by Wiley Brooks
Bob used the hose to take a cold shower in the tiny bathroom. He was having a hard time figuring out just how to feel. He had killed before when he was a soldier, but even then, he had done nothing so cold-blooded.
Yet, he had no second thoughts, felt absolutely no remorse. His mind flashed back to the day that Fitz, standing in his office, told him that Amanda had been murdered. He had promised her that day that he’d get the person who did it. And he had.
It didn’t bring her back, but in that moment, Bob remembered what Mason had said when they met at the hotel in Bangkok. Mason had called taking revenge the next best thing. At that moment, Bob felt it was just that. He wasn’t happy, but he did feel closure.
Then he thought about Mason, the man who led him to Joey, without whom Joey would have escaped to kill again. Mason deserved better than to die at Joey’s blade. He would forever be in Mason’s debt.
As he thought about the ex-CIA officer, it dawned on him that there were likely things in Mason’s cabin that would tie him to Bob. That could be a problem. Jessica, too, probably. He decided that he would sneak back into Mason’s hut and remove anything that might connect them.
He put on clean clothes and walked to the Majestic Turtle’s restaurant. Jessica was there. She, too, had changed clothes. It was lunchtime.
“Will Joey be joining you?” Umar asked when he approached the table.
“Not today,” Bob said. “He went out looking for Mason.”
They gave their lunch choices to Umar and asked that he bring them two cold Tiger beers.
“He can’t do that,” Jessica told him. “It’s a Muslim thing. We brought the beers. Umar is letting us keep them in the refrigerator. If we want one, though, we have to get it ourselves.”
Bob got up, followed Umar into the kitchen area, saw the refrigerator and took out two ice cold cans `of beers. He returned to the table where Jessica was sitting.
“What’s next for you?” he asked.
“I want to get as far away from here as I can,” she said. “When I left Seattle, I thought that I might volunteer as a nurse some place that really needs it. There’s an awful famine in the Sudan and Ethiopia. I think I’ll go there and be a nurse again.”
Bob said he thought that was a great idea. He said focusing on doing something good would help put all the ugliness of Joey behind her.
“I hope that’s so,” she said. “But right now, I just feel numb. I’ve been such a fool.”
“Cut yourself a break, Jessica. You were taken in by a master. Truly. And you got to him, too. Just in the end, you know, he was always going to look out for himself.”
Jessica stared out toward the sea. She was taking a mental inventory of her life. She knew she was smart but couldn’t help but wonder how she had made two such awful choices in men.
Joey, a psychopath, made Wallace’s dallying seem tame. My God, she thought again, she had been sleeping with a serial killer. How does that happen? At least Wallace never killed anyone. She considered her late husband in a new light. He was a good-hearted man. He just couldn’t keep his manhood in the pants. Maybe she could learn to forgive him.
Jessica told herself that she had to learn from this god-awful experience. But learn what? To be careful? That wasn’t who she wanted to be. She wasn’t going to live her life fearing what might happen. She had no answers. At least, not today.
They sat quietly for a bit, taking small swigs on their beers. Eventually, Jessica broke the silence. She picked up where they had left off.
“What about you? What do you do next?”
“I got to wrap all this stuff up as best I can.” He looked at her. “Should be me, not you. In fact, I think you should get out of the country before I do anything.”
She wasn’t about to argue that point. “Can’t happen quickly enough,” she said.
“I’ll call Mason’s detective friend, Bo, when I get back to the mainland. I’ll tell him everything and where to find Mason and Joey’s remains. I’ll ask that he keep you and me out of it, as best he can. I think he will. I’ll also call the guy at the State Department who’s been helping. He needs to know that it’s over. I’ll tell him everything. He and Mason were old friends. They were in Laos together in the Seventies.”
Bob told Jessica that he had another piece of business to take care of for Mason. Mason had asked him to consider helping the young man, Haziq, who provided the big break in the case. He explained that Haziq was trying to save four-thousand dollars to buy the restaurant he manages.
“That’s a lot of money to these people,” he said. “Mason said his time is running out. I’m going to give him ten-thousand. I would have given Mason more than that in a bonus. He was an incredible detective.”
“Mason would like that,” she said.
Bob said the hardest thing he needed to do was go to Bangkok and meet with Mason’s assistant, Boonsri. She had worked for Mason for years.
“She was dedicated to Mason,” he said. “She going to be devastated. I’ll do whatever she needs. I’ll even sponsor her coming to the States if she wants.”
Day 25
Jessica left for the mainland after breakfast. It was eerie for Bob being there with little to do, knowing that Mason’s and Joey’s bodies were less than a mile away in the jungle.
After seeing her off, he entered Mason’s bungalow and began a close inspection of what was there. There wasn’t much, but there was Mason’s journal and the manila folder with his case notes.
