Twisted

by Steve Cavanagh

  She nodded, blew the steam off her coffee and took a sip.

  ‘If I didn’t know you any better, I’d say you were afraid to say something in case you turn out to be wrong. But you know you’re nearly always right. There’s no shame in giving a theory,’ he said.

  Bloch went over to her own car, opened the trunk and came back with a hardback book in her hand. ‘I haven’t read this book,’ she said, turning it over in one hand.

  The flap copy said, ‘The Hanging Tree: the latest from the multi-million-selling author, J. T. LeBeau.’

  ‘Why has this author’s name come up twice in this investigation? There are no coincidences when it comes to crime. Come on, you said so yourself.’

  ‘No one knows who J. T. LeBeau really is. It’s a pen name, for an anonymous author. And no one knows why. It’s kind of its own mystery,’ she said.

  ‘You think Linzi solved this mystery?’ he said.

  ‘The first message is from Linzi. My best guess is she’s messaging Paul Cooper, saying she knows he’s J. T. LeBeau. She wants money. They arrange to meet. Then, the second message – that’s from someone unknown. Whoever that person is they know Linzi. Probably from that writers’ group they mentioned. Linzi’s missing. And this guy knows she met LeBeau. He wants to find her.’

  Dole nodded, said, ‘So Linzi and person unknown are in a writers’ group with Paul Cooper. Paul hits it big time with the pseudonym of J. T. LeBeau, and Linzi calls him out. She says she helped him with the book. Maybe she critiqued it before he sold it to his publisher. She wants money to stay quiet. Blackmail. Nasty business.’

  ‘Maybe she got paid and disappeared?’ said Bloch.

  ‘I’ve been reading up on LeBeau,’ said Bloch. ‘If two people know who he is, why haven’t they come forward to the newspapers before now? They could sell a story like that for a fortune. Definitely more than a hundred grand.’

  Dole looked at the sky. The clouds were threatening another storm. He couldn’t see the stars, and the moon was partially hidden behind fast-moving cloud.

  ‘We’ll run searches on missing persons with the name Linzi. See what comes up,’ he said. ‘One thing is clear – there’s a lot more to this LeBeau character. And I don’t like the feel of it. There’s something else about those messages. Something sinister. Something I’m not seeing clearly.’

  ‘Whatever happened, it was a long time ago, almost ten years,’ said Bloch.

  Dole froze, he turned and ran back inside.

  Two things had just collided in his head.

  Linzi’s meeting on the South Ridge. Ten years ago. He burst open the door to his office, and found the Jane Doe file. He flipped it open, checked the dates on the inside cover. He didn’t need to check them. He knew them off by heart. It didn’t matter – he wanted to check the dates. He wanted to be sure. Needed to be sure. Taking the file with him, he sprinted to Bloch’s laptop, scrolled up and read the first message again. Bloch followed him, stood behind him as he opened the Jane Doe file again.

  ‘Ten years brings it close to the Jane Doe case. Look, it’s right on the timeline. The first message. Cooper was going to meet Linzi on the South Ridge, in Port Lonely. Look at the date. November 11th, 2008. On Sunday November 16th we pulled Jane Doe out of the spill well, at the bottom of the South Ridge. She’d been in the water a couple of days. Jesus, if he met her on Friday the 14th, then that’s her. That’s Linzi. The son of a bitch killed her and threw her over the cliff.’

  Dole could no longer see the screen. The screenshot of the messenger conversation blurred into white and blue smudges. He felt Bloch’s hand gripping his shoulder. Only then did he realize he was crying.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Paul opened the plastic baggie, felt inside. The memory stick was wet. The bag had a small rip in the lower corner.

  ‘Do you have any rice?’ said Paul.

  ‘I think there might be a box in the cupboard above the coffee machine,’ said Daryl.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll just get changed then I’ll check.’

