Authors: Keith Domingue
Lloyd was puzzled now. This was beginning to sound like a standard Op.
“So he’s tied to it.” He shrugged.
“We don’t think so.”
Lloyd waited for more.
“The kid’s name is Alex Luthecker. Caucasian, with a birth certificate out of Philadelphia.” Brown began. “His parents, a school teacher and a nurse, unmarried at the time and now both deceased, gave him up for adoption. No takers, and he became a product of the foster home system. File says he kept to himself, from a very early age, making him very easy to manage. Thought to have a development disorder, possibly autism, due to a noticeable lack of engagement with the other kids. It would explain the no takers. At the age of eight, one foster parent noted he may have a potentially elevated IQ, but she died, and the next stop didn’t care, so he was never tested. Then out of nowhere, he emancipated himself on his sixteenth birthday and disappeared. No record of him beyond that. No license or I.D., just a Social Security number. Not on the radar whatsoever.”
“Off grid.” Lloyd added.
“Yes.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That’s where it gets strange. When we asked him how he knew about the pending attack, he started babbling about everything from the type and size of the beads of sweat on the suspects’ forehead, skin pigmentation variants, which direction he looked to first when he reached the corner, making sure to note how important that was, what kind of clothes he was wearing, down to thread origin and how many days it had been since they were washed, different body odors and their sources, a scar on the left cheek, how old it was, what caused it, haircut length, baldness pattern, discoloration on his hands, ink and powder located on thumb and forefinger, and on and on. He wouldn’t stop babbling about these details, hundreds of them, and how they formed a pattern. I’m not kidding. There are
pages
of it in the file. And the sum of it all meant to him that this guy he claimed to have just stood next to on a street corner had made a TNT pipe bomb, lived on West 23
rd
Street on a first floor apartment, a corner unit, facing east. And he was planning on carrying the bomb on the train that night.”
“And?”
“The details were too strong to take a chance. So we raided the apartment. And he was completely right. About all of it. Would’ve blown an entire car and half the Metro tunnel completely apart. Set off during rush hour, we’re talking seventy, maybe a hundred fatalities.”
Brown suddenly had Lloyd’s full attention. He had been wrong. This kid was a threat.
“He added one other thing.” Brown continued. “He also told us we were going to have no choice but to kill the suspect.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Like he said, we had no choice.”
“Why?”
“The suspect came out firing, before we even had a chance to question him.”
Lloyd poured himself another cup of coffee before responding.
“The two of them were partners. Potentially part of a larger effort. They had a disagreement. Maybe his life was threatened, so he turned on his own guy, and let your unit do the rest. We’ve seen this before, Richard. He was in on it. There’s nothing special here.”
“I don’t think that’s the case.” Brown replied.
“There’s no way he just spotted a guy on the street, calculated all those details off the top of his head and came to that conclusion. That doesn’t even make any sense. You want to tell me what’s really going on here?”
Brown tapped the file on the desk.
“We’ve known each other a long time. And I’m telling you David, something’s not right about this kid.”
Lloyd sensed Brown’s nervousness pick up a notch.
“Where is he now?”
“We have him on lock down at the local P.D. We’re keeping them out of the loop. You understand why.”
Lloyd nodded.
“Have you spoken with him?”
“No. I wanted you on this right away.”
Lloyd mulled this over.
“Lawyer?”
“He hasn’t requested one. Wouldn’t matter if he did, the patriot act makes it clear we don’t have to give him one anymore. After that initial intel he clammed up completely. He’s not saying anything at all, and he knows exactly how to do that. He just stares at everybody. Spooks them. I don’t know how to explain it, but he’s running the room. That’s why you got the call. We’re prepared to move on him aggressively, but hoping you could get to the bottom of this with a little less potential for blowback.”
“What potential for blowback? He’s off the grid.”
“David; I’m asking for a favor here.”
