by Mark Murphy
Billy took a small folded piece of paper out of his pocket.
"You know aJasmine MacAleer?" he asked.
Malcolm felt a wave of nausea wash over him.
"Oh, God," he said.
"I take it you do, then."
"She was a friend of my wife's. We had this . . . Jesus," Malcolm said.
"What?"
"Last year, Amy and I were at a Christmas party. Jasmine was there. She and Amy had been friends for years—not really close, but they'd go to lunch sometimes, that sort of thing. Jasmine was once married to another surgeon, a friend of mine, but he had an affair and they divorced a few years back. After their marriage broke up, she started drinking, slept with random men, alienated her kids. I kinda felt sorry for her. She and Amy grew apart. Anyway, we were at this party and Jasmine was drunk. She cornered me in a hallway, threw her arms around me and kissed me. I pushed her away, but Amy walked up on us. She was pissed, and left the party without me. When I finally got home, we had this huge fight. I told her that it was nothing, that Jasmine had jumped me in the hallway, that she was drunk. It took all night to calm Amy down. The next day, Amy called Jasmine. Jasmine was hung over, but she remembered what had happened and told Amy that she had initiated everything and that there was nothing going on between us. That was that. I haven't even seen Jasmine once since then."
Malcolm shot a glance at Billy.
"Do you thinkJasmine's murder could have been unrelated? Some random act?"
Billy laughed out loud.
"A serial murderer is trying to frame you, someone chops up a person you once kissed at a party and buries her in a garbage bag, and it's a coincidence? That's unlikely as hell."
The Indian cracked his knuckles and toyed with the knob on the kerosene lantern.
"It's him," he said. "Bank on it. You're sure no one else knew about this?"
"Just me and Amy."
"Then this is different. All of the other victims involved people in legal cases with you. They were matters of public record. This was a private matter. The killer is sending you a message. He's saying he knows things about you that he shouldn't know. But where did he get his information?"
Malcolm thought for a minute.
"I told Ben."
A dark thought began gnawing at a corner of Malcolm's brain. He tried to force it out, but it kept coming back.
"Ben knew?" Billy said.
Malcolm nodded.
"Well, we can't exactly ask him about that now, can we? Seems a tad too convenient." Billy said.
"Ben and I have been friends forever. I just can't see him betraying me like that."
"No one but Amy and Ben knew."
"Maybe Ben doesn't know who the killer is. He could have discussed the situation with him."
"You don't know Ben. He keeps secrets better than anyone I know. He'd never betray that confidence. That's just the way he is."
"Well, anyway, the woman's dead. And if that's her only connection to you, if no one but Amy and Ben knew, it certainly raises some questions about Ben. Maybe the killer shot him to shut him up."
But then another memory hit Malcolm like a sledgehammer.
"Shit!" he said.
The rain had become a slow, languid drizzle. The wind was now a mere whisper. Malcolm could detect the sharp tang of ozone in the air.
"What is it?"
"My chief resident, Carter Straub. He was one of the co-investigators in the lap appendectomy project, and he was at that Christmas party. He gave me a ride home that night after Amy left me. So he knew, as well. And he and Joel Birkenstock knew each other because of the paper we were writing. They've spoken, at least by phone."
Billy stood up.
"Then Carter Straub may be the link to our killer. Any way I can reach him?" Billy said.
"I have his address and cell number. Should we go speak to him?"
"I'll go speak to him. Alone. You'd be placing yourself at too high a risk if you went. You're safer here," said Billy.
Malcolm sighed.
"You're not going now, are you?" he asked.
"Not in this weather. I'll head over in the morning."
"Can I go with you? I feel like I'm not doing anything," said Malcolm.
"You can only leave when it's safe."
"I can't help you find him?"
Billy shook his head.
"They'll catch you. You're in the news every day. You're in the paper every morning. Everyone thinks you are a cold-blooded killer. You wouldn't last an hour on the street."
