Dominion

by Greg F. Gifune

  Rather than answer, Daniel looked to Bryce and motioned to the table.

  He reluctantly pulled the 9mm from his coat and laid it next to the revolver.

  “All right?” Daniel asked.

  “Does the name Steven Gorton mean anything to you?”

  I have many names.

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I used to be called Steven.

  “I don’t know, I—I don’t think so.”

  “How about Russell,” Bartkowski asked in a tone that indicated he already knew the answer. “That one ringing any bells?”

  And now?

  “The phone calls,” Daniel muttered.

  Bartkowski cocked his head. “What calls?”

  Russell.

  “I’ve been getting calls from a man named Russell. He told me his name used to be Steven, but I didn’t know what he meant, I still don’t.”

  Bartkowski seemed surprised by this information. “Where are the phone calls originating from?”

  “The first was from Ohio, the second Pennsylvania and the third from New Jersey.”

  The man swallowed hard, eyes blinking rapidly. “Jesus.”

  “Who is he?” Daniel asked. “What does he want? He says he knew my wife.”

  “Has anything else happened, besides the calls?”

  “Don’t tell this guy shit,” Bryce said. “He’s supposed to be answering our questions. What are you doing following my friend around? How are you involved in all this?”

  Bartkowski ignored him and remained trained on Daniel. “Mr. Cicero, this is important. Has anything else happened?”

  “Like what?” Daniel asked, testing the waters.

  “Anything else out of the ordinary since you started receiving the calls.”

  “Yes, but before we start comparing notes on that I think you better explain yourself.”

  Bartkowski pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lit one.

  “Hey,” Bryce said, “no smoking in here, asshole.”

  In response, the P.I. drew on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke directly at him. “A few months back I was contacted and hired by a man from Youngstown, Ohio named Steven Gorton. He wanted me to track someone down for him. I was to get as much information on the person as possible. Gorton supplied me with some basic stats: a first name, the person’s age and the fact that the person resided in Boston, was married and had no children.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat then held it out for them to see. “And this.”

  Daniel recognized the photograph of Lindsay. Printed out on a standard sheet of white paper, it was a reproduction of a photograph he had taken of her years before. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, she was standing in the kitchen with hands on hips and a broad smile on her face. Again, Lindsay had appeared to him unexpectedly, smiling from the past and unaware of what was to come. There seemed something so brutal and unfair about it, this woman posing for a photograph, smiling, happy and with no knowledge that in a few short years she would die a horribly violent death.

  “Gorton emailed me this picture.” Bartkowski put it on the table next to the guns. “This is a copy I printed out at my office.”

  “How the hell did he get it?”

  Bryce brought a hand to his head and rubbed his temples. “Christ, Danny,” he said just above a whisper, “how the hell do you think he got it?”

  Before Daniel could respond, Bartkowski answered for him. “I assumed at the time that your wife had given it to him. Gorton told me he and your wife Lindsay had been involved in an online romance for several months, that it had gotten very intense and complicated, and that she was attempting to break it off. Gorton wanted to take it offline and into the real world and she didn’t. He was afraid she’d disappear and he’d never be able to find her again.”

  A sudden tightness gripped Daniel’s gut, an unseen hand squeezing his intestines, mashing them flat. It was true then, Lindsay had known this creep. He could no longer afford to think or even hope otherwise. “So he hired you to find out who she really was.”

  “Yes, and—”

  “Hold on,” Bryce said. “How did Gorton find you? Did you two know each other?”

  “No, he contacted me out of the blue. I’ve never met him, not face-to-face anyhow.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Bartkowski took another drag on his cigarette then glanced around for somewhere to flick the ash. “I’m in the Yellow Pages and I’ve got a website. Gorton hired me online. He probably did a search for investigators in Boston and I popped up. Why he settled on me, I don’t know, maybe he figured since I was located in the same city it might be easier for me to track her down. I mostly do insurance fraud and divorce cases, now and then a missing person or a runaway kid, but nothing too heavy. We communicated through email, and eventually, on the phone. When he paid me he sent the cash Western Union.”

  Bryce stomped over to the counter, flipped over a small plastic tray, emptying pennies onto the glass. “Here,” he said, shoving it at Bartkowski, “use this.”

  “Good, bad or indifferent, it’s a new world with the Internet, everything’s done online now.” Bartkowski took the improvised ashtray and tapped his cigarette, dropping an ash into it. “And trust me, it’s not that unusual to get guys looking for information on women, old girlfriends, ex’s, somebody they met online, a picture of somebody they saw or something, it happens all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Bryce said, “they’re called stalkers.”

  “I don’t get paid to make those determinations. I just supply information. I’m not responsible for what a client does with it, understand? It took me about a week, but I found the information he was looking for. With her real first name, the other pertinent information and the photograph Gorton provided it was a lot easier.”

  “Lindsay used her real name with this guy?” Daniel asked. “Why would she do that?”

