by J. D. Oliva
Jamie balled her fists and clincher her teeth. Normally, Jericho was used to getting what he needed through intimidation. That's not happening here.
"She was saying those things to mock my family. She stalked us and killed my sister the same way my mom killed my dad."
"Holy shit," Chris finally spoke.
"Yes and no. Jamie, I get you don't want to see me ever again, but I need to know if you still have Alyse's notebooks."
That broke the scowl on Jamie's face. Her shoulders leaned in, and her jaw relaxed. With a raised eyebrow, she asked, "Why?"
"I helped her put those books together. I need her notes. If they're gone or you don't know where they are, we're out. Trust me, you'll never see either of us again."
Jamie tapped her foot against the ground a few times. The clicking of her boots echoed in the alley next to the Lannex. Something about this idea intrigued her.
"I know exactly where they are."
XXIX
Officer Anthony Flores is a big fan of Pickleman's, a mid-American sandwich stop renown in the St. Louis Metro area. He picked up his favorite, a large number 12, the chicken giardiniera sandwich and ate that bad boy in the car as he drove back to the Hampton Inn on Clay.
Anderson did him a big favor, and he didn't want to take advantage of the situation. After all, Flores didn't plan on being on the beat his whole life. A guy like Anderson could really help him move up and become a detective himself one day. Flores finished his bag of Deep River Rosemary and Olive Oil potato chip and washed everything down with his last sip of Coke. He wiped his hands on his pants and headed back into the Hampton.
"What the?"
Flores saw the door to room 423, Kim Aranda's room, ajar. He pulled out his firearm and slowly pushed the door open. Anderson was standing over Kim Aranda, her lifeless body was sprawled out on the bed.
"Detective Anderson?"
Anderson turned back to him with an ice-cold gaze.
"Look at this, Flores. Look what happened."
Flores lowered his weapon and scanned the room. There didn't seem to be any sign of conflict.
"What happened?"
"She's dead. Why do you think it was so quiet in here?"
"I just don't understand."
"What don't you get? Shane was here the whole time, and you let him slip inside and do this to our only witness!"
Flores didn't know what to say. His heart raced while his brain twisted. This didn't seem real.
"Really? Nothing to say, Flores?"
He didn't. If he did, he might make things worse. That promotion was all but gone. Anderson shook his head in disgust as he walked out of the room.
"Where are you going, sir?"
XXX
The black Chevy Traverse turned onto Interstate 55, heading back toward St. Louis. Andrew Nashida sat behind the wheel. His eyes were locked on the road, but his head was somewhere else. They got a call from the Illinois State Police. Someone who may have been Shane was spotted in a pickup truck with a man who matched the description of Leo Encarta. The vehicle was headed back toward St. Louis.
"Think this was a bust?" Tunde finally broke the silence.
"No. Something happened here, but I don't think it has anything to do with last night."
"O'Brien definitely lied to us."
"Yes, but whatever it is, the Chicago Police don't disagree with her. Whatever happened here made Shane this way. I want to know why he's headed back. And who Leo Encarta is."
"O'Brien said he didn't exist. What did that mean?"
"It means whoever Shane is working with isn't named Leo Encarta."
BBZZZZZTT
Nashida clicked the phone icon on the Traverse's dashboard, allowing the Bluetooth to connect the call.
"This is Nashida."
"Agent Nashida, this is Detective Anderson. Kim Aranda is dead."
XXXI
Jericho threw open the metal roll-up garage door. Inside they found a 10x15 storage locker filled with books, clothes, pictures, and boxes filled with the life Jamie Casten put away five years ago.
"Her notebooks are in here. Somewhere."
Jericho looked over to the 5'4" brunette with disdain still written all over her face. With a regular client or anyone else in the world, he would have said something a little snide. This is different. The only reason Jamie had this storage locker is because he failed five years ago.
"Thank you."
