Dark Prophecy

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  “Yeah,” Stephanie replied with a mock grimace. “It means you’re going to be home very late tonight, and we’re not going to have sex.”

  Paulson knew how lucky he was to be married to Stephanie. She totally got it, totally understood the rigors of his chosen field. Stephanie was in all the way, and he absolutely loved her for it. Even if she did make fun of his go-bag now and again.

  Paulson made it to Chapel Hill in record time. Chapel Hill, along with Durham and Raleigh, formed the famous “Research Triangle”—more Ph.D.’s per capita than anywhere else in the country. Green seemed to be the richest and smartest of them all. At least according to the clips Paulson read on the plane. He had to admit, his eyes glazed over a lot of the financial stuff. But one thing was clear: Green was connected.

  The lead homicide investigator, a tall, white-haired guy named Hunsicker, met him out in front of the Green house. They shook hands, Hunsicker giving him the up and down, slightly quizzical look in his eyes. Paulson knew what he was thinking. Is this guy even out of high school? Paulson had been cursed with a baby face and curly dark hair.

  “What do we have?” Paulson asked.

  Paulson knew what the crime scene looked like from the photos Riggins had sent him. But it always helped to hear another investigator’s take on it.

  “Let me show you,” said Hunsicker. “Words won’t do it justice.”

  Hunsicker walked him through the entryway. The house was furnished with designer housewares and was professionally maintained, but the inside was a mess. Papers and utensils and clothes strewn everywhere.

  “Robbery?” Paulson asked. “Or just made to look like one?”

  “No, there’s definitely stuff missing,” Hunsicker said. “Jewelry, watches, some electronics, some art. Insurance guys have already been out here, and whoever did this got away with a bundle. We also think the vic kept a seriously large amount of cash in a bedroom safe—we found money wrappers and a little logbook. Which may have brought this whole thing. But if you’re going to rob somebody, you knock ’em over the head or shoot them. You don’t do this to them.”

  “Show me,” Paulson said.

  Paulson followed the homicide detective into the basement. He tried to push everything he’d read and seen out of his mind. He wanted to view the crime scene with fresh eyes.

  Green was still hanging upside down from the ceiling, his body was suspended by one ankle. His other leg was bent at the knee and tucked behind, his legs making an inverted number four. Both legs appeared to have been flayed, exposing the blood-buttered muscles beneath. Green’s hands were tied behind his back. The first thing Paulson notice was the stagecraft. Everything was orchestrated to be appreciated by the viewer walking down this flight of stairs. The grisly tableau was meant to shock. The image was supposed to sear itself onto your mind. This was something you weren’t supposed to forget. Something you would be unable to forget.

  Paulson moved for a closer look. Green’s head was badly burned, as if it had been set on fire, then extinguished. Paulson wondered how the killer did that without the rest of the body catching fire. There were no scorch marks anywhere else in the basement. Could you wrap a man’s head in some kind of bag, then set it ablaze from the inside?

  Maybe Green had been tortured. The robbers knew he had all of that cash hidden away, so they brutalized the man until he coughed up a safe combination.

  Paulson made a mental note to take a look at Green’s financials. Even with grisly torture-executions, sometimes the best advice was to follow the money.

  “What’s the time of death?” Paulson asked.

  Hunsicker walked around the scene, but looked at everything except Green’s body. “Based on body temp, he was killed around midnight. He was last seen at a restaurant a few miles away—we talked to the bartender, and the valet guy. Green left alone. He could have picked someone up, but there’s no evidence of anyone else in his car.”

  “Who found him?” Paulson asked.

  “The security company received an alert,” Hunsicker said. “The system had been disengaged, and when it came back online, we received a call. You ever see anything like this?”

  Thing was, Paulson had. There was something familiar about all of this. He just couldn’t bring it to mind right away. It nagged at him. Paulson had to remind himself of the advice he once read: Keep your mind clear. Don’t take mental shortcuts. Let the evidence speak to you.

