Being an investigator was not as romantic as portrayed on crime dramas, and Captain Quincy Mason often clarified for his son and daughter how things were really investigated. After all, in his twenty years, there had only been about one homicide per year, which, though awful, wasn’t nearly as many as some cities, and most of the crimes were some sort of domestic or drug-related incident that got out of hand. Mason had developed his own philosophy over the course of his career and believed most people just lose control and regret their actions. If they had simply walked away for a cooling off period, incidents would have been minimal.
When his cell went off, Captain Mason had a feeling this would be something odd; it was middle of the week, not the weekend when people get paid and have free time and get in trouble. It was a call to come to a garage instead of a residence or the park, which was a place to ride the merry-go-round by day and score sex or drugs at night. Fall in Bristol, Virginia was stunning—leaves in full-blown color, glimmering orange and red hues when the sunlight shown on them, and Mason felt it was ironic that the beauty signified death in nature. Typically, people stayed in more in the fall and winter, so crime rates declined, except shoplifting and robbery with the holidays. Captain Mason called Parks, the first officer on the scene who had been called by a garage worker.
“What you got?”
“You better bring the textbook for this one,” said Officer Parks. “I ain’t ever seen anything like it.”
“You got me curious.”
“I don’t know if I can even explain it.”
“E.T.A. in five.”
“Yes sir.”
Mason didn’t believe it either. He actually had to walk to the side of the garage outside, gag a little, and take several quick fresh breaths, holding the cool air in his expanded lungs to soothe.
Once they pulled the male from the oversized barrel of oil, where engine blocks were usually soaked, they noted the victim’s arms had been cut-off, possibly while he was still living, the coroner noted at the scene. Toenails were broken and had bled where the victim tried to push himself up from the bottom and sides of the rusted barrel that would have been too slippery without hands or arms to grip. The guy likely drowned from the oil in his lungs. Whoever did this was serious and wanted this fellow to suffer. From his wallet, they learned his name and address, and Captain Mason and Officer Parks drove to the small historic cottage in midtown.
No one answered and Captain Mason jimmied the door and called out, the only response coming from a limping dog wagging its tail. They learned the fellow worked for the local electric company and had no immediate family. Next door neighbors also said that his parents were deceased, the man had a brother who lived out of town, and he was active in his church and as a coach in little league and was a part time referee. He’d played college football at Virginia Tech., had been married once, had been divorced for at least ten years, and had no children. He’d adopted the dog from the local pound and was active in supporting a variety of charities in town, including the homeless shelter and food bank. This one would take time, Mason noted.
Mason interviewed the brother, co-workers at the electric company, church members, and by all accounts, he was a good guy with no enemies. Even in his house, Mason and other detectives found nothing to indicate any deviance. Funeral over, the case became a cold one, in a file folder held on the desk by a plastic paperweight with artwork from Mason’s daughter Madeline made years before when she was in elementary school. When Mason was in the office, he couldn’t get the armless, oil-soaked image out of his mind, and he knew the brutal removal of the fellow’s arms was significant. He’d never heard of that.
Weeks later on a winter morning when a light snow had blanketed Bristol, causing schools to close, Mason came in, had a latte and banana nut muffin and decided to do some specific Google searches using quotations to see if there was a pattern emerging elsewhere. Searching for “armless” and “armless murders” didn’t turn up anything that seemed to relate, except folks who were armless and had committed crimes, which he thought was odd. Plus, those crimes had been in distant places like New York or California, not in Southern Virginia and East Tennessee, so Mason continued to search. An hour later, Mason noticed an odd crime headline: “Man’s Legs Sawed off and Tossed over fence at Alligator Farm in Florida.”
“Good night,” Mason said. “How sick.”
He walked outside, propped against the stone wall, breathed in the crisp air, spoke with a few rookies coming and going, working wrecks, and he decided he’d call the St. Augustine, Florida police department just to see if he could find out anything. Mason’s motto had always been to leave no stone overturned.
“Lt. Banks.”
“Good morning, Lt. This is Capt. Mason with Bristol P.D. in Virginia. How’re you doing?”
“Excellent, sir. Yourself?”
“Enjoying this first snow.”
“You can keep that stuff up there. Plenty of sunshine here. Probably even have a drowning at the beach.”
“Doesn’t sound good.”
