by L T Vargus
The uppers hit first, technically. He felt it in his eyeballs, a little electricity there. Then it traveled to his limbs. Muscles twitching. A tension inside pulled all his nerves as taut as piano strings about to break. It made his chest feel tight and his jaw churn.
The benzos came on more softly. Where the Ritalin barged in like someone stomping up the stairs wearing combat boots, the Valium pranced in like a ballet dancer, taking the edge right off. The piano strings relaxed just a hair, just enough to exhale again. He slowed down. Kind of cruised back into the bathroom.
He started giggling when the weird hit. Fragments from his past started drifting by, some cartoon version of his life flashing before his eyes, with just the funny images, no sound.
The family dog dragging its butt around the carpet when he was a kid.
A friend from grade school running into the gym wall and falling down.
The same buddy barfing up Goldschläger on their high school vice-principal.
Slapstick stuff. Gave him the giggles.
Were the walls moving?
He let out a last little laugh as he leaned in to check their solidity. Going quiet. Reverent. Holding out a hand. Fingertips touching the smooth of the painted drywall, sinking in just a touch.
Yes. They were getting melty. Gooey. Like taffy going soft in the sun. That made him snort out another series of giggles.
Emma Stone was on the melting wall now, her movie projected there by nothing. It was raining in the scene. Dramatic. Moody. Pouting perfect lips and downcast eyes. That was what had given him the creeps in the theater, wasn’t it? The lips. Thinking they would walk off the screen and smash him, soft and huge.
Then the projection was playing an establishing shot of the theater. All still for a beat save for the leaves scraping by on the sidewalk, powdery snow kicking up everywhere.
Then? Action.
Bullets ripping through the huge front windows. Glass tumbling in that waterfall, conjuring up a collective moan of panic from the mob inside. That out of tune choir warming up.
He put his hands on his knees, laughing so hard now that he was crying. He couldn’t help it. The juxtaposition of that phony movie crap and the reality of the violence he had wrought was so jarring and discordant that it was just about the funniest damn thing he could imagine.
He stumbled a few steps, tried to keep pacing, but the laughter was shaking him too hard. It squeezed him in the middle like a fist, constricting his core until he was so tense that he couldn’t move. The laughter was coming out in wheezes. Out of control. He couldn’t catch his breath.
He careened along the wall, falling more than walking. Knocking framed prints down and toppling over the side table where he threw his mail and emptied his pockets. Coins and keys and envelopes hit the floor and scattered. He stumbled over the tangle and slammed his shoulder back into solid drywall. It kept him upright enough to soldier on.
Finally, he caught hold of something that steadied him. The bathroom sink. He held himself up in a half-bent state, his arms supporting his upper half over the basin.
A little at a time, he pulled his head up, sure that when he did, he would be able to breathe freely again. Like it would open up his airways and relax his chest enough that the air could flow at will.
But when he did, he caught sight of himself in the mirror.
His face had gone strange. Wrong.
It was just another chinless pig staring back at him. Weak and stupid and ugly. An animal no different from the ones he had put down.
Prey.
All at once, the laughing stopped.
Chapter 28
Wind ripped through the parking garage, adding a low whine to the snapping of cameras and rumble of conversation. Loshak stood in the slight windbreak of two Forensic Services vans, watching as the techs tore through the dark green Taurus. They surrounded it, snapping photos and shining tiny flashlights into its crevices, searching underneath with small mirrors on telescoping sticks. The process reminded him of fire ants coming out of an anthill to swarm anything that touched it.
Loshak switched his coffee to his other hand so he could stuff the coldest one in his pocket for a while. He had grabbed another piping hot coffee on the way over, but after five minutes in the elements, it was already cold. Styrofoam was no match for a Chicago winter. He wished he’d left the coffee in the console of the rental, but he didn’t want to go back and put it down. He wanted to stay up close and personal on this search, make sure if they found something that pointed away from Ray Winston no one missed it.
Or tried to cover it up.
Nearby, Spinks was tugging his newly acquired hat down over his ears and bouncing a little from foot to foot, presumably trying to generate some body heat.
“You could wait in the car,” Loshak said.
Spinks shook his head.
“First-hand accounts make for a better story.”
“Oh, right, the book.”
With all the threats at the Bureau and the clusterfuck in Kansas City, Loshak had forgotten that Spinks was supposed to be writing a book about him. He cleared his throat and took a long drink of coffee, trying to look nonchalant.
“I guess I figured you had given up on that.”
Spinks scoffed.
“What would make you think that?”
Loshak shrugged. “Certain circumstances. And I haven’t seen your little notebook in a while. The one you were always taking notes in before.”
“Don’t worry, partner,” Spinks said, tapping the side of his stocking cap. “I’m still taking notes. Just not on paper right now. I thought it would be safer, considering certain circumstances.”
“How do you write your book, then?” Loshak asked. “A digital trail is as easy to trace as a paper trail these days. Maybe easier.”
“Almost,” Spinks said. “But if you look hard enough, you can find ways to stay untraceable.”