  Just like Steve Dark.

  chapter 8

  Johnny Knack always thought there was no thrill like a massive deadline rushing at you, ready to grind you into paste. He was a reporter, a hard-core news dog down to the marrow in his bones. But lately—as much as he hated to admit it—the real rush didn’t come from deadlines.

  It came from a small pile of hundred dollar bills tucked in a white paper envelope.

  Courtesy of his current employers, who apparently had bales of the stuff at hand.

  Now you had to be smart with it. You didn’t go handing the whole thing over to a cop. No sir, you tease that wad out. Make a big deal of opening that envelope, carefully plucking a single Franklin out from his friends. See, it’s not the single Franklin that does the trick—it’s the others. The cop thinks, Shit, this was the easiest hundred I ever made. And there’s plenty more where that came from. One hundred bucks, you were in.

  He’d never enjoyed such power.

  Even better, Knack worked for a Web news aggregator that was almost always mentioned on tabloid TV. Cops heard that name, and knew they weren’t exactly dealing with The New York Times. Ethics, shmethics. It was a whole new media playing field, and the Daily Slab floated in that murky Web space between respectability and sleaze. Not quite the Daily Beast or HuffPo, but then again, no Drudge or TMZ.

  What the Slab had—and what had attracted Knack to it a year ago—was a borderline psychotic obsession with scoops. If it happened anywhere in the world, the Slab wanted to tell you first. And they were willing to hemorrhage cash for the privilege.

  The Slab’s owner was a former dot.com millionaire who lost it all, earned it back, and decided to make his next fortune in news. He could afford the scoops because his checks were the plumpest. His press kit made a lot of noise about “bombing mainstream media back into the Stone Age.” The owner had deep pockets for long-form investigatory pieces, too. Well, long form for the Web at least: a thousand words and up.

  Knack had been looking into an exposé of Martin Green—a man who’d miraculously avoided the shit-splatter of the subprime mortgage meltdown a few years ago. In J-school you were taught to put a face to the story. There was no better face of greed than Green.

  And the best part: Nobody fucking knew it! His editor at the Slab agreed—they loved creating villains as much as scooping mainstream media. Green would be an amazing villain.

  So Knack had been sniffing around Chapel Hill for the past week, trying to flesh out the bio of a man who worked hard to avoid the spotlight. He had a nice house, but nothing ridiculously flashy. He drank, but not to excess. He was divorced, but these days, who wasn’t? No kids. No kinks—as far as Knack could tell.

  It was turning out to be a dull story until a little after midnight, when Knack’s phone rang and a cop told him Green was dead.

  Since then, Knack had been working the scene for hours, but he’d had no luck sneaking behind the yellow tape. The scene had been clamped down sphincter-tight, and not even his envelope of crisp new Franklins could help him out. Which was curious. Green was a player, but he wasn’t the freakin’ president.

  And the clock was ticking.

  Knack noticed that the B and E squad was on the scene, too, along with a security company van. That was interesting. Green appeared to have died following some kind of break-in. His cop source had gone mute after the first tip, but he had told him over the phone: This is a weird one.

  Meaning: It wasn’t a coronary that took out Green.

  It was something else—something weird.

  At 2
:31 A.M., Knack pulled out his BlackBerry, thumbed it for a couple of minutes, then hit SEND. He took the little scrap of official info he had from the cops (namely, that a guy named Martin Green had died in his house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) and teased it out into a 350-word piece, full of innuendo, questions, outright fabrications. Grounded in hard fact, of course.

  The e-mail was opened by the Slab’s night editor at 2:36 A.M., and posted on the site by 2:38 EST. Anyone with a phone could read Knack’s words instantly. Huzzah, huzzah. Another scoop for the Slab.

  Except Knack kind of hated to file the story. Now, even the somnambulant mainstream papers would notice Green, and there went his long-form piece. Poof. Now, he’d be competing for a story he’d owned just a few short hours ago.