“Well, it’s to be expected here. Alcohol and beaches don’t mix.”
“Understood.”
“Well, you didn’t call to talk about possible drownings, so what can I do for you?”
“I want to ask you some questions about this strange case you had there. The alligator farm case.”
“Oh yeah. That was gruesome. Gators will eat just about anything. It’s a miracle we got much of him at all, but from what we could tell, they’d been fed earlier, so they weren’t that interested in much of him. Plus, he wasn’t completely fresh.”
“That’s interesting. We’ve had a strange case here, and I know it’s a longshot, but I thought I’d check with you. I’m sure it’s a waste of time.”
“What’s your case like?”
“Single male, seemingly normal life, arms cut off and left in a rusted barrel mostly filled with oil behind a garage. No connection to the garage or employees.”
“Say his arms were cut off?”
“Yeah.”
“What did they use?”
“Well autopsy’s not definitive, so we don’t know, but I would expect a chain-saw.”
“If it turns out it’s a chain-saw, we might have a connection.”
“What about your victim?”
“Middle-aged family guy. College graduate. Church goer. Worked as a department store manager at the mall.”
“No connection that I detect.”
“Well, let me know what you find out. We could use a little lead ourselves.”
When they hung up, Mason ran some errands in town and ran by the morgue to talk with the coroner to see if he had any new evidence. The visit turned out to be more social than work-related, though the coroner, too, suspected a chain saw based on the cut. He also noted it was likely he was cut somewhere else and taken the garage due to the amount of blood splatter on his clothes and the dirt and leaf debris embedded in his jeans, likely from being dragged. Mason didn’t want to think about a serial killer on the loose with a chain saw. It dredged memories of the movie from the 1970s, a movie he hadn’t liked.
That evening, Mason’s family watched a rerun of University of Tennessee football game, and they were excited about attending the upcoming game between the U.T. Volunteers and the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Neither team had performed well in recent years, and often the coach was the recipient of blame. This year, though, both teams were doing well, and predictions were all over the map. Mason was excited they’d scored tickets and would travel two hours to Knoxville to see the game.
Their children did their homework in their rooms after dinner. Mason knew they were good kids. He and Sandy had been blessed in that regard. Mason had been a bit deviant when he was growing up in Bristol, an old mountain town known for its musical origins from the Carter family and also known for racing. Sandy, on the other hand, had grown up in a large farming family at the base of the mountains in East Tennessee where land was fertile from run-off and made for a productive farm. Sandy had gone to a private Presbyterian college in Bristol while Mason had gone through the police academy and ultimately received an Associate’s degree in Criminal Justice from a community college, but to get promoted, he had to finish his Bachelor’s in the evening at the university in Johnson City, a short drive from Bristol. He was appreciative that the police department had reimbursed tuition and books for the program and hearing from friends how much debt some of them had incurred, he was also appreciative that Sandy had received a scholarship and what that didn’t cover, her parents had paid. The only debt they had was their house and they felt it might be paid off in just a few more years. Madeline and Austin were both good kids, and Mason was able to keep tabs on their friends to make sure they weren’t running with the wrong crowd or moving into any deviant circles.
Mason retired early and awoke about three in the morning to a dreadful dream about the armless man in the oil barrel. He dreamed he was that man, he could hear the chainsaw, and then could feel the oil coating his lungs, and he woke up sweating and almost thought he heard a chainsaw off in the woods behind their house. He got up, trying not to wake Sandy, went to the kitchen, and drank a glass of ice water. He sat in the recliner in the den, covered up with a throw, and dozed. Sandy woke him when she got up earlier than the alarm and wondered where he was.
“You couldn’t sleep?”
“No, I slept, but woke up from a dream about this case.”
“You can’t always solve everything. You know that.”
“I do know that, but I’ll solve this one. It may take a few years though”
“Want some coffee?”
“Yes, strong. I’ll need it today.”
Mason headed to work earlier than usual, rounded a curve, and almost hit a doe in the middle of the road. Fortunately, the early November snow had melted off before sundown or he likely would have slid the unmarked cruiser right into the doe, killing her and doing major damage to the vehicle’s front end.
Once in his office, he called Lt. Banks in St. Augustine.
“Banks.”
“Good morning. This is Mason in Bristol calling again.”
