The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 81: The Consultant

Episode Date: October 31, 2017

He was notoriously proficient in his field and his advice was priceless – he just didn't make house calls. 

This is the way I heard it. Bob didn't believe in mediums, clairvoyance, or consultants. He caught bad guys the old-fashioned way with police work. But the letter in his hand was hard to ignore. Dear Mr. Keppel, it's been a while. I'm writing to you now because I would like to help you catch the Riverman. On his desk, the detective regarded 37 photographs he had just arranged, according to date. There were hitchhikers and prostitutes,

coeds and waitresses, blondes and brunettes, all female, all waterlogged, all dead, courtesy of a psychopath called the Riverman. Bob slid the letter across his partner's desk. What do you think? asked Keppel. Bob's partner regarded the letter inside. He too shared Bob's skepticism with wannabe citizen detectives, but then he glanced up at the Sharpie-speckled map of Tacoma, where 37 circles indicated the location of 37 dead girls, up and down the green river and beyond. What do we have to lose? It was a fair question, thought Bob. Female bodies were stacking up like cordwood. The public was in a panic. The press was calling

his task force a task farce. Soon, the 38th circle would be on the map, and there didn't appear to be a damn thing anyone could do to stop it. So Bob booked a flight to Florida to reconnect with the amateur detective who thought he could catch a serial killer 3,300 miles away. The following afternoon, Bob was back in the sunshine state, though there was precious little of that filtering into the consultant's home. There was, however, some bad coffee and the reliable tension that always marked their first few minutes together. Jesus said Keppel, looking around, who's your decorator? I'll get you a number,

said the consultant. Her rates are very reasonable. He smiled broadly, and Bob was struck, as he always was, by the irony in that charming grin. I heard you got married, said Bob. Love of my life, said the consultant. She must be a very understanding woman, said Bob. I've also got a daughter. Isn't that something? Bob agreed that, That was indeed something. Bob could hear the second hand, clicking on the clock across the hall. Three thousand miles away, a serial killer was hunting for his next victim, and time was not his friend.

Bob cut to the chase. Tell me about the river man. Again with the grin. Well, for starters, he seems a tad demented. Wouldn't you agree? Bob gave it a beat. He wanted to slap that smile right. off the consultant's handsome face.

Maybe if he slapped him hard enough, that supercilious smirk would vanish once and for all. We need to know where this lunatic will strike next, said Bob. If you have a theory, spill it. I'm not here for your entertainment. Another grin. This one accompanied by an arched eyebrow. But detective, entertainment is precisely what I propose.

Specifically, a slasher film festival at a local drive-in, set up hidden cameras. The killer will come to you. I guarantee it. Bob took a deep breath. You want the Sheriff's Department to arrange for a slasher film festival. The consultant shrugged and grinned some more. Do you want to catch your killer?

You're wasting my time, said Bob. The detective stood to leave, but the consultant stopped him with a wave and another grin. this one a bit more inward, a bit more wistful. Well, Detective, if a film festival is off the table, then I'd forget about where he's going next and concentrate instead on where he has already been. And why is that, ask Bob? Because, Detective, that is where he is right now.

Bob took his seat slowly. What are you talking about, he said. The consultant blinked very slowly and leaned forward in his chair. You see, Bob, the riverman, he visits his girls after he kills them. He brushes their hair. He paints their nails. And then, well, he loves them, Bob. He loves them like a groom, loves his bride on their wedding night.

Bob felt the goose flesh rise on his neck and arms. And then, after your deputies finally find them and take their poor bloated corpses off to the morgue, the riverman returns to the scene again to grieve their absence and reminisce in solitude about their special time together, I promise you, Bob, he's there right now. The coffee in Bob's cup had grown cold, He could no longer hear the second hand, marking time on the big clock across the hall.

He could only whisper the obvious reply, even though he knew the answer. How do you know that? The consultant glanced around the tiny apartment he called home, a prison cell, on Florida's death row. Because, Bob, that's exactly where I would be. Eight years later, in the movie inspired by the movie, Bob Keppel's most unusual collaboration. An imaginary FBI agent named Clary Starling, desperate to capture an imaginary serial killer named Buffalo Bill, went toe to toe with an imaginary psychopath named Hannibal Lecter. No one who has seen the silence of the lambs will ever forget

that scene. A scene based on the real-life psychopath who reached out to the real-life detective who had arrested him years earlier and offered to help him find another real-life serial killer every bit as twisted as he. But of course, life doesn't always imitate art. In silence of the lambs, Buffalo Bill gets shot to pieces by Jody Foster before he can murder the girl in the well and make a dress out of her skin. And Anthony Hopkins flies off to Mexico. to eat his antagonist. In real life, though, the riverman is still alive, serving 48 life sentences at the state pen in Walla Walla, Washington. And Bob Keppel's infamous consultant, he was very useful in the apprehension of Gary Ridgeway, the psychopath who called himself the Riverman.

But not useful enough, the consultant was marched off to the electric chair. in 1989, where that supercilious grin was finally fried from his handsome face once and for all, the handsome, smiling face of a serial killer named Ted Bundy. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing. multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays.

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