by Ethan Cross
To his surprise, Bill was still twenty feet from the gate when he heard the buzz and clank of the lock disengaging. Big brother was watching. The other pair of guards pushed through and ran out of his view, but he knew where they were headed. He shot a glance to Tower 3 as he ran toward the now-open gate.
Ray had disappeared from the tower’s window. Whether the shooting was over or Ray was just reloading, Bill couldn’t be sure, but he did know that things would go better for his young friend if he was the first one up that ladder.
Bill shouted at the other guards to wait, to let him go up first, but he was so winded from the sprint across the yard that he couldn’t make the sound come out with as much force as he wanted.
The younger guards didn’t stop their assault. “Wait!” he shouted. The thought of Ray attacking the guards and escalating the situation spurred him forward, pumping his adrenaline to the next level.
Bill caught the gate before it could swing shut and relatch. He rounded the corner of the wall toward Tower 3 and looked up just as the parapet of the tower exploded in a searing ball of glass and fire.
*
The concussion wave slammed Bill to the ground like a swatted fly. Blackened and flaming chunks of concrete rained down around him. He looked back at Tower 3, and his eyes struggled to regain focus. The midday sun hung in the sky directly behind the watchtower. It looked to Bill as if the sun had simply absorbed the parapet of Tower 3 like some giant fiery PAC-MAN. He held his gaze into the sun just long enough to see that the tip of Tower 3 was gone, as if the crow’s nest was the top of a dandelion blown away and scattered to the wind, there and then not.
He was still disoriented by the blast wave. His vision blurred and then came back into focus. Blurred and focused. Then, through the haze, Bill saw Ray Navarro stumbling toward the opening in the stone wall, heading back to the main building.
It was Ray. Bill was sure of it. Not some impostor or impersonator, but his friend. Had the kid completely snapped?
If something was happening in Ray’s life that could have driven him to this, then Bill had no clue what it could have been. Maybe the kid had some kind of PTSD flashback? He couldn’t have been in his right mind.
Bill’s hearing suddenly returned. One second, it was a high-pitched ringing, a shrill otherworldly sound. Then the sound quickly merged back with the real world. The screams brought Bill back to the moment. He crawled, then stumbled, then ran toward the sound of the screaming. One of the men who had beaten him to the tower was on fire. He didn’t see the other.
The man, or more of a boy to Bill’s old eyes, rolled feebly on the ground to smother the flames. Bill could smell the man’s flesh cooking. It reminded him of sizzling bacon.
Bill shoved his hands through the flames to get to the boy. Just enough contact with the fire to singe off all the hair on Bill’s arms, but also just enough contact with the boy’s torso to shove him into a full roll.
He helped extinguish the last of the flames and then rolled the kid onto his back. His face was charred. He couldn’t stop crying and coughing. And Bill could think of nothing he could do to help.
The sound of boots crushing sand and gravel announced the arrival of more guards. One pushed Bill back and started performing CPR on the burned man.
Bill hadn’t even noticed that the kid had stopped breathing. He felt suddenly disoriented, as if he had just woken up from a bad dream, and his mind was struggling to realign with reality. All he could hear was the ringing, and it seemed to be growing in volume, swelling toward a climax.
He bent over and threw up. What could Ray have been thinking? Had he seen Ray heading back toward the prison? Had that been real? If so, where was Ray going? Had his young friend done this and then was trying to sneak away in the confusion?
Bill ran back toward the gate. The other guards shouted something about needing help, but Bill ignored them. He moved with a singular focus now.
One emotion drove him forward. Anger. One thought fueled his anger. That could have been me.
If Ray had premeditated this—and he obviously had, because he must have brought some kind of explosives with him and had at least some semblance of an escape plan—then that meant that Ray had no way of knowing who would have been the next person through that hatch. It could have been anyone. It could very easily have been Bill.
A few steps closer or a few seconds faster, and it would have been him.
His friend had nearly taken his life; he had nearly taken him away from Caroline.
That didn’t sit right with him and, at the very least, he was going to find out why.
The yard was almost evacuated, and Bill couldn’t miss Ray moving toward the north barracks.
He lowered his head and ran harder, trying to close the gap between them.
Ray didn’t look back, didn’t check over his shoulder once. As if not looking at the destruction he had caused would make it less real, less horrifying. As if guilt and shame wouldn’t catch him if he refused to acknowledge them.
The anger fueled Bill even more—the anger awakened something in him. Something that he hadn’t felt since his army days. He could still smell the young guard’s burning flesh. He could still hear his screams.
He closed the last of the gap in a dive, driving his shoulder into Ray’s back and sending them both sprawling onto the concrete of a basketball court.
Ray was first to his feet. He held a Glock pistol, probably stolen from the gun cabinet of Tower 3.
“Stay back,” Ray said.
“What have you done?”
“I said stay back!”
“Why?”
Bill’s voice cracked as he took a step toward the man he had spent countless hours counseling and guiding back toward sanity.
“Back,” Ray said, retreating toward the barracks.
“You tell me why!”
