Black Frog, page 15
As George got out of her car, a young Japanese woman, the same woman who she had encountered when she met Fred Williams at the Black Frog, snapped several pictures of Emma and George with a telephoto lens from her vantage point up the hill near the intersection with the Old Brownville Road.
. . .
Late that afternoon Jim Torben, Anne Quinn, and Doug Bateman settled into a booth at Alley Oops, the bar adjoining Pat’s Pizza, a few blocks down the street from where the meth addict was stabbed to death. Ordinarily they would have used a conference room at the courthouse, but Torben wanted to avoid the possibility of encountering Sheriff Hudson. The bar was almost empty, so they didn’t need to worry about being overheard. Jim Torben took a sip of his beer and began
“The sheriff wants to stay as far away from this as he can – but still be ready to step up to the podium if things go well. He’s given me full authority to manage our side of the investigation, with the State Police of course taking the lead in the case, and is of course casting me in the scapegoat role if things don’t go well. Which is fine with me.
The victims’ name is Jack O’Connell. He grew up in the Greenville area but he’s been living in Bangor the last few years. A meth addict, he has been in and out of jail for petty theft and public disturbances, and has had a few overdoses. Sheriff Hudson sees his killing as a drug deal gone wrong, but I don’t think so. I can’t see a drug deal taking place within fifty yards of the sheriff’s office and in broad daylight. I think the Cowboy rapist was waiting for Anne so he could get another chance to kill her, and O’Connell somehow got in the way.”
Doug checked his notes and jumped in.
“I agree Jim. I think it’s the Cowboy. I got off the phone with my lieutenant a little while ago, and since I’m already up here he said I should add the O’Connell murder to my other cases, at least for the time being. And having the cooperation and participation of the county sheriff’s office will be essential. Peter Martell and his crime scene crew didn’t find any evidence of a struggle, or any dropped drugs or money. It looks like he was killed by a single stab wound that severed the carotid artery. A big knife and a strong, perfectly placed thrust –the killer knew what he was doing. Given the Cowboy’s prominent display of a big knife during his rapes, and his attempted assault at Anne’s home, he gets my vote as the likely killer of O’Connell. So far we have no witnesses and no CCTV footage – the killer seems to have just disappeared.” Looking at Anne, Doug continued.
“This guy is getting too close to Anne. I think we need to have around the clock protection for her until we catch him.”
Anne looked ready to object but Jim Torben raised his hand and spoke first.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. She’s going to have to start wearing a vest too. No discussion. Since we now have good reason to believe the Cowboy rapist is responsible for the killing of O’Connell, Anne’s investigation of the rapes and your investigation of the killing today are linked, and the two cases should be combined and you two should work together. I also want to be involved as much as possible, and Doug, you need to ask for more help – maybe your partner Tom Richard can be assigned to help us.”
Both men looked at Anne, and she nodded.
“Patty Crown, the FBI profiler I have been working with also urged me to get protection, so I’m OK with that, as long as I’m still actively involved in the search for this freak. Doug can cover the nights and I don’t mind him staying close during the day, and when we are following different leads Jim or Tom can babysit me.”
16
Cowboy
Wednesday
Cowboy recognized the woman standing at the curb as he pulled away from the Rite Aid parking lot – it was the reporter who had been writing about the murders up at Moosehead – Emma something. He had seen her at the town hall meeting on the Lily Bay development and then a few times having breakfast at Auntie M’s next to the Library in Greenville. She had just gotten a good look at him and the Chick Magnet, and as he slowed for the stop sign and turned right on Main, heading down past the Bangor Saving Bank and the Thompson Free Library, he knew he would have to make another change in vehicles, and soon. She could easily alert the local cops about the car. He had a plan for switching cars and headed out to Ladd Brothers Engineworks in Sebec Corners.