  “Gorton told me their relationship went on for a long while. It developed over time. Eventually they became comfortable enough with each other to use real first names.”

  “So you turned this information on Lindsay over to Gorton.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And what exactly did that information consist of?”

  “Lindsay’s full name, home, work and cell numbers, and home and work addresses.”

  “Unbelievable,” Bryce said. “You served her up to this maniac on a silver platter. Nice job.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk to you.” Bartkowski assumed a more aggressive stance. “Got it?”

  “Yeah?” Bryce sneered. “Well, check this out, Ernest Borgnine. If you’re talking to him, you’re talking to me. You got it?”

  Daniel stepped closer, if for no reason other than to block their paths to each other. “All right, everybody calm down.”

  “I didn’t have to come here at all.” For the first time, the fear and angst in him was unmistakable. He wore them clumsily, like ill-fitting clothing. “I don’t need this shit. I could’ve just turned my back on the whole thing. I didn’t have to try to help you.”

  “I understand,” Daniel said.

  “You don’t understand anything,” he mumbled despondently. “Christ, I don’t even understand most of what’s going on.”

  “Then do what you came here to do. Help me.”

  Bartkowski widened his stance like it might steel him for what lay ahead, but his discomfort was growing with each passing moment. “At first Gorton didn’t seem much different than any other client I’ve had over the years. Frankly, on the phone he struck me like a wimp. You know, sort of a mousey type. I pegged him for some lonely and pathetic loser that had fun with a woman online and couldn’t let it go. I gather information, that’s my job. It’s not my problem or concern what someone does with it. I only do what I’m paid to do.” A blast of freezing rain lashed the building and spattered against the front window, startling him. He exhaled smoke from his nose
and took another nervous puff on his cigarette. “But then I looked into your wife. I found out who she was, what her life was and I—for the life of me—I couldn’t figure out why she’d be talking to Gorton, online or otherwise. A lot of people have double lives, live one way with their husband or wife and a whole other way when they’re out in the world, follow? So I figured it had to be something like that with her too, only she just didn’t seem the type that would be wasting her time with some loser snapping his zippy in front of a computer.”

  The idea that this man had been watching Lindsay and following her, taking notes on her, sickened Daniel. Oblivious, he had gone on about his life, as she had, blissfully unaware that someone was watching, gathering information and preparing to forward it to a potential madman. Their privacy had been shattered, their very lives violated, and like the master thief it was, the intrusion had robbed and defiled them without ever making a sound.

  “They seemed an unlikely match, but I think we all know how it is out there in cyberspace. Nothing’s real, so anyone can get away with just about anything. The internet can be very addictive, and chatting even more so. Lots of people get caught up in it and can’t stop because it’s so damn easy and accessible, like the porn online. You should see all the divorce cases I work that started with one of them meeting somebody online. It’s rampant now. But the way I figured it, your wife was different. I figured she was just having some fun, nothing serious. This guy saw it differently, though. He saw it as something more and couldn’t let it go. Still, it was none of my business, or at least I didn’t think so then.” Bartkowski’s dark eyes bounced around the store in search of somewhere safe to land. “But then this Gorton, he changed. The second time I talked to him it was like I was talking to a completely different person. He even changed his name, wanted me to call him Russell all of a sudden. I’ve done enough audio surveillance in my time to know voices and to remember them. I knew it was the same man, but he sounded different not only in the way he talked, but in the tone of his voice and the actual cadence of his speech too. He was angrier, more aggressive. The little dweeb was gone, this was somebody else. It was creepy. I started to think maybe he was sick, schizophrenic or something along those lines, maybe one of those multiple personality jobs, follow? I’d already given him the information and I just wanted out and away from this freak. But he wanted more. He wanted me to do other things.”

  “Like?”

  “He wanted me to provide him with video surveillance of your wife.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.” Bartkowski shook his head. “He wanted bedroom shots, that kind of thing, but I—listen, I’m a professional—I don’t do that crap unless it’s a cheating spouse case where someone needs to prove infidelity. This was different. He just wanted…”

  “Yeah,” Bryce said, “I think we got it.”

  “He offered me all kinds of money. I declined and told him our business was done, that I didn’t want to hear from him again. He started talking about how he was going to come here and do all these things to your wife, how I had no idea what was happening and what was coming, so I told him that if I believed he planned to use the information I’d provided to commit a crime that I’d report him to the police. He just laughed and kept saying the most disgusting things about your wife, bragging about how the two of them were going to be together forever. Believe me, in my business, you see your share of crackpots and weirdoes. But this guy took the cake. I did eight years in the Army as an MP, another fifteen in private security and investigation before I went into business for myself. There isn’t much in this world that frightens me.” He cleared his throat. “But this guy managed it. He wasn’t just some whacked out pervert getting his rocks off. There was something about him, something evil.”

