“Again, wondering why I should care?” Harley said, “What does this have to do with the Reaper?”
Graves tapped the tablet’s face again. The image on the big screen shifted. Harley’s heart leapt to her mouth, but she clamped her jaw shut. The card. The god damned card.
It was a simple piece of white card stock with a bold capital "R" written on it with a Sharpie. There was a straight line with two curving lines at the top coming together in a point. A scythe shape.
The Reaper’s calling card. Literally. The son of a bitch had started leaving the cards at some of his crime scenes once some newspaper wit had started calling him the Grim Reaper Serial Killer. Apparently it tickled the killer’s fancy, so occasionally he’d drop the card at some of his more gruesome kills. But not all of them.
It drove the forensics people nuts.
"You recognize this, of course," Graves said, "The Reaper's little joke. Common index card stock, available at any office supply store in the country. The marks are written with a Sharpie marker. Again, available at every office supply and grocery store in the country. Untraceable. Not that we haven't tried."
Harley dug her nails into her thigh. She tried to keep her face neutral, tried to sound like she didn’t care. “So, what, the Reaper killed this Einstein clone guy? What kind of news is that? The Reaper doesn’t discriminate. He doesn’t have a pattern. He doesn’t stalk hookers or guys with BMW’s. He kills everyone.”
Graves' fingers hesitated over the tablet. He gave Harley a strange look. Something about it made her shift in the cheap office chair. What was happening here?
“We don’t think he killed Dr. DeVol,” he said, “Not yet, anyway.”
“So, some of his victims disappear,” Harley said, “And we never find a trace of them. Come on, Walt, give. You didn’t drag me down here to show me pictures. I’m not a cop anymore, and the Reaper isn’t my case. They took him away from me. So why am I here?”
Graves looked down at his tablet, his throat working. “He did something different this time.”
An electric thrill shot through her. Had the bastard finally screwed up? Did he finally leave a clue, a thread they could pull that led to him?
Walt tapped the tablet’s screen and the image on the wall changed. A small room, an apartment or motel. A single window sat in the middle of a narrow wall. A sagging bed was pushed up against another wall. A ratty easy chair sat near the window. The tan carpet was stained and worn. It looked like a flop house. Some place where drunks and people down on their luck went to kill time waiting to either die or hit bottom. She’d seen dozens of them when she was a cop. Lots of bad things happened in narrow, dirty little rooms like that one.
But what she saw in this room took her breath away. It made no sense.
"It was just chance that we even found this," Graves said, "The building manager is an ex-cop. He went to demand DeVol's rent and went in when he didn't answer. He recognized them and called immediately. Or maybe it wasn't a coincidence. Our boy never leaves things to chance, does he? He's sending us a message, Kam."
“What kind of message?” she whispered. But she was already putting the pieces together. It wasn’t hard.
Scattered throughout the room were dozens of white cards with the black R and scythe on them. Like the Reaper had stood at the door and thrown handfuls of them into the room.
“We think he wants to make himself an army,” Graves said.
Ten
It was decidedly strange to sit at table and have a conference with himself. The air was cold in the cavernous stone room. The air still held a hint of fermented grapes. The barrels of wine that used to inhabit the room were long gone, as Carlson had no taste for such things. And neither would his five children sitting around the rough-hewn pine table.
The five men were identical, of course. Their plain brown hair and round faces were the faces of his youth. It was like looking into a mirror that looked back in time. They stared back at him, their brown eyes and blank faces giving him no hint of what they were thinking. It gave him surge of pride that they hewed so close to the original.
But he didn’t show that on his face any more than their veiled thoughts showed on theirs.
“What shall we call you?” the closest clone asked.
“You may call me father,” Carlson said.
The clones each gave a small nod.
“Appropriate enough, I suppose,” another clone said.
“Though brother might be more appropriate,” said another.
Carlson nodded and smiled. “In a sense, of course,” he said, “But as I am the original, we shall stay with ‘father’ for now.”
“Or perhaps Supreme Commander,” said another clone, “Given your plans.”
“Perhaps, but as you know, I dislike the gaudy trappings of humanity,” Carlson said, “You five are the first from DeVol’s lab. As such you will be my generals in this war. Together we will create a strategy to scale our conflict to the global level. Though I have already planned much of it.”
“You need us to start laying the groundwork,” the first clone said.
“Boot on the ground, so to speak,” said another.
“Reconnaissance and espionage,” said another.
“With a little death on the side,” said another.
Carlson smiled. “Always,” he said.
Eleven
After dismissing his generals, he changed into his death work uniform and went down to DeVol’s lab. Even though the doctor knew his face, he still felt the uniform gave him more power in dealing with the doctor.
Past the heavy steel door, the sharp, vinegary smell of the artificial amniotic fluid hit him. It was something he could never get used to. The odor reminded him of when the cook would can beets from the garden. The kitchen would reek of vinegar for days. Father would make him go to the pantry. There were rows of the jars. The contents would be mysterious shadows bathed in blood. Sometimes he would imagine they were the hearts of those he hated. But there weren’t enough jars for that.
