by Wayne Batson
I stood. We shook hands. “I appreciate the help. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“If I can be of any further assistance, don’t hesitate, young man.”
“I won’t,” I said. And I had the strange fleeting thought that, even should this case become blindingly disturbing, I might have to give serious thought to keeping my memory of Doctor Shepherd.
I turned to leave, but Doc drew me to a halt when he asked, “You a Dickens fan?”
“Dickens?”
“As in Charles Dickens, the writer.”
I shrugged. “He had a keen wit,” I said. “Had a way of capturing the human condition that was better than most. I guess, you could say I’m a fan.”
“My favorite author,” Doc said, twirling his mustache reflectively. “Y’know, I think Dickens had it right when the Ghost of Christmas Present told Scrooge to beware of man’s offspring, Ignorance and Want, but especially Ignorance.”
I nodded, deep in thought. And it dawned on me what Doc meant. I quoted Dickens, “For on his brow I see that written which is Doom…”
“Be careful out there, son,” Doc said. “There’s no end to the wickedness of mankind.”
“There will be,” I replied as I left. “For some sooner than others.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Walking out of the hospital into the wall of heat some people in Florida called air, I was thinking that my day couldn’t possibly get any more interesting. Then, I almost literally ran into Special Agent Rezvani.
“You checked out of Motel 6,” she said.
“You noticed.”
“I am with the FBI,” she said. “They pay me to notice things. Not much, but they do pay me.”
“How’d you know to come to the hospital?”
“You’d written it on a stationary pad…left an imprint.”
“Clever,” I said. “From the other day, when you were in my room.”
She nodded. “Speaking of your room,” she said. “I went by there about a half hour ago, and it looked like a train wreck. Mr. Granderson was having a major hissy fit about it. Care to tell me what that was all about?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
Cicadas in the palms chirped more loudly. I raised my voice. “Depends on what you wanted to talk about…and whether or not you plan on trusting me.”
“Mr. Spector,” she said. “I want to trust you, but professionally, it would be ludicrous to do so. Do I have to explain why?”
“No, I guess not. But you did come looking for me. Should we sit down and talk somewhere?”
“Out of the heat,” she said. “This is oppressive. Come on. I’ll drive.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
We settled on a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place a few miles from the hospital. The waitress didn’t speak much English except for what was on the menu. She brought us a basket of chips and three different salsas. One of them green, one dark red, and the other a viscous, angry orange. She pointed to it and said, “Hot.”
I wasn’t too worried. I loaded a chip with a glob of the so called hot stuff and wolfed it down. I blinked a few times. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead. My throat burned. My stomach churned. And, I think my heartbeat became a bit irregular.
“This…” I said, swiping up the glass of ice water and gulping it down, “this really is hot.”
Agent Rezvani booted her laptop, plugged a power cord into an outlet below the table, and hooked up a pair of ear buds. When the desktop appeared, she opened a video player and said, “You aren’t going to want to eat after this.”
“More photos?” I asked, swabbing my forehead with napkins.
“No.” She typed in a username and a password. “A video. The camera you found had a two minute video clip on its memory card. Did you know?”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “No, I didn’t.” I slid the chip basket to the windowsill. “Does it show something new?”
“You tell me.”
Agent Rezvani gave me the ear buds and pressed play. There was no ambient sound. No voices. No scrape of a chair. But there was a dreadfully out of place cello piece. It was a deep, thrumming melody that—coupled with the expected content—turned my stomach almost immediately. The young woman with lush red hair sat in a chair like before. She wore the same ghoulish expression, but it was far worse seeing it in motion: the subtle sway of her head, the languid leer in her eyes, the lips moving, curling into that sickly smile. The killer stood behind her as before, face visible only from the bottom of his sharp nose down. The blade came up, touched her throat. A bead of blood appeared. The cello raced on. She smiled through the whole cut.
After her head fell forward, the screen flickered. There was the long dark hall and the strange glow up ahead. The unsteady camera bounced along, showing the killer from behind as he walked. The brightness of the light from the doorway burned away the killer’s face, except for a brief flash of the eyes. The camera passed through the doorway, panned left, and found the room full of dog houses. The screen went dark.
“There are two killers,” I said.
Special Agent Rezvani nodded. “No doubt about it. An accomplice at least. Easy enough to set up a camera for the still pics. He could put it on a tripod during the murder. But it followed the killer, and the picture bounced with each step.” She shut down the video software and pulled up email. “What else?”
“I think they’re killing the women at sea.”
“Why?”
“The camera’s zoomed in tight on the victim, but you can see everything’s cramped in there. The ceiling’s low and arched, like a ship’s cabin. The doghouses are in another section, but again, the walls are concave.”
“You’ve done this before,” she said. “Investigated, I mean.”
“A few times,” I admitted. “Have you sent this to the Bureau?”
She tapped a few keys. “Last night. Nothing back yet.”
