by Ryan Schow
“I’d appreciate that.”
After turning over a few more details, they ended their call with the promise of a follow-up conversation in the morning. Leopold immediately called his cleaner and said, “I have a job for you. It needs to be neat but timely, if you catch my drift.”
“I do,” he said.
Instructions were given, payment agreed upon and the call ended as abruptly as it had begun. After Leopold sent the man a secure text with Halden’s address, he simply stood there, aghast. He knew what he had to do next, which was something he didn’t want to do, something he’d promised not to do. He told himself he had no choice. He had to break that promise.
Taking a deep breath, knowing what he was in for, he dialed the number anyway. As he waited for the call to ring through, he released the breath he’d been holding and told himself this was necessary.
The call went to voicemail. There was no voice telling him to leave a message, just a beep. Typical. He hung up, called again, same thing. When he called the third time, the woman answered and it was clear she was irritated beyond measure.
“I earned this time off,” his associate growled. Estella Baccarin, Esty for short. This thirty-two-year-old Salvadorian nightmare was his number one asset. “Leopold, you promised.”
“This is big,” he said.
“So is the dick inside me. Call me in a week.”
“I don’t have a week,” he said. Then, realizing he was on an empty line, he said, “Hello? Esty?”
Nothing.
Dammit!
He dialed his second asset, Yergha Mugheri, a Pakistani who was still in the hospital from the job in Sicily. It took two calls before Yergha picked up. He sounded groggy.
“Yes?”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Flattened, if you must know,” Yergha said. “I’ve got complications with the broken bone. It’s infected around the screws, so I’m getting ready for another follow-up surgery in the morning. That’s why I’m trying to sleep off my anxiety.”
“You can do what you do for a living, but a little surgery gives you anxiety?” he asked with a stressed laugh.
“Good Lord, Leopold.” It sounded like he was sitting up in bed. “What’s with all the tension in your voice? You’re usually so good at hiding these things.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, masking his disappointment. “Just get yourself feeling better. And when you’re done with the surgery, make sure they bill me.”
“I’ve already given them a stamped envelope with your name on it,” Yergha said. “What about Esty?”
“I already called her. Don’t worry, I’ll figure something else out.”
When he hung up, instead of returning to the woman he’d been wanting since he’d first set eyes on her, he got online and re-read the top story for the day, the one about the killer ex-cop headed to NorCal State Prison. The coincidence meant something, didn’t it? Was this a sign? A small, terrible idea formed in his mind. He turned it over, massaged it, let the possibilities grow organically. A sly smile stretched over his face. What he was contemplating definitely had long odds; perhaps it was even a bit stupid, but the circumstances were curious and Leopold’s influence ran both wide and deep.
Picking up the phone, ignoring the lateness of the hour, he dialed the number, then said to the woman, a potential client of his, “This is Leopold Wentworth and I have a way to kill two birds with one stone.”
Leopold had never formally met the woman he was speaking with, but he’d seen her photo enough to put a weathered face to her craggy voice. She’d been sixty-seven when Ronnie Beckett, the serial killer, had ripped through her family. That was five years ago. When Leopold had seen her photo a year and a half later, after Beckett had been given multiple life sentences, his potential client had looked like she’d aged ten years rather than eighteen months. Tonight she sounded even older and more tired than when they had spoken just a few months ago. Was this a factor of age, the cruel turn of events, or the painful discord she must carry in her heart every single day? He couldn’t be certain. All he knew was that no woman should have to survive the slaughter of her entire family, let alone do so in the twilight years of her life.
“Anyone can kill two birds with one stone, Mr. Wentworth,” the woman with the whiskey-rough voice said. “The question is, can you get at my bird, and do you have such a stone?”
“I believe I can, and I believe I do,” he said. “The question I have for you is simply this: are you ready to proceed?”
“After what that demon did to my family, you’re damn right I’m ready to proceed!”
In that moment, he could charge the woman worth a healthy nine figures whatever he wanted and she would gladly pay the fee. But his nature prevented this. He quietly, discreetly fixed things for a living. He didn’t continue to break them, either by intention, greed or carelessness.
“I’m assuming the number we arrived at is still satisfactory?”
“It is,” she said.
“I’ll send you my account information through an encrypted message along with decryption instructions on your end. I trust you are computer savvy.”
“I may be a broken woman, but I’m not incompetent.”
“Which is why I prefer this course,” Leopold said. “You can wire me half the funds now for expenses, and the other half upon proof of death.”
“I will do that, Mr. Wentworth, but with a slight modification to our contract. I ask this hoping you’ll indulge a grieving woman.”
“I’m listening.”
“Make it bloody,” she said. The cruelty in her voice snaked right up the center of him, leaving in its wake a hard trail of goose bumps. “I want it vicious and slow. Remarkably violent. If I need to pay a premium for that service, please name the price and I will wire you the full amount with the first installment.”
He felt the rage simmering in her voice, understood the weight of it right down to the bone. He knew what this monster had done to her family, so he understood the depths of her fury. She was a good woman, once an extremely successful clothing designer, a force to be reckoned with at the height of the New York fashion scene.