Mason sat on the bed and read through the journal. He had kept track of all his expenses, as he said he would, but he had also used the pages to record his thoughts. The first few days, the personal entries were short. The first entry was on his flight from Bangkok to Penang when he wrote about his meeting the night before with Bob:
Met the new client last night. Seems like a solid guy. I could feel his agony. It reminded me of when I lost Sylvie.
Once the nightmares started, the entries became longer and more agonizing. Bob didn’t even know that Mason was having these flashbacks in his dreams. By the end, Mason was clearly in deep pain emotionally.
Tonight’s dream showed me more people I killed with that goddamn bomb. There was a man, probably in his thirties. He was dressed well. I suspect he had a professional job. Maybe an accountant or a banker. He was sitting at a small table on the far side of the restaurant with a young girl, maybe a teenager. She was clearly his daughter. I couldn’t tell, of course, what they were talking about, but they were having a wonderful time. Lots of laughing. Then there was a flash and I saw their mangled bodies lying about five feet apart. They were obviously dead, but the little girl’s eyes bore into me. That’s when I woke up. Goddamn it! I’ve cried more from these flashbacks in the past week than I’ve cried, well, ever.
As I learn more about Joey, I wonder if his crimes were any worse than mine? I mean, really. He was orphaned as a young boy, then taken in by a loving couple, but they abandoned him and left him to live on the street. No skills. No real way to earn a living. No wonder he started stealing. I don’t know why he stopped snatching purses and started killing young girls. Maybe it was just the money. The way he made a living. I don’t know. It’s easy to judge him because he killed those girls.
But what about me? I’m not just a killer. I’m a mass murderer. I took out more innocent people in one day than any IRA terrorist has done. Joey couldn’t hold a candle to me. Why has this not bothered me till now? It’s been fourteen fucking years! I killed all those people. I only wanted to kill one guy and I just didn’t care about all the others. What’s wrong with me? We think Joey is a sicko, but maybe I’m the goddamn psychopath.
Will I even be able to kill Joey? I don’t know. Taking out bad guys has never been a problem before. Maybe I should insist that Bob do it. I doubt I’d be having these nightmares if I had just focused my revenge on the general. An eye for an eye. Bob has killed in combat before. He can do it and probably should. Then again, I’ll do it if I have to. Joey
deserves to die. What about me?
Bob took the journal. There was no reason to share Mason’s inner turmoil and certainly no reason to drag Bob deeper into the case. That would be unavoidable if the authorities were to find the little notebook.
Later in the day, Bob walked to the island’s one and only dive shack. He signed on for a snorkeling trip that afternoon. He was here. He might as well take advantage of it. Besides, it might get his mind off everything else.
The snorkeling was spectacular. Wherever the boat dropped him and the three strangers in his group, he could see rich and plentiful coral for hundreds of feet around. And my God! The tropical fish, big and tiny, were so abundant and colorful. It was awe-inspiring.
Off one isolated, white sand beach, he swam upon a half dozen giant sea turtles lumbering along about six feet beneath the surface. A magnificent sight. He even glimpsed the famed blacktip sharks hanging out near the bottom. There were three and they weren’t the least bit interested in him.
The next morning, one day after Jessica left, he was on the first ferry back to Kuala Besut.
Epilogue
Amal – would he ever be just my gym buddy again? – sat silently across from me, sipping his tea while slowly shaking his head back and forth. I had held the story in a secret place for most of my adult life. I’m not sure why I never told anyone. Perhaps it was that I had no one I cared about enough to tell. That didn’t explain spilling it all to Amal.
Perhaps I feared that if I told one person the story would soon spread and define me. I didn’t want that. I certainly didn’t want to discuss it with friends and associates. Hell, I never even told a shrink! I was quite sure that telling the story would imprison me.
So why did I confide it to Amal? Good question. I think it was as simple as the time was right. I’m an old man. I have no family left and few real friends. I don’t care what people might say or think about me. Those days are behind me.
When I started telling Amal, the story just flowed from me. In a strange way, it felt good to confide it. That Amal was only a casual friend might have made it easier.
People thought it was the loss of Amanda that changed me. That certainly was a big part of it. I’ll never get over losing her. After she was taken, all that mattered to me was getting my revenge.
Revenge can be cleansing, but taking it exacts a toll on your soul. It was years before I could daydream about Amanda without reliving Joey’s final moments. The blood squirting up and soaking my shirt as I watched him die.
I don’t regret what I did to Joey. Not at all. I’m glad I did it. Who knows how many other families he would have ruined? No regrets. I did the world a favor.
“Did you ever hear from Jessica,” Amal asked.
“No. Never did,” I said. “But I did search for her online a few years ago. It’s amazing what you can find now. I knew her entire name, where she was from, her age and that she was a nurse. It wasn’t hard. Took maybe five minutes before I was looking at a photo of a much older Jessica. She’s still striking. It brought a smile to my face. There was a lot about her online. She has lived a truly meaningful life.”