Cowboy was distracted as he turned left off Main at the Weber Hardware and then right by Brown’s Mill, taking the River Road out past the cemetery and the Harry Oakes crypt. Emma, the reporter, he realized, looked a lot like Faith, a woman he had spent a lot of time with at the Waldo Christian Family compound back in New Mexico. Emma was taller and thinner than Faith, a lot younger, and didn’t have a wandering eye, like Faith. But she had the same short black hair, oval face, and large hazel eyes. Faith had been the Cowboy’s defender and mentor in the WCF, right from the start.
That first afternoon, when the Patriarch and his women - the “sisters,” had picked him up along the side of a dirt road in west Texas, it hadn’t taken the Patriarch long to start in on the Cowboy. Glancing sideways at him as they drove west toward the New Mexico border, the Patriarch looked at the scrawny, filthy boy that he had named Enoch, so clearly neglected and abused, and wondered if he was up to what would be asked of him.
“Look at me boy. Can you put the baby?”
This elicited peals of laughter from the three sisters in the back seat. Enoch didn’t answer – just looked confused and afraid. Seeing the boy’s puzzled expression, Abraham the Patriarch tried again.
“Jesus, how stupid are you, son. Ever do any fuckin? Do you pleasure yourself? Do you stroke your cock?”
Enoch’s neck reddened with embarrassment and he silently nodded.
“Do you squirt, boy? Do you squirt God’s essence on the ground? Do you waste it?”
Before Enoch could respond, Faith leaned forward from her place in the middle of the back seat and slid her arms around his shoulders. Her arms were warm and comforting and she smelled good.
“Leave him be now. We can teach him everything. You’ll see. Don’t you worry none, we’ll teach you how to put the baby, Enoch – I bet you’re a real fast learner.”
Cowboy turned north off the River Road onto Old Stagecoach Road, and when he had crossed over Route 6 at Sebec Corners he slowed and pulled in behind the Ladd Brothers Engineworks. There were easily fifty or so vehicles in various states of decay scattered across the lot behind the Ladd Brothers garage, most of them partially obscured by tall weeds and grass. Weaving between the wrecks, Cowboy drove the Chick Magnet in behind a small yellow school bus that was missing its engine but still carried the “Bowerbank” name on the side. He spent a few minutes carefully wiping down the inside and exterior of the car to make sure no fingerprints remained, removed the license plates and threw them deeper into the underbrush. Then he walked around to the front of the garage to look over their assortment of used pickup trucks and vintage cars for sale. A dark blue Ford 150 pickup with a $1,500 price tag painted on the windshield caught his attention, and after a quick test drive he paid in cash. The temporary plates on the truck were only good for thirty days but by then he would be long gone. Stopping off at the Sebec Country Store, Cowboy topped off the truck – its gas gauge didn’t work, and bought a pair of sunglasses and a “Moxie” baseball hat. Driving back up Route 6 toward his hideout, Cowboy thought he would stop at Spring Creek BBQ in Monson for a late lunch before heading home to the Barn and a nice nap.
Enoch and Faith had become very close in the time he spent as a member in good standing of the Waldo Christian Family. She was the mother he never had, protecting him as best she could from the Patriarch’s beatings, taking charge of his book learnin’, and of course, introducing him to his new role as the font of God’s essence. He was the source. Faith and the other half dozen or so women in the compound – the sisters, were the vessels – their number varied depending on the demands of their jobs in Santa Fe or down in Albuquerque. Together, the divine mission of Enoch and the sisters was to produce babies – blessed new members of the family of the faithful.
Enoch and the sisters of the Waldo Christian Family all shared a large barn-like structure with Enoch having his own room and the women sleeping in an open dormitory. The Patriarch had his own house, located on the other side of the run-down compound, across an open courtyard. The women in the WCF cleaned Abraham’s house and his clothes and cooked his meals, but he had no carnal relations with them. He would lead them in prayer each morning before they set off to work and then again when they returned in the late afternoon, before the evening meal. After dinner they would have another, longer, candlelit service where Abraham would bless the conjugal union that was to take place that night between Enoch and one of the women in the family, asking God to bless them with a divine conception.
