by Steven James
My immediate thought turned to private planes.
Someone who could afford to pay the Matchmaker for the opportunity to watch others die might not fly the way most of us do.
I called Angela. “Let’s look at private aircraft. The observer traveled to those locations somehow, and I want to know who it was and how he got there.”
71
12:02 P.M.
2 hours left
While Christie was listening to Calvin recount anecdotes about Pat’s time in graduate school, the doctors came by to wheel him out for his CT scan.
“Would you like me to stay?” Christie asked him.
“Ah, and see, here all of that talk about truth earlier gets put to the test. I would very much like for you to stay, but I do not want to intrude on your plans for the day.”
“No intrusion whatsoever. I’ll wait here.”
“I’ll see you in a few minutes, then.”
* * *
+++
Tessa found what she was looking for.
Timing and location. Patrick would have been proud.
To be thorough, she’d analyzed the dates of Timothy Sabian’s previous three book signings and compared each of them to news articles about missing persons. It’d taken a while because, in the case of Miranda Walsh, she wasn’t listed as missing until three days afterward, when her college roommate finally called the cops. As it turned out, the last time anyone heard from her was a text she sent out right after the signing.
Tessa couldn’t find the actual text message anywhere, but from what she could tell, it was to her friend informing her that she was going out with some guy.
This was just getting weirder and weirder.
Could it have been Timothy?
She gazed at the journal she’d recovered for him when that lady—who must have been Mrs. Walsh—came into the bookstore yelling those accusations.
When Timothy had read to them last night about a girl named Emily, he’d said it was from a work in progress.
It probably wasn’t smart to read it now. It might be—
No. Of course you need to read it—especially if you’re gonna return it to him. You need to know everything you can about his state of mind before you go meet him. What if it says something about Miranda?
Tessa picked up the journal and thumbed to the place where Timothy had stopped.
Then read:
When Emily grew, she visited a restaurant and watched as the other people entered and left, watched as they sat and ate or sat and read or just checked the messages on their phones.
And she wrote in her diary.
Here I am. all together with myself.
But there are others here also. Some are singing, some are silent, some are angry, others are trying to fall asleep.
And all the while the voices in my head are screaming at me, telling me what to do.
To turn off the world and turn on the light and blind myself, here in the midst of everyone.
And surprise them.
Shock them.
And finally elude their smiles and accusations.
Then really surprise them and turn the light on them.
ha.
That would be funny.
To reveal their barren hearts.
!
Yes! it would be a fun game to try—turn on the light, leave it on, burn out their eyes and watch them scream and see if the voices take over when the screams subside, see if the voices enjoy blood—
Steamy and red on arctic snow.
Dark and spotty on the desert sand.
It’s a game I wish to play.
I think I’ll try it when the time is right and no one is looking.
But I’ll wait until the voices quiet down long enough for me to find my inner light.
the hot, unyielding light that tastes so, so good.
Okay.
This guy was seriously losing it.
No, he’s just a good writer. It’s just what that girl, Emily, would be thinking.
Then why didn’t he read that part last night?
He just didn’t have time to.
Too many questions.
It left Tessa in a quandary. She could contact Timothy and see if he would meet her somewhere, or she could just let him know she was going to come by his place.
Go to his house. Take the journal and your book, just don’t go inside.
Part curiosity.
Part adventurousness.
Okay, yeah, true, part teenage impetuosity—she decided she couldn’t not go.
Who cares? It would be alright. She would just deliver the journal, get her book signed, and then be on her way again.
But, no, she would not enter his home.
* * *
+++
Timothy called his psychiatrist, Dr. Percival, to find out if he was the one who’d given the confidential information to Blake Neeson, but the call went to voicemail. Timothy did not leave a message.
He knew that Julianne had suspected him of killing Miranda Walsh, but he had no recollection of harming her, or Julianne, or anyone else.
So what’d happened to Miranda?
And who left that note in his kitchen telling him to check the basement?
When Neeson was there earlier, Timothy had wondered if he was perhaps his father, but Neeson had pretty much laughed off the idea.
Who else could have hurt those women? Who else would have?
Also, someone sent that picture of Julianne’s body to Neeson, and from what Neeson had said, it originated in the federal building downtown.
His dad? Did his dad work there?
There’s no way you could have sent that email. It proves someone else is doing this. Someone else is responsible for what happened to Miranda and Julianne.
The note left in the kitchen.
The email sent to Neeson.