Looking at the tightly packed storage unit, he wondered why she didn't get rid of all this stuff. But it's easier for some people to just shut their past away and try not to think about it rather than throwing all it away. Jericho envied her a little.
"Do you have any idea where?"
"Nope," Jamie said, turning her back on the world-class assassin turned garbage picker.
"We appreciate the help," Chris added.
"Yeah," she said, clearly trying to ignore him.
Trying to get Chris' attention, Jericho tapped him on the shocker. Chris tried to step into the storage locker, but with two people inside, seemed impossible. "Talk to the girl. Try to make sure she stays cool."
Chris nodded. Cool meant make sure I don't piss her off to the point she calls the cops.
"Hey."
Jamie turned back and shot him a look that said, I know what you're doing. She folded her arms across a gray and blue SLU Billikens v-neck shirt with blue stripes on the sleeves. Chris wasn't the most observant person in the world. It's a big part of how he found himself in this situation, but he could see that she didn't want to talk. If he wanted to stay out of prison, he needed to fix that.
"What the hell's a Billiken?" He finally asked.
We're screwed, Jericho thought.
To his surprise, she chuckled, though he swore he could almost hear her rolling her eyes at the question.
"Um, it's like this mythical good luck thing. I really have no idea."
Chris smiled and laughed.
"When I was in high school, we used to wrestled against the Freeport Pretzels."
"What?"
"Yeah, this town, I guess, had this big pretzel factory or something, and they named the school mascot after it."
"Wow, that is stupid," she said, fighting back a smile at the ridiculousness.
"Right?"
After that laugh, another uncomfortable silence followed. This kid is hopeless. Jericho chose the monastic life. Looks like Shane is going to be cursed to it. Jericho tried to shake off his new traveling partner's ineptness as he tore into box after box.
Not surprisingly the boxes labeled Mom or Dad, were filled with her parent's things. One of Anne's boxes had a few photo albums. Not what he's looking for, but Jericho flipped through one anyway. Seemed to be from about fifteen years ago. Mostly pictures of Alyse and Jamie as children. They were cute little kids.
One featured the two little girls seated on Santa's lap. Another was a family shot in front of a Christmas tree. Alyse held one of those cocker spaniel/poodle mixes. Jim and Anne were smiling. This was probably long before martial problems. Jamie was the spitting image of her mother with shorter hair. The girls looked about nine and four in these pictures. Innocent kids who had no idea of what would happen to their family.
He wanted to keep flipping, but looking at old photos isn't going to fix what the Nightcrawler did. Or the mistakes that Jericho made. Maybe Jamie had the right idea just putting these things away.
He folded the album and put it back in the Anne box. Jericho tried to step over a bike and one of those old Total Gym/medieval torture devices that tried passing itself off as exercise equipment. He found a few unlabeled, manilla boxes in the back corner of the locker.
His switchblade sliced through a thick layer of tape. Inside is a bunch of books. A lot of poetry. Stuff from Dickenson, Poe, Yates, depressing shit. They're definitely Alyse's. There were a few other books from Stephen King and HP Lovecraft with scattered true-crime pieces, including Bloodshot: The Hunt For Pentagram Killer by Cheryl Miller Sh
ane. Probably Maybe don't show that one to the kid.
Jericho closed the lid and sliced into the top of another box and found a bunch of composition notebooks. He picked the first book up and opened the lid. It was Alyse's handwriting. Nightcrawler.
"Bingo."
XXXII
Mark Chambliss had been up for hours. His husband served with the St. Charles police department for twelve years, but that never stopped him from worrying every time Brian left their house. The last couple of days had been a whirlwind. Something about a murder suspect on the run and the FBI getting involved?
Brian never really talked about work at home, which is something Mark didn't like but understood. His work at St. Louis Public Television kept him busy enough during the day. But today, he made the mistake of forgetting his laptop at home.