“Think it’ll make a difference? Think they’ll reopen the case?”
She looked out of the window, her eyes reflecting the glowering gray sky outside. Another storm. Like clockwork. “No,” she said. “I don’t think they will.”
“But you’re going on,” I said. “You’re still on the case.”
Agent Rezvani’s dark eyes smoldered. “If what we’ve seen is real, there is another young woman dead. The bastards have five left, keeping them in dog houses. But they aren’t going to stop.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to stop them.”
“You’ll have to get in line.” She glared at me, and I couldn’t tell if it was her way of sharing the anger over what was happening or if she was letting me know that she had priority on this case. Either way, there was power there. Something I couldn’t ignore. Special Agent Deanna Rezvani was going to be a factor no matter what I chose to do.
“You going to tell me what happened in your hotel room?” she asked.
“I will. But there’s something I want to check out first.”
“Where can I reach you?”
“Nowhere yet. You have a card? I can call you.”
“You really should get a cell,” she said, reaching into her purse. She handed me a card. “Not all technology is evil.”
“That’s the truth,” I said, tapping my case, then wishing I hadn’t. Never provoke an investigator. I stood up, let the case fall to my side, and changed the subject. “Can you drop me back at the hospital? I left the k—left my car there.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The sky was darkening, storm blowing in from the west this time. We’d traveled in silence, but when I stepped out of the car in the hospital parking lot, back out into the wall of heat, I said, “There’s one more thing I picked up from the video. Maybe it will help your friends at the Bureau open their eyes.”
She stared at me, exasperated, hands gripping the steering wheel
way too hard. “What?” she demanded. Lightning flashed.
“The victim,” I said. “In the video, her lips were moving. I think she was talking. Maybe someone in the FBI can read lips.”
“Son of a—” She peeled away from me so fast that the momentum slammed my passenger door for me.
Lightning flashed again. Thunder cracked and rumbled. I’d counted seven seconds. The storm was getting close.
Divine violence. I was about to bring a little of that myself.
Chapter 15
The late afternoon thunderstorm was raging, and Spinnaker Sales was hopping by the time I walked through its glimmering doors. The showroom floor was packed with clusters of smooth-talking salesmen like G and saleswomen too, though they had a decidedly different approach to luring customers. Apparently, it was working. I’d never seen so many rich people grinning with the prospects of a new toy.
I found G near the back of the showroom. His back was turned. He was staring at a clipboard. His head bobbed slightly, and his jaw was working, apparently counting. Probably figuring out how many thousands of dollars he’d made that afternoon. He looked smooth as ever and in charge. He didn’t look like someone who’d recently found a corpse.
“How were sales this morning?” I asked.
G must have jumped ten inches off the ground. He spun around, and even his carefully controlled expressions couldn’t hide his shock. It was something close to panic. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to speak to one of your valued customers?” I asked.
“You’re no customer,” he said, drawing back a measure of restraint. Then, forcing out a little superiority, he shot, “You were staying at Motel 6 for crying out loud.”
“What?” I asked. “They left the light on for me. It’s a good chain.”
“Get out of here, or I’ll call the police.”
“Really, G? You’re going to pull that card out this early? We haven’t even gotten started.” I drummed fingers on my silver case. Amazing how each new context inspires the imagination so very differently.
G swallowed. He gazed around the showroom, maybe hoping an associate would come to his aid. Maybe looking through the glass at the outside and wishing he was standing out in the storm. Or maybe just searching for a rock to hide under. “What…what do you want?” he wheezed.
“I think…I think I want to help you, G.”
“Help me?” he spluttered.
“The way I figure it, whoever you’re protecting didn’t like me poking around about his special Sun Odyssey.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Spare me.” It was my turn to look around the showroom. “You have a manager’s office somewhere? A place we can talk without this going public?”
G swallowed. I guess he thought about the body…put it all together. “You…you’re not going to kill me, are you?”
“Not unless you attack me first,” I said and then added, “That’s what the other guy did, the guy you found in the boat this morning. What’d you do with him anyway, G?”
“Shut up,” he hissed. “Back here.” He spun on his heels, marched back behind the counter and down the hall.
He opened the door to a tidy little office. There was a small desktop computer, a filing cabinet, a couple of chairs, and a large window. The desk was more of a counter that fit two sides of the square room.
Soon as we entered, I put the blinds down. I shut the door and said, “Sit down.” I put my case on the counter so he could see it…and wonder. “Now, I’m going to tell you some things. And I’m going to ask you some things. You’re going to tell me the truth. If you do, you’ll walk out of here, and you’ll have my protection.”
“Wait, I…you said you weren’t going to kill me.”
“G, I don’t have to kill you. I can do other things. Now, are you with me?”
He swallowed and nodded.
“You had the registration number of the Sun Odyssey on file. You lied about it. It was there. Right?”
He nodded.