The techs at the car huddled for a second, talking, and swapped out their warm winter gloves for nitrile. Finished with the exterior, then. They each took a different section of the car — the trunk, the front seat, the back seat — and commenced the interior search.
Loshak moved to get a better angle on the back seat, and Spinks went with him. They watched silently as the techs inspected the various nooks and crannies of the seats with those little mirrors and flashlights, then began probing with gloved hands. They fished under the seatbelts and behind the glove box and between the carpet lining and the metal in the trunk.
“I’ve got shell casings.” The tech in the front seat popped her head out the driver’s side door. “Camera.”
The camera was handed over, and photos were snapped. Then the casings were bagged and labeled.
“Well, what do you make of that, Agent Loshak?” Millhouse asked, coming over to join him and Spinks. “Casings.”
Millhouse’s hair whipped into her eyes, and Loshak took the opportunity to study her body language more closely. She didn’t sound like she was challenging him or gloating, but she had crossed her arms over her chest while she spoke — at least before her hair flew into her face — and lifted her chin a touch like she was looking down on him.
“It’s definitely the car from the traffic cam footage,” he said when she was looking at him again. “But I’d be willing to bet he dumped it here on purpose. There won’t be any way to trace this back to him. He wouldn’t have left any evidence for us if there was a way to connect it to him.”
“Yeah, I’m with the special agent on this one,” Spinks said. “I wouldn’t go to all the trouble of covering my face and wearing disposable clothes just to leave my registration in the glovebox of my getaway car-slash-murder mobile.”
“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Millhouse said, and this time it was easy to hear the incredulous tone in her voice.
The techs had moved on from the preliminary visual search to swabbing the steering wheel, gear shift, and door handles for possible DNA. Then they switched over to
dusting for fingerprints, going for a wider area around the trunk, doors, dash, window and lock buttons, and seatbelts. That part was a lot slower than the DNA swabbing. While they waited, Millhouse’s phone rang. She went to her car to answer it out of the screaming wind.
“You still don’t think she’s part of a cover-up?” Spinks asked under his breath.
“I think she might be angling for some kind of political office,” Loshak said. “If Ray Winston was our guy, that would be a nice, fast resolution to go on her record.”
Except that wasn’t entirely fair. She was probably as upset about a shooter rampaging through her city as he would be if it was happening in his backyard. Mass shootings like these did something to the psyche. Opened a primal sort of wound on the soul.
“Really,” Loshak said, “she probably wants this guy off the streets as bad as everybody else in Chicago. She’s just getting tunnel vision with this Ray Winston issue. It happens.”
Suddenly, the techs were yelling at each other and gathering around the driver’s side door. They had something. The woman who’d taken the front seat was now crouched beside the door and carefully lifting a print from the paneling. The rest of the techs had stepped back to watch or hand her materials.
Loshak glanced at Spinks. By unspoken agreement, they got closer.
“What is it?” Loshak asked.
“Gina got a partial of a palm.” A tech with heavy acne scars shined his flashlight on the spot. “The right hand most likely.”
“It could be nothing,” Gina said without looking up from her work.
“You always say that.”
“Most of the time I’m right.”
“Well, it could be something, too,” the acne-scarred tech insisted.
“Let’s hope so,” Loshak said.
“What did we find?” Millhouse asked, squeezing in between Loshak and Spinks.
“A palm print,” Spinks said. “Part of one, anyway.”
Millhouse nodded.
“That was Lopez and Flemming on the phone. Ray Winston said he sold the Taurus a few months ago to a guy from Craigslist. The guy wanted to conduct the sale off the books, all cash, and he paid an extra three hundred dollars to take the plates with him.”
“Jeez,” Spinks muttered. “And the guy never thought something might be up? Who asks to buy your plates if they’re not up to some shit? Nobody, that’s who.”
Loshak shrugged. “When you sell someone your old beater, you’re not expecting them to go running around mass murdering in it.”
“I guess so,” Spinks said, but he sounded doubtful.
Loshak turned to Millhouse. “Did the interviewing detectives get Ray Winston’s prints so we can rule him out?”
She pulled out her phone and started dialing.
“I’ll check with their captain to be sure,” she said. “If not, I’ll have him send them back.”
That was the problem with these bureaucratic observances, the degrees of removal. The detectives could be halfway back to the station by now.
But Loshak didn’t say anything. There was little doubt now. Ray Winston wasn’t their guy.
Chapter 29
He didn’t realize time was passing until his arms started to shake.
How long had he been leaning over the sink, staring into the mirror? Minutes? Hours?
He didn’t know.
But he couldn’t look away. There it was. The real him, the weak-chinned little kid with the lisp.
Thay, it’th Benny! Benny’th here, guyth!
He shook his head. Tried to remember that feeling of godlike power when he squeezed the trigger, spraying bullets at everyone in the mall, on the freeway, at the movie theater. Passing judgment on the weak and unworthy. He’d been in control then. Powerful. Predatory.
Hey, Benny, doeth thee thell theathells down by the theathore?
He tried to remember his dominance over life and death, but he couldn’t hold the feeling in his head. Not anymore.