Bob told Amal that Jessica stayed in famine-stricken Africa for more than ten years. She eventually ran a camp for a quarter-million refugees. That led to her testifying at the UN. When her mom got sick, Jessica returned to Seattle. While she nursed her mom, she wrote a book and advocated for a quicker and greater famine relief. About ten years ago, she met Bill Gates at a conference in New York where they were both speakers. He was so impressed, he hired her on the spot.
Amal asked if he kept Mason’s journal.
“Maybe I should have,” Bob said, “but it just didn’t feel right. I built a small fire on the beach the night after Jessica left. One by one, I ripped the pages and fed them to the flame. The case files from Mason’s cabin, too.”
And why did you choose this day to finally share this story, Amal asked?
Yesterday, Bob told Amal, was the anniversary of the day it all ended.
“I mark the day every year. I pour myself a glass of Jack Daniels –Mason’s drink – and think back to that month. I recall how it started with excitement because I thought that maybe the State Department was coming to offer me an ambassadorship. It was possible. I had given the Reagan campaigns a lot of money. And then the horror when I suddenly realized why Fitz was there.”
He said he recalls the first meeting with Mason in the hotel bar at the Bangkok airport and the awful next day in Kuala Lumpur. “Morgues are cold, terrible places,” he told Amar. “I pulled the sheet back and saw my sweet girl. It’s an image I can’t forget. Nobody should have to do that.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine,” Amal said.
Bob again praised Mason and how the ex-CIA officer had quickly tracked Joey down.
“And I remember every single thing about that last day we were all together on Kecil. I can smell it, Amal. The fragrance of the jungle. And hear it. The constant rhythm of the surf, the cacophony of the jungle itself. Have you ever been in a jungle?” Amal shook his head no. “It’s the original surround sound.
“When I think of my life, Amal, taking revenge on Joey was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever done. Remarkable might not be the right word. I don’t mean remarkable in the usual sense. I mean it’s the first thing that pops into my mind when I think back on my life. I guess most people would think that sad. But I don’t feel that way. When he took my girl’s life, he punctured my soul. It left me empty.
“No, killing Joey didn’t bring Amanda back. But Mason was right. Revenge was the next best thing. At least it was for me.”
The two men sat in silence for a bit. Finally, Amal broke it.
“What happened to the knife?”
Bob reached into his right pants pocket. When he withdrew his hand, it held the five-inch, pearl-handled switchblade.
“Never without it.”
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Patricia Graffy, the first person to read my book nonstop cover-to-cover. Pat is my cousin. She gave me awesome feedback that helped me refine the early versions of the story. She also was always there with heartfelt support and was quick to respond whenever I needed to bounce something off her.
Thank you as well for my great team of beta readers. In addition to Pat, the beta readers were Pete Pepinsky, Arlene Carter and Ken Dishman. Each brought unique skills and perspectives that made the story better and the mistakes fewer.
Another set of thanks to a retired CIA officer who served in Southeast Asia at about the same time as my fictional Mason Ray would have. I’m honoring my pledge keep him anonymous, but he knows these thanks are for him. You were gracious with your time and helped me better understand the CIA and how it operated at the time.
Finally, thank you to the people of Malaysia. They were friendly and accommodating to me on my first visit in 1987. When I returned in March and April 2019, virtually everyone I met went out of their way to help me. I was especially taken by the hospitality afforded me by Baharom. He was at ABC when I stayed there in 1987 and is still there today. Older and wiser now, of course, but still has that wonderful smile. He spoke freely about the times in my story. It provided an added level of detail that I found helpful. It was great to reconnect with him after all these years, and to meet his son, Thakif.
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About the Author
Wiley Brooks, shown here revising this book on the porch of his bungalow on Perhentian Kecil, is a lifelong professional writer. He started his career working in daily newspapers. By age 30, he had become an award-winning executive editor of a daily paper in central Pennsylvania. He later became a sought-after crisis communications expert for companies both large and small. Since 2003, Wiley has presented workshops to business and government groups on how to write more clearly and concisely. The Next Best Thing is his first novel.
In 1987, Wiley took a four-month sabbatical to backpack around Southeast Asia. It was on that trip that he first got the idea for The Next Best Thing. He didn’t get serious about writing it, though, until 2018. He has returned to Southeast Asia several times over the years, most recently spending part of March and April, 2019, revisiting the locales in the book.
Wiley was born in Tampa, FL, but has been living in Seattle since 1983. He is happily married to Marianne Bichsel. They have three adult children and two grandchildren. His first grandchild, a beautiful, sweet young girl named Amelia, died unexpectedly of a rare and aggressive form of leukemia. She was just twenty months old at the time. When he wrote of the pain of losing a child in the Prologue, he was thinking of Amelia.