“For example, Sergeant Polk. Maybe not someone you’d want to have for a sleep-over, but an intimate acquaintance.”
Another picture appeared. An image on a press badge.
“Then there’s Sam Weiss, feature writer for the Post-Gazette. Your friendship with him began when you treated his younger sister after she’d been raped and disfigured. Swastikas carved on her tits. To be honest, I’m not sure whether I want to kill him or the little sister who got sliced and diced.”
I felt anger spike in my chest. “Stop this, dammit—”
“But we’re not finished yet.” A meaningful pause. “And if I were you, I’d shut up and pay attention.”
Gloria gave my arm a warning tap. I calmed myself.
“Next,” Maddox continued, “we have Lieutenant Stu Biegler.”
A posed photo of the head of Robbery/Homicide filled the screen. He stood in his dress blues, the American flag and the flag of Pennsylvania displayed on the wall behind him.
“I think Biegler’s probably safe, since killing him would be doing you a favor. Though his position in the Department, and his overall obnoxiousness, make him a tempting target.”
Next came another posed picture. Leland Sinclair.
“Here’s the city’s illustrious District Attorney, with whom you’ve had more than a few run-ins. Based on some e-mails hacked from both of your personal accounts, and doing a little cross-referencing, it looks like at one point you were both sleeping with the same woman. Geez, that must’ve been awkward.”
I heard Gloria’s small intake of breath, and when I glanced at her she averted her eyes.
Barnes reached out suddenly with his good arm and gripped the top of the computer’s lid. He was going to shut it.
“That would be a mistake, Lyle.” Maddox’s voice tightened. “I suggest you trust me on that point. Danny?”
I took Barnes’ arm and gently disengaged it from the lid.
“No, Lyle. Don’t.”
“Very wise, Daniel.” Maddox gave a dark chuckle. “Because you need to hear this—and see it—all the way to the end. But don’t worry, we’re almost done.”
Even as I released my grip on Barnes’ arm, another photo appeared on the laptop screen. An official picture from a corporate personnel file.
“Next we have Nancy Mendors, Clinical Director at Ten Oaks, the private psych hospital where you were an intern years ago. At the time, she was a staff shrink going through a painful divorce and you were a recent widower…”
“Thanks to you,” I said bitterly.
“Not relevant. What matters is that you two found mutual solace by having a brief affair. However, you’ve remained friends, since you’re invited to her upcoming wedding to that pediatric surgeon. Apparently she had no trouble moving on.”
I gave Gloria a sidelong glance, but her expression was unreadable. Which was also the case when Maddox showed us the next—and last—photo. Another candid shot, from another day on a busy city sidewalk. In her jeans and sleeveless shirt.
“Last, we have the delectable and annoyingly bisexual Eleanor Lowrey. You and she were going pretty hot and heavy for a while there, Danny, you dog, you. But now things are somewhat up in the air. Good news for you, Gloria, I think.”
Her voice was deadly quiet. “Fuck you, Maddox.”
We heard his weary laugh over the laptop’s speaker. “You’re going to have to come up with another retort, Agent Reese. I’m afraid you’re wearing that one out.”
With that, Maddox abruptly reappeared on-screen.
“Now I want Lyle and Gloria to back away from the screen a bit, okay? Give Danny and me some personal face-time.”
At a nod from me, Barnes and Gloria moved off to one side, though each kept their eyes trained on the screen. Steeling myself, I again leaned in close.
“Here’s the thing, Danny boy,” he said, almost amiably. “One of these fine folks I showed you is going to die at midnight tonight. I’m not saying which one, mainly because I haven’t decided yet. But—”
“For Christ’s sake, Maddox—”
“Hold on. Let me finish. One of them’s going to get extremely dead…unless you do exactly what I say. If you do, then they all make it through the night. Blissfully unaware of the bullet they just dodged—literally.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious. Yet it’s more than fair on my part, don’t you think? You do something for me, and I do something for you. Quid pro quo, in the time-honored lingo.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Take a drive across town, to the Bassmore Cemetery. Be there by ten o’clock tonight. You’ll find the security guard in his little kiosk by the entrance. He’ll provide your next instructions.”