Julianne’s body.
But if your dad is out there, if he killed Julianne, how did he get that picture of her in the trunk of your car?
Then the revelation, something that seemed now to be so obvious, but maybe that’s why he hadn’t locked onto it earlier: He was here. He was in the house.
Hastily, Timothy began to search room by room for any clues as to who from the federal building might have been there, inside his home.
* * *
+++
Ralph and I made it a working lunch, grabbing sandwiches from the cafeteria.
We cross-checked everything we could dig up about the associates of the people who were arrested at the Matchmaker’s place with the information of the ones who’d come forward and claimed to be at the senator’s house on the night when Jon died.
One name matched: Duane Sheldrick.
An anonymous caller had contacted the senator’s hotline with the name.
When I pulled up Sheldrick’s driver’s license photo, I saw that he was indeed the man who’d opened the door when I went to see the Matchmaker. He was the one with the tattoos, and the horns, and no nose.
The guy who’d limped as he fled.
He also had priors in drug possession and intent to sell.
We contacted dispatch to get a car to his apartment.
“Ralph,” I said, “if someone were to make online communication unhackable—I mean through this quantum encryption—would that be a good thing or a bad one?”
“Well, I know one thing: it’d sure make our job a lot harder tracking down the bad guys. Why? What are you thinking?”
“Blake’s fingerprints are all over this case—I don’t mean literally.”
“Right.”
“I wonder if that might be the connection to Jon Murray.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Jon interned with Marcus Rockwell, who’s
helping spearhead this research. It can’t just be a coincidence that the senator has legislation about this on his desk right now.”
“I’m still not sure what that has to do with Blake.”
“Neither am I, except that the person who watched Jon die might be more connected to Blake’s network than we ever imagined.”
* * *
+++
Timothy was finishing his sweep through the living room when he got the call.
“Hello?”
“You’ve been busy, Timothy.”
“Who is this?”
“I’m the one the voices have been telling you about.”
This isn’t real.
Yes, yes, it is.
He stared at the phone’s screen to make sure there really was an incoming call.
“There’s nothing wrong with your phone,” the man said.
Timothy froze.
The only way the man would say something like that was if he was watching him.
He’s here. Someone is here!
No. Not possible. No one else was in the house. He would have seen him during his search.
A camera somewhere?
Maybe he’d hacked into the phone and was using the phone’s camera.
Or maybe not.
It didn’t sound like Dr. Percival, but maybe it was him. Maybe Timothy wasn’t hearing his voice correctly because he didn’t want to hear it.
No, you would know. It’s not him.
“Who are you?” Timothy demanded.
“I’m the one you’ve always been afraid of, Timothy. I’m the one you turned in when you were a boy. The one with the hammer.”
“Dad.”
“It’s been a long time.”
But is he someone from your life? Is he someone you’ve seen but not recognized?
“Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you soon enough. When the moment arrives, don’t hesitate or more people will die. When they’re gone you need to leave.”
“When who’s gone?”
No answer.
“Where do I need to go?”
Silence.
“Who’s going to die?” he exclaimed.
But the line was dead.
He has a camera somewhere in here.
Yes, that’s it. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
Timothy tried calling the number back but got a message that the line had been disconnected.
Your dad is alive. He’s the one.
He killed Mom. He’s been killing people all along.
Timothy set down the phone and began tearing his living room apart, looking for whatever his father was using to watch him.
* * *
+++
Timothy’s father received word from his sources that Christie Ellis, Patrick’s wife, was at the Metro Medical Center.
He left to go see her.
So much to do to make this work. So many pieces in play.
It was time to start clearing the board.
* * *
+++
While Ralph and I were discussing whether or not to leave and visit one of Transit Corp’s distribution centers to follow up on the possibility that they were working with Blake to ship the Selzucaine, I received word that Calvin was going into surgery.
Apparently, the CT scan had revealed that the extravasation was extensive enough to require immediate attention.
While I was processing that, Marcus Rockwell returned my call from earlier.
“Agent Bowers, I was told you wanted to speak with me.”
“Yes.” I cut to the chase. “Marcus, someone has been live-streaming suicides through Krazle, and I want to know if there’s anything you can do to help us verify the identity of the people involved—and also stop the live streams.”
He let out a sigh. “This issue, this type of streaming, has created more headaches than anything else for us. It’s too late to change things, of course—almost every online social networking service provides some type of live-streaming option. And, when that’s the case, you’re going to have people stream things that should never be broadcast to the world.”