The drive back to their home in St. Charles was only a half-hour over the Missouri River. It shouldn't be a big deal. In and out; quick. He pulled his 2017 Toyota Tercel up to their townhouse, surprised to find Brian's Honda Civic in the driveway. It was only 3:30 and he shouldn't have been home yet, but he'd been home so little the past couple days it'd be nice to see him, even for a minute.
Mark stepped into the entryway and found their front door slightly ajar. That was not like Brian at all. God-forbid Mark forget to close the garage door, he would never hear the end of it.
Mark slowly pushed the door open. "Brian?"
The TV blared so loud Mark covered his ears. Another strange move for his husband, the guy rarely ever watched anything unless it was on his phone. Something is up.
"Everything okay?" Mark asked, creeping up the stairs.
Brian sat on top of their coffee table, his eyes locked on the afternoon news. This is weird. He never sat on the coffee table. On the rare occasion, he did actually relax in their living room, it was usually on the Lay Z Boy. Even stranger, the local news echoed across the townhome. Brian hated watching local TV, figuring he got enough of what was happening locally at work. He felt that way about public television too, which always needled Mark a bit.
"Brian?"
Finally, the red-haired detective turned his head like a skulking gargoyle perched on that table.
"Everything okay?"
"Fine," Brian said, turning back to the television.
"You sure?"
"Yes." This time Brian didn't bother turning back.
"Ooookay. I just forgot my laptop in the office."
Mark walked past the living room, through the kitchen, and into the second bedroom, across the hall from their room. Mark always thought the room would make a great nursery and wanted to start going through the proper channels. But, Brian had always been lukewarm on the subject. Maybe someday that would change. In the meantime, the second bedroom made a perfect home office for Mark. Brian was usually pretty good about leaving work at the station. Not Mark.
"Does anyone know you're here?" Brian decided to contribute to the conversation.
"No, I had to skip out without anybody noticing. The station manager would have had a fit if he knew I left the laptop here again." Mark grabbed his MacBook Pro and stepped back into the hallway, where he expected to see Brian still squatting on their $800 coffee table, but he was gone. Mark paused and looked around. At 6'4" with a shock of thick red hair, he's not exactly the kind of person who could just disappear.
"Perfect," he heard Brian whisper from behind.
"What?"
Brian's thick hand clutched Mark's chin, enveloping his mouth. Mark tried to pull away, unsure of what kind of game Brian was trying to play. But he couldn't. Brian curled Mark toward his chest. If this was some kind of not-so-cutesy way to show affection, he's not a fan and tried to fight his normally docile husband off, but Brian was too strong. Mark tried to scream but couldn't, so instead, he sunk his teeth into Brian's hand.
"Aaaahhh!"
Mark finally pulled away when he saw his husband clinging to a kitchen knife.
"Brian, what are you doing?"
The red-haired detective gritted his teeth and lunged forward, plunging the kitchen knife into his husband's stomach. Mark screamed and cover the wound his hands, like he tried keeping the blood inside. Brian pulled the blade out and mounted Mark's back before clutching a handful of hair and ripping back to expose Mark's throat. A quick slash later, Mark's screams stopped.
As blood poured out onto the linoleum floor, Brian looked down at his victim's back and jammed the knife into his kidney, even though he knew it had no effect at that point. He couldn't help it. Fighting the programming was too hard. Everything about this was getting harder.
XXXIII
Chris and Jamie sat with their back's against the storage locker. Chris' new accomplice—weird, after all this, he still didn't know the guy's name—basically ransacked its contents. The whole situation was weird and awkward. It didn't need to be, but it was.
Chris didn't really know how to talk to her. She was about two years younger than him and certainly attractive, which is always part of the problem. Plus, he was kind of shady about how he approached her last night. He felt terrible about that. He hated the way the reporter got to him last year. Now here he was doing the same thing. What a piece of crap.
"Got what I'm looking for," the dreadlocked assassin said, stepping out the locker.
