by Steven James
At least Timothy hadn’t suffered from those last two—no mental deterioration or cognitive impairment.
He hadn’t lost the ability to concentrate.
To concentrate.
Yes.
He could concentrate.
And no one believes you when you tell them what’s happening with you.
But he could do it. He could concentrate.
Foreign material (they called it “birefringent” as a way to sound more scientific, always trying to sound more scientific) was found in the sores. Most often it resembled cellulose similar to cotton fibers, but it wasn’t cotton. In other cases, it contained DNA from other animals. It might be that there’s some genetic reason that in certain people, their skin becomes a host for the parasites often found on plants or animals.
Timothy had seen the movie Bug with Ashley Judd and the very creepy character Peter Evans, played by Michael Shannon. It wasn’t clear if the movie was meant to accurately portray Morgellons, but whether or not the writers had this specific condition in mind, they’d nailed some of the aspects of the disease: the bugs, the isolation you feel, the frenzy to stop it from happening, the extreme measures you’ll take in order to quiet the symptoms and not let them take over your life.
The fibers are not from an external source. Somehow they materialize inside the body—perhaps from some sort of residue left over from an infection. There might be a neurotoxin or microorganism that accounts for the memory loss and muscle control problems. That seemed to be the current thinking, but no one really knew.
The doctors prescribed him medication that they used to treat Lyme disease—that was all they could come up with. “It helps some people who suffer from these symptoms,” they told him a bit ambiguously. “It’ll help you concentrate.”
Some people who suffered from Morgellons treated it with oral and topical antibiotics, antifungals, or antiparasitics. You try them all, and you find that they don’t work. The sores stay, the cluttered thinking gets worse.
At his house, Timothy hurried to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, pulled out the tweezers and the magnifying glass.
Free.
He needed to be free.
He used the magnifying glass to study the sores covering his left arm. As he traced the scratch marks he’d made while trying to deal with the itching, he tried futilely to resist the urge to scratch at them again.
Some of the sores hadn’t healed in more than a year, and their scabs were black and raw and came off with a tiny snag of irritation whenever he scraped them hard enough.
Which he did. Yes, he admitted it, he often did.
He clamped the tweezers onto a tuft of fibers protruding from the largest sore on his arm.
Maybe if he could pull them out, it would get better.
You’ve tried that before. It never works.
But something needs to work! Something will!
He dug at them, pried them loose, but the itching didn’t stop.
No no no no. The tweezers weren’t going to be enough.
You need something better. Something to get at the roots. A knife. Some sort of knife.
The X-ACTO knife on your desk.
Delusions? They were awfully real delusions. Just the fact that it could “all be in your head” was astonishing in and of itself. How could your mind decide to grow strange fibers from your body, fibers that have plant DNA in them? How could something like that even happen?
The doctors opted for the easy answer and claimed that the fibers were from clothing caught on the sores after you scratch them, but the fibers had been found on babies that couldn’t scratch their sores and beneath smooth skin that surrounded the sores on adults.
How did they get there?
Timothy found the knife and returned to the bathroom.
Free.
Of course, there were the conspiracy theories about Morgellons. The most common one postulated that the condition was somehow linked to chemtrails, or contrails, from airplanes resulting from some sort of government test on the American population. Ridiculous, yes, of course it was ridiculous, but people often turn to the absurd when faced with the inexplicable.
But on the other hand, the government would keep it a secret if they were doing tests. It would make sense that they would.
Timothy angled the tip of the blade into position and began to carve as deeply into the flesh of his forearm as necessary to get the bugs out, using a washcloth to sop up the blood.
Then.
A nightmare.
The worst kind. The waking kind.
The fibers began twitching, began coming to life. Thin black worms wriggled from his skin, clusters of them that began growing fatter and fatter as they tugged free and then dropped, slimy and writhing, to the tiling.
They squiggled toward the baseboard near the sink, leaving lurid, bloody trails in their wake, and he stomped on them to make them go away, all go away!
Kill them, just like you killed those people.
“I haven’t killed anyone.”
Are you sure?
“Yes!”
How many has it been?
How many more will there be?
“There haven’t been any. There won’t be any!”
Timothy squashed the worms that he knew weren’t real.
No one can find out what you’re doing or how many there’ve been. Don’t let anyone know the truth, Timothy.
“I need to know. I’m going to find out.”
No, Timothy. If you poke around, the police will find you. They’ll put you away, lock you away. That’s not what you want.
“It’s not what you want. If there’ve been any, any at all, then I need to know. I need to know the truth.”
Even if it means being locked away?
“No matter what it means!”
