Dark Artist: The Black Doodler

By Sean Dexter

Jackson Burke--recluse and ex-con--is drawn out of his hermit-like existence to help a friend and former lover, Kacey Butler. Butler, an investigative reporter for a San Diego newspaper, is being threatened by a serial killer--but not just any serial killer. She believes him to be the Black Doodler, a man who murdered fourteen men in San Francisco in the mid-seventies. The Doodler would sketch his victims and then stab them to death. He was never apprehended. Now, after thirty-five years of dormancy, he appears to have resurfaced...and the police seem to be doing everything they can to cover it up. Jack Burke intends to stop the murders and protect his friend...and no one is more qualified than Jack Burke to understand the mind of a killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Dexter
• Release date: Aug 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476118390

Sean Dexter

Here's my story... Former military, process server, private investigator, and teacher. I live in the hills of Colorado with my wife, sons, a ferocious dog, and the gentle spirit of her predecessor. I am still grieving the death of Robert B. Parker and his wonderful creations who seem more real to me than many actual human beings. It has been difficult to get my mind around the death of not only Parker himself, but the passing of Spenser, Susan, Jesse, Hawk, and all the others who have been part of my life for so many years...peace, Robert B. I can still hear your typewriter clacking away... Another of my favorite writers is Max Allan Collins. His Nathan Heller books are the best in the genre. The amount of research that man does for his books is, well... frightening. That's all I have to say about myself for now. Peace, sd

Book preview

Chapter 1

Present

Jack Burke stared at the blinking green message light on his answering machine. In the eerie, pre-dawn glow, the flashing green light looked like a lighthouse beacon silently screaming a warning of danger. His chest heaved from his habitual morning run. Even this early, the heat and humidity of the Oklahoma morning was oppressive.

For a moment he hesitated. Can't be good, not this early, he thought. He pulled the straight back chair from the old, scarred oak desk—one of only three pieces of furniture in his cavernous living room—and perched on its edge. His hand snaked out and touched the heavy black telephone that squatted at the center of the desk. The black plastic was cold despite the heat of the room.

He stared at his reflection in the curtainless window on the opposite wall. He saw a man as cold and two-dimensional as the glass pane. Lines caused by life rather than age creased his face. His hair, cut prison short, formed a spiky gray helmet on his head. The bridge of his nose made random detours from neglected breaks. He looked away.

The house creaked like old bones. The sound startled Burke as sudden noises always did. Built in the twenties and never properly maintained, the ancient two-story frame farmhouse was living on borrowed time. Situated at the center of 40 isolated acres of Blackjack oak and stunted pine west of Tulsa, the old house was a perfect match for its owner.

Burke's hand reached for the St. Christopher medal that hung at his throat. He never took it off. Unlike the telephone, the medallion felt warm. His pulse slowed. He expelled a heavy breath, mouthing his dead son's name at the same time—a silent, soul-saving mantra.

He stabbed at the replay button with a sweaty finger not allowing himself a chance to change his mind. He recognized Kacey Butler's voice immediately. Back in the day—back before he had died—he and Kacey had been close, as much friends as lovers. They had both been investigative reporters for the San Diego Union.

She still was. But he was...well, he was something else now.

Her voice, muffled and blurred by the ancient tape in his answering machine, sounded scared. It was an unusual quality for Kacey. The message was brief: Call me, Jackson. Please. She said she was at her office.

He fought the urge to grab a cold breakfast beer form the refrigerator before returning the call—an urge that seemed to be growing stronger every day. And won. Burke dialed the direct number into her office. He glanced at his watch. It was a little after 3:00 a.m. in San Diego. Kacey picked up the phone before the second ring.

Thanks for calling, she said. She sounded defeated. Also an unusual quality for Kacey Butler.

You okay? he said. He felt his usual nostalgic confusion at the sound of her voice.

Sure, Jackson. You know me. Do you have a minute to talk?

Burke didn't bother to answer. For the most part, he had whatever she needed. Their sexual relationship had ended before he had even met his wife. It had never reignited. But there was still something special between them, a potential they both acknowledged without comment or elaboration. If there was ever going to be another woman in his life—however doubtful that was—it would probably be Kacey Butler.

I've been working on a story for the last few months, she said. Young men—boys really—being killed, killed horribly.

I still get the paper, Kace. Male prostitutes, right? Been what, four kids so far?

Yesterday made five. He was only fourteen years old. Someone found him in the bushes in Balboa Park. Lots of knife wounds just like the others. I haven't gotten the coroner's report yet. I’m still hoping to. Cops aren't giving out too many details to the press on this one.

