Once Shunned

by Blake Pierce

  Should she and her colleagues try to find out?

  Perhaps he’s not what he seems to be, she thought.

  As Riley made a mental note to try to learn more about Bayle, Dr. Rhind led her, Bill, and Jenn to the pleasant sitting room Riley had noticed during their previous visits. Among the relaxed-looking residents lounging, playing games, and eating snacks, she saw Wesley sitting at a table playing chess with another young man. Wesley’s mother was standing nearby, still looking tired but watching her son intently.

  Wesley’s chess partner looked lively and friendly and seemed to be carrying on a one-sided conversation with Wesley as they played. By contrast, Wesley kept his eyes focused on the chessboard, apparently unperturbed by his partner’s distracting chatter.

  Riley remembered the last time she’d seen Wesley, recovering from a meltdown in that strange contraption called a “squeeze machine.”

  Yes, he’s definitely doing better, Riley thought.

  The last thing she wanted to do was cause him a setback. Or, she wondered, was the last thing she wanted to do actually to leave town without finding the killer?

  Somebody else is going to die if we don’t get ahead of this, she thought.

  When Gemma Mannis looked up and saw the agents approaching with Dr. Rhind, she appeared uneasy.

  “I wasn’t expecting you back again,” she said. “I thought the murders had been solved.”

  This time Bill spoke up tactfully, “We do have a suspect in custody, but we’ve still got a few things to sort out.”

  Riley knew she’d better ease into the issue of whether she could be allowed to talk to Wesley. For one thing, she still wasn’t sure just what she hoped it could accomplish.

  She said to Gemma, “I can’t imagine how hard life has been, for you and Wesley both. I just need to ask you whether you can think of specific traumatic incidents that might have had a longstanding effect on him?”

  Gemma sighed deeply and said, “Traumatic incidents! Oh, Agent Paige, I’m afraid life has been one long traumatic incident for poor Wesley.”

  Dr. Rhind nodded and added, “Researchers have only just recently started to discover the extent of post-traumatic stress syndrome among autistic people. It’s a much more widespread problem than anybody realized.”

  Gemma continued, “Things are only just now beginning to get better for Wesley. But growing up with his disability was terribly hard. He was always bullied and shunned by other kids, never had any real friends, and …”

  Gemma hesitated for a moment, then said …

  “I remember once when he was a little boy, he got invited to a party at the local swimming pool. My husband and I—we were still married back then—had such hopes that he’d have a good time, maybe get drawn out of his lonely little world. But while he was there, we …”

  Gemma gulped hard and said, “We got a call from the lifeguard, saying Wesley had almost drowned and we needed to come and get him.”

  Gemma seemed on the verge of tears now.

  “We were never able to find out exactly what happened. The kids he was with just said it was an accident. Wesley didn’t know how to tell us anything, even if he understood what happened himself. But I’ve always feared that he fell victim to some prank that went wrong. Children can be awfully cruel, especially to a child who is different. But I’ve also feared … that something even worse might have happened at some point. Something I still don’t know about.”

  Gemma turned away for a moment, trying to bring her emotions under control. Then she turned back to the group and said …

  “Back in those days, he’d tell me from time to time, ‘Mom, I don’t want to live anymore. I just want to die.’ The way he said it wasn’t self-pitying at all, more like a statement of fact. And I’ve often wondered if maybe at that party he’d decided he’d had enough, and …”

  Gemma’s voice faded away, but Riley knew what she was leaving unsaid. Maybe the sensory overload of the party, all those other kids laughing and shouting and sharing in joys that he couldn’t even understand, had gotten be too much for him. And of course, the kids there had probably shunned or teased him.

  Maybe he’d had enough, Riley thought.

  Maybe he’d decided to kill himself.

  It shocked her deeply that no one who cared about him could know for sure. The secret was locked away inside Wesley’s lonely mind, probably never to be revealed.

  Riley gulped hard. She felt truly out of her depth now.

  Maybe this is a bad idea, she thought.

  Maybe I shouldn’t even try.

  Then Gemma said to her, “I take it you want to talk to Wesley.”

  Riley nodded and said, “Only if you give me permission.”

  Gemma sighed again. “Well, I’m not the one whose permission counts, am I? It’s up to Wesley as far as I’m concerned.”

  At that moment, Wesley’s chess partner toppled over his king, conceding the game with a good-natured grin. Wesley sat staring at the board as if he were still analyzing the game.

  Gemma walked over to Wesley and whispered something in his ear. Riley saw his lips move as he whispered something in reply. Then he got up from his chair and walked with his mother toward Riley and the others.

  Looking a bit surprised, Gemma said …

  “He says he wants to talk to you.”

  Wesley nodded and said in a flat, toneless voice …

  “Someplace more quiet, though. We should go back to my room.”

  Without another word, he turned and walked out into the hallway.

  Riley and the others followed him.

  Riley felt breathless with anticipation. She had no idea what to expect.

  When they got to the room, Wesley went on in ahead of the others. Riley glanced at Bill and Jenn. They both nodded and stepped aside to wait outside the door. After a moment’s hesitation, Dr. Rhind and Gemma also stood aside.