Lloyd studied his old friend a moment as he thought over what he had just heard. Brown wasn’t lying about how the target had affected him, he could tell. The nervousness was real. Still, he was hiding something. No matter, Lloyd thought. The withholding of information was commonplace and strategic with all people, even among the most trusted of friends. It was simply part of the human condition. He would address that issue at the proper time, and probably deduce it rather quickly from Luthecker during questioning.
When it came to an individual’s psychology Lloyd was a puzzle solver. He had seen a wide range of behavior in his experience, and it was remarkable how predictable it was. It was fascinating to him the things people were capable of when they put both their beliefs and actions behind it. It could be amazing or horrifying. Unfortunately most of what Lloyd saw was horrifying.
The kid was in on it. Occam’s razor. The simplest solution is most often the correct one. He was fucking with Brown. Lloyd would find out what he knew. What made this young man tick. There was no behavior he couldn’t trace the source of, no secret he couldn’t uncover. Brown was right to call him. He was the best. He finally opened the file.
He looked forward to meeting this Alex Luthecker.
• • •
The flight from West Virginia to Los Angeles took just over five hours. With the time change, that put Lloyd in front of Luthecker by roughly 9:30am.
The young man was smart to pick Los Angeles to live off the grid. A city of nine million people. Close to the Mexican border, but not too close. Home to countless undocumented residents, with an entire underground economy to support them. Liberal immigration policies and under-funded law enforcement. And new faces, young, fresh, and broke, shuffling in and out every day, from all over the world, pursuing the American dream, which had somehow morphed into the pursuit of wealth and fame with no calculable ability or work ethic.
Los Angeles, the city where the superficial and the shallow went to be noticed, was the perfect place to remain unnoticed forever.
That also summed up well why Lloyd hated L.A. A reconnaissance nightmare filled with narcissistic, superficial, smiling cobras. He would be happy to wrap this up and get back to the east coast.
Luthecker was being held at Metro downtown.
When “Homeland Security” stepped in and took over the case, the local P.D. were more than cooperative, and gladly kept their noses out of it. They had enough miscreant twenty-two year olds of their own to deal with, and couldn’t care less. They just wanted their cell back.
Lloyd arrived at the station at 9:10am, separate from Brown. He had checked into the Marriott Downtown upon arrival in Los Angeles, and rented his own car. Despite his disdain for the city, he had no problem taking advantage of its virtues. The dining, while not exactly New York, was considerably better than West Virginia. He was a fan of Morton’s, the famous steakhouse on South Figueroa Street. He’d already called and made a reservation for 8pm later this evening, a table of one. Although he got along well with Brown, they never socialized, and he preferred to dine alone anyway. It was his way of decompressing, of organizing and mentally filing the day’s information. A nice prime rib and bottle of wine would be good at the end of what he anticipated would be a long day.
He planned the initial session with Luthecker to be approximately four hours, less if he got him to open up on the first try. The most effective techniques of interrogation were the simplest- fatigue and uncertainty. Considering Luthecker’s age, and the fact that he was American, Lloyd didn’t anticipate an insurmountable amount of resistance. If he proved to be stubborn, Lloyd would ratchet up the pressure, visiting him at random intervals, day or night, for three days, depriving him of sleep and knowledge of when he would be questioned next, or what would happen to him. If little or no progress were made in that time frame, he would at that point recommend to Brown that they follow standard rendition protocol, grabbing Luthecker abruptly in the middle of the night and moving him. In less than a day and unbeknownst to the young man, he would end up overseas, Turkey or Jordan perhaps, dealing with much harsher realities in very short order.
Lloyd entered the overcrowded Precinct lobby and found Brown, along with what looked like the Precinct Sergeant, waiting for him.
“Sergeant Mike Alvarez”, the uniform offered, along with his hand.
Alvarez was short, late forties, and judging from his waistline, had worked behind a desk for at least a decade.
“Doctor David Lloyd”, he offered in response, as he shook the staff Sergeant’s hand.
“This way.” Alvarez indicated, as he made his way between desks and staff, Brown and Lloyd in tow.