Now older feelings arose to sap him of that power. Ancient feelings that took him back to the halls of his elementary school, made him feel small. He hadn’t fought back. Not then. And anything he said only sent them into hysterics at his lisp.
The bullies’ voices came to him sometimes even now, more than two decades on, usually when something good happened to him. Blurting insults in his head to undercut any joy. Just loud enough he couldn’t ignore them.
He pinched his eyes shut and shook his head at the same time, like maybe he could shudder this history away.
The floor bucked and swelled under his feet at this motion, tilted like a listing ship, but the old feelings didn’t leave. They got worse. It weighed down his stomach until he could feel the boulder in there, crushing his intestines.
It wasn’t fair. He’d known that from the beginning. From the very first day of fourth grade, when Liam Connolly had started going to Ben’s private school. Liam had gotten in on a scholarship, and his uniform was obviously second-hand, but he’d known immediately how to endear himself to the rich kids.
It played out in the mirror like the Emma Stone movie on the flesh-wall: Liam walking out onto the playground in front of him, stopping like he didn’t know which way to go. The rest of the class streaming out of the building around them. Ben tapping the new kid on the shoulder, then smiling and putting his hand out when Liam turned around, the way his father always approached new people.
Hey, my name’th Ben. Do you want to play on the thwingth?
Liam sneering, Gross, did you just ask me to play with your thing? loud enough that their classmates heard and stopped around them. That drew a few high-pitched giggles.
Ben’s face burning. No, I thaid—
I don’t want to play with your thing, weirdo. Practically yelling now, making the other kids shriek with laughter. Get lotht, ath-wipe.
That last little bit had killed. It was like none of the other kids had ever realized they could make fun of the way Ben talked until Liam unlocked that door for them.
For the next two years, even after multiple speech therapists had helped Ben’s tongue correct itself, his school life was a living hell. He should’ve been the one leading the pack, or he should’ve at least been a part of it. It should’ve been him making fun of the food stamps kid with no dad until Liam was the one hiding in the bathroom crying, but with that one simple interaction, Liam had stolen it from him. Isolated Ben as the odd man out.
Like he needed any help with that. He was already the odd man out at home. The youngest of three boys by almost twenty years, son of the second trophy wife, the baby who couldn’t talk right or do any of the manly stuff their dad loved. While Ben was in school crying in the bathroom, his older brothers were already working in the oil fields, learning the business from the old man, starting at the bottom and working their way up just like he did. While they were making him proud and ensuring his masculine legacy would go on, Ben was claiming he had a tummy ache every morning, trying to get out of school.
His nanny had bought it at first, but his dad had sniffed out the bullshit immediately. Told him that even if he was telling the truth, no son of his was staying home for a bellyache. If you want off school, you’d better be dead or dying, his dad had said. Believe me, the real world don’t care if you’ve got a bellyache.
It did care if you had a lisp, though. Ben could testify to that.
Even his dad cared. The old man had never said anything about it to Ben, never even said the words “lisp” or “speech impediment” around him, but every now and then his dad would get insistent that Ben say a word right. Just sit there with him and try to get Ben to repeat after him. No, watch my mouth. Say it like this. Until the old man got tired of trying and gave up again. There was no yelling or lecturing then, just a disappointed sigh that was so much worse. An exhalation of air that said everything his dad wasn’t going to, a sound that diced up a little boy’s insides until they bled.
When he realized he was sitting on the toilet cryin
g tears and snot into his hands, he got up again and wiped his face on the towel hanging over the shower curtain. It felt like fur still attached to a living mammal, warm and coarse. He could feel the creature breathing as he pressed his face into it and smeared the snot and wetness around. He kept his face buried in its hide for a long time, just rubbing. Animals were good. Comforting. They didn’t care if he could talk right. They weren’t disappointed in him for not being the perfect strapping, manly son to round out the trio.
He had tried, obviously. Worked and worked on saying his words until finally, when he was ten, he started to be able to pronounce a hard S correctly. Did everything he could to avoid saying any word with a soft S until he conquered that, too. But by then it was too late. His dad had already written him off as a lost cause.
Maybe that was why he’d tried so hard to reinvent himself after they moved to a new state, and he started fresh in a new middle school. The lisp had been more than just a speech impediment, it had been a privilege impediment, and with it gone, he’d become everything the son of a rich oilman always should’ve been: popular, accomplished, adored. He went out for sports, joined clubs and activities, surrounded himself with sycophants. In high school and college, he didn’t just sit at the cool kid’s table, he was the one they all wanted to be.
But all it took to remind him of his true self was a fumbled soft S or the sound of Liam Connolly’s voice ringing in his head.
Thay, Benny, what’th up? The thky?
“No.”
It came out with force this time. He held out one shaking hand like a gun and pointed it at the mirror.
He was the wolf who devoured the sheep. The lion who thundered into the herd at the watering hole and started ripping throats. He was stronger. Meaner. Unblocked by the social rules society strung up to try to pen everyone in. He was willing to wield the ultimate power. Fearless.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
Fuck you.
The flesh-wall played a different movie now. He shook his head when he saw what it was and just kept shaking, but it was in his face, not going away, not even moving with the rotation of his head.