“I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Glad I’m okay? I could have been killed. And what about the others you just murdered?”
“I can’t…” Ray shook his head and turned to run.
Bill stared at him a moment, dumbfounded.
It looked like the Ray he knew. The voice was the same. The look in his eyes. But the Ray he knew would never have done something like this. Did he have the capability? Sure. Ray was a former soldier. He had killed in combat. This was different. This was the visceral act of an animal with its back to the wall. This was the final attack of a dying predator.
What could have possibly driven Ray to such a desperate, animalistic decision?
Ray had taken three big strides toward the barracks before Bill made up his mind that Ray Navarro wasn’t leaving the yard.
Bill closed the distance between them in two huge strides. He threw all of his weight and momentum into a single blow. He hurled himself at Ray like a locomotive of flesh and bone. He aimed one huge punch directly at the back of Ray’s head. He would hit Ray hard with one sucker punch that would instantly knock him out. The fight would be over before it began.
But Ray ducked the punch at the last second and spun around, the gun still in his hand.
Bill immediately recognized his mistake. An old drill instructor’s words floated back to him from the ether of his memory.
Go for the body. The head is too small a target that can move and shift too easily.
Bill immediately knew the consequence of not heeding that advice.
The gun flashed.
Bill saw the shock and horror in Ray’s eyes.
He felt the warmth of the blood leaving the wound before actually feeling the pain of the puncture. He fell back to the concrete.
The ringing in his ears was fading away but leaving only silence in its place.
He heard the shouts of other guards telling Ray to get down. He closed his eyes. At least he had stopped Ray from escaping and hurting anyone else or himself.
Bill Singer heard the ringing. Then more shouting. Then the ringing again. And then nothing at all.
/> *
Marcus Williams kept seeing the knife plunging into the man’s body. The warm redness gushing out. Blood splattering his face. Maggie screaming. The look in her eyes.
“Special Agent Williams?” the receptionist said. Her tone implied this was not her first attempt at rousing him. He must have dozed off.
“Yes, sorry,” Marcus said.
“The deputy AG will see you now,” she said.
He stood, and she guided him into Deputy Attorney General Trever Fagan’s office. The space was cold and institutional and had a strange smell, like mint tea and cucumbers. It was free of any clutter and seemed to have been constructed with almost obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. Marcus supposed that to most people the decor and design would have appeared elegant and aesthetically pleasing. All of the elements for that were certainly in place. But those elements had been jammed in by force. It made the space seem as if it were designed by a committee or focus group rather than one person’s sense of taste.
Fagan kept typing away at his computer’s keyboard as they entered. He wore a blue pinstripe suit, and his hair was slicked back. It reminded Marcus of the pelt of a river otter he had seen as a kid at the Bronx Zoo.
The receptionist closed the double doors behind her. Once she was gone, Marcus tossed the file folder he had been carrying onto the immaculate surface of Fagan’s desk. Marcus was sure to put a spin on the folder in such a way that its contents went spilling out onto the desk and the floor.
Fagan sighed and said in his New England accent, “How can I be of assistance, Special Agent Williams?” He still hadn’t looked up from his typing.
“What the hell is this? I thought we had an understanding.”
Fagan finally turned in his direction. “I told you that I understood your position, and we’d give it some thought. It was discussed and decided that, now that Ackerman can work off the substantial cost of his incarceration by cooperating with certain research endeavors from the CIA, he would be allowed to live.”
“But he’ll never see the light of day again.”
“I’m not sure what part of all this you don’t understand. Your brother has killed a lot of people. He doesn’t get a pass on that just because now you’re a happy family.”
“My father experimented on Ackerman’s brain and put him through hell. He was forced into being what he is.”
“Those facts don’t dismiss the reality that he is what he is and has done what he’s done.”
“No, they don’t. And no one is saying that Ackerman gets a completely free pass and we just drop him back into the world. But he is in the unique position to make amends, or at least attempt some semblance of that. We hunt serial killers, and we already break just about every rule in the book to achieve that end goal. Putting Ackerman to work pretty much goes right along with our SOP.”
“Your brother is a dangerous man. It doesn’t matter how that happened. It doesn’t matter that he’s been able to stop himself from murdering everyone he meets for a little while now. If I had approved your proposal, it might have been a day from now or a year from now, but he would have eventually cut the throats of you and your team and slipped off into the night.”
Marcus sat down on the edge of one of Fagan’s white leather chairs, so that he could look the bureaucrat in the eye. “We would have the new NSA tracking chip with the kill option embedded in his spine. If he turns on us, we put him down remotely. His experience and knowledge can save countless lives.”
Fagan leaned back, steepled his fingers, and said, “I believe that the police and FBI do a wonderful job of protecting us. In extreme cases, the Shepherd Organization steps in. I see no situation extreme enough for me to ever allow Francis Ackerman Jr. back onto the street. What would you say to the families of his victims? Do you think they would approve of just leashing him up and sending him out on the trail like an old hunting dog?”
“Emily is his doctor and would be there to monitor him. She is one of his victims. And she’s in favor of this.”
