Speaking Evil

by Jason Parent

  The suits removed Horvat’s cuffs, stood her up, then secured her with handcuffs of their own. As they guided her toward an unmarked sedan, Sam blocked their path.

  “Woah!” She pushed one of them in the chest, enough to make him step back. “Where do you think you’re going with her? That’s my collar.”

  The man flipped open his wallet, showing credentials Sam barely even had time to read. “Don’t worry, Officer—”

  “Detective.”

  The man nodded. “We’ll take it from here, Detective.” He strung out the word as if its mere parlance on his tongue were distasteful. “This woman is now in the custody of the United States government. All her rights to freedom in this country have been revoked.”

  Sam started to protest, but Frank pulled her away as Bruce just watched dumbfounded.

  “What was that?” she asked again. “What the hell, Frank?”

  Frank let out a deep sigh. “People like her, people with certain skills that are attractive to the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, etcetera... they are offered much more hospitable sentences in exchange for their cooperation.”

  “You mean...”

  “It’s like what we did with all those Nazi scientists and defectors after World War II.” He shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do about it. But you can rest assured, they will have her under lock and key—and probably chipped—for a very long time.”

  She was about to voice her opinion on the subject when Tag interrupted. “Sam, er, Detective Reilly. Michael called 911. He’s safe, but he wouldn’t reveal his location. Instead, he left you a message. Said he was where he’d go if he wanted to get high.”

  Sam threw her arms around the officer, not caring at that moment for decorum. Horvat was no longer her problem. Michael was alive and safe, and she knew exactly where to find him.

  “You guys okay here?” she asked Bruce and Frank. “I need to go be with my son.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Michael watched in the dark as two figures plodded toward him through the thick foliage. He’d spent the last several hours up in the treehouse alone with his thoughts, turning over the idea that he might be a murderer and eventually coming to the conclusion that he was. Though he hadn’t planned it, he’d meant to push Dylan. And he had intended to kill him before because he thought Dylan would try to do the same to him.

  But he couldn’t be sure what Dylan had intended when he raised his hands out in front of him. He’d had the bar, but he hadn’t drawn it back for a swing.

  Below, the two individuals were now only a dozen yards or so away. One was the silhouette of a slender woman who appeared to be about Sam’s height and might have been her, but the other, beyond being that of an adult male, was a question mark. He waited in silence at the top of the treehouse, while Dylan’s body lay below, behind the tree and collecting critters.

  “Michael?” Sam’s familiar voice called up.

  “Here!” Michael pushed his way through the treehouse doors and began his descent, his body alive with excitement even while his heart weighed heavy with what he’d done.

  When he reached the ground, he ran to Sam and she to him. They embraced, wet cheek to wet cheek, Michael chancing a seizure and vision—one that never came. He wondered briefly if that was because he’d already seen her future, and nothing they’d done had changed it.

  After nearly a minute in each other’s arms, Michael pulled away. He looked back and forth between his foster mother and the person with her, Bruce, trying to learn what he could from their expressions. “Is it over? Are we safe?”

  Sam sniffled and nodded. “We got him. Bruce is here for backup, you know, just in case, while Sergeant Rollins is managing the scene with Frank’s assistance.”

  She clapped Bruce on the shoulder. “This guy would never have left Wainwright until he saw him behind bars or dead. But since he couldn’t stand next to the sicko without wearing earplugs, I forced him to come with me.” She smiled. “It’s been too long since you last had my back.”

  Bruce frowned. “What about—”

  “Anyway, Wainwright’s headed off to jail as we speak. Dr. Horvat’s in custody, too, but... well, that’s a long story. We also saved the little boy who was taken from the hospital, but two of his other victims, the people he used, died in the shootout.” She placed her hands on his shoulders. “Michael... Jimmy’s dead.”

  Michael jerked away. “What? How?” He shook his head as he began to stutter. “It-it’s not possible. He was in a halfway house. He—”

  “We don’t have all the details.” Sam exchanged a look with her former partner. “Whether he was brainwashed all along and made his way back to them or was kidnapped or whatever, we won’t know until we can investigate. He was masked and shooting at us when we found them, and—”

  “Did you kill him?” Michael wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to that question, but he fixed his gaze on Sam and waited nonetheless.

