Stolen

by Daniel Palmer

  Bob had his computer connected to mine, analyzing the data packets from my computer connection in real time. He was looking for the Fiend. The data he collected was being relayed back to a network operations center manned by scores of FBI agents. He sighed and groaned and threw a pen across the room; whatever he was doing, it wasn’t going to work.

  Agent Bob grunted in disgust. “This guy is using a pool of anonymous proxy servers to keep hidden. Some of our tracking tools are being blocked by a firewall, too. He’s good. Damn, he’s good.”

  Agent Robert was on the phone, I guess speaking with the FBI’s computer forensics operation center, while I watched the computer screen like it was a stove-top pot working toward a boil.

  “We’ve got some early feedback on the text message he sent,” Agent Robert said to Agent Bob. “They think he’s using a burner phone.”

  “Burner phone?” I said.

  Agent Bob said, “Burner phones are prepaid cell phones, replaced frequently, sometimes weekly. That’s why we call them burners. Can we get a trace?”

  Agent Robert dispelled the hope with a shake of his head. “We think it’s a no,” he said. “There’s a theory he’s sending text messages via a Google Voice account that he established using Tor or some other proxy server. We can’t trace that.”

  In a flash, the black rectangle became an all-too-familiar basement setting. And there she was, Ruby, still tied to a chair, looking impossibly weak and frail. Her head lolled limply to one side; her eyes were open only a sliver. Her lips looked desert dry, cracked like scorched earth. Her skin was slack and sallow. Without the rise and fall of her chest from each tired breath, I’d have believed the worst.

  “Ruby!” I shouted, dismayed that my voice failed to rouse her.

  A figure entered the frame, and I prickled at the sight. Once again, the Fiend wore the mask of Mario, those cutout eyeholes a portal into a bone-chilling evil. I could see his mouth move, but couldn’t hear a word being said. Frantic, I hit the volume button on the keyboard, but the sound level was already maxed out. I kept hitting the volume button, anyway.

  “I can’t hear you!” I shouted, pantomiming the message by pointing to my ear. “I can’t hear you!”

  The Fiend eyed me with curiosity, head tilted slightly to show his confusion, his masked face moving closer to the camera. Then he pointed to his ear and shook his head. He couldn’t hear me, either!

  “Volume! Volume!” I screamed.

  We had a video connection, but something wasn’t right with the audio transmission.

  “What’s going on?” I said to Agent Bob, pleading. “Why can’t he hear me?”

  “There’s a problem translating digitally compressed data packets into audio sounds. I can’t tell you any more than that without a lot more analysis.”

  I set my hands on the monitor, caressing the sickly image of Ruby. Agent Robert placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, his touch comforting. The Fiend held up a finger to the camera—“One moment please,” the gesture conveyed. I watched as he stepped out of the frame and came back moments later, holding a marker and pad of paper. I saw him write something on the paper.

  Behind him, Ruby sat slumped in the chair, her wrists bound to the armrests and her ankles secured as well. I was sure it wasn’t unintentional that the rope used to bind my wife could also be used to scale a mountain.

  I kept my hand on the monitor, my finger tracing the contours of Ruby’s weary face. I wanted to embrace her, relieve her suffering, but my touch could not be felt any more than my words could be heard. A vast digital ocean that could not be crossed or navigated separated us.

  The Fiend showed me his pad of paper.

  Technical difficulties, he wrote in a neat hand.

  Another sheet of paper.

  Wanted you to see Ruby was all right.

  Another sheet of paper.

  But she won’t be without that body.

  Another sheet of paper.

  You’ve got eleven hours to go.

  The video conference went to black, cut off with cruel abruptness.

  For a while, I don’t know how long, I sat benumbed, staring wide-eyed at the black rectangle lodged in the center of a Web page, praying it would flicker back to life again, but knowing in my heart that it would not. I heard the agents Bob talking animatedly, reviewing data packets sniffed from the session, dissecting every nuance of my nightmare in real time. All I could do was to sit and stare, feeling ashamed of my powerlessness, again asking the universe to guide me out of my darkest hour.