“Emily’s a unique case, and you know it.”
“Yes, but she understands that Ackerman truly wants to do what’s right. Aren’t those victims’ memories better served by having Ackerman help make sure that more families don’t have to feel that same kind of pain and loss?”
Fagan stood and stepped toward his office door. Marcus remained seated. Fagan said, “The decision has been made. If you want to consult with him on a case, that’s fine. But Francis Ackerman Jr. stays in a cage.”
Then, without a word or gesture of a goodbye or a follow-me, Fagan just walked out of the office.
Marcus was dumbfounded for a moment, refusing to follow Fagan, refusing to give the other man the power and satisfaction that came with making Marcus chase after him.
To the empty space, Marcus said, “That’s one way to end a conversation.”
He sat there alone until he couldn’t take it any longer, and then he ran after Fagan.
*
Francis Ackerman Jr. blocked a right cross meant to take his head off. Then he went low for a rabbit punch to his opponent’s groin.
At this point, his imaginary opponent would have doubled over, and Ackerman would have driven the imaginary man’s nose into his imaginary brain. He liked to visualize while working out, and this gave him extra time to perfect a number of killing strikes and combinations.
His knuckles were stained bloody from the pounding of his fists against the four-and-a-half-inch-thick, clear polycarbonate material. The pain was gloriously excruciating, and it sent new tendrils of agony out with every increasingly fast blow. The pain grew to a crescendo, and he slowed his pace and ferocity. Prolonging the agony. Savoring the anguish. Then he exploded with machine-gun punches until his muscles could no longer sustain the punishment his brain desired. When he felt his vision growing dim, he dropped to the floor in a heap of blood and sweat.
Ackerman had been aware of the two men observing his workout, and only now did he acknowledge their presence. He said, “Hello, brother. And Mr. Fagan. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Fagan said, “Your brother convinced me that, before I make up my mind about what to do with you, I should come down and hear what you have to say.”
Ackerman licked some of the blood from his knuckles as he regained his feet. “I always have lots to say. Give me a topic.”
“How about a question?”
“Be careful, Trever. We’re getting dangerously close to this turning into a game.” Ackerman’s grin widened. “And I’m very competitive.”
“Questions or not?”
“Ask.”
“Why are you punching the glass like that?”
“Mental and physical training.”
“Are you going to war? You seem like you’re training to kill someone.”
“War and battle are funny things. They have an uncanny ability for finding warriors. So a warrior must be ever vigilant.”
“And that’s what you are? A warrior?”
“Since birth. My brother and I were born to walk the path of the warrior. That’s the nature side of the equation. When nurture came in for me, it was in the form of a deranged father. For Marcus, it was in the form of a cop. We were born into different circumstances, but we both still possessed the warrior spirit. We turned out differently, but some things are constant. We both hunt. We both kill. Et cetera, et cetera. The thing about nature versus nurture is that in the real world, those two concepts are so intricately intertwined that they are indistinguishable from one another. Nature starts us off into a world filled with societal, economical, and philosophical differences and hardships. All those things are beyond our control and beyond the control of even our caregivers. And guess what? The sins of the father most definitely do apply to the son. And not just the sins of the father, but the father’s father. Generations. Sins of the government. Sins of your race or class. All those are dumped on our heads at birth. And there’s no amount of water you can sprinkle over a bab
y’s head to wash away those transgressions. They’re part of us. Part of who we are. And from birth, nature handed my brother and me a shit sandwich with a side of crazy.”
Fagan checked his watch and said, “And we should just overlook all those past sins because now you’re sorry? Now that you’ve found God, it’s all better?”
“Absolutely not. But you should be enlightened enough to not hold those sins against me to the point that you won’t allow me to pay penance for them.”
“There is no forgiveness for the things you’ve done, Mr. Ackerman.”
“I’m not trying to earn earthly forgiveness. I don’t need it. Forgiveness is divine. And I believe that God has already given me all the forgiveness and grace I require.”
“Then why worry about paying any penance or attempt to right any of your sins?”
“We’re all trapped on the same life raft together, waiting for God to rescue us up to the next plane of existence. Call it Heaven. Call it whatever you like. Believe whatever you like. The point is that we’re all trapped on the same life raft together, the same confined, limited existence. And it is a finite existence that we share with millions of other souls. The question is, on this life raft we all share, what kind of passenger do you want to be?”
“So what kind of passenger do you want to be, Mr. Ackerman?”
“We are all the sum of our parts. We are the collection of billions of thoughts and experiences and lessons and difficulties and sins, those from our own lifetime and those of our ancestors. That’s the setup of God’s plan for our lives. A plan that has led us to our own personal way of thinking and to the point in our life’s journey where we find ourselves now, at this moment.”
Fagan said, “You’re dancing around the question I have for you with philosophy. I asked, ‘What kind of passenger do you want to be?’ On this life raft you described, this limited existence, why should I let a madman who has been going around throwing others off the boat for years, why should I ever let him have even a glimpse of freedom?”