each woman had been photographed and the photos enhanced for reproduction. They made sure that nothing was altered: they just needed to improve the somewhat grainy work they got from the video shots.
Each photograph was labeled with the woman’s name, as well as the dates from the spines of the videotapes. If the woman had a feature that was unique: a birthmark, a tattoo, the signs of a major surgery, that too was noted. Several of the women had had their body pierced. One showed a navel ring, another showed nipple rings, and one young woman had had all of her private parts pierced and wore rings where Hallen was sure they generated severe discomfort. He shuddered at the thought. He was sure he would never find out why they did that to themselves although he would like to know for his own information.
At six the next morning, Hallen was at his desk. He called Peter Murchinson’s private number. It was close to lunch time in London, but Murchinson picked up the phone and barked his name into the instrument.
“Peter?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Peter, this is Jerry Hallen.”
“I know, I recognize your voice, old boy. How is it going?”
“Well, we’re making progress. The guy is on the lam, but we have a really firm identification of the monster. We also have some real time pictures of him. Let me tell you about it. I want to bring you up to date and tell you what I think might prove useful to the case. I’d also welcome your opinion of the way to go. Have you got a few minutes?”
“Whatever, old boy. Take what time you need.”
Hallen covered the events of the past few weeks, from the time he had had the picture of Carl Rogers posted on the TV and in the newspapers.
Murchinson was amazed at the good luck Hallen had had in recognizing the dead young blond woman from the plane and the man who had been with her. “Really a stroke of luck, wouldn’t you say?”
Hallen agreed.
He went onto explain that they had found the videotapes, and that they actually showed the murders of the young women, all of whom Hallen believed were British. He explained that by saying that the voices and accents all sounded British rather than American.
“Wait a moment, Jerry,” Murchinson said, “what is that you are saying? You have videotapes of the actual murders being committed?”
“That’s right, inspector. This guy has nothing but money, it would seem, and he has the most sophisticated equipment possible. When he showered with the young women, it was recorded on video. And when he took them into his bedroom and made love to them, that’s all on tape, too. The son of a bitch killed them in his bedroom by injection, and that’s on the tapes too”.
“That’s mind-blowing,” Murchinson interrupted. “Absolutely incredible.”
“I know it is,” Hallen said. “But seeing the tapes is sickening. I have a man reviewing them, and he is really having a hard time of it.”
“How many tapes do you have?”
”They are in sets, Inspector. Each set has a woman’s name and a date. Some of the dates cover several weeks, others much less time that that. The time he kept them alive may have been based on how well he liked them. We can’t tell. But each one ends with a killing. I’m having them copied now, and I will send you a set, if you want to watch them.”
“I don't particularly want to see them, but I think we should have a set for the record, don’t you?”
“I agree. I’ll have it made for you.”
“If you do, though, Jerry, make sure they do it in the British format. We can’t see your videos on our equipment. Did you know that?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. I bought a tape while I was there and brought it home, and couldn’t play it. So, I’ll make sure we do yours in the right format.”
“It sounds like you are building up a real body of evidence against this guy,” Murchinson said.
“We are. Now all we have to do is catch him. He seems to have disappeared, totally gone. It’s been at least two weeks, and nobody has had a sign of him. We’ve been able to trace him back to the afternoon we put his picture on the television but no one has seen him since.”
“He filled his Mercedes with gas at the local service station. The attendant there remembers him. He always tipped the attendants a couple of bucks so they are sure to remember him. They race to take care of him, even though we have self-serve gas stations here in Pennsylvania. When we got to his place the car was in the garage, and there was no sign of him and none ever since.”
“How soon after you broadcast the picture were you at his place?”
“Within hours. Many of the people around here recognized the pic, and called us. It was hard to believe it was the guy they said it was. He has a great reputation in the Poconos. Everybody seemed to know and like him.”
“That figures, psychopaths can be like that.”
“According to everyone here, he had three cars,” Hallen added, “and they were all accounted for. Nobody has seen him. He is just gone.”
“Could he have walked away from there, and gotten somewhere else?” Murchinson asked.
“I guess he could. But where? We are not talking short distances here. His place is at least a half mile from the nearest house, pretty isolated.”
“Hmmm,” Murchinson mused. “Could he have had a hideaway of some sort, a prepared hiding place?”
“Sure, but we’ve checked all of the surrounding areas and residences, including the vacation places. Nothing.”
“Hmm. Pretty interesting. I’d bet he has a place somewhere near, hidden so you may never find it, or him.”