“Bassmore Cemetery?” My throat was going dry.
“Yes. And, as before, make sure you come alone.” Maddox smiled pleasantly, showing a row of perfectly white teeth. “I assume you know the address?”
I knew the address. I’d been there before.
Chapter Thirty-one
The wind had risen with the deepening night, and as I drove out of the motel parking lot, the surrounding trees bent like stoop-shouldered old men. Pale stars shone only intermittently behind the lumbering, ash-gray clouds. And when I crossed the interchange, bypassing downtown Pittsburgh, the sleek new skyline’s sparkling lights seemed equally cold, remote.
I knew what was happening. It wasn’t just fear, or the slow-welling dread that had seized me from the moment Maddox vanished from the laptop screen.
It was as though I was estranged from the rest of the world. Caught in some surrealistic landscape outside of everyday experience. Everything that had made up my life till now seemed stripped away, reduced down to this struggle with Maddox.
I also knew something else. That whatever it took, and regardless of what awaited me in the hours ahead, I had to survive this night.
l l l l l
An hour before, as Maddox’s last words faded along with his self-satisfied smile, it was Gloria who’d reached past me this time to shut the laptop lid. I didn’t stop her.
Meanwhile, Barnes had begun to pace. Uncommonly agitated.
“You can’t do this, Doc. A goddam cemetery? It’s obviously a trap of some kind.”
“I don’t have a choice, Lyle. You heard what he said. If I don’t, one of those people will die tonight.”
Then I turned to Gloria. “And look, I’m sorry about what you just saw…or if what you heard—”
Her look was pointed. “No worries, Danny. I’m a big girl. And like I said before, you and me…? Probably just crisis sex. Though usually when I hook up with a guy, I don’t see a slide-show presentation of his former lovers.”
I took another step toward her, but she held up a hand.
“Besides, none of that matters right now. Nothing does, except figuring out our next move with Maddox.”
“Gloria’s right,” said Barnes, no doubt happy the subject had changed.
“We don’t have another move,” I said. “But I do. He said to come alone, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Then at least stay in contact with us by phone.”
I agreed, and we all checked the battery charge on our respective prepaid cells, to be on the safe side.
Before leaving, I went out to my car in the motel lot and retrieved Barbara’s unfinished manuscript. Then I brought it back to the room I shared with Barnes. He was there alone, his sling undone, bending and stretching his wounded arm.
“What the hell are you doing, Lyle?”
“Testing my range of motion. You never know when I might have need of both arms sometime soon.”
“Yeah, well, until then, get your injured one back in the sling. And do something else for me, will you?” I showed him the bound manuscript. “Keep this here in the room wit
h you. Just in case things go sideways later tonight. I want to make sure it never gets into Maddox’s hands.”
He asked me what it was, so I told him.
“And you never knew she was writing it?” he said.
I shook my head. He merely shrugged, and took it from me.
Then Barnes and I went back to Gloria’s room, to find that she’d re-opened her computer’s lid. As he’d done with my own laptop, Maddox had replaced her scenic screen-saver image with that of his smiling face.
“We’ll monitor this.” Gloria indicated the screen. “And call you if he gets in contact again.”
“He won’t.” I looked from one of them to the other. “This is just about me tonight. For my eyes only. Whatever it is.”
l l l l l
Despite its ongoing gentrification, Pittsburgh proper still boasted a large percentage of wooded, undeveloped land. One of which was the Beechwood community’s Hidden Greenway, a broad, hilly expanse of trees crisscrossed by primitive trails. The occasional deep gully was carved into the wild landscape, along which ran a few rusting, long-unused railroad tracks.
