A silence swelled and filled the room, it hung between them and then reached back through the years and snapped the bond that had been there, like a twig, like the neck of Amy Reed. “I feel sorry for you man, you used to have such a good soul, now you’ve got none,” Chris said, he left, and the hotel room door closed with a bang that echoed down the hallway as he stomped to the elevator. He stomped because he thought Jimmy would be watching through the peephole. Once inside the elevator, once the doors had closed, his shoulders slumped, and he crashed back against the mirrored wall. His pretense at resolve gone now, the bravado vanished into a resolution that he was truly all alone on this earth.
* * * * *
Jimmy felt the vacuum pulled through the door with Chris’s exit and for the first time noticed his hand holding the phone was trembling. He had considered taking Chris’s life and probably should have, he thought. Killing was always an option for Jimmy, like sausage or bacon with his eggs, Uber, or yellow cab, just another choice to make. He suspected he had chosen wrong and wondered if he should pursue. He needed to hear from The Cleaner.
Chapter XII
The old man sat alone on the earthen floor of the mound, close enough to the entrance to see the brooding sky in the distance through the opening. The dark was getting ready to settle on the woods, the primal night sounds were all around, contrasting sharply with the steady hum of the tractor trailers on the Interstate. The crickets and locusts dominated the soundstage, but an occasional croaking frog or night owl hoot punctuated the dissonance as well. Somewhere in the distance was a scream, a feral, primitive sound, some animal had gone to a place it shouldn’t have. It was the scream of an opossum perhaps, caught in the death grip of a red fox or a gray wolf. It was a soothing, comforting sound to the man who had lived here for as long as he could remember.
He reflected for a moment, just how long that had been. There was a cabin once, and he fished. There was a mana and a woman. There was a swimming hole and dreams of a life on just this exact island; a mundane normal, mortal life with a wife and children. How long ago that had been; how foolish those dreams. The real dream was this one, following and serving The One, living as generation after generation after generation was born, aged, and died. They died in droves on nights like this as he sat back and let it go. A night like this was special, he didn’t need to do a thing and neither did The One.
The One pays no attention tonight, on a night like this, he can do whatever he wants, go anywhere, he does not need the man. There are days and nights throughout a year that evil fills the air, an acute dying of the land occurs, a certain kind of creature has his way. Tonight, was a night like that. There would be atrocities perpetrated all around the world this night, the electricity was palpable. No, there was no need for the man tonight, plenty of others would be there to take his place, unexpected moments of insanity would be the rule of this night. Many would die, rapes would occur, the ancient violence of brother on brother. It was the night when people would say, “He was such a nice man, I can’t believe he was capable of this.”
The air was molasses, almost too thick to breathe, especially for one as old as he. Yes, he needed to stay put tonight, The One did not need him. He was gathering his strength. Tomorrow would be a different story. There was a storm coming both literally and figuratively. A flash of lightning that lit up the outside world reminded him of the former. Knowledge of the latter was in his bones. His days were numbered, that was for sure. The One would soon have to replace him, but not yet. He had at least one more good fight in him. A crash of thunder silenced the wild sounds of the night and all that remained was the muffled beat of his own heart. He closed his eyes and slept.
Chapter XIII
The black Impala sitting across from the two-story, semi-attached dormered Cape on Lawrence Street, blended with the rest of the cars parked on both sides of the road and would have raised no suspicion except that everyone knew all the cars that belonged on this street, and the Impala wasn’t one of them. As Special Agent Watson sat there with the engine running and the A/C on, she was watching the house unbeknownst that someone in the house was watching her.
A tall boy, with long straight brown hair, getting ready to start his last year in Junior High School, peered through the curtains of his upstairs bedroom. It was one of only two bedrooms in the house and he shared it with his twelve-year-old cousin who had already gone down to breakfast. He thought she looked like a cop or a spy or something, maybe Homeland Security, but why did she keep looking at his house.
As he watched, his patience was rewarded when a woman, dressed in black and white opened the door and stepped out into the street. She looked up and down, first left and then right, before deciding to cross. She was heading straight for his front door. Conner Carter glanced at himself in the mirror, flattened the hair on his head, and raced down the stairs to be certain he was the one to answer it. He paused at the bottom of the landing and waited. The doorbell finally rang, and he counted to five silently before yelling, “I got it!” He counted to five again, a little quicker this time, his excitement grew and his patience shrunk, and went to the door.
* * * * *
Kimberly was standing on the top step, looking out towards the street, over the small and mostly bare front lawn that was patched with brown spots and sprouted feathery white dandelions. There was a black wrought iron gate about three-feet-high delineating their 25X75 plot. She turned towards the sound of the unlocking door and when it opened, she smiled her warmest smile: Unsure why, she had not been expecting a child. “Hi, Special Agent Kimberly Watson,” she said, holding up her ID. “I knew it,” the boy said, and then added, “hold on one sec, I’ll get my Aunt.” Kim suppressed a smile at the boy’s antics. Before he had even turned to walk away, a woman appeared behind him. She was a thirty-something with blond shoulder-length hair and bright blue eyes that were the beacons of a friendly face.