  Riley stepped inside the room. Wesley was sitting at his table, so she sat down across from him.

  Staring at the tabletop, Wesley said to her …

  “Mom says you’re an FBI agent.”

  “That’s right,” Riley said.

  “I think that’s really interesting,” Wesley said. “I’d like to know more about it. Not that I could ever be an FBI agent myself. Obviously, I’ll never be able to do anything like that. I just don’t have the … abilities. Still, I’d like to know a few things.”

  Riley was startled at the flow of words. Although his voice was still expressionless, Wesley was obviously capable of more communication than she’d realized.

  Then he fell silent, still staring at the tabletop.

  Riley wondered if he was waiting for her to say something.

  How should she start?

  Without looking up, Wesley spoke again. “You must see and experience a lot of awful things, doing the work that you do. Evil things. Terrible things”

  Riley nodded slowly and said, “That’s right.”

  Wesley raised his eyes little without looking at her directly.

  “Well, what I’d like to know is … how do you cope? How do you deal with all that? Emotionally, I mean.”

  Riley felt a tingle of fascination as she wondered …

  Is this his way of starting to open up about what he knows?

  Or was he really just curious about what it was like to be an FBI agent?

  Anyway, he’d just asked her a very good question—and amazingly, it was a question that few people ever bothered to ask her.

  She realized that she had no reason not to answer it honestly.

  “It’s hard, Wesley,” she said. “There’s all kinds of evil out there in the world, and it’s my job to try to stop it. But nobody can stop it, not really. Certainly not all of it.”

  Wesley nodded slightly and said …

  “You can’t change human nature.”

  Riley felt a jolt of amazement at this remark.

  So perceptive—so right.

  At the moment, it w
as almost hard to remember that Wesley suffered from a mental disability.

  “That’s true,” Riley said, feeling strangely free to speak honestly about things she usually kept to herself. “And sometimes it makes my job seem—well, futile, as if I’m not doing any good at all.”

  Looking off to one side, Wesley said …

  “But you are doing good. You’re stopping killers. You’re putting them in prison. You’re making the world just a little bit safer. What more can you ask of yourself?”

  Riley’s eyes widened, and she felt her breath catch.

  His strangely mechanical monotone made his insightful comments all the more disarming.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it comes with the job, I guess—expecting the impossible from yourself. Anyway, in answer to your question about how I cope … I try to compartmentalize a lot, keep different aspects of my life as separate as I can. For example, I’ve got a family, but I try not to bring all that evil home with me.”

  She couldn’t keep a note of despair out of her voice as she added …

  “I don’t always succeed.”

  Wesley’s brow crinkled with thought.

  Then he said, “You say you compartmentalize. I understand that. So do I. I guess that’s part of my problem. I do it too much. I do it pretty much all the time.”

  Riley could hardly breathe now as she realized …

  He really, really wants to tell me something.

  This strange discussion they were having seemed to be his roundabout way of trying to say it.

  She said slowly and cautiously …

  “Wesley, I know you saw something the last time you went out on your garbage route. It was something awful, something very hard for you to talk about. But I need for you to tell me … if you possibly can.”

  Wesley looked down at the tabletop again.

  In a barely audible whisper, he said …

  “Windows.”

  Riley leaned toward him a little.

  She said, “You saw something through a window, didn’t you?”

  “I’m not a peeper,” he said.

  “I know you’re not a peeper,” Riley said.

  Wesley seemed to be slipping further away from her.

  She wondered, Am I going to lose him?

  Then he repeated that word again …

  “Windows.”

  After a pause, he added, “The first time I was looking out. The last time I was looking in.”

  He took a long, slow breath.

  Then he said …

  “I think I can … Agent Paige. I think I can tell you something … I’ve never told anybody else.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The man felt a twinge in his foot and ankle as he strolled along the sidewalk. He groaned a little at the realization …

  It’s starting again.

  Why did the pain always have to strike when he was out and around, trying to be inconspicuous, looking for his next target? For that matter, why did he have to suffer this pain at all?

  This cruel reminder of his childhood suffering had come and gone several times during his life, but in the most recent decade or so it had faded completely. For years he’d thought he had put it behind him for good.

  But the pain was back again. For several months now, it had been recurring at rare but unexpected moments.

  It was getting worse.

  What did I do to deserve this? he asked himself.

  He shook his head at the pointless rhetorical question. He knew perfectly well …

  Nothing. I did nothing to deserve this.

  Life had done him a grave injustice, pure and simple.

  He also knew perfectly well what would make the pain stop.

  Fortunately, the man could see a charming sidewalk café just at the end of the block. Small tables and chairs were clustered behind a low wall, and flowering plants hung overhead. It was nice, he thought, that the weather was mild enough for the outdoor part of this restaurant to be open. He could sit there and enjoy the sun and fresh air for a little while. If he was lucky, the pain would ebb a bit before he had to be on his way, searching for new prey

  Taking care not to limp or otherwise show his discomfort, he walked to the entry and waited until the hostess approached him with a menu and offered him a small table off to one side. Once he was seated, he let out a quiet sigh of relief. Just getting off his feet eased the pain a little. But what would happen when he tried to get up again? He’d take a pain pill when the server brought him some water, but lately the pills hadn’t been doing him any good at all.