“Good so far,” I said. “After I left, you called the owner. And the owner put a hit on me. Did you know that?”
G nodded again. “I mean, I called him, but…I didn’t know…didn’t think about the hit.”
“Of course you didn’t, G. You could care less if someone takes a dirt nap as long as it’s not you. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that, maybe you’re a little worried about your own skin right now. Now that the hitter’s in a box, and I’m still walking around, your boss is liable to get nervous. Maybe he’s thinking you’re a loose end. Am I close?”
G suddenly became a bobble-head doll. “He…he sent some men, for the body you left here. He wasn’t very happy about it.”
“Now, I can take care of this for you,” I said, stepping so close to his chair that my shadow fell over him. “Your boss has done some very bad things, and he’ll keep on doing them unless someone makes him go away. I can do that, G, but I need some information.”
He wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead and gave a tentative nod.
“Let’s start by you telling me who he is and where he is.”
He cursed and shifted on his chair like he had noose around his neck and any moment the floor was going to drop open beneath him. “Don’t…don’t know his real name.”
“That’s okay, G. You just give me whatever name he gave you. Give me his port. Give me his phone number. Everything you got.”
“Forget this!” G tried to stand up but ran into my chest like a brick wall. He cursed again. “You don’t know, man. This guy is nuts. He’ll carve you up and throw you to the sharks! No way I’m crossing—”
I smacked him, open palm…hard. He blinked up at me with that wide-eyed shock most men get when they get hit, really get hit. All the memories of childhood beatings come flooding back in. He blinked again, and I could see the indignation and defiance coming back.
“Look, G, I don’t have time for this petty arrogance. I need to know where I can find this guy. He’s hurting women. Did you know that?”
“So what!” G spat. “Who cares if he smacks around a few b—”
“I do.” My voice dropped two octaves. I couldn’t hold it back. The room darkened and my skin went white-hot until I was the only light in the room. White light. Searing, pure phosphorescence. There was the sound of rushing wind, deep and ominous, like an approaching tornado. Papers whirled wildly. G’s immaculately combed hair blew around his face.
At once, I willed myself to unmask partially while, at the same time, triggering a Netherview. The office was still there, but so were other things: the stone and mortar walls of an ancient chamber, cobwebs shrouding every corner, and creeping lichen spread across many patches of stone. I watched the membranous lichen, remnant shreds of iniquity, spark to whitish-green fire and burn away. And then, I saw G for what he was. I read his real name. I saw his heart, saw the fear and all the lies he’d told himself for a lifetime. I saw his inner man. It was an ugly, shriveled thing. I almost had pity on him.
Almost.
“Gimoaldo Alonzo Vasquez! Tell me what you know!” my voice boomed, but only between the two of us—my mind to his. If someone had been listening at the door, they’d have heard nothing.
G shook in his chair. “F-F-Four Seasons Marina!” he blurted. “D-don’t know the berth. It’s under Dyreson Industries.”
“His name?” I thundered.
“I…I don’t know. He called himself Gray. That’s it—don’t know if it’s a first name or what. Just ‘Gray.’ He has an accent sometimes, maybe…maybe South American, I don’t know. He doesn’t explain a lot. All I know is him and his partner sail outta Four Seasons.”
I ended the Netherview. Wise not to use it for too long at a time…unless I wanted to go to war. A Netherview attracts things. Unpleasant things like Shades…and worse.
The overhead light came on. My voice went back to normal. “I’m going to see him toni
ght,” I said. “After tonight, you won’t have to look over your shoulder anymore.”
“Not tonight, man,” G said, still shaking. “He doesn’t go out ‘til Friday night. That’s when he takes the girls out, y’know?”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, man. I swear!”
“I believe you, G.” I turned and reached for the door. “You won’t call him…warn him.”
“No, no, I won’t, no freakin’ way.” G swallowed. “Wh-what are you, man?”
“G, I’m going to give you some advice,” I said. “The best advice you’ve ever gotten in your life.” I leaned down and whispered next to his ear.
When I backed away, G looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Maybe it’s wrong to feel this way, but I love messing with people’s categories.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“With all due respect, Deputy Director,” Special Agent Rezvani argued to her cell phone, “you told me if my findings became something more than a hunch…that I should call you. I’m calling now. We need to reopen Smiling Jack.”
She listened to his response, then yanked the phone from her ear, and glared at it like she was going to take a bite out of it. “But, Sir,” she growled into the mouthpiece, “We’ve got new evidence. No, I know we still don’t have a body…look, Sir, it’s video footage. We have Smiling Jack’s latest kill on video. What do you mean? It is NOT more of the same. It’s—”
Rez’s mouth snapped shut and she listened for another three minutes straight. Finally, she’d heard enough. “Look, I know the Director doesn’t need the Bureau getting another black eye right now. Opening a case, especially one like Smiling Jack won’t look good, but Sir, we’re talking about the lives of at least five more women. Just give me—”