Twisted

by Steve Cavanagh

  Dole decided then that Paul Cooper was alive. Maria had found out her husband was J. T. LeBeau from the bank statement in her pocket. She confronted him, and he attacked her. That’s how it played out, even with the broken mailbox. Paul knew a lot about how the FBI track a wanted man, and faking your own death, particularly just after your wife has almost been killed, counted as a good way to disappear. The FBI don’t hunt dead men.

  ‘The Port Lonely Sheriff’s Department does,’ said Dole out loud.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Daryl closed the front door to his house, moved to the kitchen and switched on the light. He drank a glass of water and looked around. With the exception of the light in the kitchen, the house was silent and dark. He listened. Trying to catch the faintest noise to make sure his guest was still at home.

  Nothing.

  He put down the water, moved to the hall and saw the basement door stood open an inch or two. With great care, he slowly opened the door and took hold of the flashlight that lay on the shelf just inside. He switched it on, pointed it at the stairs and crept into the basement.

  Step. Wait. Listen.

  Step. Wait. Listen.

  Nothing.

  The old boards creaked with his weight, but the sound didn’t carry. He reached the last step, and sat down.

  He angled the beam to the wooden flooring that sat on top of the concrete. Tilted the flashlight. The beam hit the bottom of the bed.

  Daryl hesitated. If Paul had decided to run then all his efforts would be for nothing. If Paul Cooper had left, Daryl would have to hunt him down and kill him, and he would never get his money back.

  He flashed the light upwards and saw Paul asleep in the bed. He stirred, and Daryl swung the beam into the corner of the room. The light settled on Paul’s jeans, spread out on a clothes rack.

  ‘Uh, Jesus Christ …’ said Paul.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,’ said Daryl.

  ‘You scared the life out of me,’ said Paul. ‘Did you get everything we need?’

  ‘Sure did. What happened to your pants?’

  ‘Oh, just me. I’m so clumsy. Dropped a cup of coffee all over my crotch. Thank God it was nearly cold. Otherwise I’d have boiled my nuts.’

  Both men laughed. Daryl sensed the laughter from Paul was not genuine and this bothered him.

  He clicked off the torch, said, ‘Sorry to wake you. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Paul.

  Daryl went upstairs, using the light from the kitchen to find the steps. He put the flashlight back on its shelf, went into the hallway and closed the basement door. He couldn’t wait to get back to his laptop. Back to the story he’d been brewing for ten years. Maybe the last story he would tell. He knew that paying Paul all that money would eventually lead to a good novel.

  It was time to get started on it properly.

  He fetched a key from the chain attached to his jeans, and locked the door. In the morning he would need to be up early to unlock the door. Paul mustn’t be allowed to suspect a thing.

  Returning to the kitchen, he reached up above the kitchen cupboards, found a box of pills stashed behind the lip on top of the cupboard. He took one of the pills, swallowed it with more water and replaced the pack in its hiding spot. The pills kept him level – even. In control. Anti-anxiety meds helped him to take the edge off. Without them, he found it harder to manage his urges, and bring the adrenaline down after a kill.

  He found that he was staring at the floor. Looking for the wet patch where Paul had spilt his coffee. His dirty mug sat beside the sink, so he guessed it must have happened in the kitchen, and he looked again.

  There was none. He checked the hallway, living room. Bone dry. He peeked into the waste basket in the kitchen, and saw there were some used paper towels.

  He tried to put it out of his mind. Brewed some coffee and opened up the laptop. He hit the power button, waited for it to load up then entered his password. He clicked on Word and then selected his work-in-progress document. He smiled when he read over the author’s introduction. He didn’t intend it to be a confession – he wanted to muddy the waters so the readers wouldn’t know what was true, and what was fiction. He liked it that way – it kept them guessing. The author’s note was nowhere near as bad as he thought it was the day before. He left it alone. This was going to be his greatest work. He always knew there would be a book in Paul Cooper’s story once he tracked him down. It would make for a great twist. He thought about the title – he liked Twisted. It was a callback to his first novel, which was called Twist. The publishers would probably hate it, but they wouldn’t change the title. Twisted had a nice ring to it. He thought this new book should have more than one twist by the end. It would be his last, probably. Lots of people might come looking for him after this book. That was okay.