  The sun had gone down, the heat had stayed up, and Paul had finally managed to pluck up the courage to ask about his clothes, and the memory stick. Thankfully, Daryl had checked the pockets of Paul’s jeans before throwing them in the washing machine. The stick had evaded a rough time in the machine, but it still had been exposed to seawater. He had no idea if it would still work. He took his folded jeans, T-shirt, underwear and socks into the bathroom and changed out of the baggy sweats that belonged to Daryl.

  He then returned to the kitchen and checked the cupboard. An old supermarket brand box of rice lay open. Paul found a bowl in another cupboard. It wasn’t hard to find a clean bowl in this house – noodles seemed to be the dish of the day, every day. Paul supposed that they were a cheap food source for a fisherman who didn’t like eating fish and struggled to make ends meet on his haul.

  The bowl was soon filled with dry rice, and Paul stuffed the memory stick deep into the grains. A few months before all of this, he’d dropped his cell phone in the toilet bowl and found a thread on reddit about how to dry out cell phones that had water exposure. Uncooked rice seemed to be the preferred method. Sure enough, a day later he turned the phone on and it worked just fine.

  With no idea if it would work for USB sticks, Paul just had to wait for another day. He had bigger things to worry about, but writing was his life. It kept him sane when all around him was chaos.

  Daryl opened the laptop, and Paul glanced over. He was checking out the street view of some location that didn’t look at all familiar to Paul. A digital chime sounded on the computer – a prompt to confirm an update with the option of restart or shut down. Daryl hit the return key, closed the computer, put on his black denim jacket, threw up the hood of his sweater and looked around for his keys.

  ‘On the counter,’ said Paul, pointing to them.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Daryl. ‘I won’t be that long. Four, maybe five hours tops. Relax, just don’t go outside.’

  ‘Trust me, I have no inclination to set foot outside this house. It’s not worth it.’

  ‘Fair enough. If there’s a problem, my cell number is programmed into the house phone. It’s the first contact. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Paul.

  Taking a large brown envelope from the hall table, Daryl stepped out onto the porch and closed the front door behind him. Within a minute Paul heard the rumble of a car with a hole in the exhaust pipe grumble further and further away from the house, up onto the dirt road and into the trees – headed for civilization. Headed to a meeting somewhere shady to buy Paul a way out of his current, extensive problems.

  There was nothing on TV. Evangelical preachers, advertisements for anxiety meds and orthopedic folding mattresses, three hundred more channels all showing crap that nobody wanted to see.

  He turned off the TV, sighed, and got to his feet. There was too much rolling around in his mind – Maria, the money, the cops, and the certain knowledge that someone had found him. Someone who wanted him dead. His head felt like it was filled with hornets, stinging his brain with every image that flashed before his eyes. Most of those scenes involved Maria.

  He felt the urge to write. To escape this life for a couple of hours and delve into someone else’s world, someone else’s problems. It could never be cathartic for Paul. Maybe it was for others, but when Paul closed the laptop or put down his fountain pen, his life came rushing back in just like the tide. It always returned.

  In the time he’d spent at Daryl’s house, he hadn’t noticed a notebook lying around, or even scraps of paper. He liked to start a story the old-fashioned way. Pen, paper, lamp and a pot of coffee.

  At least there was coffee. He filled the machine with ground beans, topped up the water and switched it on. While it brewed, he took a look around the house. A two-story painted house. Downstairs there was a kitchen and lounge. The house had been set back off the water and heavy concrete walls poured on top of the foundation to make sure the basement d
idn’t allow the bay to seep through the walls. Upstairs there was a bathroom and two well-appointed bedrooms. None of the furniture looked as though it had been made this side of the millennium and it showed.

  In the basement he’d seen a couple of rows of bookcases, and there was one in the living room. Paul made for the books. He eased open the door, walked past the silent TV and clicked on the table lamp that sat beside an armchair which in turn was positioned close to a bookcase which had probably been built into the wall when the house was first constructed.

