Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [18]
Coincidentally, the canal where the gruesome find had been made bordered an orange grove recently treated by pesticides. The runoff had so drenched the canal with chemicals that nothing was alive to disturb the flesh on the severed head, despite all the time that had passed. There was not a doubt in the witness’s mind.
In the back office of the Hollywood PD, about a hundred miles south of where Monahan had made his identification, Hessler turned to Matthews and jabbed a finger angrily. “You don’t have the balls to call this Campbell deceptive.”
Matthews was astonished. No way on earth had Jimmy Campbell murdered Adam Walsh, then hacked off his head and dumped it in an upstate canal. Every fiber in his cop’s body was certain of it.
Jimmy Campbell had nothing to do with the crime and there was no way Matthews would be bullied into saying otherwise. Everyone else in the crowded room was quiet, looking at him expectantly. In other offices down the hall, phones rang, file doors creaked and slammed, voices rose and fell, all the humdrum sounds of daily cop business. In this room, Matthews thought, “ordinary” had lost its meaning, “procedure” had taken a hike.
Finally, Matthews spoke. “I’m nobody’s whore,” he told Hessler. “I call it the way I see it.”
Hessler regarded him for a moment, his face a mask of rage. Matthews wondered for a moment if the man might be about to take a swing at him, but the moment passed, and Hessler turned to take Hoffman by the arm, guiding him quickly out of the room. As the two disappeared down the hallway, Hessler fired his parting shot. “This one you called wrong, Matthews.”
Chapter Three
World of Hurt
Q: How many killings would you say you’ve been involved in?
A: I don’t know. Maybe a couple hundred.
Q: Would you say more of those were women or more were men?
A: A little bit of both.
Q: And you say you did these killings because it gave you a high?
A: That’s right.
Q: And how long did that feeling last?
A: Maybe a week, maybe a month.
Q: And when the feeling went away?
A: Then you go out and do it again.
—Ottis Toole, with Texas Rangers,
March 24, 1984
Jacksonville, Florida—May 16, 1981
If Ottis Toole had ever felt much sense of control over his life, the sensation was a fleeting one. He had an IQ of 75, considered the borderline for retardation in the adult population, just above the average intellect of a twelve-year-old child. According to the literature, adults in this category are considered “slow and simple,” and while they are capable of gainful employment, supervision must be constant. Such individuals are only marginally capable of coping in an adult world, and in the language of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, “need help from friends or family to manage life’s complications.”
In Toole’s case, about the only such help he ever received came from his mother, Sarah. He’d been born to her in March 1947, but he’d never known his father. A stepfather named Robert Harley arrived when Toole was ten, but he had never bonded with the man, who had alcohol problems. Perhaps the fact that Toole was “slow” helped keep them apart. Or it could have been the seizures that he had suffered since the day when a neighbor kid chucked a rock against Toole’s skull, intending to “kill the retard.”
He’d managed to struggle through seven years of special education classes and had even gotten to the point of being able to read and write, and also, to suffer when other kids ridiculed him. He was sexually molested