by Schow, Ryan
“A company?”
“It’s like that,” she says. “But it’s not a company.”
Rebecca’s wheels are turning so hard, I expect smoke to plume from her ears any second now. The fast lane is all but empty so I ease the S5 over, set the cruise control at seventy-four and turn to Rebecca. If only I could take this all away, erase the hurt from her heart. She made this trip hoping for some kind of reunion and instead she unearthed a nightmare.
The word comes to me: “Do you mean a corporation?”
“No,” she says, sitting up fast. “Enterprise. It was called Monarch Enterprises!”
“Like the butterfly?”
“Yes, but awful.”
For a long time, neither of us speak. At the last minute, I see a bunch of signs for fast food and though that crap will kill you, we pull over and for the second time that day, burden our bodies with the cheapest food on the planet.
When we’re back on the road again, Rebecca asks, “What am I going to do now?”
“You’ll stay with us.”
“Your father won’t mind?”
“Of course, he won’t. In fact, he’ll probably like you much better than me anyway. You’ll be a lot less trouble, I’m sure.”
“That’s not true,” she says, but I can tell she likes feeling wanted. I can’t believe her father tried to kill her.
“Why did he want to sell you? Your father, I mean.”
“Because the people who tried to buy me promised him a career in country music.”
“Country music?”
“He was a decent singer, but he was poor and not from Nashville. He said with those two strikes against him, he’d never succeed. The people who wanted to buy me, they promised him a career in the industry in exchange for me.”
As delicately as I can, I ask, “So why did he kill your mother?”
“She wrecked my father’s dreams by having me. And when she did have me, she wrecked his dreams again by not letting me pave the way for what could have been a promising career in the music industry.”
She uses finger quotations when she says promising career. His words, not hers. Now I know why she was so deeply affected by Maggie’s passing. Did Rebecca see her mother killed? Did she see all that blood?
I can never tell her Maggie was raped by a music producer. Not after losing her mother in some fight over what could have been a music contract for her father.
Note to self: avoid the music industry like my life depends on it.
“So she wouldn’t let him sell you, and that’s why he snapped?” She nods, and my heart smacks with anger all over again. “That’s horrible.”
“My parents were assholes,” she says.
I’ve never heard her swear before and it sits wrong with me. She’s still a little girl, even though she isn’t. But when she said that word, to me she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a wounded adult. A victim. Wronged.
“My father will be happy to have you,” I say. “We both will.”
I hold her hand and she takes mine, but by the way she’s not holding it very tight, even the blind can see she’s crawling through the horrors stuck inside her head.
For a long time, I find myself wondering about her the way I wondered about Maggie. Can she recover from this? And just like Maggie, I don’t know if she can, and this terrifies me.
Butterfly
1
She’s about to retch up every last bit of her lunch. Any minute now, the corn dogs, tater tots and Diet Pepsi will come spewing from her mouth in a chunky, bubbly brown colored display.
She couldn’t believe what just happened. Rebecca was here. The changed Rebecca! Not the ugly little mutt Rebecca she sold to Monarch Enterprises years ago. But how did they find her?
She had to know!
Mary Conner got on the phone and called the number stuffed under her old mattress. It had been sitting there for nine years. It was soft with age, but the numbers were clear. The voice on the other end of the phone said a tentative hello. More resolute, it wanted to know who she was.
“It’s Mary Conner. From Reno.”
The voice sounded uncomfortable. “Why are you calling?”
“Because Rebecca Taylor was just at my house.”
“Rebecca Taylor?”
“The last little brat I gave you people before you told me you didn’t need me anymore.”
“Was she by herself?”
“No, there was someone else. An uppity little bitch called herself Savannah.”
“Savannah?” Now the voice sounded interested. Now he sounded awake.
“Yes. Real pretty. But like, too pretty, you know? But not with makeup or hair extensions or all that junk girls do to make themselves look like movie stars and whatnot.”
“Did you get a last name?”
“I used my binoculars and got a license plate. It’s an Audi something or other. S5 it said, but that makes no sense to me since I don’t know jack fuggin’ squat ’bout them foreign cars.”
Mary heard him shuffling things around. She figured he was going for a pen and paper. “Read it to me,” he said.
“You gonna give me a reward or something?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“What do you need that we haven’t already provided for you in the past?”
She thought about it. “Another ten grand would do.”
“Five, and if you ask for more I’ll cut that in half.” She gave him the plate number and he thanked her. “So, are you gonna send me that money or what?”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t got my address.”
“You’re still on Morningside Drive. It’s in our system. You will receive a check sometime next week.”
She felt better already. Maybe her lunch would stay down after all.
2
Shelton Gotlieb hung up the telephone, hurried over to the programmer’s den and spoke with the senior programmer. He was a scientist in every aspect of his being, yet he was young and smart, and he had a penchant for operating on the fringe. Gotlieb liked him the very first day they met six years ago.
“I need a Delta, do you have one available?”
“I do.”
“When he’s done with his training for the day, prep him for Reno. I need a mess cleaned up.”