  The set-up with the armchair and the table, the lamp, it looked like a reading corner. Paul put his hands on his hips, took in the bookcase. There didn’t appear to be any order to the arrangement. Nothing was in alphabetical position, the books ranged from small, yellowed paperbacks to fairly new hardbacks. The lack of arrangement made for a disorderly shelf, and Paul knew if he had to stay in the house much longer the sight of a tall hardback side by side with a paperback would drive him crazy enough to re-arrange the entire bookcase.

  Scanning the titles, he saw biographies, thrillers, romances, historical novels, three Jane Austen books, a few more Dickens, hard-boiled crime and the rest were a myriad collection of non-fiction. The non-fiction seemed to have a particular slant. There were half a dozen books on police and FBI forensics. More on the history of the FBI, a large number of true crime books on serial killers and many more on the academic side of serial murder varying from criminologists, psychologists, FBI profilers and more.

  While researching his novels, Paul had flicked through a couple of books on serial killers, checked out the information on the FBI website, and read a few more articles online. He’d not come across these books before. Reaching for a tall hardback on the middle shelf entitled The Killer Next Door: the Sociopath and Modern Living, he suddenly stopped, his hand hovering in the air. He realized then that he couldn’t concentrate enough to read. He really needed to write.

  Stupid. There was no paper and pen, but he had the next best thing.

  The laptop.

  Paul returned to the kitchen, poured some coffee and opened up the laptop. This was the first time he’d opened up the computer by himself. The screen came up with Daryl already logged in. Daryl must’ve hit the wrong prompt before the update kicked in. Instead of a restart or a shutdown, the laptop had remained on and logged in. There was an option to switch user. Paul did so. He had no wish invade Daryl’s privacy any further than staying in the man’s house.

  He clicked on the Windows icon, but there was no option to open a Word Document. Paul switched users, clicked on the icon again and this time he saw the option for Word. He clicked on it. The screen changed to show the program loading. Then it opened.

  Paul moved the cursor over the icon for a new blank document.

  Then stopped.

  There was only one document on the system. It had been opened the day before. Paul wiped his hands on his thighs. He thought about whether he should click on that document, or not.

  He guessed it wouldn’t do any harm. It looked intriguing.

  The title said, ‘Twisted.’

  Paul clicked on the document.

  It opened. He read it.

  Then he stood, fast, knocking over the chair.

  He began to tremble. It was uncontrollable. He felt the warm urine trickle down the inside of his leg. His body wouldn’t move. It was as if liquid nitrogen had flooded his veins.

  Trapped in pure terror.

  The bastard had found him.

  TWISTED

  by

  J. T. LeBeau

  * * *

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This will be my last book. I won’t write another. The reasons should be clear by the time you come to the end of this story. That’s an interesting word – story. Is this a true story? Is it a memoir? Or fiction? I can’t say. You may have found this book on the true crime shelf, or in the thriller section of your local bookstore. It doesn’t matter. Forget about that. There are only two things you need to know:

  1. On my specific instructions my publishers have not edited this text. There have been no editorial notes, structural edits or other outside interference. It’s just you and me.

  2. From here on in, don’t believe a single word you read.

  J. T. LeBeau,

  California, 2018.

  For ten years Paul had had to run and hide from one man. The man who had undoubtedly killed Linzi. The man who had tried to kill him. The man he’d watched burn Bob Crenshaw to death.

  And now, he was in the man’s house.

  Daryl had been the one who’d attacked Maria. Paul knew it now as clear as he knew anything.

  Daryl wasn’t who he claimed to be.

  And Daryl knew Paul had lied to him.

  But now Paul knew Daryl’s real name. And he knew the name that Daryl used for the world.

  Daryl was J. T. LeBeau.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The highway stretched behind Daryl like a neon river.