“That’s not very encouraging inspector. But I’ve figured that may be the case, too. I can’t figure out what or where, but we’ll keep looking. Meanwhile, I’d like to send you pictures of these women and hopefully you can get them circulated so we may be able to identify some of them. That doesn’t mean we can provide the remains, if there are any, but at least we can tell the families that their loved ones are dead. That may help a little.”
“I understand, Jerry. Send them over here, and I'll see if my contact will publish them. It may make a hell of a good story for his tabloid. Since he was responsible for the first identification, it may be a good follow up story. I’ll let you know when I get the material.”
“You should have it tomorrow. I’ll FedEx it tonight.”
“Good. I’ll be watching for it.”
Hallen sat at his desk and reran the conversation in his head. He had had a feeling that Rogers must have had some place to hide. All of the things he had been able to develop in his profile of the man indicated that he would have had someplace to go in an emergency. It was obvious that aside from his predilection to kill women, the man was pretty smart.
‘I wonder,’ Hallen thought ‘if we really canvassed the area well enough? It may be a little late, but I think we’ll do it again, and not leave an inch unexplored. If I were in the guy’s position, I‘d have a place to hide in. Maybe he did, too.’
He sat at the desk and made a checklist to go over with BB and perhaps Captain Garcia.
l. How much time, actually elapsed between the TV announcement and the identification?
2. How long before we had a unit out at the man’s house, the cabin?
3. Did anyone notice anything about the guy. Anything suspicious reported at any of the offices around or the police stations?
4. Were there any sightings at all, anywhere?
That question got to him. Generally, in his experience, there were all kinds of sightings of people that were wanted. He didn’t recall that there were any calls, none of the usual attention seekers called in with an ID.
He asked himself if that was right. He remembered that once the news broke nationally, that there was a call within hours from Shreveport, Louisiana where someone claimed to have seen Rogers, but that would have been impossible. Not enough time.
5. Should we have set a reward? If we did, where would the money come from? Would it be too late to set up a reward now?
“Shit,” Hallen muttered out loud. ”I could go on and on with this exercise, but it seems really frustrating. I wonder if I might not find some answers to the most important questions. It is so strange that he just vanished. Where the hell could he be?”
Maybe he crawled into a hole in the ground and died there. But nobody has found any ground holes within a mile of the place. We’ll have to go over the territory again and again until we’re sure. This is giving me a hell of a headache.” He popped a couple of Tylenol into his mouth.
“I wonder if the photo lab has anything for me?”
It was still a little early. The photo lab kept normal business hours unless there was something really pressing. Hallen dialed the number and let the phone ring a couple of times. He was about to hang up when the phone was answered.
“Captain Pascal, Photo Lab,” a voice said.
“You’re in there pretty early, Mark,” Hallen said. “I thought big-time executives like you kept banker’s hours.”
“Banker’s hours? What are they?”
“Eleven to two, with an hour and half for lunch, right?”
“Oh, sure. Don’t I wish. How are you, Jerry?”
“Pretty good and you?”
”Okay. I guess you want to know what we have for you?”
“Yeah, if I’m not crowding you guys. I know this case has meant a lot of work for you.”
“It has. But we processed that photo paper we got yesterday. It was all expertly exposed. But I’m not sure it makes any sense at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well it seems to be nothing but letters and numbers and they don’t make any sense to us.”
“What we are doing now is copying all of the sheets, and when we get them done and out of the drier, we’ll get them over to you.”
“Great. Today?”
“Oh, in an hour or so, I’d think. Listen, I'm curious. If you can make any sense of this stuff, will you let me know what the hell it all is?”
“Sure will.” Hallen said. “And thanks.”
“De nada.”
They hung up.
Carl had had it. He could feel the walls closing in on him, the ceiling was falling, he could hardly breath from the oppressive feelings he had.
He felt he was buried alive and that the worms and maggots were eating at his living flesh.
He shouted at the room..
“I've got to get the hell outta here. This is like a tomb, I’m buried alive I've got to go - got to. Holy shit, Rogers, you are a stupid, dumb asshole for thinking this crappy hole in the ground would work.”
He shouted this over and over again until he was hoarse. And then he fell across his narrow bed and actually cried.
“Oh god, oh god,oh god. Why have you forsaken me? hat am I going to do?”
He decided that regardless of the risk, he would have to leave the place. And now, tonight. He couldn’t wait for a rainstorm, There was no way he could tolerate another hour of this torture and remain sane. He was sure of that, so he lay back and made plans to leave the sanctuary that was turning to a yawning abyss.