  Knack needed to own Green’s murder, no matter what.

  chapter 9

  Knack sat in his rental car, popped another breath mint, and kicked around the possibilities. Could this be a random home invasion that turned ugly? No way of knowing until he saw the coroner’s report, see what was done to poor old Greenie.

  But what if it wasn’t just a home invasion? What if someone wanted Green dead on purpose? Wanted him dead because he was such an awesome villain?

  Nothing Knack had turned up so far pointed in this direction. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  Knack paced the scene. Every once in a while a cop would give him some shit about moving on, and Knack would show him his courtesy card from the Chapel Hill PD (another gift from his friend on the force). Knack’s stomach growled, but he didn’t want to risk a five-minute fast-food run. Step away from a scene for even a few minutes, you could miss everything.

  Instead, Knack popped more breath mints, and tried to convince his stomach that it was actual food. He used to smoke, but hated how everyone started recoiling from him a couple of years ago. So fucked up. So Knack popped breath mints obsessively. He couldn’t stand to finish them, so he would spit them out when they wore down to a tiny pebble. Then he popped another one. Still, people tended to recoil whenever he opened his mouth.

  Knack was hanging around the scene, kicking around scenarios, looking for an in, when he saw someone interesting pull up. A young guy—jeans, expensive watch, good shoes, rental car. Almost immediately, he was escorted into the scene like royalty. No FBI vest, no other identifying items. But this guy practically screamed Fed.

  Oh yeah. Knack needed to find out who the fuck he was, pronto.

  Sure, he could try official sources. But that was almost always a supreme waste of time. Instead, Knack walked up to the guy’s rental and tried the handle of the passenger door. It was unlocked. Knack loved that—the cock-sure confidence of federal law enforcement officials. Dude pulls up to a crime scene full of cops, why would he bother locking his door?

  Knack lowered himself into the seat, popped open the glove box. There it was, just like he thought. The rental agreement. You’re supposed to keep them with you, of course, but this guy probably just stuffed it out of sight quick because he’d been in a hurry to get to this crime scene.

  Let’s see who you are . . .

  ... Mr. Jeb Paulson?

  Knack wrote down the name, along with his address and phone number, before stuffing the rental agreement back in the envelope and replacing it in the glove box. He scanned the inside of the car, quick. The vehicle had that new-car smell—something the rental companies sprayed in. Knack had once written a piece about it.

  In the backseat was a small duffel bag. File folder sticking out of the side pocket.

  Knack looked around. Nobody had noticed him. Yet.

  He reached back, grabbed the file folder, flipped it open. Inside were a few pieces about Martin Green—the same pieces Knack had dug up a few weeks ago. But then, in the back, was a little thin slice of gold.

  A printout of a crime-scene photo—embedded in an e-mail.

  From someone named Tom Riggins, to this mystery man—Paulson. The terse message read:

  Review, get down to Chapel Hill.

  But the photo. Oh, the photo. Even in black-and-white printout, Knack could see this had been no simple home invasion. Somebody had played around with poor Marty Green. Hung him, skinned him, burned him, and did God knows what else to him. Someone clearly had fun.

  The scene reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place it. Knack had been raised a good Catholic boy, and it looked like the torture of a saint. You had saints who were stabbed in the head. Saints who were flayed alive then tossed into salt mines. Saints who had their eyes and tongues removed and then were forced to eat them. Forget torture-porn flicks. You want the real hard-core stuff, you read Lives of the Saints.

  So who was the saint of the upside-down torture snuff? If only he’d kept in touch with Sister Marianne. She could help him sort this out in a minute.

  Knack suddenly remembered where he was—in the rental car of some unidentified Federal agent of some sort. He gets caught in here, he might be breathing through a hood in a secret Cuban prison later tonight. Keeping the printout in his lap, he gingerly slid the folder back into the duffel bag, stepped out of the car, closed the door. Calmly strolled back toward his own car, wondering where he could find a scanner.