  They would never find him. Not like Paul. It had taken Daryl a long time, but now he had him.

  Daryl couldn’t be sure, but he felt Paul had been lying about something tonight.

  He simply knew he had to be more careful. Paul Cooper was not a man to be underestimated. And he forced himself to remember that Paul was many things. A man who had eluded him for a long time. A writer, with imagination and a certain amount of intelligence. A devious husband who had kept his secrets even from his wife. And above all, he told himself, Paul was smart.

  Daryl knew he just needed to stay focused and watch his back. Paul was not a man to be trusted. He was desperate.

  And desperate men can kill.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Paul lay on the bed, wide awake, and listened to the footfalls of Daryl above him. Eventually, he must have gone to bed, and silence enveloped the house. Paul’s heartbeat slowed, and he closed his eyes. The sins he had committed were coming back to haunt him.

  It all started with a writers’ group in New York. They would meet up once a month, critique each other’s work, drink beer and eat pizza and then go home feeling lousy about what they’d written. That’s where he’d met Linzi and they quickly became friends. She was from Iowa, and had moved to New York to make it as a writer. Her parents had both passed, she had a small bank of savings, motivation and talent. She also found she had a gift for mentoring writers and she was the one in the group whose opinion mattered the most. Pretty soon people stopped coming to the group meetings. They just fell away. It was tough to get published and more and more people quit. Paul didn’t quit, but at that stage he was going to the meetings to see Linzi more than anything else. They had a brief fling, but Linzi broke it off, not wanting to ruin their friendship. She was unsure about her feelings for Paul, and wanted time away to think. Linzi moved to Bay City as it was cheaper and her savings were running low. She wanted to keep going with the writing group, and she loved having Paul involved, so she decided to set up an online writers’ group on Facebook. Writers could pay for feedback from Linzi and Paul who at that stage each had a novel published, to little acclaim and virtually no sales. They had met up in Port Lonely, six months after she moved to Bay City. It was Paul’s first time in the town. Linzi had visited a few times, and loved the place. They spent the weekend, and talked and laughed and held one another. When Paul went back to New York, he knew he had spent time with a true soul mate. Linzi still wasn’t sure about a relationship, but they agreed to let things stay as friends, for now. The writers’ Facebook group grew over six months, and gained maybe two dozen members. Most of them couldn’t write for shit.

  Except one guy. He submitted the first half of a novel to Paul and Linzi, and it was just unbelievable. The memory of that first reading was strong with Paul. It was a scene Paul had read a thousand times. Police discovering the body of a murder victim. It was like nothing else he had ever read. It was as if you were right there. The sights, the smells, the visceral details – all burned into his psyche. Both Paul and Linzi gave the writer feedback; just some simple suggestions to improve the piece – shifting some sentences around, shortening a paragraph here and the
re. Nothing major, but nevertheless it improved the work.

  Soon after the writer who had written that scene left the group. About a year later Paul had published his second novel, and he came upon an advanced review copy of a debut novel by J. T. LeBeau. His agent, Josephine, had been sent it, and she passed it on. The first chapter was word for word the same scene that he’d read a year earlier from the guy in the Facebook group. A veteran cop discovers the body of a missing girl in the basement incinerator of an old abandoned building, surrounded by the bones of dead cats. He called Linzi, sent her the book, she read it and confirmed it was the exact same one. They tried to get in contact with the guy, to congratulate him, but he wouldn’t return any of their messages.

  Paul thought nothing more of it, until the book was published and began to sell well. The book grew and grew and when it finally went stratospheric the first article appeared in the New York Times discussing not just the sensational success of the book, but the elusive author J. T. LeBeau. It was a mystery that gripped the country, at first, and then the world.