He handed the address to the programmer. “Messy or clean?” he asked Gotlieb.
“Just make it look like a botched robbery. Use a gun. The bitch just tried to extort us for five grand, so if you can help it, make her suffer.
“No problem.”
“Doesn’t have to be a gun, if you don’t want.”
“I already have a boy in mind. Delta 1A. He likes his blade. Will that work?”
“We found her,” Gotlieb said with a restrained smile. “Finally.”
“Found whom?”
“Who do you think, dummy?” he said, his grin widening.
“Savannah?”
“Yes.”
The programmer moved in his chair, which was his version of showing excitement. “And?”
“And what? She’s an open contract.”
Now he went perfectly rigid. “What about Dr. Gerhard? He said not to touch her. That the contract expired when the clients expired.”
“Gerhard? He’s a relic. Plus he took Autumn from me. And now she’s dead.”
“Still.”
“So I want Savannah dead, if only to make Gerhard suffer for Autumn.”
“Okay,” the programmer said, dragging out the word. When Gotlieb didn’t visibly react, the programmer said, “I’ll need to upload Delta 1A with the parameters.”
“No parameters yet. With Savannah, so long as we know where she’s at, hers will be a special death. In my dreams, she dies screaming.”
“What do you have in mind?” the programmer asks.
“We find them both. We take Rebecca, and then we butcher Savanah. Make it extra messy. It’ll serve Gerhard right. That arrogant prick.”
“I have someone in mind, someone perfect for this.”
“Already?”
He looked the programmer dead in his eyes and with an ocean of malice in his rank, defective heart, he said, “I swear to Jesus on my ruined soul, because Gerhard took Autumn from me, we’re going to bleed Savannah dry.”
The programmer’s cheeks turned bright red. A sign. Heightened excitement. Licking his lips, he said, “GPS trackers?”
“I have a license plate number, so she’s as good as ours. And yes, I want the trackers in place as quickly as possible. But first Reno. How soon can you get that done?”
“Two days.”
3
The programmer woke up the boy’s body. It was in the box. Gem held the body. She felt the latch release, heard the severe hiss of hydraulic hinges. Gem opened the boy’s eyes and looked up at her handler.
“Gem?” the handler asked.
“Yes,” the boy’s mouth said. The boy curled his toes, flexed his fingers, took the first decent breath of fresh air.
“Good.”
“What is our mission?” Gem asked.
“Come with me,” he said.
Gem crawled the boy’s body out of the box, struggled against the stiffening of the limbs as they walked down the cold, concrete hallway. After ten steps, Gem felt the blood hit the boy’s muscles. All the stiffness began to fade at once.
Gem said the boy’s body was ready. That Delta 1A was ready.
Deeper inside, she felt the assassin stirring. He should be asleep, she registered. But he wasn’t. He almost never slept anymore. He needed to be in charge of the body. Which was a problem. It was always the problem. Gem constantly told him to go back to sleep. Three times Gem told him.
He ignored her now.
In the programming room—the room where the body went for briefing—the temperature was dialed to normal. Not like the coffin room, which was freezing sometimes. And sometimes it was so hot it nearly suffocated the body. All to keep the alters separate.
Gem sat the boy’s body in the chair. Made the boy’s eyes look at the blank television screen. The handler turned the television on. The first picture was of a woman who looked old. She was in her forties or maybe her fifties. Her curly blonde hair had a damaged look. Her eyes were beady, drained. Even her ugly mouth looked like it had been sucking on cigarettes since she first grew tits.
Gem knew Delta 1A would savor the kill. She called to him. Felt him stir. She called him again and he rose. On the third time, she felt herself being muscled aside by the massive, malevolent presence of the boy’s assassination alter.
Delta 1A took the body. He made the boy’s mouth smile. And then he channeled every ounce of cruelty into forming an expression meant to terrify. It was the lunatic’s grin. A Sociopath’s smile. The smile on the boy’s face was the kind of wicked grin worn by mass murderers like Charles Manson. Psychopaths like Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. The Night Stalker. Serial killing rapists like Ted Bundy. The way Edward Gein must have looked wearing a necklace of human lips and boiling a human heart, that’s the way the boy’s face looked now.
He was ready.
4
Reno. Two days later. Night sat like a black quilt over the world. No wind. Dry, stagnant air. Silence. It was after three in the morning and Delta 1A was awake and alert. The electrical charge running like shockwaves though him could power an entire metropolis. Yet he was calm, restrained. Prepared to see the mission through with complete success.
Dressed head to toe in black military fatigues, his head and body freshly shaved, he moved in a noiseless run from yard to yard down Morningside Drive until he reached the Conner home. He found the fence and hopped it, then forced the back door open, the same as someone robbing the place would do. The crack of wood could have been a gunshot.
He made his way to the master bedroom, saw the woman’s form in bed, relaxed but snoring. On her night stand was a half open bottle of dime store whiskey and an ashtray heaped with ash and crushed cigarette butts. He moved delicately, quietly even though he could have easily tromped across the room under the cover of the noise coming from her rambunctious nostrils. The lamp was still on, a book with a half naked man on the cover sitting on the bed beside her.