  Bay City traffic lay ahead. He pulled off the interstate the first chance he got and drove though the docklands. Towers of shipping containers, stark and colorful against the night sky, gave the false sense that there was some life to the city. There was not. Unemployment was high, crime was up, businesses were closing at their fastest ever rate and there didn’t seem to be anything anyone could do about it. He hit industrial sites next. Apart from a couple of businesses, the ghosts of large abandoned factories loomed over the area like a warning to any haphazard visitor – there is no life here. Beyond this were the suburbs and finally the city itself. Making sure to take the long way around, ducking stop-light cameras and the more highly populated areas, Daryl eventually got through the main streets with their empty tourist traps and came to the oldest part of the city.

  The buildings weren’t so pretty on this side of town. Most stores were boarded up, and apart from small groups of drug dealers huddled around blazing oil drums on the corners, the streets were all but deserted. This suited his purpose.

  He found the old cigarette factory without difficulty. The building opposite stood alone. A long-closed liquor store with an apartment above it. Daryl saw a light on in the apartment. The directions he’d been given had worked out just fine.

  He thought about Paul, lying in wait back in Port Lonely.

  Idiot.

  He cracked a smile when he thought about Paul lying to him – telling him that he had twenty million dollars in an account because he was J. T. LeBeau.

  The balls on the man.

  Before Daryl had taken the name J. T. LeBeau he had read Paul’s work in their writers’ group. Daryl had a different name then. A name he’d left behind a long time ago. Paul’s work was good but not great. Second-rate mysteries at best. They lacked the … authenticity that Daryl brought to his work through his research.

  The twenty million was many things – blackmail money, a means to incriminate Paul, and a trail of breadcrumbs that had taken Daryl ten years to follow to the end. Paul knew Daryl’s real identity, and because Daryl couldn’t find him, he paid him. For the last ten years he’d searched for Paul, trying to trace him through the money, through his books. It had been a long struggle. One that had finally paid off. And now he was going to get his money back. And he was going to get a new book out of it.

  Daryl always knew Paul could never go to the cops claiming he knew who J. T. LeBeau really was and that the mystery author was a killer. No way. No way to prove any of it. Daryl couldn’t let Paul go, he needed a way to make sure he didn’t cause trouble, keep him at the end of a long string. It was a good story – and Daryl was getting ready to write it all down.

  And then Paul was going to suffer for what he’d done.

  Maria had been a way in. A pawn. An excuse to send Paul on the run for Maria’s murder. Only she had survived.

  He almost admired that. She was resilient. Smart too. She had needed some careful nudging in the right direction. He’d managed to get Paul’
s bank statements by intercepting the mail to his secret office in town. He copied them, then returned them to their envelopes, resealed them and delivered them. As well as the office, he knew Paul would have something secret in that study of his. Otherwise there would be no need to keep it locked. Daryl had stayed over in the house a few times when Paul was away. He’d crept downstairs while Maria slept, used the key to get inside the study. The desk drawer was locked, and there was no key around. Paul must’ve kept it with him. This had given Daryl the idea – how he could set Maria and Paul against one another. He’d brought the bank statement with him on Friday, Maria hadn’t noticed him slipping it in amongst Paul’s papers when he’d broken the drawer. His manipulation of Maria had, however, served both his purposes. Spooking Paul into running and making him a suspect for police. Forcing him into a situation where he needed to get hold of money. A situation that Daryl would exploit.

  Whatever else spiraled from the investigation was fodder. It would all end up in the new book. Or some of it, anyway. He liked the title – Twisted.

  For now, Daryl focused on the task in hand. He needed to get his money out of Paul’s bank. For that, he needed Paul alive. And he needed some documents.

  He left his car in the abandoned lot of the cigarette factory, walked to the side door of the building with ‘Cal’s Liquor’ in peeling white paint on the bricks.

  There were no streetlights on this side of the building, and he let his eyes become accustomed to the dark before he knocked on the cold steel door.

  In the distance he could hear a car engine. Probably at least two blocks away. A car was yet to pass him on this street. Quiet like this unnerved him. He was used to having to blend in with people on the streets, keeping his head down and his mouth shut. Somehow he felt safer in a crowd. The quiet of the country life was different because he’d expected it to be quiet.