  That was when I knew I’d come full circle. Not that long ago I’d feared the love of my life was going to die. I had tasted the bitterness, the profound sorrow, witnessed the crumbling of the future we’d planned. I imagined my life after the inevitable and thought about all the holidays and birthdays that would come and go without my beloved. I had cried and hated myself because I wasn’t the one who was dying. I thought I’d found a way to save her, but I was right back where we started, only worse. This was my private hell, so I kept my thoughts to myself, speaking them only in my head, over and over again—a mantra of sorts.

  My name is John Bodine. I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m married to the love of my life. And no matter what it takes, or how far I have to go, I’m not going to let her die.

  I closed my eyes and opened my heart, asking of the universe with every fiber of my being, believing without a doubt that faith and clarity of vision would answer my wishes. I constructed a vision board in my mind. It looked just like the one Ruby had instructed me to build back when my depression lingered and my game needed a serious publicity boost. I envisioned a corkboard covered in purple fabric. On it, I imagined pictures of Ruby and me together. I filled our future with kids, laughter, and love. I said my affirmation over and over again, seeking strength from above.

  No matter what it takes, or how far I have to go, I’m not going to let her die.

  At some point, my phone rang, not once but three times. I didn’t notice. I was too busy visioning. It was Agent Bob who tapped my shoulder to get my attention. I looked at the number and saw that Clegg was calling. I pressed to talk.

  “We have a body,” he said.

  CHAPTER 60

  Clegg and I followed Doctor William Cartwright, a skeletal man with stooped shoulders and a horseshoe of wispy brown hair, down a long corridor located somewhere in the basement of Harvard’s medical school. Cartwright seemed a bit too titillated by the large police presence accompanying us for my liking—Clegg’s, too, I could tell.

  “The medical students aren’t always prepared for gross anatomy,” Cartwright said in a breathy voice. “Some of them find it horrific to see a dead person. Imagine that, doctors afraid of the dead.”

  “Imagine that,” Clegg said. I could tell Clegg was annoyed, but Cartwright seemed oblivious.

  “We’ll have to scramble to get a replacement cadaver, as we don’t keep a surplus of bodies,” Cartwright continued. “Fortunately, we’re still able to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s request.”

  “Well, we’re awfully sorry for the inconvenience we’ve caused, Doctor, but I thought you might be glad to help save a woman’s life,” Clegg said.

  Cartwright cleared his throat, fanning out his long, thin fingers and then closing them into a tightly balled fist, one finger at a time. “Well, I’m speaking without a filter,” he said. “I’m glad to be of help, though less pleased to be back here at midnight, Officer.”

  “Detective,” Clegg said.

  “Is the plan for us to receive the body after you . . . do what has to be done?”

  “That’s the plan,” Clegg said. “The medical examiners will contact you when the body needs to come back.”

  Cartwright said, “From what I understand of this plot, the body will need to be cremated as it will no longer be of use to our students.”

  “Speaking of students, you know you can’t talk about this to anybody,” Clegg said. “It would be considered obstruction of justic
e.”

  “Of course,” Cartwright said, somewhat indignantly. “I was well informed of my obligation on this sensitive matter. Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Cartwright nodded his good-bye and shuffled on ahead, moving quickly to catch up with the medical examiners wheeling the stretcher that would carry out Ruby’s only hope for survival.

  “He’s trying to help us, David,” I said, wanting to settle him, though not at all surprised by Clegg’s harshness. When agitated, Clegg could be downright ornery, and we were all highly agitated. I, for one, was definitely ready to snap. But I dug deep, finding the strength to keep moving ahead, one foot in front of the other.

  Chief Higgins wasn’t faring much better, at least according to Clegg. Apparently, even with the task force working nonstop and bulletins cast out to every law enforcement organization from here to Fresno, nobody had been able to locate Carl Swain or Edwin Valdez, aka the purse snatcher.