The first night, when they had arrived at the compound after a hard day’s driving, Faith had drawn Enoch a bath and gently washed him clean with a cloth and sweet smelling soap. She had paid particular attention to his groin, and her gentle soapy stroking of his penis had yielded the expected result. She dried him off, led him to bed, and they slept in each other’s arms. The next morning, early, Enoch was awoken by the touch of Faith’s warm hands, and she showed him what was meant by the Patriarch’s phrase “put the baby.”
That same afternoon, under a bright New Mexican sun, the Patriarch joined Enoch and Faith in holy matrimony. For the first month that Enoch spent at the compound Faith shared his bed each night and he dutifully tried his best to plant God’s seed. After his first month of exclusivity with Faith, Enoch was married in turn to each of the other women in the dormitory, and so began their nightly rotation through Enoch’s bed.
Other than his nightly responsibility of sowing the divine essence, Enoch was not, at first, called on to do much around the compound. He was given instruction by the Patriarch in the mornings and then allowed to relax and study the bible in the afternoons. He took long naps, regained his strength, and gained weight. But as the months passed and none of the sisters was blessed with child, Enoch came under increasingly strict discipline from the Patriarch. His commitment to the faith was questioned. His morning instructions took on more of a physical nature – slaps to the side of the head when the Patriarch’s questions were not quickly answered or his answers were deemed inadequate. The Patriarch’s after dinner blessings became more perfunctory and the sisters began to tease Enoch and question his virility – maybe he was not the blessed font of divine seed. Maybe he was useless.
Then, eight months after his arrival at the compound – a miracle. One of the sisters – Eloise Baker, announced that she was with child. Her condition was confirmed by a home pregnancy test and Faith was given responsibility for managing her pre-natal care. The Patriarch did not permit any contact with the medical profession. Her pregnancy reaffirmed Enoch’s status as the font of divine essence, and the other sisters rededicated themselves to receiving God’s seed through Enoch, his anointed disciple.
In a candlelit procession the newly pregnant Eloise was led across the courtyard and joined Abraham in his house, beginning her blessed confinement. She would not leave the compound until after the child was born, and except for the evening meal she was rarely seen outside Abraham’s house. Her full-term pregnancy was uneventful and surrounded by Faith and her other sisters she was delivered of a healthy baby girl in the house of the Patriarch.
Abraham baptized the child and named her Esther. He proclaimed that she was under his divine protection and would be raised under his roof, but he soon tired of the noise and disruption. Within a few weeks Esther and her mother had moved back across the courtyard into the house that Enoch shared with the sisters of the Waldo Christian Fellowship of Heaven and Earth.
The fortunes of the WCF slowly deteriorated over the next several years. There was some turnover - a few new sisters were recruited into the family and a few simply disappeared – going off to work one day and never returning. Enoch fathered only two more children, by Faith and by Eloise. These additions to his flock pleased the Patriarch, but suspicions grew among some of the sisters that had not become pregnant that Enoch might not be the father of the new babies of the WCF. Both Eloise and Faith, they suspected, may have found other men from outside the family to father their children, both to protect Enoch from further beatings from the Patriarch and also to increase their own status within the family.
Abraham eventually came to share these suspicions and Enoch was removed from his privileged position and relegated to a much diminished status and role within the WCF. He no longer lay with the sisters and his major role now was as an example for the other members of the WCF - the Patriarch would occasionally give him an after-dinner beating as a lesson for the sisters. Enoch’s days were now spent doing odd jobs when he could find them in the nearby town of Cerrillos. The Patriarch took over the responsibility of sowing the divine seed and several times a week he would visit the sister’s dormitory and select one of them to join him in Enoch’s old room. Enoch’s nights were spent sleeping in an unused dog kennel behind the Patriarch’s house. He didn’t think it was too bad, as he had plenty of blankets for the cold nights and Faith would occasionally visit him and share his bed. He continued to hope that he would someday regain the faith of the Patriarch.