  At a local copy shop, waiting for the image to scan, Knack thought about how he could put himself in a position to see what was on that legal pad. In the meantime, he pecked away on a netbook, Googling this mysterious Tom Riggins. Guy turned out to be a lifer at something called Special Circs, which was notable only because it wasn’t noted very often. Special Circs seemed to be tied into the FBI, but Riggins’s name also popped up in relation to the DOJ. Interesting. So Paulson had to be Special Circs, too. Why had he been summoned to the Green murder?

  Within the hour Knack e-mailed a follow-up about Green being the target of a “vigilante death cult” (oooh, yeah, he liked the sound of that) according to “well-placed anonymous sources.” He buttressed this assertion with a blind quotes from the local cops, as well as innocuous quotes from friends and neighbors that, with just the right framework, could read as sinister and despairing. For instance:

  Green kept to himself—which could also mean he was hiding.

  Green drank occasionally—which could also mean he was drowning his guilt in single-malt.

  Green was divorced—even his family couldn’t stand to be around him. By extension, he deserved to die.

  The trick wasn’t to say these things overtly. You let the “facts” and the quotes hang out there. Readers were good at connecting their own dots. Readers just wanted a few surface details that would help them categorize a guy like Green and then file it away. It was shorthand for real thinking.

  Green = Greedy Money Man = Racked With Guilt Over Something = Green Became the Target of Vigilantes.

  Simple.

  This “death cult” was designed to provoke a reaction from the Feds. They’d want to know his sources. Well, fellas, tit for motherfucking tat. Besides, Knack had the best thing: the crime-scene photo.

  chapter 10

  West Hollywood, California

  Another night, another panicked wake-up. Another frenzied sweep through the house, checking doors and windows, lingering on his daughter’s half-finished room. Another series of hours to kill before dawn.

  So Dark surfed through murder stories.

  He knew he shouldn’t. He had promised himself that he’d pull his mind out of murders. For his daughter’s sake, if nothing else. Even reading about this stuff was like an alcoholic just browsing at the local liquor store or a heroin addict pricking the crook of his arm with a syringe, you know . . . just to remember what it felt like.

  Dark knew this.

  He read the stories anyway.

  The early morning roundup included a mother who killed her husband in a ritzy $3,500-a-night Fort Lauderdale hotel. It had been their anniversary. Her suicide note claimed she’d endured thirteen years of hell. A father in Sacramento had suffocated his two-year-old daughter. Turned himself i
n. Asked to be put to death immediately. An accountant had been stabbed on a street in Edinburgh, Scotland. A bandit who claimed his pistol fired accidentally when he held it to the temple of the kid he was robbing. At least eight—no, nine cases of children shooting other children. And this was just since midnight.

  There are an estimated 1,423 murders in the world every day. That worked out to a murder every 1.64 seconds. Dark did a daily scan of homicide briefs, which included the cruelest words in the English language: Bludgeoned. Slashed. Stabbed. Shot. Gutted. Eviscerated.

  But this morning, Dark found one that practically jumped off the screen.

  The ritual torture-murder of a man named Martin Green.

  Dark quickly read the story—which had been first broken on a gossip Web site called the Slab. The piece was everything Dark hated about modern crime journalism. It was sensationalistic, vaguely sadistic, gruesome, and yet thinly reported. The writer, Johnny Knack, had woven a story using the thinnest of threads. The paucity of details—that’s what bugged Dark the most. The stuff he did have was misleading and obscured the real story. Most offensive of all, the story had a completely unsupported premise: that a financial adviser named Martin Green had been the targets of a “vigilante death cult.”

  However, Knack did have an exclusive:

  A crime-scene photo, right from Special Circs. Or as Knack put it: “High-level sources close to the investigation.”

  Dark copied the JPEG from the Slab site and dragged it into a piece of presentation software on his desktop. After a few clicks, the image was projected onto the basement’s lone bare wall. Dark stood up, killed the lights. The bright image of Martin Green’s final moment shined on the white concrete. Nowhere near scale but large enough for Dark to see the smaller details.