He decided that he had to move with a minimum of equipment. Just enough to protect himself and enough cash to buy what he needed. Strip himself of all other stuff.
He remembered that he had once checked to see what money really weighed. Paper money, that is. He was surprised to discover that a million dollars in singles weighed over a ton. Maybe that’s where the idea that at a million bucks was a ton of money came from. Obviously, he didn’t have a million bucks with him, and the money he had was in larger denominations. He would have to be careful about the weight. He remembered, too, that a million bucks in hundreds was less than 25 pounds. He wasn’t sure he was right, but he figured he had about fifty thousand dollars in cash in the house, and he had taken that with him to the bunker. He figured that since that was in a variety of denominations it represented about fifty pounds. He didn’t know how much weight he could handle. But the fifty pounds was really necessary. He couldn’t go without cash.
What else could he take?
A gun? Two guns? Three guns?
“Don’t be an ass,” he told himself. “That’s what got you in trouble in the first place. You were loaded like a camel and couldn’t keep your footing.
Pare it down...just a few things to keep body and soul together until you can get to a bank or an ATM machine. Well I won’t need that for a while. I’ve got a lot of cash. Better count it and make sure. Suppressing his growing panic, he stacked his money on the table and began to count. He had over fifty thousand dollars, over fifty pounds of cash to carry around. In his current condition, he wondered if he could manage that much weight. Plus a gun and ammo, some clothes. All that would be a heavy burden for an injured man to carry.
“Crap!” he said out loud. “What the hell shall I do? What can I do?” There was, of course, no answer from anywhere. He dropped his head on his hands, and could feel the warm tears stream down his cheeks.
As Captain Pascal had promised, the developed photographic material was ready and a police messenger brought it over to Hallen. Hallen opened the envelope and looked at the prints. “I hope this is not the original stuff,” he said to the messenger. “Do you know?”
“Yes, sir. I do. These are copies of the material we have in the safe at the photo lab. We copied all the developed material, and we have the originals.”
”Good,” Hallen said. “You know, this may be an after thought and it may not make any sense, but maybe we should also dust the finished prints for fingerprints. Would they stay through the processing?”
“Shucks, detective. I don’t know. But I’ll mention it to the Captain, and he’ll decide what to do.”
“Thanks,” Hallen said.
Hallen took the material, it was all 16x20 photo paper and spread it on the table behind his desk. It looked like pure gibberish. He took each sheet and thumb tacked it to his wall so he could get a view of all of it together. It still looked like nothing but garbage. The stuff had to mean something, but he had no idea what. This perp was too smart to go through setting the stuff up like that, and protecting it with lights as he did for it not to have value. But the question was, what did it mean. What the hell was it?
After a few minutes staring at it all, he got up from his desk and walked into the outer office. A glance at his watch told him that a new shift would be coming on soon. Maybe somebody there might have an idea of what the stuff was. He walked into the ready room, there were half a dozen uniforms waiting for muster call.
“Fellows,” he said, “I wonder if you guys would come with me for a minute. I’ll fix it with the sergeant, you won’t be late for muster.”
The six officers followed him into his office.
He stepped aside so they could see his walls.
“This stuff is somehow related to a case we’re working on, that serial killer case. But I don’t know what the hell it is all about? Do any of you have any ideas, any ideas at all?”
Five of the uniforms looked at the walls in puzzlement. The sixth, a new officer, whose nametag said Bernstein, looked at the wall and then at Hallen.
“I have a pretty good idea what this is,” Detective, he said.
“You do?”
“Tell me then, what the hell is it?”
“I may be wrong, sir, but I would bet my life that this some sort of military style encryption. You know, code.”
“Holy Christ, ” Hallen said. “Are you reasonably sure of it?”
“I think so, sir. It looks much like the stuff we dealt with in the Marines. I was assigned to the code breaker school, and this has all of the qualities of a code. Look, here, the letters and numbers are in sets of five, and eight. That’s almost a tip off. I’m sure it’s some sort of code.”
“Well, do you think you could do anything with it?”
“Not me, sir. I was only on the periphery of the operation. I think you may need some real expertise. I think the army might be able to help you, or you could get help from 8th and I.”
“8th and I? What’s that?”
“Headquarters Marine corps, sir. But I think you would probably do better with the Army. They have a lot of expertise in the area.”
“Thank you, Bernstein. What's your first name?”
”David, sir. And you’re welcome. I hope I’m right, and I’m happy to be of help. If the rumors are correct, this is some nasty son of a bitch you’re looking for.”
“He sure is,” Hallen said.