He was alone in his dog kennel on the cold November night the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies and New Mexico State Police raided the compound. Apparently one of the run-away sisters had told the authorities lurid tales of an old man running a cult and having sex with underage girls in a remote location. Unfortunately for Abraham the raid occurred on one of the evenings he was sowing divine seed, and they interrupted him fornicating with a recent arrival – a fourteen-year-old runaway from a prominent Santa Fe Family.
The authorities didn’t quite know what to make of Enoch or what to do with him. When sheriff’s deputies discovered him huddled on a bare mattress in a dirt-floored dog kennel they assumed him to be a victim – another weak-willed innocent swept up in the Patriarch’s cult. His victim profile was further strengthened when it was learned that he had been abducted several years earlier while walking along a back road in Texas, and that his earlier life was a blank slate. Enoch did not remember, or chose not to recount, either his real name or really any aspects of his upbringing prior to joining the WCF, other than to say he moved around a lot as a kid. He could read and write but seemed to have had little if any formal education, and his limp, along with evidence of broken bones and numerous beatings, indicated a long history of physical abuse by the Patriarch and likely before. He was found to be fluent in Spanish and was familiar with many of the idioms associated with the Rio Grande borderlands – which would turn out playing a big role in the next phase of his life.
Enoch’s relative isolation from the world and his lack of an early history or identity initially presented a problem for local and state authorities responsible for his care and management, but a solution was soon found that appealed to all concerned, including Enoch. He was enlisted into the US Army, and given his lack of any family ties or indeed any personal history at all, was identified as an excellent candidate for a newly formed hybrid program designed to facilitate greater cooperation and integration between the military and other governmental agencies.
Enoch quickly adapted to life in the military and he flourished during the brutal ten weeks of basic training he completed in the summer heat and humidity of Ft. Polk, Louisiana. Basic training was followed by another 10 weeks of advanced training in close quarters combat, along with CIA taught tradecraft courses in surveillance, establishing alternative identities, and blending into a range of different cultural environments. Enoch was also given a battery of personality tests that revealed both a lack of emotional attachment or empathy and a somewhat disturbingly casual approach to physical violence – traits that drew the attention of his instructors.
When his training was completed Enoch was transferred to a small unit being formed to assist the Department of Homeland Security in infiltrating and breaking up the “coyote” gangs that were smuggling illegal immigrants across the U.S. border with Mexico. For the next two years he drifted along the borderlands from Brownsville to Tijuana, moving between communities on both sides of the border, changing his identity and his appearance along the way, and getting close enough to coyote networks to identify the major players for Homeland Security. Once his targets had been identified and profiled, usually from a safe distance, Enoch would move on to the next assignment along the border, never staying in one location for more than a few weeks or so.
He was remarkably successful in his undercover activities and thoroughly enjoyed his work, particularly since it gave him enough free time to begin again with efforts to sow his divine seed with both willing and unwilling partners. His fervent hope was to rejoin the Waldo Christian Family and to prove himself worthy to the Patriarch, who had been released from jail and had returned to the compound to start again – this time under the watchful eye of local law enforcement.
After about a year of simply identifying the major actors in coyote networks from a safe distance, Enoch’s role changed as his handlers began to drift off script and he was directed, on his own initiative, to take more direct and conclusive actions to reduce the level of human smuggling across the border. Enoch was essentially tasked with the removal of key individuals in the coyote networks and given carte blanche in terms of how he carried out his mission. This program of unofficial targeted assassinations of what were considered “bad hombres” went well for several months, until Enoch inadvertently killed an undercover DEA agent in an incident just outside Nogales. The agent had worked his way into a position of trust within a major smuggling cartel and made the mistake of attempting to intervene as Enoch, knife drawn, was closing on his intended target – the cartel’s second in command.
