The Other Daniel - A Camille Grisham Novella

by John Hardy Bell

  THE

  OTHER

  DANIEL

  A GRISHAM/SULLIVAN NOVELLA

  JOHN HARDY BELL

  Copyright © 2014 John Hardy Bell

  All rights reserved.

  This e-book is intended for personal use only, and may not be reproduced, transmitted, or redistributed in any way without the express written consent of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the organizations, characters, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  For more, visit my website http://jhardybell.com

  Twitter: @johnbellwrites

  Facebook: facebook.com/Author.John.Hardy.Bell

  Email: johnbellwrites@gmail.com

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Other Titles

  Prologue

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Epilogue

  For the fans who convinced me that Camille’s story was worth continuing

  Thank you

  PROLOGUE

  THE OTHER DANIEL – BY JACOB DEAVER

  Between 2008 and 2012, Daniel Alexander Sykes savagely murdered twenty-seven people, including the FBI agent who was attempting to capture him. Sykes was a monster in every sense of the word – a true representation of the worst that humanity had to offer. And as the grisly details of his four-year crime spree slowly emerged, no sane person would have dared argued otherwise.

  But as you are about to read, there is much more to Daniel Sykes than the man who the world came to know as ‘The Circle Killer’. He was a first-grade teacher from Kutztown, Pennsylvania, a loving husband, a doting father, and, dare it be said, a human being. By the time you are finished with this book, you may very well want to label me more pathologically twisted than the subject I am writing about. Or you may come to a more rational and balanced conclusion: that it is very easy to judge someone without first knowing everything about them. But it isn't always fair to do so.

  Meredith Park slowly exhaled as she put the two-paragraph manuscript down on her desk, only now realizing that she had been holding her breath the entire time she was reading it.

  The author of the manuscript sat across from her, nervous anticipation accentuating the tightness of his face. "So? What do you think?"

  Meredith carefully considered her reply as she scanned the top of the page. "I think the title is brilliant."

  The author smiled the same way all authors smiled when they heard the 'B' word. Images of Hemmingway and Salinger were undoubtedly swirling through his head, and Meredith knew she had to bring him back into the realm of the living - quickly.

  "But I'm not seeing much else of value here."

  She had never seen a face drop faster.

  "I'm sorry, Jacob. I've always believed in the concept, and I still do. But the fact of the matter is that it's been three months since you've collected your advance. I know I don't have to preach to you about the importance of deadlines, and given your track record I’m confident you'll find a way to meet this one. I just thought there would be a little more meat on the bone by now."

  Jacob Deaver's stiff posture was betrayed by the pronounced quivering of his chin. It was a reaction that Meredith had seen too many times before. In her experience, writers were the most prideful human beings on the planet, and no matter how much they extolled the virtues of honest feedback, deep down the only feedback they truly valued was the kind that confirmed the perfection of their words. Entering her tenth year as a literary agent, Meredith had come across perfection only a handful of times. In three years of critiquing his work, Jacob had yet to come close. But The Other Daniel contained all the necessary elements of a potential bestseller: dark subject matter, intriguing players, and most importantly, controversy. It was the kind of book that got people talking. And no matter if that talk was positive or negative, it was still talk, which in Meredith's business was everything. She was on the verge of reminding her client of this potential, but felt no need to further inflate his ego. She needed words on the page. And no matter how much potential the book had, two paragraphs in three months simply wasn’t enough.

  "The publisher hasn't asked for a progress report yet, but it's only a matter of time. And when the time does come, they are going to expect a lot more than this. Frankly I expect more too. A lot of people are sticking their necks out to get this to press. It's time to give them a reason to believe that it's worth it." She sighed, then slid the manuscript in his direction. "What are you going to do to make them believe?"

  Jacob eyed the page as if the answer was hidden somewhere deep in the margins. "It's going to come together, Meredith." His tired brown eyes communicated a doubt that his words did not.

  "How? When?"

  "The outline is finished and the basic narrative is laid out. The problem has been getting people to talk to me."

  "I thought all you needed was some background on the guy. How hard is it to get people to talk about what kind of teacher he was?"

  "Now that word is spreading that this book is some kind of sympathy piece on Sykes, which we both know isn't true, it's been incredibly hard. I've been to Pennsylvania twice now. I've seen where Sykes grew up, visited the school he taught in, I even sat through a church service with his old pastor. The people I encountered couldn't have been nicer, until I told them who I was and what I was doing there. Then I suddenly felt like the mass-murderer. People hate this man. Even the ones who love him hate him. To them, the life he lived prior to becoming a killer doesn’t even exist."