“Good to hear from you. How are the leaves up there? Sure would like to see them. May have to wait until I retire.”
“You’re welcome to come here anytime. Be glad to show you around. The full color was in October, and it’s something I always enjoy.”
“Well, you didn’t call to talk about the leaves, I know.”
“Coroner says it looks like it might have been a chainsaw.”
“Hmm. Now we need to figure out what these two guys have in common.”
“I’ll scan and email you the file to look at. I’ll be down in Knoxville tomorrow for the Tennessee-Georgia game.”
“Oh, that will be a good one. I’ll be watching it on TV. Hopefully, there will be some others worth watching. I won’t bother you over the weekend, but I’ll give you a call if I see something. Tell you what. I’ll have Felicia scan and email you our guy’s file, so you can look at it and see if you see anything that might connect.”
“Sounds good. I appreciate it.”
“Sure thing. See ya.”
The file arrived in Mason’s inbox late in the afternoon when he was getting ready to shut down his computer and head home for an early dinner before the early morning drive to Knoxville, and he didn’t look at it.
Before sunrise, family members stumbled around the kitchen and snapped at each other. None of them had slept enough because of late night movies, so everyone had coffee and loaded into the vehicle with velour throws. Once Mason was on interstate 81 headed toward Knoxville, the rest of the family napped while he sipped coffee and watched the sun rise over the mountains. The blanket of frost created a mist as the sun warmed the fields.
As they got closer to Knoxville and as Mason began to slow because of heavy traffic, they heard the rumbling and gearing down of trucks and everyone stirred. At least two hours before kick-off, Mason parked and the four visited a group of officers and their families who were tailgating. They snacked, and Mason enjoyed conversation about the game while Sandy talked with other wives about retirement and travel. Madeline and Austin sat in orange lawn chairs, heads bowed toward phones. When kick-off was a bit closer, the crowd put away food, loaded coolers in truck beds, and folded chairs and placed them in the truck cabs. The crowd shuffled up the ramps, and Mason turned back and looked out at the Tennessee River and the view of the rolling hills and downtown, and it was a stunning view. Sandy complained her legs were hurting and the kids laughed and told her she should exercise more. When they finally found their seats, the stadium had nearly filled, and Mason noted that this was not the ideal place to watch a game from a security standpoint and was the perfect place for a terrorist attack. He also thought it was a shame he had such an idea. Twenty years prior such would have never crossed his mind.
A few hours of roaring crowds with scores from both teams, several crowd waves, and some more rabid fans standing up and hollering at referees, the game came to an end with a score of Tennessee 42 and Georgia 21. The Georgia coach was clearly disappointed, hanging his head and sprinting off the field with a sea of red. The big orange coach, on the other hand, told reporters they had talked about what they would need to do to pull off a win and he was pleased they had done it.
Clearly, it had been the best game of the season for UT and Mason was glad they’d come.
The game had been Georgia’s worst loss of the season. A run from a punt of 80 yards, a touchdown from kick-off, and multiple off-sides, clipping, and face mask penalties had cost Georgia several points in the game. At some point during the game, Mason became aware he was not focused on the game so much as he was running mental scenarios about his victim and wished he’d read the file sent to him from Florida before leaving work.
It had taken them two hours to get out of the stadium, the parking lot, and get back into steady traffic on the interstate headed back toward Bristol. Mason decided that he would drop the family off at their house, grab a quick bite to eat, and head over to the office to check the file. Once in his office, he ran through the file, and there didn’t seem to be anything that jumped out at him, though the victim clearly had his legs removed in advance of being tossed into the pit at the alligator farm. It seemed to Mason this could be a mafia-like crime, something that he’d read happened a lot in New York and New Jersey, and with the influx of Northerners into Florida, he assumed there had been mafia who relocated there as well. He sent an email back to Lt. Banks that he didn’t see any connection and Banks had replied to Mason’s email that he’d looked over Mason’s file and didn’t see a connection either. So, Mason felt he’d reached a dead-end.
A few months later while Mason sat in his boxers and t-shirt watching headline news, the strangest crime story he’d ever heard was reported. Apparently, a body was uncovered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama along the river bank. The victim’s face had been removed, but there were no other injuries. Police were still working the case and had no comment, which Mason thought appropriate, but several community members had comments including one robust fellow who maintained if the “Face Eater” came around his house, he’d be ready with the shotgun. Mason shook his head, but given the type of crime, he knew the labeling of the perpetrator as a “Face Eater” was what would get picked up and run over and over in the media.