Dr. DeVol was hunched over a microscope. A monitor connected to the microscope displayed cells rapidly dividing. Along the nearest wall, a new crop of clones was growing in the big tubes. The naked fetuses gave him a faint uneasiness. He examined the feeling, wondering where it came from.
“Are the clones up to your expectations?” Dr. DeVol asked.
Carlson snapped to attention. The doctor still had his face planted to the microscope. Carlson’s skin crawled. He surprised people. They didn’t surprise him.
“Yes doctor, I have questioned them at length. They are, as far as I can tell, exact duplicates of me,” Carlson said.
DeVol looked up. His eyes were sharp, interested. “And their memories? Do they appear to be complete, along with the personalities?”
“Yes, your work is perfect doctor,” Carlson said.
DeVol rubbed his face. “Perfection is for the gods. I merely hope for excellence,” he said, “And the suggestions? Have you tested them?”
Carlson felt an itch between his shoulder blades. He made himself be still, despite an urge to twitch and look behind him. “Not extensively,” he said, “Their loyalty seems intact. It will be more difficult for me to test the other suggestions this early in the game.”
DeVol nodded and sighed. “That is the part of my process that I have had the most doubts of,” he said, “Both practical and moral.” He cast a glance at Carlson. “Though the moral part seems moot now, does it not?”
Behind his mask, Carlson smiled. “It depends on your point of view,” he said. He waved a black gloved hand at the row of clone tubes. “I am satisfied with the first clones. It is time to ramp things up.”
DeVol rubbed his face again. The man looked drawn and weary. His flyaway gray hair seemed limp and thinning.
“I am just one man, sir,” he said, “And an old one at that. How do you expect me to do the work of a dozen?”
Carlson pointed the row of clones. “There is your help, doctor. Surely
you can teach my clones how to do this work.”
DeVol turned to the tubes, and, after a long moment, nodded.
Carlson left, closing the heavy steel door behind him. His footsteps echoed down the empty corridor. Soon these empty halls and caverns would be filled with activity and purpose. The vague unease he felt was being drowned out by the excitement growing within him. His dream would no longer be a dream.
Those self-help gurus were right. Incredible things were possible when you Dreamed Big.
Twelve
“You’re going to behave, right?” Graves asked.
Harley gave a non-committal shrug. Graves glared at her, but didn’t say anything else. She didn’t feel like reassuring him. This was his call and she’d let the chips fall where they may.
She’d followed his shiny black SUV in her own crappy gray SUV down to the Fuck Up district, as she liked to call it. The section of town had a real name, something like Brownington or whatever, but Fuck Up suited it better. It was literally on the wrong side of the railroad tracks that cut through the southeast end of the city. She knew it was once a prosperous area of tenements and light industry. But then, weren’t most slums at one time or another?
These days though, the five-story apartment houses lining the narrow street were crumbling. It looked like a good shove could knock down the old red brick buildings. Even with her window closed, Harley could smell the rot from the bags of trash stacked on the sidewalks. Or maybe it was despair she smelled. It was hard to tell.
Graves pulled his shiny SUV up in front of one particularly dilapidated apartment building. Harley parked behind him. She checked her Taser and stuck it in her coat. She went to open the door and hesitated. A tickle went up the base of her spine to her neck and tightened her shoulders. From the center console, she took an extendable baton and slipped it into her other coat pocket.
Graves was already waiting on the sidewalk, foot tapping on the broken concrete. He looked grumpy. Which was normal for him. He also fidgeted, straightening his tie and shifting from foot to foot. Nervous wasn't normal for him. Graves was always in control. It would take a nuke under his chair to surprise him. Harley shoved her hands in her coat pockets, fingers curling around the baton and Taser.
The tenement looked worse up close. The lower windows had black iron bars over them, but plywood covered the inside. Jagged triangles of glass still jutted out from the frames. The red brick was crumbling. Large chunks of mortar were missing. Around the foundation was a light drift of red and gray.
“People actually still live here?” Harley asked.
“Not officially,” Graves said, “City recently condemned it.”
“Unofficially?”
“Rats, cockroaches, and some two legged wildlife,” Graves said.
She shook her head. Why did he bring her here then? “The scene’s compromised,” she said, “And haven’t your forensics people licked the place clean?”
“Yeah, sure,” Graves said. He stared at the crumbling wall.
“Then why am I here, Walt?” she said, “Your forensics people didn’t find anything of value, so what am I supposed to do?”
“How do you know they didn’t find anything?” he asked. Casual. Too casual. Still staring at the wall, eyes moving up to the windows above. Those ones still had glass in them at least.
“Because the Reaper never leaves anything he doesn’t want to,” she said, “And you already showed me that.”
Walt rubbed the back of his neck. Color rose on his cheeks. Harley hid a smile. Something about this was booga booga. If it was straight up cop work, Graves would be as emotional as a plastic mannequin.
“I want you to get a feel for the scene,” Graves said, “This is the last place we know for sure the Reaper was.”