He finished with the last of the worms, then stared at the clean tiling, spotted only with drops of blood from the weeping sores on his arm.
And so, Timothy Sabian made the decision to find out for sure how many people he had murdered. There was a number—of course, there was. After all, there’s a number for everyone.
6
Killers tend to show up at the wakes and funerals of the people they’ve killed. I wondered if someone who’d witnessed a suicide would do the same.
Back at our apartment, I texted Assistant Director DeYoung, telling him that I wanted to attend Jon Murray’s funeral tomorrow. Give me a call when you get a chance, I wrote.
I didn’t have to wait long. As I was finishing getting ready for bed, the phone rang: DeYoung contacting me for a video call.
His haggard look, his sighs, and his head shakes were all evidence of the stress that was a constant companion in his job.
After a quick greeting, he said, “Senator Murray is on board with us surveilling the funeral tomorrow morning.”
“Excellent.” I filled him in on what I’d discovered at the senator’s house earlier.
“But we still have no idea about the identity of the person in the window?”
“Not yet, sir. No.”
“I want you to put everything else on hold for a couple days. Let’s find out who was there, and let’s find out why.”
“I might be able to give you the who, but—”
“The why isn’t in your wheelhouse.”
“Right.”
“Because it deals with motive.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead in that worrisome way of his.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Listen, I want a team looking over other suicides or homicides that’ve been posted live online, especially from any contacts from Jon Murray’s social networking accounts or on sites he might’ve visited recently.”
“What are you thinking?”
/>
“We need to establish if this is an isolated incident.”
“Hmm. So we’re looking for footage in which someone else might have been present when the other deaths occurred?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think the person at the senator’s place wanted to leave you a clue that he was in the house? That he planned for his reflection to be visible?”
“That seems unlikely. There would’ve been much easier ways of letting us know he was there. Let’s start with Jon’s online interactions and Internet history, see where that takes us. Circle out from there.”
“I’ll get some people on it. I’m going to have Bill Greer join you tomorrow at the funeral.”
Jodie Fleming, the agent I typically partnered with, was presenting at a criminology conference in Orlando this week, so it made sense that DeYoung would assign someone else for me to team up with.
I’d worked with Greer before on a couple of other high-profile cases. He specialized in homicides and had a good instinct for dealing with the media. Early fifties, experienced, dedicated. I liked him. Trusted him.
“I’ll have him meet you there,” DeYoung told me. “It’s at that graveyard over near the East River Medical Center—Lancaster Cemetery.”
“I know the place.”
It was an expansive property, not as large as Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, but still substantial.
After our call, I wanted to touch base with Christie and make sure she wasn’t angry at her daughter—or at me—for something, but earlier when she left, she’d told me that she wouldn’t be turning on her phone while she was at the retreat center. “It’s supposed to be a silent retreat. The monks don’t even want us talking with the other people staying at the monastery. I’ll be fine.”
Off the grid for a weekend didn’t sound all that bad to me.
After checking in on Tessa and finding her asleep, I lay in bed, computer on my lap, and studied the files until I must have dozed off because I awoke suddenly, jarring the laptop and barely catching it before it would have plummeted to the floor. I took that as a sign, closed it up, and went to sleep.
* * *
+++
“Kiss her.”
“Her?”
“The lady.”
“Honey”—the woman whom Blake Neeson had hired for the evening threw a hand to her hip—“that’s not a lady. That’s a mannequin. You want me to kiss a mannequin?”
Blake sipped at his whiskey and gave her a nod.
The mannequin was unclothed, perfect and smooth. She came from the most recent Russian shipment, and she contained the compound. This silent lady was one of the prototypes. The final products were already in Connecticut at the greenhouse. After they were treated, the distribution would begin early next week.
The escort glanced toward Blake’s associate, Mannie, a giant of a man who hailed from the Gambia and now edged closer to the door, blocking her exit. He was tall enough and wide enough to cover nearly the entire doorway.
“And he’s gonna watch?” the woman asked him.
“Call it a threesome—well, a foursome.”
“Whatever turns you on,” she muttered as she faced the mannequin. She caressed its cheek, closed her eyes, and leaned in close to give it a kiss.
Blake watched her for a few minutes. Even the moisture on her lips wasn’t enough to affect the mannequin. Even—
Mannie’s phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.
After answering it, Mannie said, “Looks like there’s someone here to see you.”
“Who knows we’re here?”
“Just the men downstairs.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s a woman. I don’t recognize her.”
Mannie showed his phone’s screen to Blake, who studied the live footage.
Attractive. Late twenties. He was intrigued. “Have the boys show her up.”