  But it was Bruce who answered. “I did, son.” He winced, and for the second time, Michael saw a hint of vulnerability in a man who’d seemed all anger and hate.

  Michael’s chin quivered, and he had to look away, trying to board up the dam before it cracked. He fell back against the tree trunk, and he slid down it to his butt, burying his face in his hands. He thought of Jimmy, then Dylan, and the dam burst. Everything just poured on out. “I killed him.”

  “Huh?” Bruce crouched. “No, son, it was my fault. I should have aimed lower, should have been more careful. None of this is—”

  “Not Jimmy... oh, God, Jimmy too.” He bellowed a moan that sounded like an animal in its death throes, dying alone at night in the woods. “I-I-I came here with Dylan, and I... and I killed him!”

  “What are you talking about? Michael, you’re not making any sense. Dylan’s here? Where?”

  “Dylan?” Bruce asked.

  Michael ignored them and poured on. “I thought he was faking, that he was really his son, not brainwashed like the others.”

  “Wait.” Bruce stepped closer. “Whose son?”

  “Wainwright’s or Jefferson’s or whoever he is.” Michael felt a tingle in his nose and knew it was starting to run. He wiped it with his sleeve and sucked it up. “He attacked me at the school, acting like one of them, but Robbie tackled him, and he started acting all normal again. So I led him here, took his phone, checked his calls, and saw the call had come from his father.” He pointed up, his arm swaying in small circles. “I pushed him off the top there.”

  Sam exchanged a glance with Bruce, then said, “Michael, slow down. Start from the beginning.”

  “Don’t you get it? I pushed him out of the treehouse! I killed him! And I don’t even know—”

  Sam put a finger over her lips. In a soft tone, she said, “He fell, Michael.”

  “You’re not listening to me. I pu—”

  More sternly, she said, “He fell, Michael.”

  “Where is he?” Bruce asked.

  Michael threw a thumb over his shoulder as he held back a sob. He hid his eyes with his forearm, resting on bent knees, his heels tucked under him. As Bruce walked around the tree, Sam hugged him again.

  “Was he working for his dad?” Michael sniffled. “Or just brainwashed? Was he really my friend?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sam,” Bruce said. “You’d better come over here.”

  Sam held him a moment longer. “Are you okay to go with me?”

  Michael nodded, but he stood up shakily. She led him around the tree. As he saw Dylan’s pale, lifeless form, his tears ran anew.

  Bruce crossed his arms. “I thought you said you pushed—”

  “He fell, Bruce,” Sam snapped.

  “Did he fall onto that branch?” He pointed at the stick poking out of Dylan’s stomach then the two pairs of circling footprints. “Looks like he got up, and—”

  “He fell, damn it! Or Michael pushed him in self-defense!”

  Michael’s body shook, but he managed to r
espond. “He was holding that bar.” He pointed to the zip line handlebar on the ground beside Dylan. “I... I thought he was going to attack me with it, but...”

  Sam looked him in the eyes. “So you didn’t kill him. See? Even if you had pushed him out of the tree, he was trying to kill you with that bar, and you did what you had to do. It was self-defense.”

  “You say he was Wainwright’s son,” Bruce said as he removed a cell phone from his pocket and turned on its flashlight. “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s something we vetted internally because the boy’s last name, Jefferson,” Sam said. “I put someone I can trust on it. Dylan’s the son of someone else at the hospital. Everything checked out.”

  “Did you vet it personally? Wainwright’s people can fake all sorts of documents. Whoever looked into it may have seen only what Wainwright wanted him to see.” Bruce leaned closer to the boy. “But just looking at him, I can tell he’s not Wainwright’s son, at least not biologically.”

  Bruce crouched, shining the light into Dylan’s face. He went eerily silent, holding that position for several seconds as he ran his fingers down his face.

  “Bruce?” Sam said, breaking the quiet. “Is everything okay?”