"So I just sit here on this damn island and wait for you to catch a guy you couldn't bring in before when your own brother's life was at stake?"
Billy glowered at him.
"That's not fair," he said.
"It's true."
"Look, I loved my brother. And, yeah, I screwed up the bust back then. I admit it. I telegraphed it, andJernigan disappeared. So I've learned from that. I've learned that this guy is too smart to give him any sort of warning. We have to keep him in the dark, keep him wanting what he wants—which is your ass on Death Row, by the way—until we can lure him into the open. Until we can make him make a mistake. And that's not something he does very often."
"You're saying I'm just bait, then? That's all?" Malcolm asked.
Billy stood with his arms folded across his chest. He was silent, staring off into space.
"Well, that's great. I'm just a piece of meat on a treble hook waiting for the shark to bite," said Malcolm.
"If you've really gotta know, yeah. That's about the size of it," said Billy, stealing a glance at Malcolm.
Malcolm looked at the floor.
"Shit," he said quietly, shaking his head.
Malcolm stood up and walked over to a broken window, which was partly boarded up. He glimpsed at the outside world through a gap in the plywood. Lightning flickered outside. There was a distant rumble of thunder.
When he looked back at Billy, Malcolm's face was spattered with rain. His eyes were bloodshot. He raked his hands through his hair.
"I'm screwed, you know that? I'm stuck here and can't help myself. I'm dependent on you. The whole world thinks I'm a murderer and I've done nothing wrong. Nothing. If I run, I might survive, but I then abandon my whole life—my surgical practice, my wife and my daughter, everything. And I'd be a wanted man the rest of my life. But if I stay I have to depend on you to catch a guy who seems uncatchable. And if I'm caught first . . ."
"The cops have enough right now to put you away. You'll go to Death Row and the Shadow Man will move on. He'll leave his Birkenstock persona behind, like a snake shedding its skin, and he will vanish. Then it's on to the next life for him. I've seen it. It's what happened to my brother."
Malcolm stared at Billy. He felt as though the rain had seeped into his bones. He was cold and tired. His eyes hurt and his head throbbed.
"Well then, find him, Billy. Catch him this time. I want my life back," he said.
"That's the plan," Billy said.
22
The rain continued off and on throughout the night. Malcolm pulled his jacket tight around his shoulders. At some point, he fell asleep. He awoke the next morning to the mournful cries of a pair of loons someplace in the depleted half-light of morning. The rain had stopped.
Billy was gone.
He'd left a couple of Powerbars and some bottled water on the mantle of the old fireplace. Malcolm's belly felt like an empty bucket. He stripped the wrappers off the Powerbars and twisted open the cap of one of the water bottles.
At least I'm hungry, he thought. That's gotta be a good sign, right?
Malcolm gazed out of the front doorway of the farmhouse as he wolfed down the energy bars. It was a chilly, gray morning, the air thick with the scents of the sea and wet leaves. Billowing fog drifted by like something out of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The sun remained invisible, loitering someplace below the horizon.
Malcolm was taking a swig of water when he heard the first gunshot.
He wiped his mouth.
There was nothing else for a moment.
Then, a second gunshot. Closer, this time.
Then two more.
The deer came bounding out of the mist. Blood was pouring from a bullet wound in its flank. Its brown eyes were wide with fear.
"You hit it! Come on!"
The voices came from behind him. Malcolm whirled around just in time to see two men emerge from the mist.
The hunters were both wearing camouflage jackets and blue jeans. One—a butterball redneck with a pug nose and little pig eyes—sported a filthy, battered Clemson Tigers baseball cap with a crooked bill bent into an upside-down U shape from years of being stuffed into his back pocket. The other hunter was a balding scarecrow with a white ZZ Top beard and a pair of aviator sunglasses.
They both had rifles.
Not twenty feet apart, the two hunters and Malcolm stared each other down, the wounded deer forgotten.