  For the duration of Jacob's ham-handed explanation, Meredith found herself doodling on her desktop calendar. It was a portrait of her family - husband, herself, and three daughters in stick figure form with tall grass, lush trees, and a smiling sun high above. Her six-year-old would have been proud of the craftsmanship. The doodle was designed to keep her calm, to maintain perspective, to prevent her from unleashing an unruly temper on her already fragile client. It only worked for a moment.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assumed the purpose of this book was to use the people in Sykes' life – namely family and friends - to show the world that he was more than the headlines portrayed him to be."

  Jacob ran fingers across the dense stubble on his otherwise smooth, youthful face. “That’s right.”

  "So if you can't talk to these people, you don't have a book. Is that what you’re telling me?"

  The author's long frame sank deep into his chair, weighed down by the defeat of her perceived rejection. In addition to being prideful, writers were entirely too damn sensitive, Meredith thought. She forced a smile in hopes of easing the tension.

  "Okay, what do you say we change course here and do a little brainstorming. Is there anyone on your list whom you haven't yet spoken to?"

  Jacob remained quiet and Meredith could see the wheels of his memory turning. When his blank eyes met hers a few moments later, she knew what the outcome of his mental query had been. Still, she waited for him to say it.

  "Not really."

  Meredith's sigh was louder than she intended.

  "Cut me some slack here, would you? It's not like I can talk to any of Sykes' victims. In case you haven't kept up with the story, they're all dead. That leaves me with a bunch of family members and friends who spend most of their waking hours trying to disown the guy. I've tried just about everything short of putting a gun to their heads. Trust me, no one is bit
ing."

  The resolve in Jacob's voice almost had Meredith convinced of the futility of the project and she had just begun contemplating how she was going to recoup the publisher's advance. Then she thought about something Jacob said: I've tried just about everything short of putting a gun to their heads. It came to her like a flash of light, so brilliant that it almost blinded her. An idea. A solution. A book.

  "Camille Grisham."

  Jacob's mouth flew open before he could formulate the words to come out of it. "The FBI agent?"

  "Former FBI agent," Meredith corrected. "Look, I understand it's a bit outside of the box."

  "A bit?"

  "But it's also the perfect angle. Camille is the only person we know of who saw the worst of Sykes and lived to tell the tale."

  "The problem is she isn't telling that tale to anyone. Do you know how many people have angled for the rights to her story? We're talking huge names offering huge money. And Camille has said no each and every time. What makes you think she'd give me two seconds, let alone enough sit-down material for an entire book?"

  He made a good point, and deep down Meredith knew he was probably right. But she refused to let her enthusiasm be sobered by something as trivial as reality. She wrote the words 'tortured FBI agent equals guaranteed bestseller' next to her family doodle, and knew that in the world she operated in, it absolutely did. The look of borderline horror that colored Jacob's face let her know just how far in she would have to dig her heels in order to convince him. Fortunately for Meredith, nobody dug deeper.

  "If we can assure the publisher that this is possible, The Other Daniel immediately becomes their top priority. That means a faster pub date, comprehensive marketing, and an author whose value suddenly becomes immeasurable."

  The expression on Jacob's face softened as the wheels in his mind started turning again. Meredith knew exactly which buttons to push and how hard to push them. In Jacob's case, the celebrity-author button worked every time.

  "Granted it will be tough getting to her,” she continued. “But if you do, if The Other Daniel hits shelves with Camille Grisham front and center, you can spend the rest of your career writing your own ticket. Doesn't that make the effort worthwhile?"

  Without saying a word, Jacob pulled out his cell phone. He punched the keypad for several minutes before Meredith finally decided he wasn't going to let her in on his query.

  "May I ask?" she said, offended by his absence of consideration.

  "You know her best friend was murdered two days after she left the FBI, right?" he said without looking up from the phone.

  Meredith's eyes dropped to the Pilot pen that she had been twirling in her hand. "I'm aware of that."

  Jacob continued scrolling. "Then you’re also aware of the crazy claim she's making about who is involved."

  "According to some people, the claim isn't so crazy. Still, it sounds like she's going to have a hard time proving it, no matter how determined she is to do so."

  "Knowing all of that, do you honestly think I'd have an iota of a chance with her? Daniel Sykes is something of a sore subject to begin with. I don't think she's going to appreciate someone showing up at her doorstep attempting to reopen that wound when she's still dealing with a fresh one."

  "Like I said, Camille is determined to tell her story. The problem is no one is hearing that story. You have the opportunity to give her a voice."

  Jacob smirked. "I’m a regular patron saint."

  "I'm being serious. Make her believe that she's getting just as much out of this as you are and you won't have any problem getting her to open up."

  "How exactly does talking about Daniel Sykes benefit her current situation?"

  "You write your sympathy piece, only instead of focusing on Sykes, focus on Camille. The world deserves to know what really happened during that confrontation, and what happened to her as a result. Get people to understand Camille's back story and they might be more apt to listen to her regarding her friend's murder. Win for her, win for you. Actually, Pulitzer Prize for you." The gleam in Meredith's soft brown eyes was trumped by the wide smile that had spread across her angular face. She was pushing all the right buttons again.