  Only Paul and Linzi, it seemed, knew the truth. They’d talked about it endlessly, pondering what to do and whether they should talk to the press. Paul had traced him through the Word document license for the piece he’d uploaded to the group. He had his real name.

  Linzi was broke. She called Paul, asked him for a loan. He didn’t have anything to spare. Paul suggested, as a joke, that she tap-up J. T. LeBeau. He could afford it. The initial joke wore thin when Linzi said she would do just that. She had helped him, he could afford to throw something her way. Then Paul had told her to try it. It couldn’t hurt. Plus, they had his real name. He could pay to keep it quiet.

  Linzi messaged LeBeau, arranged to meet up.

  They had both helped with his book. The changes they had suggested made the final draft. LeBeau was set to make millions and Linzi was on her ass. At that time Linzi lived on the coast, and she arranged to meet him in Port Lonely. Paul had waited all night, desperate to hear what had happened. Had he given her some money? Eventually, he got tired of waiting and he called her. No answer. Days went by. Then weeks. He tried texting, emailing, Facebook, left repeated voicemail messages.

  Nothing.

  Sick with worry, Paul messaged LeBeau and told him he knew who he was, and asked what happened to Linzi. LeBeau asked for Paul’s number, and Paul gave his cell number. He called straight away.

  He used some kind of voice distortion device. Paul heard an electronic voice – cold and inhuman.

  ‘You talked about me with Linzi, didn’t you. You know who I am?’

  ‘That’s right, I know. That doesn’t matter – where is she?’

  ‘She made a mistake, Paul. She threatened me. I met her on the cliffs of Port Lonely. Nice little town, close to Bay City. I gave her the money, and she said that was just a down payment. She could get more from the press. Said CNN offered her half a million dollars for an exclusive. That was her mistake – greed. I caved in her head with a rock, stripped her clean and tossed her over the cliff.’

  He’d said it casually, like he was describing the weather.

  ‘She should have taken the money, Paul. She begged me in the end. She realized she’d made a mistake. She talked about living in Port Lonely with you some day. Setting up a home, having a baby. She won’t be doing any of that now.’

  ‘You’re an evil son of a bitch. I’m going to the police,’ said Paul.

  ‘Don’t do that. I’m going to make you an offer. I don’t know where you live, or how to find you, but I will someday. And I’ll kill you. Only way out of that is for me not to have to worry about you, Paul. Here’s what’s on offer. I was a wealthy man before I published, I’m even wealthier now. So here it is – one million a year for the first three years. Then it goes up to two million a year. That’s enough money that you won’t be tempted to go to the police, or the press, and I won’t miss it that much. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Paul, and hung up. Paul called the police, but with no record of the call, and no evidence of anyone missing, he soon got the run around. They thought he was a crackpot. He called LeBeau’s editor, Bob Crenshaw. Told him he knew who J. T. LeBeau really was.

  Paul arranged to meet Bob Crenshaw beneath the Manhattan Bridge. Bob said he would be driving a green Toyota. Paul found the car on fire with Bob still in the trunk. Maybe alive, maybe not. He had tried to black out that part of his memory. He couldn’t get to him, the flames were too hot. He stood there and a couple of seconds later the gas tank went up. Paul knew then, as sure as he ever knew anything in his life, that he was responsible for Bob Crenshaw’s death. LeBeau killed him to keep his secret safe. Linzi too. Paul had caused all of it.

  The secret was the strange life of J. T. LeBeau. Paul had done his homework before he’d met Crenshaw. He knew everything that there was to know about LeBeau. People around him had a habit of disappearing. Classmates. Neighbors. Work colleagues. Even his parents.

  He tried to kill Paul that night under the bridge. LeBeau must have tracked him down, somehow. He knew he was meeting Crenshaw and had taken care of that problem.

  Paul saw him from afar. A dark shadow. Paul ran through the lot, hid in an old dumpster filled with rats. He watched that car burn all night through a hole in the side of the dumpster. He got out by morning, before the fire department arrived. Commuters on the bridge saw the smoke, called the cops. No one was going to call the cops in the middle of the night for a fire on a lot. The fire department wouldn’t be interested either if it was just a car in an old lot. No hazard. They would put it out in the morning.