Pig-eye looked at ZZ Top and spat some tobacco juice on the ground.
"You're that psycho killer surgeon, ain't ya?" Pig-eye asked.
ZZ Top looked at Pig-eye in disbelief, then back at Malcolm, then back at Pig-eye.
"Shit, Gabe, it is!" ZZ said, raising his 30.06 to his shoulder and aiming it at Malcolm. He squinted along the gun sight and grinned, exposing a jumbled mess of green, tobacco-stained teeth.
"We're gonna be famous!" Pig-eye said.
"Boys, I'm innocent," Malcolm said, palms outstretched. "There's no reason to get crazy here."
"You can't just outsmart us, you sorry-ass sumbitch," ZZ said. "We know what you did. Cuttin' that man up and all. Buryin' that woman. What kind of sick person are you? I'm callin' the cops right n—"
The wounded deer bounded straight at them out of the mist, gangly-legged and confused. Pink froth was coming from its mouth as it stumbled into the hunters.
"God dammit!" ZZ said.
Malcolm took off running. A rifle shot whizzed over Malcolm's head but he never looked back, not once.
"He's gettin' away!" one of the men screamed.
More shots rang out. Malcolm waited for the fatal bullet to explode his brains but it never came. He kept running. He knew he was running for his life.
God, help me.
Malcolm ran as far as he could, deep into the vine-choked reaches of the maritime forest. He was grateful for the shroud of fog, grateful that the two men had probably shared a six-pack or two already. But he was scared shitless, because the fog would soon lift. He was trapped on an island with no way off, and the police were coming. Of that he was certain.
He stopped behind a thick-trunked live oak and called Billy on his cell. His call went straight to voicemail.
"Billy, this is Malcolm. Some hunters came onto the island and saw me. They're going to call the police if they haven't already. Call me back."
More shouts in the distance. Were there only two?
Malcolm couldn't tell.
The sky was growing lighter, the sun burning its way over the horizon.
There was a low thrumming sound, a sound that Malcolm felt reverberating in his chest. He could not tell where it was coming from.
The helicopter burst over the treetops and banked left. It was snow white with black markings; the word POLICE was stenciled on its undercarriage. He was so close to it that he could see the pilots in their helmets and goggles, their mantis-like heads turned directly toward him and staring, lidless, directly where Malcolm stood.
Their stares made him feel naked.
Malcolm could feel its blades chopping through the air, could hear the rush of air as it swirled into the hungry vortex of the turbojets mounted on either side of the main rotor. He stood, transfixed, unable to decide whether to stay or go.
The chopper completed its turn.
Malcolm decided to run.
Sweat was pouring down his back. His heart was racing a hundred miles an hour, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he sprinted haphazardly through the woods, plunging through stands of bamboo and thickets of river oaks with their grass skirts and beards of Spanish moss. Briars clutched and pulled at his clothes and he tore them away. He was sure that he was leaving a trail that anyone could find and he didn't care. He just had to keep moving, certain that if he stood still he was as good as dead.
He heard a gunshot echo through the trees, then another.
Probably those idiots Pig-eye and ZZ he thought.
But he wasn't really sure.
He had been running around for what he figured was about 45 minutes when he heard the dogs for the first time.
He checked his phone, but Billy had never called him back.
Dammit, Billy! I can't outrun a bunch of dogs, he thought.
He doubled back onto the small river beach and sloshed a short distance through the frigid surf, hoping that the waters of Green Island Sound would steal his scent away. But he was out in the open here, and it was only by the sheer grace of God that the helicopter did not come screaming past at that precise moment.
The dogs were closer now. He could hear their ceaseless deep-throated barking all around him, their mournful cries echoing in the forest.
They'll sniff me out, he thought. I'm trapped.
For there was no place to hide on Green Island.
Malcolm's mouth was dry and his lungs ached and his mind moved a thousand miles an hour, rocketing him all too quickly to that dark reptilian place in his brain that recalled the days when humans were simply prey.