“For you, I will venture into the gruesome and the inhumane at no additional charge, and not out of pity, or some pious denotation of justice. I’ll do this because I share your sentiment, and your disgust for this beast posing as a man.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wentworth,” she said, grateful. “What can I expect in the way of timing? My heart isn’t what it once was, and I fear I may worry myself to death before you actually give me my recompense.”
“There is but one complication I must navigate, and to do so will be delicate. Everything depends on this contact that I make, rather both contacts, so don’t expect to see Ronnie’s death splashed all over the morning papers.”
“I don’t do cryptic, Mr. Wentworth. You know that. And I don’t need to know your concerns, or how you do your job, for me to place my trust in you. I’m merely looking for your assurances, and your promise to get this done.”
“If I can’t do what I must, then I’ll return every penny of your money. You have my word.”
She gave a smoky laugh, then said, “You’re an interesting fellow.”
“How so?”
“You are a man paid to mete out justice, yet you cling to ethics and empathy.”
“It’s for that very reason that I do what I do.”
“If you hadn’t come so highly recommended,” she added, “I would not trust you. I’m not even sure I like you.”
“One can find integrity in even the darkest of holes, rare as it may be. As for my likeability, I assure you, if we ever meet in person, you will likely change your mind about me. I’m quite charming, if you must know.”
She gave a dry laugh. “They wouldn’t understand you in the world I came from. I barely understand you myself.”
“I’ll email you in the next few minutes.”
“You’ll have your money, Mr.
Wentworth. Just make sure I see my justice.”
They hung up and he sent her an encrypted email. The next call he made was to his contact in the NSA. “Your cat is pissing on my lawn,” he said to the man. I need your help.
“I think you have the wrong number, Bub,” the familiar voice said. The first handshake is complete.
“When I hang up with you, I’m going to find that cat and leave you a message you won’t forget.” You have a message.
“Are these threats even real?” he asked. What is the timing?
“Real enough that you’d better get off your ass and collect your cat.” Now is better than later.
“I’ll get to it when I get to it,” he said. I’m on it now.
They hung up like it was the end of a terse call; it was anything but that. His contact would access the secure email from an offsite location of his choosing and get back to Leopold as soon as he could.
Wentworth’s friend, an agent named Brand Stokes, was a friend from college, a former hacker who now had access to some of the greatest and most secure surveillance tools in the world. There were protocols to accessing the tools the agency had, which meant every action required accountability, and every trail led somewhere.
Leopold knew there were no basic hacks that allowed you to access the NSA’s most esteemed programs, programs like God’s Hammer. And data mining a person’s entire life? Despite the millions of square feet of server farms in threat fusion centers all over the nation, there were systems upon systems constructed to sniff out even the most creative of intrusions. The good news was, Brand had written many of those systems, superseding much of the original programming overseen by former NSA director William Binney.
The highly encrypted email Leopold sent contained a name and a location: Fabian Dicampli, warden of the NorCal State Prison.
Within two days, he’d find out if the warden could be compromised. If he could circumvent prison protocol through blackmail, he could get at the killer ex-cop. But not now, not with all the hype. Maybe it would be more than two days, he thought, not really happy that he was second-guessing things. It could be an entire week on the outside. To say the timing and flimsiness of this endeavor stressed him out would be a gross understatement. Then again, dealing with stolen children was touchy. Time was everyone’s enemy. Some kids were dead within minutes of their abduction while others survived weeks, months, and in some cases years before being found.
He prayed Kaylee Barnes wasn’t dead.
Before returning to the party, Leopold dialed one last number. A contact at the SFPD. He checked the time, knowing it would be early in California. Nearly two a.m. He dialed anyway.
“This had better be good,” the lieutenant groused.
“It is,” Leopold said. “Let me know when you have a pen and paper.”
He listened to the man calming his wife and getting out of bed. He heard him walk downstairs, turn on the light, sit down at his desk and take a breath. Leopold saw all this happening in his mind.
“Okay, go,” he said.
“Lieutenant Atlas Hargrove, former Vacaville PD SWAT commander.”
“The nutcase they just locked up for three consecutives? That Atlas Hargrove?”
“I need everything you have on him by tomorrow.”
“I just started a three-day weekend.”
“If you can get me what I need, I’ll bump you ten percent,” Leopold said. “Just send me your fee through the encrypted email account we used last time.”
“How do you know the account hasn’t been compromised?”
“Because the best people in the NSA created it for me,” Leopold said, irritated.
He didn’t like his outside contractors talking to him like this, not with what he paid them. He understood the lieutenant’s concern, but he didn’t like it.
“Alright,” he said, ready to sign off. “Either way, I appreciate the work.”
Before he ended the call, Leopold added, “I trust you know how much I hate waiting.”
“You remind me every time.”
Standing there, reflecting on the moment, he felt a rare sense of calm wash over him. If everything went according to plan, he’d be eight figures richer by the month’s end. And Ronnie Beckett? If he could take care of that sad gas bag, he could tack on another five million.