Lloyd studied the inhabitants of Metro Precinct as they walked through the stale and faded early seventies architecture. He took note of several: The middle aged black woman pleading to the empty face behind the glass. The tattoo-covered Latino in hand cuffs being pulled along by two uniforms on either side of him. The mounds of paperwork sitting on a desk in front of a sweaty cheap suit and tie.
There was a constant human miasma to large Metropolitan Police Precincts, Lloyd mused. The combined lives of all the individuals in the building created it, and it was palpable. It was a mutuality of desperation, between those who had either fallen between or created the cracks in the system, and those who were trying to keep that system from collapsing. It was a barely held balance, and it would never change. And everyone in the room knew it. It was a sad dance, a hellish environment, made survivable to the system keepers only by the occasional small victories.
“How long we gotta keep’em?” Alvarez asked, interrupting Lloyd’s train of thought.
“Until we inform you otherwise.” Brown replied.
Alvarez bristled.
“I want that fucker out of here.”
There was no attempt by Alvarez to hide the vitriol in his voice. Luthecker really did spook people, Lloyd thought.
“I’d like to observe him for a bit first.” He stated.
“This ain’t fucking Law and Order. He’s locked in a concrete room with no windows. You can sit across from him and look at him all you want.”
The men turned a corner into a hallway of bare concrete walls and faded grey steel doors, each door with a number, small wire mesh window, and waist level food slot.
An armed uniform stood in front of the last door on the right. Luthecker’s holding cell.
Alvarez pulled keys as they approached.
“My guy will go in there with you.” Alvarez offered, as he unlocked the door.
“No.” Lloyd responded. “I’d like to speak with him alone. If I need anything, I’ll let the guard know.”
Alvarez looked back and forth between Lloyd and Brown.
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged, as he opened the heavy steel door.
A small-framed man sat handcuffed to a small table bolted to the floor.
Lloyd shut the door behind him.
• • •
At first glance, Luthecker looked like nothing special, Lloyd thought. Five foot seven, maybe one hundred forty pounds. Disheveled hair and eyes both dark brown in color. Soft hands. Not a day laborer, he speculated. He also noted a relatively pale complexion for someone who looked of southern European descent. Most likely a night job, one with little human interaction, a security guard perhaps, if he even had a job at all.
He wore Nike tennis shoes, the wear, style, and model indicating that they were at least five years old. A plain grey T-shirt hung loosely on his small frame, along with Old Navy painter’s jeans, faded and worn. He remained expressionless, as Lloyd sat down across from him.
Both men studied each other for a long moment. Lloyd immediately picked up on something strange in Luthecker’s behavior: His eye movement. Almost REM-like in speed and oscillation, in what appeared to be a ravenous effort to take in every detail about Lloyd. And then, as quickly as it started, the rapid eye movement seemed to ease, as if Luthecker were breaking from a trance. At that point, he eyed Lloyd no differently than any other young idealist might, with contempt.
The incident regarding the strange eye movement lasted less than ten seconds. It gave Lloyd pause. If you weren’t ready for it, it was quite disturbing. He understood why Luthecker spooked people. Why Brown thought something was amiss as well. But Lloyd had seen similar if not as intense behavior before, in the prisons of Guantanamo Bay. The attempt to grasp any clues about your captors and use it against them. Whether trained or natural, Lloyd instinctively knew then that he was dealing with a man who had his own set of profiling skills.
This is going to be interesting, he thought.
He decided to speak first.
“I’m Doctor David Lloyd.” He started.
Luthecker said nothing.
“You realize you’re a hero.” He tossed out as bait.
Still nothing.
“And we just want to know, how you knew about the bomber. So we can be the heroes next time, and you can go back to your life.”
The first deal on the table. And the only easy one Luthecker would get.
Still nothing.
Then Luthecker spoke.
“You should have taken them.” He announced.
Lloyd looked at him, tilting his head a bit in reaction to the statement.
“Should have taken what?”
“Your meds. Did you know that the state of California uses diazepam as a pre-execution sedative?”
“Excuse me?”
“You should have taken them.”
The exchange caught Lloyd off guard. He answered back with a firm reminder of who was in charge.