“Can’t say that I would.”
“And if the freelancer was prevented from going in after his wife, who ends up dying in the fire, could you understand how the freelancer may feel about following protocol?”
“I suppose a man might be prone to think ill about any protocol that he thinks prevented his wife from being saved. I’m with you so far.”
“Let me ask you, . . Uh, I don’t know what to call you?”
“Let’s start with referring to me as ‘the only man in the room with a gun.’ Unless you have something stuffed in your waistband.”
“Nothing stuffed in my waistband Mr. ‘only man in the room with a gun,’ sir.”
“Good to hear. Proceed with your story,”
“When I was on the police force in Columbus, my wife was held captive during a bank robbery gone bad. A spaced-out loser with a Glock held her and five others at gunpoint. I knew the bank and knew that I could get in the rear entrance, walk up, and pop the bastard before he knew what I was doing. But, I wasn’t allowed to do it. I wasn’t allowed to ‘freelance.’
“Another ten minutes goes by, with me trying to convince my Captain that I could get in and make the whole problem go away. He kept telling me about the department’s ‘protocol’ and how we needed to wait for a hostage negotiator.
“Then we heard the shots. Three of them. One for my wife, one for some eighteen-year-old kid, and one for himself. Bastard killed my wife and a kid, then shot himself dead in the head.
“So you see, Mr. ‘only one in the room with a gun’ how I may just feel about following protocols?”
“Turn around and face that wall,” Ralph said without pause.
As Derek turned, he heard Ralph move closer, and then he felt himself being frisked.
“Okay, freelancing Derek, you can turn around now.”
Derek turned to see Ralph lowering his Colt.
“The name is Ralph Fox. And just because I put my trusty peacemaker down doesn’t mean that I won’t pull it back up if you decide to do something stupid.”
“Understood, Ralph.”
“You said you was hired by a Thomas O’Connell, did ya?”
“Yes sir. He hired me to protect him from his brother, Alexander, who my client believes has already killed three men. The three men who, I have to believe were found in this room.”
“I’d say your client is right about Alexander killing people.”
Derek looked around the room, noting the blood-stained couch and splatter stains on the ceiling and walls.
“What the hell happened in this room?” he asked.
“Something that was pretty damn fatal.”
Derek, relieved from the stress he was feeling when a gun was being pointed at him, regained his level of curiosity.
“Not sure if you or your team discovered this yet, but there is a trap door under the bed here.” Derek moved the institutional looking bed to reveal the opening in the floor.
“Son of bitch,” Ralph Fox said. “My boys may not be the best in the world with all this police stuff, but you’da figured that all them State Police investigators would have noticed something like this. How did you find this out?”
“Luck, I guess,” Derek said. “This leads to a crawl space under this part of the lodge. A square of the flashing had its screws and insulation removed. I can’t say for sure, but to me it looks like this was done from underneath, not from inside this room.”
“Like maybe the fella who resided in this here room had some assistance?”
“Seems likely to me.”
“So, tell me Derek Cole, you said you was hired by Thomas O’Connell?”
“Yes. He is the son of Ken and Janet O’Connell, who I believe you contacted already.”
“Yep. Called them the day after my boys discovered this scene. Found their names, and a whole lot of other names in a bunch of files in Doctor Straus’s office. Found a lot of very interesting stuff as well. Medical reports, experiment results, names and addresses, and a stack of pictures. Some of them damn pictures are scary enough to scare the stink off a skunk.”
“I’d love to have to look at those files,” Derek said through a grin.
“I bet you would, now wouldn’t you?”
“The story that my client told me, and that was confirmed by a Doctor Mark Rinaldo, seems a bit hard to believe. You find information in those files that referenced a pretty unbelievable story?”
Ralph gestured for Derek to follow him out of the bedroom, through the sitting room and into the hallway. Ralph didn’t say a word until he reached the entry way of the lodge.
“Now what I found and whether or not it supports this story of yours depends on what your story is. Doesn’t that make sense?”
“I was told that Alexander O’Connell, who may now be called Alexander Black, was reported to have died shortly after birth on account of him not having a heart. I’m no doctor, but I believe having a heart is pretty important.”
“Well now, Derek, I have to say that you and I are on the same page with that statement.”
“I also was told that the doctors in Chicago told the O’Connells that Alexander died and then formulated a plan to hide him away with a Doctor Straus. Straus ran an institution on Long Island.”
“So far what you have said is in agreement to all that I have read and determined as well. But one thing you mentioned caught my attention. I would have asked about it a tad earlier but you seemed pretty excited about telling me the story you heard.”