A couple of days later, Mason caught a glimpse of the news in the lobby at the station as he walked in, and he stopped, motioned to the desk sergeant to turn up the volume, and they offered an update of the fellow who they’d found by the river. He had once worked for the University of Alabama in the football program, and the report relayed the coach and football team would be pall bearers in his funeral. The victim had stayed in Tuscaloosa through the years after having been a successful running back under Bear Bryant, had helped financially support players from his earnings as a pub owner, had served as a fill-in referee locally, and had attended all home games and practices.
Mason wondered if the fellow had been robbed after the closing of the pub late at night and somehow was cut or maimed and then thrown onto the river bank where maybe a bobcat or some other animal might have come along having been attracted to the blood and ate his face. Regardless, Mason made the call to Tuscaloosa and got Lt. Garrett.
“Lt. Garrett here.”
“Lt. Garrett, this is Capt. Mason at Bristol P.D. in Virginia. How’re you doing?”
“Good sir, you?”
“Fine, thanks. Sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you would mind sharing anything about your recent case of the faceless fellow.”
“Yes, sir, well, before we have that conversation, I’m looking you up on the website to see if you’re legit.”
“Well, it’s nice to see someone checking on this. I tell my guys all the time that they’ll get calls from family, reporters, what have you, and they should always verify and check it out.”
“Sorry, Captain. Looks like you’re legit. We’ve been getting tons of calls trying to get information. Now, how can I help you?”
“I was curious if there was a connection between your case of the faceless victim and a murder we had here in Bristol.”
“Well, I can tell you this much. We’ve never seen anything like it. At first, we thought he might have been shot or stabbed after closing his pub and dumped and an animal did that, but there were no cuts or gunshot wounds anywhere else on his body. Then we thought he might have had a heart attack, but coroner says he bled out from his juggler, which was sliced in the removal of his face. He was carved up like a Christmas turkey. We haven’t ever seen anything like this.”
“Whoever did this was a serious psycho.”
“You got it.”
“Any other clues or pieces of evidence?”
“There was a yellow penalty flag found in the mud near the victim, but we don’t think it has anything to do with it.”
“Well, I appreciate it, Lt. Garrett. Our victim was found in an oil barrel with his arms cut off. The poor fellow drowned in the oil. We have nothing. I’m just checking on anything that is bizarre. Maybe one of these days, I’ll figure it out.”
“Good luck to you, sir.”
“Thanks. You, too.”
Mason went to lunch in the downtown diner, the meat and three as locals referred to it, with the Uncle Billy’s lunch club, which was a group the Chief had invited him to join. In fact, the only way anyone could sit at the table with the others in the club was to be invited. The group consisted of a variety of leaders in the community: the mayor, a city council member, the fire and police chief, a business owner, a college president, the newspaper editor, and a judge. The group didn’t talk a lot about the daily issues that arose in their respective areas of employment so much as they tried to solve world problems and talk about politics. Mason didn’t say much and the Chief knew he was in deep thought.
“Everything alright?” the chief asked.
“Yep, just thinking about that murder,” Mason responded.
“It’ll come. Just takes time.”
“I know. I just don’t like waiting.”
They both chuckled and Mason took off to the garage. He thought he might poke around again. He hadn’t been in a while, and they had combed the area more than once searching for any clues.
Once parked, Mason let the young lady in the office know he was there and waived at the mechanics. He leaned by a tree near the oil barrel and sent a couple of text replies to emails, one of which was to his daughter who had sent him a picture of a convertible she wanted. He’d replied that they would discuss it later. The sun was glistening on the new fallen snow out behind the garage, and Mason noted the light reflecting on trash sporadically located around the crime scene. As he focused on each piece, he saw what he thought was a yellow leaf sticking out of the snow in the stand of trees. As he made his way around car parts and the oil barrel, Mason slipped on a plastic glove he kept in his pocket, pulled, and realized the yellow was what looked like a penalty flag. He put the flag in a plastic bag he pulled from his pocket, checked the immediate area, and walked back to his unmarked cruiser and headed straight for the lab. Mason didn’t want to get his hopes up, but he felt this might be the break he needed. He also called Lt. Banks in St. Augustine on his way back to the station, shared about the victim in Tuscaloosa and the flag, and shared he’d gone back to the scene and found what appeared to be a penalty flag. Lt. Banks vowed he would go to the alligator farm and see if there was any sort of evidence again. Mason suggested they share their files with Tuscaloosa P.D. and have a conference call, asserting if they put their minds together, they could get closer to discovery. Mason called Garrett in Tuscaloosa and he agreed to the conference call the next afternoon.
