I draw my gun. Without a word, I ease the door open and step inside. A red carpet runs the length of the room before terminating at a wall, diverting left and right toward rooms unseen. Just as my eyes fall on a large statue of some eastern God, the metal of a barrel presses to the temporal bone behind my ear.
“What kind of gun do I have in my hand?” A smooth voice asks, jovial with a hint of amusement. The accent is crisp, British. I checked the room when I came in but hadn’t even seen him.
“A 9MM,” I say, measuring the small muzzle against my head.
“Nope,” he says, amused. I mistake the humor in his voice for relaxation and make my move. But when I whirl, I’m jabbed in the chest by something.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he says with a smile. “It’s 5000 volts here.”
I look down and see a cattle prod is pressed against my torso, and the gun being eased away from my head was actually a Glock with a slender suppressor on its end.
“You’ve gutted the prod,” I say and holster my gun. I’m not afraid Gideon will zap me or shoot me. He is giving me a show.
He grins. “If you have the prod against their back it is more likely they will not take your gun. You can zap as soon as they try to turn on you. I am a fan of two-handed weapons, as you know. And I modified this.”
He pushes a button on the base of his prod and a 5-inch dual blade protrudes from the end, just above the prod’s tip.
“In case shit gets serious,” he smiles. He twirls the prod around and demonstrates its dexterity. “All assuming hand-to-hand is not the order of the day.”
“Very clever,” I tell him and he smiles at my praise.
Darting to the wall, he puts down the prod and gun, then picks up a gadget. “I am a big fan of remote detonations and information acquisition these days. This here controls a bug half the size of your fingernail. It can be navigated with a remote to any location. It also has a magnetic USB that will connect to any port on command. You only need to get it close enough and zhoop.”
I nod because Gideon does this every time I visit. He shows me his latest toy with relish.
“I am expecting a drone on Monday. I can’t wait to try it out on the Maradux Outfitters. Are you still going to second me on that?”
I look down. When I manage to meet his eyes again, I take Gideon in. He is taller than I am by at least four inches. His broad shoulders taper down to a slim waist. He might look like a man now with that dark shadow at his jaw and those ridiculous curls, but his face is still the face of the 11-year-old boy I met ten years ago.
“Then the rumors must be true,” he says as if I’d just punched him.
“I wondered if you’d heard,” I say.
“Of course,” he says, with a bitter smile. “I hear everything.”
It is not a pompous exaggeration. Gideon has an amazing memory. He retains everything he’s ever heard, seen, or read since the time he was three. Couple that with the fact he is a fast talker, highly adaptive, and a survivor, Gideon has quite the skill-set. His love of Iranian comic books romanticizing the smuggler’s life should have been my first warning sign that he would take to this life too easily.
“So what are you here for?” he asks, not even trying to hide his disappointment or pain. “Is there still a chance for a final Brinkley and Bale adventure?”
I rub the overgrowth on my chin. “You may have to do this one without me. Consider it a last request and we will be even for the boat incident in Morocco.”
“And the brothel in Singapore?”
“Sure,” I say and glance around, eyes falling on what looks like an imperial crown. Then I do a double-take on what I think is a ruby the size of an egg.
Gideon is intrigued by my offer. “And you’ll forgive me for the drug lord’s daughter in Mexico City, or the shrine theft in Kyoto, or—”
“For all of it,” I say, because I can’t really be mad at this kid for anything. “It is a big favor.”
His joviality falters at the edges. “You aren’t just going to die, are you?”
“It looks like it.”
“You have the girl.” His cheeks burn red. “Use her.”
“It’s not really me he wants,” I tell him, and he knows I’m talking about Caldwell. “If she tries to save me, she’s just going to make herself more vulnerable. I can’t let that happen.” I think again of the picture in my pocket. Jesse dead in Caldwell’s arms. That could be her, trying to save me.
“Then use the other one,” Gideon says, the anger spreading to his ears and neck. “You cannot just die.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.”
His hands hang limp at his sides. He opens and closes them as if they are numb. “I can’t believe it.”
“Soldiers die. You know that better than most people.”
“You can’t just give up.” Gideon shouts. “What about my training? What about—”
“You don’t need me,” I say and it is true. Whether or not he realizes it, Gideon outgrew me a long time ago. “You’re smarter and more capable than I ever was. And wars aren’t being fought the way they used to be.”
After a moment he says, “I do not want you to die.”
“That’s a sweet thing to say,” I tell him. “But I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Did you only come here to say goodbye?” he asks, slapping the side of his leg softly.
“No,” I admit. “Like I said, I need your help.”
“Do you really?” he asks. “Or is it some petty request to make me feel useful?”
He knows me too well.
“It’s a real request,” I tell him. “This is important, Gid. I need to know that you cannot be bought. The man who wants to kill Jesse has access to a lot of money.”
His face stiffens again. “You know I don’t care about the money.”
“If you won’t take his money, he may try to give you information,” I go on. “He will try to buy you somehow. He’ll offer you whatever you want most and if that doesn’t work, he will try to kill you.”