Bassmore Cemetery lay in the crook of this unclaimed, forested patch of terrain. Built over a hundred years ago, it had eluded renovation due to a combination of civic nostalgia and corporate disinterest. Dotted by thick, spreading oaks and bordered by rows of weary hedges, Bassmore was a sprawling graveyard of faded headstones and moss-covered mausoleums.
Taking an off-ramp from Highway 51, and following a lonely road that wound under interlaced branches sawing each other noisily in the brisk wind, I spotted the cemetery’s mournful silhouette up ahead. The shanks of its low knolls and jagged outlines of its lofty trees were displayed in stark relief against the somber sky, like a Dickensian woodcut.
Damn him to hell, I thought, my hands tightening on the steering wheel. Of course Maddox would know about Bassmore. What it meant to me. The additional soupçon of pain it would bring.
As I pulled into the empty gravel lot just beyond the gated entrance, I reflected on how many years it had been since I’d walked its lonely fields and sloping hills.
My late wife, Barbara, was buried here, alongside her father, and for a long while after her death I made regular visits. Especially on her birthday, or the anniversary of our marriage.
Then, over time, the visits became less frequent. My busy life soon occupied by more pressing issues, significant demands on my time, people in the here-and-now who needed me.
At least that’s what I told myself, then and now.
Climbing out of my car, it also occurred to me that my previous visits had always been in daylight. When the sun shone warmly through the tangled tree branches and across the grass-carpeted fields, and when there were usually other mourners attending to the graves of loved ones.
Stepping into a cold night blanketed by dour, rolling clouds, the empty parking lot felt peculiarly desolate. Whether it was the sound of my shoes scraping the gravel, or the way the wind flailed angrily at the trees beyond, I felt enveloped by a sense of foreboding.
It took every ounce of will to keep myself centered, to focus on following Maddox’s instructions. I remembered from previous visits that the security guard’s kiosk was just outside the entrance gate, whose ornate iron-wrought arch soon loomed up ahead. There was a single light on in the little shack.
As I approached, I slowed my step on the gravel so as not to startle the guard. I could see him clearly now through the kiosk’s open doorway. He was a stout, gray-haired man sitting with his broad back toward me on a swivel chair, a Steelers thermos beside him on his cluttered desk.
Unmoving, he seemed riveted by the desktop security monitor screen before him. Even from where I stood I could make out the checkerboard of real-time images on the screen, showing various areas in the tree-shadowed cemetery beyond.
I’d just stepped across the doorway’s threshold, about to speak, when I abruptly stopped. Adrenaline shot through me, and I felt the heat rise in my chest.
Because suddenly I knew. Recognized that pungent, coppery smell.
Fresh blood.
Steeling myself, I took another step into the small shack and reached for the back of the guard’s chair. Turning it slowly on its swivel.
He was dead, of course.
To be sure, I checked his vitals. No pulse, no breath. No life. A knife of some kind was buried to the hilt in his chest, blood from the wound slowly spreading in rivulets down the front of his shirt.
Except for the blood seeping around the edges of an iPad, which hung from a lanyard looped around the knife’s hilt. A few crimson drops speckled the device’s blank screen.
It suddenly flickered on, revealing Maddox’s face.
At the same time, I remembered what he’d said back at the motel. That my next instructions would be provided by the security guard. This is what he meant.
Maddox’s voice echoed in the cramped kiosk.
“I’m impressed, Danny. Right on time. Even a bit early.”
“Dammit, Maddox, why did this man have to die? I don’t know him. He’s not part of your mission.”
“True. But, frankly, I didn’t see how I’d persuade him to wait patiently in his chair for you, holding the iPad on his lap. Or else maybe it was because I’ve never killed someone with a knife and wanted to give it a try.”
“Or maybe just because you’re a murdering lunatic.”