“May I help you?” she intoned.
“Mrs. Carter?” Kimberly asked, maintaining the friendly countenance.
“Yes,” she replied, beginning to look a bit unsure of the unfolding circumstance.
“Mrs. Carter, I’m Special Agent Kimberly Watson with the FBI, is your husband home?”
“Ken? No, he’s left for work. Does this have something to do with Ken?”
“Wait, are you Mrs. Christopher Carter?” Kimberly asked, suddenly unsure of all the information she had received from the center.
“No, my husband is Kenneth Carter, he has a brother named Chris?”
“I’m so sorry for the mistake, Mrs. Carter. I am looking for a Chris Carter though, does he live here as well?”
“I’m sorry, would you like to come in? I have fresh coffee on.”
“Yes please,” Kimberly answered, and walked through the door when it was pushed open for her.
Mrs. Carter led the agent to a bright, lemon-yellow kitchen that looked out on a very small backyard. The house they walked through was neat and clean, with no obvious displays of wealth or poverty, it was a comfortable middle-class home. The lady of the house showed her guest a seat at the kitchen table and then excused herself. She grabbed her cell phone off the countertop as she exited the room and Kimberly heard her explaining the situation to her husband. He had apparently given her the green light to discuss his brother because when she returned, she seemed willing to cooperate fully.
For the next fifteen minutes, the two women sat across a small kitchen table from each other, taking turns with their part of the story. Kimberly began with a mile-high overview of her reason for being there and a brief explanation of her assignment, what it was she was doing and how Chris was involved. Then, Cindy Carter made clear that they had not seen Chris for years, ten years in fact. He had gone to prison and when he was released, he disappeared. They had raised his son since age four. She told Kimberly about the car accident, the SEC indictment and conviction and lastly about the rambling, paranoiac letter he sent them when he was released from jail.
“So, no idea where he is or if he’s even in New York, is that right?” she asked.
“Right,” Cindy replied, “none.”
Kimberly thought back on the file she had read, they had gotten some things wrong, but the banking information was conclusive and indicative that he had remained in New York. “We’re reasonably certain he’s in this city. Do you still have the letter he wrote to you? I’d like to read it if you do.”
“We do, yes, it’s in the basement with some of his other effects. Would you like to see it all?”
“Very much so, yes, please. So, when would you say was the last time you’ve seen or spoken to your brother-in-law?” Kimberly asked, standing to follow her into the basement.
“I know exactly when it was, the day he left here for prison. It was September 5th, 2006, the day after Labor Day. We went to prison ten or twelve weekends in a row in the beginning, with Conner,” she said, nodding out towards the boy in the backyard. “He never saw us, refused to come out. The boy cried for two days that first time, then, a little less each time after that. Who does that to their own kid? I’m not even sure Conner remembers his dad anymore. He never talks about him.”
It was a finished basement with a pool table, a wet bar, an old couch and a 32-inch TV mounted on the wall. It was damp and on the dark side and had that damp, musty, basement smell. Despite the efforts to make it look like anything but a basement, the smell and the small windows coming down from the ceiling challenged the effort. Along one wall were bare wooden put-together-yourself shelves, probably from IKEA, on which an assortment of storage containers was housed.
The entire contents of the personal effects of Christopher Carter fit inside a blue 18-gallon Rubbermaid Roughneck storage container. In it were a few stacks of loose papers held together with red rubber bands, and about a half-dozen shoe boxes, mostly filled with more papers. It took Cindy a few moments to locate the right shoebox and pull out the letter. It was handwritten in blue ink on slightly yellowed paper that had been torn from a spiral notebook then folded in half and then in thirds, as though meant to fit in a standard #6 envelope. She gave the letter to Kim. The handwriting was cursive, neat and orderly with a consistent, almost pretty, slant to the upper right-hand corner of the paper.
Dear Ken and Cindy,
I’m dead. That’s what I would like you to tell Conner. I don’t care what details you give him, heart attack, car accident, doesn’t matter. I know I owe you more than I can ever repay, but I promise one day there will be a windfall for you, maybe not enough but significant, I think. I have a destiny I need to carry out, there aren’t any options. Any wavering from me along this path would put Conner’s and by extension your lives at stake. I can’t allow that to happen. You have to believe me that there is no other way.
I’ve seen things that I should never have seen. I know things about life and death that I really shouldn’t know. They’ve made me into someone that is far different than the man you knew and hopefully loved. That man is dead. Well, this letter is his final act, then he will be gone. It may take the next twenty or thirty years for the new me to accomplish what needs to be done so as it is for Conner, let it be for you, I am dead. Mourn me for a day or two and then let me go. Think of me on my birthday or on Connors birthday once a year, but at all other times, let me go.