“How do you monitor things? Keep inappropriate content offline?”
“We’ve hired thousands of staff to keep tabs on things, and we’re using advanced AI to identify postings that don’t meet our usage standards of conduct, but there’s no way to be everywhere at once, and in the end, the users will always be one step ahead of content monitors.”
“You mean censors.”
“We opt for a less incendiary term.”
“Senator Murray mentioned that you’re working in the area of quantum encryption.”
“We all are—there’s a lot riding on it. Listen, I’m not sure how I can help you except to assure you that we’re doing all we can to stop abuses in the area of online content.”
“What about the people involved in the filming? If I have a name, can you pull his profile?”
“Our usage agreement ensures people’s privacy.”
“If someone is influencing your users to take their own lives, then that’s murder.”
“Okay. I see where you’re going.” He was right with me. “A murder investigation would supersede our privacy agreement.”
“Yes. It would.”
After a moment, he said, “What’s the name?”
“Duane Sheldrick. Get me everything you can on him and the profiles he’s using.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
Before he hung up, he gave me his cell number so I could follow up with him directly.
Because of the two o’clock cutoff that Reese had brought up, I was anxious to see some progress on this thing, and sitting around the Field Office was just not going to cut it.
I needed to get moving.
I needed to act.
“Ride with me,” I said to Ralph. “We’ll drive up to the Transit Corp shipping warehouse, and then on the way back down we can see how Calvin’s doing.” I knew how much Ralph hated driving in the city, so I offered to take the wheel. “We’ll work en route. At least this way we can accomplish something without just sitting here on our hands.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself. At least not without swearing.”
“Especially with the ‘sitting on our hands’ part.”
“Right.”
“Let’s go.”
72
1:02 P.M.
1 hour left
Outside, the rain had turned to snow.
The meteorologists were calling for two to five inches of accumulation by the end of the day.
Having grown up in Wisconsin, I was used to driving in weather like this. However, in New York City when the first snow of the year comes, drivers are overly cautious, slowing down and clogging up the roads, making even more of a mess of traffic than usual.
And today, this heavy, wet snow would make the roads slushy and travel tricky—especially if the temperature continued to drop and the roads froze over.
As I drove, we got word that Reese had tried the phone number again but no one had answered. Also, no one was at Duane Sheldrick’s apartment. We put out a BOLO for him. So far, Thurman had discovered that two of the suicide victims did indeed make sizable donations within a few days of their deaths. He was studying the files and would get us more details as soon as he could.
I was still waiting to hear from Angela about the private flights to Miami and Seattle.
“Ralph,” I said. “Take a closer look at Blake’s known associates, front companies, and past email accounts.”
“Searching for what? Exactly?”
“Sheldrick’s name. We need to establish if he’s the Matchmaker or the Selzucaine dealer.”
“Or both.”
�
��Yes. Or both.”
* * *
+++
“Reese has been trying to call me,” Ibrahim told Blake.
“Have you picked up?”
“No, sir. Of course not.”
Blake considered Ibrahim’s words. He couldn’t think of any legitimate reason for Reese to call Ibrahim at this time.
“Did you contact him first?”
“No. I swear.”
Blake decided to have his men in Phoenix confirm that Reese was at work at Plixon Pharmaceuticals and not at a police station or the Bureau’s Field Office. If Reese had been arrested or compromised, then the time frame needed to be moved up.
And if Reese was trying to reach Ibrahim, there was a loose end there that needed to be snipped off.
He excused Ibrahim, contacted his people in Arizona, and then called Mannie into the room.
“I want you and your men to clear out the office,” he told him. “All the physical files. All the printouts. Everything.”
“I understand. And the QKD research?”
“Put it on the thumb drives. And prepare the building like we discussed earlier.”
“You want to burn it.”
“Yes. To the ground.”
With things moving in the direction they were, Blake realized it would probably be best to allow Ibrahim to take the blame for the Tranadyl posthumously.
Yes, he would make certain that the Syrian would be in the building when it turned to ash, but Mannie didn’t need to know that. It would be better this way. Blake wanted no hesitation on the part of his associate.
In the building, yes. But alive or dead when the fire began?
Blake decided to wait and see.
He located his seven-inch KA-BAR 1217 fixed-blade knife in the office drawer. It would do the trick when the time came, if he needed it to. It was specifically designed for the very purpose he had in mind.
* * *