  Bruce stood and turned, his face haggard and ghastly in the light of his phone. In a quivering voice that seemed not his own, he said, “I just can’t believe how much he looks like Jocelyn.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Officer Ronald Tagliamonte closed the door to his police cruiser as he settled in behind the wheel, Sergeant Rollins already seated beside him. He sighed, he and half his department having been stuck at the various crime scenes all afternoon and well into the evening. Behind him, separated only by the partition cage, sat the most accomplished serial killer his city had ever known. The FBI agent and Sam had trusted only him and the sergeant, a good man, to bring in Wainwright in Sam’s absence. After all, like her, he had lost a partner. I’m sorry, Paltrow.

  He turned the key in the ignition, shifted into gear, then rolled out of the sea of whirling lights. But when they reached the precinct, he drove past it, instead taking the onramp for I-195 West toward Providence.

  “Where are you going?” Sergeant Rollins asked.

  Tag threw a thumb over his shoulder. “He killed my partner. I just want to have a little chat with him before we bring him in. It’ll only take a minute. No one will know.”

  Rollins set his jaw. “Not a good idea. Turn around. We bring him in, unharmed.”

  “And if she were your partner?”

  Rollins let out a breath. “Believe me. I get it. You have no idea what’s going through my mind right now, what I’d love to do this guy. But we can’t, and you know it. So turn around. If it makes you feel better, you can consider it an order. I won’t let you jeopardize your career or mine for some payback, no matter how deserved it would be.”

  By that time, Tag was already crossing the Braga Bridge into Somerset. He shook his head and rubbed his brow, sick with the thought of what he would have to do. “Of course, you’re right, Sergeant. I... I just lost my head for a moment there.” He passed the exit for Somerset and took the first Swansea exit. “I’ll just turn around in the Park and Ride ahead.”

  But instead of turning around, he pulled into a spot.

  “Tag... Ron,” Rollins said softly. “Don’t do this. I’ll drive from here.”

  Tag ran his hands down his face. He shook like a junkie in need of a fix and pushed the car door open. He jumped out and circled the car, drawing his gun as he rounded the trunk. Rollins was already outside when he fired two rounds into the sergeant’s chest. Seeing his fellow officer, his friend, bleeding out, a stunned expression blanketing his pale face, Tag put another bullet in his head to end both their misery. Then he keeled over and dry heaved.

  Once he had composed himself, he turned and looked through the back window. Grinning, Carter Wainwright stared back, a deathly visage in the pale moon’s glow. Tag opened the door, and Wainwright slid across the backseat and out of the car.

  As Tag spun him around to unlock his cuffs, Wainwright asked, “She still doesn’t suspect you?”

  Tag sneered. “Not in the least. Well, at least not before now.”

  Wainwright massaged his free wrists. “May I have the gun?”

  Tag nodded. He handed his service pistol to Wainwright.

  “Good. And the keys?”

  The officer pointed to the only other car in the lot, a black Subaru Forester. “Already in the ignition.” He choked up. “I’ve done everything you asked, pretended to be your Indian.” He looked down at Sergeant Rollins’ lifeless body. “Killed for you. Please...” He dropped to his knees, hands folding in front of him. “Please just let her go.”

  Wainwright cackled. “Oh... all right.”

  Hopeful, Tag glanced up.

  “I was going to tell you that I would be keeping her since your position has been undeniably valuable.” Wainwright patted the officer’s head, treating Tag as if he were his good little dog. “But I suppose you’ve earned the truth. Besides, your usefulness has likely run out after tonight. So here it is—I never kept your baby sister. I tortured her and killed her months ago.”

  For a moment, Tag couldn’t comprehend what he’d heard. He stared up blankly, the cogs in his head turning slowly, grinding out sparks that bloomed into a conflagration. He exploded to his feet, charging at Wainwright without thought or regard for his own safety.

  He heard the gunshot before he felt the pain in his stomach. Tag fell, groaning in pain as his hands covered the wound.

  “If you live, that will help you maintain your cover.”