  Daniel had felt the same thing while on the phone with him. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I considered it, but I didn’t hear from him again and I thought maybe he was just a blowhard, a jackass that hid behind computers and phones and wasn’t much of anything to worry about out in the real world. I was concerned though, and I couldn’t get this guy out of my head. The things he said, and the way he said them, stayed with me. I started having these weird dreams and—I just figured I should do something.” Bartkowski’s face turned a deep red, and his eyes glistened in the dim light. “Then my computer at the office started acting up. I knew then that Gorton was fucking with me, that he’d either sent me some sort of virus or hacked into my computer somehow.”

  “What do you mean by acting up?” Daniel pressed.

  “One night it turned on by itself and the next thing I know I’m looking at some video feed or something. It’s hard to say for sure, and I was never able to retrieve any of it or get back to it again but it looked like…to be honest, it looked like Lindsay.”

  “He sent the same thing to me.”

  “The guy’s certifiable.”

  “He must have a program that manipulates video,” Bryce said, “hacked into your systems and sent it to you both. He’s trying to scare you.”

  “Yeah, he is,” Bartkowski agreed. “And he’s damn good at it.”

  “On the phone, Russell told me a Pandora’s Box had been opened,” Daniel said.

  “Last conversation I had with him, he told me that too. I couldn’t be sure what the hell was going on, but I was worried for your wife’s safety. She seemed like a good person—no criminal record, hardworking, law-abiding—and I knew she didn’t need this kind of crap. I turned down the work from Gorton, but I knew there were plenty of bums in this city that would take the money and do whatever the hell he wanted. And besides, if Gorton made good on only a few of the things he talked about then she’d be in real trouble. If something did happen and I could’ve prevented it, I knew I, well, let’s just say I didn’t want to live with that for the rest of my life, follow? After a couple weeks of trying to figure out what my best move was, I still couldn’t shake any of this.” He drifted away from the table to a bookcase a few feet away and quietly smoked what was left of his cigarette. “So I contacted your wife.”

  The knot in Daniel’s stomach tightened. Up until then he’d believed him. “Bullshit. If you’d contacted Lindsay about any of this she would’ve told me.”

  “She didn’t tell you about it because she never got the chance.” Bartkowski stared at the carpet, no longer able to meet Daniel’s gaze. “It was me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It was me,” he said again. “I was the one Lindsay was meeting at the motel the night she was killed.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Daniel could not have been more stunned had Bartkowski slapped him full in the face. Astonished, he stood speechless as the realization set in that other than her killer this man was the last person to see Lindsay alive.

  “What was she meeting you at a motel for?” he heard Bryce say.

  “When I contacted her, I told her who I was and that I had some important information she needed to be aware of,” Bartkowski explained. “She was confused and skeptical at first, of course, but she eventually realized I wasn’t a prank. I invited her to check me out—I gave her my website and phone number, my license number, the whole nine yards—and told her to call me at my office so we could set a meet. My phone rang maybe half an hour later. She tried to get me to tell her what the problem was over the phone but I didn’t think that was the right way to approach this, so I insisted on a face-to-face. She told me she had a business meeting that evening, but agreed to meet me later that night once it was over provided it wouldn’t take too long. I said we could do it at my office, but she insisted on a public place. When I suggested the mall, she said that was too public, she didn’t want anyone to see her meeting with me because she didn’t know the specifics of what I had to tell her yet. I couldn’t blame her, it was a smart move. She said she’d meet me at the motel across the street instead, that it would probably be dead that time of night and private enough so we could talk but
public enough so that we wouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But I spoke to the desk clerk,” Daniel said, finally able to string a sentence together. “He swore he hadn’t seen her.”

  “He didn’t. There’s a bar in the motel with its own street entrance, and I agreed to meet her out front, in the parking lot. I was a little surprised when she showed up on foot, but I assumed she didn’t want to risk her car being seen at a motel like that, even at the bar, which was dead too. She told me she’d parked at the mall. We ended up talking by my car, we never went inside.”

  Daniel thought about that night. While he’d sat at home opening bags of Chinese food and waiting for her to come home, Lindsay had been at that motel, meeting with this man and only moments from death. This stranger had shared her final lucid moments on earth, moments that should’ve belonged to him. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell her one last time how much I loved her. “Did you tell her everything?”

  “Everything I knew.” Bartkowski moved back to the counter, put the ashtray down. “At first I’m sure she thought I was a creep looking to blackmail her, so I reassured her I was only trying to help if I could. She claimed she had no idea who Gorton was and that she’d never had an online romance with him or anyone else. She laughed—she actually laughed—and I wanted to believe her.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because anyone confronted with that—any married man or woman—would almost certainly deny it, especially initially. I’d wondered before this if maybe someone else had gone online pretending to be her—it happens more than you know—but that didn’t wash because Gorton knew too many intimate things about her, and he had those photos and whatnot. I didn’t think it was plausible for him to know what he knew and to have what he had if he hadn’t been carrying on some sort of serious relationship with her.”