  That morning Paul knew he had to run. He figured LeBeau already knew where he worked, knew all the names of his friends – probably even where he lived. Paul ran. Hid in Manhattan. But he couldn’t work.

  He needed to end it. He knew that much. The police would never believe him. LeBeau had managed to avoid suspicion. The only way was either to kill him, or make him believe that Paul was not a threat.

  He got a call from the same anonymous number the night after Crenshaw died.

  ‘Did you hear Bob calling out as he burned? Take the money then I don’t have to worry about you. It’s almost over, Paul, you’re going to be rich.’

  Paul did take the money. He knew that it had two purposes for LeBeau.

  First, if LeBeau was ever caught, he would tell the police Paul knew everything and he was paying him to be quiet, making Paul an accomplice after the fact. The money had to be substantial for this to work. The cops would figure that a payment of over a million dollars a year had to be to hide something more important than an author’s real identity. This was the kind of money someone was paid to cover up a murder. Second reason, LeBeau would try to trace Paul through the money. Digital banking had so many pitfalls Paul hired an ex-con who’d done time for money laundering to help him move the cash with the sole purpose of hiding it from the original payee. That only worked for a short time, and he had to change the system in advance of each payment. Then he’d confided in his agent, Josephine. She acted as a barrier between him and LeBeau Enterprises, and filtered the money through her accounts, but the payment still went into Paul’s bank, minus Josephine’s commission, with the payer’s name on the deposit – LeBeau Enterprises.

  After a while, Paul felt safe. The money came in regular from LeBeau Enterprises. He made sure not to flash it. Any big purchases left a trace. Most of the money he kept. And he hid in New York.

  With time, Paul stopped being afraid. Paul knew LeBeau’s real name, but he’d never met him, and there were no photographs, anywhere. Paul didn’t know what he looked like. Any man on the street could have been LeBeau. All he could do was hide. Eventually he told himself that he could not be found.

  Years went by. Paul started writing again. His agent knew he was in hiding. He’d told Josephine the truth. And for a fee she’d kept his secret. LeBeau continued to publish. Each book a nightmarish retelling of a real murder.

 
Even if he could spend all that money – Paul never wanted to. It was blood money. Then, he met Maria. He didn’t think he could love anyone again, but she had proved him wrong. They moved to Port Lonely after they were married. Paul figured it would be the last place LeBeau would look. Linzi was gone, and that broke his heart for the longest time, but he wanted to fulfill her last wish, he wanted a life in Port Lonely, only it had to be with Maria, not Linzi. In a way Paul told himself it would help him move on, help him deal with his guilt. In some ways it made it worse, and he had thrown himself into his work.

  Paul knew the break-in was LeBeau. He’d gone for the private desk, where Paul kept the articles and press clippings on LeBeau, trying to track his movements and relate the murders in the novels to real cases. The day after the break-in, Paul had seen the message on his car.

  I know who you are. Motherfucker even signed it, Mr. LeBeau.

  Paul had been found. He had to run again. He was afraid LeBeau would harm Maria. That’s why Paul never told her the truth. The last person he’d told about LeBeau had died in agony. He could not poison her with that knowledge. Josephine needed the split from the LeBeau money, and she would never tell a soul. He knew now he should have taken Maria with him, but he’d figured she would be safer if he left her behind, after all, LeBeau wanted Paul, not Maria. He had been wrong about that. And then LeBeau fooled Paul into thinking he was rescuing him from a sinking boat. Paul guessed LeBeau was likely the one who sabotaged the boat in the first place.

  He fought down the pain. He would deal with it later.

  LeBeau had found him through the money, somehow. Probably the bank. And now LeBeau wanted the money back. That much was clear. He had come up with the plan to help Paul get the money out of the bank. If it was solely about killing Paul, Paul would be dead already. LeBeau could easily have killed him half a dozen times.