Not unusual. He didn't know where this was headed, but he'd let her get there at her own pace.

No, not unusual. No witnesses have come forward yet. And he wasn't killed where he was dumped. None of them have been.

He heard her sigh. He visualized her sitting in her dark office in San Diego, alone. He still thought of her as younger than she was actually was, her image frozen in time. He imagined her waist length black hair, the way it fanned out on the pillow like a shadow. It barely reached her shoulders now. Her concession to aging.

What's up, Kacey? You've worked murders before.

But this one’s different, she said. I got a letter a few days ago from someone claiming to be the killer. Her voice cracked a little.

Burke knew that murderers sometimes identified with reporters covering a story, even played to them as if they were fans. The readers loved it. They were getting something special. Yet there was a fine line between being an insider in the story and becoming part of the story. Kacey, it seemed, had crossed that line.

What did it say? There was a long pause in which he heard her taking several deep breaths, letting each out slowly and audibly. For Kacey Butler this was tantamount to hysteria. When she spoke, the words came in a rush.

It said he enjoyed my stories and was looking forward to reading about this one…and the next one.

Burke thought he detected a tremor in her voice. Then it was gone.

Then he said some personal stuff. He said he liked my hair and my body. Then something off the wall about the flowered curtains at my house being a little old fashioned for his taste. He said we'd have to meet soon. I can't print anything about the letter. Just standard, to help ID crackpot confessors. But there’s something else, Jackson.

He closed his eyes as if anticipating a blow. What is it?

He’s leaving sketches of the victims on their bodies. Charcoal sketches of them when they were still alive.

A heavy black silence seeped through the line. He heard something in her voice that unnerved him. It was fear. And there was no one more qualified to recognize fear than Jackson Burke. Go on, he said.

You probably haven’t heard about this. The only reason I know about it is because I’ve done some research on unsolved serial killings. Sort of a hobby of mine. But back in the mid-seventies—seventy-four and seventy-five—there were a bunch of murders in San Francisco. Gay murders.

He was struggling for a connection, not coming up with one.

She sighed. Those murders in the seventies, there were sketches left then, too. The press started calling him The Black Doodler because of the drawings.

Never heard of him. Not a very scary sounding name though.

Not many people have, but he killed fourteen men at least, maybe more. The rumor is that he sketched his victims, had sex with them, and then killed them. Three others got away from him. All three refused to testify even though the police had a suspect.

Why?

It was the seventies, Jackson. Even in San Francisco coming out meant the end of your career. One was a diplomat and one was a well-known entertainer, allegedly anyway. The police never released the name of the surviving victims.

And the suspect?

Never released his name either.

But you think the same guy is doing the killings in San Diego?

Yeah, I do. But that’s not all.

Tell me, Burke said. His voice was hard.

I know who it is, Jackson. I know who the killer is.

Chapter 2

Two hours later Burke stood on Curt Turner’s porch. People who knew the man well called him CT. Not many people used the name. He was Burke's only friend in Oklahoma. This, Burke knew, was as much a testimony to CT's tolerance as it was to his own self-imposed isolation.

They had first met years before when Burke was a very young man. Despite the difference in their ages, they had become good friends. CT had been somewhat of a mentor for the younger man. They had stayed in touch over the years and had grown close again when Burke returned to Oklahoma after being released from prison.

They had traveled through Hell together more than once.

At seven o'clock in the morning it was already hot, humid enough to suck water out of the air with a straw. Burke hated the weather in Oklahoma. It was either bad or intolerable. But then again, hate was a relative term.

CT lived in Pawnee County close to a near-deserted town north-west of Tulsa called Skedee. The population hadn’t topped one hundred in years. The total size of Skedee was a little under sixty-four acres. To say that the inhabitants of Skedee consisted of people living on the fringes of society would be a charitable description.

He lived about as rural as a man could get—old barn, slat-sided and peeling paint; three well-stocked fishing ponds; and a house just a little bigger and a little nicer than a chicken coop. He spent most of his time either fishing from one of his boats, or fishing from the dock he'd built on the largest of the ponds...but fishing. Each fish was released immediately in hope of catching it again. Some of the fish had names.

Burke knew his friend didn't like things to get too complicated. CT had done two tours in Vietnam, doing things he still wouldn't—or couldn't—talk about to anyone except Burke, and then only rarely. Although Burke had not known him prior to Vietnam—he had been an infant during the last years of that conflict—Burke knew he was a different man than before the war. In the Marines, his buddies had called him 'Mud.' No one called him that to his face now. Burke, who knew a little bit about how he'd earned the moniker, was the only person outside the Corps allowed to use the name. He seldom did.