“I like him already.”
I rub my head.
“Is that all?” he asks. “You come to tell me not to work for a bad man?”
“No,” I say.
“Of course not.”
When I give him a look, much like the look I would give him in the courtyard at St. Anthony’s when I learned he broke this or that petty rule, he softens.
“What else do you need?”
“I want to know how to take him down,” I say. “What is his weakness?”
“Shoot him.”
I laugh. “I’ve tried. He has an AMP who is always five steps ahead of me.”
Gideon shrugs. “Shoot the AMP and then shoot him.”
“I’ve tried that too,” I tell him. “It hasn’t worked.”
I remember the first time I put a gun in Gideon’s hand. He was fourteen and had begged me for two years before I finally caved and taught him to shoot.
“Are you sure you will forgive me for the brothel?” he asks, with the smallest of smiles. He’s trying. That’s all I can ask. “You were very angry with me.”
“Yes. I forgive you. Just find out what you can.” Even as I ask him, the guilt washes over me. I see him standing there, this young man who should be in school. His memory retention, his talent for espionage, and his desire for power and wealth—I should have never encouraged him, no matter how much he begged. Loneliness is a dangerous flaw.
“So will you help me?” I ask.
Gideon pulls a gold coin from his pocket and fingers its rough edge. Finally, he meets my eyes. “As you wish.”
Chapter 40
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
I took one step inside the door and Charlie yanked me into his office. “How the fuck did a bullet from your Beretta end up in Captain Jackson’s shoulder?”
I froze. The room began to spread out in front of me, elongating, and Charlie himself warping out of proportion.
“What?” I asked.
Charlie heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh thank God. I didn’t think you’d be so stupid, but I wanted to be sure.”
“What?” I demanded again.
“The bullet dug out of Jackson’s shoulder is a match for your Beretta. Well, a Beretta. I don’t think you shot her but—”
“I shot her,” I repeated.
Charlie waved his arms. “Keep your voice down. I’m saying I don’t think you shot her, but the bullet is a match. Pair that with the fact that both of you claim you saw a girl who is supposed to be dead, and the wound was nonfatal, it is starting to look suspicious. And don’t get me started about your service record.”
I considered his words. I’d asked him if he was part of something big, and believed him when he said otherwise. Here he was doing the same for me. “What do you want me to do?”
“First of all, find your fucking gun. We don’t need someone running around shooting people with your firearm, do we?”
“No, sir,” I said.
He cut his eyes up to me as if to warn me not to be cute.
“Secondly, find Sullivan. We will all breathe better if you do. The crows will stop pecking at my eyeballs and I can quit pissing on your head.”
“The girl,” I began but Charlie was prepared for me.
“The girl,” he countered, “is probably safe. For now at least. If she really is pink-cheeked, fed, and swaddled in princess blankets with teddy bear companions, then no one is using her little skull for a jerk-off tool. We on the other hand are being fucked three ways ‘til Sunday. You need to find your gun, find Sullivan, and then find me a drink. The girl can wait.”
She can’t, I thought. But I wasn’t dumb enough to start that conversation up again. Charlie’s desk phone rang and he frowned at the number on the screen before answering it.
“Swanson. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah I think I know him. Really? He’s right here.” Charlie lowered the receiver. “It’s for you.”
I reached out and accepted it.
“Hello, sir. Agent Benjamin here. We have a body down at the riverfront. We’d like you to come down and ID it.”
“I’m no coroner,” I said. I switched the receiver to my other ear. Charlie’s eyes never left mine. “What can I do for the body?”
“Yes, it is unorthodox sir, but we feel like you may be connected to the crime.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because the body we dug out of the river, sir, it has your name carved on its chest.”
Chapter 41
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
I parked on the street near the St. Louis riverfront. An engraved granite stone sat between two concrete pillars. The pillars stood like guards. Chains from each side were locked to the granite sign and meant to create a barrier.
I stepped over the chains and descended to the walkway below, heading left. With my back to the bridge, I moved toward the swarm of uniforms in the distance.
When I got close enough for someone to stop me, I held up my FBRD badge and was allowed to pass beneath the tape that roped off that segment of beach. It wasn’t a beach exactly, not the kind I knew growing up in North Carolina anyway. It was a sandy bank beside a body of water though, and I stopped before I even got to the bloated body.
It was the smell. The stench of dead bodies was never something I’d gotten used to, no matter how many years I’d been in this business, but I particularly hated the stench of bodies pulled from water, or left out in the heat to fester and rot. In the case of water bodies, something about the fishy odor of the river mixed with the corpse was particularly unpleasant.
I smeared the menthol offered by the tech under my nose and didn’t feel embarrassed by it. I know some guys who’d insist it’s a sign of weakness to accept the help. I found it more embarrassing to puke on the corpse.
The body was naked, mostly unidentifiable because of the bloat and bizarre bluish color. The genitalia had been mutilated, rather savagely. My name was carved on his chest all right, and not artistically. The B, r, n and e, were jagged scrawls rather than soft, round letters. I accepted a pair of gloves offered by one of the techs.