“And that was?” Derek asked, knowing that there was something about Ralph Fox that he liked. Perhaps it was Ralph’s confidence in himself, his down to earth nature or just the fact that he hadn’t shot him, Derek liked this guy.
“You indicated,” Ralph said as he sat in one of the leather chairs that decorated the lodge’s entry way, “that you had a conversation with a Doctor Mark Rinaldo. I gave Rinaldo a call right after I spoke with the O’Connells to let him know that we found his name on a bunch of medical reports as well as on a list.”
“My client told me about the list. Told me the names that are on it and that two of the names were crossed out in what looked like blood?”
“Their own blood, to be exact,” Ralph said. “Now Derek, you have a fine ability to take a conversation down a different path than what was intended. I’ll get to that list in a while, but I want to have a bit of a conversation about Doctor Rinaldo if you don’t object.”
“Sure. Sorry. Lot’s to digest with this case,” Derek responded.
“As I was saying, I gave Rinaldo a call to find out some details that I may need in this here case and also to let him know that his life may be in danger. Told him that three men, two of them doctors, had already been murdered and that the perpetrator may be fixing to pay him a visit. He didn’t shed any light on my case and didn’t seem to care about my suggestions that he take some precautions.”
“I got the same reaction when I visited with him in his house. He didn’t seem to care if Alexander Black, or whoever is responsible for these murders, came after him. He said he deserved whatever happened.”
“I always say that apathy is a telltale sign of guilt,” Ralph said.
“So is guilt,” Derek replied. “Rinaldo confirmed my client’s story and told me that he deserves whatever Alexander has in store for him. I suggested that he get some protection, but I don’t think he will.”
“He didn’t,” Ralph said, his eyes fixed on Derek’s.
“What do you mean?”
“Rinaldo was killed late last night in his home. Had his skull crushed.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He held the world in contempt. Each person playing their part in a production of a critical mass of fools. Each striving to be counted as part of something that they erroneously perceived to be much greater than themselves. Each of them, nothing more than a variation of a single. Many faces of one. Mindless creatures guised behind pretentious intelligence and assumed superiority. Varying in their
degrees, but all striving to satisfy the exact same set of needs.
They were followers, all of them. Each trying to fool themselves into believing in their uniqueness, in their ownership of being special. But actually, they were all the same. Bags of meat, of bones, of repeated thoughts. Shared, stolen, and borrowed thoughts. The same that have been thought for centuries, only altered by evolutionary processes. They were nothing but organisms dependent on each other, yet convinced of their own extraordinary ability to be their own expression. Some chose the comfort of conforming and others the importance of being contrary.
He didn’t hate them; they didn’t deserve such a powerful emotion. Nor did he pity them, for they were too far beneath him, and he, too far above to consider them worthy of pity.
No. They were obstructions, many of them. Others, potential tools.
Falsely intelligent, deviously blind preventers, and rendered such by their own DNA. They didn’t need to be eliminated, only structured. Revealed. Yet he knew that revelation would only be for a very select few. The others would never become aware.
Why did they claim to be something that they could not possibly understand? Fools, all of them. And now they would see. If only through the vehicle of terror, they would see. He knew they would never be able to understand, but at least they would be given the chance to see.
He managed his way through their disorganized and ignorant attempts to domesticate him. Following the prescribed methods used for generations. Manners. Respect. Controlling emotions. Politeness. All of it learned as a bird learns to crane its neck higher than its nest-mates to grab the worm.
Simple and delicate and utterly unaware of the passing moments leading them closer to their own eradication. Finding perceived meaning in his agreement to their requests. Their leaders, nothing more than panderers to idiots. Saying what was to be considered correct and damning those of opposition.
He learned of their created answers to questions well beyond their comprehension levels. Saw them structure and organize these answers. Give them rules, rituals, rewards, all while he understood their reasoned need to stomp out other answers. Crushing threats under the pretense of immortality. One after another, the creators came, each with demonstrated evidence to disproof another’s answers and offering a new one.
A parade of comical misery and guilt.
But each answer was folly and each nothing more than a trick of convenience. Born of opportunity and given life through the considered tragic conditions, caused by their own hands. By their own words. By their own dismantling of logic, reason, and tolerance.
Fools, every one of them. Grasping in the air for substance and believing, then testifying that the ether they held was solid. Reachable. Containable. But never malleable. Until another, wiser in the same train of thought, offered more irrefutable evidence.