When there was no answer to his knock, Burke went around back and walked the well-worn trail to the ponds. Turner sat on the small home-made dock in a rusty lawn chair. He was casting some brightly colored contraption into the muddy water. Burke watched as the lure, its spinning silver appendages glinting in the morning sun, wove and danced just beneath the water's surface as if alive and hungry for prey. Watching CT fish was like watching Elton John play the piano—there was no one better. Everyone had their own way to cope.

Hey, dude, Burke said, still some distance away. He made a point of not sneaking up on CT, although he suspected it might be a very difficult thing to do.

CT answered without interrupting his fishing. Mornin', Jack. Thought I might be seein' you today. He didn’t explain the comment, and Burke didn't ask. CT was just that way. Got a pole already rigged for you. He jerked his thumb at a rod and reel leaning against a second lawn chair.

Do I have to use a hook this time? Burke said. He sat in the empty chair.

Wouldn't change the outcome much either way, CT said, his voice heavy with Okie twang.

You know, Burke said staring at the weighted lure at the end of his line, I read the other day that nearly 3,000 tons of lead sinkers and lead-weighted lures are lost in the water every year. That can’t be good.

CT looked at him from the corner of his eye. How do you know shit like that, Jack?

Burke shrugged. Years of obsessive reading had made him a repository of useless facts. He knew it both amused and irritated his friend. Just do, he said.

You’re probably one the biggest contributors, CT said.

CT looked tall even sitting down. He was quite a bit older than Burke. Bald, except around the edges, he compensated by growing his beard down almost to his belt buckle. The beard was wild and billowy, mostly gray. Burke had never seen him comb it with anything except his fingers. He looked like a hybrid of Abe Lincoln and Rasputin. Come to think of it, that was a pretty fair analogy of his personality, too. He wore long-sleeved western shirts—ivory buttons snapped tight to the neck in winter, unsnapped most of the way down in the summer—and torn blue jeans as if they were a uniform.

Kacey's in trouble, Burke said. He fumbled with the fishing line that somehow he'd already managed to tangle.

CT grunted with more emphasis than his cast necessitated. He didn't like Kacey, and Burke wasn't sure why. He suspected it had something to do with her near legendary infidelity to every man she had ever known—including Burke. CT, who often and enthusiastically crossed marital boundaries for simple pleasure, could be remarkably puritanical when it came to the behavior of others. He seemed oblivious to his hypocrisy.

It was true, Burke had been deeply hurt by Kacey's cavalier attitude toward their relationship so many years before—a relationship he had taken very seriously, although it had been the seriousness of a much younger man. But that was all in the past. He had far deeper wounds now.

You goin' to San Diego, Jack? CT appeared fully occupied with tying some new glittering creature to his line.

Same as you being in trouble, CT, Burke said. His friend nodded.

Burke squeezed blood from a hooked finger and told him what little he knew about Kacey's situation. CT listened until Burke had finished the story.

So, CT said, a heavy dose of skepticism evident in his voice, after thirty, forty years this Doodler cat resurfaces. That's sort of a lengthy spell between urges, don't you think? Stupid name, too.

Burke shrugged. I don't really care who’s threatening her, whether it's the same guy or some other nut. I just can't let anything happen to her.

And you can stop it somehow?

Burke's face changed, almost a different person.

CT nodded, barely moving his head. I withdraw the question. He cast again, a careful placement and then a slow dance back in, his face a mask of concentration.

You remember how hard it was for you the last time you went there, CT said.

I do.

It had been a while, but Burke remembered all too well. His return to San Diego had opened old wounds, created new ones. His murdered family haunted every familiar sight, their spirits forever angry with the man who had killed them—Jackson Burke.

He stared at the water, not seeing it, remembering the evening his family had died, remembering the monster that he’d became. A monster that spent five years marking time on a cinder-block calendar.

Burke shook his head hard to snap himself out of his dangerous, dark reverie. It was all a nightmare. But there was one part of the horror he couldn't allow himself to think about, could never think about and retain his sanity, his tenuous will to live. The one part he had kept a secret from everyone. Even CT, who knew all the other dark secrets of that time.

Those kinds of memories follow me around, man. Doesn’t matter where I am, he said after being lost in thought for what he hoped was only a few seconds. She's scared. I have to see if I can help.

Sometimes scared is good, CT said. Sometimes it isn’t. He cast out again. The lure landed with remarkable accuracy between two neighboring stumps.

Burke shook his head, hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists. That’s bullshit. Scared is never good, just weak. He spat the words as if they were rotten meat.