  “Cover?” Fear had crippled any further aggression, the need to survive trumping all else. His hands remained where they were, but the hate kept him lucid. “You might as well kill me. I will never help you again, you son of a bitch.” He tried to spit, but only a little blood trickled down his chin.

  “Never say never.” Wainwright shrugged. “Your sister may be dead, but your little nephew is still very much alive.” He started to walk away.

  Tag tried to rise, but the pain drove him back down. He called over his shoulder. “When will you be back?”

  “When I’m ready.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll be waiting.”

  The killer waltzed over to his new Subaru, got in, then drove away, leaving Tag bleeding on the pavement.

  EPILOGUE

  After going through September without stepping foot outside Sam’s apartment, Michael finally returned to school and some semblance of a normal life. Well, as normal as he could with an old, severely disfigured man staying with them. Bruce spent his nights in a chair facing their apartment door, a gun in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. He hadn’t seen Frank since the botched arrest, but Sam said he was doing well, having regained some of his status at the FBI since he had been able to track down the monster and place him into custody. No one blamed Frank for not being able to keep him there, and with Wainwright having become Public Enemy Number One, Frank’s intimate knowledge of the killer was too valuable an asset to be ignored.

  Officer Tagliamonte had required hospitalization, but so far, only his career had been hurt in the long run. His story about Wainwright grabbing his gun and turning it on him and Rollins raised serious questions that would, in the least, subject him to discipline and likely termination. But with him being the only witness to what had actually gone down, criminal prosecution seemed unlikely. Michael imagined that letting a killer like Wainwright escape was probably devastating enough on the mind of the poor officer. Sam was tight-lipped when it came to Tagliamonte, but Michael noticed his absence on the details that would be forever posted outside the school either until he graduated or Wainwright was caught or killed.

  In his period of social distancing, Michael had ventured out with Sam only once, to visit Tessa at her new hospital in Bridgewater. After a couple of flat lines and several blood transfusions, her condition had slowly gone from cri
tical to recuperating nicely. Her mind, too, seemed to be doing much better, excellent even—so much so that it looked like she’d be getting out soon, once they found a place for her. Whatever Dr. Horvat had done to her had been nothing short of miraculous, assuming she’d done more than just repress damaging memories. She seemed genuinely happy, except when he’d told her about Jimmy. Even then, her smile had fallen away only for a few minutes. Her thoughts had turned somewhere deep inside herself while her face had borne the marks of a dreadful, contagious sorrow before the smile reappeared, and she said, “That’s too bad. He seemed really nice.”

  Michael hadn’t moved on from Jimmy’s death so easily. Nor could he move past his act of what Sam insisted had been self-defense. He wasn’t so sure. Samples taken from the body confirmed what Bruce had suspected—Dylan was the son of Jocelyn Beaudette. Even if he was after Michael or part of the so-called Indians—to which Sam had discovered no firm connections other than the familial relationship—he didn’t know what chance Dylan had had to be anything but what Wainwright had made him. Michael had deprived him of that chance as well, and in some sick way, given his own violent upbringing, he still felt he’d had more in common with Dylan than anyone else he’d met. He still considered Dylan a friend. And he had killed him.

  He hung his head as Robbie, who’d known the day he was returning, and all his football friends clapped and cheered when Michael returned to school that morning. Though he’d been used to people gossiping and whispering as he passed in the halls, he couldn’t get used to the salutes and thumbs-up signs he got from complete strangers throughout the day. Apparently, the whole school thought him some kind of hero for killing a killer. Yet no one except Dylan, and perhaps Wainwright, knew the truth.

  Walking into his English class immediately before the bell, he stopped just inside the door. It was comforting that so few inside seemed to notice his presence as they hurriedly set up their notebooks, writing utensils, and copies of Moby Dick, which the class was then finishing. Three empty seats remained in the room—in the far corner, his and Dylan’s, and one unclaimed near the entrance, right next to the girl with bifocals who no one seemed to talk to. He took the seat beside the girl. She glanced at him, swiped her bangs away from her eyes, then smiled sheepishly, averting her gaze.