You may still hear things about me that are not true. Made up lies, fabricated stories, concocted indictments. Hopefully not, but if you do, try hard to ignore them and move on, despite how good they make the evidence sound, the devil sings sweetly. Please, shield Conner from as much as possible.
I have places in my mind, foreign places, where a person should not ever travel, regions that should be off limits, I’ve gone to them all. I go there every day. You two and Conner are, for me, a part of something that can never be again.
I leave you now, I have much work to do. I need to find its weakness, and then find a way to exploit it and kill it, if it can be killed. It killed Kelly and its killed Christopher Carter. It’s made my son an orphan, but for you. I’m convinced though, that we are just two of its thousands of victims through the years, enough.
Don’t mourn me long, my boy needs you. I’m lucky to have had the chance to say goodbye. Think of all those people who just drop dead of a heart attack for no good reason and leave so many loose ends, they never get to say goodbye. I did.
Goodbye.
All my love,
Chris
A silent whistle escaped between Kimberly’s pursed lips. She sat back in the desk chair she had been reading in and looked over at Chris’s sister-in-law. The blank expression on her face told Kim that she had exhausted this resource. She pondered her next move, absently glancing down at the letter then up at her host. What could be so horrid, to make a man do this to his family? If it was indeed that bad, why hadn’t he jumped from the George Washington Bridge? No, this man was no coward and no quitter. Whatever it was that scared him, it scared him because of the people he loved, not because he was afraid for himself. The letter only served to reinforce what she already knew, she had to find Chris Carter.
Chapter XIV
The leather seats in the Beechjet 400A were the color of eggnog and the wood trim in the cabin was mahogany with a red stain. The private jet’s only passenger was sitting without a seatbelt, sunken into the soft plush leather with his eyes closed. He wasn’t sleeping though, he was lost in his thoughts. The plane had lifted off from Teterboro in New Jersey and was headed for Allegheny County Airport. He had back to back shows at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. The flight was just shy of two hours and every minute put another three miles between them.
He knew that he should be sitting there going through his repertoire, planning the songs, what to open with and what to close with, but all he could think of was Chris. His old friend had looked like shit and he sounded desperate, desperate enough to do anything. Jimmy knew that he had lost his wife and that he had spent some time in jail, but he had not allowed himself to think that the same power that was watching over him, was fucking over Chris. He wasn’t even sure that he had even come to terms with the fact that his success was not directly related to his talent, that somewhere, somehow, something had paved his way.
He supposed that in the end, he had embraced something evil, supported its existence even, and he had been repaid in ways that he did not care to understand how they happened. One look in the mirror would raise a hundred questions if he cared to think about it, but he didn’t. Not that it was all perfect, not by any means. With his looks and his success, he could have any supermodel in the world, fuck her twice a day if he wanted, but no, that was an unspoken yet understood taboo. Sex was one of the casualties of his agreement. When he needed relief, he took care of himself, except for the women It gave him, of course.
He had no wife, no children, no heirs, that was not possible either. He had no real friends. He opened his eyes finally and looked around the jet. It was a lavish, ostentatious executive jet with all the perks: comfort, drinks, food, even a personal stewardess. He had a home in Beverly Hills that was the envy of even that neighborhood. He had a small villa in Tuscany, drove the hottest sports car, and lived the rock star life to its fullest. So why was the encounter with Chris weighing so heavily on him? What were these thoughts that were running through his head? Why did he need to do everything that thing told him to? What would happen if he rebelled and made some of his own choices for a change?
The ride was smooth, if a bit noisy, and as he sat there deep in thought, the stewardess moved in and out of his peripheral vision, fussing wit
h something at the front of the plane. She looked like one of those old-time Pan Am girls in a short blue pleated skirt and a white button-down shirt with a red scarf loosely tied around her neck. Wire-rimmed aviators were perched atop her bleached blond hair which was straight and long; The One would want no part of her. She had long legs with well-defined muscles, a runner perhaps, and with her back to him her hips and ass swung side-to-side to the tune in her head as she worked. She turned to walk back toward him, their eyes met, and he could tell that she knew he had been watching her, she smiled.
“Mr. Vale, I’m Caroline,” she said. “I’m such a big fan and it will be my pleasure to make you as comfortable as possible today. Is there anything I can do for you? A drink maybe? Anything?”
“Anything huh? Be careful dear, you’re in the presence of a rock star and you know our reputations?” he countered teasingly.
Not the type to be intimidated she went right back at him. “Well, I do know your reputation, Mr. Vale,” she said with a wink of her pretty blue eye and the emphasis on the word ‘your’.
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