Feel? She suppressed an urge to ask him who he was. Walt Graves didn’t go by feelings. He went by evidence and facts.
It was the last part he said that really caught her attention.
“Last known? You mean he hasn’t dropped any cards in over a year?” she said.
He nodded. He looked up and down the trash lined street. “Come on, let’s go up. There’s too many ears around here.”
She glanced at the empty street and the tenement windows across the street. They were blank like the empty stares of battle shocked soldiers. The things those windows had seen…
But there weren’t any people around. It suddenly struck her how quiet the street was. There weren’t any cars. There weren’t any people sitting out on the steps. No unemployed young guys hustling a little smack on the corner. No girls in tight pants hustling a little ass. No children throwing things or begging for change.
Nobody.
She gripped the Taser and baton in her coat. It suddenly felt like there was a target on her back. She did a slow look around. Nothing but dark windows set tin crumbling red brick under steel gray skies.
“Where are the people?” she asked.
“We don’t know,” Graves asked.
She took a step closer, locking on his gray eyes. “What do you mean?”
Graves swallowed. She saw something in his eyes that she’d never seen before. Fear.
“Some of them moved away,” he said, “But not all of them. They’re just…gone.”
“People don’t just disappear, Walt,” she said. She turned her head away.
“You know better than that,” he said, his voice soft.
She did. Any cop did. People disappeared all the time. They skipped town and changed their name. They became someone else. And then, sometimes, they just vanished. There were milk cartons everywhere plastered with the faces of children who just vanished. Crude posters stapled to telephone poles and taped in store windows, with the word: MISSING, on top with dark letters.
People gone. Disappeared. No one saw anything. Maybe years later someone would find some bones and tattered clothing in a back lot. Or not.
They were the cases that haunted the cops and tormented the families.
“Are you saying this entire neighborhood just vanished?” she said.
Graves nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“Why hasn’t this been all over the news?” she said, “Even I would have noticed that.”
He motioned toward the tenement door. “Let’s talk inside,” he said.
“Why? Who are you afraid will hear us? Ghosts?”
Walt paled. “Inside. Please.”
Thirteen
Graves wouldn’t say another word until the got up to the third floor and Dr. DeVol’s former room. To her surprise, there was a guard at the door. A big guy in black body armor. He had an M-16 in his hands. His cold eyes followed them as they walked toward him. The floorboards creaked and groaned. The corridor stank of mildew and urine. Brown paint peeled from the walls in large sheets. At least she hoped it was paint.
Graves nodded to the guard. “Anything?” he asked.
The guard shook his head. “All quiet. Who’s she?”
Before Graves could answer, Harley flicked a nail on her eyepatch. “Arrr, I’m a pirate, matey. Can’t you tell?”
The guard looked unamused. The M-16 started to swing in her direction. Graves stepped forward.
“Consultant,” he said, “Here to check the room.”
The guard gave her a look that promised severe pain followed by severe death if she tried anything. Harley considered whipping out the baton and laying the guy on the filthy floor. But she’d behave. For now.
He moved aside and Graves opened the door. A wave of musty old man stink came out. He beckoned her through. She stepped inside and chills washed over her. Her skin crawled so much she thought it was going to jump off her bones and run back to the SUV on its own.
The little room was just like the photo Graves projected on the TV. The narrow window was there, admitting thin afternoon light. The sagging bed, the ratty easy chair.
The cards.
Dozens–no, hundreds of the small, white cards.
She
realized she was holding her breath and slowly released it. Every time she’d seen one of those cards in the past it had been attached to a death. One card, one death.
But these cards were scattered all over the room. So thick they were like snowflakes from a fresh storm. The black marks seemed like insects, ready to start crawling to life.
Were the cards deaths that had already happened? Or were they deaths yet to come?
Graves closed the door. The latch clicked, the echo bouncing around the room. He stepped up beside her, hands in his pockets.
“Why have you left it like this?” she asked, “What’s the point?”
“We still think there’s something here,” he said, “We’re just not sure what.”
“Shit, you’ve been guarding this night and day for over a year?” she asked, “That’s where my tax money is going?”
“This is the biggest case the bureau has ever had,” he said, “The Reaper is the most prolific serial killer in history.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I bet Stalin and Ghengis Kahn would give him a run for his money.”
“Those guys had armies,” Graves said, “This guy has killed thousands all by himself.”
Harley raised an eyebrow. Graves wouldn’t meet her eye. “You guys are finally admitting it’s just one guy, like I’d been saying all along?”
“That’s the current assessment,” Graves said.
“But you’re still not going public with it?” she asked.
It had been a sore point for them. Harley thought they would make more progress if they publicized the Reaper. Well, publicized him more. The public was aware there was a serial killer at large called the Grim Reaper. What they didn’t know was how many people he was suspected of killing. And those were just the ones they were relatively certain about. Harley suspected there were a lot more. A lot.
“Upstairs currently feels releasing too much info would cause panic,” Graves said. The stiff set of his shoulders told her he’d had a few arguments about it, too.
The Devil's Army Page 4