Money, however, was not his concern. It seldom was these days. To him, people like Kaylee Barnes needed to live, while men like Ronnie Beckett needed to die. Leopold was wealthy, to be sure, and he loved his money, but what he wanted most was a right and holy cleansing of the world’s filth, one Ronnie Beckett at a time.
Now that his business was—
Behind him, a door opened up, the light from the party illuminating the otherwise dimly lit room.
“Am I intruding?” the woman asked.
Feigning an inability to see, yet knowing this was the woman he’d courted earlier, he said, “I suppose it depends on who you are.”
“It’s me,” she whispered, walking in and closing the door behind her.
“I think you’ll need to be more specific.”
“Tanya,” she replied.
“Ah, Tanya,” he replied, grateful to have her name again. “You are not intruding. In fact, I was just coming to see you.”
Crossing the room, she said, “My dress has been itching and I think maybe it’s time for me to not be around others.”
“How can I remedy the situation?”
Putting her hands on him, moving her body against his, she said, “You can undress me, if you’d like.”
“And then?”
With a sly, seductive voice, she said, “You know what then.” He gave a low laugh she seemed to enjoy. “Oh, and Leopold?”
“Yes?” he asked.
“I’ll be disappointed if I’m not sore in the morning.”
Chapter Seven
ATLAS HARGROVE
Reality set in on the way to prison. It hit him like a stiff uppercut. The utter darkness. Cold fear. He couldn’t help reflecting on the journey there. But he wasn’t thinking of county lockup or the holding prison, or really even this bus. He was thinking of everything before that. Everything he’d done and how he had conducted himself in court, in his marriage, in life—what an absolute mess!
As he rode the crappy gray prison bus from holding to the last home he’d ever have, NorCal State Prison, something really bad happened. The fog of war lifted, leaving him raw with emotion. He’d expected to feel a number of things, but he hadn’t expected the tidal wave of remorse that hit him. The waves started small, but they kept crashing aground, getting larger and larger as they battered the rocky shores of his resolve.
It didn’t help that he was on a two-person bench seat, shackled to the bus’s floor, with his right arm interlinked with the guy next to him and then handcuffed. Every single bump in the road had him feeling like he was on his first date with a stranger, a guy he didn’t want to know, on a date he didn’t want to be on. And it was hot. Hot and stuffy. Both of them pretended they didn’t notice the close proximity to each other, but every dip in the road, every unfavorable lean, was a solid reminder of where Atlas was, where he was headed, what was in store for him.
When they entered the prison’s property, he saw the monolithic structure situated at the base of a lush Northern California hillside. He couldn’t breathe thinking of what lay ahead, nor could he shake the mounting dread. The bus stopped, and the inmates were given explicit instructions. He listened closely. When everyone was clear on how to proceed, the yard dogs, as they were called because they were rude and mean, began unloading them. His stomach was already in knots.
They were first herded into a metal warehouse that felt fifteen degrees hotter than everything else. Vietnam-era music was playing on a small beat-up boom box, and everyone was sweating. To make sure there was no problem, the yard dogs made everyone strip naked.
“Move against the wall. Put your feet on the stickers showing feet. Then put your hands on the wa
ll with stickers showing hands.” The brute walked the line behind them, made sure everyone was in compliance. “Even a five-year-old knows how to do this, so I expect you to stay put while your person is searched. If you have concerns about being searched, my best advice is to breathe and relax.”
Atlas complied, knowing what was next. They sent the proctologist in, making sure it wasn’t like the movies where you smuggled a lock pick set and a rope ladder in by way of your lower colon.
After that lovely round of dehumanization, they were given their prison uniforms. Dark blue pants with a short-sleeved button-up, thin socks, fresh underwear, crappy shoes. Atlas had his name and inmate number affixed to every single piece of clothing he was given, even his underwear.
“Good news,” the yard dog said with the booming voice of a drill sergeant. “You get to do paperwork with the admins. Even better news. There’s tons of it to do.”
He hadn’t been lying.
As his incoming group navigated through processing, he tried to get ahold of himself, but it wasn’t working. You could enter prison a lot of ways, but the worst way was to go in soft and remorseful. From the very moment they got their hands on him, it felt like they were working to break him down, to get him accustomed to doing things their way. He was already broken down. Half those guys were. Which was why starting out soft and feeling remorseful was the surest way to suffer.
After he was successfully processed, one of the correctional officers, or C/Os for short, showed him to his cell. Lockdown was twenty-two hours of the day with thirty minutes in the yard and three thirty-minute meal breaks in the chow hall. They were allowed to shower every three days.
“Welcome to Supermax living at NorCal State Prison,” his C/O said.
On the way to his cell, he strolled past a caged man he knew by face, name and reputation. Ronnie Beckett. Mass murderer and self-proclaimed body artist. Whatever calm he’d managed to wrangle up at that point completely fell apart. He was indeed in a Supermax prison, which meant he was locked down with the worst offenders the state had to offer. And he was one of them. A three-time killer.