How can I hide from a pack of damn dogs?
And then it came to him.
He had one chance to avoid the inevitable.
When he came into the clearing, there was no one there. The dogs were howling down by the beach, and the chopper was someplace to the north that he could not see, over Wassaw Island.
He sprinted toward the magnolia tree. Toward the well.
Malcolm could smell the stench of the dead porker long before he saw the well opening.
It was what he wanted.
Looking about and seeing no one, he launched himself over the well's edge, wedging his legs along the opposite wall. The stones crumbled, sending flurries of mica particles sparkling into the emerging sunlight like fairy dust.
He clambered down the well's shaft, trying to breathe only through his mouth, but the vomit came anyway. He heard it spatter all over the invisible bottom of the well.
He didn't care.
The dogs were closer now, their eerie baying echoing in the hollow darkness of the sorry pit he had thrown himself into.
The well bottom was as black as sin. The smells of bile and decay intermingled in an olfactory tango that forced him to pinch his nose closed. He puked again anyway.
"Here goes," he said.
The hog's massive carcass had been softened by the torrential rains and a horde of wriggling maggots. He was able to dig his way into its soft belly with his hands. The odor there was more foul than he could have ever imagined—the smell of dead flesh mixed with shit and mud and God-knows-what-all. But Malcolm surrounded himself with the dead animal's bristly hide because he knew that this was his only shot at getting out alive.
He had just gotten most of his head under the creature's shoulder when the first bloodhound poked its jowly, wrinkled head over the edge of the well.
With his one exposed eye, Malcolm could see its canine silhouette against the sky, fifty or sixty feet above him. Saliva dripped off the dog's tongue, raining around him.
"I think he's in the well!" a voice said from far above.
Malcolm felt his chest and gullet contract again. More forcefully this time.
Gonna be close, he thought, scrunching down beneath the dead razorback.
A second bloodhound's head popped into view, followed by the unmistakable silhouette of a man.
"Hand me your spot," the man asked another as-yet-invisible colleague.
Light flickered
down the crooked shaft of the old well. For a brief instant, Malcolm could see the concentric circles of jagged stones and rotten wood beams that held the well open against the inexorable forces of nature, and he realized how close the damn thing was to simply caving in. It was like some ancient sacrificial chamber, a subterranean Stonehenge, a monument built by long-dead men to ward off starvation and thirst.
Malcolm closed his eyes. A beam of light fluttered across his eyelids.
Dear God, protect me, he thought. Keep me safe from harm.
"What the hell is that?" another voice said.
"It's a dead boar! A huge one!" the first voice said. "Damn thing fell down the well!"
"God, that smells awful," said the second voice.
And then he chuckled.
"These dogs must be hungry," he said. "Instead of finding us a murderer, they tracked us right to a big old slab of barbeque!"
"Ain't eatin' that barbeque," the first voice said.
"I heard that."
"Let's go. He ain't here, and the dogs have to eat."
And just like that, they were gone.
Malcolm didn't dare try to do anything for a while. Above, the world remained silent. Even the chopper seemed to have gone away.
He took out his cell phone. Billy had called back.
Amazingly, Malcolm's phone had two bars of service.
He called Billy again.
This time, Billy answered.
"Hey, I got your message. Are you okay?" he said.
"So far. I'm . . . I'm at the bottom of the old well. With the dead hog."
Billy started laughing.
"No shit," he said.
"No shit. They had bloodhounds."
Billy's voice became more serious.
"Are they gone?" he asked.
"I think so. Not sure, though."
"Alright, here's what we'll do. We have to get you off the island."
"But what if they are still here?"
"We're not doing it now. We're going to wait until tonight. The dark will help us. Can you get out of the well?"
Malcolm gazed up at the well's opening above his head.
"Yeah, I think so. I climbed down here by wedging my legs against the wall. I think I can get back out the same way."
"Good. Can you find your way back to the river beach where we first came in?"