"What did you take?" Jamie asked.
"Couple notebooks."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Jamie's arms were still crossed over the Billikens logo on her shirt. Chris was pretty oblivious when it came to reading body language. Still, even he could tell she was trying to evaluate the situation. Jamie looked tired. She probably didn't sleep well last night. God knows he didn't, having spent the night in the cab of a truck his partner called The Green Beast.
"What are you going to do with them?"
"Read the notes your sister and I took five years ago."
"Why?"
The man in black went silent, obviously not knowing how to answer the question. Chris didn't blame him. He actually watched the thing try to burrow into Dennis Reed's ear, and he couldn't explain it.
"I don't even know where to start.."
"If you want those notes, you're gonna make the time."
"I thought you didn't want anything to do with this?" Chris finally spoke for some reason.
"Last night, I didn't. I changed my mind." Jamie bowed up and got into the assassin's face. Well, at 5'4", she more accurately bowed up to his chest, but you had to commend her guts. Maybe she'd do well in the cage. Couldn't be any worse than him.
"I couldn't sleep last night. For years I was convinced you killed my sister. I sat in Kathryn Bischoff's trial every day for five weeks, but something about it didn't make sense."
"Your sister is dead 'cause of me. I didn't stick the knife in her, but she'd be alive today if she just stepped aside and let me do my job on my own. She didn't, and instead got involved. Then she died. Not that I did anything to stop her from trying to help."
Jamie shook her head. "Not good enough. You want those notes, you tell me everything."
"You don't need to die," he said, trying to intimidate her.
"And you don't need that book." Jamie reached into her shorts pocket and pulled out her phone. "Of course, I'm sure the St. Louis Police would be very interested in having a little conversation with you."
Chris looked over to his partner. He could probably evade the SLPD as quickly as he did the Chicago Police. But with Chris being the focus of a manhunt, the last thing he wanted was Jamie to make the call.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Chris said, putting his hand on her phone. "My friend here isn't used to working with people. He's only talking to me cause I'm paying him. We'll tell you everything."
"No, we won't!"
"Yeah, we will," Chris said, knowing they had no choice.
The giant shook his head. "Fine, but we need to go somewhere a little more private."
"No, we don't. Tell me now."
He threw his hands into the air. "Fine. Your sister and mom hired me because they thought I could find the Nightcrawler."
"And what is that?"
Jericho laughed. "A serial killer that uses mind-control to force his victims to kill each other. It's been happening for sixty years. It used your Moms to kill your Pops. Alyse found the pattern and MO. Then it used Katie Bischoff to kill her. I stopped the man I thought was trying to kill her, and when I did, a worm crawled out of his ear."
Everything went eerily silent. Jamie leaned forward and raised an eyebrow, almost like she was ready for a punchline.
"Bullshit!" She said the way any rational person would.
"He's right. I saw the same thing two nights ago," Chris added.
She didn't believe either of them. Why would she? Instead, she shook her head in a way that screamed, why am I listening to this?
Chris understood the Doubting Thomas thing. "Look, a year ago, I'd be right there with you, but this is real. Both of us have seen things you would never understand in a million years unless you looked at it yourself. And that's fine. You don't gotta to believe us. Just let us have the book and take care of this thing. Afterwards, you'll never see either of us again."
Jamie curled her lips in a duck-face which seemed to be a tell for when she was debating with herself.
"You're here to stop who, or whatever, killed my sister?"
They both nodded.
"Does that mean kill?"
Chris turned to his partner.
"Possibly."
"Okay. I want in."
XXXIV
Anderson stood over the body of the man he loved more than anything in the world. Part of him wanted to scream out, but something else kept him silent and apathetic. He's still Brian Anderson, but at the same time, something different. The world looked dreary, almost foggy. His mind was in thoughts and memories that weren't his. Memories of countless murders. The faces blurred, but the memory of the action was there. Mark was one of them now.