Mason let his chief know immediately after getting back into his office.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What do the crimes have in common?”
“The victims are all white males and single.”
“Think it’s a homosexual crime?”
“No, nothing indicates that.”
“Anything else?”
“You know, our victim played football for Virginia Tech. The Tuscaloosa victim played for Alabama.”
“What about the St. Augustine victim?”
“It wasn’t in the file.”
“2 penalty flags?”
“Yes.”
“What about the crimes?”
“Well, our victim was missing his arms. The one in Alabama had his face cut off, and the one in Florida had his legs cut off.”
“What’s the penalty?”
“Sir?”
“Do those relate to penalties?”
“Not that I can see.”
“What happened to our victim?”
“Sir, they cut off his arms.”
“Off sides?”
“Good night! That’s it. The one in Alabama would be face masking and the one in Florida—clipping? Thanks, chief.” Mason grinned, shook his head, and laughed as he headed across the hall to his office. Barely sitting in his desk chair, Mason’s cell rang and he noted it was Lt. Banks.
“Got a penalty flag,” Banks said. “It was buried under a little mud, only a portion sticking out. Just didn’t appear a clue to anyone at the scene, I guess. There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Our victim played for Miami. I don’t believe it’s in the file. Didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
“Excellent,” Mason said. “Now, we’ve got to connect the dots. What a break-through day. I didn’t think we’d get here.”
“Me neither.”
“So,” Mason said. “Since he’s leaving penalty flags, I am assuming we are either looking for a psychotic football player who played against each of these teams and had an issue with these players or a referee. We have some homework to do.”
“It’s going to be tough. We probably need to pull in the FBI, too, given the crimes cross multiple state lines. The FBI can help with their resources.”
“Right. I don’t know how we’ll go through all this game footage, but clearly this killer is about the penalties. I guess in his world he was wronged by these former players. I don’t know how a referee would be involved.”
“Me neither. Alright then. We’ll talk tomorrow. Thanks.”
“Sure. Have a great evening.”
“It will be at some level, but we have a serial killer out there.”
Sandy was glad to hear there had been a break through, glad to see Mason’s worried look disappear. Mason slept like a baby, felt exceptional when he woke, had coffee, and left early. When he got to the office, he made calls to the regional FBI office in Richmond and left a message for them to call giving them some detail, so they could coordinate with Florida and Alabama agents. He also made a call to the TBI in Nashville for their assistance.
By mid-morning, two FBI agents–Tom Harris and Dale Rettig–set up operations at Bristol P.D. and Mason shared his and Lt. Banks’ files. He also invited them to sit in on his conference call with Banks and Garrett that afternoon. Both agents were very complimentary of their work, especially picking up on the flag clues as well as the identifying the football penalties connected to the particular crimes.
Later, Mason, Banks, and Garrett had the conference call and the FBI agents sat in and suggested Banks and Garrett come to Bristol, where they could be of more value to the team. Both agreed and made arrangements to be in Bristol the next day. Harris and Rettig had folks in Richmond pull football footage for the three teams during the years the victims played. Interestingly, all three had been decent football players and held good records. It was tedious going through the records, and they found no penalties among them during the first year of video footage they were able to secure and watch, but then, this had been their freshman years and they had not had as much playing time at that point in their careers. It was not until the junior year that they found the first penalty by the Virginia Tech. player. His reaction to the player he faced as well as to the referee was rather volatile, behavior that Mason felt was not in character with all the information they had collected in his file. Nonetheless, he understood how in younger years, males tend to be more high strung and aggressive than once they settle down in life. The player had reacted in such a negative fashion that they had ejected him from the game, and other players had to hold him back and guide him off the field. The crowd of Virginia Tech. fans had booed at the call, but after the next play was set in motion, the fans had calmed.