  Clegg and I passed through a set of double doors that opened into a large room kept meat-locker cold. Racks of bagged bodies entombed in white plastic shells, four long rows worth, rested atop metal trays. Rollers beneath the trays made body retrieval easier. The overpowering smell of preservative, formaldehyde perhaps, hit me like a sucker punch, causing my eyes to water, my breath to quicken.

  “Now, that’s a scent only a mortician could love,” Clegg said as we caught up with Cartwright at the end of a row of dead people.

  “This is yours,” Cartwright said, rolling out the tray on which the cadaver rested. “We’re going to arrange for cremation, but you have instructed the widow that she’ll need to pick up the remains, have you not? We can’t ship human ashes, you know.”

  “Yup, that’s all set. Thanks, Doc,” Clegg said. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you will.”

  Cartwright slunk out of view, and Clegg looked pleased.

  “Why are you giving him such a hard time?” I asked. “He’s trying to help us.”

  “That guy,” Clegg said, “didn’t want to give up this body. I had to go to the dean to get Cartwright to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s wishes. The dean, it turns out, was a lot more understanding.”

  An ME unzipped the bag and nonchalantly pried open the sides like it was just another day at the office for him. It was time for me to do my job.

  Someone had to make the call that the body would fool the Fiend. To my surprise, Higgins had asked Clegg to include me in this gruesome show-and-tell. The plan was mine to begin with, and it was my wife in jeopardy, so maybe that was why Higgins wanted my input. Maybe he worried a preserved body would look too different from a freshly killed one. Maybe he just knew that Clegg would bring me along regardless.

  It looked like a wet and heavy cloth had been overlaid on an old and withered frame, but the counters were all there, the basic scaffolding of features that defined a face. He had caterpillar eyebrows, wisps of gray hair, and wrinkles that spoke of a long and fulfilling life. His arms were two twigs, chest sunken, a body ravaged not by disease, but by the aging process alone.

  “Who is he?” I asked. “I need to know about him.”

  “He’s an eighty-two-year-old retired pharmacist who wanted to donate his body to his alma mater. He was a pilot, a war vet, and from what I read in his file, an all-around nice fellow.”

  “Was it hard to get the permission?”

  “Not hard,” Clegg said. “We found the right person. There was a lot of paperwork to fax back and forth. Mrs. Grayson’s son helped her do it. It took a while, but we got it done.”

  “Why’d she agree to do this?” I asked.

  “The Graysons had a daughter,” Clegg said.

  “Had?”

  “Had, as in the daughter’s dead.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” I said in a respectful tone, as though expressing my condolences. “How did she die?”

  “She was murdered,” Clegg said. “About twenty years ago. When we told the wife we needed to use her husband’s body, but we couldn’t say how or why—police business was all we could tell her—Mrs. Grayson wasn’t too keen on helping. Then we told her about Ruby, or more specifically that a young woman’s life might be saved, and she agreed to help, whatever it took. We had a lot of people making a lot of calls, John. For a while there, I didn’t think it was going to happen.”

  I nodded, feeling a reverent appreciation for the Graysons’ sacrifice.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now you tell me if you think our killer is going to believe that you took out an old guy.”

  “I think he’ll believe that the most,” I said. “I took a life at the end of a life. Yeah, this will work.”

  “He looks a bit like a marinated olive to me,” Clegg said. “We’re going to need to get some blood to add a bit of realism here.”

  “Will he be on the news?”

  “Not his face, just a news report,” Clegg said.

  “We’ll need proof.”

  “The profilers at the FBI think he’s going to contact you after the news breaks. We’ll get you a video clip you can send him. That should work.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” Clegg said. “Then we’re a go. I’ll prep it.”

  Without warning, Clegg hoisted up one of the man’s frail arms and splayed open the fingers of his bony hand. He reached into his back pocket with his free hand and removed a pair of spring-loaded pruning shears.

  “I hope this works,” Clegg said, snipping off one of the man’s fingers as nonchalantly as an ME opening up a body bag.