For every organic spark, they assigned a common name. Each of those given the respect of efficient labeling, elevating himself or herself to a vaulted position. Discoverers of the obvious. The obtuse truth. Patting themselves on their own backs for seeing the blinding light in front of them. Rewarding themselves and those that they felt they needed to be in favor with.
Patience was not a gift, but a choice. For him, the choice was made consciously. Deliberately.
“Feed their imagined ego, and advance towards the only possible conclusion,” he would remind himself. “Trained discipline and calculated steps. One after another.”
It started with books. He learned about their feeble attempts to create an understanding that others could then point to as reference. He knew his captors, his unwitting suppliers, had lacked making the choice of patience. He knew that they were searching through him for their way to become a point of reference.
Doctor Straus and his team began offering him books to read in order to distract him and to give themselves a break from the constant barrage of his questions. He would ask questions about nearly any topic and would only stop a line of questioning when he realized that he could gain no additional information from his captors.
The books started with history books, as they deemed to be the safest for him to read.
“History of Ancient civilizations?” he asked when, at six, Doctor Straus handed him his first book. “But Doctor Straus, I don’t know how to read yet.”
“I’ll ask Doctor Curtis to provide you some reading lessons. A few lesson should be all it takes before you’ll be reading completely on your own.”
He took to reading very quickly. Within days, as Doctor Straus had suggested, he was able to manage his way through his first book. His questions tempered, more books were brought to him.
More history. Classic works of fiction. Outdated and replaced science. Mathematics.
The more books he was offered, the fewer questions he asked to the doctors. They were relieved and more than happy to offer him as many books as he wanted.
As other creators advanced in their imagined brilliance, books gave way. Though hundreds were used, invention rendered them debilitating in their pace and in their accessibility.
“Alex,” he was told, “I’ve saved several articles for you to read. Read them then I will test your ability to recall them.”
“From the Internet, doctor Straus?”
“Yes, Alex. These are from the Internet.”
He enjoyed the last decade of his life much more than he did the first. His years at Hilburn, were filled with aggressive treatments and invasive tests and sensing the growing impatience of the doctors. They made their expectations of him quite clear.
“Alexander, we have all made significant sacrifices and have put our careers at risk by caring for you. We feel that our requests of you to be a willing participant in our experiments are more than fair. The doctors who abandoned you with us have completely forgotten about you and, honestly, would rather never be reminded of you every again.
“But Alexander, we have cared for you, protected you from the public, kept you warm, fed you, and even granted you the opportunity to gain an education. We have never given up on you and will continue treating you as long as you promise to assist us and to never try to harm any of us. Do we have an understanding?”
“We do, and I appreciate all that you have sacrificed caring for me.”
He didn’t care if they fully believed him. Their hubris would allow them to believe in their irresistible influence over him. Once he added compliant actions to his promises, they would be controlled.
When Straus told him that “a move to a more secluded, quieter, and much more pleasant environment” was necessary, he agreed to be sedated during the transfer. To sedate him, the doctors couldn’t just inject a sedative into his arm but needed him to drink a cocktail of drugs. Once consumed, his cells would transfer the sedative throughout his body, and the effects would be felt. They knew, from multiple experiments, that to sedate him could take as long as three hours. The only fast way to make him unconscious was by shocking him, and that method was too painful and too dangerous.
“If you still do not trust me, Doctor Straus, and feel you need to take this precautionary measure, I will offer no resistance. I am, however, disappointed in myself.”
“Why is that?” Straus had asked.
“Though I have tried to demonstrate my trustworthiness and my appreciation for all that you have done for me, if you still lack confidence in my promises, I must have not done enough. Yet.”
Doctor Straus had decided, more out of necessity and convenience than out of concern, that he needed to move his patient out of the once friendly and secure confines of Hilburn and up to the Adirondack Lodge that Straus had inherited from his father. The state of New York was continually slashing its funding to institutions like Hilburn and, twelve years after his patient had arrived, Straus received notice that Hilburn was scheduled to be closed within one year.
Having nowhere to continue to treat, examine, test, and hide his patient, Straus hired a contractor, who promised confidentiality in exchange for payment
in cash, to make several modifications to Straus’s lodge in Piseco, Lake New York.
“I need an addition put on,” he told the contractor. “I plan to start renting out rooms to fellow doctors who need a quiet place to relax. However, I also need a suite of rooms designed to ensure maximum security.”
“Plan on keeping criminals in your lodge, Doctor?” the contractor from Connecticut asked.
“I believe our agreement includes confidentiality but does not require full disclosure. Am I correct?”
Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) Page 10