“Really, Doctor. Your pathetic attempts to bait me are growing tiresome. Meanwhile, I have some news that I think you’ll find of interest. I’ve decided who I’m going to kill tonight at midnight. That is, if you fail to do as I say.”
I swallowed my anger, and kept my voice measured.
“Who is it, Maddox? At least tell me that.”
“So you can warn the lucky winner? I hardly think so. That’s not how the game is played.”
I stared at his smug face on the iPad, as a single drop of blood meandered down the middle of the screen.
“But first,” he continued, “show me that prepaid cell phone you brought with you. Come on, I know you must have one.”
Reluctantly, I withdrew the cell from my pocket. Held it up to the iPad so he could see it.
“Good. Now stomp on it. Break it into pieces. Right now, and then show them to me.”
When I hesitated, his face darkened.
“I mean it, Danny. Do it or everything stops right now. Which means someone dies tonight…”
Quickly, I dropped the cell to the concrete floor of the kiosk and brought my foot down hard. Then harder. Finally the plastic shattered, pieces calving off.
I gathered them up and held them before the iPad screen.
“Good. But don’t worry, you’re about to trade up. Look on the guard’s desk, right next to his thermos. See the smartphone? Put it in your pocket.”
I saw it, and did as he asked.
“Next, turn to your left and you’ll see a shovel standing in the corner. Brand new, too. I got it on sale at Walmart.”
I took hold of the shovel. It was heavier than that used for yard work. I’d seen ones like it at construction sites.
“Now here’s what you’re going to do next. And don’t try to fool me, because I’ll be watching. Through the laser sight of a sniper rifle, if you must know. But I’d really hate for things to end that way, Danny. Not after all we’ve been through together. And certainly not yet.”
I leaned in toward the blood-spattered screen.
“Jesus, Maddox, don’t you ever get tired of hearing yourself talk? I sure as fuck do.”
The self-assured smile twisted up into something malignant. And the green of his eyes turned icy. As did his voice.
“You have until midnight. Do exactly what I say, or—”
This time I didn’t hesitate. “What do I have to do?”
“Take tha
t shovel and the smartphone and go to burial plot J-191. You know where it is.”
My heart stopped. “Maddox, no…”
“Oh, yes. Go to J-191 and start digging as though the life of someone you care about depends on it. Because it does.”
His smile returned. All teeth.
“You’re going to dig till you reach the coffin, and then you’re going to open it. And then, Danny boy, you’re going to use that smartphone to take a selfie of yourself and what’s in the coffin. Or should I say, what’s left in the coffin.”
My nerves twisted in my gut, and again I had to push down my rising panic. Try to hold onto myself.
“There’s a number pre-programmed into the smartphone,” he went on. “Once you’ve taken the picture of you with the dearly departed’s remains, you’ll send the photo to me.”
I had no words. No thoughts.
“Do you understand, Rinaldi? Say something! At least nod your stupid head. Now! Make me know you understand!”
Finally, after an eternity, I slowly, dumbly, nodded.
Plot J-191 was Barbara’s grave.
Chapter Thirty-two
I was in hell.
Gripping the shovel with one hand, I staggered out of the kiosk in a kind of trance and headed up the main access road to where the plots were laid out. The recent rains had churned the road’s dirt into uneven scallops of mud that had then dried in the sun. This left treacherous ridges and unexpected troughs practically impossible to see in the yawning darkness.
Although I’d thought to bring a flashlight with me from the car, its pale light bobbing up ahead on the road somehow made my path seem even more harrowing. Like a chiaroscuro landscape, with flickering, distorted images leaping out of the night.
Daunted by the road’s rising elevation, I was reminded of the physical toll my body had taken recently. My ribs ached, and my legs felt stiff and cramped. Every step was an effort.
At the top of the first hill, gasping, I stopped to catch my breath. Though the biting wind chilled the air around me, I could feel sweat sheening my forehead. Not from the exertion alone, but from the feverish intoxication of fear.
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