  CHAPTER 61

  It all went down. The best-laid plans of mice and men. The MEs, accompanied by a substantial police escort, brought Mr. Oliver Grayson’s body to a cordoned-off section of woodlands near the Boston Police VFW Post in Dorchester. I guess I could have killed somebody there in the predawn dark. A press release went out to the news media shortly thereafter, around 4:30 that morning, six hours before the deadline. “The police have found a body in Dorchester,” the alert read, “another apparent victim of the SHS Killer.” News media descended on the scene the way vultures are drawn to carrion.

  Yellow crime-scene tape held the press at bay, though reporters did everything possible to gather information. They pushed and shoved and shouted out questions. “Who is the victim?” “Male or female? Age?” “Any connection to the other victims?” “How did he die?” “Can we see the body?” Police detectives assigned by Higgins to manage the media gave vague answers to the firestorm of questions.

  I stood in the background, watching as the events unfolded. Everyone, it seemed, acted with authentic urgency. It looked like controlled chaos. I wasn’t in the briefing room when Higgins and the FBI did all the planning, but if Academy Awards were given out for the most realistic faked murder scene, I’m sure this would have won.

  The discovery of a body in Dorchester, and its possible link to the serial killer terrorizing Boston, dominated the morning news and topped headlines on both local and national media outlets. Everyone, Special Agent Brenner included, believed the Fiend would contact me via my cell. He’d done it before. He’d do it again. So I was kept under close supervision. The FBI set up a tech center that could triangulate a cell signal if he did make contact.

  An hour passed. And then another. Four hours to go, and still no word.

  The tightness in my throat matched that of my stomach. Not a second went by when I wasn’t thinking of Ruby. I wanted to hold her, to feel her touch, feel her body pressed up against mine. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being cursed. King Midas in reverse. Everything I touched turned to poison.

  I said my mantra over and over again. And no matter what it takes, or how far I have to go, I’m not going to let her die.

  “It’s like fishing,” Detective Gant said to me, depositing a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me. “Bait the hook, cast a line, and wait for a bite.”

  I ignored Gant’s tasteless analogy by watching the video of O
liver Grayson’s dead body. We took the recording using my iPhone’s camera just after sunrise. Morning dew collected around the head in a crown of beaded water. The sky ignited with streams of pinks and yellows, all the markers of a beautiful day. We wanted the video on my phone in case I had to send it to the Fiend. The illusion had to be complete and perfect. I killed Oliver Grayson. I took a video of the body as the sun poked out over the horizon.

  Afterward, the MEs bagged up Grayson—again—and Clegg left to escort them to a funeral home where the body would be cremated. Wailing sirens added authenticity to the departure. I stayed behind, camped out in a conference room at the VFW headquarters, along with a host of other law enforcement types, playing the waiting game.

  I watched the video several times. Grayson looked to me like the other victims of the SHS Killer. Poor Oliver had two fingers set on the eyes, two on his waxy lips, and fingers protruding from each bulbous ear. The added blood was ketchup, but on video I couldn’t tell the difference. I didn’t see a cadaver. I saw a dead body, a murder victim. What I saw was my obligation fulfilled.

  Three hours to go. Still no word.

  A song popped into my head. The waiting is the hardest part. Tom Petty. Hadn’t I sung that to Ruby in Dr. Anna Lee’s office? Hadn’t that won me a point in our never-ending game? How prophetic a tune, how true it was.

  And then it happened. My phone rang. My first thought was that Gant was right: it was like fishing. I did feel that jolt of adrenaline when a slack line suddenly goes taut. Everybody in the room—Higgins, Gant, Kaminski, Brenner, Agents Bob, Brewer—all tensed as well. I could see it on their faces. They felt the pull on the line, too.

  “Shut up! Everybody shut up!” somebody screamed. “Everybody shut the hell up!”

  Silence descended like a curtain. Voices went from a murmur to complete quiet in a few breaths. My phone rang again, sounding out the haunting chime of marimbas. I heard Brenner whisper, “Make sure our equipment is a go.” Burner phone or not, I knew that by triangulating the nearest cell phone transmission masts, coupled with cooperation from my cell provider and a lot of sophisticated equipment, they could pinpoint at least a general location of the Fiend.