From the sheath strapped to his belt, Delta 1A removed the karambit blade. It felt so good in his hand. So purposeful. The short, curved blade looked vicious, a Velociraptor’s razor-sharp nail. To get to do her with the blade…ah, this made it all worthwhile.
The woman turned over in bed, licked her lips then resumed her snoring.
When the moment was right, Delta 1A sliced the side of her throat wide open, making sure he held her down and let the arterial spray hit the ceiling and walls behind him. No blood on him. Those were the rules. He was to come out clean, leaving no remnants of himself behind, including a void in the blood spatter for blood spatter analysts to study.
He kept his hand clamped over the woman’s face until the very end. When it happened, when she expired, he felt the wash of ecstasy drench him. It was exhilarating. The only time he felt.
In that moment, all Delta 1A ever wanted was to kill people. Over and over and over again. He took the karambit, dug it into the open wound, then peeled it all the way across her neck, not because he needed to, but because he wanted to. Because it did something sensational with the body. All he’d ever wanted was to help people die. This was his purpose.
Then, in fulfilling the mission parameters, he ransacked the place, finding only costume jewelry and about two thousand in twenties stuffed in the living room air vent. After that, he left the tiny house through the front door, quietly, swiftly, like a wraith.
A Dish Best Served with Gasoline
1
Dr. Heim wanted Rebecca back. He hadn’t seen her in what seemed like forever and it was positively destroying him. Just yesterday he told himself she was gone. But now she wasn’t. That one phone call changed everything. Now he knew exactly where she was. And the girl who took her, the one who attacked him and Nurse Arabelle? Savannah Van Duyn? He ached to turn that girl into a crispy corpse.
When his former colleague, Shelton Gotlieb, called and told him where to find his most precious Rebecca, he nearly wept. He took down the address Gotlieb gave him, then thanked the man cordially, and professionally. He would need his things. Heim collected his rubber tubing, his canister of gasoline and his exacto-knife, then set out for Palo Alto.
He staked out the house from half the block away. His black Supercharged Jaguar XF blended into the posh neighborhood easily. He barely drew a glance on the few occasions that other cars passed by. When he saw the Audi R8 sports coupe roll out of the driveway with the man inside, presumably the new and improved Atticus Van Duyn, he drove up to the house, parked in the driveway.
He walked up the porch, set his equipment on the stoop and rang the doorbell. A moment later, the door opened and his treasure stood before him.
“Rebecca, my darling,” he said.
“Do I know you?” she replied.
Heim shook his head and the way he did it must have sparked something in her because fear shot through her eyes and he knew that she knew. He was the one who took her. The one who put his needle into her neck all those years ago. She turned to run.
Heim rushed after her, blowing into the house like the devil himself. Halfway down the hallway, he dove after her, tackled her to the ground. They crashed hard together, both of their bodies hitting the floor. He crawled up her body, snaked his arm around her neck, put her in a figure-four choke hold and squeezed. With the pressure on her carotid artery just right, the struggle was over in moments.
He got to his feet, looked down at the very unconscious Rebecca. From his pocket, he withdrew the handcuffs and ankle restraints. He locked her up, then gagged her, making sure not to constrict her breathing. After that he walked through the house looking for Savannah. He found her in the bedroom listening to her iPod.
<
br /> He couldn’t help his joyous feelings.
She saw him come in the room. Her eyes flashed wide. Startled, she jumped off her bed. He stepped into the room and closed the door, the look on his face grim. The look on his face a bottomless pit of hatred. In his dark, remorseless heart, he had prayed this day would come.
Slowly he made his way toward her. Every move she made, he countered.
“What do you want, you sick son of a bitch?”
“You know what I want,” he said.
She was looking around the room, measuring opportunities, calculating risks. “I don’t.”
“I want Rebecca.”
“You can’t have her!” Savannah screamed. She was running out of space to maneuver; he could see her trying but failing to form a definitive escape plan.
“Ah, but I already have her,” he said in a heavily accented voice. Despite his years in the United States, he still missed the nuances of his native Austrian tongue.
To look at him, one would say he had not aged a day in decades. Gerhard’s serum was working perfectly. Long behind him were his days in Austria. Long behind him were his days as a concentration camp doctor and war criminal. Long behind him was the feeling of being mortal. Looking at this rat in a corner, this pestilent child, Heim remembered those days. If only for a brief moment.
He, too, was a child once. He, too, was an old man, dying of cancer in Egypt. But not now. Not ever. After the serum, and after weeks of unbridled pain and shitting and puking out human waste—the decayed remains of his cancer and old age—Heim returned to his youth. He looked thirty, even though he was born in 1914.
Dying was a thing of the past for him, but not for Savannah. She tried to skirt around him, but he punched her in the stomach so hard, she crumpled like a tall sack of rocks.
2
The blow to the girl was euphoric. Savannah was on her knees, trying to breathe. One righteous kick to the face put her out cold on the carpet. Just like Rebecca. He lifted her lifeless body onto the bed, laid her out on her back.