“Whatever he used,” I said, fingering the edge of the wound with my gloved hand. “It wasn’t sharp enough.”
“Do you know him?” the man who escorted me to the body asked.
Instead of replying, I went on. “The blood under his fingernails could be his attackers.”
I remembered what Fizz said about Chaplain then, about his ability to make a man shove a screwdriver into his own eye.
“Or he could have been forced to mutilate himself,” I offered. “It would explain the jaggedness and uneven approach. He wouldn’t have been able to be precise through the pain.”
“I know it might be hard to identify him,” the man said.
I turned then. I looked up and measured him for the first time. His face blanched and he took a step back.
“I know him,” I said. “But I don’t know you or why you deserve the pertinent details for this case.”
“I’m Detective Smith, from Boston,” he said.
That explained the attitude and the accent.
“I’ve been tracking a killer for a long time and believe he’s taken up in St. Louis. It’s been a decade since I started this task force. Most guys last three years. I’ve been riding this for ten years,” Smith said.
I arched an eyebrow. “Why are you telling me?”
“I want you to understand that I’m dedicated to this. I want to close it, and here I have a body with your name carved on it, and the body fits my killer’s M.O. perfectly. Throw me a bone here, Agent Brinkley. Please.”
I nodded. I knew what it meant to go hard on a case for that long.
In retrospect, I know even better now than I did then.
“His name is Harry Fitzgerald,” I said. “I busted him with narcotics, an insignificant amount, and let him go in exchange for his collaboration.”
“He was your informant.”
“Fizz, as I liked to call him, was good. He gave me what I needed, and clearly someone found out.”
“What were you working on now?”
I looked up at the other man. While I disregarded him at first, a work habit unfortunately, I took him in more fully now. He was maybe 5’10”, chestnut brown hair and a pointy jaw. His hook nose was crooked and the acne pock marks on the side of his face weren’t as bad as they could’ve been.
“Who was he following? Who was he narking on?” he pressed.
My mind blurred and warped. I looked for the answer and couldn’t find it. A strange, feverish chill slid down my back. “I can’t remember.”
“What?” he said.
I stood up. I hoped I didn’t look as incompetent as I felt. “I can’t fucking remember.”
“That’s real convenient.”
I pointed at the blue hair, wet and sticking to the unrecognizable face. “I ID’d your man and I told you what I know. Call me if you need anything else.”
Smith yelled after me but I did not turn back. I kept walking at a slow and steady clip to the Impala.
Chapter 42
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Since Jackson was still out of commission at least another day, I hit the bar. I admit I was hoping to run into the guy again, the man who seemed to know something about the internment camps. But I showed up real early. I played darts with the young Bobby George wannabe until I grew bored. Then I challenged his friends to pool.
I had a considerable buzz by the time someone slid onto the bar stool beside mine.
“Just the man I was looking for,” I blurted, not entirely on top of my game. I was just this side of drunk, which was dangerous.
“Really?” he said and smiled.
“What’s your name?” I asked. “I never got a name.”
He turned and considered me for a moment. Then as if realizing just how far gone I was, he grinned. “Aaron Reeves,” he said. “But you can call me Reeves. That is what agents, cops,
and all those types do right? Last name only?”
I thought about Charlie. “Reeves it is.”
“Are we celebrating something?” Reeves asked and accepted the pint that Peaches readily put in his hand.
“My partner was shot and my best nark was found in the river with his balls cut off,” I said. I lifted my glass. “Cheers.”
Reeves looked horrified and so did Peaches.
“Water for you,” Peaches said. “A dead body in my bar isn’t good for business.”
Reeves had forgotten about his beer. “Someone is trying to kill you.”
I shrugged. “Someone is always trying to kill me.”
Reeves stared harder as if he was unsure how to proceed. After a long pause he finally said. “Someone is actively hunting you. Why else shoot your partner and kill your informant?”
I shrugged and the stool slid from beneath me. Reeves reached out and caught me by the arm.
“Uneven floor,” I muttered.
“Earthquakes,” Peaches offered with a grunt.
“This isn’t San Fran,” I said, aware that he was making fun of me.
“You pissed someone off,” Reeves said again.
“I’m always pissing someone off,” I slurred. Peaches laughed companionably. “What else is new?”
Reeves was perturbed. More perturbed by the news that I was on someone’s hit list than I was—at least after all the booze I’d put in me.
“You need to be careful,” he said. His cheeks were red even in the low light. “Your work is important.”
“The missing girl?” I couldn’t remember what case he was referring to.
“The camps,” Reeves insisted. His eyes were wide, urgent and it was as if he’d forgotten himself in the moment. “You have to uncover the truth about the camps. If a good man like you tells the world about them, people will believe you.”
I snorted at the good man comment, but even so a light went on in my head. “Right. Right. You’re right. Tell me about the camps.”
“They were horrible,” he said. His mouth hung open as if he was still astonished himself. “Absolute torture mills.”
“How did you get out?” I asked.
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