Agents Harris and Rettig and Mason continued on into the early evening and just before 8:00p.m., they found what they thought might be the clipping penalty the Miami player made against the Florida Gator player. This player, too, was volatile and knocked down the Gator until the referee and others from the Hurricane team pulled him away at which point he began to poke the referee in the chest and scream obscenities. Agents marked and printed off both the Gator player’s photo with identifying jersey number and also printed off the referee’s picture. Through the victim’s senior year, there were minor infractions on the team, but nothing nearly as volatile. The same was the case with the Virginia Tech player. It seemed either they learned valuable lessons from their behavior or they simply listened to their coaches for fear of retribution. The men gave up at 10:00p.m. and decided to wait and go through the Alabama footage the next morning when they felt more fresh.
Mason felt like they would get a break-through by the next morning. On the way home, he found it interesting that, if the culprit was a player, they were looking at more than one, which he thought unlikely. The penalty against the Virginia Tech. victim had been made when playing Georgia and the penalty against the Miami victim had been made while playing the Florida Gators. He also thought it was interesting that the Miami player had been fed to the Gators, literally. Mason was dog-tired and slept well. The next morning, he left early and drank strong coffee before the agents came to the office.
They viewed the footage up until, again, a volatile play with the Alabama victim face-masking a player from the Tennessee Vols, a game that had gone down in history between coaches Bear Bryant and Johnny Majors. The Big Orange had stopped the Crimson Tide by only a few points and while the face mask penalty hadn’t made a major difference, it was a spectacle to watch with the Volunteer starting a fight with the victim. A referee had been punched in the face by the Alabama victim and was removed by medical personnel for a check before he came back in the game. The FBI agents looked at each other and Mason and said in unison, “The referee.” Mason’s hunch had been right: three penalties to different players did not equal one serial killer. If the referee was the same in all three games, they needed to move fast, since they had no idea who would be next.
The agents and Mason decided to eat lunch at the diner, but didn’t sit with the club members. After a quick lunch, they met Banks and Garrett in the lobby. They made the introductions and then moved back to the work room where agents and Mason caught them up to speed. Banks and Garrett were impressed, especially after watching the specific footage.
“That was quick work, guys,” Banks said.
“Well, when you have all this snow, you don’t have anything else to do, but work, unlike watching bikinis at the beach,” Mason joked and they all laughed.
The problem with referees was that they were typically anonymous to players and coaches in an attempt to avoid harassment from players or fans and were often escorted to and from games. The standard uniforms, too, helped remove some of the more personal characteristics one might detect. While the group waited for information from Richmond in to help identify the referee, they put together a profile with multiple characteristics they knew the killer would have based on other profiles and they discussed how they might approach. Depending on location, Mason, Garrett, and Banks might not be authorized for action; however, they were welcome to accompany the FBI agents.
Harris and Rettig asked if Mason could get them a plane locally in Bristol to avoid the process of getting one sent from headquarters in Richmond. One of the few private jets docked at Bristol’s airport was owned by the Kodak family and used primarily by the family and the photography company in the Tri-cities area. With a promise of reimbursement from federal or local agencies, Mason secured the Learjet, which held eight and was ready at any given notice.
Even with media hounding Tuscaloosa police, Garrett had not shared he was in Bristol working with others on the case, and it hadn’t leaked from St. Augustine or Bristol or from Richmond, yet, but they knew it was a matter of time before something leaked and media swarmed.
At 3:00pm and after multiple gyrations of research angles, Richmond agents called to say the suspect in at least two seemed a match to a retired Department of Natural Resources officer named Emory Serbenski. From what intelligence had gathered, Serbenski had played college football at Clemson and completed a degree in Natural Resources, had been picked up by the pro circuit, the AFL, had played before an injury took him out. He’d returned to the Newberry, South Carolina area and worked in the Sumter National Forest. Mason called the airport to let them know they needed to get as close to Newberry as possible while FBI agents called field offices in Greenville to meet them at the Newberry airport. The airport wasn’t used at all for commercial traffic and mostly housed small, private aircraft. The pilot and co-pilot were concerned about runway length, but also knew this was high priority. They felt it would work if they adjusted landing and take-off speeds. The weather was clear in most of the state of South Carolina, so they felt comfortable with their decision.