The woman from the escort agency was still making out with the mannequin.
“Keep kissing her,” he told her quietly.
“It’s your dime, sweetie.”
The two guards led the visitor in. She wore a blouse that revealed a left arm that hadn’t developed properly, leaving her with just one usable arm.
After Blake dismissed the men, he asked her, “Who are you?”
“My name is Julianne Springman. I worked with your brother.”
“My brother? When?”
“In Detroit.”
“And he told you about me? Is that how you found me?”
“He told me where to look.”
“Detroit was last summer. You just found me now?”
“I just showed up now. That doesn’t mean I just found you. You need to do a better job covering your tracks.”
“My brother is dead.”
“And I’m here to honor his life, to carry on his work.”
“Justice.”
“Yes.”
He evaluated that as he took a sip of his drink.
Mannie gestured toward the escort. “Should I arrange a car for her?”
Blake understood it as Mannie’s way of asking if he should get rid of her, which could have meant permanently or simply for the evening.
“Let her stay.” Blake turned his attention back to the woman calling herself Julianne Springman. “And what brings you here tonight, Miss Springman?”
“I want to find someone like your brother. Someone with his interests.”
Blake was quiet for a moment. “I see you’ve learned one of the early lessons.”
“And that is?”
“It’s difficult, once you get started, to turn it off.”
“I don’t want to turn it off.”
“Huh.” Blake walked to the window and peered out across the darkened city dotted with the confident lights of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. “Let me tell you a story, Miss Springman.”
“Julianne. Please.”
“Alright. Julianne. This comes from Aesop. Do you know the fable about Bat and the Fight Between the Animals?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
“Long ago, there was a war between the birds and the beasts. Bat was fighting on the side of the birds, but it looked like they were going to be vanquished by the beasts, so in the middle of the night, he sneaks over to the other camp. Shocked to see him, all the beasts exclaim, ‘What are you doing over here? You’re a bird!’
“‘No,’ he tells them, ‘I’m a beast just like you. Look, I have fur. No birds have fur. I’m a beast.’
“Well, the beasts talk it over and can’t think of a way to refute that. They say to him, ‘Okay, that is true. No birds have fur. You must be a beast. You can fight with us.’
“The war continues, and soon it looks like the birds are going to win, so Bat slips over into their camp at night, and they say, ‘Hey! You were fighting with the beasts. What are you doing here?’
“‘No, you’re mistaken,’ he explains. ‘I’m a bird like you. Look, I have wings. No beasts have wings.’
“They couldn’t argue with that, so they let him join them, but once more it looks like they might lose, so Bat goes over to the beasts’ side once again.
“‘We know you were fighting with the birds,’ they tell him, but he just shakes his head. ‘No, my friends. Look. I have teeth. No birds have teeth. I’m a beast just like you.’”
Blake paused momentarily to watch the escort kiss the mannequin. There still seemed to be no adverse effects—in either direction. Then he finished the story: “Eventually there was peace between the birds and the beasts, but they told Bat, ‘From now on you must live by yourself in a cave in the dark, and you will be considered neither a bird nor a beast, for you could not decide which side you were fighting for.’”
* * *
+++
Julianne waited fo
r more, but when it was clear that Blake was done with the story, she said, “There are consequences to switching sides—is that your point?”
“You must know who you are, which side you’re fighting on. Most people could be either birds or beasts. I used to be a police officer—I’m sure my brother told you that. But then I chose my side and I never looked back.”
Julianne had been a police officer herself, had worked on the CSI unit in Detroit, but this didn’t seem like the right time to mention that. If Blake took it the wrong way, if he assumed she was here to betray him or turn him in, she didn’t stand much of a chance of walking out of this room alive.
She had no weapon. Yes, she was strong in her one good arm—she’d had to compensate—but she was no hand-to-hand fighter and absolutely no match for Blake’s enormous bodyguard, who might very well have been three times her size.
“Have you chosen your side?” Blake asked her.
“Yes. That’s why I’m here.”
“Did you love my brother, Julianne?”
“I didn’t know him for long, but yes, I loved him.”
“You’re the one they never found, I mean, after he was killed. His partner.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me you want to find someone with his interests?” he said, circling back to what she’d told him earlier when she first came in.
“That’s why I’m here. Yes.”
“What makes you think I can help you with that?”
“You chose your side a long time ago. I’m newer at this. Besides, I believe that Dylan would have wanted it.”
Blake considered that. “I can do some checking. Perhaps offer an introduction, but I can’t make you any guarantees. The person might not be to your liking.”
“A name is all I need.”
“No doubt. And you might not be to his liking. Have you considered that?”