  With a gleam of his own, Jacob returned to his phone - same silent scrolling routine as before.

  "What are you looking at now?" Meredith asked, feeling slighted for a second time.

  "The next flight to Denver."

  Suddenly she didn't feel the least bit slighted. "So Camille is our girl?"

  Jacob tucked his phone into his pocket as he stood up. The white Oxford shirt he wore was wrinkled and at least two sizes too big. Meredith made a note to recommend a stylist befitting the world's next great true-crime author. And if she had anything to say about it, that is exactly what Jacob Deaver was going to be.

  "Camille is our girl," he said with confidence.

  "The only problem is that she hasn't been seen much in public lately. How will you even know where to find her?"

  "Promise me that Pulitzer and I'll go to the ends of the earth if I have to."

  For the sake of their bestseller, Meredith hoped like hell that he meant it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE SHARK

  The City Perk Café was a trendy little coffee shop located in a section of the city that felt overrun with trendy little coffee shops. Like most of the others, it was normally crowded with wide-eyed college students pounding away at their Apple MacBooks and sipping delicately on their custom-made cappuccinos. If you weren’t one of them, the air of determined self-importance created by their collective efforts could be suffocating. As a result, Camille Grisham rarely allowed herself to stay longer than the five minutes it took to make her no-whip skinny mocha.

  On this particular morning, however, the City Perk was nearly empty – a first in the two months that she had been coming here. Without the hordes of twenty-something’s occupying every square inch of space the atmosphere was bright, like one of those festive French bistros you see on the Travel Channel. Having not spent much time in bright atmospheres lately, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a seat while she waited for her coffee.

  “If you want to hang out, I’d be happy to put this in a mug for you,” the barista whose name Camille couldn’t remember said when she noticed her sitting.

  With little on her agenda other than the fruitless hours she planned to spend staring at a blank notebook with the words PRO and CON written at the top, Camille decided to grab a newspaper, stake out a small table in the back, and take in as much of this Travel Channel experience as she could. “A mug would be great,” she told the barista with a smile that wasn’t entirely manufactured.

  For more than an hour she skimmed the morning paper, sipped delicately at her latte the way the college kids did, and allowed herself to simply exist. Normal, just like everyone else. There had been moments of normal in the past six months, but they were always fleeting, like the illusion of liquid blue in an otherwise barren desert. Camille worried that this moment of normal would eventually meet the same fate, but she basked in it nonetheless.

  Only a handful of customers entered the café during her time there. A few took up seats in the empty tables around her, huddled in close conversation or staring intently at their electronic tablets. The rest took their orders to enjoy elsewhere.

  Camille kept a close eye on each one.

  Watching people, studying their movements, their expressions, their body language, had been a habit engrained in her as an FBI profiler. Though it had been some time since she used the skill in any official capacity, she instinctively applied it to every situation she found herself in. Camille was once afflicted with the notion that she could break down a person’s entire psychological make-up within two minutes of meeting them. These days she wasn’t nearly as confident. But it didn’t stop her from trying.

  She knew, for instance, that the middle-aged couple sitting two tables away was in the midst of a relationship crisis that the French bistro cheerin
ess of the City Perk did little to alleviate. His wandering eye was most certainly to blame. Her blatant indifference to it didn’t help. That wandering eye landed on Camille, as it had every other woman who walked into the café. A couple of the younger girls met the handsome man’s gaze with passive smiles and that unmistakable lock-of-hair-tucked-behind-the-ear signal of flirtation. Camille responded with the thousand-yard stare indigenous to prison yards across the country and perfected through her eight years spent in the company of the planet’s most hardened criminals.

  No great surprise that his eyes failed to find her a second time.

  She was used to the attention, even before the tabloids made her face a fixture in hair salons and hospital waiting rooms across America. When it came to her appearance, Camille could be self-effacing to the point of being extreme; meeting most every compliment she received with a sneer, a sigh, or an eye roll. On really good days an unsuspecting suitor got all three. But the compliments kept coming. Even after a bullet fragment cut across her left cheek, dotting her light olive complexion with a one and a half-inch scar, no Camille Grisham news story was ever complete without at least one reference to what they termed her ‘fashion runway’ looks. The last story even went so far as to suggest that she play herself in the movie version of her life, since very few actresses on the current SAG roster could fit the bill. Little that Camille read about herself inspired genuine laughter. That last bit certainly did. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the glare of the spotlight any less harsh.

  The stares from admirers and curious onlookers were easy to deal with. Sometimes they pointed, sometimes they took pictures with their cell-phone cameras, but they always did so at a respectful distance.