Once in the air, officers were quiet and occasionally discussed details. Mason learned from the FBI data that Serbenski had been married, but his wife had succumbed to cancer after a long battle. They could find no religious or social organization connections for Serbenski, and the couple had one adopted daughter from South America who was married and had a successful career on the West Coast. While he had been a substitute referee for a number of years with the Southeastern Conference (SEC), he had retired from the DNR once his wife had become sick. Mason hoped they had the right guy. He certainly fit the typical profile: white male, loner, and no close family.
When the plane landed, there were several unmarked cars waiting and they were driven to the destination. It was determined Mason would accompany the FBI to the Serbenski house, a brick ranch on several acres that adjoined the forest. They had secured a warrant, and as they approached, the other vehicles hung back just off the road on the shoulder. The house was dark and there wasn’t a car in the double carport on the back, but as they approached the front door, outside security lights came on, a barking dog came running around the house, the front porch light came on, and the wooden door creaked open a little.
“FBI. Open the door.”
“A gentleman was squinting at the light shown in his eyes. What’d you say?”
“FBI. Open up!”
The door completely opened and the agents told him to turn around and put his hands on the wall. It was clear he didn’t have a weapon because he was wearing boxers and a t-shirt. “Mr. Serbenski, you are under arrest.”
“I’m not Serbenski,” the man said. “Name’s Earl Howard. Wallet’s on the kitchen table.” Mason walked over, peaked in, and confirmed.
“Where’s Serbenski?”
“I don’t know. Said he was moving to the coast around Hilton Head.”
“Did he used to be here?”
“Yeah, I bought the house last year. Don’t even know him, but I took the job here with DNR and this was a perfect location for me.”
After checking around, and after the South Carolina officers verified, the group was back at the airport, trying to get any leads as to where Serbenski might have gone. Richmond researchers were in communication with agents as the jet took off again for the short flight to Hilton Head. While they learned Serbenski had no forwarding address, they did learn his pension checks were being sent to a post office box on Dawtaw Island, a small island closer to Beaufort than Hilton Head, and they directed the pilots to make the adjustment. They also radioed ahead for cars. What they learned upon landing is that no one knew Serbenski, but they knew he came to the Post Office and grocery store periodically. They further learned from Richmond that paychecks were being deposited in a bank account from a research corporation that owned a small island referred to by locals as Monkey Island. Calls to the company confirmed he was the only employee on the island and his job consisted of feeding, testing the monkeys, collecting data, and reporting back. They were cautioned that the monkeys carried diseases and a scratch could contaminate.
Local officers pointed out where the dock and boat were, and if Serbenski were on the island in the lab, connected to a small cabin, it would be easy for him to swim to Dawtaw to escape. Local officers also shared they could all fit in one boat and would position themselves on different parts of the island with silencers and darts in case the monkeys tried to attack. This would also work to take out Serbenski. While they still had a couple of hours of daylight, Mason was nonetheless concerned, mostly for the safety of the others. None of them, aside from the locals, had ever been on a mission in a South Carolina marsh, and none of them had experience with monkeys.
After each man was deposited, the local officers felt they should go ashore away from the dock, so to keep the boat out of site. Harris, Rettig, and Mason, climbed out, holding a branch of a Live Oak tree covered in moss, and bent down. They could see the cabin and what appeared to be movement inside. Taking positions behind the Live Oak trees, it didn’t take long to spot Serbenski walking by a window with a bottle of water. Screams of monkeys from the other side of the island seemed to alert Serbenski. He put on his shirt, grabbed a gun, and walked to the front door, sprinting onto the porch and walking to the other side, where the monkey screams originated, his back facing the FBI agents and Mason. Mason aimed the gun directly for Serbenski’s leg, and the dart landed square in the back of his leg, the force of which knocked him off the porch into the sand below. As he moaned from the sedative swimming swiftly through his system, the agents were on him, cuffing him and reading him rights before he could get up and grab his gun.
Once Harris and Rettig had him cuffed and on his feet, his eyes met Mason’s.
“Good call. Interference,” Serbenski said.
“How many?” Mason asked.
“Four,” Serbenski said.
“Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
As Serbenski became groggier, Harris and Rettig loaded him on the boat to circle and pick up the others and head back to shore. Mason wondered if Serbenski would offer up the fourth penalty victim.