Went out to Nebraska a few weeks ago, CT said. He had shifted into his slow talking, storytelling mode. Saw a deer caught up in a barb-wire fence along the highway. Must have been a thousand people drove by that deer before me, no one stoppin’ to help. It was cut up pretty bad, so scared it couldn’t even struggle much anymore.

He reeled in his line double-time, as if dissatisfied with its placement. I just about got hit by a truck crossing the highway. And you know what? All that deer had to do to get loose was take a couple of steps backward. Almost gets me killed, and that stupid animal didn’t need my help at all.

CT reached down for a coffee cup on the dock near his chair and took a sip. The smell of coffee and whiskey was strong in the still, morning air. Burke waited for him to say more. When he didn't, he broke the silence himself.

Well? What happened to the deer, man? There was a moral here of some kind but damned if he could figure it out.

There was a long pause.

Remember that stew we had last weekend? CT said, apparently preoccupied with fishing again.

Burke looked over at his friend, ready to grin and share the joke.

He wasn't smiling.

Chapter 3

Burke left CT’s house feeling depressed and a little betrayed. No, betrayed was too strong a word. Disappointed was closer. CT would never betray him. He had just hoped for more understanding. But with or without his friend’s support, he was going to San Diego.

He decided he would drive across country rather than fly. The situation was serious, but not acute. A day or two, as long as Kacey kept out of sight, would not be critical. The last time he flew had been a nightmare. Crowds and close quarters often had a disastrous effect on him. They created in him an overwhelming and crippling anxiety.

Five years in prison could do that to a man.

His car was one of the very few places where Burke found relative peace. The 1949 ½ Oldsmobile Holiday Hardtop—a dirigible of a car—was almost big enough to rent rooms. Everything in the Olds was original except the leather upholstery and the blackout windows. Privacy was important to Burke. Its Rocket V8 engine was still one of the most powerful ever to come off an assembly line. Some time ago, on a whim, he had had the old car painted a metallic turquoise-blue. He still wasn’t sure why he had done something so out of character, but the color reminded him of the ocean that he loved and missed every day of his.

As he drove up the long, dusty driveway to his rambling, two-story house, he was both relieved and repelled by its looming presence—a frightened prisoner leaving the menacing freedom of the yard for the security of his cell.

The house had been purchased for cash using the proceeds of his wife’s insurance settlement. He saw her face in every board, every brick. The exterior of the house was ill-kept, the interior empty and impersonal.

It didn't take him long to pack. Blue jeans and brightly colored short-sleeve cotton shirts—remnants of a former and more vibrant life—made up his entire wardrobe. He stuffed the clothes into an old, brown leather duffel. The new Doc Ford book by Randy Wayne White completed his packing.

In the garage, Burke tore open a bag of dry food for his cat. After three years the animal still had no name. Burke didn't acknowledge himself as the cat's owner. They just lived in the same house. He'd asked Turner to drop by occasionally to check on the animal. CT was a closet animal lover. Burke figured he'd be by a lot more than that.

By noon, Burke was hunkered down in the Oldsmobile cruising Interstate 40 on his way to California.

***

Burke allowed the long miles of highway, the endless blur of passing traffic, to numb his mind, hypnotically blocking all thoughts of the past, and the future.

He drove twelve hours the first day. Exhausted, he stopped after midnight at a small town motel. The garish, flashing neon depicted a giant cowboy with an over-sized hat roping a cactus. The anonymity of these ubiquitous and sterile motor lodges appealed to him. He could be anybody and nobody, another faceless traveler treated politely but with indifference by the clerk behind the counter. He slept fitfully, Kacey never far from his thoughts.

He arose early the following morning and drove another twelve hours. He arrived on the outskirts of Riverside, California in the early evening. Reluctant for personal reasons to show up at Kacey's hotel room late at night, Burke opted to spend the night in Riverside County at a Super 8.

After a late breakfast eaten slowly so he’d miss at least some of the hellish morning traffic, he reached the northern fringe of San Diego County a little before noon. He stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Oceanside for lunch, a beer, and to call Kacey. He reached her at her office and arranged to meet her at an outdoor bar in nearby Cardiff-by-the-Sea. He asked her if she was okay, but nothing more. They could talk later.

He returned to his table and found his order waiting for him. The meal was tasteless and overpriced, the beer watery and flat. A growing sense of foreboding and bone-deep despair stained his thoughts as he left the restaurant.

He had parked in a run-down residential area near the restaurant. The neighborhood catered to the transient lifestyle of the enlisted Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton. When he’d parked his car it had been the only car