  He knew what was required. He knew that when he fulfilled his duty, the pain would disappear like magic and he would have at least some days of comfort.

  Meanwhile, he was glad he’d gotten here when he did. A line was starting to form at the café entrance. He’d been spared the ordeal of standing there waiting for a table.

  Second in line was a young woman who immediately captured his attention. She was remarkably beautiful, with exquisitely sculpted facial features and an equally well-shaped body.

  A model? he wondered.

  No, her clothes didn’t suggest it. She was wearing was a nice outfit, but he could tell that it had been chosen off the rack—possibly even at some thrift store, a shrewd and sensible purchase that spoke well of the woman’s intelligence. Stirred by her beauty, he wished he could walk over to her and introduce himself to her. But then he reminded himself …

  Those days are over for me.

  With the recent recurrence of his pain, he’d discovered a burning purpose in life, and it precluded fleeting, pleasurable entanglements like the fantasy that was now forming in his mind.

  When the server arrived, the man ordered a tuna melt sandwich. He gulped down a pain pill with a glass of water. Then he saw that the hostess was escorting the young woman to her table. As he glimpsed her from behind, he noticed something he couldn’t have seen before.

  There were small, reddish scars in the bends of her knees.

  Right then he knew …

  Liposuction.

  This woman’s good looks had been manufactured very recently. Just a few weeks ago, or maybe even a few days ago, she’d been markedly less sleek and attractive than she was now.

  As he watched her sit down, he wondered—how much surgical work had she gotten done?

  A lot, he guessed.

  Which meant that those two little scars he’s spotted weren’t the only ones. She was bound to have similar scars all over her body—tiny pinpricks in her thighs, her back, her buttocks, and low on her belly. If he could only see her closer up, he’d surely spot similar little marks on her arms.

  Artificial, he thought, suppressing a shudder.

  Now that he studied her face more carefully, he noticed a mannequin-like stiffness about her features.

  Plastic surgery.

  He wondered—how had she looked before all that surgery? And why had she gotten it done? A couple of scenarios ran through his head. Maybe she’d been in some terrible accident and had been disfigured. Or maybe she simply hadn’t been very good-looking from the start, with unsightly features and a dumpy body.

  Either way, she’d been just the sort of prey he was hunting …

  Imperfect.

  The surgery hadn’t corrected anything, not really, not below the surface. Those old flaws would still be there, visible to anyone who knew how to look. Even worse, in trying to make herself perfect, she’d just created new flaws. Her various scars might heal and become nearly invisible, but they would still be there.

  He felt a flash of anger toward her at the thought of those flaws.

  She herself was a scar on a world that should only consist of the perfect.

  But he quickly reminded himself …

  Don’t be angry.

  You must remain composed.

  After all, he was carrying out a kind of surgery all his own, extracting imperfections from human society. A surgeon never let himself be controlled
by emotions. And his own mode of killing required an extraordinary degree of precision and skill.

  So far, he’d managed carry out his mission with the necessary purity of focus.

  But when and how was he going to remove her?

  A bold possibility occurred to him …

  Why not right here and now?

  It would be a challenge, of course, but hardly impossible. He was carrying his ice pick in his briefcase, and he could conceal it in his cloth napkin and walk right over to her. He could act like he just wanted to introduce himself, then move so deftly that nobody would notice his swift stabbing movement to her ear. She might not even slump over right away. Maybe he could slip out of the restaurant before she mysteriously collapsed, apparently from some natural cause.

  Then he silently scolded himself …

  Don’t be ridiculous.

  Customers and staff here had gotten a good look at him. They’d be able to identify him sooner or later. No, he had to lure her away to some other location and kill her there.

  He felt a sudden twinge of alarm as her eyes met his.

  She sees me staring at her.

  But then she smiled and got up from her table and walked toward his.

  She said in a flirtatious voice …

  “I see we’re both here alone. Would you like some company?”

  He smiled back at her and said, “Thanks, that would be nice.”

  He sometimes forgot that he was considered to be a reasonably handsome man who was attractive to some women. As things were turning out, his good looks were likely to prove quite opportune for his purposes.

  The woman sat down and introduced herself as Dawn. He lied and said that his name was Scott. As they began to exchange pleasantries, he found himself thinking of a different woman who had been on his mind lately …

  Agent Riley Paige.

  She was far more intriguing than this fake beauty who was chattering away about nothing of interest to him.

  Riley Paige was a healthy, vigorous, good-looking woman. He knew that some people would consider her beautiful. Although he was sure that Riley Paige had never used surgery to improve her looks, he had to wonder if she harbored imperfections that weren’t immediately visible. Yes, surely a life of crime-fighting would leave its share of scars, both emotional and physical.